Free Republic

Why do priests use incense at Mass? — A reader in AlexandriaIncense is an aromatic substance which is the resin from certain trees. When burned over charcoal, the incense produces a sweet smelling aroma. To make the smoke thicker and to enhance the fragrance, sometimes other perfumes are blended with the incense.The use of incense in the ancient world was common, especially in religious rites where it was used to keep demons away. Herodotus, the Greek historian, recorded that it was popular among the Assyrians, Babylonians and Egyptians. In Judaism, incense was included in the thanksgiving offerings of oil, grain,...

In his final "Sermon By the Sea" given in 1959 at Asilomar, California, Ernest Holmes shared with us his vision of the outcome of global well-being, the human species and Earth transformed by the consciousness that he had articulated as Science of Mind. His Sermon is a prescription for planetary resurrection, a prophetic, millennial assertion of the role of Religious Science in bringing about the world's rebirth: [Science of Mind] is the most direct impartation of Divine Wisdom that has ever come to the world, because it incorporates the precepts of Jesus, and Emerson, and Buddha, and all the rest...

Transcendence and Immanence: An Excerpt from Voegelin's "What Is History?" Eric Voegelin"What Is History?": An ExcerptWhat Is History? and Other Late Unpublished Writings: The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Vol. 28. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1990. * * * * * * * Before we get into Voegelin's differentiation of immanence and transcendence which is the subject of the excerpt I'm about to post, we need to do a little "stage-setting": Voegelin had previously cited two classical "sophistic propositions." The two provide important background for the excerpt's main thesis. The first is attributed to Protagoras,...

In our capacity as political scientists, historians, or philosophers we all have had occasion at one time or another to engage in debate with ideologists – whether communists or intellectuals of a persuasion closer to home. And we have all discovered on such occasions that no agreement, or even an honest disagreement, could be reached, because the exchange of argument was disturbed by a profound difference of attitude with regard to all fundamental questions of human existence – with regard to the nature of man, to his place in the world, to his place in society and history, to his...