Word: religion
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Dates: during 1870-1879
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...Christian world, like a man just awakening to the knowledge of his own faculties, has begun to question the truth of what it has been taught to accept as dogma. On the one hand, science, made confident by its recent achievements, assails the very foundations of the Christian religion, rejecting with scorn testimony and proof which require standards of judgment other than those of the exact sciences; while, on the other, literature, or rather the champion of the "literary theory of culture," refuses to accept a religion which cannot be justified by man's own powers of reasoning. Just...
...suppose that, in so short a time, and only at this late day, men have become possessed with the desire for thorough intellectual training. For a man to be learned and accomplished is nothing new in theory or in practice; but the separation of learning and intellectual training from religion, - using the word in its broadest sense, - or rather the elevation of the one above the other, is something as new as it is startling...
...curious fact that this new movement principally affects by its two phases the two extremes of society. Certain of the most learned and brilliant writers of the day develop and expound their theory of culture in its aesthetic direction, and as opposed to or as including religion; while, according to more than one authority, the lower classes have begun to discuss at least one side of the question, - that which concerns religion as it is now taught. Scepticism and contempt for the "theologians" have, we are told, long prevailed among them, until, in the natural course of events, they have...
...furnished by extensive learning and a delicate taste for sarcasm. That the "theologians" will be utterly unable to maintain their position by means of that same metaphysical and logical reasoning which is used to drive them from it, is too often taken for granted. Preachers of the Christian religion are so apt to make use of arguments addressed to the feelings rather than to the will, that the infatuated disciples of the new theory forget that the "theologians," bigoted though they may be, stand upon ground every inch of which has been tried and proved by men who paid regard...
...much can be said, religion at Harvard is neither sneered at by those who have it not, nor does it ever degenerate into cant. The question next arises, How much of this religion have we? And here, dissenting from the opinions already expressed, we venture to say that there is very little. In making such an assertion, we of course become liable to the charge of unwarrantably passing judgment upon our neighbors; but if the conversation and outward life of the average undergraduate show anything, they show a character which is not so entirely under the control of religion...