The Dangers of Philosophy and Religion: Judaism Us the Religion of the Flesh

When man occupies himself philosophically with all things, the insufficiency of his own resources always throws him into the hands of an intellectual leader, and into tradition and. when religion is the subject into traditions which develop the religion of the flesh, and are suited to its powers and tendencies.
In those days Judaism had the highest pretensions to this kind of religion. It allied itself with human speculations and adopted them, and even pursued them assiduously offering at the same time proofs of divine origin, and a testimony to the unity of the Godhead which the absence of the grossness of pagan mythology and the meeting of human consciousness of the divine rendered credible. This relative purity tended to remove—for enlightened minds—that which was disgusting in the pagan system. The Jewish system had, by the death of Jesus, lost all pretension to be the true worship of God, and was therefore suited (by the advantages it offered in the comparative purity of its dogmas) to be an instrument of Satan in opposing the truth. At all times it was adapted to the flesh and was founded on the elements of this world, because by its means, when owned of God. God was proving man in the position man stood in. But now God was no longer in it, and the Jews, moved by envy, urged the Gentiles to persecution. Judaism allied itself to pagan speculation in order to corrupt and sap the foundations of Christianity and destroy its testimony.
In principle it is always thus. The flesh may appear for a time to despise tradition, but that which is purely intellectual cannot stand in the midst of humanity without something religious. It has not the truth nor the world which belongs to faith, and for an immense majority superstition and tradition are needed, that is to say, a religion which the flesh can lay hold of, and which suits the flesh. God by His power may preserve a portion of the truth, or allow the whole to be corrupted, but in either case true Christian position and the doctrine of the assembly are lost.
We may indeed find philosophy apart from the religion of the flesh, and the latter apart from the former, but in this case philosophy is impotent and atheistic, the religion of the flesh narrow, legal, superstitious, and, if it can be so persecuting.