If many men and women have lost interest in the futilities of institutional religion they have not lost any interest whatever in the wonderful words of those grand men whose mission these institutions have purported to represent. They honour their benign sayings more than most pious people but they detest the puerile creeds and intolerant actions which were perpetrated under the shelter of such hallowed names. They revere and love those teachers who give a higher ethic to man. Although they can take no interest in the dogmatic utterances of mitred clerics and professional priests, they ever raise their minds in homage before Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, and Muhammed. If they appreciate the missions of these messianic men and receive a deeper significance in their sacred glowing utterances, they remain indifferent to the foolishness of followers who take the name of these Masters in vain, and who have strayed far from the ethical precepts. If the rebels have left behind the public observances of established religion, it is because they regard them as having degenerated into meaningless mumbo-jumbo. "Repent and return" is an old maxim but a sound one. A church which has departed from the straight and narrow road of its master can always return if it wishes. A pontiff who holds a million minds in benighted thraldom can always set them free again. A temple-priest who has battened on the trust of numerous pilgrims can always cease to be an official charlatan and help them to a higher view of God. A clergyman who entered a pulpit as his profession and not as his inspired vocation can always resign. But these decisions demand immense sincerity to make and immense courage to implement. Why should not a religion go from strength to strength, instead of from weakness to weakness? Why should it not deserve increasing success? Will not its tangible and intangible profits be greater, grander, and more enduring if it fulfils its task of emotionally comforting and morally uplifting mankind? Has not history proved such profits to be fitful and fugitive when its followers are ignobly exploited and their minds forcibly enslaved?
-- Notebooks Category 17: The Religious Urge > Chapter 7 : Beyond Religion As We Know It > # 45
