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It is known of course to all divines, but not necessarily, perhaps, to every other person, that this turbulent and ambitious patriarch, during what he calls his embassy to Syria, occupied himself in taking down notes of the contents of theological treatises by his predecessors and contemporaries, with his judgments on their merits.
He did not regard those to whom he ministered as so many souls and subjects of theological dogma, but as flesh-and-blood men, women, and children, with complex interests and relations; and the heartiness of his laugh over a joke, often his own, and the havoc that he made in the dishes of nuts and apples, proved that he had plenty of good healthful blood himself.
Or a third way of meeting such a man is suddenly to turn upon him, and ask him to give you a brief and lucid account of the views he is condemning. Ask him to tell you what are the theological peculiarities of Bunsen; and what is the exact teaching of Mr. Maurice. He does not know, you may be tolerably sure.
But this method, although it might be sufficient for many, perhaps for most, of our readers for all, indeed, who come to the study of the subject with reflective but unsophisticated minds could scarcely be expected to meet the case or to satisfy the wants of those who stand most in need of instruction; the men, and especially the young men, in all educated communities, who, imbued with the spirit of philosophical speculation, and instructed, more or less fully, in the principles of modern science, have been led, under the influence of certain celebrated names, to adopt opinions which prevent them from seriously considering any theological question, and to regard the whole subject of religion with indifference or contempt, as one that lies beyond the possible range of science, the only legitimate domain of human thought.
Another interesting circumstance was her enjoyment of cultivated society, and even of those literary treasures which imperishable art had bequeathed. She spoke the Greek language as an English or Russian nobleman speaks French, as a theological student understands German. Her companions were gifted and learned women.
In the theological controversy of Civilization without Delusion, an even less effective and becoming performance, the young author revealed a deficiency which, in any writer, can only be regarded as a misfortune and a cause for tolerant regret. The spiritual side of his nature was an undeveloped, almost a barren field.
Fisher will not give heed to theological disputants, I by no means ignore the grievance under which some of those disputants have suffered. The ever-memorable majority of 1906 was won, not wholly by Tariff Reform or Chinese Labour, but to a great extent by the righteous indignation of Nonconformity at the injury which had been inflicted on it by the Tory Education Acts.
Oxford, unlike Cambridge, gave notice of its attitude by requiring every one who matriculated to subscribe the Thirty-nine Articles: the theory of its Tutorial system, of its lectures and examinations, implied what of late years in the better colleges, though certainly not everywhere, had been realised in fact a considerable amount of religious and theological teaching.
When finally these beliefs and speculations are committed to writing, it is done in part for the purpose of assuring them a greater degree of permanence, and in part to establish more definitely the doctrines developed in the schools to define, as it were, the norm of theological and philosophical thought.
Science, though repelled by the antiquated theological conception of the supreme isolation of man among created beings, regards with complacency the probability that there are regions in the universe where no organic life exists, stars which shine upon no inhabited worlds, and planets which nourish no animate creatures. As with the stars, so with the planets, which are the satellites of stars.
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