Ancient Faiths And Modern: A Dissertation upon Worships, Legends and Divinities in Central and Western Asia, Europe, and Elsewhere, Before the Christian Era. Showing Their Relations to Religious Customs as They Now Exist. — John Shaqi
Ancient Faiths And Modern: A Dissertation upon Worships, Legends and Divinities in Central and Western Asia, Europe, and Elsewhere, Before the Christian Era. Showing Their Relations to Religious Customs as They Now Exist.Inman, Thomas
Religion
Ancient Faiths And Modern: A Dissertation upon Worships, Legends and Divinities in Central and Western Asia, Europe, and Elsewhere, Before the Christian Era. Showing Their Relations to Religious Customs as They Now Exist.
Inman, Thomas
Religions
How can any reasonable man hold the opinion that the Devil instigated
all atrocities of the Syrians, Chaldees, Assyrians, Romans, Turks,
Tartars, Saracens, Affghans, Mahometans, and Hindoos, and believe that
the good God drowned the whole world, and nearly every single thing that
had life; that He ordered the extermination, not only of Midianites and
Amalekites, but slaughtered, in one way or another, all the people whom
he led out of Egypt--except two--merely because they had a natural fear
of war. What was the massacre at Cawnpore to that in Jericho and other
Canaanite cities? I say it with sober seriousness--in sorrow, not in
anger--as a thinking man, and not as an advocate for, or against, any
religious view, that it is an awful thing for any nation to permit
a book to circulate, as a sacred one, in which God and the Devil are
painted in the same colours.
Into this analysis of religion I was led to enter from the observation
of a friend, who challenged me to find, in any non-Hebraic or
non-Christian country, a faith or practice equal to that current amongst
the followers of Moses and Jesus, or to discover any spot in the wide
world where there is, or has been, a civilization equal to that which
existed in Judea, and the parts inhabited by Christians. In consequence
of this defiance, it became more than ever necessary for me to study the
nature of the current faith and practice of Christendom, and to inquire
how far the latter was dependent upon the former--that is to say,
whether the practices of civilization are due to our religion, or have
gradually grown up in spite of it. The next point was to pay similar
heed to the doctrines and manner of life common amongst those to whom
our Bible has been wholly unknown.
Many of the conclusions to which I came have already appeared in the
second volume of _Ancient Faiths_, under the heads of "Religion,"
"Theology," &c.; but others came upon me when that book had been
completed, and the present supplement is designed with the idea of
expressing, still further, the extent of my views, and the evidence upon
which they are founded--with special reference to the differential value
of Christian and unchristian faith and practice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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