The Soul Author:Francis William Newman 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: CHAPTER III.. THE SENSE OF SIN. Where the traditionary impure influences of early crude religion have been happily worked off', to such a degree that the n... more »ew elements are allowed to display their proper tendencies; no sooner does it become distinctly conceived that the God of nature is the God of our consciences, and that all wrong doing is frowned on by Him, than the two new terms Hohness and Sin are needed. To murder or to betray, are no longer merely offences against man,—which we call crime; they also offend God, and are sins. In this state were the Hebrews from even an early period ; and God, as abhorring sin, was entitled by them a Holy God. Where Polytheism and its degenerate deities were honoured, such phrases could not enter the common language even of philosophers; yet, in Greece for instance, philosophers of a religious turn undoubtedly held the fundamental notion involved in them. We cannot pretend to sound the mystery, whence come the new oirths in certain souls. To reply, " The Spirit bloweth where He listeth," confesses the mystery, and declines to explain it. But it is evident that individuals in Greece, in the third century before the Christian era, were already moving towards an intelligent heart-worship, or had even begun to practise it. The most eminent extant proof of this, is in the beautiful hymn of Clean- thes to Jupiter. Even in old Herodotus we see the cordial response of his conscience to the sentiment which he emphatically approves,—that the Gods hate and punish the desire of sin, as itself a sin : and this is the germ of all spirituality. Thus God for the first time is acknowledged as Lord of the conscience, and is conceived of as a God who searches the heart. Thus, if the See Note 1 to this Chapter. thought be legitimately unravelled, ...« less