MATERIALISM, OR A SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY AND NATURAL RELIGION. BY Badger GILES B. STEBBINS, DETROIT, MICHIGAN. EDITOR AND COMPILER OF “CHAPTERS FROM THE BIBLE OF THE AGES," "All that we are is the result of what we have thought; it is founded "God is the original life and force of all things."- Plato. "Physiology reduces man to a jelly; Psychology lifts him to immortality." "Sweet souls around us watch us still; Press nearer to our side; Into our thoughts, into our prayers, With gentle helpings glide." Harriet Beecher Stowe. BOSTON: COLBY AND RICH, PUBLISHERS, 9 MONTGOMERY PLACE. 1880. SEP 291899 (771) COPYRIGHT, 1880, BY GILES B. STEBBINS. Stereotyped at the Boston Stereotype Foundry, DECAY OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY: THE WHAT NEXT? "The monstrous blasphemy of creeds Who tempts man sorely through his needs, The pure fresh impulse of to-day, Which thrills within the human heart, As time-worn errors pass away, que. failings! Fresh life and vigor shall impart."— Lizzie Doten. HE power and sway of dogmatic theology are on the decline. Its assumptions, that creeds and books are authority, more sacred than the truths of the soul and of Nature, that belief in dogmas is the only means of salvation, and that there can be no religious life outside its narrow limits, are to die as the soul asserts itself, and as rational knowledge increases. By slow but sure degrees it fails and weakens. It grows spasmodic in action, rushes into “revivals of religion," goes into a chill after the revival fever is over, halts in doubt yet weakens continually. Men and women hunger for some bread of life it cannot give ; crushed and darkened minds seek liberty and light; the thoughts of men grow and broaden beyond dogmas, Pagan or Christian. The demand for religious liberty is quick 3 |