He laid by his old sermon.
He put back a pile of old commentators with their eyes and mouths and
hearts full of the dust of the schools. Then he opened the book of
Genesis at the eighteenth chapter and read that remarkable argument
of Abraham's with his Maker, in which he boldly appeals to first
principles. He took as his text, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth
do right?" and began to write his sermon, afterwards so famous,--"On the
Obligations of an Infinite Creator to a Finite Creature."
It astonished the good people, who had been accustomed so long to repeat
mechanically their Oriental hyperboles of self-abasement, to hear their
worthy minister maintaining that the dignified attitude of the old
Patriarch, insisting on what was reasonable and fair with reference to
his fellow-creatures, was really much more respectful to his Maker, and
a great deal manlier and more to his credit, than if he had yielded the
whole matter, and pretended that men had not rights as well as duties.
The same logic which had carried him to certain conclusions with
reference to human nature, this same irresistible logic carried him
straight on from his text until he arrived at those other results, which
not only astonished his people, as was said, but surprised himself. He
went so far in defence of the rights of man, that he put his foot into
several heresies, for which men had been burned so often, it was time,
if ever it could be, to acknowledge the demonstration of the _argumentum
ad ignem_.
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