The main change in the life of nations is the change in their beliefs.
Jesus, approaching the limit of his life, is occupied with chiefly two questions: the question of how his name is going to be abused, and of the final affirmation of his law, which will happen after deep and destructive shocks. Before his death, Christ told all his disciples and all the people that false Christs and false prophets will come after him, and that they should beware of them, despite how much they might amaze the people. He said that they will be mighty and that the people will be tempted by their might.
He speaks of how it will be possible to know that their teaching is false. We can identify it by the same thing which we use to distinguish a good tree from a bad one: by its fruits. If the teaching does not include contempt for the pleasures of this world, does not teach one to renounce oneself, does not teach charity and love for all without discrimination, then it is not true Christian teaching, and those who teach it are false Christs and false prophets. And Christ says that there will be many of them. They will appear one after another until the day and the hour known only to the Heavenly Father comes.
But this hour will come, the time will come when human societies will become unstable, when some nations will turn on others, when authorities and powers will begin to fall and there will be universal turmoil. It is then, says Christ, that the old world will end and a new one will begin, and the kingdom of heaven will be established. And the time of this new world is near, says Christ, because we can already see that the old world, the world of false Christs and false prophets, is going away. And the peoples are already lifting their heads with joy and looking all around them to greet the advent of the kingdom of heaven.
— After Lamennais
When in ancient times a nation suffered misfortunes, the prophets said to it: “You have forgotten God, you have strayed from the path of God, otherwise misfortune would not have befallen you. You did not live by the eternal laws and were not guided by them, but followed the laws of deceit and falsehood, consciously rejecting reality, and now you see that nature’s patience has ran out.”
All this is wholly comprehensible to simple, uncorrupted people. But in recent years there have appeared people who consider nature to be dead, to be something akin to a weekly clock, created many thousands of years ago; it is still ticking, but is of no use for anything. No exhortations or denunciations can work on such people. But, fortunately, not everyone is like this, and there are those who understand that if their life is bad, then they have only themselves to blame for it.
— After Carlyle
Just as a drunk man, standing at the edge of a precipice, answers the warnings of the people who want to prevent him from falling with foolish laughter and indecent words, so too does our world, intoxicated with all kinds of unclean desires, scoffs at the prophets who want to save it from the precipice that threatens it. What was said in the ancient times can be said now: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I would have gathered your children together, even as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not!”
— Lucy Mallory
Humankind is an ever-learning man. Individuals die, but the truth which they had thought through, the truth which they had expressed, does not die with them. Humankind keeps it all, and, from the graves of the dead, a human being uses that which others who had lived before him had acquired. Each of us is born in a world of the beliefs of the humankind that lived before us; and everyone unconsciously contributes something more or less valuable for the life of the humankind that will inherit it. The education of humankind happens like those eastern pyramids, for whose construction every passerby put down a stone. We, who are are momentary tenants, recalled to complete our education elsewhere, will leave; but the education of humankind, though slow, continues uninterrupted.
— After Mazzini
It is a big mistake to think that there can be one faith for all times. The longer people live, the more understandable, simpler and firmer their faith becomes.
And the more understandable, simpler and firmer their faith, the more harmonious and better people’s life is.
To believe that one and the same faith is good for all times and should not be changed is the same as to think that the tales and fables that your mother told you when you were a child are the gospel truth, and that you should not stop believing in them.
