Chapter 6

NORTH.

What a great passage in Milton is that descriptive of——

TALBOYS.

Upon a day of the heavenly year the Almighty Father, upon his Holy Mount, before the assembled Angels, manifests the Son—proclaims the Son, the head over all Principalities and Powers, and requires to be paid him accordingly the homage and obedience of the whole angelical host. The whole angelical Host pay, as required, their homage. But not all gladly and sincerely. One of the highest Archangels—if not the highest—whose heavenly name is heard no more—but upon Earth and in Hell he is called Satan and Lucifer—envies and revolts in heart at this new vicegerency. He intends rebellion:—beguiles the next Angel in authority under him, and with him, pretending a command from the celestial King, withdraws the legions who are bound in service to his hierarchal standard into the northern quarter of Heaven. With such precision does Milton dare to imagine, even in the highest, the scenes and procedure of his Poem. There the false Archangel proposes to his followers that they shall resist the ordinance imposing a new reign over them. The followers thus addressed areone third partof the whole celestial host. One Seraph resists—refuses to forego his original, proper allegiance, and flies back. The rest march in arms against the Mount of God. They are encountered by an equal number of the faithful Angels. Two days the fight rages in the celestial fields. The second of the two days closes the unequal, hopeless conflict. The Messiah goes forth to war; and the rebellious angelical multitude are precipitated from the verge of Heaven into the fiery pit of Hell, newly created, and yawning to receive the vanquished and cast-out numbers without number from their unimaginable fall.

NORTH.

What, according to Milton, is Pride? Milton’s answer is in one word. Satan aspires to sit upon the Throne of God. Then in angel or in man there is but one meaning of the word Pride. He unseats God, and sets up another—namely, Self—in his place. The comparison of Man’s Sin to Satan’s, is by Milton distinctly affirmed. The Almighty says—

“——Man disobeying,Disloyal breaks his fealty, and sinsAgainst the high supremacy of heaven,Affecting Godhead.”

“——Man disobeying,

Disloyal breaks his fealty, and sins

Against the high supremacy of heaven,

Affecting Godhead.”

I suppose the meaning to be universally applied to man’s transgression—namely, to break a law is virtually to set aside the Lawgiver, and to legislate for yourself. The act may, indeed, be more or less conscious, wilful, reflective; may more or lessintendsiege and defiance to Heaven. Proud Sinmost intendsthis; and even the Sin of Pride, simply as constituted in the Will, ere going forth into action. I understand that moral offences, into which impetuous passions hurry, however undeliberated, and although theyintendsimply the gratification of desires, and cannot well be said to include a proud scorn of the laws that they break—for there is often more rash oblivion of than stiff-necked opposition to the laws broken—yet partake of the character condemned in Satan; and condemned in man also by these words put into the mouth of the Almighty. Every the most thoughtless and reckless breach of a law sets aside the Lawgiver, and usurps legislation to the law-breaker. The law-breaker makes his own law. No doubt, however, there are more heedful offenders. There are those who look the law in the face, and with impious hardness of heart, and wilfully approaching God, break his laws. They are proud Sinners.

TALBOYS.

In the Seventh—the Book of the Creation—we are told

“The World was made for Man, and Man for God.”

This is not so much perceptive or demonstrative as it is enkindling: a dear and near tie—elation by consciousness of a high purpose in his Creation, and gratitude for the love which thus ennobled him in creating him. If he reverences himself he is bound to a Creator, whose designs in him are thus expounded. Related hereto, but distinct, and more incidental, is the Philosophy of Man’s nature, propounded by Raphael, who nevertheless propounds as if upon divine revelation made to himself at the moment. This philosophy, delivered in three words, appears to me exceedingly sublime, and profoundly true.

