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The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Méiji by William Elliot Griffis
page 48 of 455 (10%)
Pantheism's Destruction of Boundaries.[26]


In its rudest forms, this pantheism branches out into animism or
shamanism, fetichism and phallicism. In its higher forms, it becomes
polytheism, idolatry and defective philosophy. Having centuries ago
corrupted Buddhism it is the malaria which, unseen and unfelt, is ready
to poison and corrupt Christianity. Indeed, it has already given over to
disease and spiritual death more than one once hopeful Christian
believer, teacher and preacher in the Japan of our decade.

To assault and remove the incubus, to replace and refill the mind, to
lift up and enlighten the Japanese peasant, science as already known and
faith in one God, Creator and Father of all things, must go hand in
hand. Education and civilization will do much for the ignorant _inaka_
or boors, but for the cultured whose minds waver and whose feet
flounder, as well as for the unlearned and priest-ridden, there is no
surer help and healing than that faith in the Heavenly Father which
gives the unifying thought to him who looks into creation.

Keep the boundary line clear between God and his world and all is order
and discrimination. Obliterate that boundary and all is pathless morass,
black chaos and on the mind the phantasms which belong to the victim of
_delirium tremens_.

There is one Lawgiver. In the beginning, God. In the end, God, all in
all.



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