He considered every
spiritually gifted person to be the result of an immaculate conception.
At the close of the essay on "Unity" he says:
"Verily, I believe that he who was born at Bethlehem, that majestic
witness for the soul, was Messias, Christ, one sent from the Father;
that the eternal Godhood concurred in the production of his being; that
the consciousness of a divine inhabitation lived in his heart."
It was no new evil he complained of, but one older than the brazen
serpent in the wilderness. It might be called the fossilization of
religious ideas. He called to his support the testimony of a witness
whose orthodoxy has never been questioned. This was the poet Milton, who
says:
"A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believe things only
because his pastor says so, or the assembly so determine, without other
reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes
his heresy."
Then Wasson adds: "And it is no more than a different application of
this aphorism to say that one may be an idolater in the reverence of
that which is truly venerable; for if he render it homage only in blind
conformity to custom, and in implicit submission to the discipline of
ancient use and wont, though the object be worthy, yet his worship is an
idolatry." It is indeed a type of idolatry which becomes continually
more subtle and dangerous with the progress of civilization.
Pages:
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172