University of Virginia Library

Sin a form of insanity

There are many species of insanity. All sin is insan- ity in different degrees. Sin is spared from this classification, only because its method of madness is in consonance with common mortal belief.

Every sort of sickness is error, - that is, sickness is loss of harmony. This view is not altered by the fact that sin is worse than sickness, and sickness is not ac- knowledged nor discovered to be error by many who are sick.

There is a universal insanity of so-called health, which mistakes fable for fact throughout the entire round of the material senses, but this general craze cannot, in a scien- tific diagnosis, shield the individual case from the special name of insanity. Those unfortunate people who are committed to insane asylums are only so many distinctly defined instances of the baneful effects of illusion on mor- tal minds and bodies.