“There wanted yet the master-work, the endOf all yet done; a creature who, not proneAnd brute as other creatures, but enduedWith sanctity of reason, might erectHis stature, and upright with front sereneGovern the rest, self-knowing; and from thenceMagnanimous to correspond with heaven,But grateful to acknowledge whence his goodDescends, thither with heart, and voice, and eyesDirected in devotion, to adoreAnd worship God supreme, who made him chiefOf all his works.”

“There wanted yet the master-work, the end

Of all yet done; a creature who, not prone

And brute as other creatures, but endued

With sanctity of reason, might erect

His stature, and upright with front serene

Govern the rest, self-knowing; and from thence

Magnanimous to correspond with heaven,

But grateful to acknowledge whence his good

Descends, thither with heart, and voice, and eyes

Directed in devotion, to adore

And worship God supreme, who made him chief

Of all his works.”

Here Milton describes Man as being—1.Self-knowing.That is the root. 2. Thence, great souled, and communicating with Heaven. 3. Thence also acknowledges himself as dependent. 4. Still thence grateful for the good. 5. Still thence adoring, praising. 6. From his height of Being—as chief of God’s works here below.

SEWARD.

He knows himself.

That is to say, he knows the God-like and God-allied and God-tending in his nature.

He knows his Nature as exalted—as capable for divine communions and influences, aspirations, joys, desires.

And knowing this, he boldly cherishes these desires and joys—aspires to these communions.

As Milton says, he is—

“From thenceMagnanimous to correspond with Heaven.”

“From thence

Magnanimous to correspond with Heaven.”

NORTH.

But knowing himself, he knows himself weak—unable to create—unable to furnish his own good. Hence

“But grateful to acknowledge whence his goodDescends.”

“But grateful to acknowledge whence his good

Descends.”

SEWARD.

And why should self-knowledge educegratitudefrom dependence?

NORTH.

I imagine, because self-knowledge includes the distinctintelligenceofhis own good. But he cannot know his own highest good—cannot really understand his happiness, and be ungrateful. How can you to the Giver of Love be ungrateful for the gift of Love?—if you know truly the happiness of love—i. e., know yourself as a Spirit endowed for loving—and know him for the giver? It would be a self-contradiction in Spirit.

SEWARD.

And why do you,theself-knowing, adore and praise? I think that Milton expresses this—

“Thither with hearts and hands and eyes,Directed in devotion to adore,Who made him chiefOf all his works.”

“Thither with hearts and hands and eyes,

Directed in devotion to adore,

Who made him chief

Of all his works.”

NORTH.

As if the discernment of his own constitution as chief of creation peculiarly summoned him to acknowledge with adoration—i. e., with awful ecstasy of admiring—the Constitutor. Is it not a high, solemn, sublime, true thought, that Man’s discernment of his own exaltedness, immediately and with direct impulse, carries him God-ward—as on the summit of a high hill you are next heaven, or seem to be next it?

TALBOYS.

This passage beginning—

“There wantedyet the Master-work,”

contains an undoubted imitation of Ovid.

“Sanctius his animal, &c.Deerat.”

“Sanctius his animal, &c.

Deerat.”

And Ovid’s is surprisingly noble—forhim—theSanctiusalone is quite enough. That is the heathen contemplation of Man. How many of us know ourselves and our fellows as holy? Nevertheless, Milton makes that which was high and impassioned—logical, comprehensive, and sublime.

SEWARD.

Sanctity of Reason is hallowed and hallowing Intelligence. It is implied that in the best and truest actions of our understanding, there is an afflux of Deity, and that, as Bacon says, we are akin to God by our Spirits.

NORTH.

Well alluded to.

TALBOYS.

