The Recreations of a Country ParsonBoyd, Andrew Kennedy Hutchison
General
The Recreations of a Country Parson
Boyd, Andrew Kennedy Hutchison
Clergy -- Anecdotes; Country life -- England; Rural clergy -- England
is so like as quite to justify the assertion in Scripture: it is not
so identical as to justify the introduction of a new philosophical
phrase. It is perfectly true that Christianity is described in
Scripture as a means for bringing men from death to life; but it
is also described, with equal meaning, as a means for bringing men
from darkness to light. And it is easy to trace the analogy between
man's spiritual condition and the condition of one in darkness--between
man's redeemed condition and the condition of one in light; but surely
it would be childish to announce, as a philosophical discovery,
that all men are blind, because they cannot see their true interests
and the things that most concern them. They are not blind in the
ordinary sense, though they may be blind in a higher; neither are
they dead in the ordinary sense, though they may be in a higher.
And only confusion, and a sense of being misled and trifled with,
can follow from the pushing figure into fact and trying to identify
the two.
Stripping our author's views of the unusual phraseology in which
they are disguised, they do, so far as regards the essential fact
of man's loss and redemption, coincide exactly with the orthodox
teaching of the Church of England. Man is by nature and sinfulness
in a spiritual sense dead; dead now, and doomed to a worse death
hereafter. By believing in Christ he at once obtains some share of
a better spiritual life, and the hope of a future life which shall
be perfectly holy and happy. Surely this is no new discovery. It
is the type of Christianity implied in the Liturgy of the Church,
and weekly set out from her thousands of pulpits. The startling
novelties of Man and his Dwelling-Place are in matters of detail.
He holds that fearful thing, Damnation, which orthodox views push
off into a future world, to be a present thing. It is now men are
damned. It is now men are in hell. Wicked men are now in a state
of damnation: they are now in hell. The common error arises from
our thinking damnation a state of suffering. It is not. It is a
state of something worse than suffering, viz., of sin:--
We find it hard to believe that damnation can he a thing men
like. But does not--what every being likes depend on what it is?
Is corruption less corruption, in man's view, because worms like
it? Is damnation less damnation, in God's view, because men like
it? And God's view is simply the truth. Surely one object of a
revelation must be to show us things from God's view of them, that
is. as they truly are. Sin truly is damnation, though to us it is
pleasure. That sin is pleasure to us, surely is the evil part of
our condition.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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