Theism as a science of natural theology and natural religion / by teh Rev. Charles Voysey.

  • Voysey, Charles, 1828-1912.
Date:
1895
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Theism as a science of natural theology and natural religion / by teh Rev. Charles Voysey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    only an incident in the ebb and flow which ultimately result in the beneficial development of religion, is it not reasonable to assume that any mere detail of its immediate effect on individuals, whether persecuted or persecuting, is a matter which we may with safety assume to be capable of being accounted for satisfactorily if we could follow out the calculations of the Ruler of all things, even although we cannot for the moment see the exact solution ? These reflections lead me to another point which you have touched upon in your Lectures, but which seems to me to be capable of much more extended development than you have at present attempted, although I daresay I should find it in some other of your works. I am indeed by no means sure that my ideas, which I will endeavour to express, are not the outcome of some of yours which I have read and almost forgotten. I allude to the possibility of deducing a more general argument in favour of life after death, and ultimate perfection, from this wonderful doctrine of evolution as applied to man. Ever since I began to appreciate something of the truth and value of this doc- trine as applied to physical subjects, and the strength of the evidence in its favour, it has seemed to me that, to a thinking man, it is full of much consolation, and that it contains in itself some of the strongest arguments in answer to the position of the Atheist and of the thorough-going Agnostic. I noticed in your Lecture, No. YIII., that you point out that there is no scientific demonstration of a future life, that it rests upon faith and nothing more, and that you say that physical science is absolutely silent upon the question. This may be so in one sense, but I am not sure that you have not somewhat overstated the case, and that physics and metaphysics do not combine in such a manner as to enable us to draw valuable deductions upon this great question. It is one which I daresay you have long ago worked out in your own mind, and which I have not had time to develop critically ; but I will endeavour to give you a rough outline of the ideas as they present themselves to me.