Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER H. VARIATIONS AND CONTRADICTIONS IN THE THEOLOGICAL OPINIONS OF SKEPTICS AND TRANSCENDENTALISTS. How is it that some men tolerate dogmatic assertion and crude philosophisms in such writers as Carlyle, Emerson, and Parker, while on the same subject they require in others mature and accurate thought ? It is possible that in relation to some things, the teachings of Christ may not be fully nor clearly apprehended, even by those who receive and obey His instruction; thoughtfully to examine those teachings is, therefore, lawful and proper. If there be objections to the views of Christians, let them be distinctly and fairly stated, and upright minds will hear and weigh the reasons alleged by objectors. If men have a better system to propound, let them show it, and old errors will vanish in the light of a newly-developed truth. Let those who do not discriminate between good sense and pompouspretense, stand agape in the presence of theological bravado and assertion; but will intelligent men accept crude dicta from any one on a subject of serious moment,-and accept it with little or no examination? We do not design in thus writing, to disparage the conceded ability of the authors to whom we have alluded. In some respects they are able and learned men ; and the author of this book seems to me to have been sincerely engaged in some of the reform efforts of our time. But any mind, even that of Laplace or Bishop Butler, were it afloat on the sea of skeptical conjecture, without the pole-star by which reason might direct her course, would become perplexed, and would perplex others by its erratic wanderings on a starless sea. Note, therefore, whether there be any evidence of crude and contradictory thought in the teachings of the popular writer already named:— The author affi...