The priest cannot afford to believe in human nature

The claim of the preachers that unless men are assured of black-eyed houris and golden harps, or at least,--some sort of a ghostly existence,--somewhere and at sometime in the future, they will convert life into a debauch, is simply a falsehood. Man is not so depraved as that. Indeed, the doctrine of total depravity was invented by the priests to create a demand for the offices of the church. The priest cannot afford to believe in human nature. If a man can save himself, or if he can do good by his own effort, what need would there be of the mysteries cheap ray bans
and the sacraments,--the rites and the dogmas? I had occasion to tell you a few Sundays ago that if a lily can be white, or a rose ray bans sunglasses
so wondrous fair, or a dog so loyal and heroic, without dickering with the universe for a future reward, man can do, at least, as much. Would this be expecting too much of him? In France, there fake ray bans
is, in one of the close-by suburbs of Paris, a cemetery for dogs. Of course, no priest or pastor would think of officiating at the interment of a dog, however useful or faithful the animal may have been. They are brought here by their owners and quietly buried. The visitor finds here, however, many tokens of appreciation and gratitude for the services and value of the dog to man. Little monuments are raised over the remains of some of the occupants of the modest graves. One of these bears the inscription: "He saved forty lives, and lost his own in the attempt to save the forty-first." He did his best without the hope of a future reward.