39:0. Religious Teachings in the Occident
P1077:1, 98:0.1 The Melchizedek teachings entered Europe along
many routes, but chiefly they came by way of Egypt and were embodied in
Occidental philosophy. The ideals of the Western world were basically Socratic,
and its later religious philosophy became that of Jesus as it was modified and
compromised through contact with evolving Occidental philosophy and religion,
all of which culminated in the Christian church.
P1077:2, 98:0.2 For a long time in Europe the Salem missionaries
carried on their activities, becoming gradually absorbed into many of the cults
and ritual groups which periodically arose. Among those who maintained the Salem
teachings in the purest form must be mentioned the Cynics. These preachers of
faith and trust in God were still functioning in Roman Europe in the first
century A.D., being later incorporated into the newly forming Christian
religion.
P1077:3, 98:0.3 Much of the Salem doctrine was spread in Europe
by the Jewish mercenary soldiers who fought in so many of the Occidental
military struggles. In ancient times the Jews were famed as much for military
valor as for their theological curiosity.
P1077:4, 98:0.4 The basic doctrines of Greek philosophy, Jewish
and Christian theology were fundamentally repercussions of the earlier
Melchizedek teachings.
P1077:5, 98:1.1 The Salem missionaries might have built up a
great religious structure among the Greeks had it not been for their strict
interpretation of their oath of ordination, a pledge imposed by Machiventa which
forbade the organization of exclusive congregations for worship, and which
exacted the promise of each teacher never to function as a priest, never to
receive fees for religious service, only food, clothing, and shelter. When the
Melchizedek teachers penetrated to pre-Hellenic Greece, they found a people who
still fostered the traditions of Adamson and the days of the Andites, but these
teachings had become greatly adulterated with the notions and beliefs of the
hordes of inferior slaves that had been brought to the Greek shores in
increasing numbers. This adulteration produced a reversion to a crude animism
with bloody rites, the lower classes even making ceremonial out of the execution
of condemned criminals.
P1077:6, 98:1.2 The early influence of the Salem teachers was
nearly destroyed by the so-called Aryan invasion from southern Europe and the
East. These Hellenic invaders brought along with them anthropomorphic God
concepts similar to those which their Aryan fellows had carried to India. This
importation inaugurated the evolution of the Greek family of gods and goddesses.
This new religion was partly based on the cults of the incoming Hellenic
barbarians, but it also shared in the myths of the older inhabitants of Greece.
P1078:1, 98:1.3 The Hellenic Greeks found the Mediterranean
world largely dominated by the mother cult, and they imposed upon these peoples
their man-god, Dyaus-Zeus, who had already become head of the whole Greek
pantheon of subordinate gods. And the Greeks would have eventually achieved a
true monotheism in the concept of Zeus except for their retention of the
overcontrol of Fate. A God of final value must, himself, be the arbiter of fate
and the creator of destiny.
P1078:2, 98:1.4 As a consequence of these factors in religious
evolution, there presently developed the popular belief in the happy-go-lucky
gods of Mount Olympus, gods more human than divine, and gods which the
intelligent Greeks never did regard very seriously. They neither greatly loved
nor greatly feared these divinities of their own creation. They had a patriotic
and racial feeling for Zeus and his family of half men and half gods, but they
hardly reverenced or worshiped them.
P1078:3, 98:1.5 The Hellenes became so impregnated with the
anti-priestcraft doctrines of the earlier Salem teachers that no priesthood of
any importance ever arose in Greece. Even the making of images to the gods
became more of a work in art than a matter of worship.
P1078:4, 98:1.6 The Olympian gods illustrate man's typical
anthropomorphism. But the Greek mythology was more aesthetic than ethic. The
Greek religion was helpful in that it portrayed a universe governed by a deity
group. But Greek morals, ethics, and philosophy presently advanced far beyond
the god concept, and this imbalance between intellectual and spiritual growth
was as hazardous to Greece as it had proved to be in India.
