The Buddha of Christendom : a book for the present crisis / by Robert Anderson.

  • Robert Anderson
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Buddha of Christendom : a book for the present crisis / by Robert Anderson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    26/352 page 6
    Let no one here fling down the book as though this were but an abstract metaphysical inquiry devoid of practical importance. There is a sen- tence in one of Tyndall’s treatises ^ which might well excite pathetic interest in this discussion in every house where there is a children’s nursery or a baby’s cot. “ Athwart all play and amusement,” he wrote, “ a thread of seriousness ran through my character; and many a sleepless night of my childhood has been passed, fretted by the ques- tion ‘ Who made God ? ’ ” 2 And in many a home to-day there are little brains perplexed with kindred problems, which, in the strange isolation of child life, they brood over in the darkness. For the sceptical philosophy of the nursery is too often met by ridicule or reproof, or else by pious plati- tudes, instead of by wise and sympathetic words. The youngest child can be made to understand that the question “ Who made God ? ” is essentially absurd. For no matter how much we try, we cannot get rid of the thought of a being that had * “ I’rof. Virchow and Evolution.” ^ John Stuart Mill tells in his “Autobiography” (p. 43) how his father urged this absurd problem upon him in childhood.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3