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Thoughts for the Age, by the Author of 'amy Herbert'.
Thoughts for the Age by the Author of 'amy Herbert' Author:Elizabeth Missing Sewell General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1870 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: RIGHT JUDGMENT. He is despised and rejected of men. (Isaiah liii. 3.) We are apt to think that was because of the natural alienation of the human heart from what is in itself holy. But perhaps this is a mistake. Demons may hate goodness because it is goodness, but human beings do not, at least till they have become so brutalised that they have lost almost all trace of their humanity. As a general rule, men misinterpret, misunderstand goodness, or they fail to recognise it because it is so mixed up with what is evil. They say that the works of Christ are the works of the devil, and therefore they think themselves justified in condemning them; but they do not say this is noble, pure, unselfish, and therefore I hate it. For, as Bishop Butler remarks, 'If it be thought that there are instances of an approbation of vice, as such, in itself, and for its own sake (though. it does not appear to me that there is any such thing at all; but supposing there be), it is evidently monstrous ; as much so as the most acknowledged perversion of any passion whatever.' It may probably often have struck us as very wonderful that the Jews should have rejected our Butter's Analogy, part i. chap. 3. blessed Lord. Recognising as we now do the absolute perfection of His character, it may seem to us that even if we had not acknowledged His Divinity, we must have bowed down to His sinless Humanity. And in fact the Jews did bow down to it, so far at least that they never ventured to bring against Him any accusations except those which were based upon a misconstruction of words. The persons who condemned him were not demons or ...« less