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The Masonic Temple in Chicago is said to be occupied on Sundays all day long by larger or smaller groups which may be societies for ethical culture or with some social program or other, or for the study of Oriental religions.
A religion of law assumes that man is capable of himself of obeying the law, and is responsible for his mode of life; it assumes that man is capable through his own energy of conquering the world of sin, and of leading the higher life. Religions of this type possess of course the merit of simplicity, transparency, and finality.
In point of fact Judaism and Christianity were as widely different from one another as they were from his own teaching and he was more than ever inclined to regard as his special forerunner, Abraham, who had preceded both Moses and Jesus, and was revered by both religions as the man of God.
The formulae of various religions were used as instruments of magic, as our own witches used the Lord's Prayer backwards. [146:2] Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, v. 7. They worshipped the Serpent, Nāhāsh (
He considers there is no need for investigation until Christianity has itself determined what is the precise truth that non-Christian countries are to be asked to accept. Regarding the influence of the Buddhist and Shinto religions during the many centuries they have existed in the country on the lives of the people, I propose to make a few remarks.
Just in a similar fashion the first gods arose, through the personification of the forces of nature, and these in the further development of the religions acquired greater and greater supernatural force, until by a natural process of abstraction, I might say of distillation, from the many more or less limited and mutually limiting gods, in the course of spiritual development, at last the idea of the one all embracing god of the monotheistic religions took its place in the minds of men.
The fine contempt for the vessel manifested by the original artists of each new movement is almost as salutary as their sublime belief in the spirit. To us, looking at the history of art, the periods of abjection and compromise may appear unconscionably long, but by comparison with those of other religions they are surprisingly short.
Fortunately similar rivalries, dissensions, and treasons prevailed amongst the Mussulman emirs, some of them Turks and others Persians or Arabs, and at one time foes, at another dependants, of the Khalifs of Bagdad or of Egypt. Anarchy and civil war harassed both races and both religions with almost equal impartiality.
Here were ten millions of people on a great highway of commerce, of numerous different races, different languages, different religions, some semi-civilized, some barbarous, others mere pagan savages, but without a majority or even a respectable minority of them accustomed to self-government or believed to be capable of it.
Mohammedanism is another outgrowth from this group of religions. The teachings of the Koran give the institutional and ritual forms to the same three elements distinguished above. God is the identical single God; and Mohammed is His Prophet, as Jesus is the New Prophet of Christendom.
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