DISCOURSES BY E. P. POWELL Author of "Our Heredity from God" CHICAGO 175 DEARBORN STREET 1889 PREFACE. Evolution has brought us to face such new views of life, and of our responsibility as the finality of the animal kingdom, and inheritors of an eternal evolution of organic and functional power, that we must recast our views of sin altogether. Henceforth, if I do not mistake the drift, sin will be held to be not a personal affront to a Creator, but a course of action that degrades ourselves in either body or mind, and that tends to degeneration. We are placed in charge of ourselves by the fact of self-consciousness; and the sum of all duty is so to use ourselves as to be in every function honest, wholesome and regenerative. Liberty is not a power to act as we choose, but to live in fullest accord with Him "in whom we live and move and have our being." This book is offered cordially to those who desire only that liberty which broadens and intensifies existence. It is in some sense supplementary to my book "Our Heredity from God;" and I am confident that readers of that volume will not misunderstand me. E. P. P. |