Читать книгу The Seekers - Jessie E. Sampter - Страница 6

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When we were all gathered about the table at three o’clock, I opened the discussion thus:

“Do you remember that I told you we were going to speak to-day of the fact that there is almost no religion at present, and the cause for this? Now, are we all agreed that there is very little religion—true religious belief—at present?”

All agreed to this except Henry. He said that he thought people were as religious as ever.

“I think,” said Florence to Henry, “that you are confusing religion and creed. People belong to churches and temples, and think they are religious, but they don’t know what they believe.”

I saw Henry was not convinced, so I said to him: “I think perhaps we do not mean the same thing by religion, therefore we might as well go on, and speak of it later, when we do understand.

“Now, I believe there is a definite historic reason for our religious lack, and I will tell it to you.”

Then I reviewed briefly the history of ancient religions, Brahmanism, the Egyptian creed, the Greek and the early Catholic religions, to show that all these for various reasons—but chiefly because of the ignorance of the populace—had been, as it were, double religions. There was an initiated religion of the priests, who did indeed see truth, who were monotheists of the universal vision, and were filled with the sense of unity in all things. Besides this was the religion of myths, the popular religion. The people took literally the poetical tales told by the prophets; and these prophets, or priests, even went so far as to deceive the people purposely, for what they considered the people’s good.

“I don’t see how the priests could have known the truth,” Ruth said, “if they meant to deceive the populace. Those who knew the truth would not wish to deceive.”

“You are right,” I answered; “they had not the whole truth, but in so far as they saw, they saw truly.”

Ruth seemed to doubt this historic account. I quietly proved to her and the others that it was true. I read them a passage from Plato’s “Republic,” in which he recommends telling the people a myth because belief in it would put them in the proper frame of mind.

I went on to explain how the democratic spirit began to destroy the religion of the initiated. The aristocracy of religion was as much resented as the aristocracy of government.

The result was that every one believed the popular, mythical religion; and that is what most of our churches have lived upon since then. All the superstitions of creeds, the absurd stories that are believed literally by some people even to-day, are the poetic symbols of prophets and teachers, accepted as narratives of fact.

Next came the scientific spirit, and said: “The world is more than six thousand years old; it was not created in a week; the whale could not have swallowed Jonah, and given him up again.” Now people cried out: “Religion is not true. We will believe nothing but science.”

When I spoke of the difference between mythical and true religion, I found the children already understood this, that they realized Moses’ true meaning when he spoke of the burning bush; that they knew Jesus, when he spoke of himself as the son of God, meant to express the divinity of man. I said the true religion spoke in poetry, and the popular made its figures of speech into gods.

“For instance,” I said, “from where comes the line, ‘The rosy fingers of the dawn’?”

“From Homer,” answered Marian, “from the Odyssey.”

“Well,” I went on, “a person reading that might say, ‘Just think, the dawn has fingers; then it must have a hand.’”

“Then,” said Virginia, “he would add, ‘So the dawn is a woman.’”

I said one might worship an image of a god, but if he kept his mind upon the vast divine unity he would not be an idol worshiper.

“But,” objected Henry, “if he did it long enough, he would become an idol worshiper.”

“He might,” I said, “but he need not.”

Now we came to the question of science. What has religion to do with science?

Alfred said science led in the same direction, was looking for the same thing.

Henry said science was supposed to be in opposition to religion, because it destroyed her creeds.

That, I answered him, seemed to me a good thing.

Virginia said she thought religion and science were almost the same. She meant that her scientific knowledge of the universe led her to her religious convictions.

Florence said she thought science and religion were altogether separate, had nothing to do with each other.

Marian said she did not see how science could help us to religious knowledge. But it turns out that she has read no science at all, save what she was taught in school.

Ruth said that science was the enemy of religion, that two things seeking in a different way could not possibly both reach the truth; that science might tell us of material facts, but could not possibly give us the divine truth.

I asked: “Are you sure material truth is not divine truth?”

Then I said that I myself thought science was the servant of religion, that it was valuable only in so far as it helped us to a knowledge of life—divine and whole—(I said aside to Ruth) and that I did think it helped us so. It gave us a sense of unity, of our relation with the whole world, because we knew that the same law moved us and the stars.

“Now,” I went on, “Marian mentioned the other day that she had heard people say they were too educated to need religion. They meant they knew too much science. Can science replace religion?”

They all said no.

They saw at once that behind every science was the mystery, the unexplained, and that every scientist must begin with a philosophy.

I said: “I have heard people say that science disproves immortality.”

Virginia answered: “It does not disprove immortality. It proves, indeed, that nothing ever is destroyed.”

“Do you think,” I asked, “that there is such a thing as absolute religious knowledge?”

“Yes,” they said.

“Do you think we can get it? That it is a certain knowledge?”

They answered “Yes.”

“But,” said Ruth, “you would want it proved.”

I used the word “faith,” and the children rightly objected, because, they said, faith could be used to express the most superstitious of mythical beliefs. One must know.

“I mean self-evident knowledge,” I said. “If to-day the priests and the myths are dead, if we are to have a democratic religion, then each one of us must be a prophet. We here to-day, we seven, shall find the unanswerable truth. Shall we?”

“Yes, I believe so.”

“How do we know that such truth is to be reached? We do know certain things in ourselves? We know the mystery is there? We know that which we call God?”

“Yes,” they said.

“Is there any other reason for believing that the truth can be known?”

Marian said: “In past times some men have known it, we feel certain.”

