The Origin and Propagation of Sin; Being the Hulsean Lectures Delivered Before the University of Cambridge in 1901-1902

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: It would be easy to multiply similar quotations from various kinds of literature; though, to be fair, one should notice too the absence of such testimony where one might expect to find it: as, for instance, in the works of Shakespeare. The doctrine of original sin is perhaps alluded to by him occasionally, but seems never to be used as an explanation of the mixed nature of human character. One must admit, however, at the outset, without serious qualification, the truth of the words in which a recent theologian has estimated . the wide-prevailing hold of this doctrine on the general mind: it collects, as it descends to this modern era of the world, the suffrages of modern thought. But -lest this considerable unanimity amongst poets and men of the world, which it is impossible to gainsay, be taken to imply an overwhelming weight of Our life is a false nature?'tis not in The harmony of things, ?this hard decree, This ineradicable taint of sin, ... For a collection of similar passages see Mozley's Lecturet a Ml other Theol. Papert, pp. 157 ff. As evidence of the extremely important place in Christian doctrine assigned to original sin by many modern theologians, the following passage may be quoted: What may be called the starting point of Christian theology, the doctrine of hereditary guilt and sin, through the fall of Adam, and of the consequent entire and helpless corruption of our nature, is entirely unknown to Rabbinical Judaism. Edarsheim, Life and Tima of Jetut the Metsiah, 1894, vol. i. p. 52; cf. p. 165, where the doctrine of the Fall is said to be presented in the New Testament'' as the basis of the need of a Eedeemer. authoritative testimony, based on the directly observed facts of human character and conduct, such as would envelope with an air of pr...