This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 edition. Excerpt: ... mystification of nature under the guise of interpretation. 8. The Christian hope. The Christians were poor; they were hungry; they suffered from many physical ailments; but they felt that they were great. They had a moral value. They possessed a capacity for a higher life. They had learned self ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 edition. Excerpt: ... mystification of nature under the guise of interpretation. 8. The Christian hope. The Christians were poor; they were hungry; they suffered from many physical ailments; but they felt that they were great. They had a moral value. They possessed a capacity for a higher life. They had learned self-respect. This self-respect, however, was but imperfectly wrought. The primary influence in awakening the sense of self-respect is love. In sexual love (as distinct from an unspiritual lust) the fascination essentially lies in the novel recognition of one's self as an object of admiration and value. Till love appears, we may feel a good conceit of ourselves, and preen our little spirits with self-complacence; but there is no assurance, no fine elation. When one whom we esteem discovers love for us, we become consciously registered among the things that count for worth and even preciousness. Love is the annunciation, the testimony, the seal. The soul that is loved--though it be but the soul of a day-labourer amid the drains, or a flower-girl in the highway--assumes a new animation and sees its own joy and vigour reflected in the world around; it seizes affinities; it unites itself with the stream of life; it sympathises. So also with friendship of the less ardent type. The friendship is a ray of light which makes us aware of some ethical merit in ourselves hitherto unknown or unverified. A friend broadens the area of our better nature, or, rather, reveals an area which was once hidden. Now, it was this kind of self-respect which asserted itself in the hearts of the first Christians when they imagined that Jesus loved them. They stepped on to a new plane; they breathed a sweeter air; they beheld the world as from a high mountain; they walked with...
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Add this copy of The Religion of the First Christians to cart. $63.29, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2016 by Palala Press.
