 |
|
 |
||
|
|
||||
|
|
|
||
|
|
||||
"that ye seek not after your own heart and your own eyes,
after which ye use to go a whoring:
that ye may remember,
and do all my commandments,
and be holy unto your God.
I am the LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: I am the LORD your God." (Nu 15:39-41).
"God's goodness is seen in nothing more than in this -- insistence on His own glory and supremacy as the first condition of human fellowship with him: for how stands the fact? That man seeking his own glory fails by the very constitution of things to attain any good at all. Man living for himself cannot rise to even what possibilities of good lie latent in his organization as a creature formed in the image of the Elohim. He necessarily sinks into all kinds of earth gravitating ignoblenesses: languishes in sluggishness and ennui [boredom]; spends his fire and his interest, and sinks in a quagmire of vanity and vexation of spirit. For a man to see God and love and worship and serve Him is, on the contrary, to rise to beauties and joys of life even now that are outside the highest experiences or conceptions of the most dashing child of disobedience . . . How good for God to insist that without His exaltation in the way He has appointed there can be no fellowship or well-being or life." (Robert Roberts)
Intellectual Honesty
"Opinions formed, or facts believed, in the immaturity of experience become incredible when seen to be out of harmony with larger and more exact information. Piety, the twin brother of science, tends at such times to be the guardian of error. Love of truth is forced into unnatural hostility with the virtue which is only second to it, and then come those trying periods of human history, when devotion and intelligence appear to be opposed, and the metal of which men and nations are composed is submitted to a crucial test. Those who adhere at all costs to truth, who cling to her though she lead them into the wilderness, find beyond it a promised land where all they sacrifice is restored to them. Those who through superstition, or timidity, or political convenience, or pious feeling, close their eyes to fact, who cling to forms which have become shadows, and invent reasons for believing what is essentially no longer credible, escape a momentary trial only that it may return upon them again in a harder and harsher shape. They surrender themselves to conscientious emotions, and they forfeit those very emotions for which they are sacrificing intellectual honesty as the object of their reverence becomes more palpably an idol." (Froude's History of England, Vol. 12, p. 481-482. From the fall of Wolsey to the defeat of the Spanish Armada by James Anthony Froude, MA, London: Longmans, Green and Co.)
"A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still"
The Compact is Powerful for the Maintenance of Error
"The compact is powerful for the maintenance of error. The whole of society is so put together, that each part keeps every other part in bondage. The leaders, when boys, learnt by rote and with unquestioning reverence, the things believed [or thought to be believed] by past generations and before they had attained the capability of independent judgment [or in some cases, before they had accurate facts], they had committed themselves with ardor, hope and ambition, to the pursuit and maintenance of the system founded on these things; and once in the ranks – the numerous, powerful, wealthy, respectable ranks of orthodoxy – they are bound hand and foot with ropes of silk and chains of gold. Every avenue of escape is stopped up. There is only one thing they can do with safety, and that is to pillarise [glorify] the system; to do anything else would be to run against their dearest interests, their deepest prejudices, their strongest preconceptions, their tenderest solicitudes. Few men – scarcely any – have either the intellectual strength or moral hardihood to extricate themselves from the coils. Society jams them into their places; the affections and interests of life bind them to it with sweetest cords. Should one dream for a moment that all is not right, the dawning idea is quickly extinguished by the number and the influence of those in the same plight with himself – talented men of 'degrees' – men known to fame – can all these be wrong? Impossible! The united glare – though it be but the merest candle-light in nether darkness – deceives his senses." ( The Christadelphian, October 1867)
"The fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom" (Psalm 111:10, Proverbs 9:10)
"Those that seek me early shall find me" (Proverbs 8:17)
Last Update: April 24, 2006