Various

“ In all this we have perfect harmony with all Bible duty and truth, and also with science and universal consciousness of freedom and ability to choose and act. Not by a hair's breadth has God ever infringed upon the freedom of the soul to shape and mould its own moral character, and shape its own moral destiny; but he has done many wonderful things to better the condition of the free soul—not forsaking it in the hour of greatest need.
The soul's free, voluntary service is that which constitutes the requirement of religion in all the ages. ”

“ Are such shams of rights, as caucus-and-ballot-boxism can give us, worth spending any more time and money and agitation upon? I ask, and I appeal to what has been most lyingly named free government in Greece, Rome, England, Venice, France, the United States, and wherever else it has been attempted to make permanent the crisis stage of progress which marks the departure from monarchy. No, my friends, art-liberty alone can be of any avail.... By art-liberty, my friends, I mean the practical application of all science and art systemized as fast as unfolded. ”

“ Bolingbroke's morality is all embraced in self-love. Hobbes claims that the only basis of right and wrong is the civil law. Rousseau says all the morality of actions is in the judgement we ourselves form of them. Shaftsbury says, all the obligations to be virtuous arise from the advantages of virtue, and the disadvantages of vice. Have such moral principles ever reformed the world? Do they reform their advocates? Did you ever know a man to reform after he became an advocate of such principles? Did you ever know a man to reform after understanding and abandoning the Christian religion? ”

“ The office of “art-liberty,” the liberty for which infidels plead, is to destroy popular free discussion and reasoning, allowing them only in order to destroy themselves, that is, allowing the infidels to use them to displace them in religious and state affairs. This is called “art-liberty;” liberty in art and science, and despotism in religion and politics or state. Such a society, plus the absence of conscience, virtue and vice, is the infidel's ideal of free government. ”

“ It is profitable for us to occasionally survey the dark arena where men have played their part, in lonely gloom, without a Savior and without a God. Pagan morality, being without the motives and restraints of revealed religion, and guided wholly by the passions and the lights of reason and nature, is grossly defective. It has no settled standard of right and wrong. It is vain to look, in all heathen philosophy for any settled principles of duty or motives that commend themselves to enlightened minds.
What is the basis and character of virtue? ”

“ Life exists. I can't comprehend or set limits to life; therefore life is infinite, life is eternal.
The time was when there was no life or mind associated with or in matter, the matter belonging to our planet. From whence came life? From whence came mind? Do you say from the laws of nature? Well, laws are rules by which agents act. Laws are nothing unless there is an agent to act in harmony with them or by them. There is consequently something lying behind the laws of nature, acting by them. ”

“ After man had sinned, with the knowledge of good and evil, he was master of his position, and now, lest he “put forth his hand and take of the tree of life, and eat and live forever,” subjected to shame, to torment, to anguish and tribulation, mental suffering, a lost being in the state of abandoned fallen angels, with a possibility of corrupting his conscience until it should be past feeling, seared as with a hot iron, and so glory in his shame ”

“ Such was doubtless given man, as the Bible teaches, as a capital stock, and all languages are, directly or indirectly, from this original stock, and its results upon the human understanding; for who can set limits to possibilities of the human mind when once it is furnished with a capital stock and learned the art of its use? In Europe twenty-seven languages are known, which are kindred branches from three roots, and these three roots are scions of one stock; all languages are traceable to one stock. The Bible alone accounts for the origin of speech, which was, doubtless, the origin of law. ”

“ It is not enough for a man to have the right spirit and the right motives, unless he does that which is right in itself. Conscience may be warped by malevolence, selfishness, prejudice, or education, until the man is led to do that which is detestable in the sight of God. The time may come when this man will regret his foolishness, and see that he was wrong, like Saul of old.
Right things may be done from a wrong spirit, and wrong things may be done from a right spirit, but the morality of the Christian religion consists in doing right things from right motives and in a right spirit. ”

“ I am conscious of life and mind, but do I comprehend either? We know that matter, of itself, is inert, dead, and yet it lives. But this is our difficulty: How does it come to live? We know it lives, but do we comprehend the fact? We know enough about a great many incomprehensible things for all practical purposes. Do you unbelievers know the unknown? ”

“ Here is the outcome of the liberty that infidels talk so much about. “Art-liberty” is to annihilate conscience and the distinction between virtue and vice so completely that there will be no more use for the words, “they will be obsolete.” “All benefiting selfishness will then govern humanity.” Reader, are you prepared for such a state of society? ”

“ How much better are modern Pagan nations? These evils have been extinguished in the ratio of the circulation and influence of the Bible. The relation between the state and its citizens the Bible recognizes as of divine appointment; the foundation of civil government is the will of God. Government is an ordinance of God. “The powers that be are ordained of God.” The great author of our rights, life, liberty, peace, order, public morals and religion, has not left these interests to chance, anarchy or the social compact. ”

“ The great motive that governs us as Christian moralists is the fact made known in these words, God requires it. You may talk of the dignity of correct morals, of their beauty and virtue, and of the terrible nature of vice, and of the demands of a well-governed selfishness, but all these are weak compared with the authority of the Supreme Being whom Christians love and adore.
If we would reform men successfully we must bring the conscience under the strong bonds of obligation ”

“ Hence, nothing short of union with God, through his own appointed means, by which he brings his own omnipotence to bear for the purpose of controlling the essential condition of organic existence, could ever be an antidote of death. Man in his original innocence enjoyed such means in the fruit of the tree of life. Being removed from this he dies by the essential laws of his existence. So man in his physical nature is enslaved in common with all things that are under the reign of physical laws. Yet he is a free intelligence. ”

