The New Gospel

The history of religion is a long attempt to reconcile old custom with new reason, to find a sound theory for an absurd practice.

The saint and the recluse, disdainful of earth and rapt in ecstatic contemplation of heaven, became in popular opinion the highest ideal of humanity, displacing the old ideal of the patriot and hero who, forgetful of self, lives and is ready to die for the good of his country.  The earthly city seemed poor and contemptible to men whose eyes beheld the City of God coming on the clouds of heaven.  Thus the center of gravity, so to say, was shifted from the present to the future life … A general disintegration of the body politic set in.  The ties of the state and the family were loosened: the structure of society tended to resolve itself into its individual elements and thereby to relapse into barbarism; for civilization is only possible through the active cooperation of the citizens and their willingness to subordinate their private interests to the common good.  Men refused to defend their country and even to continue their kind.  In their anxiety to save their own souls and the souls of others, they were content to leave the material world, which they identified with the principle of evil, to perish around them.  This obsession lasted for a thousand years.

It was they [the supernatural powers], as he [man] now believed, and not he himself, who made the stormy wind to blow, the lightning to flash, and the thunder to roll; who had laid the foundations of the solid earth, and set bounds to the restless sea that it might not pass; who caused all the glorious lights of heaven to shine; who gave the fowls of the air their meat and the wild beasts of the desert their prey; who bade the fruitful land to bring forth in abundance, the high hills to be clothed with forests, the bubbling springs to rise under the rocks in valleys, and green pastures to grow by still waters; who breathed into man’s nostrils and made him live, or turned him to destruction by famine and pestilence and war.

The saint and the recluse, disdainful of earth and rapt in ecstatic contemplation of heaven, became in popular opinion the highest ideal of humanity, displacing the old ideal of the patriot and hero who, forgetful of self, lives and is ready to die for the good of his country.  The earthly city seemed poor and contemptible to men whose eyes beheld the City of God coming on the clouds of heaven.  Thus the center of gravity, so to say, was shifted from the present to the future life … A general disintegration of the body politic set in.  The ties of the state and the family were loosened: the structure of society tended to resolve itself into its individual elements and thereby to relapse into barbarism; for civilization is only possible through the active cooperation of the citizens and their willingness to subordinate their private interests to the common good.  Men refused to defend their country and even to continue their kind.  In their anxiety to save their own souls and the souls of others, they were content to leave the material world, which they identified with the principle of evil, to perish around them.  This obsession lasted for a thousand years.