By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
Among the insights into the meaning of superstition that are on something like the same high level as Wittgenstein's is Maurice's. The Psalms, he says:
. . . train us, as they trained the Reformers in the sixteenth century, to be impatient of all superstitions, by whomsoever sanctioned or devised, which presume that God has not redeemed and justified us, that we are not warranted in calling upon Him as a reconciled Father. [They] teach us that we are surrounded by enemies, and that God is our stronghold and refuge from them. Superstition proclaims that He himself is our enemy, that it is He who must be persuaded to be at peace with us. It invests Him with the attributes of the evil spirit, and leads us to fly from Him—not to Him. Deep and subtle blasphemy, ever reappearing in new shapes, the implicit ground of all false religions! (The Prayer-Book: 97)."
24 September 2007
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