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Man responsible for his belief: tow sermons
Man responsible for his belief tow sermons Author:Ralph Wardlaw 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: knows any thing of even the most ordinary phenomena of human nature,—phenomena which, so far from being recondite, are open to every one's observation,—is not aw... more »are how mighty is the power of the desires and inclinations over the operations of intellect? —to what a vast extent, both in the number of instances and in the degree of force, opinion and belief are affected by predisposition,—by the previous bent of the will ? The thing is notorious—proverbially notorious ;—the blindness produced by the want of will to see, being pronounced by proverb, which embodies the authority of experience, the most inveterate and hopeless of all.—I speak, of course, of human nature, according to the appearances which it now- presents. The question is not, whether what I now describe be a regular and healthy, or a disordered and morbid exercise of its powers and functions,—but simply, whether the fact be or be not as I have stated it:—not what was originally the case,—or even, whether the case ever was otherwise,—but what is actually the case now ? And as to this, it is impossible to hesitate. I do not, for my own part, entertain a doubt, but that at the very moment when the sentiment under consideration was publicly, uttered, there was a practical exemplification furnished of the truth of the observation just made concerning it,—an experimental refutation of its principle.—At the time of its being delivered, it was generally and loudly applauded. There might possibly be not a few, especially of the junior part of the auditory, who swelled the noisy acclamation, as they are ever ready to do, without well knowing why:—there might be some, too, who gave it their instant and hearty sanction, because of the decided reprobation which it involved of all religious intolerance, without, at the moment of...« less