The Churches and Modern Thought: An inquiry into the grounds of unbelief and an appeal for candourPhelips, Vivian
Religion
The Churches and Modern Thought: An inquiry into the grounds of unbelief and an appeal for candour
Phelips, Vivian
Rationalism
Again, there is the religious feeling evoked by that strongest emotion
of all--sexual love; the one excites the other, and the effect produced
may be beneficial or may be mischievous. But sexual love appears to me
a strange aid to the worship of God; and persons who really imagine
they are nearer Him when in this state of emotion most certainly
deceive themselves. The ascetic who is debarred from this particular
"religious" experience should agree with me.
REVIVALISM.
An examination of religious experiences, however brief, cannot well
omit all mention of the question of revivalism. Has it an ethical
value? Has it a spiritual meaning? To the latter question the answer of
the Church is for the most part in the affirmative. In his Pentecostal
message for Whitsuntide, 1905, the Archbishop of Canterbury refers,
without directly naming them, to the extraordinary movement of which
the young Evan Roberts has been the leader, and to the preaching
of Messrs. Torrey and Alexander in London. "To whatever cause or
combination of causes we may attribute it," he says, "the fact
appears to be certain that expression has this year been given in
an unusual degree to a desire for increased spiritual earnestness
in the Christian life." I shall not embark upon the question of the
spiritual signification of revivalism. My remarks on other religious
experiences may be taken to apply here also. Regarding its ethical
value, I fancy most thoughtful onlookers will be with me when I
say that it is unadvisable to stir up hysteria in hysterical people
just for the sake of effects, the usefulness of which is extremely
problematical--effects which, if they benefit a few, are harmful to
the majority, and, in any case, are unlikely to be of a permanent
nature. We have it on excellent authority that "emotional appeals and
revivals do not destroy carnal sin in schools, and it is well known
how often they seem to stimulate, to increase, immorality." [240]
§ 6. The Inevitable Conclusion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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