Читать книгу An Appeal to the People in Behalf of Their Rights as Authorized Interpreters of the Bible - Catharine Esther Beecher - Страница 49

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All the business of life rests on a belief of this truth. Our confidence that the sun will rise, the seasons return, the ocean and rivers flow, the mountains remain; and in thousands of other things that regulate our plans and conduct, all depends on this implanted belief that things will continue according to our past experience till there is evidence of a change. A man who acted as if he disbelieved this principle would be regarded as having “lost his reason.”

When, therefore, we have gained the idea that the Creator is an intelligent mind, we necessarily believe that his mind is such as we have ever known in past experience, that is, a mind like our own, endowed with reason, intellect, susceptibilities and will. We can not conceive of any other kind of mind, because we [pg 050] have never had any experience or knowledge of any other kind.

The only respect in which we can conceive of the Creator as differing from our own minds is in the extent of those natural faculties which are exhibited in his works.

Thus by the use of the principles of common sense we have gained the positions that there is a Being who is the Author of all finite existences, whose mind is like our own in natural faculties, while in the extent of these faculties, as exhibited in his works, he is far beyond our conceptions.