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... since the Sacred Book is a phenomenon of religion in general, and as isolation is a fruitful source of wrong judgment in the historical investigation of ideas and institutions, we decline to detach our Sacred Book from similar books of its class in other faiths of the world. Now, in surveying the history of religion, I seem to detect four negative truths about the Sacred Book. Not every religion possesses a sacred book. The sacred book does not lie beside the cradle of the faith in question. No religion lives by its sacred book alone. And no sacred book can be judged apart from the specific ethos of the faith out of which it rose and for which it exists. (en) |
