R15157 1856, Nov. 14. Sist of Boston. ENTERED according to Act of Congress, in the year 1852, by M. EDGEWORTH LAZARUS, M. D., in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New-York. E. O. JENKINS, STEREOTYPER and Printer, 114 Nassau Street. PREFACE. THIS paper is the first of a series, designed to show the unitary origin and scientific basis of the principal religions of the world, and to furnish a criterion by which we may discover how far they have been truly developed upon their natural type, and how far they have been falsified, as well as what they contain that is essential, and what is merely complementary. In the first papers, which are historical, the reader will naturally make those deductions which flow from the text. Amongst other forgotten truths here revived, it will be proved that Religion, as it is now understood, is only a shadow or dream, as compared with the primitive and concrete religions,—an unfortunate sha dow wandering over the world in search of its body. It will find this body only by the reunion of worship, and the thanksgiving of a happy, healthy, and joyous life,-with agriculture, or the development and management of all the mineral, vegetable, and animal creations of our planet, according to divine order. It is thus that man co-operates actually with the Infinite and Eternal God, and with the Sun, which to the natural world of our planetary system is his symbol and representative. Passive religion exists in the heart and the disposition of our feelings, and passive worship in our forms of adoration and prayer; but active religion exists only in beneficent productive labor, and active worship, in that spontaneous energy which is inspired by the love of its object, and the consciousness of that divine life whence the love flows, and in which both subject and object are one. Nothing in the history of religions affords us a purer pleasure than to observe how in all forms of the solar religion, whether of Persia or of Peru, it has consecrated external nature, ennobled the objects on which man is called to exert his energies, by the thought of their source, and endeavored to spiritualize and charm the labors of the poor. |