REMARKABLE RELIGIOUS ANECDOTES. EDITED BY RICHARD PIKE. To please one feeling heart, for one calm thoughtful hour, JESSE. LONDON: HAMILTON, ADAMS & CO., 32, PATERNOSTER ROW; DERBY: WILKINS AND ELLIS, 12, ST. Peter's street. 1882. 141. 2. 303. PREFACE. SIR 'IR WALTER SCOTT somewhere remarks:-" There is a curiosity implanted in our nature which receives much gratification from prying into the actions, feelings, and sentiments of our fellow-creatures." Hugh Latimer, one of the noblest preachers of any age, was thoroughly alive to this curiosity, and gratified his hearers by introducing many a racy anecdote into his sermons by way of illustration. Those speakers are generally the most interesting who deal in anecdotal illustrations. Anecdotes appropriately introduced serve to illustrate and enforce a subject, and lead to its being remembered in after years, while the lucubrations of the speaker, who deals in abstract propositions, are soon forgotten. Of this collection of Anecdotes I may say with an old writer: "I am but a gatherer and a disposer of other men's stuff." Most of them I leave to tell their own tale without note or comment. It is believed that rarely, if ever, so many Remarkable Religious Anecdotes have been crowded into so small and inexpensive a volume. Some of them may prove useful to public speakers in illustrating important themes; while for the hour of relaxation at home or abroad, by the fireside or the railway journey, they may profitably instruct and divert the mind from abstruser subjects or petty annoyances. Nottingham, 1882. R. P. REMARKABLE RELIGIOUS ANECDOTES. SPEED.-SIR ISAAC NEWTON AND VOLTAIRE. IN a tract, by the Rev. Mr. Craig, Vicar of Leamington, entitled "Astral Wonders," is to be found the following remarkable passage:-"Let me narrate to you an anecdote concerning Sir Isaac Newton and Voltaire. Sir Isaac wrote a book on the Prophet Daniel, and another on the Revelations; and he said, in order to fulfil certain prophecies before a certain date was terminated, namely, 1260 years, there would be a certain mode of travelling of which the men in his time had no conception; nay, that the knowledge of mankind would be so increased that they would be able to travel at the rate of fifty miles an hour. Voltaire, who did not believe in the Holy Scriptures, got hold of this, and said: Now look at that mighty mind of Newton, who discovered Gravity, and told us such marvels for us all to admire. When he became an old man, and got into his dotage, he began to study that Book called the Bible; and it appears that, in order to credit its fabulous nonsense, we must believe that mankind's knowledge will be so increased that we shall be able to travel fifty miles an hour. The poor dotard!' exclaimed the philosophic infidel Voltaire, in the self-complacency of his pity." But who is the dotard now? |