John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works - Twelve Sketches by Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison, and Other Distinguished Authors by Unknown
page 80 of 81 (98%)
page 80 of 81 (98%)
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show the "Reasonableness of Christianity," but paraphrased several of
the books of the New Testament. Mr. Mill has never written one sentence to give the least encouragement to Christianity. But, although a contrast appears to exist, there is really none. Locke was what may be called a Bible Christian. He rejected all theological systems, and constructed his religious belief in the truly Protestant way,--with the Bible and his inner consciousness. His creed was the Bible as conformed to reason; but he never doubted which, in the event of a conflict, ought to give way. To him the destructive criticism of biblical scholars and the discoveries of geology had given no disquietude; and he died with the happy conviction, that, without abandoning his religious teaching, he could remain faithful to reason. Mr. Mill inherited a vast controversy, and he had to make a choice like Locke, he remained faithful only to reason. Perhaps, it might be urged, this comparison leaves out of account the very greatest work of Mr. Mill,--his 'Political Economy.' Locke lived too soon to be an Adam Smith; but, curiously enough, the parallel is not broken even at this point. In 1691 and again in 1695 he wrote, "Some considerations of the consequences of the lowering of interest, and raising the value of money," in which he propounded among other views, that, "taxes, however contrived, and out of whose hands soever immediately taken, do, in a country where the great fund is in land for the most part terminate upon land." There is of course no comparison between the two men on this head: nevertheless it is interesting to note in prototype the germs of the great work of Mr. Mill. It shows the remarkable and by no means accidental similarity between the men. The parallel is already too much drawn out, otherwise it would be |
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