< Another Letter from Koot Hoomi Lal Singh's Brother (continued from page 11-226) >
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Order Above Us, Religion, or Christian Theosophy
Every systematic religion embodies a conception of man’s relation to the Universe.
Every religious conception implies the dependence of man upon the realm of spiritual causation; and presupposes some knowledge or fancied knowledge of the order of things of which man forms a part.
The most obvions element of that order is the relation of man’s physical existence to the visible world. This has originated the saying that “Self-preservation is the first law of nature”; and a perception of this relation teaches the prudential fulfilment of the laws of health and physical well-being.
The second sphere of relationship which forces itself on man’s recognition is that pertaining to his fellow-creatures, and it is commonly called morality. This chain and series of relationships is more obscure than the former, and indeed of infinite complexity. A fresh reading and interpretation of them is necessary for evey era, climate, race and individual.
There is a third sphere of relations, which dominates and modifies every other; and that is man’s spiritual relation to a cognate spiritual realm of causation.
From men’s various and imperfect recognition of these different spheres of relation have arisen their various religions.
One effect of the features of nature on the mind in generating religious ideas is very manifest to every student of comparative mythology. The sterner, fiercer aspects and phenomena beget conceptions of deities of violent passions and der structive characteristics, like the Indian Siva; which are scarcely balanced by deities of the Vishnou type, creative and preservative.
Nature is the theatre of unceasing birth, life, decay and destruction. Man himself is the subject of these agencies or events, and the comparatively even tenor of his history is interrupted by occasional more striking manifestations of power chiefly destructive, such as flood and fire, storm and earthquake. It is reasonable, then, that there should arise mythologies, personating these different powers with quasi-human relations of subordination or hostility between them. Such, apparently, is the first stage in the development of the religious instinct.
A perception that all the phenomena of life are more or less due to the heat and light of the sun, and the attempt to understand the connection of the daily and yearly movements of the sun with other celestial phenomena—such as the movement and light of the moon, planets and stars, the occurrence of meteoric lights, comets, eclipses, &c.—led to the semi-scientific systems of religious legend, belief, and ritual, which centred in Sun-worship. This cultus is the key to almost all mythologies.
Associated with this sublimest form of idolatry we find a mysterious importance attached to the propagation, of human life, and to all symbols in any way related to it. Hence Tower and Tree-worship and a thousand mysteries, bringing within the range of religious law and reverence some of the most important and influential sentiments of the human soul. Here we first distinctly see the bearing of religious belief upon moral relations; and tins bearing became contin-<... continues on page 11-230 >
Editor's notes
- ↑ Order Above Us, Religion, or Christian Theosophy by Bengough,Samuel Edmund, Medium and Daybreak, v. 12, No. 596, September 2, 1881, pp. 545-47
Sources
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Medium and Daybreak, v. 12, No. 596, September 2, 1881, pp. 545-47