Purchase of this book includes free trial access to
www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books
for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II.
ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN. " All things to all men."? I. Cor. ix., 22.
A Very good practice that seemed to be, as Paul used the words and
applied them; a very poor practice, one of the poorest of all, as
many people use and apply them to-day. To become " all things to
all men " is very noble and Christ-like, when it means that you
detect whatever is good in even the worst human beings about you,
and linking your heart to theirs at that point lead them on to
something better still. To become "all things to all men" is very
ignoble and un-Christ-like, when it means that you let your own
evil desires respond in sympathy to theirs, and drag you down to
deeper degradation still. The one is the Master's spirit, which
could so eat with publicans and sinners as never to encourage their
misdeeds, but only to quicken their aspiration for something good;
so that, when he left them, they longed to eat with him again and
forever in his Father's kingdom: the other is the spirit of the
prodigal son, who could eat with the same people, and become so
like them in their worst condition, so low, unmanly, and shameful
that he ended by despising himself, and could only cry out on his
return home, " Father, I am no more worthy to be called thy son."
The one, therefore, is Christian tact, which, joining the wisdom of
the serpent with the purity of the dove, draws many souls to a
better life without giving them just cause of offence; the other is
unchristian weakness, which is laughed out of its principles, and
follows a multitude to do evil, or at least stands silently by,
consenting to a wicked deed. Now, the first thing to be noticed,
with reference to this subject, is that, strictly speaking, no one
ever did, or can, become "all things to all men." Human nature is
too different, as it is...
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
