STRIKING TRUTHS.
Selected.
The Protestant reformation was indeed a glorious era—glorious for its reduction of Papal and clerical power and for the partial liberation of the mind, rather than its immediate improvement of men’s apprehensions of Christianity. Some of the Reformers invented or brought back as injurious errors as those they overthrew. Luther’s con-substantiation differed from the Pope’s only by a syllable and that was all the gain; and we may safely say that transubstantiation was a less monstrous doctrine than the five points of Calvinism. —Dr. Channing.
“One of the most striking features of the human mind is its thirst for constantly enlarging knowledge, and its proneness to lose its interest in subjects which it has exhausted.”—Ibid.
Quaere—Have not ‘certain,’ yet ‘exhausted the subject’ of Baptism for the remission of sins—the Pentecostian ‘Kingdom’ and other kindred topics which they have so long taught by halves. Will they never leave the first principles of the doctrine of Christ and go on to perfection?)
This love of freedom is not borrowed from Greece or Rome. It is not the classical enthusiasm of youth which, by some singular good fortune, has escaped the blighting influence of intercourse with the world. Greece and Rome are names of little weight to a christian. They are warnings rather than inspires and guides. —Ibid.
Passion for power has made the names of King and Priest the most appalling in history. —Ibid.
Power should never be permitted to run into great masses. No more of it should be confided to the rulers than is absolutely necessary to repress crime and to preserve public order. But there is a power which cannot be accumulated to excess. I mean, moral power—that of truth and virtue, the royalty of wisdom and love, and magnanimity and true religion. This is the guardian of all right. It makes those whom it acts on free. It is mightiest when most gentle. —Ibid.
Study is a restraint, compelling us, if we would learn any thing, to concentrate the forces of thought and to bridle the caprices of fancy. —Ibid.
Duty restrains the passions only that the nobler faculties and affections may have freer play—may ascend to God and embrace all his works. —Ibid.
Virtue is the free choice of the right; Love, the free embrace of the heart; Grace, the free motion of the limbs; Genius, the free, bold flight of thought; and Eloquence, its free and fervent utterance. —Ibid.
It is the prerogative of true greatness to glorify itself in adversity and to meditate and execute vast enterprises in defeat. —Ibid.
Dr. Channing says of Milton—“His whole soul revolted against the maxims of legitimacy, hereditary faith, and servile reverence of established power.”
I earnestly beseech all lovers of truth, not to cry out that the church is thrown into confusion by that freedom of discussion and inquiry which is granted to the schools and ought certainly to be refused to no believer, since we are ordered to prove all things, and since the daily progress and light of truth is productive of less disturbance to the church than of illumination and edification. Without this liberty there is neither religion nor gospel—force alone prevails, by which it is disgraceful for the christian religion to be supported. —Milton’s Prose Works.
Words are wise men’s counters; they do but reckon by them. But they are the money of fools that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, a Thomas Aquinas, or any other Doctor whatsoever. —Hobbes.
A cripple in the right way will beat a racer in the wrong. —Bacon.
Better to be defeated fighting for your principles than to succeed by abandoning them. — Anonymous.
Martyrdom is no criterion of truth; for truth and error have their martyrs who have died in the defence of each. —Anonymous.
Whatever men are taught highly to respect, gradually acquires the rank of virtue. Thus if men are taught to fear adverse public opinion in the struggle between truth and error, they will always side with the latter, which has ever carried it by the popular vote. —Anonymous.
Men must be taught as tho’
We taught them not,
And things unknown, proposed,
As things forgot.
He that saith to the wicked—thou art righteous, him shall the people curse. Nations shall abhor him. But to them that rebuke him, shall be delight, and a good blessing shall come upon them. —Proverbs.
He that hath no rule over his own spirit, is like a city that is broken down and without walls. —Proverbs.
Because sentence is not speedily executed against an evil work, therefore the heart of the sons of men (contra-distinguished from the sons of God) is fully set in them to do evil. —Ecclesiastes.
God giveth to a man that is good in his sight, wisdom, and knowledge and joy; but to the sinner, he giveth travail, to gather and heap up that he may give to him that is good before God—[in the Age to Come.]—Ecclesiastes.
Worth means wealth, and wisdom the art of acquiring it. This is the world’s creed. —Anonymous.
As respects natural religion—revelation being for the present altogether left out of the question—it is not easy to see that a philosopher of the present day is more favourably situated than Thales or Simonides. He has before him just the same evidence of design in the structure of the Universe which the early Greeks had * * * *. As to the other great question—the question what becomes of man after death—we do not see that a highly educated European, left to his unassisted reason, is more likely to be in the right than a Blackfoot Indian. Not a single one of the many sciences in which we surpass the Blackfoot Indians, throws the smallest light on the state of the soul after the animal life is extinct. In truth, all the philosophers, ancient and modern, who have attempted, without the help of revelation, to prove the immortality of man, from Plato down to Franklin, appear to us to have failed deplorably. —T. B. Macauley.
The Christian believes, as well as the Jew, that at some future period the present order of things will come to an end. Nay, many Christians believe that the Messiah will shortly establish a kingdom on the earth and reign visibly over all its inhabitants. Whether this doctrine be orthodox or not, we shall not here enquire. The number of people who hold it is very much greater than the number of Jews residing in England. Many of those who hold it are distinguished by rank, wealth and ability. It is preached from the pulpits, both of the Scottish and English church. Noblemen and members of Parliament have written in defence of it. —Ibid.
Every generation enjoys the use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity and transmits it, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future ages. In these pursuits, therefore, the first speculators lie under great disadvantages, and even when they fail are entitled to great praise. Their pupils with far inferior intellectual powers, speedily surpass them in actual attainments. Every girl, who has read Mrs. Marcet’s little dialogues on Political Economy, could teach Montague or Walpole many lessons in finance. Any intelligent man may now, by resolutely applying himself for a few years to mathematics, learn more than the great Newton knew, after half a century of study and meditation. This is true of the experimental sciences. It is not so, however, with the imitative arts, as music, painting, and sculpture, and still less with poetry. —Ibid.
“Better have, in the church, a peaceful error than a troublesome truth,” said Erasmus. “Peace indeed, if possible, but truth at all hazards,” was the noble reply of Luther. —D’Aubigne.
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