The sublime passage, which describes Man’s creation, besides the moral influence and incitement of its main bearing—that Man is “the end of all yet done”—that he is made in the likeness of God—that here only the Father is distinctly and especially announced as consulting and co-operating with the Son—besides the call that is thus made upon Man to revere and guard the Spirit implanted in him—and besides the formal precept with which it concludes, inculcating compliance with the sole prohibition, is, in the following respect, also remarkable, when we look for testimonies to the frame of mind in which the Poem was written. To wit: The passage appears to embosom, in a very few words—in half-a-dozen verses—an entire system of Ethics in the germ, or general thought. Milton appears to lay as its basis the faculty which Man possesses ofSelf-Knowledge, which he seems nearly to identify with Reason. Hence, very loftily, but very summarily, he deduces the general moral condition of Man, and his highest, that is to say, his religious obligations. We must understand, no doubt, that the other inferior obligations are to be similarly deduced. But the bare fact, that Miltonso places(and so compendiously) this high and comprehensive speculation in a striking manner, attests the temper of thinking in which the whole Poem has been composed. In such a fact we unequivocally read that which has been repeatedly here affirmed upon all kinds of evidence,—that theParadise Lostwas to Milton the depository (within room at once confined and ample) for his lifelong studies; and in particular, that, holding the office of a Poet at the highest—that is to say, seeing in every one upon whom the high faculties of Poetry are bestowed, a solemn and missioned Teacher to Men, Milton hoped, in this great Poem, to acquit himself of this responsibility laid upon his own Spirit.

NORTH.

In the Kingdom of God’s Love, to obey him and to promote happiness is one and the same thing. To disobey him and to destroy happiness is one and the same thing. If it were possible for a finite being to see the consequences of his actions as God sees them, he would perform precisely the same actions, whether he aimed at augmenting to the utmost the welfare of God’s Creation, or endeavoured to the utmost to conform his actions to God’s Will.

SEWARD.

Unable to penetrate consequences, should he have access to know God’s Will—he will by this means have a safe rule of effecting that which the right, loving disposition of his Mind desires, but which his imperfect foresight disables him from accomplishing by his own computation of results.

TALBOYS.

Nor is it unreasonable to say that nations unvisited by God’s Word have access to know, in some imperfect measure, his Will—and to use it for their guidance—and that they have done so;—for all the nobler nations, and perhaps all the nations—or all, with few exceptions—at least those high Gentile nations who have left us their own hearts disclosed and recorded in writings, have witnessed, as follows:—They have regarded the primary Affections by which the family is bound together within itself—and those affections by which a nation is bound as a brotherhood within itself—as Divine Laws speaking in their bosoms. Yet more solemnly they have acknowledged the voice of Conscience, dividing Right from Wrong, in each man’s innermost Thoughts, as a divine oracle, shrined in the human heart.

SEWARD.

Yes, Talboys; their Orators, their Historians, their Philosophers, their Poets, their Mythologies, and their Altars, witness to the fact of their having thus apprehended themselves to live under a Divine Legislation.

NORTH.

When, therefore, not idly and presumptuously arrogating to themselves to divine and calculate consequences removed from their faculties, they did, in simplicity of soul, follow out the biddings of these holy charities, and the dictates of this inwardly prophesying monitor, they were so far, in the light and in the eye of Reason—VIRTUOUS. They did so far—if we may dare so highly to pronounce—conform themselves to God’s will. They did this, designing—even in the dim light in which they walked—to do this. And so far conforming themselves, after their imperfect apprehension, to his laws, they were so far producers of happiness. Their conformity—their production of human happiness, and their virtue—flowed in one channel—were one and the same stream.

SEWARD.

Even this solemn conviction, which seems to carry its own evidence in itself, derives confirmation from weighing the connection of human happiness with human actions. The feelings which carry us to accept implicitly, and without the suggestion of a doubt, the Will of God as the law of our actions, are in themselves principal sources of Happiness—the Obedience itself is the firmest and only secure foundation of Happiness. He whose will we are to obey is the Sole Giver of Happiness. And if we could begin with searching our own Being into its depths—the laws of Happiness which we should there discover would point out to us, as the effectual and unfailing sources, and the necessary condition of happiness, those qualities of action, which we know as the immutable attributes of the Divine Will—Truth, Justice, Holiness, Love.

