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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1852. Excerpt: ... an extemporaneous memory. Those conversant with courts well know that large amounts of property have often been lost, and enduring stigmas have been fixed upon pure characters, by testimony wholly alcoholic in its origin. Often, too, has the assertion of valuable rights been foregone, because intemperance had besotted the witness by whose testimony alone they could have been established. In commercial affairs, what vast amounts of property frequently depend upon the evidence of men whose powers of clear recollection and of precise and intelligent statement are wholly obliterated, though something of the moral sense may have survived, or have been renovated in them! We all feel that a reputation for honor, and virtue, and beneficent action is the third treasure in the universe, inferior only to the smiles of Heaven and the approbation of conscience; and yet, when the profligate in principle or the dissolute in life are found contending with the sober and the upright, do not the intemperate almost invariably espouse the cause of the former? In some parts of our country, numerous instances have already occurred where that sympathy with guilt, which is generated by intemperance more than by all other things combined, has filled the temples of justice with a rout of fraternal villains, rebelling against law, perplexing the minds of witnesses with fear, and overawing the sworn administrators of justice. Nor is it unworthy of remark, in this connection, that the established and regularly-organized tribunals of the land have jurisdiction of only a small part of the controversies which arise among men. The law takes no cognizance of innumerable questions which relate to the performance of domestic, social, or neighborhood duties. In these cases, all persons are ar...

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1856. Excerpt: ... INTRODUCTION. It is generally admitted as a fact, that the Scriptures of God utter their great and saving truths in much simplicity and plainness. Miracles, it is confessed, are not excluded; but these miracles are propounded, not so much to our reason, as to an unquestioning and child-like faith. Far from obscuring the doctrines at large, they set them in their purest light, and reveal them in their heavenly beauty, and glory, and harmony. Yet, paradoxical as it may seem, their very simplicity has proved a fruitful occasion of their being misunderstood and misrepresented. Speculative men, men of acute minds, and reasoning talents, coming to the Bible, and finding there nothing which a well-instructed child cannot understand nearly as well as themselves, are dissatisfied and disgusted. Hence philosophy is summoned to supply the defects, and adorn the artlessness, of scripture. But the attempt is fatal. By these devices, men's minds are unhinged, reason takes the place of faith, and endless doubts and misgivings are substituted for positive and satisfying certainty. Breaking loose from the eternal truths of God, men are seduced into a labyrinth of interminable and destructive error. When we read the Epistles of St. Paul, we find that he rebuked this arrogant species of philosophy, viewing it as eminently and irreconcilably hostile to the pure truths of the gospel. In one passage, he brands it with the epithet of science falsely so called. And most justly. For what a wretched thing is that science which understands every thing but the truth of God, and the way of human salvation. How mis-called is that philosophy which arrays itself against divine and everlasting truth. Genuine philosophy is modest and unassuming. It delights to open its eyes to the light o...