Word: sin
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Dates: during 1880-1889
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...need no argument for it. All are agreed on the first point, at least-that drunkenness is an evil, and an evil that all should seek to avoid. Traffic, or provision in any way encouraging drunkenness, should be discouraged. But people object, and say that there is no sin in moderate drink-Dr. Crosby has even said that temperance is more manly than total abstinence; the temperate man is the manly man, the total abstainer the coward, and the excessive user the beast. The man who can drink and hold a good deal, is sometimes regarded as a noble example...
...whom we walked toward the college. And here we learned our first lesson. We will not relate how we learned it, but will simply warn all who may read this never to call that lovely piece of water, at the foot of Wellesley College, a pond. This is the sin of sins for which you may never be forgiven. Call it a lake by all means, if you wish to win favor with the students...
Apart, then, from these considerations, fatalism does not change our notion of what things are right and what wrong. But what it does change completely is our notion of the nature of right and wrong, of the nature of sin. We sometimes feel that we have thoughts and desires which are profoundly shameful; we have moments and seasons in which we feel very wretched and guilty. There is an anarchy in our souls which seems somehow to accuse us of treason and rebellion. But what does all this become in the scheme of fatalism? A delusion, a disease. Guilt cannot...
...explanation be a good one or not, the facts remain the same. No theory about free will can alter the teaching of experience or take from us our energies and desires. But if we believe that our actions and characters are wholly determined by physical causation, we must regard sin as a disease or deformity, which may make us dangerous and disgusting, but cannot make us guilty. If we believe, on the contrary, that the law of our being is a spiritual law whose essence is freedom; if we believe that this natural freedom is abdicated when it is abused...
...Middle Ages, the monkish chronicles and the legends of saints are full of the Devil, who suddenly becomes a very active member of society. He is now a rather contemptible, mischievous fellow. His primary object is to entrap human souls; but if not successful in making holy men sin, he is content, nevertheless, for he at least makes them miserably uncomfortable. He is always playing tricks upon the unwary, in which he is usually discomfited. A typical example of the Devil in the literature of this time is found in the story of his persecution of St. Dunstan...