Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1845 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XXIX. Nature of selfishness. Extract from her writings on this subject. Her lore of inward purity. Her care as to her expressions. Her compassion for others. Views of the greatness of God's lore. He lores especially his own work. The views of this intelligent and divinely experienced woman, in relation to the nature and results of selfishness, are very instructive. She relates, as she was one day dwelling in thought on religious things, she had, by the aids of divine grace, a clear view of this subject. She was enabled, as she thought, to perceive very distinctly, that the spirit of self, such as we see it in every unholy person, is the same thing with the spirit of Satan. They were presented to her mind as entirely identical. So that if the holy person may always be regarded as bearing about the image of God in his own regenerated nature; the soul of the unholy and selfish person, may, with equal reason, be looked upon as a miniature image of the Prince of darkness. 2. " I come to the conclusion," she says in some remarks on this subject, " that selfishness is the root of all the evils to which we are exposed, either in this life or in the future. Satan himself would not have fallen, if he had not left the love of God for the love of self. And still more clearly, as it seems to me, am I enabled with divine aid, to trace the results of this destructive principle in the fall of man. Adam fell the moment he turned his desires from God to himself, and substituted his own will, as his principle of action, instead of God's will. And the life of self, which he then possessed, in accordance with the law of natural descent, which gives to the child a moral character as well as a natural body like that of the parent, became the inborn...
