Excerpt from The Conflict of Ages: Or, the Great Debate on the Moral Relations of God and Man
I am induced to dedicate this work to you, because its subject is one in which you all have a deep and common interest. You will doubtless observe that I do not address you as a controversialist, aiming to promote the interests of any existing theological party, but simply as a Christian brother, endeavoring to remove the causes of paralysis and division from our common Christianity, and thus to promote the interests of the church as a whole. I think also that you will not deny that the issue which I present to you is of sufficient magnitude to deserve and demand your candid and careful consideration. The great conflict of which I speak is, on the whole, the most prominent and important fact in the history of the church. So great a fact must have an adequate cause. Moreover, a cause powerful enough to produce, for so many centuries, such stupendous results, must also be powerful enough seriously to affect the adaptation of Christianity, as a system, to accomplish all that is involved in the great work of the conversion of the world. It is not enough that the existing system can do some good, or even much good; we need a system that shall give us the power intelligently to meet and logically to solve all of the great religious and social problems which we are called on to encounter in the great work of converting the world, and thoroughly reorganizing human society; for this work is not to be done, even in part, by infidel philosophy, but solely by the gospel of Christ, in its purity and power, as applied to all the relations of human society.
Animated by these considerations, I have endeavored to point out, as the cause of the conflict, an element foreign to the system, and which creates constant and powerful tendencies to pernicious errors in philosophy and in doctrine, divides the church, depresses the tone of piety, and thus paralyzes the energies of Christianity, and unfits it to accomplish the great enterprise which it has undertaken.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге The Conflict of Ages (Edward Beecher)