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God the Known and God the Unknown by Samuel Butler
page 44 of 56 (78%)
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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