To be near unto God - pagina 346

so the}' said, and their heart still went out after the unknown Infinite. Now another step is taken. Even the appearance of godliness can be laid aside. Atheists have that among cultivated discovered especially classes they are represented by more people than they had dared to surmise. They observe that when they confess their denial of God, public opinion takes it calmly, and at times hails it as an evidence of honesty. Even among the faithful we have become so accustomed to the growing numbers of those who deny God that we are scarcely aware of the trembling which it occasioned in better days. This is significant. When a child for the first time hears his father or mother evilly spoken of, he resents it. But when in the course of ten years he has grown accustomed to such talk, and can listen to it calmlj^, he has suffered moral loss. This applies to a nation with respect to its sovereign. When violation of royal dignity first But when begins, indignation will be general. this violation is continued, and royal defects form the topic of daily public talk, people cease to be affected by it. Respect for what is high becomes outworn. And in the same waj'- a people has lost something of the gold of its wings, when in its best circles it has become so accustomed to the language of atheism, that it raises no more Especially along this line protest among them. evil communications corrupt good manners. Here a poison works unobservedly that extinguishes higher aspirations and unnerves the elasticity of confession.

"Without God

in the world" 342

is

not the most

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