FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   >>  
ings of which it were not well to speak. Imagination turns its back. In a world that has never been without its gods, among human creatures who have never existed without a conscience, deeds have been done and horrors have been practised through centuries, through ages, that make annals read like ogre-tales and books of travels like the works of morbid novelists; and the worst always goes unrecorded. What then ought we to anticipate for a world yielding obedience to nothing loftier {232} than the human intellect, seeking no prize obtainable outside the individual life time, logically incapable of any gratification outside the individual body, convinced of nothing save eternal oblivion in the ever-nearing and inevitable grave, and reposed on the calm assurance that "goodness" and "badness," "virtue" and "vice" (whatever these terms may then correspond to) are recompensed, indifferently, by nothing better and nothing worse than physical animal death?'--JASPER B. HUNT, B.D., _Good without God: Is it Possible_? p. 51. [1] See _The Wonders of Life_, chap. v., popular translation, and other works. {233} APPENDIX XI 'When we say that God is personal, we do not mean that He is localised by mutually related organs; that He is hampered by the physical conditions of human personality. We mean that He is conscious of distinctness from all other beings, of moral relation to all living things, and of power to control both from without and from within the action of every atom and of every world. This is what we mean by personality in God. It is not a materialistic idea. It is essentially spiritual. It is a breakwater against the destruction of the very thought of God, or the submersion of it in the mere processes of eternal evolution. There is a Pantheism which obliterates every trace of Divine personality, which takes from God consciousness, will, affection, emotion, desire, presiding and over-ruling intelligence. But such Pantheism is better known as Atheism. It destroys the only God who can be a refuge and a strength in time of trouble. It annihilates that mighty conscience which drives the workers of iniquity into darkness and the shadow of death, if possible, to hide themselves. It closes the Divine Ear against the prayer of faith. It abolishes all sympathy, all communion between the Father and the children. It makes God not the world's life, but the world's grave. Therefore, against all such Panthe
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   >>  



Top keywords:

personality

 
physical
 

Pantheism

 

Divine

 

individual

 

eternal

 
conscience
 
spiritual
 

destruction

 
hampered

conditions

 

breakwater

 

thought

 

related

 

mutually

 

localised

 

submersion

 

essentially

 
organs
 

things


living

 

relation

 

action

 

control

 
processes
 

beings

 
conscious
 

materialistic

 

distinctness

 
presiding

closes

 

shadow

 

darkness

 

drives

 

workers

 

iniquity

 
prayer
 

children

 

Therefore

 

Panthe


Father

 

abolishes

 

sympathy

 

communion

 
mighty
 
annihilates
 

emotion

 

affection

 
desire
 

consciousness