Morality as a Religion: An exposition of some first principlesSullivan, W. R. Washington (William Robert Washington)
Religion
Morality as a Religion: An exposition of some first principles
Sullivan, W. R. Washington (William Robert Washington)
Conduct of life; Ethics; Religion and ethics
The most serious errors in the philosophical and religious domains are
generally found to be nothing but the exaggeration, or the minimising,
of a truth, very much as evil, physical and moral, is often the
privation of a corresponding good, the absence of something which ought
to be present. Year by year the vast majority of religionists in this
Western world are seriously engaged in the commemoration of a
transcendent mystery, the humanisation, or incarnation, of the Deity in
the person of the Prophet of Nazara. As might be expected, the
upholders of this belief are by no means all agreed as to the manner in
which this momentous event came about, and, while there are many
prepared to speak of "Our Lord Jesus Christ"--and we certainly feel no
difficulty in so speaking of an elevated and saintly spirit such as
he--all are not prepared to subscribe to the precise formulation of the
mystery as given in an Athanasian creed, or a homily of a fourth
century father. Beyond admitting in a general and rather vague way
that Jesus is "Divine," many people are not prepared to go. They would
shrink from saying that he was the Infinite and Eternal, from whom all
things derive their being; they see no necessity for believing in the
story of his miracles, or the legendary account of his appearance in
this world; above all, his virginal conception and birth they often
repudiate in terms. They are coming to see--these open-minded men and
women of the Anglican body--that the pre-eminence of Jesus must rest,
not upon miracles, but on morals; that it is not his mystic offices,
but his moral grandeur, which makes him to be so great a figure in
history. In a word, that it is not his miracles which prove his
teaching, but his teaching must authenticate his miracles.
Now, all this is, of course, very hopeful, and makes directly for that
reconstruction of religion on an ethical basis which we conceive it our
duty to press upon the attention of our age. Venerable to us is the
memory and teaching of the last of the noble line of Jewish seers. Not
one of the masters of the Church ethical, whom we obediently follow,
but has exhausted, one might say, the possibilities of speech in their
reverence and admiration for the great spirit of Jesus. When Immanuel
Kant published the _Critique of the Practical Reason_, old men and
thinkers of the Fatherland were moved to tears at the thought that the
great deliverance had come at last, that a man had at length arisen who
had penetrated to the core the significance of the great prophet's
teaching. The only true commentator on Jesus and his religion is
Immanuel Kant. Heretofore, men have followed Paul, Athanasius and
Augustine; it is high time the ethics of Kant were substituted in
colleges and seminaries of the clergy, and our ministers of religion
taught to interpret the Gospel from the standpoint of the moral law
instead of the imaginary dogmatics of Paul, and the dialectics of
Athanasius and Augustine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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