Forlong - Rivers of Life

xxxii
Preface.
that profess it,” and that seeing “how natural it is for all to have an over-bearing opinion
and esteem for that particular religion. they are born and brought up in,” he resolves
“to be more jealous and suspicious” of his own “in order that he may make diligent
and impartial enquiry into all,” He “will look upon himself,” he continues, “as one
not at all interested in any particular religion”—a noble faith and trust in the power
of truth, and the only attitude the reader and writer of this work can profitably
assume. Let us free ourselves from that common and real infidelity which fears and
distrusts truth, nay, which even calls its honest pursuit “a dangerous and evil thing.”
Religion is not like Politics, a system of compromize. We should rather dread
belonging to any church, because this necessarily confines our views and makes
us content with the modicum of truth it may have grasped. It is certain at least to
find us partizans when any doctrine or rite held sacred by our sect is attacked.
To have breadth of view in religious matters, one must take a neutral standpoint,
and be a patient waiter upon truth, welcoming rather than repelling new ideas
and all enquirers and reformers. The study of other faiths must ever tend to
purify our own, and lead us to treat with deference and respect all the pious and
earnest thoughts which have. helped men to realize in some degree the grent Ideal of
power, goodness and truth.
It is not enough to know well and write incisively upon religions. We must
sympathize with the highest and holiest feelings they inculcate, and no less with the
uncultured thought of him who bows before a mystic stone or bedizened altar, than
with those who in lowliness of mind torture their bodies and souls to find favor in
the sight of their God; with men to whom the world is as nothing; who thrust aside
with loathing its pomps and vanities, beauties and joys, and even proclaim all excellence
of mind and heart to be but filthy rags in comparison with that holy ecatasy
they experience in their believed communion with the Supreme. Let us not forget
that now as in ancient times, there are millions who still fee1 that though flesh and
heart faint and fail, He is the strength of their heart and continual joy; that there are
tens of thousands of revered and solitary ones, who in filth and nakedness, sit within
lone mountain caves or temple cells, striving in death-like silence to still every earthly
emotion that they may perchance hear but one word or sound from Him whom they
call the Father of Spirits. Most of us can fully sympathize with that cultured piety
which, though it rejects all that Europe holds sacred, can yet express itself in hymns
like that sung by Firdusi eight hundred and fifty years ago: “The height and the
depth of the whole world have their centre in Thee, O my God! I do not know Thee