The Greek Gospel; An Interpretation of the Coming Faith (Paperback)

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: BOOK SECOND. MAN AND HIS PROBLEMS. I. The Natuee Of Man. II. Knowledge ? Wisdom ? Truth. III. Education. IV. Sacrifice And Renunciation. V. Self-reliance. VI. Sanity. VII. Evil. BOOK SECOND. THE NATURE OP MAN. From typical man comes by evolution the best that we know of life, and yet he is capable of being the worst of all living creatures and stands as the paradox of the universe. He is the easy prey of those who seek to exploit him and too often the despair of all who seek to help him. He is capable of exaltation and equally susceptible to those influences that degrade him. His presence may be a productive blessing and yet it may be a most destructive curse. He is 'certainly a riddle and a paradox, the unsolved conundrum of the Sphinx. It is common usage to refer to the lower and higher nature of man. It is certainly convenient to do so, and it is so interpretative of what seem to be facts that it is likely to continue for a long time. It is, however, really incorrect, for man has but one nature. When this develops in harmony with its true laws he discloses what we call his higher nature, but when he lives in antagonism to those laws, or in forgetfulnessor ignorance of them, he discloses what we call his lower nature, and yet all the time it is one nature. The truth is that in the one case he has grown in a normal, healthy way and is a manifestation of the highest life of which we have knowledge. In the other case he has failed to grow and develop and so, relatively to what he might have become, he seems stunted, abortive and dwarfed. The so-called lower nature may therefore be more properly designated as man's nature existing under conditions that furnish nothing to stimulate and produce a healthy development of its potential capacity. The n...