(1896.)
I. Influence of Birth in determining Religious Belief--Scotch, Irish,
English, and Americans Inherit their Faith--Religions of Nations
not Suddenly Changed--People who Knew--What they were Certain
About--Revivals--Character of Sermons Preached--Effect of Conversion--A
Vermont Farmer for whom Perdition had no Terrors--The Man and his
Dog--Backsliding and Re-birth--Ministers who were Sincere--A Free Will
Baptist on the Rich Man and Lazarus--II. The Orthodox God--The
Two Dispensations--The Infinite Horror--III. Religious Books--The
Commentators--Paley's Watch Argument--Milton, Young, and Pollok--IV.
Studying Astronomy--Geology--Denial and Evasion by the Clergy--V. The
Poems of Robert Burns--Byron, Shelley, Keats, and Shakespeare--VI.
Volney, Gibbon, and Thomas Paine--Voltaire's Services to Liberty--Pagans
Compared with Patriarchs--VII. Other Gods and Other Religions--Dogmas,
Myths, and Symbols of Christianity Older than our Era--VIII. The Men
of Science, Humboldt, Darwin, Spencer, Huxley, Haeckel--IX. Matter and
Force Indestructible and Uncreatable--The Theory of Design--X. God an
Impossible Being--The Panorama of the Past--XI. Free from Sanctified
Mistakes and Holy Lies.