God the Known and God the Unknown by Samuel Butler
page 44 of 56 (78%)
page 44 of 56 (78%)
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present than our minds can intelligently embrace. The first is
omnipotent and all-wise; the second is only quasi-omnipotent and quasi all-wise. It is true, then, that we deprive God of that infinity which orthodox Theologians have ascribed to Him, but the bounds we leave Him are of such incalculable extent that nothing can be imagined more glorious or vaster; and in return for the limitations we have assigned to Him, we render it possible for men to believe in Him , and love Him, not with their lips only, but with their hearts and lives. Which, I may now venture to ask my readers, is the true God-the God of the Theologian, or He whom we may see around us, and in whose presence we stand each hour and moment of our lives? CHAPTER VIII THE LIFE EVERLASTING Let us now consider the life which we can look forward to with certainty after death, and the moral government of the world here on earth. If we could hear the leaves complaining to one another that they must die, and commiserating the hardness of their lot in having ever been induced to bud forth, we should, I imagine, despise them for their peevishness more than we should pity them. We should tell them that though we could not see reason for thinking that they would ever hang again upon the same-or any at all similar-bough as the same individual leaves, after they had once |
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