Читать книгу Through Nature to God - Fiske John - Страница 10

Before we enter upon this topic a word of caution may be needed. I do not wish the purpose of the foregoing questions to be misunderstood. The serial nature of human thinking and speaking makes it impossible to express one's thought on any great subject in a solid block; one must needs give it forth in consecutive fragments, so that parts of it run the risk of being lost upon the reader or hearer, while other parts are made to assume undue proportions. Moreover, there are many minds that habitually catch at the fragments of a thought, and never seize it in the block; and in such manner do strange misconceptions arise. I never could have dreamed, until taught by droll experience, that the foregoing allusions to the garden of Eden could be understood as a glorification of sin, and an invitation to my fellow-men to come forth with me and be wicked! But even so it was, on one occasion when I was trying, somewhat more scantily than here, to state the present case. In the midst of my endeavour to justify the grand spirit of faith which our fathers showed when from abysmal depths of affliction they never failed to cry that God doeth all things well, I was suddenly interrupted with queries as to just what percentage of sin and crime I regarded as needful for the moral equilibrium of the universe; how much did I propose to commit myself, how much would I advise people in general to commit, and just where would I have them stop! Others deemed it necessary to remind me that there is already too much suffering in the world, and we ought not to seek to increase it; that the difference between right and wrong is of great practical importance; and that if we try to treat evil as good we shall make good no better than evil.