Page:The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained.djvu/130

124 knowledge, or a better understanding of spiritual laws, which may be gained from revelation and the faithful exercise of our higher season.

What is religion? Few subjects, perhaps, have been more misunderstood, even by professing Christians, than this. Some have supposed it to consist in oral prayers and penitential sighs; others, in certain rites and ceremonies solemnly and reverently performed at stated times; others, in fastings, flagellations, and other bodily sufferings, either self-inflicted or imposed by ecclesiastical authority; others, in indiscriminate alms-giving and liberal endowments of religious institutions; others, in a certain system of religious belief, and a certain form of religious worship; others, in retiring from the world, renouncing its pleasures, cares and pursuits, and giving one's self up to a ceaseless round of solemn services.

But very different from all this is the teaching of the New Church respecting religion. Our illumined expositor says: "All religion has relation to life; and the life of religion is to do good." (D. Life,n. 1.) And throughout his writings he teaches that the true religion—while not rejecting forms and ordinances and external worship, but using