CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE SOCIETY.

TWENTY-FOUR PLAIN QUESTIONS TO HONEST MEN..

QUESTION 1. Have you ever inquired into the foundations of your religion?

QUES. 2. Are you sure that the Bible was written by the per-/ sons who are said to have written it?

QUES. 3. And that they had authority to write what they did? QUES. 4. they wrote?

And that you have got a faithful translation of what

QUES. 5. And if what they wrote was a revelation to themselves, does that make it a revelation to you?

QUES. 6. If you receive it in faith, might you not receive the Koran, the Shaster, or any other books which have been falsely called the word of God, in faith also?

QUES. 7. Do you not know that there have been many false religions in the world, by which mankind have been mischievously and cruelly deceived?

QUES. 8. How came they to be so deceived; but by acting. as you do, if you do not inquire for yourself, or if you suffer any persons to discourage you from exercising your own reason? QUES. 9. Is not God the author of your reason?

QUES. 10. Can He then be the author of any thing which is contrary to your reason?

QUES. 11. "If reason be a sufficient guide, why should God give you any other ?"

QUES. 12. "If it be not a sufficient guide, why has he given you that?"

QUES. 13. If you ask the question which it is your duty as a man to ask of your Christian Ministers, will they answer you?

QUES. 14. Will they not treat both you and your questions with contempt?

QUES. 15. Is contempt an answer?

QUES. 16. They profess to " Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh them a reason of the hope that is in them." 1 Peter iii. 15. and "In meekness to instruct those that oppose themselves." 2 Tim. ii. 25. How does their conduct agree with their professions?

QUES. 17. Does it look like sincerity and truth, that your' Ministers should have so much to say, where nobody may an swer them; but have nothing to say where they may be answered; defending their Gospel, where nobody may be allowed to attack

it, but afraid and ashamed to undertake its defence where it may be likely to meet an adversary?

QUES. 18. Does it look like sincerity and truth that your Missionaries should " compass sea and land to make one proselyte" from among barbarians, while they affect to treat thousands of their unbelieving countrymen with contempt and scorn?

QUES. 19. And that they should insult you with their Societies and Colleges for training scholars for the Ministry, when there is not one of them who dare come forward in an assembly, where he may be likely to meet a better scholar than himself?

QUES. 20. Do you believe every part and tittle of the Bible? If you do not, you are an unbeliever yourself: "whosoever shall offend in one point is guilty of the whole." James ii. 10. “He that doubteth, is damned." Rom. xiv. 23.

QUES. 21. Do you find those who believe the Bible, much better men than those who do not un 443, 43!

QUES. 22. Who are they who first believe the Christian religion-but children and persons of weak understanding; and who are they who reject it, but shrewd and clever men, yourself being judge?

QUES. 23. On which side does the suspicion of prejudice and interest lie strongest: the professors of Christianity in this country pocketing nearly £.10,000,000 a year, &c. &c. &c. and yet shrinking from the light of Free Discussion-the opponents of Christianity renouncing all interested motives, courting inquiry, and earnestly calling upon you to come and hear, and answer if you can the convincing arguments by which they prove its false hood?

QUES. 24. If Christianity be true, why are you afraid to trust it to public investigation?

COME, HEAR, AND JUDGE?

I am your assured Friend,

ROBERT TAYLOR, A. B. of St. John's, Cambridge, Orator of the Christian Evidence Society, and late.Minister of Midhurst.

Christian Evidence Society,

• London, Nov. 17, 1826, de 2986).

THE homo, or man, who finds repugnance in a word that has a mere negative meaning, has something very repugnant in his state of mind that wants correction. Atheism is a negative of an unproved hypothesis and just repugnancy is only applicable to

hypothesis that produces nothing but mischief from the want of proof. Let there be proof, and there will be no dissent. In no instance, among the jarring dispositions of mankind, has dissent and proof been associated. All our disputes are about undefined and unintelligible words, and not about things that admit of definition and proof. The "pride, vain glory, and affectation to be thought more wise and penetrating than others," lies not with the negative side of an unproved and unproveable hypothesis; but with the affirmative." A Theist makes certain statements about a phantom which he calls God: an Atheist humbly and wisely says, I cannot be so affected as to boast of knowledge where I have it not; I cannot assent to your conclusions, because you confess them to be beyond such evidences as can be brought to human senses. My conclusion has no pride in it, except it be the pride of truth and honesty, a determination not to be deceived. Your's is the pride of inventing a cause for all the phenomena that surround us, for which you cannot otherwise account. You are not satisfied to share my humility and confess your ignorance of the cause or foundation of those phenomena, your dogma expresses that you will make a God that shall cloak your ignorance, encourage your idleness and want of research, and be called the maker of all things; a sort of factotum, in which you may enwrap yourself and say, "Here will I rest, whether right or wrong. I say, not knowing, I will enquire; I will ask the Theist, WHAT IS GOD? You answer,. "How dare you to disturb my reverie, my mental repose, by asking a question that cannot be answered, by carrying your enquiries beyond the customs of mankind." I reply, that your revery and mental repose constitute stupidity. The human mind is adapted for constant enquiry and should rest no where in doubt. And how dare you to impose a deception upon me and others who wish not to cease from enquiry? Could you answer the question, WHAT IS GOD? you would rush forth to do it triumphantly; we should have had no nonsense about necessitous contingency or a contingent necessity. If you look again you may discover that your contingent existence is involved in your necessary existence. That which doth exist, doth exist necessarily; for necessity expresses nothing more than the consequent of causes. Where there is a cause there is a con

sequent.