P1078:5, 98:2.1 A lightly regarded and superficial religion
cannot endure, especially when it has no priesthood to foster its forms and to
fill the hearts of the devotees with fear and awe. The Olympian religion did not
promise salvation, nor did it quench the spiritual thirst of its believers;
therefore was it doomed to perish. Within a millennium of its inception it had
nearly vanished, and the Greeks were without a national religion, the gods of
Olympus having lost their hold upon the better minds.
P1078:6, 98:2.2 This was the situation when, during the sixth
century B.C., the Orient and the Levant experienced a revival of spiritual
consciousness and a new awakening to the recognition of monotheism. But the West
did not share in this new development; neither Europe nor northern Africa
extensively participated in this religious renaissance. The Greeks, however, did
engage in a magnificent intellectual advancement. They had begun to master fear
and no longer sought religion as an antidote therefore, but they did not
perceive that true religion is the cure for soul hunger, spiritual disquiet, and
moral despair. They sought for the solace of the soul in deep thinking --
philosophy and metaphysics. They turned from the contemplation of
self-preservation -- salvation -- to self-realization and self-understanding.
P1078:7, 98:2.3 By rigorous thought the Greeks attempted to
attain that consciousness of security which would serve as a substitute for the
belief in survival, but they utterly failed. Only the more intelligent among the
higher classes of the Hellenic peoples could grasp this new teaching; the rank
and file of the progeny of the slaves of former generations had no capacity for
the reception of this new substitute for religion.
P1079:1, 98:2.4 The philosophers disdained all forms of worship,
notwithstanding that they practically all held loosely to the background of a
belief in the Salem doctrine of "the Intelligence of the universe,"
"the idea of God," and "the Great Source." In so far as the
Greek philosophers gave recognition to the divine and the superfinite, they were
frankly monotheistic; they gave scant recognition to the whole galaxy of
Olympian gods and goddesses.
P1079:2, 98:2.5 The Greek poets of the fifth and sixth
centuries, notably Pindar, attempted the reformation of Greek religion. They
elevated its ideals, but they were more artists than religionists.
P1079:3, 98:2.6 Xenophanes taught one God, but his deity concept was too pantheistic to be a personal Father to mortal man. Anaxagoras was a mechanist except that he did recognize a First Cause, an Initial Mind. Socrates and his successors, Plato and Aristotle, taught that virtue is knowledge; goodness, health of the soul; that it is better to suffer injustice than to be guilty of it, that it is wrong to return evil for evil, and that the gods are wise and good. Their cardinal virtues were: wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice.
P1079:4, 98:2.7 The evolution of religious philosophy among the
Hellenic and Hebrew peoples affords a contrastive illustration of the function
of the church as an institution in the shaping of cultural progress. In
Palestine, human thought was so priest-controlled and scripture-directed that
philosophy and aesthetics were entirely submerged in religion and morality. In
Greece, the almost complete absence of priests and "sacred scriptures"
left the human mind free and unfettered, resulting in a startling development in
depth of thought. But religion as a personal experience failed to keep pace with
the intellectual probing into the nature and reality of the cosmos.
P1079:5, 98:2.8 In Greece, believing was subordinated to
thinking; in Palestine, thinking was held subject to believing.
P1079:6, 98:2.9 In Palestine, religious dogma became so crystallized as to jeopardize further growth; in Greece, human thought became so abstract that the concept of God resolved itself into a misty vapor of pantheistic speculation not at all unlike the impersonal Infinity of the Brahman philosophers.
P1079:7, 98:2.10 But the average men of these times could not
grasp, nor were they much interested in, the Greek philosophy of
self-realization and an abstract Deity; they rather craved promises of
salvation, coupled with a personal God who could hear their prayers. They exiled
the philosophers, persecuted the remnants of the Salem cult, both doctrines
having become much blended, and made ready for that terrible orgiastic plunge
into the follies of the mystery cults which were then overspreading the
Mediterranean lands. The Eleusinian mysteries grew up within the Olympian
pantheon, a Greek version of the worship of fertility; Dionysus nature worship
flourished; the best of the cults was the Orphic brotherhood, whose moral
preachments and promises of salvation made a great appeal to many.
