Posts
Regarding the reader or hearer of the message taking personal offense at the message or the messenger.
"It is a book of dissections, in which every department of the Christian character is skillfully divested of its covering, and laid open to impartial survey; and although it would be too much to say, that in the performance of a task, which exhibits such diversity, and requires such a nicety of spiritual discrimination, nothing has been done to disturb the peace of a saint; yet the instances in which its author is chargeable with this, we take to be very few; while perhaps there is not one of them in which the pain produced, if rightly improven, is not salutary in its tendency, or fails to lead on to more exalted enjoyment. But supposing that instances do occur, in which the peace of conscience is unduly disturbed, or that a sentiment, here and there, has dropped from the pen of the author, which tends to a false or injurious alarm, still it is better that a reparable injury should be suffered, than that a delusion which is irreparable should remain undetected. It is the lot of the messenger, who either lifts up his voice or his pen to publish the counsel of God to man in the present complex state of society, that he cannot sound an alarm to the wicked, without putting some of the righteous in fear; nor can he minister consolation to the latter, without at least the hazard of having his message misapplied by the perversity of the latter." (Pg. xvi )
by Matthew Mead published in 1856, reprinted Diggory Press.
"It is a book of dissections, in which every department of the Christian character is skillfully divested of its covering, and laid open to impartial survey; and although it would be too much to say, that in the performance of a task, which exhibits such diversity, and requires such a nicety of spiritual discrimination, nothing has been done to disturb the peace of a saint; yet the instances in which its author is chargeable with this, we take to be very few; while perhaps there is not one of them in which the pain produced, if rightly improven, is not salutary in its tendency, or fails to lead on to more exalted enjoyment. But supposing that instances do occur, in which the peace of conscience is unduly disturbed, or that a sentiment, here and there, has dropped from the pen of the author, which tends to a false or injurious alarm, still it is better that a reparable injury should be suffered, than that a delusion which is irreparable should remain undetected. It is the lot of the messenger, who either lifts up his voice or his pen to publish the counsel of God to man in the present complex state of society, that he cannot sound an alarm to the wicked, without putting some of the righteous in fear; nor can he minister consolation to the latter, without at least the hazard of having his message misapplied by the perversity of the latter." (Pg. xvi )
by Matthew Mead published in 1856, reprinted Diggory Press.
No comments:
Post a Comment