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 Adams (William). The Elements of Ch3 
 ie. A Treatise upon Moral Philosophy and Pra( 
 cloth, pp. 379. Phil. 11 
 
 A WORK ON AND- ENTITLE*} CHRISTIAN SCIENCE, PUBLISHED" 
 TWENTY-ONE YEARS PRIOR TO MRS. EDDY'S FIRST PUBLICA- 
 TION AND TWELVE YEARS PRIOR TO HER DISCOVERY OF CHRIS- 
 TIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 A
 
 
 
 XT t?
 
 THE 
 
 ELEMENTS OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 A TREATISE UPON 
 
 MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE. 
 
 BY WILLIAM ADAMS, D.D., 
 
 PRESBYTER OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH, E THE DIOCESE OF WISCONSIN. 
 
 THIRD EDITION, REVISED. 
 
 " All things are double one against another, and God hath made nothing imper- 
 fect." JESUS, SON OF SIHACH. 
 
 " Man's perfection is not by himself, nor by any thing in or of himself, but by that 
 which is to him external" 
 
 PHILADELPHIA : 
 
 H. HOOKER, CORNER OF CHESTNUT AND EIGHTH STREETS. 
 
 1854.
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by 
 WILLIAM ADAMS, 
 
 In the Office of the Clerk of the District Court of the United States, in and for the 
 Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 NATURALISTS tell us that the oak has a northern circle, beyond which 
 it does not grow. It has also a limit that is set for it towards the south. 
 Thus it has a region, marked out by definite limits, upon the surface of 
 the earth, within which it grows, and out of which it cannot live. In 
 the language of natural science, this is called its Habitat. Within that 
 habitat it lives, varied in vigor and appearance according to circum- 
 stances. The same tree, in sheltered valleys, shoots up a taller and 
 more slender stem than the oak that braves the storm upon the mount- 
 ain-side. The timber also of that oak, that has grown slowly in the 
 clefts of the rock, has a roughness and a knotty strength that is never 
 found in that which has started up rapidly from rich and cultivated 
 soils. All these differences, and a thousand more, may be produced, 
 and exist in oaks that have come from acorns of the same parent-tree. 
 
 To explain this, we know that all of these trees had, each of them, a 
 constitution, a germ of vegetable life peculiar to the oak, suited to take 
 up supplies from external things, and to grow thereby, because it is a 
 life. 
 
 To use the example again, wherever the tree grows, in the North or 
 the South, in the valley or upon the mountains, from the cleftod rock 
 or in the fertile plains, there, amidst all variety of circumstance, the 
 constitution is the same, if the tree is anywhere capable of living, it is 
 as an oak that it lives, and not as any other tree. Position modifies, 
 but never wholly destroys or wholly changes the nature. 
 
 The vigor of the tree, individually considered, its state and condi- 
 tion, are determined by these two elements, Nature and Position, and 
 3
 
 4 V PREFACE. 
 
 infinite varieties are produced in individuals, but the one element never 
 wholly overcomes the other, Position never entirely changes Nature, 
 Nature never wholly conquers Position. We have been so careful in 
 laying out precisely, and illustrating this example, that our readers may 
 clearly see, that wherever there exists organized life, then, if we would 
 examine the state of the individual existence, these two elements must 
 always be taken into account, first, Nature, and secondly Position. 
 
 So it is with all organized life. The Horse, in the dry deserts of 
 Arabia, in the damp climate and succulent pastures of Holland and 
 Flanders, upon the high Pampas of South America, and again, upon our 
 South-western Prairies, in all these cases, the animals are very different. 
 And in them, all the variety can be shown to have arisen from Position. 
 The Nature can be proved to be the same in all, and the circumstances 
 even be shown, in each particular case, that have modified it into such 
 very different forms. 
 
