United States or South Sudan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
As the islanders always maintained a discreet reserve with regard to my own peculiar views on religion, I thought it would be excessively ill-bred in me to pry into theirs. But, although my knowledge of the religious faith of the Typees was unavoidably limited, one of their superstitious observances with which I became acquainted interested me greatly.
Now the Lord is that Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. Paul understands by the veil the human opinion concerning the entire Law, the Decalog and the ceremonies, namely, that hypocrites think that external and civil works satisfy the Law of God and that sacrifices and observances justify before God ex opere operato.
A small community, isolated from other communities by the accidents of position, often comes to believe that its way of doing things is the way of the world; a small body of religious people, devoutly attentive to their own observances, often reach the conclusion that these observances are the practice of that catholic church which includes the pious-minded of all creeds and rituals; a group of radical reformers, by passionate advocacy of a single reform, come to believe that there have been no reformers before them, and that none will be needed after them; a band of fresh and audacious young practitioners of any of the arts, by dint of insistence upon a certain manner, rapidly generate the conviction that art has no other manner.
After his preceptor had rested a while and when he was seated with his wife on the same seat, Vipula represented unto him everything that Sakra had done. Hearing these words of Vipula, that foremost of Munis, endued with great prowess, became highly gratified with him for his conduct and disposition, his penances, and his observances.
When, about 1511, he journeyed to Rome on business of his order, he devoutly visited all the holy places for the good of his soul, and was almost tempted to wish that his father and mother were dead, so that he might free them from purgatory by his pious observances.
Although the tribes retained their separate gods and religious observances, and families among them also had their own family cults, the bond by which they had been formed into a people and made capable of common action was stronger than these earlier ties; the God whom Moses proclaimed as their head inspired in them an enthusiasm and vigour unknown before.
At any rate two different and inconsistent interpretations were given in the earlier and later codes of law. They had then probably regarded it as a superstitious practice to be eschewed like those idolatrous observances which had caused Terah to remove with Abraham and Lot from Ur of the Chaldees.
Among the Hurons and Iroquois, and indeed all the stationary tribes, there was an incredible number of mystic ceremonies, extravagant, puerile, and often disgusting, designed for the cure of the sick or for the general weal of the community. Most of their observances seem originally to have been dictated by dreams, and transmitted as a sacred heritage from generation to generation.
Many every night meet in Robert Pantatun's house, twenty-five or thirty, and ask him all manner of questions, and he reads a little. They end with prayer. 'They have many strange customs and superstitious observances peculiar to this group. They have curious clubs, confraternities with secret rites of initiation.
But our Lord here lays down a broad principle, which, if applied as it was meant to be, would lift a heavy burden of outward observance off the Christian consciousness. Fast when you are sad; feast when you are glad. Let the disposition, the mood, the moment's circumstance, mould your action. There is no virtue or sanctity in observances which do not correspond to the inner self.
Word Of The Day