The Religion of Humanity: An Address Delivered at the Church Congress, Manchester, October 1888

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David Douglas, 1888 - 56 lappuses
 

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45. lappuse - We survey the past, and see that its history is of blood and tears, of helpless blundering, of wild revolt, of stupid acquiescence, of empty aspirations. We sound the future, and learn that after a period, long compared with the individual life, but short indeed compared with the divisions of time open to our...
45. lappuse - ... the energies of our system will decay, the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for a moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go down into the pit, and all his thoughts will perish. The uneasy consciousness, which in this obscure corner has for a brief space broken the contented silence of the universe, will be at rest. Matter will know itself no longer. Imperishable monuments and immortal deeds, death itself, and love...
55. lappuse - ... and who might in any case be puzzled to discover its interest or its importance? Can it assure them that there is no human being so insignificant as not to be of infinite worth in the eyes of Him who created the Heavens, or so feeble but that his action may have consequence of infinite moment long after this material system shall have crumbled into nothingness? Does it offer...
44. lappuse - Man, so far as natural science by itself is able to teach us, is no longer the final cause of the universe, the Heavendescended heir of all the ages. His very existence is an accident, his story a brief and transitory episode in the life of one of the meanest of the planets.
49. lappuse - Paul, give us some theory as to the destiny of man and his relation to the sum of things. My contention is that every such religion and every such philosophy, so long as it insists on regarding man as merely a phenomenon among phenomena, a natural object among other natural objects, is condemned by science to failure as an effective stimulus to high endeavour. Love, pity, and endurance it may indeed leave with us: and this is well. But it so dwarfs and impoverishes the ideal end of human effort,...
54. lappuse - religion of humanity " seems specially fitted to meet the tastes of that comparatively small and prosperous class, who are unwilling to leave the dry bones of Agnosticism wholly unclothed with any living tissue of religious emotion, and who are at the same time fortunate enough to be able to persuade themselves that they are contributing, or may contribute, by their individual efforts to the attainment of some great ideal for mankind. But what has it to say to the more obscure multitude who are absorbed,...
56. lappuse - If not, then whatever be its merits, it is no rival to Christianity. It cannot penetrate and vivify the inmost life of ordinary humanity. There is in it no nourishment for ordinary human souls, no comfort for ordinary human sorrow, no help for ordinary human weakness. Not less than the crudest irreligion does it leave us men divorced from all communion with God, face to face with the unthinking energies of nature which gave us birth, and into which, if supernatural religion be indeed a dream, we...
44. lappuse - His very existence is an accident, his story a brief and transitory episode in the life of one of the meanest of the planets. Of the combination of causes which first converted a dead organic compound into the living progenitors of humanity, science, indeed, as yet knows nothing. It is enough that from such beginnings famine, disease, and mutual slaughter, fit nurses of the future lords of creation, have gradually evolved, after infinite travail, a race with conscience enough to feel that it is vile,...
48. lappuse - ... divisions of time open to our investigation, the energies of our system will decay, the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for a moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go down into the pit, and all his thoughts will perish. . . . My contention is that every such religion, and every such philosophy, so long as it insists on regarding man as merely a phenomenon among phenomena, a natural object among other natural objects,...
53. lappuse - ... can at best be only provisional. But when the time comes at which mankind shall have attained some coherent method of testing the validity of those opinions respecting the natural and the spiritual worlds on which in their best moments they desire to act, then I hazard the guess, since to guesses we are at present confined, that adaptation to the moral wants and aspirations of humanity will not be regarded as wholly alien to the problems over which so many earnest minds are at present disquieting...

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