 And upon this principle, all our researches into the nature of the ani- 
 mals are founded. We examine the Nature first. that is, the organization 
 in its various faculties and organs, its elements, powers, and constituent 
 principles. Then we examine its Position, the relation, that is, of all 
 these to the circumstances of the country in which it dwells, as to 
 climate, and soil, and natural features, such as mountains and rivers, 
 and their productions, animal, mineral and vegetable. And often, when 
 in the Nature we have seen organs and faculties, the uses of which we 
 could not at once discern, the consideration of Position shall at once 
 flash light upon these problems, and again the facts of Nature evince the 
 causes of Position. Nay, stranger still than this, it has often hap- 
 pened in the case of animals that have been for ages tamed to the use 
 of man, that the circumstances, which in the original habitat surrounded 
 them, have explained facts of their natural action that seemed unac- 
 countable to them who had seen them only as tame. The law of Nature 
 and Position is an universal one, and is the foundation of all true 
 philosophy in reference to organized animal life. 
 
 To extend the same principle upward to the Life of Man, to apply it 
 to his Moral Being, is the object of this book. It is, as the reader may 
 see, the principle of the motto, that I have chosen from Ecclesiasticus 
 and placed upon my title-page, that says, " All things are double, one
 
 PREFACE. 5 
 
 against another, and there is nothing imperfect." In other words, that 
 there is no finite being that in itself has its perfection ; but only in 
 being compared with a second can it be perfectly understood, only in 
 being united with another, can it perfectly fulfill its appointed ends, 
 only in obtaining from some other, that which it has not in itself, can it 
 be perfect. This principle of Twofoldness, any thinking man shall, 
 upon calm and deep reflection, see to run through the world of created 
 life. He shall see it, in reference to man, to be true in the words of 
 my second motto, that " Man's perfection is not by himself, nor by any- 
 thing in or of himself, but by that which is to him external." The Law 
 of Duality, or to use a better word, before employed, of Twofoldness, 
 extends to man as considered in every relation, as in the Home, in the 
 Nation, in the Church, as in his relation to External Nature, to his 
 brother men, and to his Almighty Creator and Father. 
 
 The application of this principle to the moral nature of man, will be 
 found to be the leading idea of this treatise, that from which all its 
 other principles flow, that in whose light, all the phenomena of our 
 Moral Being are viewed, and by which they are explained. 
 
 We take it for granted herein, that man has a Moral Nature and con- 
 stitution, as well as an animal and intellectual being ; and that to man 
 as a moral being there are external facts and institutions that correspond 
 to this moral nature. This treatise seeks to discover, define, and specify 
 distinctly, the various faculties of the moral constitution of man, and so 
 to classify them that they may assume a definite, scientific, and prac- 
 tical form. And to do this, it considers them in the two-fold point of 
 view, as in themselves first, and secondly, their relation to those other 
 external fixed facts, which bear upon Moral Life, as the external cir- 
 cumstances of physical nature do upon the powers of vegetable or animal 
 existence. This, as I have said, is my leading principle, and in refer- 
 ence to this it is, that I define Ethics to be " the Science of Man's 
 Nature and Position." 
 
 And I can appeal to the Self-knowledge of every thoughtful man for 
 the proof of the position I assume, that man is a being that has a Moral 
 Constitution, composed of clear and definite elements, and that this 
 Moral Nature answers to, and is to be explained by moral influences 
 and facts external to us. That this is the case with man considered as
 
 6 PREFACE. 
 
 3 race and as an individual, and that his moral growth depends upon 
 these two conditions. 
 
 And he that shall go with me through this treatise, I hope will find 
 that moral science is not without a deep interest. For surely, each 
 man in this world who knows that he is endowed with a Moral Nature, 
 and is placed amidst circumstances, all of which may have a moral effect, 
 must think the question to be deeply interesting, " How shall I so culti- 
 vate this my Nature, and so employ this my Position, as to arrive at 
 the fullest maturity and completeness of my moral being, that I am 
 capable of?" 
 
 This is the question the author attempts to answer in this book, as a 
 matter both of science, and also of practical action and guidance.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 HUMAN NATUBE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 13 
 
 Is man's nature ' good or evil' ? There is a nature perfectly indifferent as to good or 
 evil. It is that of the brutes, not of man. Man's nature is not partly good and partly 
 evil. It is not essentially evil. This proved by the monstrous conclusions which would 
 follow. It is then essentially a nature good in itself, not evil in itselfbut fallen. 
 
 CHAPTER n. 22 
 
 What is the nature of Good and Evil ? The highest good, and the means of dis- 
 covering it. 
 
