Source: Horns
“Primarily, God is not bound to punish sin; he is bound to destroy sin.
The only vengeance worth having on sin
is to make the sinner himself its executioner.”
From ‘’Justice’’ in Unspoken Sermons Series III (1889)
Context: If sin must be kept alive, then hell must be kept alive; but while I regard the smallest sin as infinitely loathsome, I do not believe that any being, never good enough to see the essential ugliness of sin, could sin so as to deserve such punishment. I am not now, however, dealing with the question of the duration of punishment, but with the idea of punishment itself; and would only say in passing, that the notion that a creature born imperfect, nay, born with impulses to evil not of his own generating, and which he could not help having, a creature to whom the true face of God was never presented, and by whom it never could have been seen, should be thus condemned, is as loathsome a lie against God as could find place in heart too undeveloped to understand what justice is, and too low to look up into the face of Jesus.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
George MacDonald 127
Scottish journalist, novelist 1824–1905Related quotes
“One leak will sink a ship, and one sin will destroy a sinner.”
“A shaping stone, to make us; a testing ground to prove our worth; and a punishment for the sin.”
Aiel on the Three Fold Land
(15 November 1990)
Source: Discipleship (1937), The Disciple and Unbelievers, p. 184.
“756. Every sin brings its punishment with it.”
Jacula Prudentum (1651)
October 27, 1882, to Keshub Chunder Sen. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, Volume 1, Madras, 1985, p. 138. Quoted from Goel, S. R. (2016). History of Hindu-Christian encounters Ch.13
The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942)
“Hate the sin and love the sinner.”
This is variant of a traditional Christian proverb; ie: "Hate the sin, but love the sinner" in Sermons, Lectures, and Occasional Discourses (1828) Edward Irving http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=VwUeH-wTxZ8C&pg=PA132, and similar expressions date to those of Augustine of Hippo: "Love the sinner and hate the sin." Gandhi did express approval of such sentiments in his An Autobiography (1927): "Hate the sin and not the sinner" is a precept which, though easy enough to understand, is rarely practiced, and that is why the poison of hatred spreads in the world.
Misattributed