Identifier: worldsparliament01barr (find matches)
Title: The World's Parliament of Religions : an illustrated and popular story of the World's First Parliament of Religions, held in Chicago in connection with the Columbian exposition of 1893
Year: 1893 (1890s)
Authors: Barrows, John Henry, 1847-1902
Subjects: World's Parliament of Religions, Chicago, 1893 Religions
Publisher: Chicago : Parliament Pub. Co.
Contributing Library: Princeton Theological Seminary Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
y checking two powerful influenceswhich, however corrective and within limits useful, were pressing undulyupon faith and even threatening its existence—the infidelity of Voltaire andthe naturalism of Rousseau. Goethe set his hard German sense and loftierinspiration against these poisoning and undermining influences, insistingon reverence, and asserting a doctrine of nature that embraced will andspirit and made them the sources of conduct. Goethe also rendered Christianity an inestimable service in destroyingthe mediseval conception of the world as a piece of mechanism, and of Godas an external world-architect,—conceptions that had come in through theLatin theology, or rather had been fostered by it. Both Augustine and Cal-vin held the Divine Immanence, but it did not shut out a practical external-ism in their systems. It may be truly said of Goethe that he introduced themodern spirit into theology—chiefly, however, through protests and denials. c%o I-:XT. n> WC > O r> C
Text Appearing After Image:
686 PARLIAMENT PAPERS: SIXTH DAY. No ! such a God my worship may not win,Who lets the world about his finger spin,A thing extern; my God must rule within,And whom I own for Father, God, Creator,Hold nature in himself, himself in nature;And in his kindly arms embraced, the wholeDoth live and move by his pervading soul. In the transfer of thought from the conception of God as a purely tran-scendent maker and ruler of the universe to such a conception as that con-tained in these lines—a God also immanent and acting from within, we havethe starting-point of the theology which is now prevailing, and prevailingbecause it accords with other knowledge. I have spoken at length of Goethe, not because he is an interpreter ofChristianity in literature, but because he illustrates the relation to Chris-tianity of certain authors who are usually counted as doubtful, or as on thewrong side of faith. The Christian value of an author is not to be deter-mined by the fullness of his Christian assertion

Note About Images