than those of the sculptor when breathing over his work the prayer of Pygmalion. There are powers in man which need only to be restored to their first symmetry and order. The acquired and demonizing instincts of cruelty and revenge, need not to be restored, but purged away.

The history of every acquired instinct would disclose three distinct stages of development. There is, first, the transient emotion which ebbs and flows. Then there is the fixed mood of mind into which it settles down, when it operates an organic change in the moral, and thence in the physical structure. And, lastly, there is the altered constitution reproduced in the offspring. Anger at first is a flash of fire. Anger hoarded up becomes hate, and it settles into the brow and grates through the tones of the voice. Love at first may be an emotion that comes and goes. Then it is a fixed principle, beaming out of the heart so as to transfigure the whole person, and create a new face under the ugliest features. And the aversions of hate or the appetencies of love often appear in the next generation, in the transmitted feuds of families and nations, or in the heavenly inheritance of that good-will which was the burden

* "I ordered the artillery to be overlooking it, and open its fire. conceivable."

"The storming of

posted on a hill near the town and Now ensued the most beautiful sight

was a magnificent spectacle. What a glorious feeling of elation took possession of my soul at that moment.” — Livermore's War with Mexico, Chap. XXVI.-But see the literature of war passim.

of the angel-song. The first two stages in the natural history of the passions, we witness daily in ourselves or in those about us, how evil passions run down the nerves and shake them out of tune, till the whole frame, though once like an organ of sweet stops, will discourse nothing but janglings and discords, how corruption out of the heart will flood the brain and darken its "chambers of imagery," and thence derange all the vital functions of soul and body. Or, on the other hand, how pure affections, passing into high, rational, and spiritual frames, transform the whole man and create him anew; how benevolence works its changes from within, and makes the outer clothing of the spirit to be radiant and white as the light; how faith lays the soul to rest in the arms of God; how hope, from its first fond flutterings at the heart, changes into confidence and trust, when "wings at our shoulders seem to play," and bear us away from care and trouble into an atmosphere which is bracing and serene. He who denies that these opposite states of mind, after becoming fixed and habitual, affect the natural tempers and dispositions of offspring, shows that the simplest guardians of the nursery might teach him wisdom. Hence the path of endless progress that opens upward into light, or of endless deterioration that slopes downward into darkness and death.

"It is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.”—

HENRY WARE, JR.

ROMANS Vii. 17.

THERE is a large class of minds, ranging through all nations, sects, and ages, which, though differing in their theologies, have a singular agreement as to the facts of consciousness. They draw various conclusions from these facts, but they bear uniform testimony as to the facts themselves. The testimony

is substantially this, that some evil forces within, lying deeper than their personal volitions, or acquired tastes, and antedating all their culture and habits, are seeking to possess and to sway their faculties. They give to the individual the feeling of divided consciousness. And this feeling is stronger just in the degree that the religious experience becomes more deep and vital. The more the interior man is searched and laid open by the word of God, the clearer are the demonstrations of this divided consciousness; and it seems to the individual that two classes of powers are ranged in opposition and seeking for the dominion of his nature. This conflict, perhaps, did not appear except under the light of Christian truth bursting on the soul in clearer splendor, — like the sun rising on a field where hosts are gathered and arrayed for battle, but which lay in stillness on their arms until the morning light should appear. Those who live a life merely natural, and outwardly blameless, yet who have never brought the most interior life under the judgments of the eternal law, have no such experience as we here describe. But it is conspicuously displayed in the lives of such men as Luther, Fénelon, Taylor, Bunyan, Fox, Edwards, and Ware, and the more so as the interior nature emerged out of dim twilight into open day, where all things appeared, not in mass, but distributed, and with their shape and quality confessed. Now the question may be raised, whether those moods be healthful or morbid, and whether the facts of consciousness are here rendered truly; but

the question will hardly fail of a right answer, if we remember that oftenest out of these moods has come a robust and fervid piety, oblivious of self, earnest for great deeds and sacrifices, and with words that speak most effectively to the condition of sinful men. Yea, what mind penetrated with religious ideas has never been resolved into this same double consciousness, however dimly? Has the reader never, in the stillness of meditation and earnest introspection, had revealed to him the breadth and the purity of God's law, shining down into his soul as the serene almighty justice, and searching out all that was in opposition to itself? And in that all-revealing hour has he not been prompted to exclaim, “I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips, for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts"? Has he not then seen a law in his members, warring against the law that shines down into his mind, waking up the old conflict which Paul has described in such living language?— God's voice calling one way, and a tide of inclinations and a throng of fancies sweeping the other way, which will not return nor subside at his bidding, - opposing powers, impersonating themselves in him and calling and answering to each other? Then he verifies anew the language of Paul, no longer a paradox, — "What I would, that do I not, but what I hate, that I do." Some mighty power is standing behind his personal volitions, and bending and swaying his faculties at its will, so that he does not seem so much to act and speak himself, as to be acted through and