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Secularism, then, professes to be the positive or practical side of Atheism, and it claims to be better than Religion at least for this world, because it pays a preëminent, if not exclusive, regard to the duties of the present life.
"To propose the printing of such a speech," said Lecos, a constitutional bishop, "is to propose the printing of a code of atheism. It is impossible that a society can exist, if it have not an immutable morality derived from the idea of a God." Derisive sneers and murmurings hailed this religious protest.
The spirit of the revolution, as it was understood in France and in Europe, had to wait for Shelley for its complete expression. Freedom is the breath of his work freedom not only from the tyranny of earthly powers, but from the tyranny of religion, expressing itself in republicanism, in atheism, and in complete emancipation from the current moral code both in conduct and in writing.
But notwithstanding the stubbornness of the materialistic principles with which he had become imbued, his higher instincts were, unconsciously to himself, beginning to be aroused his memory involuntarily wandered back to the sweet, fresh days of his earliest manhood before the poison of Doubt had filtered through his soul his character, naturally of the lofty, imaginative, and ardent cast, re-asserted its native force over the blighting blow of blank Atheism which had for a time paralyzed its efforts and as he unwittingly yielded more and more to the mild persuasions of these genial influences, so the former Timon-like bitterness of his humor gradually softened.
Dost thou keep thyself free from the fourteen vices of kings, viz., atheism, untruthfulness, anger, incautiousness, procrastination, non-visit to the wise, idleness, restlessness of mind, taking counsels with only one man, consultation with persons unacquainted with the science of profit, abandonment of a settled plan, divulgence of counsels, non-accomplishment of beneficial projects, and undertaking everything without reflection?
"Two Gods there could not be," said Mr Graham. "Of the two beings supposed, the evil one must be called devil were he ten times the more powerful." "Wi' a' my hert!" responded Malcolm. "But I agree with you," the master went on, that "Manicheism is unspeakably better than atheism, and unthinkably better than believing in an unjust God. But I am not driven to such a theory."
It would be tedious to describe their habits and persons; for which reason I shall only inform my reader, that the first couple were Tyranny and Anarchy; the second were Bigotry and Atheism; the third, the Genius of a commonwealth and a young man of about twenty-two years of age, whose name I could not learn.
And the final state of supreme blessedness, the ending of the long and weary transmigration, would be attained only with the extinction of all desires, even the instinctive desire for existence. Buddha had no definite ideas of the deity, and the worship of a personal God is nowhere to be found in his teachings, which exposed him to the charge of atheism.
The air is sharp and keen, not foetid with poisonous lies; the waters are blue and beautiful; there are shining shores about us, and marvels of a new nature on every hand. We who were in the night, and of it, become vivid with the sun. Our atheism banishes the worshipped gods of evil that are no more extant in our dogmatic creed of joy.
To keep alive and make the most of this superstitious feeling has ever been the object of Christian priests, who rarely hesitate to make charges of Atheism, not only against opponents, but each other; not only against disbelievers but believers. Not a metaphysical writer of eminence has escaped the 'imputation' of Atheism.
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