Morality as a Religion: An exposition of some first principles — John Shaqi
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
We believe the contradiction receives its explanation in the synthesis
already suggested, that above the two processes, the cosmical and
ethical, there is another, that of absolute intelligence or mind,
energising through them both from first to last, but in widely
different ways. In the cosmos, by ways which we describe as non-moral;
in us by law, which we recognise as moral. In every grade of being, in
every stratum of Nature, the self-same ever-active Mind is manifest,
nay, the very distinctions of Nature's life are fixed by the intenser
or remisser energy wherewith the eternal Mind functions in them. From
first to last it is mind-power behind all and in all. "In the
beginning was Mind; in the beginning was the Reason." Lao-tze is
right; the Alexandrian mystic is right; _En arche ho Logos_, and the
Mind was the light of man, the light of reason, the holier light of
conscience, leading him if he will but follow it, in the way which has
been described in language of philosophic precision by the Hebrew poet
as "the way everlasting".
Man may sing a _Magnificat_, because mighty things have been done in
him, such as a cosmos or an infinity of worlds never knew or shall
know. And thus the very contradictions manifested by evolution do but
contribute to the truth of the general conclusion, that there is a
Power, not dead, dull, inert, but an ever-living, ever-energising Mind,
whence the mighty procession set forth, unto which it is ever
returning. There is a Power above the water floods and cosmic
disasters which is bringing to fulfilment purposes known from
everlasting, which we are compelled to acknowledge as beneficent. We
see its workings in history, in the rise and fall of nations; we
witness the morally, no less than the physically, unfit fall out of the
ranks. Progress here and there may seem to stop, but the course of
things is "never wholly retrograde". Is not that hope strong in every
man of us, going before us as an unquenchable light, encouraging us to
persevere even to the end, because we shall not be deprived of the
fruits of our toil, and no demon power shall come to dash the cup of
happiness which we have striven to fill?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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