The Religious Creed Of Giuseppe Mazzini WE BELIEVE IN GOD, Intelligence and Love, Lord and Educator, Author of all that exists, living and absolute Thought, of which our World is a ray, the Universe an incarnation. in a We believe, therefore, in Moral Law, Supreme, an expres sion of His Intellect and of His Love. We believe in a Law of Duty for us all, who are called upon to understand it and to love it, that is to say, to incarnate it if possible in our acts. We believe to be one only the manifestation of God, visible to us, namely Life, and in it we seek the indications of the Divine Law. We believe that as God is one so Life is one, one also the Law of Life throughout its two-fold manifestation, namely the individual and collective Humanity. We believe in Conscience-revelation of the Life in the individual, and in Tradition-revelation of the Life in Humanity, as being the only two means Conscience and that of Tradition harmonise in an affirmation, that affirmation contains the Truth or a part of the Truth. We believe that the one and the other, religiously enquired inLife is Progress: unlimited Progto, reveal to us that the law of ress in all manifestations of Being, whose germs, inherent in Life itself, successively develop themselves through all its phases. We believe that Life being one, and one its Law, that selfsame Progress which takes place in humanity collectively and is revealed to us as we go along by tradition, must equally fulfill itself in the individual; and as unlimited Progress, dimly perceived, conceived by consciousness and preannounced by tradition, cannot fufill itself completely in the brief terrestrial existence of the individual, we believe that it will achieve this elsewhere: and we believe in the continuity of the life manifested in each of us, and of which the earthly existence is only a period. We believe that as in Human which God has given to us where- ity collectively every conception by we may understand His Design; and that when the voice of of amelioration, every presentiment of a vaster and purer ideal, NEW OUTLOOK every powerful aspiration towards Good transmutes itself, sometimes after centuries, into realities, so in the individual each intuition of Truth, each aspiration to the Ideal and the Good, though to-day ineffectual, is a promise of future development, a germ that must unfold itself in the series of existences which consti tute Life: we believe that as Humanity collectively gains as it advances, and in a successive manner, the understanding of its own past, so the individual shall gain, as he advances on the path of Progress, and in proportion to the moral education he has reached, the consciousness, the memory of his previous existences. We believe not only in Progress but also in the solidarity of men in it: we believe that as in Humanity collectively generations link themselves on to generations and the Life of the one promotes, fortifies and helps that of the next, so individuals link themselves on to individuals and the life of the one helps on, here and elsewhere, the life of the others; we believe that pure, virtuous, and constant affections are the promise of communion in the future, and the bond, invisible but fruitful in effect, between those passed over and those living. We believe that Progress, God's Law, must infallibly fulfill itself for all; but we believe that, as we must gain the consciousness of it and earn it by our deeds, time and space are bequeathed us by God as a sphere of liberty within which we can, by hastening or retarding this progress, acquire merit or demerit. We believe hence in human Liberty, the condition of human responsibility. We believe in human Equality; that is, that to all are given by God the faculties and forces necessary for an equal progress: we believe all to be called and chosen to accomplish it at different times according to the work of each one. hinders Progress, Liberty, EqualWe believe that anything which ity, and the Solidarity of Humanity is Evil: all instead that assists their growth is good. We believe in the Duty for us all and for each one of us, to combat without rest, both in thought and in action, Evil, and to promote Good: we believe that in order to conquer the Evil, and to promote the Good in each one of us, it is necessary to conquer the Evil and to promote the Good in others and for others: we believe that no one can win salvation for himself except by laboring to save his brothers; we believe that egoism is the mark of Evil, sacrifice that of Virtue. We believe the present existence to be a step to the future one, the Earth the place of trial where, by combating Evil and promoting Good, we must earn the right to rise: we believe it the duty of all and of each one to work to sanc tify his life by making true in it as much as is possible of the Law of God-and from this faith we derive our morals. We believe that the instinct of Progress, innate in us ever since the beginning of Humanity, and made now-a-days a tendency of the intellect, is the only revelation of God to men, a continual revelation for all: we believe that in virtue