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LESSON IX

 

THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT; ITS ORIGIN, GROWTH

AND ULTIMATE PERFECTION

 

            THERE are many persons who now-a-days question the desirability of religion, as many consider the word religion implies restrictions antagonistic to liberty, maintaining that as religion is derived from religio, which signifies to bind, or to bind again, therefore to be religious implies to be held in bondage. Now while there is no necessary idea of bondage connected with religion, we must all admit in a certain sense that we must be bound in order to be free.

 

            There are no two words in the English language which mean more directly opposite things than liberty and license, than freedom and lawlessness. No one can lie lawless and yet free; no one can be unmindful of the interests of his fellow beings and live as though lie were the only occupant of the world and enjoy liberty, for liberty is a pure, holy, divine and healthy sentiment, which unites man forever and forever with the eternally true, with the eternally free. “He is free whom the truth makes free, and all are slaves beside,” is an utterance that has been wisely quoted thousands of times in the past, and will be quoted thousands of times in the future, as it expresses the true idea of n-hat liberty is. Liberty is freedom to serve truth; freedom

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to live a life of truth in obedience to one’s highest convictions of right and duty. Genuine liberty is liberty for the soul, for the spiritual nature, for the immortal mind, over which death can have no power and the grave no victory. Liberty is a divine and holy realization of our relation to divine law and order, and the willing subjection of all our material inclinations to immortal guidance. Liberty never concerns itself with the first person singular, with my affairs or my interests; liberty knows nothing of the great I, but always speaks of our interests, of our concerns, of our welfare. Liberty, therefore, is in perfect accord with self abnegation, and yet with purest self enjoyment in the spiritual sense.

 

            Without doubt it is natural to man to love happiness and, to search for it, it is natural to the human family to try every experiment until they find happiness; every creature seeks happiness, and it is our supreme conviction that the day is coming in this world when everybody on the planet will be happy. Our sincere conviction is, that that wonderful goal of joy looked forward to by all nations and individuals, will one day be found; that as the Eternal Parent is an infinitely happy spirit, all children of the one Great Eternal are by their very nature, by the essential and unchanging constitution of their being ordained to happiness. Our belief is that all darkness and discord, all the pain and trouble through which mankind at large is now passing and through which individual minds are passing, even beyond the grave, is never anything worse than a school discipline, and even though a school be a purgatory, it is still an educational institution.

 

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                Our idea concerning man’s existence is, that every creature, without exception, is born not only with a great desire to be happy but also with an instinct that happiness is natural to him and will eventually be realized by him.

 

            Happiness can be only attained in one way: in purity, not in impurity; in truth, not in error; in love, not in hate; in knowledge, not in ignorance; in wisdom, not in folly. And as happiness can only be obtained in wisdom, knowledge, love, liberty, truth and righteousness, no matter where we may be, either in an external form or in spirit, we must be unhappy as long as we are impure, foolish, ignorant, untruthful, unloving, unwise or unrighteous; and as all unhappiness is the result of ignorance and imperfection, it is as the grand old Grecian sage, Socrates, described, happiness, good and knowledge are all one, while evil, darkness ignorance and misery are all one and inseparable; so we must all admit that as there is within the mind of man an ineradicable desire to be happy, and happiness can only be found in the one way ordained by Eternal Providence, i. e. in compliance with divine order, all souls will at length be happy, all lives will eventually flow together in one divine channel and all feet march together up that great hill upon the summit of which stands the city of gold, the symbol of the transmutation of all life’s perplexities into the absolute fullness of eternal harmony.

 

            Sorrow is often-times an alchemist transmuting the baser elements into the more precious. Our perplexities and woes, and even our restless discontent, are all servants of the divine plan that works out infinite

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good at last; when we hear the words pronounced so often on funeral occasions, “Peace at the last,” let us pause for a moment and ask, “What is the last?” The last, Omega, is identical with the first, Alpha. In the beginning God created, i. e., in the beginning of the history of a planet God began to manifest himself, and at the last his manifestation is complete to all souls from that planet. In the beginning man was endowed with a pure and holy soul, immortal, ineffable, and at the last, no matter how long that soul may have been eclipsed, it shines forth in divine splendor, in sheen of glory it bursts from behind the clouds which have so long veiled it and caused shortsighted minds to deem it lost forever.