NORTH.

The Moral Nature of Man is to be regarded as something which may rise from very low to very high degrees. And what is manifestly true of it in one state may not be as manifestly true of it in another. To understand it, my dear friends, we must regard it in its nearest approaches to perfection. From that observation of it, we must endeavour to establish principles, and deduce Rules, which we may be able afterwards to apply to judging of its inferior states. We cannot equally expect, from observing its inferior states, to find the rule that will enable us to comprehend its highest.

SEWARD.

My Preceptor teacheth well.

NORTH.

The highest Moral State of the Human Mind is unquestionably that in which it knows Deity, in his perfections; in which his Known Law is adopted as the express and supreme Law of Life;—in which the affections due towards him are strong, pure, full, habitual;—in which all the other affections, under subordination to these, are directed, each in due degree, towards its due object; and in which Conscience is known, as a declarer of the Divine Will, when other testimony is silent, is revered as such, and holds authority sufficient to decide the choice whenever the Will fluctuates in its Obedience to its highest affections.

TALBOYS.

From this state, which is that to which every human being is bound to aspire, you would deduce grounds of judging of those inferior moral conditions which tend to the attainment of this highest?

NORTH.

I would; and it will be found that these are moral, either because they bear an imperfect and broken resemblance to this state, or because they have a visible tendency towards it.

TALBOYS.

Believing, then, that the Human Soul only reaches the fulness of its nature, and the exaltation of its powers, when it Knows itself in the presence of God, when it looks up to Him, and endeavours, not in hidden thought merely, but in action and life, to adore His Will, we must not allow as possessing the same excellence, and participating in the same Nature of Morality, any state in which we cannot discern footsteps of the same Deity, where the breath of the same spirit cannot be felt? That, on the other hand, we embrace with affection, and with moral anticipation, whatever seems even remotely to be animated with this influence, and to tend to this result?

NORTH.

Yes. To an observer looking in this spirit upon the affairs of men, there will be no difficulty in approving and condemning those who, in the same light as he himself enjoys, conform to or contemn what he acknowledges as the highest Law. The two extremes of virtue and crime fall distinctly and decisively under the test which he recognises. The nature of the merit, the nature of the Guilt, of those who in the highest degree conform to this Law, and of those who most audaciously trample upon it, cannot be mistaken.

SEWARD.

But between these there are infinite degrees, to which it may often be extremely difficult to apply the same rule of Moral Estimation.

NORTH.

Alas! alas! He who looks forth from himself with the views of human perfection which I have described, must regard the world with sorrow and compassion, perceiving how much the great body of mankind are departed from the happiest and fittest condition of their nature—how they are become immersed in passions and pursuits which disguise from their own knowledge the very capacities of their being, and degrade and destroy their powers by withholding from them even the prospect of their original destination!

SEWARD.

Such must, indeed, be his melancholy view of mankind at large, comparing them, as he needs must do, with the idea of that excellence of which they are capable, and which they ought to attain.

NORTH.

But when he descends from that height of contemplation, and, mixing with them, makes himself more intimate with their actual condition, he will look on them in some degree in a different light; for, my good Seward, he will then consider, not so much what theywantof perfection, as thosetendencies towardsit, which are still actually undestroyed among them, and which are continually found exerting themselves—with irregular impulses, indeed, and with uncertain and variable direction; but which still do exert themselves, throwing gleams over human nature of its true happiness, and maintaining to Man, in the midst of all his errors, the name and dignity of a Moral Being.

TALBOYS.

