The Sixth Sense: Its Cultivation and UseBrent, Charles Henry
Religion
The Sixth Sense: Its Cultivation and Use
Brent, Charles Henry
New Thought
It is not hazardous to say that the ideals and hypotheses which are still
waiting for the cognition of the Mystic Sense transcend gloriously those
thus far apprehended. This means that science is in its infancy. It is
equally true to assert that religion, so far from having fallen into
decline, is but girding itself to scale heights impatient to feel the
tread of human feet. That which is good and true in itself must persist,
whatever its crudeness and blemishes. The Mystic Sense in relation to
religion is only at the beginning of its history. Human, that is mystic,
life began at so remote a period as to be beyond the reach of research.
The operation of the Mystic Sense through many thousands of years[25]
prior to human records led the way to that ordered approach to God which
we call religion. The possibilities of its growth for the race at large
are indicated and emphasized by individual instances taken from the
common crowd. The world is just at this moment engrossed in seeing that
every one should have an opportunity of developing fine physique and of
acquiring information. It is assumed that under proper conditions a high
average may be reached. The same is to be postulated for the development
of the Mystic Sense in relation to the highest and best in religion.
Under a sufficient stimulus the average man will be able to apprehend
what now is reached only by a minority. This, however, can not come to
pass until a whole world of men strain their inner eye and quicken their
inner ear in the same direction, each contributing of his own strength to
the rest, and all to each.
The history of Christianity and its immediate progenitor, Judaism, is
the record of the highest development of the Mystic Sense in religion.
In the course of its progress the Absolute rises from a dim shadow to
the greatest Reality. It is distinctively the religion of orderly and
rational mysticism. At first, men, feeling the working of the Mystic
Sense, used it in a childish way. What was splendid in them would be
culpable in us. Abraham could consider it a call of God to slay his son:
a man of to-day could only think of it as a monstrous crime against God
and society, revolting even to contemplate. It marked a stage in the
rationalizing of faith when at the last moment Abraham saw mystically
that it was not God’s purpose that any human being should ever do at His
bidding an inhuman deed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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