The Churches and Modern Thought: An inquiry into the grounds of unbelief and an appeal for candourPhelips, Vivian
Religion
The Churches and Modern Thought: An inquiry into the grounds of unbelief and an appeal for candour
Phelips, Vivian
Rationalism
We have a striking example of this in Dean Farrar's tractate, The
Bible and the Child (James Clarke & Co., 1897). The passage runs
as follows: "There are a certain number of persons who, when their
minds have become stereotyped in foregone conclusions, are simply
incapable of grasping new truths. They become obstructionists, and
not infrequently bigoted obstructionists. As convinced as the Pope
of their own personal infallibility, their attitude towards those who
see that the old views are no longer tenable is an attitude of anger
and alarm. This is the usual temper of the odium theologicum. It
would, if it could, grasp the thumbscrew and the rack of mediæval
Inquisitors, and would, in the last resource, hand over all opponents
to the scaffold or the stake. Those whose intellects have been thus
petrified by custom and advancing years are, of all others, the most
hopeless to deal with. They have made themselves incapable of fair
and rational examination of the truths which they impugn. They think
they can, by mere assertion, overthrow results arrived at by the
life-long inquiries of the ablest student, while they have not given
a day's serious or impartial study to them. They fancy that even the
ignorant, if only they be what is called orthodox, are justified in
strong denunciation of men quite as truthful, and often incomparably
more able than themselves. Off-hand dogmatists of this stamp, who
usually abound among professional religionists, think that they can
refute any number of scholars, however profound and however pious,
if only they shout 'Infidel' with sufficient loudness."
P. 367, lines 21-2.--Did not slavery flourish side by side with
the Christian Church?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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