And yet, note clearly one thing. So long as the world
believes this, so long as the one end and aim of human life, as held up
to people, is to be saved, think of the waste, think of the time, the
anxiety, the enthusiasms, the prayers, the consecrations; think of the
wealth, think of the intellectual faculties, think of the moral
devotion, this whole power of the world expended on a false issue,
turned into wrong channels!
Is this a dead question? Is there no reason for us to consider it here
in this latter part of the nineteenth century? Why, nine-tenths of
Christendom to-day is spending its time in trying to propitiate a God
who is not angry and trying to "save" souls that are not "lost."
Expending its energies along mistaken channels towards issues that are
entirely imaginary! Think, for example, if during the last two thousand
years all the time and the money, all the intelligence, all the
consecration, could have been spent on those things that would have
really helped men to find out the meaning of life, and to illustrate
that meaning in earnest living; suppose the money that has been spent
on the cathedrals, on the monasteries, spent in supporting hordes and
hordes of priests, spent in all the endeavor to save men in a future
life, if all this had been used in educating men and training them into
a comprehension of what kind of beings they really are, what kind of a
world this is in which they have found themselves, spent in training
them into mastery of themselves, spent in teaching them how to
understand and control the forces of nature in order to serve and
develop the higher life, think what a civilization might have been
developed here on this poor old planet by this time! How much of the
disease, how much of the corruption, how much of the unkindness, how
much of the cruelty, how much of all that still remains in us of the
animal, might have been outgrown, sloughed off, put underneath our
feet!
Is it not, then, a vital question, so long as so many thousands, so
many millions of people are still consecrating their time, their money,
their energy, in the attempt to do that which does not need to be done?
Let us turn, now, and for a little while face another theory of human
life; try to find out, or to suggest, what we are here on this planet
for, what may be accomplished, how much of grand and true may be
wrought out as the result of our attempt.
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