Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905 edition. Excerpt: ... HUMAN SUBMISSION. CHAPTER I. THE TRUE KEY OF THIS UNIVERSE. There is nothing that a religious philosopher keeps at such a distance as the actual facts of life. But while these philosophers go their way ignoring the actual and indeed very ignorant of it, the people are going their way and leaving philosophers to their little artificial world of old texts, desks, and lecture rooms, and they are making up their own minds about 'god ' and religion, a very different mind from what the scholastic thinkers would like them to have. Yet the main light on whatever god there may be is not thrown by the nature of Being, of which the philosophers are so competent to' speak, nor by the nature of Consciousness, but by the things happening to men every day in this sphere of god's power and love. And knowing full well the commiseration I shall inspire in philosophers for thinking of these mere events and drawing deductions from them, I lay them down as the First Principles from which any theory of the universe must be drawn. If we eliminate consciousness from the universe I do not know of what consequence its existence is, and if consciousness is the greatest thing, the way this universe uses every conscious being is our test of the universe. When these facts are presented to the philosopher he will be contented by saying, "but suffering is not the only postulate whence our moral nature starts; it is also the discipline through which it gains its true elevation." But how will this strike the sufferer? And men of fineness can sharply realize the sufferer's point of view. Will they follow the proclamation of another philosopher, who says: "To the question, then, how evil consists with the goodness of God? I answer flatly, it does not consist with the...
