Controversial letters

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A. Strahan, 1865

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Page 311 - YES! in the sea of life enisled, With echoing straits between us thrown, Dotting the shoreless watery wild, We mortal millions live alone. The islands feel the enclasping flow, And then their endless bounds they know. But when the moon their hollows lights, And they are swept by balms of spring, And in their glens, on starry nights, The nightingales divinely sing; And lovely notes, from shore to shore, Across the sounds and channels pour — Oh!
Page 125 - I have argued upon the principles of the Fatalists, which I do not believe : and have omitted a thing of the utmost importance which I do believe, the moral fitness and unfitness of actions, prior to all will whatever; which I apprehend as certainly to determine the Divine conduct, as speculative truth and falsehood necessarily determine the Divine judgment.
Page 365 - tis Death itself there dies. EPITAPH. STOP, Christian Passer-by — Stop, child of God, And read with gentle breast. Beneath this sod A poet lies, or that which once seem'd he — O lift one thought in prayer for STC ; That he who many a year with toil of breath Found death in life, may here find life in death ! Mercy for praise — to be forgiven for fame He ask'd, and hoped, through Christ. Do thou the same ! AN ODE TO THE RAIN.
Page 290 - So monstrous a principle is far more dangerous than any single interference with liberty; there is no violation of liberty which it would not justify; it acknowledges no right to any freedom whatever, except perhaps to that of holding opinions in secret, without ever disclosing them: for, the moment an opinion which I consider noxious passes any one's lips, it invades all the "social rights" attributed to me by the Alliance.
Page 154 - ... it were better for sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions who are upon it to die of starvation in extremest agony, as far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say, should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one wilful untruth, though it harmed no one, or steal one poor farthing without excuse.
Page 366 - It is acknowledged on all hands, says that learned prelate, that the authority, either of the Scripture or of tradition, is founded merely on the testimony of the Apostles, who were eyewitnesses to those miracles of our Saviour, by which he proved his divine mission. Our evidence, then, for the truth of the Christian religion, is less than the evidence for the truth of our senses; because, even in the first authors of our religion, it was no greater ; and it is evident it must diminish in passing...
Page 11 - All honour to those who can abnegate for themselves the personal enjoyment of life, when by such renunciation they contribute worthily to increase the amount of happiness in the world ; but he who does it, or professes to do it, for any other purpose, is no more deserving of admiration than the ascetic mounted on his pillar. He may be an inspiriting proof of what men can do, but assuredly not an example of what they should.
Page 332 - As came on you last night — it is our will That thus enchains us to permitted ill — We might be otherwise — we might be all We dream of happy, high, majestical. Where is the love, beauty and truth we seek But in our mind ? and if we were not weak Should we be less in deed than in desire?" " Aye, if we were not weak — and we aspire How vainly to be strong !" said Maddalo : " You talk Utopia."
Page 333 - All rose to do the task He set to each, Who shaped us to his ends and not our own ; The million rose to learn, and one to teach What none yet ever knew or can be known.
Page 333 - ... in this peculiar case, are evidently of far wider application; yet a limit is everywhere set to them by the necessities of life, which continually require, not indeed that we should resign our freedom, but that we should consent to this and the other limitation of it. The principle, however, which demands uncontrolled freedom of action in all that concerns only the agents themselves, requires that those who have become bound to one another, in things which concern no third party, should be able...

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