The Reconciliation of Races and Religions — John Shaqi
The Reconciliation of Races and ReligionsCheyne, T. K. (Thomas Kelly)
Religion
The Reconciliation of Races and Religions
Cheyne, T. K. (Thomas Kelly)
Bahais
The faith of the Messiah is another of Israel's treasures. Or rather,
perhaps I should say, the faith in the Messiahs, for one Messiah will
not meet the wants of Israel or the world. The Messiah, or the
Being-like-a-man (Dan. vii. 13), is a supernatural Being, who appears
on earth when he is wanted, like the Logos. We want Messiah badly now;
specially, I should say, we Christians want 'great-souled ones'
(Mahatmas), who can 'guide us into all the truth' (John xvi. 13). That
they have come in the past, I doubt not. God could not have left his
human children in the lurch for all these centuries. One thousand
Jews of Tihran are said to have accepted Baha'ullah as the expected
Messiah. They were right in what they affirmed, and only wrong in
what they denied. And are we not all wrong in virtually denying the
Messiahship of women-leaders like Kurratu'l 'Ayn; at least, I have
only met with this noble idea in a work of Fiona Macleod.
CHRISTIANITY
And what of our own religion?
What precious jewels are there which we can share with our Oriental
brethren? First of all one may mention that wonderful picture of the
divine-human Saviour, which, full of mystery as it is, is capable of
attracting to its Hero a fervent and loving loyalty, and melting the
hardest heart. We have also a portrait (implicit in the Synoptic
Gospels)--the product of nineteenth century criticism--of the same
Jesus Christ, and yet who could venture to affirm that He really was
the same, or that a subtle aroma had not passed away from the Life of
lives? In this re-painted portrait we have, no longer a divine man,
but simply a great and good Teacher and a noble Reformer. This
portrait too is in its way impressive, and capable of lifting men
above their baser selves, but it would obviously be impossible to take
this great Teacher and Reformer for the Saviour and Redeemer of
mankind.
We have further a pearl of great price in the mysticism of Paul, which
presupposes, not the Jesus of modern critics, nor yet the Jesus of the
Synoptics, but a splendid heart-uplifting Jesus in the colours of
mythology. In this Jesus Paul lived, and had a constant ecstatic joy
in the everlasting divine work of creation. He was 'crucified with
Christ,' and it was no longer Paul that lived, but Christ that lived
in him. And the universe--which was Paul's, inasmuch as it was
Christ's--was transformed by the same mysticism. 'It was,' says
Evelyn Underhill, [Footnote: _The Mystic Way_, p. 194 (chap. iii.
'St. Paul and the Mystic Way').] 'a universe soaked through and
through by the Presence of God: that transcendent-immanent Reality,
"above all, and through all, and in you all" as fontal "Father,"
energising "Son," indwelling "Spirit," in whom every mystic, Christian
or non-Christian, is sharply aware that "we live and move and have our
being." To his extended consciousness, as first to that of Jesus, this
Reality was more actual than anything else--"God is all in all."'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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