Resurrection (Volume 2); What Is Art? the Christian Teaching (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING PART THE FIRST THE ANCIENT RELIGIONS AND THE NEW CONCEPT OF LIFE L THE ANCIENT RELIGIONS 1. At all times, since most remote antiquity, people have felt the wretchedness, insecurity, and meaningless- ness of their existence and have tried to find a salvation from this wretchedness in the helief in God or gods who might free them from the various evils of this life and might in the future life give them that good which they wished for, and could not receive in this life. 2. And so, since most remote antiquity and among all the nations, there have existed all kinds of preachers who taught men about what God or the gods were who could save men, and about what ought to be done in order to please this God or these gods in order to receive a reward in this or in the future life. 3. Some religious teachings taught that this God is the sun and is personified in various animals; others taught that the gods are the heaven and the earth; others ? that God created the world and chose one favourite people from among all the nations; others ? that there are many gods, and that they take part in theaffairs of men; others ? that God, having assumed a human form, came down upon earth. And all these teachers, mixing truth with the lie, demanded from men, not only the desistance from acts which were considered bad and the performance of such as were considered good, but also sacraments, and sacrifices, and prayers, which more than anything else were to guarantee to people their good in this world and in the world to come. II. THE INSUFFICIENCY OF THE ANCIENT RELIGIONS 4. But the longer people lived, the less and less did these religions satisfy the souls of men. 5. Men saw that, in the first place, happiness, after which they were striving, was not...