Conformity in Religion Now if that is true of social life, it is true also of religious life. One might almost take the words of Emerson and say, The virtue most in demand in religion is conformity. In its origin, regarding it historically, there is nothing so individualistic as religion. It is born in a universe that is untenanted, save for the individual and his God. But gradually this solitary yearning finds itself echoed in the heart of multitudes, and then religion broadens into fellowship. It is no longer a solitary life: it has now risen into a social life. It has its wide and interlacing interests — its complex and multifarious relationships. And so just as in secular society, though with far greater havoc here than there, you have in religion an increasing tendency to reduce everything to common levels. It is the constant danger of the church to have room only for one particular type. She is tempted increasingly to look askance on everything that does not conform to that. And it is when we are likely to be overridden by what I call the tyranny of type that we ought to remember the infinite divergences which are indicated in our text. There is one God who worketh all in all. That is the bond of union and of unity. At the back of everything, as an unfailing reservoir, is the plenitude of His power and His grace. But as from our earthly reservoirs there will flow water to serve a thousand purposes, so with the manifesting of the grace of god. To change the figure, sunshine is but one, yet how diverse are its operations. It touches the hedgerows, and they are green again. It falls on the waters, and the vapors rise. It lights on the sleeping lilies of the field, and they awake and clothe themselves with scarlet so that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Therefore if God works so in nature, shall He not work as variously in grace? It is a temptation we must guard against, that of imposing our standards on the infinite. And on that temptation and some correctives to it, as we see it in certain spheres of our religion, I should like to elaborate.
Posted on: Tue, 21 Oct 2014 16:17:48 +0000
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