CHAPTER VI.

DISTINCTIONS.

"I am sure there is a common spirit that plays within us, yet makes no part of us, and it is the Spirit of God; the fire and scintillation of that noble and mighty essence which is the life and radical heat of spirit and those essences that know not the virtue of the sun, a fire quite contrary to the fire of hell. This is that gentle heat that brooded on the waters and in six days hatched the world: this is that irradiation that dispels the mists of hell, the clouds of fear, horror, despair, and preserves the region of the mind in serenity. Whoever feels not the warm gale and gentle ventilation of this spirit, (though I feel his pulse,) I dare not say he lives." — SIR THOMAS BROWNE.

IT results from the foregoing argument, that there is in human nature an inborn capacity for goodness, virtue, and holiness, since by its very constitution it is made, from the beginning, receptive of the Divine Spirit, and opens inward towards the influence of a spiritual world. Hereditary corruption may gather around this inborn capacity, and human nature may be filled with the germs of all evil; still, through the inmost recesses of the soul God is always speaking, always operating, always waiting to be received. This is the strength which is always available to human weakness, this is the consuming fire which fills the souls of the guilty with corroding memories.

It will be seen at once, that this is a very different doctrine from that which gives to human nature

rate resources.

original and independent powers for virtue and progress. Human nature is sometimes represented as capable of self-development, through its own sepaOr yet again, as a spark struck out from the Divinity, to shine ever afterward through its own unborrowed effulgence. Man, like God, has the power of originating truth and goodness, through the independent exercise of his own faculties.

We represent, on the other hand, that man no more originates truth and virtue, than the plant originates the sunshine in which it warms and expands. Like the plant, which is an organism to receive the light and the heat of the solar beams, and through them to be clothed in glories more rich and varied that those of the robes of Solomon, so the human soul is an organism to receive divine light and influence, and through that to grow into all the graces and glories of Christian excellence. If the light were put out in the heavens, all the beauty would vanish from the many-colored landscape, and darkness fall the fields like a pall. So if at any moment human nature were cut off from the Eternal Light, all the excellences and graces which make up the scenery of the moral world would vanish in uniform night.

upon

We distinguish, then, between an original capacity for goodness and original goodness itself; between the power of originating truth and the capacity of receiving truth and being formed thereby into its resplendent image. And we hope to make it appear that this distinction is of such vital importance, that

there is no true progress unless it be kept steadily in

view.

Let one start, then, with the assurance that moral excellence is self-development out of an original fund of goodness deposited in human nature, the exercise of an independent faculty of his own. It results inevitably from this, that all culture will start from self and centre around it, and have self-exaltation for its object. It results just as inevitably, that all the pride of the natural man will be excited and developed, and intellectual culture and religious forms and ceremonies will serve alike to inflame its fires. The dignity of human nature will consist, not in its capacity to receive the Divine Image, as the placid and lowly lake receives the glowing skies into its tranquil deeps, but in its power of exhibiting a dignity and splendor out of itself, which resemble the splendors of the Godhead. The human soul will seem to itself a portion of the Divinity, and sufficient unto itself for all its progress and culture. Whatever virtues and moralities are put on, they are but the exhibitions of self; whatever be the forms of devotion, they are but the splendid liturgy that "wafts perfume to pride." These moralities and devotions will be lifeless, and they will only serve to wrap round and decorate the corruption of the natural man, a corruption that is never subdued and never removed. Hence there is so much of self-culture without self-renovation, so much of outward conformity where there is no inward life, so much of natural depravity that lurks under the vain disguises of Chris

tian civilization. That which is God-given, man claims as his own, and turns to his own private uses. He steals the eternal fires. The virtues are his own; they come not from hourly acknowledgment and self-surrender. There can be no morality which shall be redolent of the divine life within, no regeneration, no worship that shall be any better than gilded mockery, until men in spiritual things as well as natural shall cease to violate the awful command, "THOU SHALT NOT STEAL."

In contrast with these ideas, and the culture which grows out of them, we put forward the doctrine that the Divine Spirit, though immanent in man, is not a part of man, not a separate faculty of his own. may not appropriate the empyrean light, and claim it as his, for then the light being shut in becomes darkness, and the divine voice, being confounded with his own instincts, is changed into babblements and lies. On the other hand, the source of this Light must be profoundly acknowledged, and our daily dependence upon it. Then it stands apart in its awful sanctity and authority: we dare not steal it and appropriate it, but we bow before it in lowly surrender. Not self, but God, then becomes the radiant centre of all our thoughts. Conscience is not now a self-moving power, but a capacity through which a Power which is out of us and above us sends its eternal utterances into our inmost being, showing our own corruptions in mournful contrast with the Absolute Purity and Excellence. Then we do not attempt to bring down the Divine Spirit to the level

of our own powers, but we suffer it to lift us up into the circle of its own radiance: we do not impress it into the service of our own interest and pride, but we suffer it to abase our pride, and we sacrifice all our interests to its behests. Then we do not confound its voice with the suggestions of our own passions, but we suffer it to cleanse away our passions and bathe our souls in its all-entrancing beauty.

Coleridge has somewhere described a man who used to take off his hat with great demonstrations of respect and deference whenever he spoke of himself. Perhaps there was more method in his madness than might at first appear. Let the idea of the Divine Personality be lost, and then God will be merged in nature or in man. The universal reason becomes itself the Divinity, and first obtains impersonation in individual men. So the creature's personal attributes become divine, and self-contemplation is the highest devotion, and self-worship is his daily ritual. Not the surrender of all his powers to the one Infinite Person to be shaped anew by its sovereign and plastic influence, but the exaltation of those powers to the place of God when most they need strength, and guidance, and renovation, - this becomes the characteristic of self-culture. Then one's own cognitions are the supreme authority and his own utterances the infallible oracle. "Ye shall be as gods," knowing good and evil, through selfillumination. And these are the gods from whose afflatus come confused prophesyings, which throw the world into bewilderment, or fill the air with the