P1080:1, 98:2.11 Most Greece became involved in these new
methods of attaining salvation, these emotional and fiery ceremonials. Few
nation ever attained such heights of artistic philosophy in so short a time; few
created such an advanced system of ethics practically without Deity and entirely
devoid of the promise of human salvation.
P1080:2, 98:2.12 Religions have long endured without philosophical support, but few philosophies, as such, have long persisted without some identification with religion. Philosophy is to religion as conception is to action. But the ideal human estate is that in which philosophy, religion, and science are welded into a meaningful unity by the conjoined action of wisdom, faith, and experience.
P1080:3, 98:3.1 Having grown out of the earlier religious forms
of worship of the family gods into the tribal reverence for Mars, the god of
war, it was natural that the later religion of the Latins was more of a
political observance than were the intellectual systems of the Greeks and
Brahmans or the more spiritual religions of several other peoples.
P1080:4, 98:3.2 In the great monotheistic renaissance of
Melchizedek's gospel during the sixth century B.C., few of the Salem
missionaries penetrated Italy, and those who did were unable to overcome the
influence of the rapidly spreading Etruscan priesthood with its new galaxy of
gods and temples, all of which became organized into the Roman state religion.
This religion of the Latin tribes was not trivial and venal like that of the
Greeks, neither was it austere and tyrannical like that of the Hebrews; it
consisted for the most part in the observance of mere forms, vows, and taboos.
P1080:5, 98:3.3 Roman religion was greatly influenced by
extensive cultural importations from Greece. Eventually most of the Olympian
gods were transplanted and incorporated into the Latin pantheon. The Greeks long
worshiped the fire of the family hearth -- Hestia was the virgin goddess of the
hearth; Vesta was the Roman goddess of the home. Zeus became Jupiter; Aphrodite,
Venus; and so on down through the many Olympian deities.
P1080:6, 98:3.4 The religious initiation of Roman youths was the
occasion of their solemn consecration to the service of the state. Oaths and
admissions to citizenship were in reality religious ceremonies. The Latin
peoples maintained temples, altars, and shrines and, in a crisis, would consult
the oracles. They preserved the bones of heroes and later on those of the
Christian saints.
P1080:7, 98:3.5 This formal and unemotional form of
pseudo-religious patriotism was doomed to collapse, even as the highly
intellectual and artistic worship of the Greeks had gone down before the fervid
and deeply emotional worship of the mystery cults. The mystery religion of the
Mother of God sect had its headquarters in those days, on the exact site of the
present church of St. Peter's in Rome.
P1080:8, 98:3.6 The emerging Roman state conquered politically
but was in turn conquered by the cults, rituals, mysteries, and god concepts of
Egypt, Greece, and the Levant. These imported cults continued to flourish
throughout the Roman state up to the time of Augustus, who, purely for political
and civic reasons, made a heroic and somewhat successful effort to destroy the
mysteries and revive the older political religion.
P1081:1, 98:3.7 One of the priests of the state religion told
Augustus of the earlier attempts of the Salem teachers to spread the doctrine of
one God, a final Deity presiding over all supernatural beings; and this idea
took such a firm hold on the emperor that he built many temples, stocked them
well with beautiful images, reorganized the state priesthood, re-established the
state religion, appointed himself acting high priest of all, and as emperor did
not hesitate to proclaim himself the supreme god.
P1081:2, 98:3.8 This new religion of Augustus worship flourished
and was observed throughout the empire during his lifetime except in Palestine,
the home of the Jews. And this era of the human gods continued until the
official Roman cult had a roster of more than two-score self-elevated human
deities, all claiming miraculous births and other superhuman attributes.
P1081:3, 98:3.9 The last stand of the dwindling band of Salem believers was made by an earnest group of preachers, the Cynics, who exhorted the Romans to abandon their religious rituals and return to a form of worship embodying Melchizedek's gospel as it had been modified through contact with the philosophy of the Greeks. But the people at large rejected the Cynics; they preferred to plunge into the rituals of the mysteries, which not only offered hopes of personal salvation but also gratified the desire for diversion, excitement, and entertainment.
