RELIGION—EMOTIONAL AND INTELLECTUAL.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4442, 15 June 1875, Page 2

RELIGION—EMOTIONAL AND INTELLECTUAL.

TO TIIE EDITOR OP THE NEW ZEALAND TIMES. Sra,—Emotional religion is adapted to the ruinds of those members of our common humanity whose early training has been neglected, and whose daily life precludes them from the study of the art of thinking. Such possess the power of bringing emotion into action at a moment's warning. The Bible is the storehouse from whence the gushinglyreligious man draws his supplies of heat, and in his eagerness to convince his opponents is not usually careful in his selection of epithets, and very often he is not commonly polite; he believes that as every word therein written is true, he cannot mangle nor pervert any of them, especially when he is fighting as he thinks in the cause of Truth. When taken separately, the emotions are the most variable and deceptive of all the human faculties. "Music," it has been finely said, "is the languageand the sonl of feeling," and with this all will agree. For instance, how delighted the ragged urchin marches after the military band in the street, his ears a glowing, his head erect, his very being changed—but only momentarily, when the music ceases, the rude cares and the vulgar anxieties of every day life return—and even so it is with the immature and the untrained mind, blinded by zeal it allows itself to be whirled away into the labyrinths of religious frenzy, it next snatches up the implements of war and issues armed to the teeth, scattering a hell-fire, a human and a super-human agony on the heads of those who but too often are as superstitious as need be—the latent spark ignites and burns all the fiercer by reason of its novelty. These terrors of the Dante school of incipient lunatics are sparingly interspersed with feeble and ill-conceived conceptions of endless happiness. Ignorant of what true happiness consists of, it is no wonder that these woeful creatures are evermore howling. Emotional religion is a heavy burden to bear, is is a grinding slavery of the mind, its professors are necessarily always upon the rack of their well-mean-ing but sternly tyrannic activity to keep themselves and their flock from straying. When these people who profess so much fall into carelessness, and into positive backsliding, is the taunt and the sneer of sensible men deserved ? Well, perhaps not, yet the fall and the method of reproof must afford the supreme devil not a little amusement. Those whose religious belief is based upon intellectual convictions enjoy the true dignity and calmness of repose. Such do not run hither and thither, they clearly comprehend and understand the different and the varying phases of the mind, they are above and superior to a fictitious enthusiasm; this is not to be regretted. Education has driven blind and spurious enthusiasm out of the world. The first Christians were more or less enthusiastic, but as soon as they came to a better comprehension of duty, they followed the reasonable dictates of their reasonable nature. From this view of the religious question one may infer that true religion is a very tender plant, soon soiled, soon humbled ; its successful culture is the rarest and the noblest effort of the sanctified faculties, it is liable to many diseases, it requires the heart and the head of the most skillfully trained physicians to prescribe for it when ill, and unremitting care and watching whilst struggling' for health. How great the need of true and honest men for this work? But which is the greater wonder, the impudence of some who assume the position of religious leaders, or the imbecility of the many who are content to be so led ? Again, true religion bears a triple mark—it is active, it is influential, it is progressive—and unless it bears upon its front all of these easily recognisable features it is but a training school for quacks, and as such is generally shunned by men whose discretion has not forsaken them.. Those who prefer emotional to intellectual forms and convictions are, thanks to the spirit of our age, at perfect liberty to do so ; but the latter is the higher and the freer, and consequently the form which is best adapted to the state progressive.—l am, &c, Gloege Wilson.