 

            All our imperfections and errors may be compared to the mists and fogs, and smoke arising from the earth, especially from great manufacturing centers, while our souls in their union with the Eternal may be compared with the glorious lights of heaven that are never diminished or quenched, because earthly factories and chimneys fill the air with smoke.

 

            Here on the earth we are surrounded with imperfection and error, we are living in a smoky atmosphere and the smoke arises from the chimneys of our houses and our factories wherein we do material cooking, and engage in material merchandise. We cannot see the glorious lights on high when we are in the midst of a city whose chimneys fill the air with smoke, but when we get some distance out of the city, though our traveling brings us no nearer to the heavens above, no nearer the glorious sun, no nearer the circling planets and the “fixed stars” so very far away, by it we get

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out of the smoky atmosphere that we ourselves have created by our own occupation and our own very imperfect way of doing business; so when we have got out of the mental smoke which befogs ideas, out of the smoky atmosphere of our doubts and misbeliefs, got rid of all unhealthy sentiments which arise from our perverted nature and which make impure the atmosphere we breathe – God will have come no nearer to us, angels will be no closer to us, divine power no more ready to bless us, but we shall see the sun where afore-time we saw the fog; the fog will clear away that hid the sun – then will the sun appear. This simile will be found very important and easy of application in almost all cases.

 

            Astronomy teaches that the sun is much older than the earth but no matter how old it is, the earth could know nothing about it until the sun became visible to the earth. No matter how old the stars may be the earth could know nothing about them until it became ready to see them, so from man’s standpoint of imperfect observation it appears as though new worlds were ever coming into existence, as though new truths were ever being born, though from God’s point of view, from the point of view of the angels who have passed beyond the murky shadows of earthly imperfection there are no such new creations, new dispensations and new revelations as less enlightened minds suppose, but they understand how man in his ever increasing intelligence draws ever nearer and nearer to a knowledge of the Eternal and his works. And so when you sing, “Nearer my God to thee, nearer to thee,” you must not imagine that the idea of prayer, when interpreted

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truthfully, spiritually, philosophically, and scientifically carries with it the slightest suggestion that God ever changes his disposition toward us; you must never suppose for one moment there is any such thing as an atonement or reconciliation offered to the offended Majesty of Heaven whereby he is importuned to have mercy upon the sinner; never suppose there can be any opposition in the divine nature between the divine attributes, so that mercy and justice are reconcilable by vicarious atonement.

 

            But in the light of a true perception of man’s spiritual nature he offers atonement who effects reconciliation, who reveals the fatherly character of the Infinite, who removes all that doubt, fear and pride which as the smoke filling the earth’s atmosphere, hides the glorious luminaries of the heavens from man’s observation, and as theology of old has often concerned itself with changes in God, and from the very earliest times men have engaged in propitiatory rites, in offering sacrifices to placate a hitherto implacable Deity, as glen supposed that by their altars running with blood, v human as well as animal sacrifices they might prevail upon God to be merciful – they will learn in the future that God was never unreconciled to man, but man has, unfortunately, often been unreconciled to his brother man, and the reconciliation which needs to be effected in society to-day is, the unification of all races, and the identification of all human interests. We must no longer remain unreconciled to each other, and in our own individual nature we must no longer remain at discord with ourselves. Follow out this train of thought simply and logically and you will all understand the true nature of atonement.

 

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                The religious instinct in man is as natural as the instinct to walk, talk, eat, clothe ones-self or sleep. Any good phrenologist will tell you that the organs of yen-oration, spirituality, sublimity, benevolence, conscientiousness, and all the others which portray religious and moral faculties are just as natural as the organ of alimentiveness which disposes toward the enjoyment of food, or the organ of destructiveness which immoderately developed causes men to be dangerous to one another, but when perfectly balanced and wisely unfolded gives strength of character without which man would have no intellectual vigor or spiritual power.

