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Natural Religion, by the Author of 'ecce Homo'.
Natural Religion by the Author of 'ecce Homo' Author:John Robert Seeley ) General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1882 Original Publisher: Macmillan Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can selec... more »t from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER II. THE ABUSE OF THE WORD 'ATHEISM.' I Have suggested the thought of a God revealed in Nature, not by any means because such a view of God seems to me satisfactory, or worthy to replace the Christian view, or even as a commencement from which we must rise by logical necessity to the Christian view. I have suggested it because this is the God Whom the present age actually does, and, in spite of all opposition, certainly will worship, also because this aspect of God is common to all theologies, however much in some it may be slighted or depreciated, and lastly, because I do not believe that any theology can be real or satisfying that does not make it prominent as well as admit it. I can conceive no religion as satisfactory that falls short of Christianity, but, on the other hand, I cannot believe any religion to be healthy that does not start from Nature-worship. It is in the free and instinctive admiration of human beings for the glory of heaven, earth and sea, that religion -- so far as religion is the name of a good and healthy thing -- begins, and I cannot imagine but as morbid a religion which has ceased to admire them. But many religious men will probably think that not much is to be hoped from dwelling on this subject." We know very well that the Universe is glorious, but when you have said that, there is an end of the matter. We want to make atheists believe in God, and you do it not by changing their minds, but by changing the meaning of the word God. It is not a verbal controversy that rages between atheists and Christians; it is the great controversy of...« less