Theism; being the Baird Lecture of 1876Flint, Robert
Religion
Theism; being the Baird Lecture of 1876
Flint, Robert
Theism
(_e_) By faith or belief is sometimes meant trust in a person or
fidelity to a truth; the yielding up of the heart and life to the
object of faith. Faith or belief of this kind always involves
"preparedness to act upon what we affirm." It does not appear to me
that such preparedness is, as Professor Bain maintains, "the genuine,
unmistakable criterion of belief" in general. This kind of faith,
like all other faith, ought to rest on the assent of the intellect to
evidence, although what is characteristic of it is to be found not in
the intellect but in the emotions and will. Since it constitutes and
produces, however, spiritual experience, it is a condition and source
as well as a consequence of knowledge. There can be, in fact, no
profound religious knowledge, because there can be no vital religion,
without it.
In religion, as in every other department of thought and life, man is
bound to regulate his belief by the simple but comprehensive principle
that evidence is the measure of assent. Disbelief ought to be regulated
by the same principle, for disbelief is belief; not the opposite of
belief, but belief of the opposite. Unbelief is the opposite both of
belief and disbelief. Ignorance is to unbelief what knowledge is to
belief or disbelief. The whole duty of man as to belief is to believe
and disbelieve according to evidence, and neither to believe nor
disbelieve when evidence fails him.
NOTE XI., page 118.
THE THEOLOGICAL INFERENCE FROM THE THEORY OF ENERGY.
A remarkably clear account of the chief theories as to the nature of
matter will be found in Professor Tait's 'Lectures on some Recent
Advances in Physical Science,' Lect. XII. In Thomson and Tait's
'Natural Philosophy,' Thomson's article on "The Age of the Sun's
Heat" ('Macmillan's Magazine,' March 1862), Tait's 'Thermodynamics,'
Helmholtz's 'Correlation and Conservation of Forces,' Balfour Stewart's
'Treatise on Heat,' &c., the facts and theorems which seem to establish
that the material universe is a temporary system will be found fully
expounded.
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