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If it be answered, We are justified in assuming Theism true, because we are justified in assuming that known mind can only have been caused by an unknown mind, and hence that Mind must somewhere be self-existing, then this is to lead us to the second objection to the above syllogism. And this second objection is of a most serious nature.
These scoffers were good men, and their scoffs were protests against theology, loud protests against the follies of Christianity; they had never heard of theism and the new and better religious thoughts of this age.
Nor is it necessary for any enlightened advocate of Theism to betake himself to these expedients; he may freely admit the existence of such cases of gradual development, he may even appeal to them as illustrative of the order of Nature, and the design which that order displays; and the only question which he is at all concerned to discuss amounts in substance to this: Whether the method of production which is pursued in the ordinary course of Nature can account for the original commencement of the present system of things?
The vaster vistas which scientific evolutionism has opened, and the rising tide of social democratic ideals, have changed the type of our imagination, and the older monarchical theism is obsolete or obsolescent. The place of the divine in the world must be more organic and intimate.
Theism has been defined as consisting in the belief in a God who is wise, powerful, and loving, and who has selected man as the object of his preferential care, and to this may be added the statement that most modern theists would extend that care to the whole of sentient life.
Eminence, once existing, grows by its own operation. Its causes natural and its privileges just. Advantage of inequality. Fable of the belly and the members. Fallacy in it. Theism expresses better the aristocratic ideal. A heaven with many mansions. If God is defined as the human ideal, apotheosis the only paradise. When natures differ perfections differ too.
All over the world this black and God-wanting shadow dances behind the solid Theism of "The People," affording proof that if the latter can be preserved, even in the wildest wanderings, to illustrate Holy Writ so can gipsydom for no apparent purpose whatever. How often have we heard that the preservation of the Jews is a phenomenon without equal?
The Buddha preached a creed without reference to a supreme deity and the great Emperor Asoka, the friend of man and beast, popularized this creed throughout India. Even at the present day the prosperous and intelligent community of Jains follow a similar doctrine and the Advaita philosophy diverges widely from European theism.
In Christianity the doctrines of original sin and of redemption are especially congenial to our philosopher, as well as mysticism and asceticism. He declares Mohammedanism the worst religion on account of its optimism and abstract theism, and Buddhism the best, because it is idealistic, pessimistic, and atheistic.
The platform of argument on which the question of "Theism" must be discussed is that of the observable Cosmos; and if, as Dr.
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