 

            The religious sentiments are born in man, and the organ of spirituality which phrenology has discovered, as well as the organ of veneration, proves the natural instinct of worship, which, because natural, may be cultivated or repressed, but never totally eradicated.

 

            Nature worships in every flower that turns its face to the sun, offering an act of adoration to the great fountain of energy; the animal that looks up to man, a dog or horse looking up to his master with loving gratitude, displays the instinct of veneration. And when men erect high pedestals and place upon them statues of great men and women, almost deifying heroes and heroines; while they spare no praise and stint no gratitude when asked to pour out eulogistic adoration at the feet of some benefactor of society, man though lie calls himself an infidel and avows no faith in God, doubting if there be a spiritual or supreme Being, his natural instinct of veneration leads him to bow down to some superior man. In America there are men who acknowledge no supreme Ruler of the universe, who do

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not believe in erecting houses of worship, and who disregard all religious sentiment and worship altogether, who are ready to almost deify George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and other eminent patriots; those who read history are so profoundly touched with a sense of the majesty – we may also say divinity – of the, greatest characters who appear upon the historian’s page, that they consider no monument, no eulogy too extravagant when these men are brought before them as objects of respect.

 

            There is in man an irrepressible instinct of veneration and worship, and when people talk about the time coming for worship to cease, for adoration and devotion to come to an end, we tell you if that time does come man will be born with only half a brain, but as long as he is born with a whole brain physiologists and phrenologists will still behold the outward indications of sentiments of worship within the mind.

 

            This true instinct of worship, veneration, adoration, this continual looking up to a higher power is the lever in man which lifts him to a higher and more glorious life; that moral sense, or conscience, that spiritual faculty which is so closely allied to, and, indeed, inseparably identified with the distinction between right and wrong, or the sense of good and evil, is the magnet within man’s being that attracts him to a higher life, the inspiration of the soul within him that causes him to rise to a more blessed level and without which moral and spiritual progress would be impossible.

 

            Unfortunately, man has been so ignorant of his true nature, that what has been after all the divinest and kindest gift of the Eternal to his children, has been

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regarded as the voice of God’s displeasure, as the anger or wrath wherewith he would smite his enemies. How very, very often in human ignorance men denounce as cruel that which in days of added wisdom they declare to be most kind of all. How very often that parental discipline which brings the most tears to the eye and the most immediate sorrow to the heart of a child in the days of its administration, in after years proves itself to the absolute satisfaction of the offspring to have been the noblest and kindest ministration of fatherly and motherly love and wisdom.

 

            So when we look back through the dim vistas of by-gone years, when through the long ages we see humanity toiling up the steeps of time, and shedding blood even, for what we -may now term superstition or fanaticism, we find the instinct of worship even within the savage breast, deepest down in human nature of all instincts, and destined at last to overcome all imperfections and shine forth in its native brilliancy as God’s best gift to man.

 

            Let us consider briefly some of the forms which this natural instinct of worship has already taken to manifest itself, how it is now manifesting itself, and how it is likely, indeed certain, to manifest itself in future. Our first proposition is that no one ever worshiped anything without deeming it in some respect superior to himself; no one ever bowed to any power, force or creature without endowing that power, force or creature with superior attributes; and no one ever endowed any creature, force or power with superiority until that force, power or creature had manifested something that looked like superiority to the worshiper.

