"Granting Him, therefore, these attributes (and it is both blasphemous
and unreasonable to DENY HIM THOSE VIRTUES WHICH DISTINGUISH THE BEST
OF MEN), it is easily understood how He, the All-Fair Beneficent Ruler
of the Central Sphere, perceiving the long distance to which the Earth
was propelled, like a ball flung too far out, from the glory of His
Electric Ring, saw also that the creatures He had made in His image
were in danger of crushing that image completely out, and with it all
remembrance of Him, in the fatal attention they gave to their merely
earthly surroundings, lacking, as they did, and not possessing
sufficient energy to seek, electric attraction. In brief, this Earth
and God's World were like America and Europe before the Atlantic Cable
was laid. Now the messages of goodwill flash under the waves, heedless
of the storms. So also God's Cable is laid between us and His Heaven in
the person of Christ.
"For ages (always remembering that our ages are with God a moment) the
idea of WORSHIP was in the mind of man. With this idea came also the
sentiment of PROPITIATION. The untamed savage has from time immemorial
instinctively felt the necessity of looking up to a Being greater than
Himself, and also of seeking a reconciliation with that Being for some
fault or loss in himself which he is aware of, yet cannot explain. This
double instinct--worship and propitiation--is the key-note of all the
creeds of the world, and may be called God's first thought of the cable
to be hereafter laid--a lightning-thought which He instilled into the
human race to prepare it, as one might test a telegraph-wire from house
to house, before stretching it across a continent.
"All religions, as known to us, are mere types of Christianity. It is a
notable fact that some of the oldest and most learned races in the
world, such as the Armenians and Chaldeans, were the first to be
convinced of the truth of Christ's visitation. Buddhism, of which there
are so many million followers, is itself a type of Christ's teaching;
only it lacks the supernatural element. Buddha died a hermit at the age
of eighty, as any wise and ascetic man might do to-day. The death and
resurrection of Christ were widely different. Anyone can be a Buddha
again; anyone can NOT be a Christ. That there are stated to be more
followers of Buddhism than of Christianity is no proof of any efficacy
in the former or lack of power in the latter. Buddhists help to swell
that very large class of persons who prefer a flattering picture to a
plain original; or who, sheep-like by nature, finding themselves all
together in one meadow, are too lazy, as well as too indifferent, to
seek pastures fresher and fairer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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