Word: religion
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Dates: during 1873-1873
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...Christian world, like a man just awakening to the knowledge of his own faculties, has begun to question the truth of what it has been taught to accept as dogma. On the one hand, science, made confident by its recent achievements, assails the very foundations of the Christian religion, rejecting with scorn testimony and proof which require standards of judgment other than those of the exact sciences; while, on the other, literature, or rather the champion of the "literary theory of culture," refuses to accept a religion which cannot be justified by man's own powers of reasoning. Just...
...view of the fact that articles are multiplied in discussing the works of a favorite author, in presenting different theories of reputation, and on other topics, it may be not out of place to touch again upon the subject of religion. The articles which have preceded and occasioned the present one have presented - one in the guise of irony - the two most opposite opinions held of the state of religion, or, rather, of what one sees of religion at Harvard; and, as usually happens in such cases, the truth seems to lie between them...
...regard to the catholicity which prevails here are beyond all cavil. Not only is it true that the College authorities studidiously avoid anything which might influence the religious opinions of a student, but the students themselves are not sharply divided by doctrinal lines, nor do they make their religion, when they have any, a barrier to separate them from others less correct than themselves. We often see the member of one denomination figuring as an earnest listener to the prayers and sermons of another; and those who are in any way remarkable for their strictness of life are seldom...
...much can be said, religion at Harvard is neither sneered at by those who have it not, nor does it ever degenerate into cant. The question next arises, How much of this religion have we? And here, dissenting from the opinions already expressed, we venture to say that there is very little. In making such an assertion, we of course become liable to the charge of unwarrantably passing judgment upon our neighbors; but if the conversation and outward life of the average undergraduate show anything, they show a character which is not so entirely under the control of religion...
Such, I believe, is the state of religion at Harvard. And it is evident from these considerations that no one man can be considered as an example of the religious influence of the College; but rather we must decide what this is as we would in an ordinary New England village...