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Show Frank L. Hunt thought is that it expresses a gregarious type of thinking, a mass opinion formulated into a system or a creed, which is wholly inadequate for free and independent spirits. Even capable of religious thought are happy to delegate their thinking to those in authority just as the unintelligent do and the result is a dull conformity to rules and regulations which have nothing to do with human behavior. The behavior of the herd becomes the docile, uniform disposition of the people. Systems of theology and unaltering creeds, wet with the dews of heavenly inspiration, were formulated to this holy end. But for those creeds and systems of theology to cause the people to act like automatons, religious persecution could not persist, and disgraceful heresy trials would not mar the growing good will of this more enlightened age. Creeds and systems preserve an outgrown past. They are anachronisms of the religious process, causing even the intelligent to divide their allegiance between the ideas of Athanasius, Augustine, and Calvin, and the reasonable, spiritual conceptions of the present day. The religious thought of primitives and of the ancients is even good enough for some scientists of this generation, who are content to worship at the tombs of creeds on Sunday, while on Monday they pursue with feverish research the data that will shed light upon the latest scientific theory. While religion emphasizes the inner life, it demands that those - - the inner life issue in outer expression. Mental acts are not complete without motor action. The Lord listens most attentively to those whose prayer is in their works. Those who continually cry, "Lord, Lord," without doing the will of God, in as far as they understand it, are farthest from the Kingdom of Heaven. Psychologists assure us that all thought tends to express 249 |
