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It cannot too often be pointed out that this situation was unhealthy in many ways. It is not good for a people to have codes of morality thrust upon it from outside. Especially is it bad when the code is in many ways untrue to human nature under normal conditions. Ascetic, other-worldly Christianity distorted the impulses of mediæval man.
But these experiences were surely characteristic, not only of Bābism, but of Ṣufism. Ecstatic joy is the dominant note of Ṣufism, a joy which was of other-worldly origin, and compatible with the deepest tranquillity, and by which we are made like to the Ever-rejoicing One. The mystic poet Far'idu'd-din writes thus, Joy! joy! I triumph now; no more I know Myself as simply me. I burn with love.
The force which had broken out desperately in the crazy wonder-working of Eunous of Enna and had then inspired the 'other-worldly' exaltation of Paul of Tarsos, was soon conducted into the walls of chapels, and the local associations of Christian chapel-goers were steadily linked up into a federation so powerfully organized that the Imperial federation of city-states had eventually to choose between going into partnership with it or being supplanted.
However, the full potential for organizing protest was overlooked. For the most part, the church taught an other-worldly religion which strove to provide strength with which to endure the sorrows of this life, but it did not try too actively to change the situation. Richard Allen, for example, counseled patience and caution, advising his people to wait for God to work in His own way.
Yeats's commerce with dreams and fairies and other spirits has not all been of this evidential and disputable kind. His confessions do not convince us of his magical experiences, but his poems do. Here we have the true narrative of fairyland, the initiation into other-worldly beauty. Here we have the magician crying out against All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old,
Agatha's hand, that rested on the table, was trembling by the time she finished her speech; she was vividly conscious of the panic that had come upon her nerves at a fresh realization of the wall of defense and resistance which she was attempting to assail. It spoke to her from Mrs. Stoddard's calm, other-worldly eyes, from her serene, deep voice. "No, Miss Redmond, that work is not for me."
Great heavens, what a tableau!... We well know how resistlessly the male of humankind is drawn to the female, at the mere glimpse of her flinging aside the tools of his trade, whatever it may be, and furiously pursuing to the ends of the earth. And how she springs up startled from her other-worldly dreams, to hear the thundering feet behind....
Hindus are poetic, other-worldly, and spiritually minded. They have a keen instinct for things of the spirit. They are, also, very unlike the people of the West. Among Westerners, religion is largely an incident in life. It has for them a separate department, a small corner, in the life. In the East, on the other hand, religion enters into every detail of life.
As a minister of Christ and his kingdom he must give to Christianity an interpretation which will offset provincial and narrow impressions. He must free it from cant and from the other-worldly emphasis and bring it into the realm where boys and business men will respect it as a social factor of primary importance. All the problems of early adolescence belong to the village boy as to every other.
Toyohiko Kogawa, the secretary of the Japan Labor Federation, says: "Labor considers the Church too other-worldly. It thinks it has no concern with the interests of labor; and that the Church has lost her aim in this world and is looking up only into heaven. And labor forgets where to go, loses its sense of direction.
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