Living Fountains or Broken Cisterns: An Educational Problem for Protestants — John Shaqi
Living Fountains or Broken Cisterns: An Educational Problem for ProtestantsSutherland, E. A. (Edward Alexander)
Religion
Living Fountains or Broken Cisterns: An Educational Problem for Protestants
Sutherland, E. A. (Edward Alexander)
Church and education; Education -- History; Religious education
The spiritual death which followed the perversion of the senses was
attended, in time, by physical death. Indeed, the fruit had scarcely
been eaten when the attention of the man and his wife was turned toward
externals. The soul, which had enveloped the physical man as a shroud
of light, withdrew, and the physical man appeared. A sense of their
nakedness now appalled them. Something was lacking; and with all the
glory they had known, with all the truths which had been revealed, there
was nothing to take the place of the departed spiritual nature. “Dying,
thou shalt die,” was the decree; and had not the Saviour at this moment
made known to Adam the plan of the cross, eternal death would have been
inevitable.
God, through His instruction, had taught that the result of faith would
be immortal life. Satan taught, and attempted to prove his logic by a
direct appeal to the senses, that there was immortal life in the wisdom
that comes as the result of human reason. The method employed by Satan is
that which men to-day call the natural method, but in the mind of God the
wisdom of the world is foolishness. The method which to the godly mind,
to the spiritual nature, seems natural, is foolishness to the world.
[Sidenote: True education and redemption]
There are but two systems of education,—the one based on what God calls
wisdom, the gift of which is eternal life; the other based on what the
world regards as wisdom, but which God says is foolishness. This last
exalts reason above faith, and the result is spiritual death. That the
fall of man was the result of choosing the false system of education can
not be controverted. Redemption comes through the adoption of the true
system of education.
Re-creation is a change of mind,—an exchange of the natural for the
spiritual. “Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by
the renewing of your mind.” In order to render such a change possible,
Christ must bruise the head of the serpent; that is, the philosophy of
the devil must be disproved by the Son of God. Christ did this, but in
so doing, his heel, representing his physical nature, was bruised. The
result of the acceptance of the satanic philosophy has been physical
suffering; and the more completely man yields to the system built upon
that philosophy, the more complete is the subjection of the race to
physical infirmities.
[Sidenote: Physical degeneracy]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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