Ten Great Religions | Page 5

that all the religions of the earth are
providential, and that all tend to benefit mankind.

To ascribe the vast phenomena of religion, in their variety and
complexity, to man as their author, and to suppose the whole a mere
work of human fraud, is not a satisfactory solution of the facts before
us. That priests, working on human ignorance or fear, should be able to
build up such a great mass of belief, sentiment, and action, is like the
Hindoo cosmogony, which supposes the globe to rest on an elephant,
the elephant on a turtle, and the turtle on nothing at all.
If the people were so ignorant, how happened the priests to be so wise?
If the people were so credulous, why were not the priests credulous too?
"Like people, like priests," is a proverb approved by experience.
Among so many nations and through so many centuries, why has not
some one priest betrayed the secret of the famous imposition? Apply a
similar theory to any other human institution, and how patent is its
absurdity! Let a republican contend that all other forms of
government--the patriarchal system, government by castes, the feudal
system, absolute and limited monarchies, oligarchies, and
aristocracies--are wholly useless and evil, and were the result of
statecraft alone, with no root in human nature or the needs of man. Let
one maintain that every system of law (except our own) was an
invention of lawyers for private ends. Let one argue in the same way
about medicine, and say that this is a pure system of quackery, devised
by physicians, in order to get a support out of the people for doing
nothing. We should at once reply that, though error and ignorance may
play a part in all these institutions, they cannot be based on error and
ignorance only. Nothing which has not in it some elements of use can
hold its position in the world during so long a time and over so wide a
range. It is only reasonable to say the same of heathen or ethnic
religions. They contain, no doubt, error and evil. No doubt priestcraft
has been carried very far in them, though not further perhaps than it has
sometimes been carried in Christianity. But unless they contained more
of good than evil, they could not have kept their place. They partially
satisfied a great hunger of the human heart. They exercised some
restraint on human wilfulness and passion. They have directed,
however imperfectly, the human conscience toward the right. To
assume that they are wholly evil is disrespectful to human nature. It
supposes man to be the easy and universal dupe of fraud. But these

religions do not rest on such a sandy foundation, but on the feeling of
dependence, the sense of accountability, the recognition of spiritual
realities very near to this world of matter, and the need of looking up
and worshipping some unseen power higher and better than ourselves.
A decent respect for the opinions of mankind forbids us to ascribe
pagan religions to priestcraft as their chief source.
And a reverence for Divine Providence brings us to the same
conclusion. Can it be that God has left himself without a witness in the
world, except among the Hebrews in ancient times and the Christians in
modern times? This narrow creed excludes God from any communion
with the great majority of human beings. The Father of the human race
is represented as selecting a few of his children to keep near himself,
and as leaving all the rest to perish in their ignorance and error. And
this is not because they are prodigal children who have gone astray into
a far country of their own accord; for they are just where they were
placed by their Creator. HE "has determined the times before appointed
and the bounds of their habitation." HE has caused some to be born in
India, where they can only hear of him through Brahmanism; and some
in China, where they can know him only through Buddha and
Confucius. The doctrine which we are opposing is; that, being put there
by God, they are born into hopeless error, and are then punished for
their error by everlasting destruction. The doctrine for which we
contend is that of the Apostle Paul, that God has "determined
beforehand the bounds of their habitation, that they should seek the
Lord, IF HAPLY THEY MAY FEEL AFTER HIM AND FIND HIM."
Paul teaches that "all nations dwelling on all the face of the earth" may
not only seek and feel after God, but also FIND him. But as all living in
heathen lands are heathen, if they find God at all, they must find him
through heathenism. The pagan religions are the effort of man to feel
after God.