The Natural History of Atheism

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Daldy, Isbister, 1877 - 247 pages

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Page 85 - Towards the crescent moon, with grateful heart Called on the lovely wanderer who bestowed That timely light, to share his joyous sport : And hence, a beaming goddess with her nymphs, Across the lawn and through the darksome grove (Not unaccompanied with tuneful notes By echo multiplied from rock or cave) Swept in the storm of chase, as moon and stars Glance rapidly along the clouded heaven, When winds are blowing strong.
Page 85 - When winds are blowing strong. The traveller . slaked His thirst from rill or gushing fount, and thanked The Naiad. Sunbeams, upon distant hills Gliding apace, with shadows in their train, Might, with small help from fancy, be transformed Into fleet Oreads sporting visibly. The Zephyrs fanning, as they passed, their wings, Lacked not, for love, fair objects whom they wooed With gentle whisper. Withered boughs grotesque, Stripped of their leaves and twigs by hoary age, From depth of shaggy covert...
Page 85 - In that fair Clime, the lonely Herdsman, stretched On the soft grass through half a summer's day, With music lulled his indolent repose : And, in some fit of weariness, if he, When his own breath was silent, chanced to hear A distant strain, far sweeter than the sounds Which his poor skill could make, his Fancy fetched, Even from the blazing Chariot of the Sun, A beardless Youth, who touched a golden lute, And filled the illumined groves with ravishment.
Page 61 - A Moralist perchance appears; Led, Heaven knows how ! to this poor sod : And he has neither eyes nor ears ; Himself his world, and his own God; One to whose smooth-rubbed soul can cling Nor form, nor feeling, great or small; A reasoning, self-sufficing thing, An intellectual All-in-all...
Page 149 - I now desire to turn the wheel of the excellent law ; For this purpose am I going to that city of Benares, To give light to those enshrouded in darkness, And to open the gate of Immortality to men.
Page 226 - As well might we, resting on the earth, deny that there is any depth beneath, or, living in time, deny eternity. I do not say, therefore, that there is no God : but that it is extravagant and irreverent to imagine that cause a Person. All we know is phenomena : and that the fundamental cause is wholly beyond our conception. In this I do not suspend my judgment : but rather assert plainly that of the motive power or principle of things we know absolutely nothing, and can know nothing...
Page 188 - God ; for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
Page 14 - Christian missionaries going about doing good are thus probably not so despicable as some might imagine; there is no necessity for beginning to tell even the most degraded of these people of the existence of a God, or of a future state, the facts being universally admitted. Everything that cannot be accounted for by common causes is ascribed to the Deity, as creation, sudden death, itc. ' How curiously God made these things !' is a common expression ; as is also, ' He was not killed by disease, he...
Page 175 - F5 by the Confucians, that they unfit men for the business and duties of life, by fixing their speculations so entirely on another state of existence as to lead some fanatics to hang or drown themselves in order to anticipate futurity ; nay, two persons have been known to commit suicide together with a view to becoming man and wife in the next world.

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