Methinks, sir, what would appear to such a Mind most grateful and consolatory in the midst of the aberrations of the human Soul, and of its darkness as to the knowledge of its Chief Good, must be the sight of those beautiful Affections which fill the hearts of human beings towards one another, and the observations of the workings of that Conscience, which in its mysterious intimations admonishes men of their departure from the Eternal Laws, though they know not whence the voice comes, nor how profound is its significance. In these great and pure affections, and in the rectitude of conduct thus maintained, he would recognise the fulfilling of that Divine Will, in harmony with which is all Good, and in revolt from which is all Evil. To him, then, the Human Will would appear thus far to maintain its conformity with the Divine: and he would witness Obedience to the Universal Law, although those who fulfilled it did but imperfectly understand their own Obedience, or conceive to what authority it was paid.

NORTH.

If the great natural Affections were made at first in perfect harmony with the Affections of Religion, they will still bear that character. And they do so, for they still appear to us in themselves pure and holy. If that is their character, then their very presence in the soul will be in some degree a restoration of its own purity and holiness. And this also is universally felt to be true: to such a degree that, most strongly to describe those feelings, we apply to them terms derived from the language of religion. We call those ties sacred: we call those duties Piety. They re-induce upon the Soul that purer, loftier nature, which the ordinary course of the world has troubled; and in doing so, they not only bring the Mind into a State which is in harmony with the Divine Law, but they do, to a certain degree, begin Religion in the Soul. This intimate connection between the strongest feelings of the heart and its holiest thoughts, discovers itself when the whole heart is wrung by the calamities to which through those feelings it lies open. When the hand of Death has rent in one moment from fond affection the happiness of years, and seems to have left to it no other lot upon Earth than to bleed and mourn, then, in that desolation of the spirit, are discovered what are the secret powers which it bears within itself, out of which it can derive consolation and peace. The Mind, torn by such a stroke from all those inferior human sympathies which, weak and powerless when compared to its own sorrow, can afford it no relief, turns itself to that Sympathy which is without bounds. Ask of the forlorn and widowed heart what is the calm which it finds in those hours of secret thought, which are withdrawn from all eyes?—ask what is that hidden process of Nature, by which Grief has led it on to devotion? That attraction of the Soul in its uttermost earthly distress to a source of consolation remote from Earth, is not to be ascribed to a Disposition to substitute one emotion for another, as if it hoped to find relief in dispelling and blotting out the vain passion with which it laboured before: but, in the very constitution of the Soul, the capacities of human and of divine affection are linked together; and it is the very depth of its passion that leads it over from the one to the other. Nor is its consolation forgetfulness. But that affection which was wounded becomes even more deep and tender in the midst of the calm which it attains.

SEWARD.

Assuredly such a spectator of human nature as we have imagined could not be indifferent to such a tendency of these natural emotions. He could not observe with unconcern even the nascent streaks of light, the dawning of a religious mind. He would call thatGoodwhich, though it had no distinct and conscious reference to anything above the Earth, did yet, by the very preparation it made in the Soul for the reception of something more holy, vindicate to itself a heavenly origin.

NORTH.

Even the Ancients, contemplating that Power in the Mind which judges so supremely of Right and Wrong, could call it nothing else than a God within us. He then who, in the highest light of knowledge, contemplates the human mind, will be yet more strongly impressed with thisSanctityof the Conscience, which affected even minds lying under much darkness and abasement, and therefore alienated from such perceptions. He undoubtedly will regard this principle as a part of original Religion not yet extinct in the Soul: will, as such, esteem and revere it; and conceiving the highest perfection of human nature to consist in its known and willed Conformity to the Divine Will, will regard with kindred feelings even this imperfect and unconscious conformity to that Law, which is thus maintained by the human spirit, resolutely and proudly struggling, in the midst of its errors, against a yet deeper fall.

TALBOYS.

And, sir, it must be remembered that, as the degrees of moral goodness are different in the various dispositions and actions of men, though they all fall under the description of one morality; so, too, the feeling of moral approbation exists in very different degrees in different minds, though in all it bears a common name. If the moral sensibility is not enlightened and quickened by those feelings which belong to its most perfect state, its judgments will be proportionally faint and low. As in its virtue there is a lower virtue, which tends merely to a Harmony with the Divine Will, so, in the judgment of virtue, there is a lower judgment, which implies no more than that he who judges has his own mind brought into a state in which there is a tendency to the same sacred and solemn apprehensions.

