"
"And I, as your duenna," said Mrs. Shortridge, "prohibit any such
frank admission of propensity to evil in a young lady under my
charge."
"Why, will you not let me make a Christian confession of the
sinfulness of my nature? It were indeed heresy to claim an equal
capacity for good. There I acknowledge the need of aid from above."
"And that aid is not compulsion," said L'Isle, "as every page of
Scripture testifies. There is something strangely illogical in the
reasoning of those who, starting from the point, that what has been
decreed by God is as good as done, and the future as fixed as the
past, thence exhort us to plead, because the decree has gone forth; to
run in the race, because the victor has been chosen, and the prize
adjudged; to strive, because the battle has been fought; and to repent
and be saved, because our final destiny was decided before time was.
Surely, if this life have any bearing on another, we are running a
race, the issue of which is undecided until death; and ours is a real
struggle, not merely the acting out of a foregone conclusion, not the
dramatic representation of a past event. What would you think of a
modern Greek praying zealously that Mohamed II.
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