The Way Of Salvation Author:Albert Barnes 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: the attention of any who may choose to reject the Christian system. Now, I will not say that there is always designed injustice hi this, though I shall endeav... more »our to show you that the injustice is real. There is an illusion about it which I do not doubt affects the minds of many persons who would by no means do injustice to any system of religion, or its friends. The illusion arises from this fact, that all religion, in our world, has much to do with these painful things—the fall, sickness, death, the grave. In other worlds religion may be a materially different thing— the pure and delightful service of a holy God without one gloomy association, for there is no sin there, no sick-bed, no grave. But here, religion must be essentially a remedial system. It. will answer no purpose if it is not. It must propose some way for the pardon of sin ; some relief in calamity; some consolation in bereavement and death; and it must shed some light on the grave. It seems to be demanded that it should do something to tell us how it was that man came into his present condition ; what, in fact, the condition is, and how it bears on his prospects for the future world. It of necessity, therefore, has much to do with the doctrine of depravity, and with the subject of death—just as the practice of medicine has much to do with diseases and sick-beds. Now, by a very obvious law of mind, we fall into a delusion, and unconsciously do injustice to the system. We group all these things together; regard them as part and parcel of the same system, and think that they must stand or fall together. But nothing can be more obviously unjust than such a course. It is as if we should associate the science of medicine and the diseases which it proposes to remedy together, and hold that science responsible for having...« less