Boros György (szerk.): Értesítő a Nemzetközi Unitárius Conferencziáról (Kolozsvár, 1897)
A Nemzetközi Unitárius Konferenczián tartott beszédek és felolvasások - Beszédek és felolvasások
146 On the one hand there is nothing before us but the confinement of spiritual life, in a strait enclosure, a complete exhaustion of heavenly blessings, inspiration no longer flowing from its first source, light still left amid earthly darkness, incapable of reaching heavenly fire, the heavens themselves shut up, and sinful souls suspended on a mere thread of divine grace. On the other hand there is nothing before us but an imagined higher existence, the scene of illusions ; nothing but delusion in the most holy aspirations, the most earnest desires, cherished for countless years ; nothing but the blotting out of the shining golden visions, born of the highest ideals. Thus the alternatives are these: a divine deposit, cut off from Divinity; or everything divine considered as uncertain, nay, interpreted as the psychology of childhood, the outcome of the wonder-love of infancy, a mere dream. Is it really so ? Must we choose in religion between these two opposite tendencies, these two extremes ? Is it to be religion bounded and enclosed, or no religion at all ? We refuse to adopt this standpoint. We cannot follow the seemingly great majority, committed to the view which denies all change; nor again can we sympathize with the position of the minority Avhose tendency is to deny everything. We hold our eyes open to the light from whatever side it come, and we distinguish, we must distinguish, in religion, between what is changeable and what is permanent. We cannot sacrifice the essential to the non essential; and we cannot deny what is divine and eternal on the ground of its association with the transient and the changeable.-tjyr-As for the changeable in religion, the change extends to all religious conceptions, to all the manifestations and expressions of religious thinking, to the whole notional part of religion, thus even to that which is in
