Article July 22, 1905 Issue

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with contributions from Philip S. Moxom

Nothing not true is good, and everything perishable, the hay and stubble of superstition and distorted myth, must be consumed by the white heat of the fire of Truth. Very timorous was the religionist of half a century ago. He could not see that nothing can harm the really true, and that nothing not really true is worth saving. Religion to him was something very precious and very delicate. It had been handed down from his father's fathers, and if carelessly handled it might fall and be hopelessly broken. To doubt that the world was created in six days of twenty-four hours was sinful heresy. Man originally was worth while, but a snake and a woman had been his undoing, and even his Creator could only be just to him by crucifying His son, who was also Himself. The end of existence was getting saved, and that was only possible to the limited number who could believe something that was unbelievable to any man who dared to think. This was the religion of the churches. How much of it is there left?—The Pacific Unitarian.

A god outside his finished universe, a magnified human being, a god who sits in the heavens and looks down upon the earth as a king sits on his throne, or a judge on the bench, is still more largely than any other the popular conception of how the universe is governed.

The conception, however, seems cruder, more irrational, now than in the days when blatant unbelief delighted in declaring there is no loving and conscious God. Unbelievers are more modest. They delight less in shocking the pious neighbors. It seems a paradox; but it is true that unbelief is more reverent, more conscious than it once was of the crudity of its conceptions, and the magnitude, the infinitude of the subjects it seeks to handle,—mysteries before which the little, infantile mind of man must remain prone with humility and wonder.—The Christian Register.

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