The Gospel of Life; Thoughts Introductory to the Study of Christian Doctrine

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1892. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER V. PRAE-CHRISTIAN GENTILE SOLUTIONS OF THE PROBLEMS OF BEING. What then, we have now to ask, are the characteristic thoughts which underlie the praeChristian Book-religions? and what lessons can we learn from them? These lessons, as we have already seen, will be twofold, according as they are drawn from the original conceptions to which the several religions bear witness, and from the subsequent embodiments of them. The original conceptions will serve at once to enlarge and to define our view of man's religious nature; and if so, to illuminate our own faith; for if Christianity be, as we believe, universal, then every genuine expression of human religious thought will enable us to see in the Gospel some corresponding truth which answers to it. If we can understand what whole races of men were feeling after, we shall have a clue to the discovery of mysteries for which 122 The value of the old Book-religions we, with our limited religious instincts, should not otherwise have sought. And in the growing assurance that the Gospel meets each real need of humanity, we shall find the highest conceivable proof of its final and absolute truth. This then is one end of our inquiry; and the other is to apprehend the fatal course of the actual history of primitive Gentile religions. For so much will be clear that in each case the central idea from which they all start, the need of a harmony between man and the world and God, after it had at first found a popular expression through the voice of great teachers, became as time went on, more and more overlaid on the one side by speculation and on the other side by ceremonialism. That which originally found spontaneous acceptance among different races as a religion became universally a philosophy or a ritual. Some...