Imatges de pàgina
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THEIR INCONSISTENCY AND UNCERTAINTY.

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dation, which has no reality in itself, nothing real can be built; and as he, whose element is darkness, cannot impart to anything the evidence of light. Whilst in this manner all our thinking and feeling, under that evil influence, is necessarily uncertain, there are causes, which tend to invalidate the certainty, naturally inherent in those results of our intellectual and moral life, which are produced by the agency of the divine power upon our faculties. The submission of our soul to that power, involves submission to a second necessity, which is not physical, but spiritual, the necessity of the perfect and holy will of God. This necessity is not one, under which we are naturally and inevitably placed, it is one, to which we are called upon to submit ourselves with freedom; inasmuch as it is perfect freedom in itself. But the spirit of self in us, loves that false freedom, in which it rules us, better than the true freedom, in which God ruleth, and, therefore, constantly revolts against the idea of perfect submission to that spiritual necessity. Moreover, that divine power of life, in which freedom and necessity are thus blended to holiness and perfection, is, at the same time, a light, before which, whatever is evil, cannot stand, but turns away from it, and strives against it.* The consequence of this is, that there is always lurking in the recesses of the heart, a tendency to re-action against that good and perfect power, tempting us to call its authority, nay, its reality, into

"This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved." This throws great light upon the necessity of an allsatisfactory atonement, for the perfect redemption and restoration of man, at least as far as the state of the creature is concerned, which, without atonement, could never feel in perfect union with God. The importance of this side of the question concerning the necessity of the atonement, is, I fear, not sufficiently acknowledged; or, if it were, it seems that we might dispense with some high doctrinal discussions, which have been ventured upon, respecting the necessity of the atonement on the part of God, and which, in my opinion, are to be ranked among the most presumptuous inquiries, into which religious conceit has betrayed weak and mortal man.

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118 EXAMINATION OF OUR FACULTIES RESUMED.

question, and to throw off its yoke, or, if possible, the very thought of its existence. But, whatever tends to shake the authority of that power itself, must, of necessity, produce the same effect upon all that we have derived from that power, as the validity of our ideas rests entirely upon the authority of their source; so that, in proportion to the prevalence of such a tendency to re-action, a constant unsettling takes place in our faculties, throwing suspicion upon that, which we received with certainty. The combined effect of the uncertainty, which naturally attaches to one part of our thoughts and feelings, and of the artificial uncertainty, which we thus throw upon such as are naturally certain, is that vagueness, and want of conviction, in which most men are so enveloped, that they flee in distress to the mock-evidence of logic, or, in despair, give up every thing but facts and letter.

After having dwelt so long upon this point, which I thought necessary, because upon its full elucidation, the whole value of our remaining knowledge of the human mind for practical purposes entirely depends, I shall content myself with adding, that the same division between intellectual faculties, and faculties of feeling, which was illustrated with reference to the first class, pervades the one now under consideration. Thus, for instance, we have two faculties of fellowship as it were, with our equals, whom we acknowledge, in the correspondence of their thoughts and feelings with ours. The first of these faculties is one of fellow feeling, or sympathy, through which we communicate with others, in benevolence and affection, whilst the other is an intellectual faculty, a sort of fellow-judgment, which enables us to concur in the thoughts and ideas of others, as well as to call for their concurrence in ours. There is another pair of faculties, through which we explore, as it were, the things which are new to us, in the world of thought and feeling, and on the other hand convey to others, what is not yet a matter of common consent between them and

DIVINE PRESENCE IN THE SOUL.

