True Religion Is the Natural Growth of the Noblest Part of the Human Heart

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Blavatsky Speaks Series · 9 pages

From Lucifer of March 1888, and it begins by handing the floor to the other side. A petition laid before the Upper House of the Convocation of Canterbury had complained of a marked increase in the employment of Sunday afternoons and evenings for amusement by the upper and fashionable classes, and the list of offences is reproduced entire — dinner parties, smoking concerts, theatrical and semi-theatrical performances, comic recitations, jugglery, the parade in Hyde Park, coach drives assembling at Hampton Court and Richmond, boxing at the Pelican Club, lawn tennis, dances, and at least one appearance of the Wild West Show.

Her reply does not defend the amusements so much as decline the terms of the complaint. The title carries the position: true religion is the natural growth of the noblest part of the human heart, and therefore not a matter of which day of the week a thing happens on. The bishops' concern with Lord's Day profanation is set against the question of what the observance was ever supposed to be for, and the long list from the petition — men eminent in art, science, politics and commerce named alongside those whose only prominence is devotion to pleasure — is turned back on the institution that compiled it.

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