Calvinism a life-system - pagina 70

CALVINISM AND RELIGION.

66

Every attempt

weight

on the way to perfection, aroused

stage

an

insult

the

beginning,

England",

in his

that the

may

his wrath, as

confessed, from

same truth which Buckle has

the

viz.,

appearance

He

the majesty of God.

to

monstrated empirically

y

to explain sin, as an incomplete

de-

"History of Civilization

forms

which

in

makes

sin

in its

show' us a gradual refinement, but that

moral condition of the human heart, as such, has-

the

remained the same throughout

the centuries.

all

To

the

de profwidis with which, thirty centuries ago, the soul of David

unto God,

cried

God

of

child

in

the troubled soul of every

the sixteenth century

still

sounded a

The conception of all human misery

response with undiminished power.

the corruption of sin as the source of

was nowhere more profound than

Even

ment. in

in the assertions

in Calvin's environ-

which the Calvinist made,

accordance with Holy Scripture, concerning hell and

damnation, there

no coarseness, no rudeness, but only

is

that clearness which

of

life,

is

the result of the utmost seriousness

and the undaunted courage of a deep-rooted

conviction

of the

holiness of the

from

whose

lips

He,

most winning words,

most High.

Did not

flowed the most tender, and the

— did

not He, Himself also speak

most decidedly and repeatedly of an "outer darkness", of a "fire that cannot be quenched", and of a that

dieth

not".-*

And

in this, also,

for to refuse to assent to these

words

lack of thoroughgoing consistency. sincerity

in

It

"worm

Calvin was right, is

nothing but a

shews a want of

our confession of the holiness of God, and

of the destructive power of in this spiritual

And on

sin.

experience of

sin,

the contrary,

in this empirical

con-

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