tion himself, but leads his neighbors into sin as well. The salvation of people consists in everyone learning to think with his own mind. Emerson.
5. The harm done by false religions can neither be weighed nor measured.
Religion is the determination of the attitude of man towards God and the world, and the definition of his calling as derived from this attitude. What then can be a man's life if both this attitude and the definition of his calling derived from it are false?
6. There can be three kinds of false beliefs. The first is the belief in the possibility of learning by experience that which according to the laws of experience is impossible. The second is in the admission for our moral perfecting of things which cannot be conceived by our reason. The third is the belief in the possibility of summoning by supernatural means mysterious activities whereby the Deity may influence our morality. Kant
II.
False Religions Respond to the Lowest, Not to the Highest Needs of the Human Soul
1. The only true religion contains nothing but laws, that is those moral principles the absolute necessity of which we can recognize and study ourselves and which we can acknowledge by our reason. Kant.
2. Man can please God only by good living. Therefore all things outside of good, upright and clean living whereby a man thinks he can please God are a crude and a harmful delusion. Kant,
3. The penance of a man who chastises himself instead of taking advantage of the disposition of his spirit
in order to change his mode of Hfe is wasted labor; such penance has in addition the bad effect of making him think that by this act of penance he has wiped out his score of debts and he takes no further care to perfect himself, which is the only thing conscious when conscious of moral faults.
Kant.
4. It is bad enough when man does not know God, but it is worse when he acknowledges that as God which is not God. Lactantms,
5. It is said God created man in his image; one might rather say that man has created God in his own image.
Lichtenberg,
6. When some speak of heaven as of a place where the blessed abide they usually imagine it somewhere high up in the unfathomable cosmic spaces. But they forget that our own earth, viewed from those cosmic spaces appears like a celestial star and that the inhabitants of other worlds might with as much right point to our own earth and say: "Look at that star, the abode of eternal bliss, the heavenly refuge prepared for us where we shall enter some day." In the curious error of our mind the flight of our faith is alwa3rs associated with the idea of ascension, without realizing that no matter how high we might soar we should still have to descend somewhere in order to set foot firmly in some other world.
7. To ask God for material things, such as rain, recovery from illness or delivery from enemies, is wrong if for no reason than because people may ask God at one time for opposite things, but principally because in the material world we are given all that we need. We might pray God to help us live the life of the spirit, such a life that
therein no matter what occurred it would redound to our blessing. But a rogator]* prayer for material things is a self-deception.
8. True prayer is to withdraw from all that is of the world, from all that might distract our feelings (the Mohammedans have the right idea when upon entering a mosque or commencing to pray they cover their eyes and their ears with their fingers), and to summon the Divine principle within ourselvtes. But the best is to do as Christ taught: to enter your closet in secret and to shut your door, that is to pray in solitude whether in your closet, or in the woods, or in the field. True prayer is to withdraw from all that is worldly, f пж! all that is external, to examine your soul, your actions, your desires not in the light of the demands of outward conditions, but of that divine principle of which we are conscious in our soul.
Such prayer is help, strength, elevation of spirit, confession, examination of past acts and direction of acts to come.
III.
Outward Worship
1. Between a Shaman and a European prelate, or taking plain people for example, between a crude sensual heathen who in the morning places upon his head the paw of a bearskin and says: "Slay me not," and a cultured G)n-necticut Puritan, there may be a difference in methods, but there is no difference in the fundamentals of their faiths, for both belong to that class of people whose idea of serving God is not in becoming better men, but in religion or in the observing of certain arbitrary rules. Only those who believe that serving God is to strive towards a better life are different from these others, inasmuch as they acknowledge a different, a vastly superior basis for their faith that
unites all right-minded people into one invisible chtirch, which alone can be the universal church. Kant
2. The man who performs acts which have nothing ethical in themselves in order to incline to himself the good will of God, and thereby to attain the realization of his desires, is in error, because he means to attain supernatural results by natural means. Such attempts are called witchcraft, but since witchcraft is usually associated with the evil spirit, and these endeavors, though ignorant, are nevertheless based on good intentions, let us rather call them fetishism. Such supernatural activities on the part of man towards God are possible only in imagination and are irrational if for no other reason than because it cannot be known whether they are pleasing to God. And if a man, in addition to his immediate efforts to gain the goodwill of God, that is in addition to good conduct, endeavors to acquire further merit by means of certain formalties, or supernatural aids, and with that end in view means to render himself more receptive to a moral state of mind and to the attainment of his good inclinations by external observances which have no intrinsic value, then he relies on some supernatural agency for the correction of his natural weakness. Such a man, believing that acts having nothing moral or God-pleasing in themselves, may be a means or a condition of the attainment of his desires direct from God, is in error, because he imagines that he can without any physical or moral inclination, make use of supernatural means having nothing in common with good morals, in order to conjure this supernatural divine assistance by the observance of various outward practices. Kant.
3. ''And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are. for they love to pray standing in the S)ma-
gpgue and in the comers of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their re* ward
"But thou when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to the Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth secret shall reward thee openly." Matthew VI, 5-6.
4. "Beware of the scribes, which desire to walk in long robes and love greetings in the markets, and the highest seats in the synagogues, and the chief rooms at feasts:
"Which devour widows' houses, and for a shew make long prayers: the same shall receive greater damnation.''
Luke XX, 46-47.
Where there is false religion there will also always be scribes and they will always act just as the scribes of old against whom the Scripture warns us.
IV.
Multiplicity of Religious Teachings and the One
True Religion
1. The man who has given the subject of religion no thought imagines that the only true faith is the one in which he was bom. But just ask yourself what if you had been bom in some other faith? You a Christian—if you had been bom a Mohammedan? You a Buddhist, if you had been bom a Oiristian? You a Christian, if you had been bom a Brahmin ? Can it be that we alone are right in our faith, and all the others believe falsehood? Your faith will not become truth just because you assert to yourself and to others that it is the one tme faith.