Christianity Old and New - 1914 Author:Benjamin Wisner Bacon Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION AND HISTORIC TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY I. To speak of "the evolution of religion" implies a conception of it as advancing in conti... more »nuous change from lower to higher forms. In point of fact, we hazard the assertion that it not only has advanced, but is still advancing, and will continue to advance with the progress of culture and enlightenment. Our primary proposition is that the tendency of human progress is not to discard religion, but to deepen and refine it. However, this proposition will not command assent without careful definition. Eeligion may be so defined as to incline us all to agree with that radical school of sociologists who classify it with the folkways that vanish with other delusions, poetic, and perhaps temporarily useful, before the advance of science. The definition of religion which I propose is that of Carlyle: "Not that to which in words or otherwise a man will give assent, but what he lays practically to heart and knows for certain concerning his vital relations to the mysterious universe and his duty and destiny there — this," says Carlyle, "is his religion." ' Duty and destiny ' ' in the mysterious universe ! The doctrine of evolution has brought changes unparalleled in the history of thought to our conceptions of "this mysterious universe" and our vital relations to it. Is it any wonder that our convictions of "duty and destiny" are changing, too? Only a dead religion, a religion imposed from without, cast in the unchanging moulds of the past, enforced under the otherworldly penalties of dogma, could fail to respond. Our religion is proving its vitality by changing in answer to new views of the universe. This is the real significance of that vast new alignment called by Vatican authority — and well called — 'moderni...« less