P1083:1, 98:6.1 Prior to the coming of the mystery cults and
Christianity, personal religion hardly developed as an independent institution
in the civilized lands of North Africa and Europe; it was more of a family,
city-state, political, and imperial affair. The Hellenic Greeks never evolved a
centralized worship system; the ritual was local; they had no priesthood and no
"sacred book." Much as the Romans, their religious institutions lacked
a powerful driving agency for the preservation of higher moral and spiritual
values. While it is true that the institutionalization of religion has usually
detracted from its spiritual quality, it is also a fact that no religion has
thus far succeeded in surviving without the aid of institutional organization of
some degree, greater or lesser.
P1083:2, 98:6.2 Occidental religion thus languished until the
days of the Skeptics, Cynics, Epicureans, and Stoics, but most important of all,
until the times of the great contest between Mithraism and Paul's new religion
of Christianity.
P1083:3, 98:6.3 During the third A.D.,, Mithraic and Christian
churches were very similar both in appearance and in the character of their
ritual. A majority of such places of worship were underground, and both
contained altars whose backgrounds variously depicted the sufferings of the
savior who had brought salvation to a sin-cursed human race.
P1083:4, 98:6.4 Always had it been the practice of Mithraic
worshipers, on entering the temple, to dip their fingers in holy water. And
since in some districts there were those who at one time belonged to both
religions, they introduced this custom into the majority of the Christian
churches in the vicinity of Rome. Both religions employed baptism and partook of
the sacrament of bread and wine. The one great difference between Mithraism and
Christianity, aside from the characters of Mithras and Jesus, was that the one
encouraged militarism while the other was ultra-pacific. Mithraism's tolerance
for other religions (except later Christianity) led to its final undoing. But
the deciding factor in the struggle between the two was the admission of women
into the full fellowship of the Christian faith.
P1083:5, 98:6.5 In the end the nominal Christian faith dominated the Occident. Greek philosophy supplied the concepts of ethical value; Mithraism, the ritual of worship observance; and Christianity, as such, the technique for the conservation of moral and social values.
P1084:1, 98:7.2 It is not the province of this paper to deal
with the origin and dissemination of the Christian religion. Suffice it to say
that it is built around the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Christianity was spread
throughout the Levant and Occident by the followers of this Galilean, and their
missionary zeal equaled that of their illustrious predecessors, the Sethites and
Salemites, as well as that of their earnest Asiatic contemporaries, the Buddhist
teachers.
P1084:2, 98:7.3 The Christian religion
arose through the compounding of the following teachings, influences,
beliefs, cults, and personal individual attitudes:
P1084:3, 98:7.4 1. The Melchizedek teachings, which are a basic factor in all the religions of Occident and Orient that have arisen in the last four thousand years.
P1084:4, 98:7.5 2. The Hebraic system of morality, ethics, theology, and belief in both Providence and the supreme Yahweh.
P1084:5, 98:7.6 3. The Zoroastrian conception of the struggle between cosmic good and evil, which had already left its imprint on both Judaism and Mithraism. Through prolonged contact attendant upon the struggles between Mithraism and Christianity, the doctrines of the Iranian prophet became a potent factor in determining the theological and philosophic cast and structure of the dogmas, tenets, and cosmology of the Hellenized and Latinized versions of the teachings of Jesus.
P1084:6, 98:7.7 4. The mystery cults, especially Mithraism but also the worship of the Great Mother in the Phrygian cult. Even the legends of the birth of Jesus became tainted with the Roman version of the miraculous birth of the Iranian savior-hero, Mithras, whose advent on earth was supposed to have been witnessed by only a handful of gift-bearing shepherds who had been informed of this impending event by angels.
P1084:7, 98:7.8 5. The historic fact of the human life of Joshua ben Joseph, who was given the titles, Jesus of Nazareth, Christ, Son of God by Christians
P1084:8, 98:7.9 6. The personal viewpoint of Paul of Tarsus. And it should be recorded that Mithraism was the dominant religion of Tarsus during his adolescence. Paul little dreamed that his well-intentioned letters to his converts would someday be regarded by still later Christians as the "word of God." Such well-meaning teachers must not be held accountable for the use made of their writings by later-day successors.