 

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                Let us revert to the earliest form of savage worship, the worship of animals. Wherein does animal superiority consist? Surely in superior physical strength. No one can deny for a moment that the larger animals on earth are man’s superiors physically; in bodily strength, in power to protect themselves, in power to fight, they most certainly excell. Poor, illiterate, naked savages, not armed with the weapons which intelligent and skillful nations have devised, could not protect themselves against the mauraders of the forest; they were stung to death by venomous reptiles they could not control; they were eaten up alive by monsters of the forest they could not destroy, but who mercilessly destroyed them; had they not then good reason to recognize superior strength in such creatures? Now, as they witnessed in animals and reptiles a disposition to do them harm, they discovered also that they could appease them by offering them food; that they would often eat the food given them instead of destroying them and their children; what was the outcome? Surely a system of sacrifice; even human sacrifice grew up in the world and frequently parents offered their own children to monsters; they offered one child that several might be saved; later on they frequently offered prisoners whom they had taken in war, and in still later times they offered those who were less perfect than others in order that by the sacrifice of one they might save many; sacrifices to the barbaric gods of all tribes originated with fear of animals and the elements.

 

            When men saw creatures of savage propensities holding sway on earth, they soon thought of militant powers in heaven, of wrathful and unmerciful gods, especially

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as they saw nature bestowing what seemed to them her greatest gifts upon the cruel and ruthless; they soon endowed the power that brought everything into existence with attributes like those of the serpent, the bear, the lion, the tiger and the wolf, and then when they turned their eyes to the heavens above, and also contemplated the phenomena perpetually transpiring upon the earth around them, wind, thunder, lightning, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, cyclones and all forms of devastation, which were more active in early times than now, did they not naturally endow the powers who ruled all things, with awe and majesty, with power and might, but with very little love, mercy or tenderness? And indeed to any one who is not a careful scientist, a profound philosopher, or deeply spiritual in his thought, the universe certainly suggests the idea of wrath mingled with beneficence. To any one who cannot read in the future the harmonizing and equalizing of all things, this world appears to be given over in large measure to powers of darkness, hate and cruelty. To those who look only upon the surface, there are no satisfactory evidences of a perfectly good God supreme in the universe. We do not wonder that awful ideas of devils, hells, divine wrath and fiery retribution hold sway, when we see the lightings strike the dwellings of the innocent as well as of the guilty, when the earthquake does not spare the babe at the breast, or the mother who is so necessary to the maintenance of her offspring, any more than it spares the murderer; when the volcanic eruption has no sympathy for the young and tender, any more than for those who have lived a life of sin.

 

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                There is an awful mystery in nature; a mystery which scientists, philosophers and theologians, have alike endeavored to unravel and have as yet been unable to satisfactorily explain save when from the higher realms of spirit and the deepest intuitions of man’s divine soul a voice has declared this is only a prelude to the oratorio, a scaffolding to the temple, which when it appears in all its beauty, crowned with light, the scaffolding removed, and the noise of the workmen hushed, – when all the forces of angry waves have subsided and there is a great calm, when the rain and wind have ceased, then you will see the earth rejuvenated and perfected. Then you will know that all is for the best, and the righteous shall shine forth in the kingdom of their Father.

 

            There is wonder and dread all over the world, and those poor short-sighted theologians who can see out of earth into hell, but can not see through hell into heaven, who can see beyond man to devil, but cannot see beyond devil to the angel into which that devil will at length be converted, who can see the strife, discord and storm, but can not see beyond it to the day of ineffable calm and great glory yet to be revealed – such short-sighted gazers into the mysteries of human life and destiny are not merely imagining horrors or supposing calamities – they simply do not see far enough; their point of view does not reach out into the universe far enough.

 

            Until we have more powerful telescopes and greater powers of spiritual vision, until we are longer sighted with regard to spiritual things, we shall be tormented with dread of fiends and hobgoblins and all the awful

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creatures which people the realms of the unknown; but -when ignorance dies and we know good, all is for good, when brighter light and fuller revelation explain the mystery and solve the problem, then because darkness is no more, the hobgoblins disappear even from imagination, and in the light all will know that there is nothing to fear. When in the darkness you are afraid of everything, even of your own shadow, and often of that most of all. When Emanuel Swedenborg in the last century, and Dante centuries before saw into the hells and told of states almost too awful to be depicted, they did not describe what did not exist, but Dante, who had been educated in Roman Catholicism and had therefore been taught that there was an endless hell for those who died in mortal sin, and Swedenborg, who had been brought up in the Lutheran faith and taught that those who died out of Christ would be damned forever, could only modify their ideas of everlasting torment, they could not see far enough beyond the hells into the heavens, which all must at length reach. Anyone standing at a point were he can see but a little way before him can describe only what is not very far ahead and is apt to imagine there is a boundary line, a horizon, and nothing beyond it. A child standing upon the shore, with a field-glass, looking across the water thinks there is nothing beyond the water—it is all water and nothing but water in that direction to this vision. But those who have been over seas have found land on the other side. You can not show the distant land to the child on the shore; you can not, even if your sight is excellent, stand on the Pacific slope and look across the water, to the Sandwich islands, China,

