George Jacob Holyoake and Modern Atheism: A Biographical and Critical Essay

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London, 1855 - Всего страниц: 53
 

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Стр. 32 - I, long before the blissful hour arrives, Would chant in lonely peace, the spousal verse Of this great consummation; and, by words Which speak of nothing more than what we are, Would I arouse the sensual from their sleep Of death, and win the vacant and the vain To noble raptures...
Стр. 35 - That man is compelled by his original constitution to receive his feelings and convictions independently of his will. "3rd, That his feelings, or his convictions, or both of them united, create the motive to action called the will, which stimulates him to act, and decides his actions.
Стр. 32 - Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation ; all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy in the minds of men.
Стр. 27 - Even such a shell the universe itself Is to the ear of faith ; and there are times, I doubt not, when to you it doth impart Authentic tidings of invisible things ; Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power ; And central peace, subsisting at the heart Of endless agitation. Here you stand, Adore, and worship, when you know it not ; Pious beyond the intention of your thought, Devout above the meaning of your will.
Стр. 4 - I appeal to your heads and your pockets whether we are not t jo poor to have a God ? If poor men cost the state as much, they would be put like officers on half-pay, and while our distress lasts I think it would be wise to do the same thing with deity.
Стр. 18 - We therefore resolved to choose a new name (Secularism), which should express the practical and moral element always concealed in the word Atheism Secularism seeks the personal Law of duty, the Sphere of duty, and the Power by which duty may work independently. The Law is found in natural, utilitarian, and artistic morals. The Sphere is this, to / work with our first energies in this life, for this life, — for its growth, culture, development, and progress. The Power is discovered in Science, the...
Стр. 28 - Deem me not blind to the magnificence of nature or the beauties of art, because I interpret their language differently from others. I thrill in the presence of the dawn of day, and exult in the glories of the setting sun. Whether the world wears her ebon and jewelled crown of night, or the day walks wonderingly forth over the face of nature, to me — ' Not the lightest leaf but trembling teems With golden visions and romantic dreams.
Стр. 28 - It is not in a low, but in an exalted estimate of nature that my rejection of the popular theology arises. The wondrous manifestations of nature indispose me to degrade it to a secondary rank. I am driven to the conclusion that the great aggregate of matter which we call Nature is eternal, because we are unable to conceive a state of things when nothing was. There must always have been something, or there...
Стр. 13 - By many an impulsive politician this doctrine has been bitterly cried down as cold and treacherous, and Ion has been denounced, in broadside and epigram, as false to liberty and to his own previous professions. This is not the first time, and will not be the last, that the severe self-restraint of a passionate soul has been mistaken for coldness, and a life of unceasing renunciation set down as traitorously politic.
Стр. 18 - What has it, on the whole, sought, even in its negative and least favourable aspect ? It has, in modern times, disbelieved all accounts of the origin of nature by an act of creation, and of the government of nature by a Supreme Being distinct from nature. It has felt these accounts to be unintelligible and misleading, and has suggested that human dependence and morals, in their widest sense, should be founded on a basis independent of scriptural authority; and it has done this under the conviction,...

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