P1084:9, 98:7.10 7. The philosophic thought of the Hellenistic peoples, from Alexandria and Antioch through Greece to Syracuse and Rome. The philosophy of the Greeks was more in harmony with Paul's version of Christianity than with any other current religious system and became an important factor in the success of Christianity in the Occident. Greek philosophy, coupled with Paul's theology, still forms the basis of European ethics.
P1084:10, 98:7.11 As the original teachings of Jesus penetrated the Occident, they became Occidentalized, and as they became Occidentalized, they began to lose their potentially universal appeal to all races and kinds of men. Christianity, today, has become a religion well adapted to the social, economic, and political mores of the white races. It has long since ceased to be the religion of Jesus, although it still valiantly portrays a beautiful religion about Jesus to such individuals as sincerely seek to follow in the way of its teaching. It has glorified Jesus as the Christ, the Messianic anointed one from God, but has largely forgotten his personal gospel: the Fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of all men.
P1085:1, 98:7.12 The God concept was and is existent in the hearts of men and women, the same God concept that still flames anew in the living spiritual experience of the manifold children of the Universal Father as they live their intriguing temporal lives on the whirling planets of space.
P2071:1, 195:1.1 The Hellenization of Christianity started in
earnest on that eventful day when the Apostle Paul stood before the council of
the Areopagus in Athens and told the Athenians about "the Unknown
God." There, under the shadow of the Acropolis, this Roman citizen
proclaimed to these Greeks his version of the new religion which had taken
origin in the Jewish land of Galilee. And there was something strangely alike in
Greek philosophy and many of the teachings of Jesus. They had a common goal --
both aimed at the emergence of the individual. The Greek, at social and
political emergence; Jesus, at moral and spiritual emergence. The Greek taught
intellectual liberalism leading to political freedom; Jesus taught spiritual
liberalism leading to religious liberty. These two ideas put together
constituted a new and mighty charter for human freedom; they presaged man's
social, political, and spiritual liberty.
P2071:2, 195:1.2 Christianity came into existence and triumphed
over all contending religions primarily because of two things:
P2071:3, 195:1.3 1. The Greek mind was willing to borrow new and good ideas even from the Jews.
P2071:4, 195:1.4 2. Paul and his successors were willing but shrewd and sagacious compromisers; they were keen theological traders.
P2071:5, 195:1.5 At the time Paul stood up in Athens preaching
"Christ and Him Crucified," the Greeks were spiritually hungry; they
were inquiring, interested, and actually looking for spiritual truth. Never
forget that at first the Romans fought Christianity, while the Greeks embraced
it, and that it was the Greeks who literally forced the Romans subsequently to
accept this new religion, as then modified, as a part of Greek culture.
P2071:6, 195:1.6 The Greek revered beauty, the Jew holiness, but
both peoples loved truth. For centuries the Greek had seriously thought and
earnestly debated about all human problems -- social, economic, political, and
philosophic -- except religion. Few Greeks had paid much attention to religion;
they did not take even their own religion very seriously. For centuries the Jews
had neglected these other fields of thought while they devoted their minds to
religion. They took their religion very seriously, too seriously. As illuminated
by the content of Jesus' message, the united product of the centuries of the
thought of these two peoples now became the driving power of a new order of
human society and, to a certain extent, of a new order of human religious belief
and practice.
P2071:7, 195:1.7 The influence of Greek culture had already
penetrated the lands of the western Mediterranean when Alexander spread
Hellenistic civilization over the near-Eastern world. The Greeks did very well
with their religion and their politics as long as they lived in small
city-states, but when the Macedonian king dared to expand Greece into an empire,
stretching from the Adriatic to the Indus, trouble began. The art and philosophy
of Greece were fully equal to the task of imperial expansion, but not so with
Greek political administration or religion. After the city-states of Greece had
expanded into empire, their rather parochial gods seemed a little queer. The
Greeks were really searching for one God, a greater and better God, when
the Christianized version of the older Jewish religion came to them.
