There is a widespread impression abroad that religion may not be a permanent element in human nature.  Many are telling us that it is a phase of thought, of feeling, of life, peculiar to the early and comparatively uncultivated stages of man’s career, and that it is something which civilized man will progressively outgrow and at last leave behind…  I do not think we need be especially troubled over this problem.  We ought to be able to look at it dispassionately, because if religion is only superstition, why then of course it ought to be outgrown…  If on the other hand religion is divine, if it is essential to the highest and noblest human life, then criticism and question will only verify this fact…  If you find some mark on a coin, if you find it on every one of the coins, you feel perfectly certain that there is some reality in the coin-stamping die that accounts for such a mark.  It was not there for nothing; it did not simply happen.

So wherever you find any universal or permanently characteristic quality in human nature, or any other nature for that matter, you may feel perfectly certain that there is something real in the universe that corresponds to it and called it out.

You find man, then, universally a religious being.  You find him everywhere believing that he is confronted with an invisible universe.  On any theory you choose to hold about this universe, it has made us what we are.  There must be – unless the universe is a lie – a reality corresponding to that which is universal and permanent and real in ourselves, because this universe has called these things into being and has made them what they are.  Minot J. Savage, The Passing and the Permanent in Religion.

The religious element, contemplated from that elevated standpoint, becomes thus the highest and noblest factor in man’s education, the greatest potency in his civilization, while effete creeds and political selfishness are the greatest obstacles to human advance.  Statecraft and priestcraft are the very opposite of religion…  Our study here has shown the religious substance everywhere to be identical, eternal, and divine, permeating the human heart wherever it throbs, feels, and meditates…  The logical results of our researches all point to the identical basis of the great religions, to the one doctrine unfolding since the dawn of humanity to this day…  Deep at the bottom of all the creeds flows the stream of the one eternal revelation, the one religion, the “word of God to the mind of man.”

Let the Parsee wear his taavids, the Jew his phylacteries, the Christian his cross, and the Muslim his crescent; but let them all remember that these are forms and emblems, while the practical essence is: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  This is equally emphasized and accentuated by Manu, Zoroaster, Buddha, Abraham, Moses, Socrates, Hillel, Jesus, Paul, and Mohammed.  Maurice Fleugel

No true society can exist without a common faith and common purpose.  Political activity is their application, and religion supplies their principle.  The will of the majority rules where this common faith is lacking, showing itself in constant instability and the oppression of others.  It is possible to coerce without God, but not to persuade.  Without God, the majority will be a tyrant, but not an educator of the people.

What we need, what the people need, and what the age is crying for that it may find an issue from the slough of selfishness, doubt, and negation in which it is submerged – is faith, in which our souls, ceasing to wander in search of individual ends, can march together in consciousness of one origin, one law, and one goal.  Every strong faith that arises on the ruins of old and outlived beliefs changes the existing social order, for every strong faith inevitably influences all departments of human activity.

In different forms and different degrees, humanity repeats the words of the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy kingdom come on earth as in heaven.” Mazzini

A man may regard himself as an animal among animals, living for the passing day; or he may consider himself as a member of a family, a society, or a nation, living for centuries; or he may and even must (for reason irresistibly prompts him to this) consider himself as part of the whole infinite universe existing eternally.  And therefore a reasonable man, besides his relation to the immediate facts of life, must always set up his relation to the whole immense Infinite in time and space, conceived as one whole.  And such establishment of man’s relation to that whole of which he feels himself to be a part, and from which he draws guidance for his actions, is what has been called and is called religion.  And therefore religion always has been, and cannot cease to be, a necessary and indispensable condition of the life of a reasonable man and of all reasonable humanity.  Leo Tolstoy, What is Religion?

Religion (regarded objectively) is the recognition of all our duties as the commands of God…  There is only one true religion, though there may be various faiths.  Kant

The evil from which men of our time are suffering comes from the fact that the majority of them live without what alone affords a rational guidance for human activity, namely religion.  This is not a religion that consists in a belief in dogmas or the fulfillment of rites affording a pleasant diversion, consolation, or stimulation, but a religion that establishes the relation of man to the All, to God.  Such a religion therefore gives a general higher direction to all human activity, and without it people stand on the plane of animals, or even lower than animals.  This evil, leading men to inevitable destruction, has shown itself with particular strength in our time.  Men, having lost a rational guidance in life and having directed all their efforts to discoveries and improvements chiefly in the sphere of technical knowledge, have developed enormous power over the forces of nature, but lacking guidance for its rational application have naturally used it for the satisfaction of their lower animal impulses.

Bereft of religion, men possessing enormous power over the forces of nature are like children to whom gunpowder or explosive gas has been given as a plaything.  Considering this power that men of our time possess, and the way they use it, one feels that their degree of moral development does not really qualify them to use railways, steam-power, electricity, telephones, photography, wireless telegraphy, or even to manufacture iron and steel, for they use all these things merely to satisfy their desires, amuse themselves, become dissipated, and destroy one another.

Then what is to be done?  Discard all these improvements, all this power mankind has acquired?  Forget what it has learned?  That is impossible!  However harmfully these mental acquisitions are used, they are still acquisitions and men cannot forget them.  Alter those combinations of nations which have been formed during centuries and establish new ones?  Invent new institutions that would prevent the minority from deceiving and exploiting the majority?  Diffuse knowledge?  All this has been tried and is being tried with great fervor.  All these supposed improvements supply a chief means to distract and divert men’s attention from the consciousness of inevitable destruction.  The boundaries of states are altered, institutions are changed, and knowledge is disseminated, but with these other boundaries, other organizations, and increased knowledge men remain the same beasts ready at any moment to tear each other to pieces.  Or, they remain the same slaves they always have been and always will be, as long as they continue to be guided, not by religious consciousness, but by passions, theories, and external suggestions.

Man has no choice.  He must be the slave of the most unscrupulous and insolent among slaves, or else a servant of God, because there is but one way for man to be free: by uniting his will with the will of God.  Some people bereft of religion repudiate religion itself.  Others regard as religion those external perverted forms that have superseded it, and guided only by their personal desires – by fear, human laws, or chiefly by mutual hypnotism – they cannot cease to be animals or slaves.  No external efforts can release them from this state, for religion alone makes man free.

And most men of our time lack it.