IX A Last Word

A Last Word additions and alterations, has also played its part in giving birth to this modem concept. Toynbee writes: It is, in fact, difficult to imagine that a God whose mind and will govern the whole course of the Universe would compromise the conduct of His government by acting on a caprice. It would seem highly improbable that he would pick out just me and my tribe to be His Prophet and His ‘Chosen People’. Any such idea of mine would seem less likely to be the truth than to be an hallucination conjured up by my innate self-centredness.4 The concept of the ‘Chosen People’ (possibly the concept of Judaism which the writer has in mind) normally signifies that a group is chosen for no better reason than its relation to a particular person, nation or race. But in terms of religious absolutes, this is an absurdity: the truth is that an individual or group following divine revelation will be considered ‘chosen’ in the eyes of God irrespective of family, race or nationality. The former interpretation of religion, from the religious point of view, is little better than a denial of religion. A religion which does not base itself upon the concept of rewards and punishments justly meted out, and reduces itself simply to a personal undertaking with no relation to other human beings, recognizing as its fountainhead not a living and conscious God, but man’s own mind and consciousness, (or even the unconscious) can only be described as fallacious and a pure matter of expediency. It is unacceptable to mankind, for adherence to such creed is tantamount to saying, “There is no God but man,” rather than “There is no god but God.” 1. Man, The Unknown, p. 130. 2. An Historian’s Approach to Religion, p. 123. 3. Ibid, pp. 250-51 4. lbid, p. 135