P2072:1, 195:1.8 The Hellenistic Empire, as such, could not
endure. Its cultural sway continued on, but it endured only after securing from
the West the Roman political genius for empire administration and after
obtaining from the East a religion whose one God possessed empire dignity.
P2072:3, 195:1.10 Alexander had charged on the East with the
cultural gift of the civilization of Greece; Paul assaulted the West with the
Christian version of the gospel of Jesus. And wherever the Greek culture
prevailed throughout the West, there Hellenized Christianity took root.
P2072:4, 195:1.11 The Eastern version of the message of Jesus, notwithstanding that it remained more true to his teachings, continued to follow the uncompromising attitude of Abner. It never progressed as did the Hellenized version and was eventually lost in the Islamic movement.
P2072:5, 195:2.1 The Romans bodily took over Greek culture,
putting representative government in the place of government by lot. And
presently this change favored Christianity in that Rome brought into the whole
Western world a new tolerance for strange languages, peoples, and even
religions.
P2072:6, 195:2.2 Much of the early persecution of Christians in
Rome was due solely to their unfortunate use of the term "kingdom" in
their preaching. The Romans were tolerant of any and all religions but very
resentful of anything that savored of political rivalry. And so, when these
early persecutions, due so largely to misunderstanding, died out, the field for
religious propaganda was wide open. The Roman was interested in political
administration; he cared little for either art or religion, but he was unusually
tolerant of both.
P2072:7, 195:2.3 Oriental law was stern and arbitrary; Greek law
was fluid and artistic; Roman law was dignified and respect-breeding. Roman
education bred an unheard-of and stolid loyalty. The early Romans were
politically devoted and sublimely consecrated individuals. They were honest,
zealous, and dedicated to their ideals, but without a religion worthy of the
name. Small wonder that their Greek teachers were able to persuade them to
accept Paul's Christianity.
P2072:8, 195:2.4 And these Romans were a great people. They
could govern the Occident because they did govern themselves. Such unparalleled
honesty, devotion, and stalwart self-control was ideal soil for the reception
and growth of Christianity.
P2072:9, 195:2.5 It was easy for these Greco-Romans to become
just as spiritually devoted to an institutional church as they were politically
devoted to the state. The Romans fought the church only when they feared it as a
competitor of the state. Rome, having little national philosophy or native
culture, took over Greek culture for its own and boldly adopted Christ as its
moral philosophy. Christianity became the moral culture of Rome but hardly its
religion in the sense of being the individual experience in spiritual growth of
those who embraced the new religion in such a wholesale manner. True, indeed,
many individuals did penetrate beneath the surface of all this state religion
and found for the nourishment of their souls the real values of the hidden
meanings held within the latent truths of Hellenized and paganized Christianity.
P2073:1, 195:2.6 The Stoic and his sturdy appeal to "nature
and conscience" had only the better prepared all Rome to receive Christ, at
least in an intellectual sense. The Roman was by nature and training a lawyer;
he revered even the laws of nature. And now, in Christianity, he discerned in
the laws of nature the laws of God. A people that could produce Cicero and
Vergil were ripe for Paul's Hellenized Christianity.
P2073:2, 195:2.7 And so did these Romanized Greeks force both
Jews and Christians to philosophize their religion, to co-ordinate its ideas and
systematize its ideals, to adapt religious practices to the existing current of
life. And all this was enormously helped by translation of the Hebrew scriptures
into Greek and by the later recording of the New Testament in the Greek tongue.
P2073:3, 195:2.8 The Greeks, in contrast with the Jews and many
other peoples, had long provisionally believed in immortality, some sort of
survival after death, and since this was the very heart of Jesus' teaching, it
was certain that Christianity would make a strong appeal to them.
P2073:4, 195:2.9 A succession of Greek-cultural and
Roman-political victories had consolidated the Mediterranean lands into one
empire, with one language and one culture, and had made the Western world ready
for one God. Judaism provided this God, but Judaism was not acceptable as a
religion to these Romanized Greeks. Philo helped some to mitigate their
objections, but Christianity revealed to them an even better concept of one God,
and they embraced it readily.