NORTH.

The Moral judgments of men are vague and undefined; but they are accompanied universally with a solemn feeling: not merely of dislike—not, in the highest degree, of mere detestation and hate—not merely with reproach and resentment for violating the benevolence, and invading the happiness of human nature; but there is a sensation of awe accompanying the sentiment of condemnation, which visibly refers to something more than what is present to our eyes on the face of the smiling or the blasted Earth. Among all nations, the abhorrence and punishment of crime has always reference to some indignation that is conceived of among higher powers. Their Laws are imagined to be under a holier sanction, and in their violated majesty there is apprehended to be something of the anger of offended Deity. Hence the wrath of Punishments, which have been conceived of as fulfilling heavenly displeasure; and those who have inflicted signal retributions have imagined that they avenged their Gods as well as the broken laws of men.

TALBOYS.

This feeling of a superhuman authority present in the affairs of men shows decisively what is the tendency, in natural minds, of moral feeling, when it is aroused to its greatest height; the season in which it may be expected best to declare its own nature.

NORTH.

Nor did this awe of a superior power present in the consciences of men, and violated there, discover itself solely in the vindications of punishment; but the great acts of virtue also led men to thoughts above humanity; nor did they otherwise conceive of the impulses of the mind, in the noblest actions, than as inspirations from the divinity.

SEWARD.

These opinions and views have prevailed in nations ignorant of religion, but in whose powerful nature the native sentiments of the human spirit disclosed themselves in full force; among whom, therefore, its actual tendencies may best be ascertained.

NORTH.

The same truths, deeply buried in human nature, may be recognised in different forms wherever its voice speaks in its strength. If one people have believed that Furies rose from their infernal beds to dog the steps of the murderer, wandering upon the Earth, others, from the same source of preternatural feeling, have believed that the body would bleed afresh at his approach, and that his unappeased ghost would haunt the place where Guilt had driven it out from life. The very conception of such crimes dilates the spirit to conceptions of the unseen powers which reign over human life, which walk unperceived among the paths of men, and which are universally believed to be enemies or punishers of human wickedness. If the history of superstition might be told at large, it would represent to us the conscience of man laid open by his Imagination, and would disclose, in fearful pictures, the reality of that connection which subsists in our nature between the apprehension of Good and Evil in the soul of man, and the apprehensions cognate with it of a world of invisible power, of which it is the eternal law that Good is required, and Evil hated and pursued.

TALBOYS.

These evidences attest that, even among those who have the least knowledge of Religion, whose judgments are least moulded by its spirit, there is an inseparable connection between Conscience and Religion; that its strong emotions always carry the soul to those conceptions which are most akin to its powers.

NORTH.

If, under the circumstances which produce the strongest feeling, such a tendency shows itself distinctly and in remarkable forms, then, under all circumstances, there will be fainter and more indistinct perception of this tendency?

SEWARD.

Even so, sir.

NORTH.

For this is the nature of the human Mind. Our feelings are not always determined by distinct thought; but there is a sort of presaging faculty in the soul, by which it foresees whither its own conception tends, andfeels, in anticipation of those thoughts, into which the imagination would run if it were left free.

SEWARD.

I am not sure, sir, that I fully understand you.

NORTH.

Thus certain strains of thought are felt to be joyous or solemn when they are barely touched, and in the ready sensibility, feeling begins to arise, though no ideas are yet distinctly present to which such feeling fitly belongs. The mind shudders or is gladdened at the distant suggestion of what it knows, if pursued, would shake it with horror, or fill the blood with joy.

TALBOYS.

Every human being must have had such experience.

NORTH.

