The Fatherhood of God (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. 1879. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER III. THE FATHER OF SPIRITS. "I AM, I ought, I can, I will." Such is the way in which man, as the high-born child of the Father, is represented as being able to speak of himself. As Anselm expresses it, "The human spirit is a created image of the Divine Spirit; it can and ought to love God as the highest good." It is the way of modern thought to speak of man as a being whose whence and whither no man knows. Among a class of writers who condescend to particulars, his origin is represented as being lowly enough. As they are not exactly agreed about his nature, they can scarcely avoid being at sea about his origin. With a subtlety and inconsistency quite startling, they speak of mental, moral, and spiritual things, while the reality of mind or spirit is with the stoutest dogmatism denied. The defence set up, that "no harm can accrue so long as we bear in mind that we are dealing merely with terms and symbols," might be innocent enough; but the reckless way in which all the terms used are made to conduct to a materialistic conclusion, only shows to what confusion all falsehood leads. For as Lange in his History of Materialism says, "It is one of the most important efforts of recent materialism to deduce the whole mass of voluntary movements from mechanical causes." The inconsistency in the idea of voluntary movements as the result of mechanical causes, is gulped down with an eagerness unsurpassed by the hungry beggar who swallows his morsel, wipes his mouth, and moves off. And hence it comes that, to use the language of Tyndall on another subject, "there is often a virulent contagion in a confident tone; and the hardihood of argumentative assertion is sure to influence minds swayed not by knowledge but by authority." It is not simply those who give the...