sacredness

88:6.4Ges­ture, be­ing older than speech, was the more holy and mag­i­cal, and mimicry was be­lieved to have strong mag­i­cal power. The red men of­ten staged a buf­falo dance in which one of their num­ber would play the part of a buf­falo and, in be­ing caught, would in­sure the suc­cess of the im­pend­ing hunt. The sex fes­tiv­i­ties of May Day were sim­ply im­i­ta­tive magic, a sug­ges­tive ap­peal to the sex pas­sions of the plant world. The doll was first em­ployed as a magic tal­is­man by the bar­ren wife.

92:2.2Re­li­gion clings to the mores; that which was is an­cient and sup­pos­edly sa­cred. For this rea­son and no other, stone im­ple­ments per­sisted long into the age of bronze and iron. This state­ment is of rec­ord: “And if you will make me an al­tar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stone, for, if you use your tools in mak­ing it, you have pol­luted it.” Even to­day, the Hin­dus kin­dle their al­tar fires by us­ing a prim­i­tive fire drill. In the course of evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion, nov­elty has al­ways been re­garded as sac­ri­lege. The sacra­ment must con­sist, not of new and man­u­fac­tured food, but of the most prim­i­tive of viands: “The flesh roasted with fire and un­leav­ened bread served with bit­ter herbs.” All types of so­cial us­age and even le­gal pro­ce­dures cling to the old forms.

155:3.5One of the great lessons of this so­journ at Cae­sarea had to do with the ori­gin of re­li­gious tra­di­tions, with the grave dan­ger of al­low­ing a sense of sa­cred­ness to be­come at­tached to non­sa­cred things, com­mon ideas, or ev­ery­day events. From one con­fer­ence they emerged with the teach­ing that true re­li­gion was man’s heart­felt loy­alty to his high­est and truest con­vic­tions.

159:4.9“But the great­est er­ror of the teach­ing about the Scrip­tures is the doc­trine of their be­ing sealed books of mys­tery and wis­dom which only the wise minds of the na­tion dare to in­ter­pret. The rev­e­la­tions of di­vine truth are not sealed ex­cept by hu­man ig­no­rance, big­otry, and nar­row-minded in­tol­er­ance. The light of the Scrip­tures is only dimmed by prej­u­dice and dark­ened by su­per­sti­tion. A false fear of sa­cred­ness has pre­vented re­li­gion from be­ing safe­guarded by com­mon sense. The fear of the au­thor­ity of the sa­cred writ­ings of the past ef­fec­tively pre­vents the hon­est souls of to­day from ac­cept­ing the new light of the gospel, the light which these very God-know­ing men of an­other gen­er­a­tion so in­tensely longed to see.

97:9.29And so does the truth about the Jew­ish peo­ple dis­close that much which has been re­garded as sa­cred his­tory turns out to be lit­tle more than the chron­i­cle of or­di­nary pro­fane his­tory. Ju­daism was the soil out of which Chris­tian­ity grew, but the Jews were not a mirac­u­lous peo­ple.

167:6.3Je­sus of­ten talked to his apos­tles about the ce­les­tial man­sions and taught that the ad­vanc­ing chil­dren of God must there grow up spir­i­tu­ally as chil­dren grow up phys­i­cally on this world. And so does the sa­cred of­ten­times ap­pear to be the com­mon, as on this day these chil­dren and their moth­ers lit­tle re­al­ized that the on­look­ing in­tel­li­gences of Neb­a­don be­held the chil­dren of Jeri­cho play­ing with the Cre­ator of a uni­verse.

181:2.19Je­sus then went over to the Al­pheus twins and, stand­ing be­tween them, said: “My lit­tle chil­dren, you are one of the three groups of broth­ers who chose to fol­low af­ter me. All six of you have done well to work in peace with your own flesh and blood, but none have done bet­ter than you. Hard times are just ahead of us. You may not un­der­stand all that will be­fall you and your breth­ren, but never doubt that you were once called to the work of the king­dom. For some time there will be no mul­ti­tudes to man­age, but do not be­come dis­cour­aged; when your life­work is fin­ished, I will re­ceive you on high, where in glory you shall tell of your sal­va­tion to se­raphic hosts and to mul­ti­tudes of the high Sons of God. Ded­i­cate your lives to the en­hance­ment of com­mon­place toil. Show all men on earth and the an­gels of heaven how cheer­fully and coura­geously mor­tal man can, af­ter hav­ing been called to work for a sea­son in the spe­cial ser­vice of God, re­turn to the labors of for­mer days. If, for the time be­ing, your work in the out­ward af­fairs of the king­dom should be com­pleted, you should go back to your for­mer labors with the new en­light­en­ment of the ex­pe­ri­ence of son­ship with God and with the ex­alted re­al­iza­tion that, to him who is God-know­ing, there is no such thing as com­mon la­bor or sec­u­lar toil. To you who have worked with me, all things have be­come sa­cred, and all earthly la­bor has be­come a ser­vice even to God the Fa­ther. And when you hear the news of the do­ings of your for­mer apos­tolic as­so­ciates, re­joice with them and con­tinue your daily work as those who wait upon God and serve while they wait. You have been my apos­tles, and you al­ways shall be, and I will re­mem­ber you in the king­dom to come.”