A Defence of the Eclipse of Faith (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. 1854 edition. Excerpt: ...and image of His glory;--in himself too bright for the dazzled eye to bear, he now bathes rejoicing nature in the glowing tints of morning or the golden pomp of sunset, now piles the thunder-clouds about him and casts a lurid light upon the world from behind that stormy pavilion;--and anon hides himself for days together within an impenetrable curtain of wintry cloud and tempest.--Thrice welcome surely, under the changing aspects of the Infinite One, should be the message of Him who came to make known to us the Father in disclosures equally "full of grace and truth"; and to assure us, amidst the variable phenomena of the universe, that "He is without variableness or the shadow of a turning." That the Atheist should sullenly acquiesce in his ignorance, I can understand. Not that he is not the victim of an infinite fallacy, if he supposes (as he is so apt to suppose) that Atheism gives him any hostages against futurity; for if his stray consciousness has somehow wandered into this world, --we cannot say why, for none can know that on his hypothesis, --it may find its way into another world, not quite so eligible as this. His next move, for aught he can tell, may be for eight thousand years into Saturn, with a hump on his back and a cancer in his stomach. But at all events he cannot help himself; he must take the "goods" not "which the gods provide" him, but the goods, or perchance the evils, which necessity may supply. He can only say, as to the one, "I need exercise no gratitude,"--pleasant thought --and as to the other, "I must exercise my fortitude." The acquiescence of the Deist, considering the hopeless discordance of his theories and his utter darkness in relation to the origin and the destinies of man, I do not so easily understand. But one...