A Defence of 'The Eclipse of Faith' by Its Author [H (Electronic book text)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 355 SECTION III. WHETHER MR. NEWMAN'S THEORY, THOUGH HE MEANS IT NOT, DOES NOT INVOLVE THE CONCEPTION OF AN IMMORAL DEITY. Having defended myself from the grotesque charge of having pleaded for an immoral or z'wzmoral Deity, let not Mr. Newman imagine that I am content to let it end with defence. With more reason I make reprisals. Though I will not imitate Mr. Newman's injustice, by representing him as consciously pleading for an " immoral Deity," I textit{do contend that it is his theory, not mine, (notwithstanding all his moral and spiritual intuitions, ) which directly involves the notion. I believe in the God of the Bible; I believe in a God who created man holy, innocent, and happy, reflecting his image, and participating in his felicity; and that textit{when God created him he said of him, as of all else that came immediately from his hand, that his creature was " very good !" I believe in that God, if textit{that is to believe in an immoral Deity; but what sort of God is it which Mr. Newman's theory requires ? Why, one who is supposed to have launched man into the world, not only with a textit{nature no better than he possesses now, but in a textit{condition worse than that of the worst idolater, as the starting point for that long textit{curriculum of " Progress," in which " the old barbarism" and " methodised Egyptian idolatry" are to be supposed hopeful epochs and notable stages of improvement fromhis original condition ! " The law of God's moral universe," says Mr. Newman, " as known to us, is that of Progress. We trace it from old barbarism to the methodised Egyptian idolatry, to the more flexible polytheism of Syria and Greece," (is the worship of Baal and Astarte, of Venus and Bacchus, the most hateful and fearful exhibitions of the corruptions of man, veiled under this polite p...