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. 1892 Excerpt: ...unselfishness can discover. Alas! is this the sure type of character in every Christian? Do we always find this, where we find belief in Christ's Church? Is it not too possible for strong belief itself to harden our sensibilities; to give us a crushing self-confidence, a self-assertive intolerance, from which tender ...
Read More
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. 1892 Excerpt: ...unselfishness can discover. Alas! is this the sure type of character in every Christian? Do we always find this, where we find belief in Christ's Church? Is it not too possible for strong belief itself to harden our sensibilities; to give us a crushing self-confidence, a self-assertive intolerance, from which tender souls shrink as if wounded? Cannot our very faith sometimes induce us to take an acute interest in ourselves; to be greatly occupied with its story, its interests, its peculiarities, until we pride ourselves on just that in it which is most personal to us and therefore least valuable--until we cannot credit or endure other roads by which belief has been reached, nor appreciate the infinite and exquisite diversity of characters which are all, by manifold graces, drawn together into the family of God, wherein there should be "neither Jew nor Greek, neither barbarian nor Scythian, neither male nor female "? Let us ask ourselves whether we have ever begun the education of the Christian family; whether our faith in Christ has yet taught us, at all, to give increased worth to the lives about us; whether it has taken our attention off ourselves, and turned it upon the needs and hopes of others; whether it has made other people's lives more interesting to us; whether we have won a new patience and courtesy, a new respect for the weak, the uninteresting, the stupid, the wearisome, the depressed; whether it has bred in us the desire to honour all, to love the brotherhood--not those whom we select and like, but the whole Christian brotherhood as such--to esteem others better than ourselves; to give place to others; to wait upon others' cares? Has faith enlarged our stock of sympathy, quickened our affectionateness, softened our hardness, purged o...
Read Less
