Ten Great Religions (Volume 2)

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The publisher of this book utilises modern printing technologies as well as photocopying processes for reprinting and preserving rare works of literature that are out-of-print or on the verge of becoming lost. This book is one such reprint. Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ghosts, evil spirits, genii. Thus we see the whole world from the earliest times engaged in the worship of Unseen Powers. How shall we bring this chaos into order ? How extricate some system out of this confusion ? Our first attempt must be to classify these varieties under some more general form. Then we can compare them together to find wherein they agree, and wherein they differ, and learn what there is of truth or error in each. � 4. Definition of Religion. But first let us look for some simple, yet comprehensive definition of religion. . Passing by others, I will for the present take this : " Religion is the worship and service by man of Invisible Powers, believed to be like himself, yet above himself." This definition includes what is called " Animism," or the worship of departed human souls, and also at the other extreme many forms of Pantheism. Spiritual Pantheism personifies the All of Things, making the universe full of feeling, consciousness, vitality, and purpose. Spinoza, the arch-Pantheist, declares that we must " love God as our supreme good," that " we love God and are blessed." Shelley, another Pantheist, has a hymn to " The Spirit of Intellectual Beauty," which he addresses as a being who can hear and answer ; " an awful loveliness, which can give more than words express." He says : " Let thy power supply calm to the life of one who worships thee." Even Fetichism is included in our definition, for the savage believes that the rude stone or block which he looks on with superstitious reverence, has an unseen spirit acting through it. It is the spirit which is feared or propitiated, and not the block. So we say that " Religion is the tendency in man to worship and serve invisible beings, like himself, but above himself/) This supposes and includes the be...

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