“That is just what I meant, Marian. Such men, you mean, as Moses and Jesus?”

“Yes.”

“And we here shall get it. We shall know.

“I believe,” I said, “that when we have talked everything over we shall know the truth, and it shall be the same for each.”

“In fundamentals, perhaps,” said Ruth, “but not in all things.”

No religion could be the true religion, we said, if it fostered antagonism or bitterness toward those of another persuasion.

“One would wish to teach them,” said Marian.

“Well, then, what is the truth? We spoke of the nature of ‘God.’ What is God, the something we all know and cannot speak?”

Henry said: “I could tell better what I mean by God by saying what is not God.” We tried to make him explain.

“Nothing is not God,” said Virginia, “everything is God, good and bad, too; and the bad only seems bad to us, but really leads to good.”

“Everything is not God,” said Ruth, “for God is perfect, and we are imperfect, and are striving for his perfection. Imperfection and all bad things are not of God.”

“What are they, then?” I asked. “Surely you do not believe in two gods, like the Zoroastrians, in a good and a bad? But the wisest of them saw that the two were one.”

Ruth answered: “I have it at home in a book, how evil came into God’s world, although we are of him and he is perfect. I will bring it next time. I don’t remember it.”

“Yes, do bring it. But I believe that as long as we are not perfect, God is not perfect.”

“That seems,” answered Ruth, “as if we were God.”

“So we are a part of God, who is the whole. Anything else is unthinkable. And unless we are perfect, how can He be perfect?”

The children corrected me, for I had used the wrong word.

“God must be perfect,” they said, “if we long for that perfection.”

Virginia said: “If the world is ever to be perfect, then it is perfect now. Whatever shall be is here now, is here forever.”

“You are right,” I answered, “I should not have used that word.”

Henry said: “The apple-tree might be perfect, but the apples might still be unripe.”

“Yes,” I went on, “but the apple-tree would not be perfect unless the apples ripened.”

“The world is like a rose-bud,” said Alfred. “It is perfect as a bud, and yet it must open and evolve in its perfection.”

“Yes,” I said, “or like a sleeper who awakens.

“Now, then,” I asked, “you do all believe in progress; that the world changes and that it changes in a certain direction?”

“I don’t know,” said Virginia. “I believe that the world, that God, must always be the same, even though it change.”

“That is true, and it is a strange paradoxical truth, which I hope to make you understand later on, that all things change and progress, yet are ever the same, even as the rose-bud that unfolds.”

We had tacitly admitted that God and the aim of life stood for love and unity. Once when Henry spoke of the “fear” of God, the others corrected him.

“Now,” I said, “if there is progress, what is it?”

Ruth answered: “There is progress of individuals, not of the world. Certain men saw the truth as clearly in old times as they could now.”

“I do not believe so,” I answered her. “I think the whole must evolve and bud forth, and that it does. Now you all admit that Moses was a prophet who saw the truth?”

They said “Yes.”

“But he felt enmities. Jesus was a greater prophet than Moses. In what was he greater?”

“In his realization not only of the unity of God, but of the unity and divinity and love of man.”

“If Moses were here to-day,” I asked, “in what might he be greater than he was in his own time?”

Florence said: “He would have all the advantages of culture since then.”

“That would not make him greater.”

Marian answered: “You mean the democracy of to-day, the realization of the brotherhood of all men.”

“Yes,” I said, “that is just what I mean. When I look at history, I can see no progress but this. Automobiles, electricity, scientific knowledge, these are not progress except as they lead to that other progress. We do understand our fellowmen better than we ever did. We can—some of us—call every savage our brother. That is the clear progress throughout history.”

The children were impressed by this fact.

“Then you mean,” said Ruth, “that universal love is the object of life?”

“Yes,” I said, “but I am afraid to use the word ‘love,’ for it might mean blind love, and I mean understanding love.”

“Of course,” said the children.

“You mean love of mankind?” asked Marian.

“Yes,” I said, “but individual love, too; and perhaps more than both of these.”

“I still believe,” said Ruth, “that progress is only for the individual, and that it doesn’t matter whether we progress here or hereafter. Personal love is selfish. We want divine love.”

I answered her: “I will not speak now of hereafter. But here and now, to-day, do we not want at once the thing that we want?”

“Yes,” they said.

“Then, now and here we mean to go forward, as far as we can, and now and here we will love men with our might, because that is the human way and the human progress.”

“It does seem to me, from books,” said Virginia, “that people are less mean, selfish and jealous than they were a hundred years ago.”

Marian smiled over to her. “You have been reading Thackeray,” she said.

“But,” said Virginia, “all people are not progressing together, for though we should find the truth now, many others will not find it for a long time. The world is like a bunch of roses, in which some are full-blown, and others are small buds.”

“Yes,” I answered her; “and for the whole to evolve, each bud must be unfolded in beauty.”

Now we said many things beside these, but these were the chief trend and conclusions of our thought. I also told them how every moment was a promise and a fulfillment, a state of the endless whole.

Next Sunday each is to tell me what he or she does mean by the word “God.”

The children were enthusiastic, uplifted, whole-hearted in their interest.

Virginia and Alfred, who stayed some time after the others, had a long discussion on good and bad, in which I refused to join.

Virginia said she thought all bad things had good results, and could be used for good.

Alfred answered he was not sure of that, but he believed bad to be a necessary part of good. He said: “If I never felt ill, I could not know I felt well.”

Virginia said: “Reason made evil, for when creatures became reasonable they knew that the things they had done before were wrong.”