Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts: From The Edinburgh Review, October 1849, Volume 90, No. CLXXXII. (Pages 293-356)Rogers, Henry
Religion
Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts: From The Edinburgh Review, October 1849, Volume 90, No. CLXXXII. (Pages 293-356)
Rogers, Henry
Christianity -- Philosophy; Faith and reason -- Christianity
rebuked by the constant falsification of similar prophecies, from
the time of Julian to the time of Bolingbroke, and from the time of
Bolingbroke to the time of Strauss. As Addison, we think, humorously
tells the Atheist, that he is hasty in his logic when he infers that if
there be no God, immortality must be a delusion, since, if chance
has actually found him a place in this bad world, it may, perchance,
hereafter find him another place in a worse,---so we say, that if
Christianity be a delusion, since it is a delusion which has been proof
against so much of bitter opposition, and has imposed upon such hosts
of mighty intellects, these is nothing to show that it will not do so
still, in spite of the efforts either of Proudhon or a Strauss. Such
a tone was, perhaps, never so triumphant as during the heat of the
Deistical controversy in our own country, and to which Butler alludes
with so much characteristic but deeply satirical simplicity, in the
preface to his great work:--'It is come,' says he, 'I know not how, to
be taken for granted by many persons that Christianity is not so much
a subject of inquiry, but that it is now at length discovered to be
fictitious .... On the contrary, thus much at least will here be found,
not taken for granted, but proved, that any reasonable man, who will
thoroughly consider the matter, may be as much assured as he is of his
own being, that it is not, however, so clear that there is nothing in
it.' The Christian, we conceive, may now say the same to the Froudes,
and Foxtons, and to much more formidable adversaries of the present day.
Christianity, we doubt not, will still live, when they and their works,
and the refutations of their works, are alike forgotten; and a new
series of attacks and defences shall have occupied for a while (as so
many others have done) the attention of the world. Christianity, like
Rome, has had both the Gaul and Hannibal at her gates: But as the
'Eternal City' in the latter case calmly offered for sale, and sold, at
an undepreciated price, the very ground on which the Carthaginian had
fixed his camp, with equal calmness may Christianity imitate her example
of magnanimity. She may feel assured that, as in so many past instances
of premature triumph on the part of her enemies, the ground they occupy
will one day be its own; that the very discoveries, apparently hostile,
of science and philosophy, will be a great extent with the discoveries
in chronology and history; and thus will it be, we are confident, (and
to a certain extent has been already), with those in geology. That
science has done much, not only to render the old theories of Atheism
untenable and to familiarise the minds of men to the idea of miracles,
by that of successive creations, but to confirm the Scriptural statement
of the comparatively recent origin of our Race. Only the men of science
and the men of theology must alike Guard against the besetting fallacy
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