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Posthumous Works of .... Thomas Chalmers (1852)
Posthumous Works of Thomas Chalmers - 1852 Author:Thomas Chalmers 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: CHAPTER III. ON CERTAIN INITIAL CONSIDERATIONS PRESENT TO EVERY MIND, AND WHICH LAY THE OBLIGATION UPON ALL OF GIVING TO RELIGION THEIR SERIOUS ENTERTAINMENT.... more » 1. But far the most important lesson in the science of the mental physiology is the supremacy of conscience—the discovery also of Bishop Butler, or at least first given forth by him in clear and formal announcement for the benefit of the world. Yet we have reserved it for our present Chapter, because we hold this law to be the real originator of certain moral forces which operate in every mind, and give it the first impulses towards any earnest thought or inquiry after God. 2. We do not think it necessary to expound here this great principle, which Butler has set forth with so much perspicuity and philosophical precision. Let me refer you therefore to the three first of his famous fifteen sermons, all of which are worthy of being most seriously pondered by the theological student; and whereof those now specially recommended are capable, we think, of being so used and applied as to give him a most commanding position at the outset of his professional studies. A few of these applications it shall now be our endeavour to unfold. 3. The sense of right and wrong is universal in our species. This moral faculty has been termed a voice within us; and if so, there is no speech nor language where the voice is not heard. The evidence for a universal conscience throughout the human family is to be found in the vocables of all nations ; and could so very extensive an induction be made, might be foundpiecemeal, and with no exception, by successive acts of distinct individual converse, save in the cases of infancy and idiotism, wherever man or woman was to be met with. Certain it is, that missionaries, whose field of enterprise...« less