The sentimental idealizing of contemporary life, the declension of the
humanist's optimism into that superficial complacency which will not
see what it does not like or what it is not expedient to see, makes
one's mind to chuckle while one's heart doth ache. There is a brief
heyday, its continuance dependent upon the uncontrollable factors
of outward prosperity, physical and nervous vigor, capacity for
preoccupation with the successive novelties of a diversified and
complicated civilization, in which even men of religious temperament
can minimize or ignore, perhaps sincerely disbelieve in, their divided
life. Sometimes we think we may sin and be done with it. But always in
the end man must come back to this moral tragedy of the soul. Because
sin will not be done with us when we are done with it. Every evil
is evil to him that does it and sooner or later we are compelled
to understand that to be a sinner is the sorest and most certain
punishment for sinning.
Then the awakening begins. Then can preaching stir the heart until
deep answereth unto deep. It can talk of the struggle with moral
temptation and weakness; of the unstable temperament which oscillates
between the gutter and the stars; of the perversion or abuse of
impulses good in themselves; of the dreadful dualism of the soul. For
these are inheritances which have made life tragic in every generation
for innumerable human beings.
Pages:
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201