Lectures on magdalenism : its nature, extent, effects, guilt, causes, and remedy : delivered and published by special request of forty ministers of the Gospel, and eleven hundred fellow-Christians / by Ralph Wardlaw.

  • Wardlaw, Ralph, 1779-1853.
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on magdalenism : its nature, extent, effects, guilt, causes, and remedy : delivered and published by special request of forty ministers of the Gospel, and eleven hundred fellow-Christians / by Ralph Wardlaw. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    loathing of the beastly system is so intense that I am unable to speak of it with patience, or to ap- ply to it any of the terms of a smooth-tongued cour- adds : This, law of nature is evidently intended to induce, impel, or compel, one portion of organized matter to seek some other portion of matter necessary to its best state of ex- istence ; and this law seems to pervade all nature, except whea man, by his absurd artificial laws, opposed to nature's laws, interferes, and says to the Power which animates and organ- izes the universe, < I am more wise and holy than thou, and I will therefore oppose thy laws with all my might, and endea- vor to frustrate thy weak and foolish decrees. I will force into union, according to my notions, bodies and minds, contrary to thy laws, and compel the continuance of the union, however thy laws may repel or loathe the connexion.' Thus has the ignorance of man, with regard to his own nature, and universal nature, interfered in opposition to his own happiness, and to the happiness of all surrounding nature, as far as his limited powers extend. ... He has decreed, that men and women, whose natural sympathies and affections unite them at one time and repel each other at another, shall speak and act in opposition to these unavoidable feelings; and thus has he produced hypocrisy, crime, and misery, beyond the powers of language to express.—Owen's Book of the New Moral World, &c.—pp. 54,57. And again: It is in reality, therefore, the greatest crime against nature, to prevent organ- ized beings from uniting with those objects or other organized beings, with which nature has created in them a desire to unite. Nature, when allowed to take its course, through the whole life of organized beings, produces the desire to combine or unite with those objects with which it is the best for them to unite, and to remain united with them as long as it is the most beneficial for their well-being and happiness that they should continue together ; and Nature is the only correct judge in de- termining her own laws. It is man alone who has disobeyed this law:—it is man alone who has thus brought sin and misery into the world, and engendered the disunion and hatred which now render the lives of so many human beings wretched. It is to secure the performance of this law, that Nature rewards, with so much satisfaction and pleasure, the union of those or- ganized beings, who often, in despite of man's absurd artificial arrangements to the contrary, contain, between them, the pure elements of union, by being the most perfectly formed to unite together, physically, intellectually, and morally. Man, then, to be perfectly virtuous and happy, from birth to death, must implicitly obey this law of his aud of universal nature.—Ibid