Faith and Action from the Writings of F.D. Maurice (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1886 edition. Excerpt: ...and worship Nicholas V. or Lorenzo the Magnificent, or Leo X. I can as little bring myself to regret the revival of Latin scholarship and Greek art, or not to hail it as a very great step forwards in the divine and moral education of the West. I cannot think that a mere dilettanteism and refinement, which satisfied no one of the great national impulses that had been awakened in the fourteenth century, which did nothing whatever for the elevation of the mind of the people, which scorned the idea of liberty and popular life, which tolerated the basest intrigues and the darkest vices, which concealed them, apologized for them, and allied itself with them; I cannot conceive that this is a thing which brave men But on the other hand, I must think that this dilettanteism, poor and contemptible in itself, was discovering, or at least polishing weapons that were destined to do mighty service for mankind, and partly by working out its own destruction. Call the old literature Classical or Pagan, or what you please, but it was a literature that spoke of national life and energy, of politics that were based upon principles and not upon plots, of statesmen who were first men, of states that were called into being by a divine voice, and which asserted their origin by the vengeance and fall which overtook the human rulers who supposed they could fashion the world at their pleasure. This literature, with all its corruptions, spoke more clearly and distinctly of domestic life as lying at the foundation of civil polity, than any monk, however high his ideal might be, had been able to speak. # # # Can we find no picture... which may teach us what the effect upon a man would be if the Conscience were... reduced to the smallest possible force and vitality?...