The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1867-09-08

Man, 1t has been said, Is q religious animal
The history of the race warrants the definition
Since the days Of Adam up to the present
| time we have not been without our gods
many and our lords many nor have any por-
tons of the human family ever been found in
circumstances SO degraded and brutal that 1t
could be said of them they were without
belief in higher and unseen Power. Strict
obedience to the gods, or to the religious sys-
TENS which have been set up in their name, has
not always been truthful predicate of the
race, but religiosity in some shape or form has
been an unfailing characteristic.
The gods, we have said, have been nu-
merous. We might add they have been as d.
versifed as they have been numerous The
gods of the early Hindoo mythology are as
unlike the deities of Egypt as these are I'M
like the deities of the Greeks and the Romans
and the deiies of the Greeks and the Romans
! have but little in common with the gods whose
names have been preserved in the myhologies
of Northern Europe. Nor has this diversity
been limited by national boundaries only for
| the gods of one nation have not differed more
| from the gods Of another nation than the gods
Of each separate nation have differed from
one another.
There is one impression which most men
who have looked into the ancient mythologies
find it difficult to resist, and that is that the
gods are singularly like their worshippers
and the worshippers are singularly like their
gods. If it must be admitted that the gods
| exercised a powerful influence over che des-
tiny of their mortal subj ,cts, it is not to be de-
| MED that the subjects were largely influential
in moulding the characters of their celestial
chiefs. The influence, in fact, was mutual.
There was debt on both sides. 1t might not be
difficult, did time and inclination permit, to
discover in the peculiar character of man him.
self the true cause of this multiplicity and
diversity of the objects of his worship. For
the present we content ourselves with noting
the facts that there was multiplicity, that there
| was diversity, and that the worshipped and
the worshippers were, batting certain necessary
peculiariies, singulariy like each other.
What it is more important and more suited
to our present purpose to notice is, that those
divinitias and the systems of religion with
which they were identified had in turn their day
of power, lived their thousand years or more
or less, exercised while they lived an infu-
ence not unmixed with good and evil, and then
fell back, as all old things must do into the
dim and shadowy past-mankind the while
marching on to new and nobler conditions, to
the discovery at once Of greater strength and
of greater weakness, and ceasing not thou III
kc x:vsts k1.k.~
the strong arm of the Unseen and the Eternal,
who, he believed, moulded and controlled his
destiny. In the beautiful mythology of Greece
in the scarcely less beautiful but more vigor-
GUS mythology Of Rome, and in the sturdy
mythology OF the Scandinavian North, we dis
cover the influences which were giving tone
and character to the races of Europe when
Christianity caught them and Launched them
forth on their new and glorious career.
Are we to come to the conclusion that as all
the old systems disappeared before Chris
tianity, Christianity itself must disappear
before something higher and nobler? Has
Christianity done its best? Must it give place
to a new and grander development of the
religious principle in man! Is the time to
come when our posterity, living under more
perfect system, shall look ino the Christian
mythology and marvel at our faith and folly
rs we now marvel at the faith and folly of
our ancestors? Strauss, Reaan, Colenso, and
their disciples in the Oh World, and the fol-
lowers OF such men as Theodore Parker and
Ralph Waldo Emerson in the New-for what
else is it they are laboringi There is much in
the present aspect of things fitted to create
alarm. Never, at least since the Reformation,
was the Christian system more vigorously and
perss emily attacked. Never were missionary
records SO dull; never was q. se more of
form-never less of spirit. Religion is fashion
abe-tais in our large cities especially is one
of the main sources Of the Churches strength
True relig Gus life, there is none. The Churches
which are most progressive have eliminated
from their standards almost all that Is distinc-
tive and valuable in tue Oh istian system. To
be Christian and to enjoy Christian privileges
1t is no lcnger necessary to believe In the
divine mission Of Christ. Inspiration is so
explained away that it has ceased to have
any meaning. Among the different Sec
tions OF the Christian Church bond
Of union we find not; but jealousy and
petty rivalry are everywhere. The Church
Of England, the largest and most powerful Of
all the Protestant denominations, is being torn
in pieces by internal dissensions and the Pope
has but recently been attempting to galvanize
the Catholic Church into q little temporary
vitality by grand spectacular demonstrations
and Wholesale lamentations. Verify, we are
drifting somewhere-whither it is difficult to
say. Thus much we shall venture to say: II
man is to remain religious animal, one of two
things must follow; either Christianity must
awake 10 newness Of life, or take her place
with the mythologies of a dead and buried
| past. We must have more Christian life or n