The Religion of the Future.
Man's nature ia the same as it always was. Science has much to teach us, but • its message is not the last nor the highest. If we may infer the future from the past, a time will come when we shall cease to be dazzled with the thing which we call progress, when increasing " wealth " will cease jto satisfy, nay, may be found incapable of being produced or preserved except when relegated to a secondary place, when the illusions which have strangled' religion shall be burnt away, apd the immortal part of it restored to its rightful soyereignity. A long and weary road'may lie before us. Not easily will au inviolable atmosphere of reverence form again round spiritual faith to warn off Ihe insolent intruder. Piety, reverence, humble adoration of the great Maker of the. world, are in themselves so beautiful that religious faith might have remained for ever behind the enchanted shield, if imaginative devotion could have kept within bounds its wild demands upon reason. Not till Catholics had piled superstition on super atition, not till Protestants had elaborated a speculative theology which conscience as well as intellect at length flnng from it as' incredible, did the angels which guarded the shrine fold their wings and fly. T l c Garden of Eden i- desecrated now by the trampling of controversy,, and no ingenious reconciliation of.; religion and science, no river of casuistic holy water can restore the ruined loveliness of traditionary faith. But the truth which is in relieion will assert itself again, as it asserted itself before. A society without God in the heart of it is not permitted to exist; and when once more a spiritual creed has established itself, which men can act on in their lives and believe with their whole souls, it is to be hoped they. will have grown wiser by experience, and will not again leave the raost precious of their possessions to be ruined by the extravagances of exaggerating credulity.— 2*rou(jle.
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Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 3802, 5 March 1881, Page 3
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336The Religion of the Future. Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 3802, 5 March 1881, Page 3
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