Theism as a science of natural theology and natural religion / by teh Rev. Charles Voysey.
- Voysey, Charles, 1828-1912.
- Date:
- 1895
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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![I start from the proposition that we know nothing of the soul, either whence it comes, or what it is. We speak of life, the vital spark, instinct, intellect, mind, spirit, and soul without any knowledge of what they are, where thev begin’ where they end, or upon what they depend. Philo*sophers and scientists of all types and shades of religious belief may discuss these subjects from their own points of view, and will undoubtedly differ. Physical and metaphysical’ science are helpless to define with certainty when and how life begins, where instinct ends and intellect begins, where intellect ends and the soul begins, or what is death. No one has yet succeeded in laying down any definitions or laws acceptable to all men on these questions. Their accept- ance or rejection must, I think, much depend upon the idiosyncrasies of individuals, which are infinite in their variety; and the conclusion )arrived at in each case will be more or less affected by the standpoint from which the subject is a]3proached. All men are, however, practically agreed that there has, in the course of ages, been a distinct and immense advance, not only in what we call knowledge, but in those qualities in mankind which make up what we should call goodness or virtue. There may have been much ebb and flow, but when we look back through the long vista of years now opened to our mental vision by the researches of recent times, this ebb and flow is nothing, compared with the enormous progress which, in the aggregate, has been made towards perfection, by steps which are in themselves some- times imperceptible, and some of which are, or seem to be retrograde. The doctrine of the Creation of Man in the image of God, and his subsequent Fall to a lower state has, to all who dare to think upon the subject at all, become as obsolete as the dead mythologies of the ancients, or the Ptolemaic Theory. We are, according to my view, no more justified at tho present day in talking of it to educated men as a living doctrine, because a few blind bigots still persist in hammering it into the brains of children and grown-up children, than we should be in contending that the old- world belief in witches is still part of the doctrines of the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24886270_0140.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