P2073:5, 195:3.1 After the consolidation of Roman political rule
and after the dissemination of Christianity, the Christians found themselves
with one God, a great religious concept, but without empire. The Greco-Romans
found themselves with a great empire but without a God to serve as the suitable
religious concept for empire worship and spiritual unification. The Christians
accepted the empire; the empire adopted Christianity. The Roman provided a unity
of political rule; the Greek, a unity of culture and learning; Christianity, a
unity of religious thought and practice.
P2073:6, 195:3.2 Rome overcame the tradition of nationalism by
imperial universalism and for the first time in history made it possible for
different races and nations at least nominally to accept one religion.
P2073:7, 195:3.3 Christianity came into favor in Rome at a time
when there was great contention between the vigorous teachings of the Stoics and
the salvation promises of the mystery cults. Christianity came with refreshing
comfort and liberating power to a spiritually hungry people whose language had
no word for "unselfishness."
P2073:8, 195:3.4 That which gave greatest power to Christianity was the way its believers lived lives of service and even the way they died for their faith during the earlier times of drastic persecution.
P2073:9, 195:3.5 The teaching regarding Jesus’ love for children soon put an end to the widespread practice of exposing children to death when they were not wanted, particularly girl babies.
P2074:1, 195:3.6 The early plan of Christian worship was largely taken over from the Jewish synagogue, modified by the Mithraic ritual; later on, much pagan pageantry was added. The backbone of the early Christian church consisted of Christianized Greek proselytes to Judaism.
P2074:2, 195:3.7 The second century A.D. was the best time in
all the world's history for a good religion to make progress in the Western
world. During the first century Christianity had prepared itself, by struggle
and compromise, to take root and rapidly spread. Christianity adopted the
emperor; later, he adopted Christianity. This was a great age for the spread of
a new religion. There was religious liberty; travel was universal and thought
was untrammeled.
P2074:3, 195:3.8 The spiritual impetus of nominally accepting
Hellenized Christianity came to Rome too late to prevent the well-started moral
decline or to compensate for the already well-established and increasing racial
deterioration. This new religion was a cultural necessity for imperial Rome, and
it is exceedingly unfortunate that it did not become a means of spiritual
salvation in a larger sense.
P2074:4, 195:3.9 Even a good religion could not save a great
empire from the sure results of lack of individual participation in the affairs
of government, from overmuch paternalism, over-taxation and gross collection
abuses, unbalanced trade with the Levant which drained away the gold, amusement
madness, Roman standardization, the degradation of woman, slavery and race
decadence, physical plagues, and a state church which became institutionalized
nearly to the point of spiritual barrenness.
P2074:5, 195:3.10 Conditions, however, were not so bad at
Alexandria. The early schools continued to hold much of Jesus' teachings free
from compromise. Pantaenus taught Clement and then went on to follow Nathaniel
in proclaiming Christ in India. While some of the ideals of Jesus were
sacrificed in the building of Christianity, it should in all fairness be
recorded that, by the end of the second century, practically all the great minds
of the Greco-Roman world had become Christian. The triumph was approaching
completion.
P2074:6, 195:3.11 And this Roman Empire lasted sufficiently long
to insure the survival of Christianity even after the empire collapsed. But we
have often conjectured what would have happened in Rome and in the world if it
had been the gospel of the kingdom which had been accepted in the place of Greek
Christianity.
P2074:7, 195:4.1 The church, being an adjunct to society and the
ally of politics, was doomed to share in the intellectual and spiritual decline
of the so-called European "dark ages." During this time, religion
became more and more monasticized, asceticized, and legalized. In a spiritual
sense, Christianity was hibernating. Throughout this period there existed,
alongside this slumbering and secularized religion, a continuous stream of
mysticism, a fantastic spiritual experience bordering on unreality and
philosophically akin to pantheism.
P2074:8, 195:4.2 During these dark and despairing centuries,
religion became virtually second-handed again. The individual was almost lost
before the overshadowing authority, tradition, and dictation of the church. A
new spiritual menace arose in the creation of a galaxy of "saints" who
were assumed to have special influence at the divine courts, and who, therefore,
if effectively appealed to, would be able to intercede in man's behalf before
the Gods.
