Author: Philip M. Bikle

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2019-01-14

Total Pages: 704

ISBN-13: 9781397284129

Excerpt from The Lutheran Quarterly, 1890, Vol. 20 T he Ascetic, Conception of the New Life passing away - In these days, as concerns this most serious of all matters that can engage the minds of men, it has been found best to set all the Old-time scholastic car/eats aside, and go at it in the light Of common sense. If a man will get out of sin, he must proceed to get out of it, and not stop to chaffer about the degree Of his disability under it. Gradually the ascetic conception of the new life, which houses it up to certain special experiences, and limits it to paroxysmal seasons of exalted devotional fruition, has given way, and men think, if they do not say, that the divine forgive ness is executed for them, only when they have had the forti tude, by the help Of the Master, to cut loose from their sins. And this common-sense View Of salvation must in the end greatly modify, and, perhaps, wholly revolutionize the methods by which the Church seeks to evangelize the world. If the power Of locomotion is all the responsible power that is left to the man, whereby he can move his members and get to church, the inference is that the Holy Ghost will let in upon him then, or through the truth which he hears there, an aflatus of feeling which is essentially not his own, in which he is held to be passive, and in which, finally, is embodied the whole re newing epoch to which he is called. N ow this makes the emo tional moment the sum Of all his years. We have already learned that in the field of the beautiful, emotion counts for nothing unless it is concreted in act. The painter must take hold Of his brush, and the poet Of his pen. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.