Mivart
asserts that 'without belief in a personal God there is no religion
worthy of the name.' This is a matter of opinion. But it may be
asserted, with less reason to fear contradiction, that the worship of a
personal God, who, on Mr. Mivart's hypothesis, must have used words
studiously calculated to deceive his creatures and worshippers, is 'no
religion worthy of the name.' 'Incredibile est, Deum illis verbis ad
populum fuisse locutum quibis deciperetur,' is a verdict in which for
once Jesuit casuistry concurs with the healthy moral sense of all
mankind." (p. 458). Mr. Huxley calls believers in the Scriptures, and
(apparently) believers in a personal God, bigots, old ladies of both
sexes, bibliolators, fools, etc., etc.
[26] _Lay Sermons_, etc. p. 331.
_Buechner._
Dr. Louis Buechner, president of the medical association of
Hessen-Darmstadt, etc., etc., is not only a man of science but a popular
writer. Perhaps no book of its class, in our day, has been so widely
circulated as his volume on "Kraft und Stoff," Matter and Force. It has
been translated into all the languages of Europe. He holds that matter
and force are inseparable; there cannot be the one without the other;
both are eternal and imperishable; neither can be either increased or
diminished; life originated spontaneously by the combination of
molecules of matter under favorable conditions; all the phenomena of the
universe, inorganic and organic, whether physical, vital, or mental, are
due to matter and its forces.
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