Sermons Of Theism Atheism And The Popular Theology PDF Download

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1859 edition. Excerpt: ... the Hebrew prophets atheists, for they denied all the God that Gentile knew. Paul, in the New Testament, more of a theist than the Greeks and Asiatics about him, with a larger religious development than they dreamed of, said, --" an Idol is nothing." That is, there is no divine being which corresponds exactly to the qualities ascribed to any material idol. Their idea of God, said Paul, lacked actuality; it was a personal or national whimsey; not a perfect subjective representation of the objective fact of the universe; but only a mistaken notion of that fact. If a man has outgrown the Hebrew, or common Christian idea of God, he may say what Paul said of the Idol, --" It is nothing." He will not be an atheist, but a theist all the more.. The superior conception of God always nullifies the inferior conception. Thus as the world grows in its development, it necessarily outgrows its ancient ideas of God, which were only temporary and_provisional. As it goes forward, the ancient deities are looked on first as devils; next as a mere mistaken notion which some men had formed about God. For example, a hundred years ago it was the custom of the learned men of the Christian church to speak of the Heathen deities, --Jupiter, Apollo, Venus, and the rest, --as Devils. They did not deny the actual existence of those beings, only affirmed them to be not Gods but devils or "fallen angels;" at any rate, evil beings. Some of the heretics among the early Christians said the same of the Hebrew Jehovah, that he was not the true God, but only a Devil who misled the Jews. Now-a-days well educated men who still use the terms, say that Jupiter, Apollo, Venus, and the others, were only mistaken notions which men formed of God. They deny the actuality of the idea;...