P2075:1, 195:4.3 But Christianity was sufficiently socialized
and paganized that, while it was impotent to stay the oncoming dark ages, it was
the better prepared to survive this long period of moral darkness and spiritual
stagnation. And it did persist on through the long night of Western civilization
and was still functioning as a moral influence in the world when the renaissance
dawned. The rehabilitation of Christianity, following the passing of the dark
ages, resulted in bringing into existence numerous sects of the Christian
teachings, beliefs suited to special intellectual, emotional, and spiritual
types of human personality. And many of these special Christian groups, or
religious families, still persist at the time of the making of this
presentation.
P2075:2, 195:4.4 Christianity exhibits a history of having originated out of the unintended transformation of the religion of Jesus into a religion about Jesus. It further presents the history of having experienced Hellenization, paganization, secularization, institutionalization, intellectual deterioration, spiritual decadence, moral hibernation, threatened extinction, later rejuvenation, fragmentation, and more recent relative rehabilitation. Such a pedigree is indicative of inherent vitality and the possession of vast recuperative resources. And this same Christianity is now present in the civilized world of Occidental peoples and stands face to face with a struggle for existence which is even more ominous than those eventful crises which have characterized its past battles for dominance.
P2075:3, 195:4.5 Religion is now confronted by the challenge of a new age of scientific minds and materialistic tendencies. In this gigantic struggle between the secular and the spiritual, which will eventually triumph?
P2075:4, 195:5.1 The twenty-first century has brought new
problems for all religions to solve. The higher a civilization climbs, the more
necessitous becomes the duty to "seek first the realities of heaven"
in all of man's efforts to stabilize society and facilitate the solution of its
material problems.
P2075:5, 195:5.2 Truth often becomes confusing and even
misleading when it is dismembered, segregated, isolated, and too much analyzed.
Living truth teaches the truth seeker aright only when it is embraced in
wholeness and as a living spiritual reality, not as a fact of material science
or an inspiration of intervening art.
P2075:6, 195:5.3 Religion is the revelation to man of his divine
and eternal destiny. Religion is a purely personal and spiritual experience and
must forever be distinguished from man's other high forms of thought, such as:
P2075:7, 195:5.4 1. Man's logical attitude toward the things of material reality.
P2075:8, 195:5.5 2. Man's aesthetic appreciation of beauty contrasted with ugliness.
P2075:9, 195:5.6 3. Man's ethical recognition of social obligations and political duty.
P2075:10, 195:5.7 4. Even man's sense of human morality is not, in and of itself, religious.
P2075:11, 195:5.8 Religion is designed to find those values in
the universe which call forth faith, trust, and assurance; religion culminates
in worship. Religion discovers for the soul those supreme values which are in
contrast with the relative values discovered by the mind. Such superhuman
insight can be had only through genuine religious experience.
P2075:12, 195:5.9 A lasting social system without a morality
predicated on spiritual realities can no more be maintained than could the solar
system without gravity.
P2076:1, 195:5.10 Do not try to satisfy the curiosity or gratify
all the latent adventure surging within the soul in one short life in the flesh.
Be patient! be not tempted to indulge in a lawless plunge into cheap and sordid
adventure. Harness your energies and bridle your passions; be calm while you
await the majestic unfolding of an endless career of progressive adventure and
thrilling discovery.
P2076:2, 195:5.11 In confusion over man's origin, do not lose sight of your eternal destiny.
P2076:3, 195:5.12 As you view the world, remember that the black
patches of evil which you see are shown against a white background of ultimate
good. You do not view merely white patches of good which show up miserably
against a black background of evil.
P2076:4, 195:5.13 When there is so much good truth to publish
and proclaim, why should men dwell so much upon the evil in the world just
because it appears to be a fact? The beauties of the spiritual values of truth
are more pleasurable and uplifting than is the phenomenon of evil.
P2076:5, 195:5.14 We find God through the leadings of spiritual insight, but we approach this insight of the soul through the love of the beautiful, the pursuit of truth, loyalty to duty, and the worship of divine goodness. But of all these values, love is the true guide to real insight.