Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Southern Review, Vol. 15: January, 1874
Now, what, in the first place, were those singularly elevat ing and ennobling conceptions of the original purpose of man's creation, ' which serve as the basis of those sublime specula tions that supply such striking explanations of long-recog nized difficulties We could not possibly have imagined, if the author himself had not been pleased to set before us, in his own words, this grand, original purpose of man's creation.' It was, ' says he, the reverent belief of these early thinkers, that man was called into being to fill up the places of the lapsed angels, that he was thus formed, as we read in early pages of the inspired narrative, out of the dust and constituent parts of this earth with which these fallen powers certainly retained some connection, and, on the other hand, that into his nostrils was breathed the neshama or breath of life.' (p. Now, in all this, and in all that immediately follows, we see nothing - absolutely nothing - that is not familiar to every reader of the first pages of the inspired narrative, ' except the sublime, elevating, and ennobling conception, that man was created to fill the places of the fallen angels We have no doubt in our own mind that if, instead of finding this specu lation in those early thinkers, ' or fathers of the Church, he had, for the first time, met it in some modern writer, he would have turned away from it with indifference, if not with con tempt.
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