God, the Invisible KingWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Religion
God, the Invisible King
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
God (Christianity)
than doctrinal Christianity, and may long survive it. Men and women may
still chant of Beulah Land and cry out in the ecstasy of salvation; the
tambourine, that modern revival of the thrilling Alexandrine sistrum,
may still stir dull nerves to a first apprehension of powers and a call
beyond the immediate material compulsion of life, when the creeds of
Christianity are as dead as the lore of the Druids.
The emancipation of mankind from obsolete theories and formularies may
be accompanied by great tides of moral and emotional release among types
and strata that by the standards of a trained and explicit intellectual,
may seem spiritually hopeless. It is not necessary to imagine the whole
world critical and lucid in order to imagine the whole world unified in
religious sentiment, comprehending the same phrases and coming together
regardless of class and race and quality, in the worship and service
of the true God. The coming kingship of God if it is to be more than
hieratic tyranny must have this universality of appeal. As the head
grows clear the body will turn in the right direction. To the mass of
men modern religion says, “This is the God it has always been in your
nature to apprehend.”
11. GOD AND THE LOVE AND STATUS OF WOMEN
Now that we are discussing the general question of individual conduct,
it will be convenient to take up again and restate in that relationship,
propositions already made very plainly in the second and third chapters.
Here there are several excellent reasons for a certain amount of
deliberate repetition. . . .
All the mystical relations of chastity, virginity, and the like with
religion, those questions of physical status that play so large a part
in most contemporary religions, have disappeared from modern faith. Let
us be as clear as possible upon this. God is concerned by the health and
fitness and vigour of his servants; we owe him our best and utmost; but
he has no special concern and no special preferences or commandments
regarding sexual things.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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