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When the church and her ministers, when the Scriptures and their anomalies, and when the faults and failings of Christian men are made the subject of mockery and laughter, the reverence, the fear, the awe, the respect that all enter so largely into religion, and especially into the religion of young people, is too easily destroyed; and not seldom the first seeds of practical and sometimes of speculative atheism are thus sown.
We do not class these speculations among the formal systems of Atheism, although they have often been associated with it; but we advert to them as specimens of that style of thinking which has a natural tendency to induce an atheistic frame of mind. The profession of such sentiments is a symptom rather of incipient danger, than of confirmed disease.
Hebblethwaite, a Primitive Methodist minister, "prepared the way of the" Atheist by pouring out virulent abuse on Atheism in general, and this Atheist in particular; two Protestant missionaries aided him vigorously, exhorting the pious Christians to "sweep Secularists out". The result was a very fair row; I got through the lecture, despite many interruptions, but when it was over a regular riot ensued; the enraged Christians shook their fists at me, swore at me, and finally took to kicking as I passed out to the cab; only one kick, however, reached me, and the attempts to overturn the cab were foiled by the driver, who put his horse at a gallop.
Everywhere lodges opened to him, everywhere mysteries unveiled; everywhere in the higher grades he found spiritism, magic, evocation; his atheism became impossible, and his conscience troubled. Ultimately his business led him to revisit Calcutta, where his last unheard-of experience had overwhelmed his whole being, just eight days previously to his encounter with Doctor Bataille.
The system of atheism, as the priests choose to denominate it, can only be the result of long meditation; the fruit of connected study; the produce of an imagination cooled by experience: it is the child of reason.
An Associated Press dispatch of Dec. 24, 1924, states that Zinovieff, a Soviet leader, admitted that the Communists had gone too far in their efforts to establish atheism by force, but he adds, "We shall pursue our attacks on Almighty God in due time, and in an appropriate manner. We are confident we shall subdue him in his empyrean.
If we regarded only the pampered classes, then we might well think that true human fellowship had perished, and a starless darkness worse almost than Atheism would fall on the soul. But we are not all corrupt, and the strong brave heart of our people still beats true.
I do not say that my opinions began to change, but the state of my feelings got better, which rendered possible a change for the better in my sentiments. But I had reached a sad extreme. I had lost all trust in a Fatherly God, and all good hope of a better life. I had come near to the horrors of utter Atheism. And the universe had become an appalling and inexplicable mystery.
Now what are these features? The postulate of an Eternal Self-existing Something is common to Theism and to Atheism. Here Atheism ends. Theism, however, is generally said to assume Personality, Intelligence, and Creative Power as attributes of the single self-existing substance. Lastly, Pantheism assumes the Something now existing to have been self-created.
Robespierre applied a torch to Atheism, but alas, the wind was hostile, or else Atheism and Madness were damp. They obstinately resisted the torch, and it was hapless Wisdom who took fire. Her face, all blackened by smoke, grinned a hideous ghastly grin at her sturdy rivals.
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