A World Without God.pdf/5

Exported from Wikisource on November 12, 2024

A WORLD WITHOUT GOD.

5

the God of the Christians, one part of whom became man and in whom there are three distinct persons. After thus lightly waving aside all differences as to God, Miss Cobbe with equal lightness ignores the vast evils wrought by religions: "I absolve myself from weighing against the advantages of religion the evils which have followed its manifold corruptions"! But how can we balance the results of religion and non-religion if we are to leave out of account all the evils accruing from one? We are now to have, it seems, the "religion of Christ—i.e., the religion Christ practised and lived". But that was Judaism, and there is not the smallest sign that Christendom proposes to revert to Judaism.

Miss Cobbe then proceeds: "I confess, at starting on this enquiry, that the problem 'Is religion of use, or can we do as well without it?' seems to me as grotesque as the old story of the woman who said that we owe vast obligation to the moon, which affords us light on dark nights, whereas we are under no such debt to the sun, who only shines by day, when there is always light". If this be a true exposition of the state of Miss Cobbe's mind on the great subject with which she deals, she stands self-condemned as incompetent. No one can argue who is incapable of appreciating the opponent's position, and Miss Cobbe cannot appreciate the Atheistic position if she thinks it comparable to that of her ignorant old woman. I pass the intolerable impertinence of her assumption that her opponents are ignorant fools, as much below herself in knowledge and intelligence as the woman referred to was below the average man and woman; it is one of the results of religion, this intense and arrogant self-conceit. But even Miss Cobbe might deign to consider that it was scarcely worth while to waste fifteen pages of the Contemporary Review in solving a grotesque problem, and that the pains she takes to frighten people from Atheism prove that to her it is far more likely that intellectual people will accept it than her insolent parable would imply.

Religion, it seems, is the sun: friendship, science, art, commerce, and politics, are only "moonlike things". "It is the special and unique character of religion to deal with the whole of human nature, all our pleasures and pains and duties and affections and hopes and fears, here and hereafter. It offers to the intellect an explanation of the universe (true or false we need not now consider); and

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Table of Contents

Title page

A World Without God.pdf/5

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