The Stoics also granted a Divine Providence, but they maintained such a fatal necessity that they blunted the edge of all virtuous efforts and excused themselves in vicious conduct. Both Stoics and Epicureans doubted the immortality of the human spirit, and thereby opened the way to all manner of licentiousness.
I am persuaded that eternity alone will fully reveal the consequences of a denial of a future life and retribution; it is a physical leprosy which removes all the most powerful incentives to virtue and loosens up the soul to all manner of lustful gratifications.
A man once remarked: "I have lived four years an avowed infidel. I have boasted that I would live a good man and die an infidel. I have formed the acquaintance of all the leading infidels of my country, and I am now prepared to candidly confess that I do not believe any man can keep a good heart without the fear of God. Such is my observation and experience."
THE LATEST EVOLUTIONARY CONFLICT.
THEY FIRST WISH IT TO BE SO, THEN SOON, WITHOUT PROOF, THEY ASSERT THAT IT IS SO!
(From the Cincinnati Gazette, of June 26, 1880.)
"Prof. Huxley is assured that the doctrine of evolution, so far as the animal world is concerned, is no longer a speculation, but a statement of historical fact, taking its place along side of those accepted truths which must be taken into account by philosophers of all schools."
This statement was the summing up of an address delivered at the Royal Institution on the 19th of March. The address was specifically an account of "The Coming of Age of the Origin of Species"—it being nearly twenty-one years since Darwin's work bearing that name was first published.
The lecturer glanced at the general replacement of the catastrophic theory of geology by the uniformitarian hypothesis, claimed that many of the most important breaks in the line of the descent of plants and animals had been filled, noticed the great advance made in the science of embryology, and held that the amount of our knowledge respecting the mammalia of the Tertiary epoch had increased fifty-fold since Darwin's work appeared, and in some directions even approaches completeness. The lecture closed with these words: "Thus when, on the first of October next, 'The Origin of Species' comes of age, the promise of its youth will be amply fulfilled and we shall be prepared to congratulate the venerated author of the book, not only that the greatness of his achievement and its enduring influence upon the progress of knowledge have won him a place beside Harvey, but, still more, that, like Harvey, he has lived long enough to outlast detraction and opposition, and to see the stone that the builders rejected become the head-stone of the corner."