This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1877 edition. Excerpt: ... nature were reproduced in the mysteries of Isis or of Ceres. Moreover, Christianity, recognising the liberty and power of God, who is a Spirit, repudiates all confidence in the secret forces of nature, and is altogether opposed to magic and its deceptive arts. The complicated ritual of the purely national ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1877 edition. Excerpt: ... nature were reproduced in the mysteries of Isis or of Ceres. Moreover, Christianity, recognising the liberty and power of God, who is a Spirit, repudiates all confidence in the secret forces of nature, and is altogether opposed to magic and its deceptive arts. The complicated ritual of the purely national paganism of Rome, which makes religion a thing of minute observances, is no less contrary to Christianity, which seeks only the living and spiritual union of the soul with God. More nearly related to Judaism, which was the direct preparation for it, the Christian worship nevertheless differs from it in most essential features. It could not maintain the separative character of Judaism without belying itself. As the religion which proclaims a redemption no longer promised and typified, but accomplished, it cannot perpetuate institutions the object of which was to awaken and sustain in man the sense of his condemnation and separation from God. The system which brought into prominence the pollution of man's existence, by setting apart a holy place for worship, holy days, and a holy caste, must needs disappear when the Cross had wrought a full redemption for the race, and the great reconciliation was no longer a promise but a fact. Comprehensiveness is, then, an essential element of Christian worship. In its second function, as a figurative and typical system, " the shadow of good things to come," the Jewish worship of necessity becomes obsolete at the advent of Christianity. Redemption no longer needs to be prefigured in a symbolic ritual; it is an accomplished fact, a present reality, to be apprehended and grasped first by means of teaching, which occupies a large and important part in this dispensation of the Spirit, and then by the very act of...
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