To be near unto God - pagina 347

Many are atheists indifference. They care for nothing. Others are atheists, because in their career of sinful pleasure the}^ will not brook trouble from their consciences. Others again are atheists, because in their own wisdom they are too proud to bow before God. But each of these three groups maintains discreet silence about God, rather than that from enmity it would seriously oppose the faith. They live "without God in the world" but thejare no fanatics, who strive to banish God from the world. When it comes to this, spiritual infatdangerous fofm of atheism.

from sheer

uation reaches its highest degree, and every prospect of recovery is cut off. That this atheistic fanaticism obtains public hearing from time to time, and that tracts, bearing the most shameful titles^ are broadcast through the land, to slander faith in God and to make it appear ridiculous, is most dangerous for the life of a nation. For it betrays the presence of a poison in national life that is bound to work harm and to break national elasticity. Even among the heathen, slander of the gods was made punishable; and almost every nation that was great at first and then went down, shows in history this sad process, that it began with wealth that wealth produced moral decay; that moral decay led to religious indifference; that then in more cultivated circles people lived "without God in the world;" and that at length fanaticism broke out against all religion, whereby at last the people became wholly degenerate and were overtaken by ;

disgraceful ruin. In the days of St. Paul like conditions of ungodliness prevailed in Ephesus, and of the con343

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