Faith and Rationalism: With Short Supplementary Essays on Related TopicsScribner, 1885 - 191 pages |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
answer Apostle argument of design assertion atheism Atonement authority believe Bible Bishop Butler cause character Christ Christian Church client conception connection conscience consciousness conviction death divine doctrine Edwards effect element eternal evidence evil existence experience fact faith FAITH AND RATIONALISM Father feeling forgiveness Galatians George Eliot give God's Gospel ground guilt heart holy human nature idea inferences infinite influence intellectual Jesus John Calvin knowledge Liberal Christianity light living Luther mankind means ment mind miracles moral mystery natural law natural selection Natural Theology object ourselves patron Pelagian penalty perfect petitions phenomena philosophy principle produce proof punishment question Rationalism Rationalistic reason regard relation religion religious truth remark respecting revelation rience righteousness Schleiermacher Scripture sense sinner sins Socinian soul spirit stands suffering supernatural theologians theology theory things thought tion true turbed variation whole words wrath wrath of God
Popular passages
Page 126 - It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism ; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion : for while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no farther; but when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity.
Page 127 - Nay, even that school which is most accused of atheism doth most demonstrate religion; that is, the school of Leucippus and Democritus and Epicurus. For it is a thousand times more credible, that four mutable elements, and one immutable fifth essence, duly and eternally placed, need no God, than that an army of infinite small portions or seeds unplaced, should have produced this order and 1 "The Golden Legend," a I3th century collection of saints' lives. beauty without a divine marshal.
Page 124 - ... the passage from the current to the needle, if not demonstrable, is thinkable, and that we entertain no doubt as to the final mechanical solution of the problem. But the passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought, and a definite molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously ; we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to pass, by a process...
Page 53 - But on her forehead sits a fire : She sets her forward countenance And leaps into the future chance, Submitting all things to desire. Half-grown as yet, a child, and vain — She cannot fight the fear of death. What is she, cut from love and faith. But some wild Pallas from the brain Of Demons? fiery-hot to burst All barriers in her onward race For power. Let her know her place; She is the second, not the first.
Page 96 - Evidences of Christianity ! I am weary of the word. Make a man feel the want of it ; rouse him, if you can, to the self-knowledge of his need of it ; and you may safely trust it to its own Evidence, — remembering only the express declaration of Christ himself : No man cometh to me, unlest the Father leadeth him.
Page 69 - As we are in no sort judges beforehand, by what laws or rules, in what degree, or by what means, it were to have been expected, that God would naturally instruct us; so upon supposition of his affording us light and instruction by revelation, additional to what he has afforded us by reason and experience, we are in no sort judges, by what methods, and in what proportion, it were to be expected that this supernatural light and instruction would be afforded us.
Page 70 - We are equally ignorant, whether the evidence of it would be certain, or highly probable, or doubtful ;* or whether all who should have any degree of instruction from it, and any degree of evidence of its truth, would have the same ; or whether the scheme would be revealed at once, or unfolded gradually. Nay, we are not in any sort able to judge, whether it were to have been expected, that the revelation should have been committed to writing ; or left to be handed down, and consequently corrupted,...
Page 52 - Nor thro' the questions men may try, The petty cobwebs we have spun : If e'er when faith had fall'n asleep, I heard a voice, "Believe no more," And heard an ever-breaking shore That tumbled in the godless deep; A warmth within the breast would melt The freezing reason's colder part, And like a man in wrath the heart Stood up and answer'd, "I have felt.
Page 70 - In like manner, we are wholly ignorant what degree of new knowledge, it were to be expected, God would give mankind by' revelation, upon supposition of his affording one ; or how far, or in what way, he would interpose miraculously, to qualify them, to whom he should originally make the revelation, for communicating the knowledge given by it ; and to secure their doing it to the age in which they should live, and to secure its being transmitted to posterity.
Page 47 - As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God...