and the heat of the solar

That man has the power of originating truth and goodness is one of the illusions of his own pride. He no more originates them than the plant originates the sunshine in which it warms and expands. Like the plant, which is an organism to receive the light beams, and through them to be clothed in glories more rich and varied than 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 upon the fields like a pall. So if at any moment human nature were cut off from the Eternal Light, all the excellencies and graces which make up the scenery of the moral world would vanish in uniform night.

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.

If we start with the former conviction, all culture will start from self and centre round it, and have self-exaltation for its object. The human soul will seem to itself a portion of the Divinity, and sufficient unto itself for all its progress and culture. . . 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.

Not

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. He 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. self, but God then becomes the radiant centre of 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. did not create the human machinery and leave it to work out its own results. He creates us always in the present time. He works within us to will and to do of his good pleasure, on the single condition of self-surrender. apprehension of man's relation to the Highest is calculated to beget in him that sweet sense of hourly dependence by which alone he is truly exalted, that self-abasement which comes of self-revelation, that state of hourly prayer whence rises to God the soul's unceasing hymn. Edmund H. Sears.

God

This

IV.

TWO WORLDS.

TWO WORLDS, OF WILL AND OF ACTION.

It is the necessary faith in our own freedom and energy, and in the reality of our actions and of certain laws of human action, which lies at the root of our consciousness of external reality. We are compelled to admit that we act, and that we ought to act, in a certain manner; we are compelled to assume a certain sphere for this action, this sphere is the actual world as we find it. From the necessity of action proceeds the consciousness of the external world, and not the reverse way, from the consciousness of the external world the necessity of action. We do not act because we know, but we know because we are destined to act.

I am required to act, but can I act without having in view something beyond the action itself, without directing my intentions to something which could only be attained by my action? Can I will, without willing some particular thing? To every action is united in thought, immediately and by the laws of thought itself, some future

to cause.

existence, a state of being related to my action as effect This object of my action is not however to determine my mode of action. I am not to place the object before me, and then determine how I am to act that I may attain it, my action is not to be dependent on the object, but I am to act in a certain manner, merely because it is my duty so to act. As I do not hunger because food is present, but a thing becomes food for me because I hunger, so I do not act thus or thus because a certain end is to be attained, but the end is to be attained since I must act in the manner to attain it. I do not observe a certain point and allow its position to determine the direction of my line, and the angle it shall make; but I draw simply a right angle, and by that determine the points through which my line must pass. The end does not determine the commandment, but the commandment the end.

Fichte.

The will is the effective cause, the living principle of the world of spirit, as motion is of the world of sense. I stand between two opposite worlds; the one visible, in which the act alone avails; the other invisible and incomprehensible, acted on only by the will. I am an effective force in both these worlds. My will embraces both. This will is in itself a constituent part of the transcendental world. By my free determination I change and set in motion something in this transcendental world, and my energy gives birth to an effect that is new, permanent, and imperishable. Let this will manifest itself in a material

deed, and this deed belongs to the world of sense, and produces in it whatever effect it can. ib.

Two worlds are ours, one creative of the other. There is the inner realm of thought, emotion, and imagination, and there is the outward realm of practice, where thought, emotion, and imagination take their investiture of flesh and matter, and pass into nature and history. In one we have them in their warmth and fusion, in the other we have them crystallized into fact. All radical changes in character begin with changes in the inner realm of thought and emotion. There we are moved upon by the powers that are above us; by the Eternal Spirit that lies on our soul like a haunting presence, giving us visions of celestial purity, bitter compunctions, sighs for a better state, and images that float down out of heaven through our fancies. But none of these are yet ours. They sometimes come without any agency of our own. Thus far they have wrought no change in character, for they have not yet passed under the action of a human will. Left to themselves they are as indeterminate as celestial ethers. They are appropriated by a distinct agency on our part, which consists in giving them a place by our own right arm among fixed and solid realities. The thoughts and emotions wrought in us by the Spirit of God are as yet foreign to us. They are heavenly treasures let down within our grasp. We grasp them by fixing them in the voluntary life, and then they are forever ours. Edmund H. Sears.