The Sympathy of ReligionsHigginson, Thomas Wentworth
Religion
The Sympathy of Religions
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth
Natural theology; Religions
Now comes Keshub Chunder Sen, with his
generous utterances: "We profess the universal and absolute religion,
whose cardinal doctrines are the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood
of Man, and which accepts the truths of all scriptures, and honors the
prophets of all nations." The movement reaches thousands whom no
foreign influence could touch; yet the Methodist missionaries denounce
it in the name of Christ, and even the little Unitarian mission opens
against it a battery of a single gun. It is the same with our
treatment of the Jews. According to Bayard Taylor, Christendom
converts annually three or four Jews in Jerusalem, at a cost of
$20,000 each. Nothing has been more criticised in the course of the
Free Religious Association than its admission of Jews as equals on its
platform; and yet the reformed Jews in America have already gone in
advance of the most liberal Christian sects in their width of
religious sympathy. "The happiness of man," says Rabbi Wise, in
speaking for them, "depends on no creed and no book; it depends on the
dominion of truth, which is the Redeemer and Savior, the Messiah and
the King of Glory."[O]
It is our happiness to live in a time when all religions are at last
outgrowing their mythologies, and emancipated men are stretching out
their hands to share together "the luxury of a religion that does not
degrade." The progressive Brahmoes of India, the Jewish leaders in
America, the Free Religious Association among ourselves, are teaching
essentially the same principles, seeking the same ends. The Jewish
congregations in Baltimore were the first to contribute for the
education of the freedmen; the Buddhist Temple, in San Francisco, was
the first edifice of that city draped in mourning after the murder of
President Lincoln; the Parsees of the East sent contributions to the
Sanitary Commission. The great religions of the world are but larger
sects; they come together, like the lesser sects, for works of
benevolence; they share the same aspirations, and every step in the
progress of each brings it nearer to all the rest. For us, the door
out of superstition and sin may be called Christianity; that is an
historical name only, the accident of a birthplace. But other nations
find other outlets; they must pass through their own doors, not
through ours; and all will come at last upon the broad ground of God's
providing, which bears no man's name. The reign of heaven on earth
will not be called the Kingdom of Christ nor of Buddha,--it will be
called the Church of God, or the Commonwealth of Man. I do not wish to
belong to a religion only, but to _the_ religion; it must not include
less than the piety of the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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