Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the KhedivéZincke, F. Barham (Foster Barham)
History
Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the Khedivé
Zincke, F. Barham (Foster Barham)
Egypt -- Description and travel; Egypt -- History
(These ideas, by the way, neither condemn nor commend to us the principle
of the establishment of national Churches. That is a question of times,
of circumstances, and of expediency. We can imagine conditions under
which the advantages of such an arrangement, and others, under which
the disadvantages would preponderate. Of course, at the time of the
promulgation of the religion, the idea of anything of the kind was
impossible. What has been before us has, however, obviously a bearing on
the questions of what establishments, where they exist, should teach, and
of how they should enforce their teaching.)
As to the law, for which a man would be accountable to God, that would be
taught him by God. The knowledge of it and the desire to fulfil it would
result from the working of a Divine Spirit within his heart. The teaching
of that Spirit would be always in harmony with the knowledge to which man
had been enabled to attain, and with the social conditions to which he
had been raised. That knowledge and these conditions are progressive. So,
therefore, would be the teaching of this Spirit. We know in what mode it
spoke, in old times, through prophets and holy men; and what it was, at
a later period, in the words of Christ, Whom God sent. Under the Mosaic
Dispensation it had promulgated municipal law, which requires in all
cases, and had required, in an especial degree, in the case of so rude a
people as the Hebrews, immediate rewards and punishments; and this, under
the circumstances, the most important particular of these being that God
was Himself executing the law, here and now, had excluded the doctrine of
a future life. Under the Christian Dispensation it promulgated natural,
universal, unlocalized law, and so required the doctrine of a future
life; and this necessitated the abrogation of the doctrine that God is
Himself executing the law, here and now.
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