Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 394

370

§ 70.

artificially.

save

life,

by

RELATION BETWEEN THIS PRINCIPIUM

The purpose

however,

is always to on healing, so again enter the stomach in the normal

of

this,

the vitality thus saved to bring

that finally food

way

[Div. Ill

may

The

through the throat.

scaifolding

placed before a

may

be the only enclosure about the house for a long time, and may render it quite invisible, but the dilapidated gable

purpose in view is, that presently the scaffold shall disappear, and the house itself be seen again, and remain in its normal condition. In a similar sense it must be confessed of the original principium of knowledge, that by sin it has become temporarily insutficient and has been rendered incapable

;

that consequently the temporary aid of another principium

has become indispensable

;

but that the tendency of this can

be no other than to restore the 7iatural principium,

principium grounded in our nature to

and

its

i.e.

the

normal activity

;

as soon as this has been realized, to dismiss the special

principium, which renders merely a temporary service.

Let no misunderstanding, however, enter here. We by no means assert that the purpose of extraordinary revelation is to restore us to the knowledge of God which Adam had. All knowledge we possess in this earthly dispensation shall pass aivay, and in place of this defective knowledge there is to come the "seeing face to face." Even now the form of our consciousness differs by day and by night ecstasy and vision affect us differently from common fancy and sober reasoning. But this effects no change in our psychic constitution. Even if you imagine sin never to have entered, so that no ruin of our nature had taken place, and there would consequently have been no question of a special revelation, the knowledge, nevertheless, which Adam had as connate, would sometime have passed into the " seeing face to face." The butterfly exhibits an entirely different form from the caterpillar, and yet that butterfly came forth from the natural conditions of the caterpillar, without any assistance in the transition from an abnormal something. Call the knowledge which Adam had in paradise the caterpillar, and the "knowing face to face" the beautiful butterfly, and you perceive how this higher and to be completed knowledge ;

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