The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume 1, January, 1880 — John Shaqi
The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume 1, January, 1880Various
Religion
The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume 1, January, 1880
Various
Religion and science -- Periodicals
Was it reasonable to expect a revelation from God? Is it necessary to
the greatest good of the greatest number? If so, it is a thought at once
involving the moral character of God and necessitating a revelation of
himself. In answering these questions intelligently we must look after
the demands for such a communication. Where shall we find them? Answer,
in the wants of our humanity. Here two kinds of light are needed for two
pair of eyes in order that we may be happy in two respects. First,
physical light for the physical eyes, in order to the enjoyment of
physical life in a material world. Second, the light of knowledge for
the eyes of the understanding, in order to the enjoyment of spiritual
life in a spiritual world. It is universally conceded that there are
means provided in nature to meet man's physical wants and adaptations
that manifest the wisdom that belongs to God; also, that it would have
been the work of a demon to create man with these wants, like so many
empty vessels, without any provision to satisfy or fill them. Without
those supplies our suffering would be great and our wretchedness
unendurable. Is there no liability to mental suffering? Are there no
spiritual wants consequent upon the nature of mind?
Is it not unreasonable to allow that "Infinite wisdom" provided for all
our physical wants and left our spirits with all their demands, like so
many children away out in the darkness without hope, uneasy, restless,
always dissatisfied, and ever trying to get into the possession of the
knowledge of the unseen and future, without one ray of mental light
shining out from the heavens upon our relations to perfect our condition
and declare the glorious goodness of an all-wise Creator? Volney says,
"Provident nature having endowed the heart of man with inexhaustible
hope, he set about finding happiness in this world, and failing in his
efforts, he set out in his imagination and created a world for himself,
where, free from tyrants, he could have all his wrongs redressed and
enjoy unsullied bliss." This is Volney's account of the origin of
religion, the tap-root of the tree. It contains a most wonderful
concession, one that Tyndal made when he said, "There is a place in
man's psychological nature for religion." Is there a place in man's
physical nature for bread and meat, for food of every variety that man's
soul desires? Do we attribute all the mercies of physical life to a
supreme intelligence? Has that intelligence created us and left us
endowed with "Inexhaustible hope," to be disappointed forever, and the
only result, the "imaginary" creation of the Christian's happy heaven.
But Volney makes another grand concession in the quotation which I have
given, and that is the nature of the Christian's future world in its
relations to wrongs as well as tyrants, neither are to exist there. That
the Christian's religion, with its beautiful world, does fill up the
soul's demands is a fact unintentionally conceded by Volney, and known
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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