Systematic Theology (Volume 1 of 3)Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Religion
Systematic Theology (Volume 1 of 3)
Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Baptists -- Doctrines; Theology, Doctrinal
We must judge beginnings by endings, not endings by beginnings. It
matters not how the development of the eye took place nor how
imperfect was the first sense of sight, if the eye now gives us
correct information of external objects. So it matters not how the
intuitions of right and of God originated, if they now give us
knowledge of objective truth. We must take for granted that
evolution of ideas is not from sense to nonsense. G. H. Lewes,
Study of Psychology, 122—“We can understand the amœba and the
polyp only by a light reflected from the study of man.” Seth,
Ethical Principles, 429—“The oak explains the acorn even more
truly than the acorn explains the oak.” Sidgwick: “No one appeals
from the artist’s sense of beauty to the child’s. Higher
mathematics are no less true, because they can be apprehended only
by trained intellect. No strange importance attaches to what was
_first_ felt or thought.” Robert Browning, Paracelsus: “Man, once
descried, imprints forever His presence on all lifeless things....
A supplementary reflux of light Illustrates all the inferior
grades, explains Each back step in the circle.” Man, with his
higher ideas, shows the meaning and content of all that led up to
him. He is the last round of the ascending ladder, and from this
highest product and from his ideas we may infer what his Maker is.
Bixby, Crisis in Morals, 162, 245—“Evolution simply gave man such
_height_ that he could at last discern the stars of moral truth
which had previously been below the horizon. This is very
different from saying that moral truths are merely transmitted
products of the experiences of utility.... The germ of the idea of
God, as of the idea of right, must have been in man just so soon
as he became man,—the brute’s gaining it turned him into man.
Reason is not simply a register of physical phenomena and of
experiences of pleasure and pain: it is creative also. It discerns
the oneness of things and the supremacy of God.” Sir Charles
Lyell: “The presumption is enormous that all our faculties, though
liable to err, are true in the main and point to real objects. The
religious faculty in man is one of the strongest of all. It
existed in the earliest ages, and instead of wearing out before
advancing civilization, it grows stronger and stronger, and is
to-day more developed among the highest races than it ever was
before. I think we may safely trust that it points to a great
truth.” Fisher, Nat. and Meth. of Rev., 137, quotes Augustine:
“Securus judicat orbis terrarum,” and tells us that the intellect
is assumed to be an organ of knowledge, however the intellect may
have been evolved. But if the intellect is worthy of trust, so is
the moral nature. George A. Gordon, The Christ of To-day, 103—“To
Herbert Spencer, human history is but an incident of natural
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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