This is a fact of our nature too well understood by those whose mind labours with any store of fearful or bitter recollection, into which they dread to look. The approach to some place hideous to the memory produces the shivering of horror before it is beheld; and even within the spirit, in like manner, the approach to those dark places of thought where unsoothed sorrows lie buried, startles the mind, and warns it to turn the steps of thought another way.

TALBOYS.

The feeling that “that way madness lies;” and the recoiling from it, through a forefeeling of the pain which lies in the thoughts that might arise, is common to all strong passion that has held long possession of the mind.

NORTH.

A similar state is known in these imitations of passion, the works of art;—Music has power over us, not by the feelings which it produces distinctly in the mind, but by those many deep and passionate feelings which it barely touches, and of which it raises up, therefore, from moment to moment, obscure and undefined anticipations. In Painting, the Imagination is most powerfully excited often not by what is shown, but by what is dimly indicated. What is shown exhausts and limits the feelings that belong to it; what is indicated merely, opens up an insight into a whole world of feelings inexhaustible and illimitable.

SEWARD.

Such, indeed, is the nature of our mind; and these are examples of a general principle of thought and feeling.

NORTH.

This capacity of the Mind to be affected in slighter degree, but in similar manner, by anticipated feeling, is to be noticed in respect toallits more fixed and important emotions. It enters as a great element into all its moral judgments. The judgment of right or wrong is quick and decisive, but is rather unfrequently attended with very strong emotion. Those strongest emotions belong to rare occurrences; for the greater part of life is calm. But they have been felt, nevertheless, at times; so that the soul distinctly knows what is its emotion of moral abhorrence, and what its emotion of moral veneration. When lesser occasions arise, which do not put its feeling to the proof, it still is affected by a half-remembrance of what those feelings have been: a slighter emotion comes over it—an apprehension of that emotion which would be felt in strength, if it could be given way to. Thus even the very name of crimes affects the mind with a dim horror, though the Imagination is still remote from picturing to itself anything of the reality of acting them. Whatever great conceptions, then, are so linked in actual Nature with our moral emotions, that under the passionate strength of these emotions they must arise, some slight shadow of the same conceptions, some touch of the feelings which they are able to call up, will be present to the mind whenever it is morally moved.

SEWARD.

Ay, sir, I now see the meaning—of the application—of all your discourse. If there is in the depth of our Nature such a connection between our Moral and our Religious conceptions, that our moral feelings, when exalted or appalled in the highest degree, will assume a decidedly religious character, then even in their slighter affection they will be touched, even from a distance, with that religious temper.

NORTH.

And does not this appear to be precisely the case?

SEWARD.

It does appear that the two kinds of feelings are so connected, that in the strongest moral feeling Religion is sensibly present, and that in its weaker emotion there is a slight colouring of the same feeling—faint and indistinct indeed, but such as to give to all our judgments of right and wrong a something of solemnity that is distinct from the ordinary complexion of human affairs, from the ordinary judgment of human interests or passions.

NORTH.

This connection which is perceived in individual Minds may be observed in considering the differences of national character. The different nations of the earth have exhibited the moral nature of man in very different degrees of strength. It will be found that they have also possessed in very different degrees the spirit of Religion; and that the two have risen or declined together. This is true both of the nations of the old world who were enlightened, and of the Christian nations, who have preserved their Religion in various degrees of purity and truth, and whose morals have always borne a corresponding character. If there is a people light and fickle in their moral character, the same unfixedness and levity will be found in their religion. But whatever nation has embraced with deep and solemn feeling the tenets of their faith, will be found to be distinguished in proportion by the depth of their moral spirit. The dignity of their Mind appears not in one without the other, but in the two united.

TALBOYS.

Thus, then, in those minds in which the two are imperfectly unfolded, they are united, as in those in whom they are most perfectly unfolded. But with this difference:—that where Religion in its most perfect form is known, there it enlightens and exalts the moral feelings. Under its imperfect and erroneous forms, conscience applies to men’s hearts in some degree the defects of religion.

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