Truth and Falsehood in Religion; Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge to Undergraduates in the Lent Term, 1906 (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: FALSEHOOD IN RELIGION I Said last week that I shall assume that we can distinguish healthy and morbid conditions in religion. I do not suppose that this assumption will be seriously disputed. And yet before proceeding with the analysis of falsehood or disease in religion, which is my subject to-day, I think it may be well to insist that the conception of "sin" is no figment of theologians, but a positive fact, which cannot be resolved into any such negative ideas as privation of good, or imperfection. The tendency to suppress the idea of sin is very strong in our generation. It proceeds partly from causes which we need not regret, such as a humanising of the idea of punishment, making us less afraid of vindictive penalties at God's hands; a shifting of the centre of gravity in morals, laying more stress on what a man is good for, and less on what he is bad for; a revolt against overstrained teaching about the utter depravity of mankind; a truer view as to the historical value of primitive legends about the Fall of Man; and partly to less satisfactory causes, such as the shallow optimism and self-satisfaction induced by prosperity and security; flabby sentimental- ism, increased by the same conditions; and a widespread misunderstanding of the doctrine of evolution, which is taken as a guarantee of social and individual progress from one generation to another. But there are several considerations which make it impossible to regard sin as mere imperfection or privation. The very idea of sin implies falling short of an attainable, not of an unattainable standard. The attainable standard is not absolute perfection, but relative perfection; as we might speak of a perfect child, without imputing to it the strength or intelligence of a man, or a perfect mammal, which nevertheless ...