The Eclipse of Faith; Or, A Visit to a Religious Sceptic — John Shaqi
The Eclipse of Faith; Or, A Visit to a Religious ScepticRogers, Henry
Religion
The Eclipse of Faith; Or, A Visit to a Religious Sceptic
Rogers, Henry
Skepticism -- Controversial literature
of the ten thousand possible developments, is the true; but it is a
matter of the less consequence, since it will, on such reasoning, be
always something future.
"Unhappy Paul!" you will say. Yes, it is no better with him than it
was in our youth some five-and-twenty years ago. Do you not remember
the astute old German Professor in his lecture-room introducing the
Apostle as examining with ever-increasing wonder the various
contradictory systems which the perverseness of exegesis had
extracted from his Epistles, and at length, as he saw one from which
every feature of Christianity had been erased, exclaiming in a
fright, "Was ist das?" But I will not detain you on the vagaries of
the new school of spiritualists. I shall hear enough of them, I have
no doubt, from Harrington; he will riot in their extravagances and
contradictions as a justification of his own scepticism. In very
truth their authors are fit for nothing else than to be recruiting
officers for undisguised infidelity; and this has been the consistent
termination with very many of their converts. Yet, many of them tell
us, after putting men on this inclined plane of smooth ice, that it
is the only place where they can be secure against tumbling into
infidelity, Atheism, Pantheism, Scepticism. Some of Oxford Tractarians
informed us, a little before Crossing the border, that their system
was the surest bulwark against Romanism; and in the same way is this
site "spiritualism", a safeguard against infidelity.
Between many of our modern "spiritualists" and Romanists there is a
parallelism of movement absolutely ludicrous. You may chance to hear
both claiming, with equal fervor, against "intellect" and "logic"
as totally incompetent to decide on "religion" or "spiritual" truth,
and in favor of a "faith" which disclaims all alliance with them. You
may chance hear them both insisting on an absolute submission to
an "infallible authority" other than the Bible; the one external,--that
is, the Pope; the other internal,--that is, "Spiritual Insight"; both
exacting absolute submission, the one to the outward oracle, the
Church, the other to the inward oracle, himself; both insisting that
the Bible is but the first imperfect product of genuine Christianity,
which is perfected by a "development," though as to the direction of
that development they certainly do not agree. Both, if I may judge by
some recent speculations, recoil from the Bible even more than they
do from one another; and both would get rid of it,--one by locking
it up, and the other tearing it to tatters. Thus receding in opposite
directions round the circle, they are found placed side by side at
the same extremity of a diameter, at the other extremity of which
is the--Bible. The resemblances, in some instances, are so striking,
that one is reminded of that little animal, the fresh-water polype,
whose external structure is so absolutely a mere prolongation of
the internal, that you may turn him inside out, and all the
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