Thus the summons to
repent and the prophecy about destiny which were the root of
Christianity, can fully retain their spirit when for "this wicked
world" we read "this transitory life" and for "the coming of the
Kingdom" we read "life everlasting." The change is important, but it
affects the application rather than the nature of the gospel. Morally
there is a loss, because men will never take so hotly what concerns
another life as what affects this one; speculatively, on the other
hand, there is a gain, for the expectation of total transformations
and millenniums on earth is a very crude illusion, while the relation
of the soul to nature is an open question in philosophy, and there
will always be a great loftiness and poetic sincerity in the feeling
that the soul is a stranger in this world and has other destinies in
store.
What would make the preaching of the gospel utterly impossible would
be the admission that it had no authority to proclaim what has
happened or what is going to happen, either in this world or in
another. A prophecy about destiny is an account, however vague, of
events to be actually experienced, and of their causes. The whole
inspiration of Hebraic religion lies in that. It was not
metaphorically that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed.
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