CHRISTIAN THEISM. BY THE AUTHOR OF "AN INQUIRY CONCERNING THE ORIGIN LONDON: SMALLFIELD AND SON, 69, NEWGATE STREET. 1839. PREFACE. THE following are some reflections on the direction which the religious sentiments of men may be expected to take after the relinquishment of their belief in miraculous revelations. On some occasions old truths have an interest and fitness of application which give them a freshness equal to that of novelty. This must be the excuse for repeating here some things which may have often been said before. To those who have felt compelled to acquiesce in the conclusion referred to with respect to the Christian religion, the truths which can be gathered from Nature come to have a force and a reality which were never before perceived. When we are called upon to decide between Nature's religion and none, it seems to us as if we had not yet sufficiently weighed the import of the lessons conveyed in Creation, and we find in them the interest and value belonging to new discoveries. These pages may, perhaps, express some of the thoughts to which such a position gives rise; and also tend to shew in what sense Theism and Christianity may unite in name as well as in sympathies. September 1839. CHRISTIAN THEISM. MIRACLE and prophecy are losing their influence over the minds of men; they are no longer put forward as the impregnable bulwarks of religion, but are withdrawn to a more secure place in the background. Their strength as armour is mistrusted; and they are preserved with the jealous care due to venerated but fragile relics. The tone of confident appeal to the supposed unimpeachable evidence on their behalf, is succeeded by an imploring deprecation of the rashness which should root up a belief on the whole beneficial, or by a discreet silence. The imagination may still linger over the ancient and pleasing fictions, so long intertwined with the religious feelings of all the nations who have drawn their creeds from Palestine; but calm reason is unable to acknowledge them longer as facts. A dispassionate examination persuades us that there is no sufficient ground for believing that that land, more than others, has witnessed interruptions or suspensions of the laws of nature: the closest investigation fails to support the wondrous tales, the power of which over the imagination and heart was enhanced by the solemnity of religious sanction: we recognize with some disappointment, that although men in every land have been liable to mistake, exaggerate, or deceive, the sun and moon have, in all probability, ever pursued their regular course over the valleys of Judea; that attraction of gravitation has probably never ceased to operate on the sea of Galilee; nor the human frame, in the region from Idumea to Tyre and Sidon, to be affected by B |