Your mere play upon abstruse words proves nothing. Go to, and examine the things about you, if you would prove any thing about deity, and not rest on words which you cannot define and which another person cannot understand. It is not enough to tell us that we are surrounded by phenomena and that therefore there is a greater phenomenon as the cause; the point at which we pronounce the existence of phenomena should be the point for our humility to commence, the point at which we should express our ignorance and not our arrogance and dogmatism, in saying

that there is a God and that he has done this, that and the other thing.

When Homo says, "wherever the disbelief of the being of a God gains the ascendancy in the mind, the foundation of morals is swept aside;" he says, in effect, that an unproved hypothesis is the foundation of morals, in effect, that morals are founded on a dogmatical lie! Not so, Homo. Morals are founded in recipro cal interests, in social relations, they have a higher origin, a better foundation, than a belief in a God; they are founded in our gain, interest, or self-love.

The question WHAT IS GOD? must have better answers than this from Homo, before an enquiring mind can be satisfied. I confess that his logic is Sanscrit to me. I cannot understand what he would convey.

R. C.

NOTE WRITTEN IN DORCHESTER GAOL, AS A FINISH TO THE CORRESPONDENCE WITH J, E. C.

THE effects of the motions of matter are an insatiable variety of identities, each so unlike the other, that it is scarcely possible to find two identities without a distinguishing mark in each; whilst some approach so near to a likeness, that it is difficult to distinguish them; yet close observation yields distinction. It is of those identities that we can alone speak; that which we call the whole of matter, or the universe, is a mere phrase to cover our ignorance, to say that beyond a certain point we are ignorant. We must of necessity remain ignorant of the peculiar cause of the milky way, of the various nebule, and of other planetary phenomena, too remote from our view for correct conclusions as to cause and properties. But the continued sameness of these phenomena argues fixed laws; whilst the laws of will, design, intelligence, are ever variable, and variableness is the only distinguishing mark of intelligence. In what we can see of the identities about us, we see nothing but a regular sameness of process: though varieties be produced, there is no variableness in the producing power: its principles of action are uniform, and being uniform, evidently designless. Giving design to superhuman power, is but to harmonize it; for what can design do after it is possessed? What can human design accomplish, to lead us to attribute the capacity to superhuman beings? It accomplishes nothing more than the gratification of its own passions and fancies, without producing any immediate general good. There is nothing so momentous in the capacity of design, as to be worthy of being attributed to a superior and sublime idea of a God or Idol.

R. C.

SLR,

TO THE EDITOR OF THE REPUBLICAN."

I PERCEIVE with much regret, the account you have published of the death of Richard Hassell, whom, though I knew him not per sonally, I respect by reputation. Your eulogy of him is just and appropriate. And his having sprung from the lower ranks of life is an additional merit, and a proof, at the same time, that gift of genius does not descend by hereditary right to the sons of the titled, the wealthy, or even of the intelligent-but breaks out here and there in all ranks and conditions, among the children of the wise and of the foolish, by the sportive play of Nature in the production of infinite variety. So that the vile assertion of the late Parson Whitaker, that the clever children of all the poor round Oxford must be the gownsmen's bastards, is not true.

Seriously speaking, I have generally observed, that our greatest geniuses, as Ferguson, Burns, and others, have sprung from the working orders; and my explanation is this, that where they have natural genius, they have also the manifest advantage of a simple education, free from the prejudices of superstition, and unstained by that love of wealth, and the unbridled cupidity which makes the sons of the higher orders barter their independence and the steady and unprejudiced pursuit of truth, for the loaves and fishes offered by Superstition, and only to be obtained by a mean subserviency to popular prejudices, and an attachment to fanatical institutions. I suggest to your readers who have leisure, to form a Calendar of Genius for every day in the year, in which each day should be dedicated to some antagonist of Superstition, or to some distinguished friend of Humanity, with short notices of their lives and origin, not omitting due mention of the martyrs to the cause of Liberty, who have undergone fine, imprisonment, and other ill usage.

Nov. 19, 1826.

Your's, &c.

-PHILO.

WILLIAM ALLEN IN ANSWER TO RICHARD CARLILE, IN ANSWER TO A LATE PAMPHLET:

SIR,

I SHOULD be strongly tempted to accept your challenge, did I not feel, that to enter into a discussion with you were to degrade my understanding, by the mere attempt to reason with one who is ignorant of the first principles of sound logic. If there were a Deity in existence, and if it were possible to prove it, could it be