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Japan or any land whatever, but when travelers have been across the water and found land, and one comes back to tell the tale, then you accept a revelation from the land invisible; there is water indeed but there is lard beyond the water. This is but a poor and faint illustration of the heavens beyond the hells, of the paradise beyond the purgatories, of the good beyond the evil, of the light beyond the darkness.

 

            Looking at matters from your earthly standpoint, unless spiritually endowed and enlightened, or in communion with those who have crossed the seas, you know of nothing more than that which follows directly upon your present state. After a few short years in the earthly body you encounter death and the grave, and there is the end of life to physical sight or material perception. But there are those who can see beyond, and where you declare death they declare fullness of life; where you declare destruction they declare resurrection and reconstruction. Siva, among the Brahmins, is “Destroyer” only to the ignorant, the same divinity is both Destroyer and Reproducer to the enlightened.

 

            The religious systems of the world must come and go, rise and set, wax and vane, and all that will remain forever is man’s perception of absolute truth, and this will be perpetually increasing.

 

            We have already alluded to the worship of the lower creation – to the worship of the dark, brutal and belligerent forces of nature, which led to sacrifices of the most fearful character – and we think we have accounted for it naturally, that man being on a material plane, and surrounded with forces he

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could not control, and seeing no further than his immediate environment, worshiped the physical force which was superior to his own; and there are millions of people to day, who, with all their boasted intelligence, scientific ability and literary acumen, never advance further than savages, in a spiritual direction, thus they only perceive what seems very unjust and cruel in natural phenomena.

 

            Why do the most illumined minds refuse to bow before the blind force which is the substitute for God among atheists and materialists C Why do they not acknowledge that supreme law or infinite force, a vague abstraction in the universe, and declare that is all we can know about causation? Why do they not bow clown and worship the blind “necessity” of modern materialism?

 

            We have only one answer; that ideal “force” is not as good as we are and we will not worship our inferior, we will not bow to the materialists’ substitute for God, because it is an image of clay inferior to the substance of which we ourselves are made.

 

            We claim to have some affection, some intelligence, some mercy, some sense of justice, but a blind, unintelligent force, a mere abstraction, a something not ourselves, not endowed with any intelligence, wisdom, love or sense of justice, is infinitely our inferior, and that which is our inferior calls for our contempt not our adoration.

 

            Instead of believing that the universe is guided by some unknowable power that brings multitudes into existence, mocks them with noble powers and wonderful endowments, cherishes in their breasts the highest

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hopes and loftiest sentiments, and then allows a cart wheel to run over their body, or some other accident to cause their death, and that is the end of them; instead of believing in a power which gives glorious life and then allows it to be destroyed by the blundering of a drunken cab-driver, or a careless engineer, instead of bowing before a power that gives intelligence, hope, aspiration, all that constitutes noblest manhood and womanhood, and then destroys these attributes in a moment by a falling tile or by a missile hurled at your head by a careless boy, we e prefer to believe in an intelligent, controlling power that regards the material body as the most external and superficial, vesture of man, and sees the man himself forever safely alive, forever in spirit.

