The world as the subject of redemption Author:William Henry Fremantle 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: Christ and His apostles and. What is the Church through which its salvation is to be wrought out I. What is the world which Christ came to save, and which i... more »s to be changed into His Church ? We mean by the world the organized constitution of things in which we live, including the material universe so far as we apprehend it, but chiefly humanity, which (taking the world as known to us) is its crown. The world is the universe as conceived of and wrought upon by men. It partakes, therefore, of man's rise and fall; for, if man be degraded, outer nature becomes evil to him, and through him the source of evil to others; whereas, when man rises to his true position, all outer nature is first viewed as serving the spiritual good of mankind, and then is actually used for this purpose. The world thus conceived is a harmony. But the harmony is broken through when man is driven helplessly by the physical powers by which he is surrounded; when he reckons them above instead of below him, as idolaters do, and he thus becomes impotens sui, resigning his rightful supremacy; or when he drifts on without a perception of the Moral Order; or, again, when he uses nature and his fellow- men wilfully or selfishly, instead of seeking that they and he ehould serve the highest spiritual purpose. The harmony is restored when the spiritual aim is understood and embraced. Then men are at one through their common pursuit of justice and love, and outer nature is subservient to this pursuit. This harmony is also properly divine ; the world thus conceived is a manifestation of God. He who perceives and acts upon this harmony is a believer in God, whether he name thesacred name or not. He who through moral indifference does not recognize it, at least as 'the purpose of the ages,' and he alone, may properly be c...« less