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The Importance of Religion in Man
RELIGION is the one progres
sive force in this world. Relig
ious feeling gives to man the
power that has lifted him above
the other animals, and that has
lifted his graze from the earth
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and its selfish interests, to the sky, to the stars,
and to highest abstract speculation.
Os all the animals that live and feel and
suffer upon this earth, man alone looks upward
The eagle flying in the daytime. q nd the owl fl v
ing at night, look always downward for some
thing to kill and to eat -they have the power to
fly, but nc power to send their thoughts * o the
glorious, inspiring sun, or to the stars that shine
above them.
Man aJone through the ages, gradually
landing erect, has at last fixed his gaze upward,
and for a few thousand years in the tens of
thousands that he has lived on this earth, his
chief interest has been RELIGIOUS.
Religion has freed men, during the evolu
tion of religious thought, from brutalities,
superstitions, hatred and cruelty.
Religion freed the slaves, abolished infanti
cide. and gave to the serf the right to own the
land on which he worked.
And the power of religion has only begun
its work.
In days to come man’s true religious feel
and conviction will free children from the
torture of poverty, of hard work, and all misery,
just as the early Christians saved the children
from the curse of infanticide by holding the
mothers responsible and declaring that no child
could go to Heaven that had not been baptized.
Religion in time will give to women their
rights, full protection, including the protection
from oppressive labor, and realize the teachings
of Jesus, who was the first and the greatest of
all advocates of the rights and the equality of
women.
Religious feeling is as varied in its expres
«ion as the races and the individuals that inhabit
the earth. And every religious feeling has its
value, whether it be the dull mental groping of
some negro kneeling before an idol, the vague
feeling of Napoleon on the ship that carried him
to St. Helena, pointing toward the stars and
saying to his companions and his jailers, “AU
that means something,” or the feeling of such a
man as John Brown, actually taking seriously
the'words of Christ, “One is your Master, and
all ye are brethren.”
There has been no progress on this earth,
except progress born of religious feeling
using the word religion as expressing man’s
duty to his fellows, and especially to the weak
and the poor.
Religious feeling and enthusiasm lend
power to the brain and develop all of its facul
ties. Religion is the highest expression of the
imagination of man. and imagination is man’s
greatest force in all the work of life.
When nations and individuals become in
’’fferent to th* 1 h : Q-hest things, fix their minds
exclusively on this earth, its selfish interests
nd pleasures, they go down and soon are for
gotten.
The man living upon this planet, able to
look up at the stars and the clouds, whose chief
interest is not in the power, the justice and the
law that rule throughout the universe, is as
much to be pitied, and as low in the intellectual
scale as some dog that never looks upward—
unless to bark at a cat, or a squirrel in a tree.
Bible classes, organized for young men, are
of especial value. It is a pity that they are not
more numerous, more largely attended.
A man may begin the study of the Bible in
his childhood and read it to the last day of his
life, always finding new inspiration, new thought
and new meaning.
The most beautiful and powerful writing
that has ever been done is in Isaiah.
No man can pretend that he has studied his
own language unless he is familiar with the
Bible, both the Old and the New Testament.
To those that are unfortunate, the Bible
offers consolation that never fails. Millions of
mothers condemned to see their children die in
infancy have found comfort and strength in
Christ’s words, “Their angels do always behold
the face of My Father which is in Heaven.”
For those upon whom the troubles and
borrows of the world press heavily, there is more
The Great Napoleon, Agnostic and Hostile to Religion, r
Yet Pointed to the Stars From the Deck ol the Ship on the Way
to His Last Prison, St. Helena, Saying: “Say What You Please,
Some One Created and Controls All That” He Said at St.
Helena: “There Is So Much That One Does Not Know, That One
Cannot Explain.” Lord Rosebery, in His “Napoleon, the Last
Phase,” Says: “One of the Books That Napoleon Loved Most
to Read Aloud Was the Bible —and He Was, We Are Told, a
Great Admirer ot St. Paul.”
This Editorial Is Written By Request to Be Read in a
Young Men’s Bible Class.