 

            If I am a brute, I naturally worship a bigger and stronger brute than myself; if I am merely an animal, I naturally worship a larger and stronger animal than myself, and if I am a human being, with no other instincts cultivated, no other powers developed than those I share in common with the lower creation, I naturally bow to those of the lower creation, who have attributes such as mine but more powerfully developed than mine. And thus it is only natural that as long as man is on the material plane of thought and affection, and does not recognize anything more than his material nature, he will invent a material substitute for God, which substitute is the direct result of the mammon worship of this age, a remote result of the ignorant animality of savage times. There is fully as much animality and brutality and more treachery in the respectable man of business, who does not care how

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many wives and children he ruins, how many heads of families he dooms to misery, and perhaps suicide by his tricks in trade, misrepresentations and gambling speculations, than in the panther or the wolf. We would rather be in the clutches of a tiger than in those of a man who lives for self and money only; we would rather trust to the tender mercies of the wild beasts of the forest than to those of a creature who has more intellect but uses that intellect solely for personal aggrandizement, recognizing nothing beyond buying and selling, eating, drinking and getting gain. As long as this worship of mammon continues, and to make a fortune is the supreme object of life, so long as education has for its watchword, competition, and your most approved mottoes: are look out for yourselves, take care of number one, there can be no spiritual revelation to satisfy the highest needs of human nature, there can be no sunshine visible in which we can bask with delight. If the air is filled with noxious exhalations and the smoke from a thousand factory chimneys. Man must get rid of the mist and smoke that is continually enveloping him. When he is no longer selfish nor brutal, then he will be able to accept a glorious revelation from the spiritual universe, which is absolutely necessary to happiness and a true understanding of the plan of the universe.

 

            We are ready to make the assertion, extravagant though it may appear to many, that we know people who have absolutely discovered God. But if they have discovered God, have they met a person and had a personal interview with an omnipotent spirit in the guise of man who proclaimed his deity by name? We answer they have beheld the divine presence with the eye

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of the soul; they have become spiritual to the extent of entering into conscious relation with the divine spirit made known to them in the innermost recesses of their being. “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” A great many people quibble at that beatitude, many want to know -what it means to see God. According to the statement itself no one can know what it means to “see God” until perfectly pure in heart, therefore until they are in that condition they have no means of either proving or disproving the statement. The sight of God to the pure in heart is the full perception that everything is good and for the best, that all life w ill turn out well and all roads lead at length to the great terminus of the celestial city, that all boats will land at length upon the shore of eternal happiness. By perceiving God we mean perceiving spiritual truth, love, wisdom, goodness and righteousness; perceiving perfect justice in the order of the universe. And when we have found divine justice ruling and governing all we do not trouble ourselves as to whether Deity has or has not an anthropomorphic form; when we have found divine wisdom, love and truth we do not care to ask how love, wisdom and truth are presented outwardly to sense or intellect, we are satisfied with the knowledge of the soul, with the perception of the interior nature.

 

            For all discussions in theology concerning God’s personality or impersonality we shall care less than for the changing sands on the sea shore. It does not matter whether we can decide as to the personality or impersonality of God. There are a great many things beyond our intellectual range, even beyond our moral

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preception, and there are a great many mysteries in the universe that are beyond us which we do not need to settle.

 

            But if we have found enough to content our souls in truth, if we have found enough to still the wild beating of our rebellious, sorrowing Hearts, to demonstrate life immortal where we have hitherto found death, and the victory of truth where hitherto we imagined the victory of the grave; if we corn stand by the side of a corpse and yet see a resurrected  being promoted to a higher state of intelligent existence, if we can shed the tear of sympathy with the mourner who is bereaved of an earthly and vet be so convinced that the so-called dead are alive and with its, that the tears which, flow through ignorance we can wipe away; if we cane bring wisdom’s consolation to the sad heart, if we have the certainty that thought every earthly prop be destroyed, and every earthly opportunity denied, though t we have lived our lives front the ordinary standpoint in vain, labored and toiled for naught, that there is in the spiritual universe a crown, a reward, a glorious result for our every undertaking that can not be observed from earth’s plane of observation, then Ave have found the God we all need to find, for we have found infinite goodness; Infinite Good, is “God” which is an old saxon word meaning the Good One or the All Good. God then becomes a word no longer meaningless upon our lips. All human speculations concerning God and the life beyond must eventually pass away, all outward forms and ceremonies of religion will pass away, but the essence of religion will never pass away. Religion may cast aside its

