What Is To Be The Religion Of The Future.
“Brahmanism has avoided the fatal mistake of Catholic and Protestant philosophy by assuming an impersonal deity in three modes of manifestation, while Christian thinkers have played around the logical contradiction of one personality in three equal persons for fifteen hundred years. We must utterly break with the idea of a personal God, and accept that of one impersonal essence behind all phenomena.” [Hartmann's future religion.]
Must we do this? Is there any necessity for it? What have we to do with “the fatal mistake of Catholic and Protestant philosophy?” It was a mistake, that's all! “Christian thinkers have played around the logical contradiction of one personality in three equal persons for fifteen hundred years.” Have they? 'Tis well! Christianity requires no man to step into logical contradiction and stand there. They have done this “for fifteen hundred years.” Well, it has been about that [pg 233] long since men, in the prelude of the dark ages, began to speculate foolishly about the subject of the Divine existence. There was a purer atmosphere in the first centuries of the Christian era, in which primitive Christians enjoyed better conceptions of the Divine Being, to which it is the privilege of Christians to return. Is it the only alternative “to break with the idea of a personal God, and accept that of one impersonal essence behind all phenomena?” No! We Christians affirm nothing that can necessarily be construed with the Catholic and Protestant “mistake” concerning the Trinity, nor anything that can be construed with ultra Unitarianism, which treats of our Lord and Savior simply as an extraordinarily inspired man. Neither are we under any logical necessity to “break with the idea of a personal God,” and form an alliance with Atheistic philosophy through the adoption of the idea of a Pantheistic “essence behind all phenomena.” Such speculative nonsense may be the best that a mind can do while it is in its own ignorance upon the subject of what it takes to constitute personality, and while it is also surrounded with nothing but the darkness of the dark ages, which has been the legitimate accompaniment of “the Catholic and Protestant fatal mistake,” but it is not the best that an intelligent mind, clothed with the sunlight of the gospel of Christ, and intelligently educated upon the subject of personality can do. No! The intelligently informed mind can stand upon the everlasting bed-rock of truth, which has been raised to the highest mountain top of Christian thought by the pure, unadulterated teachings of the Savior of men, which lie behind the fifteen hundred years of jargon upon the questions of Trinitarian and Unitarian “isms.”
“God is a spirit.” That settles the question of “person” with every well instructed Christian mind. “What man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man which is in him; even so the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God.” The Spirit of God is the Supreme intelligence. And, being such, he is the Supreme person, for where there is intelligence there is person. The attributes of personality [pg 234] belong to intelligence, and they belong to nothing else. If you have an intelligent essence, it is, of a logical and scientific necessity, a person. Let some Pantheistic “wiseacre” grapple with this thought.
The fatal mistakes are not all confined to Catholics and Protestants; Pantheists and Scientists have made full as many mistakes. The great mistake upon the subject of the Divine existence, which Scientists and Pantheists have made, is the conclusion that person is simply and necessarily material, or animal existence. So they say, if God is a person he must be a great big almighty man, having great arms and legs, etc. I have the first Atheist or Pantheist to meet in conversation that understands the truth of science in reference to this question of person.
It is claimed that a Monotheistic Pantheism, that is, the idea of one essence, not person, but essence, is to unite, or make one, the whole human family upon the scientific (sciolistic) base that man himself is one grand part of the grand all-pervading, impersonal essence.
Religions have their practical results, and, consequently, bearings upon human society. The Monotheistic idea, which, it is claimed, is to equalize all beings and things throughout this vast universe, in the conception that all are parts of the same grand all-pervading essence, can have only the following results: First, to wipe out all ideas of a future retribution, for want of judge, for want of governor; second, to destroy all distinctions consequent upon the ideas of a divine moral kingdom, or Kingdom of God among men; third, to loosen up the religious and moral restraints by removing the religious sanctions, or promises and threats, which relate to the future retribution.
The advocates of this universal religion of the future, which is simply universal non-religion, say “Protestantism is the grave digger of Christianity.” “But Christianity stoutly refuses to be buried alive,” and the multitude of facts that are continually transpiring demonstrate a living, active existence; “its blood circulates; its pulse is certainly beating;” its [pg 235] force is not spent in the least; it is always giving but is never growing lean; “it has a long lease of life.” All the trees of the forest stand together in one grand old struggle for life. It may be that Christianity will be under the necessity of struggling, for many years to come, with the Godless forms of Pantheism and Atheism, which are simply two different phases of the same Godless philosophy; but the seeds of the great Christian tree, in these United States, are being shaken down into the tender and warm soil of millions of hearts in all our Sunday-schools, and it will be many a year before Christianity dies.