“ A body must remain forever at rest without some external agency to put it in motion. Now, you step out from our planet to its nearest neighbor, and from thence to the next, and so on till you get to the furthest limits of matter—carry along with you the idea that one planet has put another in motion until you arrive at the last one thinkable, and then ask yourself this question: Is inertia a property of matter here? ”

“ When an idea is once consecrated to science or religion in the human heart it is hard to eradicate. When you find that you have made a wrong start remember that it is the part of true manhood to make a frank surrender, and start anew.
The assumption of the “evolution of species” lays all its advocates under the necessity of assuming that a low state of barbarism lies behind the civilization known in the history of the race as the primitive or first condition of intellect. ”

“ You talk about infinite space, infinite duration, infinite substance. Yes, and I talk about infinite life, infinite power and infinite mind. We all know there are infinities in existence. We apprehend them, knowing enough about them for all practical life purposes. You talk about the infinities known in science, and I talk about the infinities known in religion. ”

“ When such a state of society is brought about in this country the infidels will have more hell than they will relish. Listen once more, “Man's right to be self-governed is, equally with his desire to be so, self-evident.” How are these infidels going to have self-government and intolerance by law in matters of religion and state? ”

“ His universal agency is the only organ of power adequate to the accomplishment of the wonders of nature—the only solution of its great problems which lies within the reach of human reason. Some fools still say in their hearts there is no God. ”

“ The race is continually multiplying and enlarging. What wonderful wisdom was it that consulted its honor, its virtue and eternal destiny by the appointment of the marriage relation? It was the best method upon which human society could be organized. ”

“ His reasoning is this: Space exists. I know it exists. I can't set bounds to space, therefore it is infinite.
Matter exists. I know it exists. I can't annihilate matter, therefore matter is eternal. ”

“ Thou shalt not do so unto the Lord thy God: for every abomination to the Lord, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods. The destruction of these idolators, who were burning their own sons and daughters in the fire, furnishes unbelievers and skeptics with a great deal of capital, which can be used with ignorance, but not with intelligence. ”

“ Has the religion of Christ been a disturber of the social organization where social rights were properly understood and regarded? or has it set aside the rights and obligations of men in social life where men were enjoying peaceable, happy relations? Does its legitimate influence make men more wicked and miserable? An honest answer to these questions will commend the religion of Jesus Christ, and do honor to him as our Lord and Master. The Scriptures have been the means of establishing institutions which have stood for centuries. ”

“ Simple advantage is not the foundation of virtue; it has a nature aside from its tendencies to worldly profit. Otherwise virtue would often cease to be virtue, and vice would often cease to be vice. Anciently there were moral philosophers who plead that utility was the only foundation of virtue. Paul speaks of some who supposed “Godliness was gain.” Such a morality would be the most uncertain thing in the world; give it what name you choose, it is mere selfishness. ”

“ If there ever was a language of nature it was abandoned when artificial language was taught. The greatest philosophers have failed to account for the origin of language or speech. The Pagans have declared that it was a gift from the gods. If all the inhabitants of the world could be congregated, and all would consent to the use of one and the same vocabulary, then we might, through universal training in that vocabulary, have an universal language. ”

“ There is a sin of which the Bible often speaks, pointing the guilty perpetrators to the fact that they have none inheritance in the kingdom of God and of Christ.
The history of Pagan nations is little else than a record of crime. By studying it we may learn something of our obligations to the Christian religion, and our indebtedness to its pure spirit, which has brooded over the darkness of the nations, and brought order out of confusion. It will, also, learn us to value the names father, mother, husband, wife, children and parents ”

“ From the dissecting-room, the chemical laboratory, the astronomical observatory, the physician's and physiologist's study—in fine, from all the schools of science and arts should human law be declared, instead of being ‘enacted’ in legislative halls by those who in every respect besides political trickery, fraud and ‘smartness,’ are perfect ignoramuses. ”

“ These enemies of God and the Bible talk as though such an outrage as burning sons and daughters in the fire to idol gods should not be visited with such punishment. Would they do any better? Could they manage such barbarous murderers better for the general good? If it was possible for a civil government to allow such characters the rights of citizenship it would be at the expense of giving license to all other crimes, for there are no crimes greater in their heinousness than murderous idolatry. ”

“ It is possible that a few unbelieving colonels have killed better men upon Southern battle-fields, and it is possible that a few of them [pg 101] are traveling over the country abusing Moses and the God of the Bible for putting worse men to death.
Let us ever remember that the eternal laws of right, sometimes, necessitate the destruction of human life. The greatest good of the greatest number is an object that should always govern the action of a nation. This law should never be disregarded. Murder, having no connection with the general good, is a very different thing. ”

“ If all contracts in accordance with present ‘law’ were fulfilled to the letter, and if all the ‘duties’ enjoined by present moralism were unflinchingly performed, and if all which ‘virtue’ styles ‘vice’ was entirely abstained from, and if what is now ‘free trade’ according to ‘law,’ had a ‘fair field,’ how long would it take a millionth of the earth's inhabitants to accumulate all its wealth? ”

“ Did The Race Ascend From A Low State Of Barbarism? The fact that the human mind abhors a contradiction is an evidence of the Godlike nature of man, and an objection to the old tenet of total depravity; it is also the secret of the effort, upon the part of errorists, to systematize. One assumption creates a demand for another, and thus men who start wrong, in science or religion, labor under great disadvantages. ”