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comfort in the Sermon on the Mount than in all
the books of philosophy that have ever been
written.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit * * *
“Blessed are they that mourn * * *
“Blessed are the meek * ♦ *
“Blessed are the merciful * *
“Blessed are ye when men shall revile you
and persecute you.”
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Copyright 1912, by the Star Company. Great Britain Right* Reserved
The greatest preacher of equal
ity, a believer in the rights of man
more powerful and earnest than all
the French philosophers, a de
fender of women and children, one
whose heart was always with the
sorrowful, was the founder of the
Christian religion.
There is comfort for the poor
and unhappy and a warning for
the rich and those overcon
fident in their own wisdom, judg
ment and power in the Bible.
“Go to, now, ye rich men, weep and howl for
your miseries that shall come upon you.
“Your riches are corrupted and your gar
ments are motheaten.
“Your gold and silver is can’ a red; and +he
rust of them shall be a witness against you, and
shall eat your flesh as it weie fire. Ye have
heaped treasure together for the last days.
I
“Behold the hire of the labourers who have
reaped down your fields, which is of you kept
back by fraud, crieth: And the cries of them
which have reaped are entered into the ears of
the Lord of Sabaoth.
“Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth and
been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts as
in a day of slaughter.”
If a man appears on this earth with a new
idea of kindness, a message of hope for the poor,
a plan to take the burden and the sorrow from
the backs of the weak, he is mocked and jeered
by those that consider themselves wise. It is a
good thing for the over-confident who sneer at
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three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of
God come down from the cross.’
“Likewise also the chief priests, mocking
him, with the scribes and elders, said:
“‘He saved others; himself he cannot save. If
he be the King of Israel, let Him now come down
from the cross and we will believe Him.
“ ‘He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him
now, if He will have Him; for he said, I am the
Son of God.’ i
“The thieves also, which were crucified with
Him, cast the same in his teeth. ”
Every Bible class, and every man and
woman in or out of a Bible class, should study
over and over that last scene in the life of
Christ—the crucifixion. The brutality and
ignorance of the mob that demanded the free
dom of Barrabas, the political agitator, when
they might have freed and heard Christ; the
journey to the hill outside Jerusalem called
Golgotha, meaning “the skull”; the poor women
collecting money to buy and give to the con«
demned a drink that should stupefy them and
diminish pain, and the touching picture of
Christ, putting the rim of the cup to his lips and
refusing to drink, refusing to diminish the sor
row and horrible suffering that he had willingly
brought upon himself for the sake of others.
In all the history of the world there is no
picture such as that on Golgotha, the patient,
upturned face of the sufferer destined to change
the world, the Roman soldiers at the foot of the
cross gambling for his scanty garments, the
rabble hooting, the thieves on either side de
nouncing Him because the miracle they hoped
for did not come; the faitnful women, Mary
Clecpahs, Mary of Magdala, Joanna, wife of
Khouza, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, watch
ing patiently until death should come, and give
His body back to them. i
Many are the wonderful scenes of heroism
and self sacrifice painted in history by men
willing to die for the truth. But there is nothing
to compare with that one great picture, the
crucifixion and the hst words of Christ:
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what
they do.”
Until a man has studied the character of
Christ, and the effect of his teachings, no other
study is worth while.
Unless a man possesses a deep religious
feeling, no other feeling is worth while.
A philosopher, drunk with his own conceit
and scientific research, may say of the Divin*
Being: “I have no need of that hypothesis.”
But the boast is false. Every wonder in
Nature, and every proof of permanent, un
changing justice and law, demonstrate that
there is need of that “hypothesis” and that, as
Voltaire said, in his sardonic wav, “If there had
not been a God it would have been necessary to
invent one.”
Religious feeling opens the mind, lifts the
spirit from the earth, changes man from a self
ish animal to a cosmic being in sympathy and
in touch with universal life and thought. " Pity
the man who is the centre of his own universe,
and who fails to realize that thought is given us
to study and revere the infinite with which
religion alone can bring us into contact and
spiritual fellowship.
hope and earnestness
to read in the Bible of
the jeers and the in
sults poured out by
those that surrounded
Christ dying:
1 ‘And they that passed
by reviled him, wagging
their heads. i
“And saying, ‘Thott
that destroyest the tem
ple, and buildest it in