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Untitled Article
Now , touching this matter of belief in a God , it is clear that Julian Hibbert spoke without due reflection . He probably had been somewhat annoyed in his youth with the cant of religion , while he saw through the hypocrisy of the professors , and that gave him so much distaste for the whole thing , that the hatred of the one became synonymous with the hatred of the other . I myself remember passing through similar
sensations in my boyhood , being driven to churches and chapels innumerable , sometimes thrice in the day , to hear dull and measured routine services , and still duller sermons , wherein dogmas were made to supply the place of logic , till the very name of religion became loathsome to me , as something invariably connected with privation and suffering , and Christianity became ^ synonymous with Jesuitry and bigotry . Hatred of this tyranny practised in his name , made me blind to the beautiful spirit of Christ , blind to the fact , that he was a beneficent and radical reformer of
the numerous evils to which the human mind is subjected . It was a most unfortunate religion for a race of oppressive rulers to live under , and therefore was it that they did what in them lay , to change its beautiful morality to vicious practices . Oppression is utterly incompatible with pure Christianity . When Julian Hibbert professed his disbelief of the existence of a God , he was illogical . He may ask others to prove the existence of a God , but they may also challenge him to prove
the non-existence . Those who logicize in favour of belief , state their arguments very briefly . ' Does the general system of the universe give internal evidence of plan , or no plan ? If the answer be in the affirmative , then the existence of a plan must premise also the existence of a planner . This , allowed , opens another argument ; does there seem in the raee of men a general and constant tendency towards perfection , through all his changes ? This cannot well be
disproved , and the inference must be , that the nature of the planner of the universe must be beneficent . ' I apprehend that Julian Hibbert would experience some difficulty in disproving this argument , notwithstanding no two witnesses can be found who can say , We have seen God face to face / Most probably , Julian Hibbert , stung by the illiberality and oppressive nature of those who wield religion as an implement for keeping down the poor , has been driven into the not very mathematical conclusion ,
that two wrongs maRe one right . The religious traders eay to him * You shall believe , or we will bait you / and he replies , ' I am bent therefore upon disbelieving , and will disbelieve in spite of you all / The fact is , belief or disbelief does not seem in any way to depend on the will of the individual , but on the peculiarity of his mental organization , and it is possible for a believer to be a much worse member of society than an unbeliever . A man may readily profess a belief , without examining the
premises , just as men profess themselves Christians , though a true Christian , i . e . a being regulating * all his thoughts and actions upon the prin' ciple of * do as you would be done by , ' is scarcely to be met with . _ A cold pure logician , even if he professes to believe in the existence of a God , is not therefore necessarily a benevolent man , nor even if he does
really believe . Something of an enthusiastic spirit is necessary to produce good fruit in the shape of religion , and enthusiasm is a matter of temperament . But it is quite certain , that a man professing to be an Atheist may neverth eless be a moral man , as far as regards the transaction of his social duties , and if he be a punctilious man in regard to truth , which declaring hia disbelief in opposition to public obloquy is
Untitled Article
Hissing an Atheist . 85
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1834, page 85, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2629/page/87/
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