"
Therefore, as we have previously corrected the half truth of the
naturalist who makes a caricature, not a portrait of man, we must now
in the same way turn to the correcting of the humanist's emphasis upon
man's native capacity and insist upon the complementary truth which
fulfills this moral heroism of mankind, namely, the divine rescue
which answers to its inadequacy. Man must struggle for his victory; he
can win; he cannot win alone. We must then insist upon the doctrine
of salvation, turning ourselves to the other side of the humanist's
picture. Man cannot live by this more-than-natural law unaided. For
not only has he the power to rise above Nature; the same thing gives
him equal capacity to sink beneath her, and, when left to himself, he
generally does so. The preacher does not dare deny the sovereignty
of sin. Humanism hates the very name of sin; it has never made
any serious attempt to explain the consciousness of guilt. Neither
naturalist nor humanist can afford to admit sin, for sin takes man, as
holiness does, outside the iron chain of cause and effect; it breaks
the law; it is not strictly natural. It makes clear enough that man
is outside the natural order in two ways. He is both inferior and
superior to it. He falls beneath, he rises above it. When he acts like
a beast, he is not clean and beastly, but unclean and bestial.
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