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ourselves. The intellectual faculty devoted to this use is essentially the faculty of association, by which we connect a new idea, which strikes us, with one familiar to our mind, and thereby endeavour to possess ourselves of the former, or, if we communicate a new idea to others, seek for a point of connexion, by which we may introduce it into their minds. The corresponding faculty of feeling, on the contrary, is individualizing and intuitive. It concentrates itself, as in one focus, upon the object of its investigation or communication, and receives or represents it, as a matter of immediate intuition, or mental perception, without analysis, without comparison, without reference to any thing else, as it were, by one stroke. It is the predominance of this faculty in the female sex, which renders woman so much more quick-sighted concerning the character of those with whom she comes into contact; and the close connection which it has with the essence of poetry, is the reason why a poetic tinge attaches, almost invariably, to the female character. In the same manner do all the other faculties of the second class-with the exception of those, which belong not so much to our inward life, as to the communication of it in the outward world-exist in pairs, the one being a faculty of feeling, and the other of intellect. The simultaneous and harmonious development of both these branches, and of the different faculties belonging to each, decides upon the moral character of man, which, to be well balanced, requires the judgment of feeling, as well as that of the understanding. So far, but no farther, can man's development be carried, without consciousness of the indwelling, the nature and operations of that light which "lighteth every man that cometh into the world" and without whom, as "not any thing was made," so not any thing can be understood, of all things that were made. It is by the operation, I repeat it, the unconscious and unknown operation of that light upon the faculties of the two first classes, that the heathen were enabled to investigate nature, to discover principles, and to establish

120 MADE MANIFEST THROUGH JESUS CHRIST.

sciences; and it was by this, that they were enabled to come, from a state of brutal hostility, into a state of civilization; to cultivate the arts of life; to frame laws and institutions; to inquire into the nature, the origin, and destination of the soul; to set up a standard of virtue, and to ascertain the moral duties between man and man. But they were not purely submitted to the influence of that light, nor were they governed by it exclusively; the spirit of rebellion influenced the development of their individual and national life, and the results which they obtained, were attributed by them, not to a divine power distinct from themselves, though dwelling within them, but to their own talents and capacities. Nevertheless, some indications of consciousness of a divine presence in the human heart, such as the Saw of Socrates, broke in upon them in the course of their inquiries, and prepared them for the conception of that great purpose of God, which was to be realized in fulness and glory in the person of Jesus Christ, viz., the divinization of man, through the humanization of the Deity. The historical existence of that fact, and, connected with it, that infinite mass of spiritual information, which the New Testament contains, was necessary, to lead man to a full consciousness of the source, from which he had already derived so much light, so much assistance; and, in that consciousness, to call into full action the faculties of the third and highest order, viz. those which appertain to his existence in and with God. Thus, then, the superiority of christian education, over that which the pagan world gave, consists, not only in the knowledge of God, and our position to him, with which revelation has made us acquainted, and of which the heathen were entirely destitute, but in the light which has been thrown, by that knowledge, upon the whole constitution of human nature, and upon its different operations. It is not merely by the addition of a branch of instruction, called the knowledge of the christian religion, that education has been enriched, but, by the distinct

THE FACULTIES AND THEIR OBJECTS.

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information which we have received, concerning the nature of our task; so that, whilst the heathen knew not, by whose power they learned, nor in whose name they taught, we, on the contrary, know, or at least, ought to know, since the means of knowledge are placed in our hands, in whose name, and by whose power alone, all education and instruction ought to be carried on. How deeply is it, then, to be deplored, that still the greatest part of our education should be imparted in our own name, or in the name of science, and that the little, which is given in the name of God and his Christ, should be given in his name only, and not in his power.

In the preceding sketch of the human faculties, I have drawn your attention to the main parts, rather than to the details, as the latter would far exceed the compass which I am obliged to prescribe to myself, and I have merely mentioned the third order of faculties, without offering any remark on them here, as my last lecture will be exclusively appropriated to that subject. Nor do I think it necessary, in the present lecture, to enumerate the different branches of instruction, as they will come under consideration again in the discussion of the two following questions, and I will therefore only beg leave, in conclusion, to say a few words regarding the connection, in which the different faculties. stand with the visible as well as the invisible world. I have shown that they are all destined for one purpose, for the attainment of which they are to be concentrated upon the divine light and life, and developed in subserviency to it; and it remains now for us to see, what relation they bear to the objects of their activity, which are, erroneously enough, generally mistaken for the purposes of their existence. It has been repeated, often enough to be called a truism, that man is a compound being, and still it may be very excusable to repeat it once more, for the purpose of fixing a meaning upon a term, used so habitually without a meaning. The composition of the different beings, and the ground on which their communication with each other

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