Some Elements of Religion

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. 1872 Excerpt: ...meant, then, undoubtedly, a variety of the gravest questions at once open before us, both as to what we have to be saved from, and as to the means and conditions of our salvation. Upon the first of these questions, we shall encounter in the next lecture some of the more serious differences which divide the modern world: to-day it must suffice to have insisted upon the mingled blessedness and awfulness of life. What it is to live here at all as a human being; what it is to possess or rather to be a centre of self-reflecting thought, of self-determining will, a centre of life which under some conditions will be perpetuated indefinitely;--this, when we think of it steadily and in good earnest, is, next to the spiritual sight of God Himself, the most solemn, the most chastening, the most stimulating consideration that can open upon us. Let us make much of it, in the interests both of the present and of the future, for the sake of God and truth, as well as of our own lasting happiness. Let us determine to ask ourselves again and again during the coming week, what in our inmost selves we really are, and, next, whither we are going. Let us listen to a voice which will at times find some echo in every conscience, and which bids us, in God's name, reflect that "the things which are seen are temporal, while the things which are not seen are eternal." LECTURE IV. dfottrtj) Stmftag in Hent THE OBSTACLE TO BELIGION-SIK S. James i. 15. When desire hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is, bringeth forth death. FT! HE ground which, we have hitherto traversed is, in the--main, common ground to those who accept the idea of religion in any serious sense at all. Eeligion is impossible, except as a bond between a real, that is to say, a moral and go...