Precept and Practice – SEPTEMBER 20 – Sin- A Disease

I speak with a fixed conviction that human nature is a noble and beautiful thing;  not a foul nor a base thing.

All the sin of men I esteem as their disease, not their nature;  as a folly which may be prevented, not a necessity which must be accepted.   And my wonder, even when things are at their worst, is always at the height which this human nature can attain.   Thinking it high, I find it always a higher thing than I thought it;  while those who think it low, find it, and will find it, always, lower than they thought it:  the fact being, that it is infinite, and capable of infinite height and infinite fall;  but the nature of it and here is the faith which I would have you hold with me the nature of it is in the nobleness, not in the catastrophe.

(Ruskin)

Sin, like disease, is a vital process. It is a function, and not an entity.   It must be studied as a section of anthropology.   No preconceived idea must be allowed to interfere with our investigation of the deranged spiritual function, any more than the old ideas of demoniacal possession must be allowed to interfere with our study of epilepsy.   Spiritual pathology is a proper subject for direct observation and analysis, like any other subject involving a series of living actions.   In these living actions everything is progressive.   There are sudden changes of character in what is called ‘conversion’ which, at first, hardly seem to come into line with the common laws of evolution.

But these changes have been long preparing, and it is just as much in the order of nature that certain characters should burst all at once from the rule of evil propensities, as it is that the evening primrose should explode, as it were, into bloom with audible sound, as you may read in Keats’ Endymion, or observe in your own garden. 

(Oliver Wendell Holmes – The Poet at the Breakfast Table)

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From the Introduction to Precept and Practice

The kindly welcome given to my other little books, ‘Being and Doing’ and ‘Character and Conduct,’ must be my excuse for adding another collection of extracts to the number now in circulation.

The quotations are gathered from the books of many earnest thinkers, and deal with Life in all its length and breadth, with ourselves, our characters, our plain unvarnished faults and weaknesses, our often untoward circumstances, and with all that drags us down;-  with our purposes, our religion, our love and friendships, and with all that uplifts us;-  with our relation to others, our influence and responsibilities, and finally with those stages of our journey which bring us to the Road’s Last Turn and to the Silent Land.

CONSTANCE  M. WHISHAW