Modern Skepticism: A Course of Lectures Delivered at the Request of the Christian Evidence Society
Religion
Modern Skepticism: A Course of Lectures Delivered at the Request of the Christian Evidence Society
Church of England; Skepticism; Skepticism -- Controversial literature
But you may say the penalty is slight, and we will pay it. We will
use our physical powers, and become grand animals and we will use our
mental powers, and become grand intellectual men. Not men I answer.
Add intellectuality to animality, and you merely get an intellectual
animal. Your moral powers are an essential part of yourselves.
Confessedly too, there is ample field for using them. The whole
world is so constituted that morning, noon, and night, the question
perpetually arises of right and wrong. You cannot take a step in
life without conscience intervening. It is so inseparably a part of
yourselves that constantly it acts as a mere instinct, and approves or
condemns your conduct as spontaneously as your palate distinguishes
between sweet and bitter. You may render your palate dull, so that you
cannot taste what you eat and drink; you may render your conscience
dull, but it has a strong recuperative force, and, after years of
dullness, will awaken, and exercise again its judicial functions with
stern and decisive energy. Struggle as much as you like, but the
conclusion cannot be evaded, that you can distinguish between right and
wrong, that you ought to do so, and that you must do so.
If so, what follows? I answer, the necessity of religion, and therefore
of revelation. Resist as men will and do, they have but a choice
between two alternatives. Either all this present state of things, in
which every faculty has its appropriate field of exercise, and every
external possibility has opposite to it an internal faculty; either
all this is an illusion and deceit, a purposeless and objectless piece
of jugglery;[29] or if it be a reality, then the existence in man
of faculties, obliging him to distinguish between right and wrong,
constitute him a _responsible_ agent. If he is responsible, he is
responsible to some one: and certain penalties are necessarily attached
to the neglect, the misuse, and the violation of his moral powers.
The person to whom man is responsible must be capable of forming an
equitable judgment, and therefore must know the motives as well as the
outward acts, and for this nothing less than omniscience will suffice.
He must have the power of apportioning adequate rewards and punishments
to human actions, which will need little less than omnipotence. And
as no adequate reward or punishment follows in this life, there must
be some other state in which men will be dealt with according to
their true deserts. If not, then there exists in man a whole class of
faculties, moral faculties, which seem to find in this present state of
things an appropriate field for their exercise, but which man is under
no necessity of using. A man who lives in the habitual violation of
every moral obligation, but does so with discretion, may have a very
large enjoyment of the things of this world: while generally a man
whose conscience is tender, and whose life is regulated by the highest
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account