'That is still the noblest, most sublime picture in the whole Bible, where the Christ is hanging on the Cross, and the tears and blood flow trickling down, and the last words heard from His lips are "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." That love and pity will for ever endure as the type and symbol of what is most Divine in the heart of man. Thank God! it has been repeated and repeated in the lives and deaths of millions besides the Christ of Calvary. But wherever found it still claims the admiration, and wins the homage of every human heart, and is the crowning glory of the human race.—C. VOYSEY, Religion for All Mankind, p. 105.
APPENDIX XXII
'Not only the Syrian superstition must be attacked, but also the belief in a personal God which engenders a slavish and oriental condition of the mind, and the belief in a posthumous reward which engenders a selfish and solitary condition of the heart. These beliefs are, therefore, injurious to human nature. They lower its dignity, they arrest its development, they isolate its affections. We shall not deny that many beautiful sentiments are often mingled with the faith in a personal Deity, and with the hopes of happiness in a future state; yet we maintain that, however refined they may appear, they are selfish at the core, and that if removed they will be replaced by sentiments of a nobler and purer kind.'—WINWOOD READE, Martyrdom of Man, p. 543.
APPENDIX XXIII
'There is a servile deference paid, even by Christians, to incompetent judges of Christianity. They abjectly look to men of the world, to scholars, to statesmen, for testimonies to the everlasting and self-evidencing verities of heaven! And if they can gather up, from the writings or speeches of these men, some patronising notices of religion, some incidental compliment to the civilising influence of the Bible, or to the aesthetic proprieties of worship, or to the moral sublimity of the character or gospel of Christ, they forthwith proclaim these tributes as lending some great confirmation to the Truth of GOD! So we persist in asking, not "Is it true? true to our souls?" or, "Has the Lord said it?" but, "What say the learned men, the influential men, the eloquent men?" Shame upon these time-serving concessions, as unmanly as they are fallacious. Go back to the hovels, rather, and take the witnessing of the illiterate souls whose hearts, waiting there in poverty or pain, or under the shadow of some great affliction, the Lord Himself hath opened.'—F. D. HUNTINGDON, Christian Believing and Living.