The Religion of Time and the Religion of Eternity; Being a Study of Certain Relations Between Mediaeval and Modern Thought (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1899. Excerpt: ... THE RELIGION OF TIME AND THE RELIGION OF ETERNITY. RECENT developments of the High Church movement in England have filled many minds with wonder, some with exultation, some almost with despair. It seems as though nothing were ever settled, as though history were going back upon herself, as though national characteristics and tendencies which we thought had once for all declared themselves, may still vere round; as though, in the current phrase of contempt and reprobation, we were liable at any moment to find ourselves 'back again in the middle ages.' Yet it is difficult for the reflective mind to acquiesce in a theory of mere reaction or retrogression with respect even to a side current of the life of nations; and the question naturally occurs whether this anomalous appearance of retrogression is in any way connected with other movements or tendencies with which we can more easily reconcile ourselves. And in truth, as soon as we examine our surroundings a little more closely, we find that this modern ecclesiasticism with its elaborate pomp of ceremonial, with its lofty claims for the supremacy of the Church, with its jealous attempt to control education, and to lay its guiding hand upon the inmost thoughts and volitions of the individual soul, is but one out of many evidences that the ideals of the Middle Ages, and more specifically of the twelfth, the thirteenth, and the fourteenth centuries, are re-asserting their attractive force. And when we consider what these centuries produced (the great cathedrals of France, for example), a renewed interest in them can by no means be put down offhand as purely reactionary and regrettable, except by the narrowest and least spiritually-minded of the sons of the nineteenth century. Let us examine, then, a little more...