The Profits of Religion, Fifth EditionSinclair, Upton
Religion
The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition
Sinclair, Upton
Christianity -- Controversial literature
London, Dec. 14.--Shell-proof and bullet-proof soldiers have
been discovered on the European battle-fronts. Heroes with
"charmed lives" are being made every day, according to
Frederick L. Rawson, a London scientist, who insists he has
found the miraculous way by which they are developed. He
calls it "audible treatment". "Practical utilization of the
powers of God by right thinking," is the agency through
which Dr. Rawson declares he can so treat a man that he will
not be harmed when hundreds of men are being shot dead
beside him. This amazing treatment includes a new type of
prayer. It is being administered to hundreds of men audibly,
and to hundreds more by letter. Nothing since the war began
has aroused so much talk of modern miracles as have many of
the statements of Dr. Rawson....
At the taking of a wood there were five hundred yards of "No
Man's Land" to be crossed. Our troops could not get across.
Then Capt.----, who practices this method of prayer, treated
them for an hour before they started, and not a man was
knocked out. He was the only officer left out of eighty in
his brigade. He simply held onto the fact that man is
spiritual and perfect and could not be touched. A bullet
fired from a revolver only five yards away hit him over the
chest, tore his shirt and went out at the shoulder. But it
never penetrated his chest. He was frequently in a hail of
shells and bullets which did not touch him.
#The Graft of Grace#
All this is grotesque; but it is what happens to religions in a world
of commercial competition. It happens not merely to Christian Science
and New Thought religions, Mazdaznan and Zionist, Holy Roller and
Mormon religions, but to Catholic and Episcopalian, Presbyterian and
Methodist and Baptist religions. For you see, when you are with the
wolves you must howl with them; when you are competing with fakirs you
must fake. The ordinary Christian will read the claims of the New
Thought fakers with contempt; but have I not shown the Catholic Church
publishing long lists of money-miracles? Have I not shown the Church
of Good Society, our exclusive and aristocratic Protestant Episcopal
communion, pretending to call rain and to banish pestilence, to
protect crops and win wars and heal those who are "sick in
estate"--that is, who are in business trouble?
The reader will say that I am a cynic, despising my fellows; but that
is not so. I am an economic scientist, analyzing the forces which
operate in human societies. I blame the prophets and priests and
healers for their fall from idealism; but I blame still more the
competitive wage-system, which presents them with the alternative to
swindle or to starve.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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