Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century as Contrasted with Its Earlier and Later History

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Harper, 1881 - Church history - 216 pages

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Page 193 - Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath : for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner. But my salvation shall be for ever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished.
Page 189 - ... a man charged with a special, express and unique commission from God to lead mankind to truth and virtue...
Page 111 - Yes, if the life and death of Socrates are those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus are those of a God.
Page 188 - And whatever else may be taken away from us by ' rational criticism, Christ is still left ; a unique figure, not more unlike all His precursors than all His followers, even those who had the direct benefit of His personal teaching.
Page 188 - Above all, the most valuable part of the effect on the character which Christianity has produced by holding up in a Divine Person a standard of excellence and a model for imitation, is available even to the absolute unbeliever and can never more be lost to humanity.
Page 189 - ... religion cannot be said to have made a bad choice in pitching on this man as the ideal representative and guide of humanity ; nor I even now would it be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete ! than to endeavour so to live that Christ would approve our life.
Page 110 - What presence of mind, what subtlety, what truth in his replies! How great the command over his passions ! Where is the man, where the philosopher, who could so live, and so die, without weakness, and without ostentation...
Page 187 - On these principles it appears to me that the indulgence of hope with regard to the government of the universe and the destiny of man after death, while we recognize as a clear truth that we have no ground for more than a hope, is legitimate and philosophically defensible.
Page 189 - ... so to live that Christ would approve our life. When to this we add that, to the conception of the rational sceptic, it remains a possibility that Christ actually was what he supposed himself to be...
Page 189 - When this preeminent genius is combined with the qualities of probably the greatest moral reformer, and martyr to that mission, who ever existed upon earth, religion cannot be said to have made a bad choice in pitching on this man as the ideal representative and guide of humanity...

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