The Eclipse of Faith, Or, a Visit to a Religious Sceptic (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: " Yes; but the new weapons will not be so easily evaded as those of a past age." " Will they not ? we shall see. You must not prophesy; in that, you know, you do not believe." " No; but nevertheless we shall see so-called sacred dogma and history exploded, for Mr. Newman " " Thinks so, of course; and he must be right, because he has never been known to be wrong in any of his judgments, or even to vary in them. But we have had enough, I think, of these subjects this evening, and it is too bad to give you only a controversial welcome. I want to have some conversation with you about very different things, and more pleasant just now. We shall have plenty of opportunity to discuss theological points." To this Fellowes assented: they resumed general conversation, and I finished my letters. July 3. We were all sitting, as on the previous day, in the library. " Book-faith " I heard Harrington say, laughing; " why, as to that I must needs acknowledge that the whole school of Deism, ' rational' or ' spiritual, ' have the least reason in the world to indulge in sneers at book- faith; for, upon my word, then: faith has consisted in little else. Their systems are parchment religions) my friend, all of them; books, books, for ever, from Lord Herbert's time downwards, are all they have yet given to the world. They have ever been boastful and loud- tongued, but have done nothing; there are no great social efforts, no organizations, no practical projects, whether successful or futile, to which they can point The old ' book-faiths' which you venture to ridicule have been something at all events; and, in truth, I can find no other ' faith' than what is somehow or otherattached to a 'book, ' which has been any thing influential. The Vedas, the Koran, the Old Testament Scriptures, ...