God in History; Or, Facts Illustrative of the Presence and Providence of God in the Affairs of Men (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1849 Excerpt: ...the eagle's eye could not see, and those fooleries of theirs which a modern dunce cannot tolerate, were not useless. Had Christianity appeared abroad in its princely and glorious aspect, it had been quenched and banished from the earth by the Romish autocrat. As it was, these schoolmen wove the ark of dialectic subtleties in which the Babe of Bethlehem was preserved from the Pharaohs of the earth. When the time of the Church's deliverance drew near, it was the scandalous lives of the prominent ecclesiastics, the excesses of their tyranny, the merely literary character of Leo X., the prevailing ignorance as well as immorality of the priests, that were overruled by God to precipitate the great Reformation. Nor can one fail to perceive that the fall of Constantinople, the learned refugees of which covered Europe with the treasures of ancient learning, and next the discovery of printing, were God's appointed heralds crying in the wilderness, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord." Thus the fall of Constantinople, which gave new impetus to scholarship, was the evidence of the presence and overruling providence of God. Thus Guttenberg, the inventor of printing, was not a mere accident--an isolated fact. He was as much the creature of God as the highest angel; and his work, unconsciously on his part, a contribution to the sovereign purposes of Deity. It is thus seeing all facts as part of a great whole that gives the least so sublime a significance. Lords of science, ye who read Wisely the eternal creed, Writ on sky and sea and land By an ancient author's hand, Chant from stone and starry pages The old laws that rule the ages; Poets who have bravely striven To o'ershadow earth and heaven; Faint not in your noble duty, Feed the heart of earth with beauty; And w...