Pebbles from the Brook, by
George Bethune English
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Title: Five Pebbles from the Brook
Author: George Bethune English
Release Date: November 20, 2006 [EBook #19879]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FIVE
PEBBLES FROM THE BROOK ***
Produced by Charles Klingman
FIVE PEBBLES
From
THE BROOK.
A Reply
TO
"A DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY"
WRITTEN BY
EDWARD EVERETT,
GREEK PROFESSOR OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY IN ANSWER
TO "THE GROUNDS OF CHRISTIANITY EXAMINED BY
COMPARING THE NEW TESTAMENT WITH THE OLD"
BY GEORGE BETHUNE ENGLISH.
"Should a wise man utter vain knowledge, and fill his belly with the
east wind?" "Should he reason with unprofitable talk? or with speeches
wherewith he can do no good?--Thou chooseth[fn1] the tongue of the
crafty. Thy own mouth condemneth thee, and not I: yea, thine own lips
testify against thee." "Behold I will make thee a new sharp threshing
instrument having teeth."
PHILADELPHIA:
PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR.
1824.
[PG Editor's Note: Many printer's errors in this text have been retained
as found in the original--in particular the will be found a large number
of mismatched and wrongspace quotation marks.]
ADVERTISEMENT.
WHEN I left America, I had no intention of giving Mr. Everett's book a
formal answer: but having learned since my arrival in the Old World,
that: the controversy in which I had engaged myself had attracted some
attention, and had been reviewed by a distinguished member of a
German university, my hopes of being serviceable to the cause of truth
and philanthrophy are revived, and I have therefore determined to give
a reply to Mr. Everett's publication.
In this Work, as in my prior writings, I have taken for granted the
Divine Authority of the Old Testament, and I have argued upon the
principle that every book, claiming to be considered as a Divine
revelation and building itself upon the Old Testament as upon a
foundation, must agree with it, otherwise the superstructure cannot
stand. The New Testament, the Talmud, and the Koran are all placed by
their authors upon the Law and the Prophets, as an edifice is upon its
foundation; and if it be true that any or all of them be found to be
irreconcileable with the primitive Revelation to which they all refer
themselves, the question as to their Divine Authority is decided against
them, most obviously and completely.
This work was written in Egypt and forwarded to the U. States, while I
was preparing to accompany Ismael Pacha to the conquest of Ethiopia;
an expedition in which I expected to perish, and therefore felt it to be
my duty to leave behind me, something from which my countrymen
might learn what were my real sentiments upon a most important and
interesting subject; and as I hoped would learn too, how grossly they
had been deluded into building their faith and hope upon a
demonstrated error.
On my arrival from Egypt I found that the MS. had not been published,
and I was advised by several, of my friends to abandon the struggle and
to imitate their example; in submitting to the despotism of popular
opinion, which, they said, it was imprudent to oppose. I was so far
influenced by these representations-- extraordinary indeed in a country
which boasts that here freedom of opinion and of speech is established
by law--that I intended to confine myself to sending the MS. to Mr.
Everett; in the belief that when he should have the weakness of his
arguments in behalf of what he defended and the injustice of his
aspersions upon me, fairly and evidently laid before him, that he would
make me at least a private apology. He chose to preserve a sullen
silence, probably believing that he is so securely seated in the saddle
which his brethren have girthed upon the back of "a strong ass" that;
there is no danger that the animal will give him a fall.
Not a little moved at this, I determined to do my myself justice, and to
publish the pages following.
This book is not the work of an Infidel. I am not an infidel; what I have
learned and seen in Europe, Asia and Africa, while it has confirmed my
reasons for rejecting the New Testament, has rooted in my mind the
conviction that the ancient Bible does contain a revelation from the
God of Nature, as firmly as my belief in the first proposition of Euclid.
The whole analogy of Nature,
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