Experimental investigation of the spirit manifestations, [electronic ...

'ON THE MORALS OF CHRISTIANS 2811197. '' By their fruits ye shall know them?" It being premised thatGoil is omiiisciont, all-wise, and omnipotent, can any iVuit proceed fVoiiithat high source which has not proved to answer well the purpose forwhich it was intended ?ll!)S. The actual morality of Christendom being the inverse of thatexcessive and impracticable restraint, which Christ enjoined as the objectof his mission, must prove that his doctrine could not have originatedwith a being by whom its failure must have been foreseen.1190. Arguments such as I have used are met often by referring to theevils, to which all animated nature issubjected, in the way of misery, mutilation,disease, or death. ]5ut when the government of the universe isattributed to general laws, it may be inferred that evil results from a wantof power to render those laws free from bad consequences. Nothing butsuch limitation of power, or an indisposition to prevent those evils, canaccount for their occurrence. But this is widely different from assuming,in the first place, with self-called orthodoxy, that God is omnipotent,omniscient, all-wise, and all-good, and then representing him as resortingto measures for the accomplishment of his ends which are utterly inefficacious.This is accusing the Almighty of acting like an idiot. Canany thing be more preposterous, thanthat an all-wise, all-good, all-powerful,and all-foreseeing Deity should require the services of human missionariesto carry out his will ?Would he not at least require that such messengersof his word should first agree as to what that word ought to be ?pagan might remain during his whole life a pagan, should he, before adoptingany creed, require that professed Christians, in general, should agreeas to the tenets which he should espouse.1200. Agreeably to the attributes assigned to the Deity by orthodoxy,the state of things which exists in the universe cannot be otherwise thanas God wishes it to be, to the falling of a sparrow ; so that any changesought by man, beyond the immediate sphere of his necessities, must bean officiousinterference with God's providence.1201. Yet if a man be considered as an instrument in attaining; certainbeneficent ends, without which those ends could not be accomplished, thenhuman exertion is reasonable, in whatever way it can be productive of good.1202. How can any being who contemplates the wonderful power displayedin the creation, hesitate to perceive that if the divine Architectdesired that all men should coincide in their modes of worship, he wouldhave furnished them sufficient evidence of his will, and disposed theirminds to receive the desired impression ?1203. Nevertheless, his measures are represented as the inverse of these.It is represented that a creed which he wished all men to embrace waspromulgated in an obscure part of an obscure country, under the yoke ofheathen despotism, in a language unknown to any other people. It was.so promulgated that the great majority of mankind were entirely out of'A