A Legacy to the Friends of Free Discussion: Principal Historical Facts and Personages of the Books Known as The Old and New Testament; With Remarks on the Morality of NatureOffen, Benjamin
Religion
A Legacy to the Friends of Free Discussion: Principal Historical Facts and Personages of the Books Known as The Old and New Testament; With Remarks on the Morality of Nature
Offen, Benjamin
Bible -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Miracles could not have been evidences of divine interposition to the
Jewish people, at the time of Christ’s appearance among them, owing to
the prevailing belief that supernatural beings, called devils, could
perform wonderful things, far above man’s power or comprehension; and
that some of them, more powerful than the rest, could invest mortals
with the power of performing-miracles of the same nature as those
ascribed to Jesus Christ.
Most of the religious sects at the present day affect to be influenced
by something almost amounting to divine inspiration—their religion
consisting of feelings, not of action. In the Scriptures we read, “_If
any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his._” I have often
noticed the variety of modes in which the spirit operates on different
sects. The Methodists, while seeking the Lord, as they term it, will
sigh, moan, and howl, and immediately after be in ecstasies bordering on
insanity, and bawl so loud that a passer-by might reasonably conclude
that some dreadful accident had befallen them. Passing to the other
extreme, the Friends, or Quakers, are as dumb as mutes, and will not
allow their speakers to open their lips until impelled to do so by the
spirit. But the Jumpers, in Wales, (Great Britain,) go ahead of all, for
they often perform the journey from their homes to their churches, by
the same kind of evolution as frogs make when on their peregrinations in
search of water. All these monkey tricks are of much easier performance
than feeding the hungry, or clothing the destitute. Can, or, presuming
that they can, will the preachers please inform us, which of these three
modes of spiritual manifestation will be practised in heaven?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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