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outward dress, its pagodas, temples, synagogues and churches may all be looked upon some day as things of the past and no longer needed; but supposing the outward church does come to an end, how will it come to an end? By growth. The church will grow so large it will cover the earth, and when the whole earth is a temple, then nobody will need a smaller temple. When the temple was small it stood on a little spot of ground, and people could easily tell you how large it was; but when the whole earth becomes holy, you can never wear your shoes anywhere if you have to remove them when you tread on holy ground.

 

            We believe in the extension of holy ground, in the enlarging of consecrated territory so that we can find God everywhere.

 

            Where did Jacob find holy ground? Out in the wilderness where he had but a stone for his pillow. There had been no rite of consecration, no house of worship was built there, but he was constrained to remove the shoes from his feet for the place whereon he stood was holy ground. Where did Moses find holy ground, where did lie seethe phenomenon of the burning bush? There was no temple built by human hands and dedicated to the Most High where he received the divine message, lie was in the solitary unconsecrated desert.

 

            Where did Jesus tell the woman of Samaria that God should be worshiped? It was not necessary to approach a holy mountain, as the Samaritans thought, with their ruined temple on its summit; it was not necessary to enter Jerusalem with its temple of unparalleled magnificence or pause within its walls, for God is everywhere. Spirit and truth are the only two essential words used in connection with his worship.

 

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            In the future the religious instinct will be entirely disconnected from fear, from all harsh conceptions of Deity and moral obligation; the very word obligatory will be removed from the thought of religion and God will be worshiped in perfect freedom.

 

            But some may still ask how can perfect freedom be reconciled with religion or religio, which means binding? Can we be religious – completely bound – and yet enjoy perfect freedom? Yes, for you can serve your father and mother from pure love, you do not fear them at all, if you love them perfectly. The youngest child can know what it is to feel: father would never punish me, nor would mother; but when they tell me what to do I do it because I love them, and because I love them I choose to please them.

 

            The only worship God can care for is the kind of worship we have just mentioned, any other is craven, and usually selfish. When worship is offered to God for the sake of receiving something in return, is not the worshiper like a child who obeys his parents not from love, but because if lie is a good child lie may get a toy or some sweetmeats, such worship is not religion. There are people who are so afraid of God they worship in order to escape hell. Congregations in times of revival are thrown into hysteria at the thought of endless perdition, and then they are said to receive the spirit, having prayed for the Holy Spirit because they very naturally did not wish to drop into fire and be burned forever. There is no religion in such experiences. Where true religion appears is where people worship lovingly and truly the eternal God, from gratitude to the God who blesses them; where their hearts

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are full of gratitude to the Eternal Fount of, all, and they love the Eternal with all their hearts, with all their souls, with all their minds and with all their strength, fear is gone, dread is removed from such forever.

 

            True religion has nothing but love in it. The only reason why the men and women of the future will worship will be because they love the Eternal. Now as

God wants nothing, and as you can not possibly do God a favor, add to his glory or bestow one fraction of honor upon the Eternal that He does not eternally possess, religion resolves itself into practical philanthropy; and love for the Eternal takes the form of love for all his children. Religion, rising in glorious light from its chrysalis, transformed into a butterfly, becomes philanthropy, humanitarianism. When we support religious services in days to come we shall know that others arc helped by them, and that they generally benefit society; we shall do whatever we can to help our brethren to a higher and nobler life. There is a divine utilitarianism which recognizes the usefulness of whatsoever tends to promote the spiritual nature, and this will be the impetus to all religious observance in clays to come. Nothing is more important than that doubting and nervous persons, in particular, should be helped to a spiritual sight of divine goodness, and assisted to realize the truth of immortality. Pains, suffering and diseases of every name proceed from doubt, fear and sorrow, and to remove these deadly enemies of health and happiness is to employ the only effective measures to overcome sickness and insanity.