Here is plain justification of the
practice, provided always that the sufferer be in the bondage of
transgression, and obnoxious to divine censure. Let no man,
therefore, in the pride of his learning, and, perhaps, of his
prosperity, disdain to believe things that are so manifestly taught
and foretold; but let us all bow in humble submission to the will of
a Being who, to our finite understanding, is so perfectly
incomprehensible."
We trust that no one of our readers will be disposed to deride
Parson Amen's speculations on this interesting subject, although
this may happen to be the first occasion on which he has ever heard
the practice of taking scalps justified by Scripture. Viewed in a
proper spirit, they ought merely to convey a lesson of humility, by
rendering apparent the wisdom, nay the necessity, of men's keeping
them-selves within the limits of the sphere of knowledge they were
designed to fill, and convey, when rightly considered, as much of a
lesson to the Puseyite, with abstractions that are quite as
unintelligible to himself as they are to others; to the high-wrought
and dogmatical Calvinist, who in the midst of his fiery zeal,
forgets that love is the very essence of the relation between God
and man; to the Quaker, who seems to think the cut of a coat
essential to salvation; to the descendant of the Puritan, who
whether he be Socinian, Calvinist, Universalist, or any other "1st,"
appears to believe that the "rock" on which Christ declared he would
found his church was the "Rock of Plymouth"; and to the unbeliever,
who, in deriding all creeds, does not know where to turn to find one
to substitute in their stead.
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