The Millennial Harbinger and Voluntary Church Advocate (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: 42 THE CONVERSION OF THE WORLD. [By A. Campbell, '] Man has been often considered as a creature of circumstances. Diversified by climate, by language, by religion, by morals, by habit, he presents a most varied aspect to the contemplative mind. Betwixt " the frozen Icelander and the sun-burn'd Moor," the wandering Indian and the polished cit, the untutored savage and the sage philosopher, the superstitious Pagan and the intelligent Christian, what a difference ! To the sceptic reasoner, the human race presents an insoluble enigma. The questions, What am I? Whence camel? and Whither do I go? are questions which philosophy in its boasted powers, deism in its bold excursions, infidelity in its daring enterprises, attempts in vain. The Bible alone answers them with satisfaction and certainty. To the disbeliever of it, the world has neither beginning, middle, nor end. The sceptic feels himself a speck of matter, floating down the stream of time into a region of impenetrable darkness, alike ignorant of his origin and his destiny. Whether there is in him a spark of immortality, or whether he is all annihilated in the grave, are, to him, things unknown and unknowable. The reptile, encased in its kindred shell, the oyster clinging to its native rock, could as easily calculate the rapidity of the particles of light or measure, by its powers, the orbit of a comet, as the most gigantic genius, by its own vigour, unaided by the Bible, could prove that there is a God, that there was a creation, that there is an immortal spirit in man, or that there will be an end of this mundane state of things. We know what deism, philosophy, and natural religion arrogate to themselves; but their pretensions are as vain as their efforts to give assured hope are impotent and unavailing. Deism steals fr...