“The first question we have to answer is: What is the object of religions?
They are given to the world by men wiser than the masses of the people on whom they are bestowed, and are intended to quicken human evolution…
Next comes the question: In what way do religions seek to quicken human evolution?
Religions seek to evolve the moral and intellectual natures, and to aid the spiritual nature to unfold itself.
Regarding man as a complex being they seek to meet him at every point of his constitution, and therefore to bring messages suitable for each, teachings adequate to the most diverse human needs.
Teachings must therefore be adapted to each mind and heart to which they are addressed…
Not only does it thus direct itself to the intelligence and the emotions, but it seeks, as said, to stimulate the enfoldment of the spiritual nature. It answers to that inner impulse which exists in humanity, and which is ever pushing the race onwards. For deeply within the heart of all – often overlaid by transitory conditions, often submerged under pressing interests and anxieties – there exists a continual seeking after God…
Trampled on for a time, apparently destroyed, though the tendency may be, it rises again and again with inextinguishable persistence, it repeats itself again and again, no matter how often it is silenced; and it thus proves itself to be an inherent tendency in human nature, an ineradicable constituent thereof…
So much is it an integral part of humanity, that man will have some answer to his questionings…
Religion, then, meets this craving, and taking hold of the constituent in human nature that gives rise to it, trains it, strengthens it, purifies it and guides…”
Annie Bezant
1847 – 1933