The Origins of Theosophy (Routledge Revivals) by Besant Annie;

The Origins of Theosophy (Routledge Revivals) by Besant Annie;

Author:Besant, Annie; [Besant, Annie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2022-02-25T00:00:00+00:00


THE

WORLD AND ITS GODS.

BY

ANNIE BESANT.

LONDON:

FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY,

63, FLEET STREET, E.C.

1886.

___

PRICE THREEPENCE.

LONDON: PRINTED BY ANNIE BESANT AND CHARLES BRADLAUGH, 63, FLEET STREET, E.C.

The World and Its Gods.

DOI: 10.4324/9781315740126-5

There are many who acknowledge that Christianity has made for the retardation of scientific thought, the hindering of human progress. By thousands of educated men and women, the question I lately asked, “Is Christianity a success?” has been answered in the negative. Face to face with the evidence borne by history, honesty forces from them this one answer. They read of the countless frauds out of which struggled its “historical” books; of its success among the most ignorant and superstitious of an uninstructed populace; of the horrible crimes of its first imperial supporter; of the violence, treachery, and bribery by which it won its way through Europe; of its shocking barbarities towards heretics and unbelievers; of its crusades and its Inquisition; of its ferocious struggles against each new truth, and its fawning supple acceptance of each when it had won its way by agony and martyrdom. Glancing over Europe, they see that to-day the most backward and the most ignorant countries are those over which Christianity still rules unchallenged, while those which are in the van of civilisation are penetrated through and through with all the forms of scepticism, from moderate doubt of Biblical inspiration up to the most pronounced and aggressive Atheism. As the result of all this cumulative evidence, they pronounce Christianity to be a failure. But very many of them still cling to a belief in “God”, whether as a “personal Deity”, a “great First Cause”, a “pervading Power” that “makes for righteousness”, and is the Creator, Upholder, Father of all. They think that the world would be hopeless were it not for God, and that humanity walks the more strongly for leaning on a divine crutch. I propose to traverse this contention and to show, by surveying the Gods of the world, that they have been its hindrances rather than its helpers.

For what is God? He is the black cloud of the Unknown. Vast, stretching in every direction, brooding over existence from horizon to horizon, such was God in the childhood of the race. He was huge as its ignorance, omnipresent as its wonder and its fear. As man has grown in knowledge, God has diminished in extent. Each acquisition of new truth has lessened the domain of uncertainty over which he spreads. The telescope has chased him from his throne beyond the stars; navigation has left him no “heaven above” towards which prayer can be directed; the understood forces of nature render him unnecessary; “there is no” longer “need for such a hypothesis”.

That man's belief in God was natural, and indeed inevitable, every student must admit. Theism is a stage through which the race must pass in its intellectual evolution. The supernatural, being the unknown portion of the natural, must needs play a large part in the thoughts of the race as it begins to study and to question.



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