Is it, for instance, the experience of the mass
of men, as men, that the "fleshly mind is death, but the spiritual mind
is life and peace"? Is not rather the world at large habitually putting
money-making, position-making, and the care of the things of the body,
of time, and of sense, in the first place; and is not the moral law
perpetually warning us that the fashion of the world passes away, and
that what seems gold is in reality tinsel? As far as the condemnation
that conscience passes on the broad evils which affect society--"thou
shalt not steal," "thou shalt not lie," or so forth--no doubt it is
supported by the transmitted sense of inconvenience; but who has told it
of the evil of things that do not affect our social state? and who has
changed the inconvenient, the painful, into the _wrong_? It is one thing
to instinctively avoid a theft or a falsehood, even if the first origin
of such instinct were the fear of consequences or the love of
approbation; it is quite another--the inward condemnation of something
which "the deceitfulness of sin" is able to excuse, and which the world
at large would regard as permissible or at least venial. Even if
inherited use has its full play, there is still a something wanted
before the one can be got into (or out of) the other. Why, again, are
savages prone to imagine natural phenomena to be caused or actuated by
"spirits"? Surely it is because there _is_ consciously a spirit in man,
and a Higher Power, even God, outside, who exists, though man in his
ignorance has many false ideas regarding Him.
Pages:
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118