"It can do truth no service to blink the fact, known to all who have the
most ordinary Acquaintance with literary history, that a large portion,
of the noblest and most valuable moral teaching has been the work, not
only of men who did not know, but of men who knew and rejected, the
Christian faith."--J. S. Mill.
"The history of Christ is contained in records which exhibit
contradictions that cannot be reconciled, imperfections that would
greatly detract from even admitted human compositions, and erroneous
principles of morality that would hardly have found a place in the most
incomplete system of the philosophers of Greece and Rome."--Rev. Dr.
Giles.
"That any human creature, be he peer or peasant, man or woman, pauper or
millionaire, should be visited with pains and penalties because of
his or her speculative opinion on a subject whereon but few even of
professing Christians are agreed, is a bitter satire on our vaunted
liberty. My Lords, it is the spirit which lighted the martyr-fires of
Smithfield, and led to the stake gallant and noble souls such as Bruno.
It is a noble; company you are placing me in, my Lords, and I shall
thank you for it."--_Ibid_.
"Who shall number the patient and earnest seekers after truth, from the
days of Galileo until now, whose lives have been embittered, and their
good name blasted, by the mistaken zeal of Bibliolators? Who shall count
the host of weaker men whose sense of truth has been destroyed in the
effort to harmonize impossibilities--whose life has been wasted in the
attempt to force the generous new wine of Science into the old bottles
of Judaism, compelled by the outcry of the same strong party." _Prof.
Huxley_.
"Thou shalt not kill, even the smallest creature.
"Thou shalt not appropriate to thyself what belongs to another.
"Thou shah not infringe the laws of chastity.
"Thou shalt not lie.
"Thou Shalt not calumniate.
"Thou shalt not speak of injuries.
"Thou shalt not excite quarrels, by repeating the words of others.
"Thou shalt not hate."
--_Moral Precepts from Buddhistic Sacred Books._
"I discern in matter * * the promise and potency of all forms and
qualities of life."--_Tyndall_
"A poor man, in our day, has many gods foisted on him; and big voices
bid him 'Worship or be --------' in a menacing and confusing manner.
What shall he do? By far the greater part of said gods, current in the
public, whether canonized by Pope or Populas, are mere dumb asses and
beautiful prize-oxen--nay, some of them, who have articulate faculty,
are devils instead of Gods. A poor man that would save his soul alive is
reduced to the sad necessity of _sharply trying his gods_ whether they
are divine or not, which is a terrible pass for mankind, and lays an
awful problem upon each man."--_Tomas Carlyle_
"These Gospels, so important to the Church, have not come to us in one
undisputed form. We have no authorised copy of them in their original
language, so that we may know in what precise words they were originally
written. The authorities from which we derive their sacred text are
various ancient copies, written by hand on parchment. Of the Gospels
there are more than five hundred of these manuscripts of various ages,
from the fourth century after Christ to the fifteenth, when printing
superseded manual writing for publication of books. Of these five
hundred and more, _no two_ are in all points alike: probably in no two
of the more ancient can _even a few consecutive verses_ be found
in which all the words agree."--_Dean Alford, "How to Study the New
Testament_." "I find Armenian Christians who say that it is a sin to eat
a hare; Greeks who affirm that the Holy Ghost does not proceed from
the Son; Nestorians who deny that Mary is the mother of God: Latins
who boast that in the extreme West the Christians of Europe think quite
contrary to those of Asia and Africa. I know that ten or twelve sects
in Europe anathematise each other; the Musselmen disdain the Christians,
whom they nevertheless tolerate; the Jews hold in equal execration the
Christians and Muselmen; the Fire-worshippers despise them all; the
remnant of the Sabeans will not eat with either of the Other sects;
and the Brahmin cannot suffer either Salbeans, or Fire-Worshippers, or
Christians, or Musselmen, or Jews. I have a hundred times wished that
Jesus Christ, in coming to be incarnated in Judea, had united all the
sects under his laws. I have asked myself why, being God, he did not use
the rights of his divinity; why, in coming to deliver us from sin, he
has left us in sin; why, in coming to enlighten all men, he has left
almost all men in darkness. I know I am nothing; I know that from the
depth of my nothingness I have no right to interrogate the Being of
Beings; but I may, like Job, raise a voice of respectful sorrow from the
bosom of my misery."--_Voltaire_.