The Philosophy of the Moral FeelingsAbercrombie, John
Religion
The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings
Abercrombie, John
Ethics
their force is felt by those only whose minds have been in some degree
trained to habits of reasoning, and that they are therefore not adapted
to the mass of mankind. But the truths which they are intended to
establish are of eternal importance to men of every degree, and we
should therefore expect them to rest upon evidence which finds its way
with unerring aim to the hearts of the unlearned. The unanswerable
reasonings of Butler never reached the ear of the gray-haired pious
peasant, but he needs not their powerful aid to establish his sure and
certain hope of a blessed immortality. It is no induction of logic that
has transfixed the heart of the victim of deep remorse, when he withers
beneath an influence unseen by human eye, and shrinks from the
anticipation of a reckoning to come. In both, the evidence is within,--a
part of the original constitution of every rational mind, planted there
by him who framed the wondrous fabric. This is the power of
conscience;--with an authority, which no man can put away from him, it
pleads at once for his own future existence, and for the moral
attributes of an omnipotent and ever-present Deity. In a healthy state
of the moral feelings, the man recognises its claim to supreme
dominion. Amid the degradation of guilt, it still raises its voice and
asserts its right to govern the whole man; and, though its warnings are
disregarded, and its claims disallowed, it proves within his inmost soul
an accuser that cannot be stilled, and an avenging spirit that never is
quenched.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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