Excerpt from The Presbyterian Quarterly, Vol. 4: January-April-July-October, 1890 His various essays and speeches - especially his recent large essay in the North American Review - appear to build his oppo sition to Christianity upon four grounds: One is composed of specific objections to points in Bible history and precept, which, he intimates, intuitively appear to himimmoral. Another is his as sertion of moral irresponsibility for Opinions even upon ethical subjects. This he claims for himself, and of course for everybody else, as the only adequate basis for freedom of thought, which we all regard as an inalienable right. A third ground is his total de nial of all punitive aspect and quality in the evil consequences Of free human actions. He absolutely denies the element of re wards and punishments in the experienced course of human exist ence. He says that the evils which follow the mistakes of our free agency are nothing but natural consequences, following from the natural laws of the universe, which are necessary and invaria ble; so that these experiences give no evidence whatever 'of a moral providence over men. His fourth and chief ground is the old cavil, how God, if there were a God, could even permissively ordain natural and moral evil in his kingdom. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.