Book Description

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. 1856 edition. Excerpt: ... QUESTIONS ON THE EVIDENCES OF IMMORTALITY. The fundamental religious elements, immanent in man's highest faculties, seem, at first glance, to be incompatible with deliberate investigation. There are few minds capable of reasoning while prejudiced. Come to that most high and princely of all emotions--the religious--and forthwith there departeth deliberation, consistency, and vigilance. How few persons there are from whom you expect straightforwardness, reasonableness, charity, temperance in all things. The Modern Church exerts a powerful stultifying influence upon the human conscience. It has forbidden the conscience to reason, to think, to become enlightened. Men may be intelligent concerning the ordinary interests of life; not upon religious questions. No! Men dare not become religiously enlightened. Innumerable attempts have been made, with more or less success, to shackle the human conscience. What is the consequence of such mental bondage? The consequence is, that, while men make advancement in science, commerce, merchandise, in all the relations pertaining to our common existence, they stand still in the far past; without illumination upon whatsoever is religious and ecclesiastical. And a vast portion of the world, therefore, have involuntarily gone into extreme skepticism on religion. How many sources of human knowledge are there? There are four sources of human knowledge: first, Intuition; second, Reflection; third, Perception; fourth, Testimony. Two are inherent and natural; two are outside and artificial. The reliable sources of knowledge are, Intuition and Reflection; the unreliable and secondary are, Perception and Testimony. Perhaps, these have never been harmoniously consulted. Do the churches refer men to their own inherent...