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Updated: May 27, 2025
Governmental pardon always implies repentance and promised reform, and between individuals a due concession to violated principle is deemed the dictate of the truest honor. How can there be reconciliation to God, then, without repentance and humiliation? Of what value can heathen asceticism and merit-making be while the heart is still barred and buttressed with self-righteousness?
They have exchanged the old atheism for theism. They have given up all dependence on merit-making and self-help; they now rely wholly on the infinite merit of another. Their religious duties are performed out of gratitude for a free salvation wrought out for them, and no longer as the means of gaining heaven. They live by a faith which works by love.
It was maintained that two distinct kinds of revelation had been made to men. First, that simple kind which was designed for priests and the common masses, for all those who regarded only effects and were satisfied with sacerdotal assumption and merit-making. But, secondly, there was a higher knowledge which concerned itself with the origin of the world and the hidden causes of things.
For six years he tried diligently the resources of Hindu self-mortification, but becoming exhausted by his austerities, almost unto death, he abandoned that mode of life, having apparently become atheistic. He renounced the idea of merit-making as a means of spiritual attainment, and he was sorely tempted, no doubt, to return to his former life of ease.
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