The world's great sermons, Volume 08 - Talmage to Knox Little by Unknown
page 127 of 171 (74%)
page 127 of 171 (74%)
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Persian forbidding the sackcloth is more to their taste than the
Egyptian or the Christian dragging the corpse through the banquet; but we confidently contend that the recognition by Christ of the morbid phases of human life is altogether wise and gracious. I. We consider, first, the recognition by revelation of sin. Sackcloth is the outward and visible sign of sin, guilt, and misery. How men shut their eyes to this most terrible reality--coolly ignoring, skilfully veiling, emphatically denying it! "The heart from the moment of its first beat instinctively longs for the beautiful...." We strive for the right and the true: it is circumstance that thrusts wrong upon us. What is popularly called sin these philosophers call error, accident, inexperience, indecision, misdirection, imperfection, disharmony; but they will not allow the presence in the human heart of a malign force which asserts itself against God, and against the order of His universe. That principle which is darkness in the mind, perverseness in the will, idolatry in the affections, "every passion's wild excess, anger, lust, and pride,"--the existence of any such principle they absolutely and scornfully deny. There is no evil in the universe, all is good, and where everything is good human nature is still the best. A single substance comprises all that is, and no place is left for that profoundly decisive and destructive element called sin; all that we have to do is to descant on the marvelous loveliness of the world, the serene harmony of the universe, man's love of the true, the beautiful, and the good. Intellectual masters like Emerson and Renan. ignore conscience; they refuse to acknowledge the selfishness, the baseness, the cruelty of society; they are deaf to the groans of creation; they smile, and expect us to smile, whilst they clap a purple patch of rhetoric on the running sores of humanity. No sackcloth must pass their gate, and no craftsman of Ind ever wove |
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