of this revelation Humanity advances from Epoch to Epoch, from religion to religion, on the way of improvement assigned to it. We believe that whosoever arrogates to himself now-a-days the right to concentrate revelation in himself and to place himself as privileged intermediary between God and men, is guilty of sacrilege: we believe Authority to be holy when, consecrated by Genius and by Virtues, the sole hierophants of the future and manifested by the widest power of sacrifice, it preaches the Good, and, freely accepted, it guides visibly to it; but we believe it a duty to combat and to expel from the world as a daughter of Lies and a mother of Ty NEW OUTLOOK ranny every authority not clothed with those characteristics. We bebelieve God is God and Humanity is its Prophet. This, in its main headings, is our faith: in it we embrace, with all respect, as stages of progress achieved, all past religious manifestations, and as symptoms and presentiments of future progress, all present manifestations of austere and virtuous Thought. In this faith we feel God to be father gether in a communion of origin, of all; Humanity all bound toof law, and of end; the Earth fulfilling in it of the Divine pursanctified stage by stage by the pose; the individual blessed by immortality, by freedom, by power, and a responsible artificer of his own progress. In this faith we live, in it we will die: in this faith we love and we labor, we pray and we aspire. Signora Elisa Ferrari.) I do not believe in Death. I believe in Life, potent affirmation of a force that proceeds from God, which cannot perish without that a part of the Divine thought should also perish. The law of Life is for me marked out by its indications of its virtual essence universal, perennial aspirations: and of the final meaning that it must reach; these aspirations speak to us of immortality, of indefinite progress, of an unfolding of faculties and powers that in the brief course of terrestrial existence cannot be achieved; it must therefore be fulfilled elsewhere. From the study of science which does not know Death but only transformations; from the cry of all humanity; from the instinct of the heart which is the intuition to the individual; from the reverence that, believers or no, we have for the dead; from the forms, all pointing to eternity, which our language spontaneously assumes when we, made better and therefore brought closer to what is true, pour ourselves forth in those supreme moments of love and virtue; from the last words of dying Genius; from the ray of faith which illumines the brow of the Martyr; from the serene peace which often I have seen settle down on the face of those beings whose extinction cost most pain; from the impossibility of believing the most holy affections a bitter irony, the most saintly sacrifices a delusion, the omnipotence of Genius a will-o'-thewisp that the first material phenomenon can extinguish; from every contemplation, from every study, from every presentiment, I have gathered that we are immortal; that the law of Life is One; that the progress felt before hand and carried out by Humanity collectively, from generation to generation, is also unfolded by Humanity individually from transformation to transformation, from Existence to Existence; that this unfolding of progress implies the consciousness of progress; and that consciousness of progress accomplished and memory are identical words; that we therefore keep throughout these transformations the consciousness and memory of our identity, and only reconquer slowly the one and the other, precisely as collective Humanity wins the knowledge of its past in the measure that it advances into the future. I have gathered that love is a promise to be fulfilled elsewhere, hope a fruit in bud, the bier a cradle of new life. (Letter of Guiseppe Garibaldi to Signora Carolina Giffard Philipson.) In a previous letter of yours you said to me: 'I am unhappy to learn that you do not believe in God.' But you, most charming friend, must pay no attention to my detractors. At Geneva, among other propositions, I put forward the following one: 'Let us establish the Universal Religion of God.' God, father of all nations without distinction of climate, frontier, sect, or color-God who wishes all human beings to be brothers and sisters-who represses and condemns all evil and wishes the good for all-in short who has as basis of His religion the holy precept: 'Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you.' If this is what is called not believing in God you may tell me in your next letter. A fond remembrance to your family from The Parable of the Sower G. Garibaldi. Landscape by Pleter Brueghel, Antwerp And he spake many things unto them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow; And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up; Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth, and forthwith they sprang up, because they had no deepness of earth; And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them; But others fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold. -St. Matthew |