Ten Great Religions eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 690 pages of information about Ten Great Religions.

Ten Great Religions eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 690 pages of information about Ten Great Religions.
earth, spiritual, not needing to receive anything from man, but giving him all things.  Next, he proclaimed the doctrine of universal human brotherhood.  God had made all men of one blood; their varieties and differences, as well as their essential unity, being determined by a Divine Providence.  But all were equally made to seek him, and in their various ways to find him, who is yet always near to all, since all are his children.  God is immanent in all men, says Paul, as their life.  Having thus stated the great unities of faith and points of agreement, he proceeds only in the next instance to the oppositions and criticisms; in which he opposes, not polytheism, but idolatry; though not blaming them severely even for that.  Lastly, he speaks of Jesus, as a man ordained by God to judge the world and govern it in righteousness, and proved by his resurrection from the dead to be so chosen.

Here we observe, in this speech, monotheism came in contact with polytheism, and the two forms of human religion met,—­that which makes man the child of God, and that which made the gods the children of men.

The result we know.  The cry was heard on the sandy shore of Eurotas and in green Cythnus.—­“Great Pan is dead.”  The Greek humanities, noble and beautiful as they were, faded away before the advancing steps of the Jewish peasant, who had dared to call God his Father and man his brother.  The parables of the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan were stronger than Homer’s divine song and Pindar’s lofty hymns.  This was the religion for man.  And so it happened as Jesus had said:  “My sheep hear my voice and follow me.”  Those who felt in their hearts that Jesus was their true leader followed him.

The gods of Greece, being purely human, were so far related to Christianity.  That, too, is a human religion; a religion which makes it its object to unfold man, and to cause all to come to the stature of perfect men.  Christianity also showed them God in the form of man; God dwelling on the earth; God manifest in the flesh.  It also taught that the world was full of God, and that all places and persons were instinct with a secret divinity.  Schiller (as translated by Coleridge) declares that LOVE was the source of these Greek creations:—­

                          “’Tis not merely
    The human being’s pride that peoples space
    With life and mystical predominance,
    Since likewise for the stricken heart of Love
    This visible nature, and this common world
    Is all too narrow; yea, a deeper import
    Lurks in the legend told my infant years
    That lies upon that truth, we live to learn. 
    For fable is Love’s world, his home, his birthplace;
    Delightedly dwells he ’mong fays and talismans,
    And spirits, and delightedly believes
    Divinities, being himself divine. 
    The intelligible forms of ancient poets,
    The fair humanities of Old Religion,

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Ten Great Religions from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.