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. 1849 edition. Excerpt: ...of thinkers, in proportion to their numbers, than in any ten others put together. The real difference is not in the feeling with which we regard the fact of guilt, but in the point of view from which we regard it. The point of the Orthodox doctrine on the subject is, not that mankind is generally wicked and ...
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. 1849 edition. Excerpt: ...of thinkers, in proportion to their numbers, than in any ten others put together. The real difference is not in the feeling with which we regard the fact of guilt, but in the point of view from which we regard it. The point of the Orthodox doctrine on the subject is, not that mankind is generally wicked and corrupt, but that it is altogether and absolutely so, and cannot, in the nature of things, except by miracle, be otherwise. This is the position which its advocates have chosen. They see the subject from the point of view of theological opinion, not from that of the natural reason and conscience; the guilt they speak of is not men's actual or apparent guilt, but their theological or constructive guilt. By the very terms of the theory, our natural sentiments of right and wrong cannot be trusted. In fact, where all is on one dead level of sin, there can be no real difference of right and wrong. The most amiable feeling, the most heroic self-devotion, the purest love of God, and man, and truth, or what seems so in the eye of reason and conscience, is just as likely to be deceitful, corrupt, and hateful in the eye of God, as the most atrocious crime. There is no room left for subordinate moral distinctions. All are lost and swallowed up in the one gulf of original depravity. AH differences of faithful and treacherous, kind and cruel, generous and malignant, are melted down in that one stern judgment, pronounced without reservation or abatement on the entire human race, --that " the wickedness of man is great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart is only evil continually." To every age, to every nation, to every man, is applied without qualification that terrible description of the wickedness of the world before the...
Read Less
