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Show U ni tarianism in Utah such word no man. as failure in the vocabulary It doesn't exist for him. than failure in the vocabulary of the And there is of the no religious other word man or woman who all, only if you religion. know what is worth while and do what is worth while. And It is worth while to live at lacks right here is where the need of religion may be seen as nowhere else. But this has not minister or a always church, and been be the business of seen to it is not always seen to a be that Let me tell you why. During the years that followed the death of Jesus the years when the writings of the New now. - a very different idea of taking shape religion from what I am speaking about and different from what Jesus taught and lived grew up. It was during those years after Jesus had died that religion came to be thought of as a preparation for life beyond the grave. I say" came to be thought of' in that way. For if you will read over the reported words of Iesus, you will find no such idea of religion at all. Religion, to Jesus, had nothing whatever to do with Testament a were future world - - it had to do with this world now and here. But very much of the later writings of the New Testament have to do with a life beyond death. Why was that? Because within a very few years after the death of Jesus the church which took him as its founder was made up almost wholly of the slave class of the Roman Empire. Those later writings were bound to reflect, and do reflect, the outlook of that slave class. Religion could not possibly seem the enslaved Gentile classes of the Roman seem to So, 212 same Empire thing to the that it would Jews, with their agelong love and struggle for liberty. Christianity, which in the teachings of Iesus deals wholly with the present life, became in the minds of the Gentile Christian slaves of the Empire a matter of the future life. |
