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291

(1909) [MARC] Author: Ellen Key Translator: Marie Franzos
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Religious Instruction 291
The most demoralising of all principles of
belief was the discouraging teaching that hu-
man nature was fallen and incapable of reach-
ing holiness by its own effort—the teaching
that one could only come through grace and
forgiveness of sins into a proper relation with
temporal and eternal things. For those be-
low the ordinary level, this position of grace
produced spiritual stagnation, not to speak of
the business people, who daily allowed the
blood of Jesus to wipe out their day’s debit in
the score of morality. Only those who were
naturally superior increased in holiness on
being convinced that they were children of
God in Christ. Mankind, on the whole,
showed the deep demoralisation of a double
morality. This dualism commenced as soon
as the first Christians ceased to expect the
return of Jesus,—an expectation which
brought their life into real unity with his
teaching. But this double morality has for
nineteen hundred years retained man’s soul
and the social order in practical heathenism.
Although some pure and great spirits really
received aid from Christianity in their longings
for infinity, and although in the Middle Ages
many strong hearts tried seriously to realise
its teaching, yet the majority of mankind lived

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