The Fair Haven

The Fair Haven

The occasion of a Second Edition of The Fair Haven enables me to thank the public and my critics for the favourable reception which has been accorded to the First Edition. I had feared that the freedom with which I had exposed certain untenable positions taken by Defenders of Christianity might have given offence to some reviewers, but no complaint has reached me from any quarter on the score of my not having put the best possible case for the evidence in favour of the miraculous element in Christs teachingnor can I believe that I should have failed to hear of it, if my book had been open to exception on this ground. An apology is perhaps due for the adoption of a pseudonym, and even more so for the creation of two such characters as John Pickard Owen and his brother. Why could I not, it may be asked, have said all that I had to say in my own proper person? Are there not real ills of life enough already? Is there not a lo here! from this school with its gushing earnestness, it distinctions without differences, its gnat strainings and camel swallowings, its pretence of grappling with a question while resolutely bent upon shirking it, its dust throwing and mystification, its concealment of its own ineffable insincerity under an air of ineffable candour? Is there not a lo there! from that other school with its bituminous atmosphere of exclusiveness and self-laudatory dilettanteism? Is there not enough actual exposition of boredom come over us from many quarters without drawing for new bores upon the imagination? It is true I gave a single drop of comfort. John Pickard Owen was dead. But his having ceased to exist (to use the impious phraseology of the present day) did not cancel the fact of his having once existed. That he should have ever been born gave proof of potentialities in Nature which could not be regarded lightly. What hybrids might not be in store for us next? Moreover, though John Pickard was dead, William Bickersteth was still living, and might at any moment rekindle his burning and shining lamp of persistent self-satisfaction. Even though the Owens had actually existed, should not their existence have been ignored as a disgrace to Nature? Who then could be justified in creating them when they did not exist? ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 6092
Author: Butler, Samuel
Release Date: Jul 1, 2004
Format: eBook
Language: English