Mill's admissions, which, taken
together, almost amount to a confession of faith in the Christian
system, and which leave upon the mind the impression that this painful
groping of an earnest inquirer after the truth, and the closer
approximation he continually made to Christian dogma, would have
resulted, had he lived longer, in his adoption of that faith as
offering the hypothesis that best explains the perplexing phenomena of
the moral world.
"Experience," he says, "has abated the ardent hopes once entertained
of the regeneration of the human race by merely negative doctrine, by
the destruction of superstition." Here is a declaration of the need of
a system of positive truth.
Again, of the Christian revelation he says: "The sender of the alleged
message is not a sheer invention: there are grounds independent of the
message itself for belief in His reality.... It is moreover much to
the purpose to take notice that the very imperfection of the evidences
which natural theology can produce of the divine attributes removes
some of the chief stumbling-blocks to the belief of revelation.
Pages:
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351