Historical Reprints
Religion
|
"The word was God." That "word is Truth." Truth can never change, or it would contradict itself. Past, present, and future, must be governed by immutable laws. Experience is acquired by the careful study of history, and the present condition of all things.
According to the ignorant prejudices which priestcraft has interwoven through the human mind, the subjects treated of in the following Lectures, are considered as sacred ground by the votaries of superstition.
And now a few words regarding the evolution of this book. It is something over a quarter of a century since I labored with Ezra Cornell in founding the university which bears his honored name. Our purpose was to establish in the State of New York an institution for advanced instruction and research, in which science, pure and applied, should have an equal place with literature; in which the study of literature, ancient and modern, should be emancipated as much as possible from pedantry; and which should be free from various useless trammels and vicious methods which at that period hampered many, if not most, of the American universities and colleges.
This is one of the most controversial books publshed in the age of enlightenment. Reproduced with all notes and footnotes. Critics hung their attack on a couple of errors, overlooking the massive amount of evidence the author produced challenging the orthodox and fundamental view of Christianity. Cassels challenged the biased translations of manuscripts by theolgians of his day.
Justice is due to all men; it is a gem that sheds a brilliant radiance upon the tyrant and the slave, upon the rich and the poor; Justice is in the moral world what the sun is in the physical, one illuminates the intellectual, the other the terrestrial system.
Common sense questions about Christianity from the Chinese to the missionaries.
Your late zealous exertion against the infidels, in procuring the Sunday Bill to be passed, and prosecutions and pillory against infidel writers and publishers, must have convinced them that you are in earnest in your attempts to propagate and establish our holy faith.
This vast valley plain is our Garden of Eden. Now, Look! as thousands before you have done in wonder and surprise! Look immediately around you, over the hanging garden on which you stand, and, look out for snakes, for how could you have such a garden without a "Serpent."
MANKIND has ever been ready to discuss matters in the inverse ratio of their importance, so that the more closely a question is felt to touch the hearts of all of us, the more incumbent it is considered upon prudent people to profess that it does not exist, to frown it down, to tell it to hold its tongue, to maintain that it has long been finally settled, so that there is now no question concerning it.
Some reverend panegyrists on our late king, have, a little unfortunately, been fond of comparing him with a monarch in no respect resembling him; except in the length of his reign, thirty and three years: which a lucky text informed them to be the duration of David's sovereignty over the Hebrew nation.
The Bishop of Manchester, in a speech delivered by him ... is reported to have said that "he could defy anyone to try to caricature the work, the character, or the person of the Lord Jesus Christ."
There are two accounts of the miraculous conception, one in the gospel according to St. Matthew, the other in the gospel according to St. Luke
A comical, satirical, and critical look at the lives of Londoners and the cultures of that great city. Written in a fashion of fiction, the author portrays London in its ugliness and its raw beauty.
In presenting this volume to the "intelligence of the world," the author is fully aware of the incredulity with which it may meet in many literary minds. Nevertheless, the truths which it contains will remain unmarred by the salient attacks of "critics," when they have passed away and have ceased to be remembered.
A transitional state of mind is clearly evidenced by the present division and perplexity of Christian thought concerning the Christian miracles. Many seem to regard further discussion as profitless, and are ready to shelve the subject. But this attitude of weariness is also transitional. There must be some thoroughfare to firm ground and clear vision. It must be found in agreement, first of all, on the real meaning of a term so variously and vaguely used as miracle.