United States or Republic of the Congo ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I have only to repeat, that what has been advanced is a setting of this great subject; and I venture to urge it upon your consideration. It now remains for me to notice very briefly one or two further questions as I draw to a close. What, I may be asked, are we expected, as young people, to understand about the doctrines and dogmas of Christianity as necessary to an intelligent religious faith?
Humanity is the sky, and these religions and dogmas and theories are but the mists and clouds, changing continually, destined finally to melt away. Let the ghosts go. We will worship them no more. Let them cover their eyeless sockets with their fleshless hands, and fade forever from the imaginations of men.
In religious matters, the heart opposes not so much what is to be believed as what is to be done. Minor points of their theology have been from time to time disputed, but these may be regarded as generally settled. Predestination is one of the chief dogmas on which the faith of the Turk is as firmly fixed as on the most momentous article in his creed.
Dogmas and observances apart, I felt that her religion was so much loftier than my own that, though it would have been impossible for me to profess acceptance of it, it was equally impossible to argue with her about it, that it was so woven into the fibre of her existence that to move it in the least would be impossible, or, if possible, only at the cost of mental and spiritual dislocation.
If my anarchic friends will not have rules they will have rulers. Preferring personal government, with its tact and flexibility, is called Royalism. Preferring impersonal government, with its dogmas and definitions, is called Republicanism. Objecting broadmindedly both to kings and creeds is called Bosh; at least, I know no more philosophic word for it.
In the honest conviction of profound knowledge, the clever, vigorous champion of materialism endeavoured to brand the opponents of his dogmas with the stigma of absurdity, and those who flattered themselves with the belief that they belonged to the ranks of the "strong-minded" followed his standard. Hegel's influence was broken, Schelling's idealism had been thrust aside.
My mind had all the while been kept in a state of agitation resembling the motion of a whirlpool, and, when we came to separate, I then discovered that the purpose for which I had sought the fields had been neglected, and that I had been diverted from the worship of God by attending to the quibbles and dogmas of this singular and unaccountable being, who seemed to have more knowledge and information than all the persons I had ever known put together.
From the day of this apotheosis of Marx until our own, the "orthodox" Socialist of any shade is of the belief that the first essential for social salvation lies in unquestioning belief in the dogmas of Marx.
The message of Christ does indeed remain for all minds, for all places, for all times, inexhaustible in its meaning, unalterable in its nature; the dogmas of theology, on the other hand, demand Councils of the Church for their definition, and an infallible Pope for their interpretation.
Once started along this road he became an habitué, spending in a particular chair at a certain table anywhere from three to six hours a day, deep in a book, not to be deterred therefrom by the usual series of mental shocks which a man, full-fed all his life on conventions and dogmas and superficial thinking, gets when he first goes seriously and critically into the fields of scientific conclusions.
Word Of The Day