Author: Frederic William Farrar

Publisher: Theclassics.Us

Published: 2013-09

Total Pages: 66

ISBN-13: 9781230343808

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1892 edition. Excerpt: ...dumbly, Over her breast. Owning her weakness, Her evil behaviour. And leaving with meekness Her sins to Iter Saviour!" III. Hut, my brethren, the vast, vast mass of mankind belong to the third class: they are not utter reprobates any more than they are saints. They may rise to the one, they may sink to the other; but for the most part they are undecided. They face both ways; they halt between two opinions; they are neither saints nor criminals; they have not closed heart and soul with good, they have not abandoned themselves utterly to evil. They want to be pardoned, yet they want to retain the offence; they admire holiness, but they dally with iniquity; they shudder to be in a state of sin, yet they attain not to a state of grace; there "is an Adam in them, and there is a Christ;1,1 now they sin with reckless abandonment, now they repent in bitterest remorse; "the angel has them by the hand and the serpent by the heart."2 To how many here do these words apply? We break no law of man; to the eye of man it might seem that we broke no law of God. But O what would be thought of us if we were all seen as we are?--if our hearts were naked and open to each other as they are to God? And it is those who do try to be God's children who most realise 1 J. Martineau, Endeavour after a Christian Lifr.-Ruskin. their own exceeding sinfulness. This is why (as one has said) the cry of remorse and anguish which springs from the lips of a Fenelon or a Cowper is far more bitter than any confession which is ever wrung from a Richelieu or a Voltaire. Many, many of these better, and tenderer, and saintly souls have, I believe, been rendered utterly and hopelessly wretched, even to madness, as poor Cowper was, by that false view of God which...