 CHAPTER in. 29 
 
 God the Supreme Good, and the only Standard of Good. It must have been so to 
 Christ and to Adam. The case of Adam. Adam's Moral Perfection first, by his nature 
 secondly, by the gift of the Presence of GOD, as a Supreme Rule actually. Our fallen 
 nature differs, first, in the withdrawal of that gift; secondly, in disturbance and insubor- 
 dination of faculties. Still, as a matter of each man's experience, and also of History, 
 God is the Law and Standard of Moral Good to the Natural Man. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. .40 
 
 God has external means whereby he conveys His Knowledge unto Man. 1 . External 
 Nature. 2dly. Society. The operation of External nature upon man's moral being 
 explained. The operation of Society is two-fold first, of Law ; second, of traditional 
 knowledge or Opinion, whereof Society is a channel. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 65 
 
 Society brings to all men the knowledge of Good, and the Enle of it. Man's nature 
 yearns toward it, being good; but it finds itself unable it is driven then, inwardly for 
 aids finds within, Conscience, Reason, the Heart, the Will, powers that aid us. From 
 these arise four philosophies, Socratic, Platonic, Epicurean, Stoic. These powers the 
 sources of moral progress. Yet moral perfection by nature unattainable. Original Sin. 
 Answer to the question, " How man does evil although his nature is good ?" Differ 
 ence between Mental or Physical and Moral inability. Original Sin is primarily in the 
 incapacity of the moral or Governing Powers. 
 
 7
 
 8 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 66 
 
 There are in human nature, Governing Powers and Powers Subordinate. No powers 
 in human nature essentially evil. Anger analyzed as a proof of this assertion. Evil 
 action comes from the weakness of the Governing Powers, not the strength of Passions. 
 Laws of the Governing Powers. 1st, Governing Powers should govern Subordinate 
 Powers only subordinately act. Dangers from breach of this first law. 2d, They should 
 act always, others only intermittingly. 3d, They govern according to a Law. This is 
 the Law of God, which is also the Law of the harmony of man's nature. The relation 
 of moral to mental power. 
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 THE CONSCIENCE. 
 
 CHAPTER L 77 
 
 Of Conscience. Mistakes with regard to it. What it is not. It is the sense of respon- 
 sibility. Socrates and Pythagoras. The action of Conscience is, 1st, Prohibiting, 2d, 
 Recording, 3d, Prophetic. The Prohibiting office of Conscience considered. The 
 Recording Conscience. The books that shall be opened. The true solution of the facts 
 of Conscience is the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Conscience in us is not the Holy Spirit, 
 but the ear that listens to His voice. It is at once infallible and fallible. 
 
 CHAPTER H. 91 
 
 The value of Conscience. Our position in consequence of it. An examination of it 
 in action, as, 1st, Withholding; 2d, Recording; 3d, Prophesying. The emotions that 
 are sanctions to it, 1st, Moral Restlessness ; 2d, Shame; 3d, Fear. The mark upon the 
 Nature, 1st, the Stain; 2d, the Guilt. Conscience is not properly a "judge," nor the 
 pain from it properly " punishment." 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 104 
 
 The deficiencies of the Conscience and its laws deduced from its nature. The defi- 
 ciencies of Conscience, the various kinds classified and enumerated. Its Laws are 
 three : First, of Obedience, Examination of this law, Practical inferences from this 
 law. 2d Law of Conscience, Permanence. Its nature and effects. By means of this 
 second law all passions can be resisted, not otherwise. Reason of sudden and unexpected 
 moral falls. Besetting sins, or obstacles to moral progress. 3d Law of Conscience, The 
 law of Subordination; that is, " while it rules us, itself must be ruled." The rule of 
 Conscience is the law of God. Evils that arise from ignorance of this law. Morality is 
 eternal and immutable. Scruples of Conscience. Explanation of their nature, ami how 
 to treat them. 
 
 CHAFFER IV 119 
 
 The facts of Conscience render Natural Religion possible and the facts of Revealed 
 Religion perfect Conscience. In whom the Conscience is perfect, Conscience cannot 
 pardon. It leads us towards the Atonement of Christ. 
 
 Note upon the Practical nature of Justification in its connection with the Con- 
 cience. 126
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL 'REASON. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 129 
 
 First reasoning is not Reason, this illustrated. The composition of human nature is 
 not double, but triple. Man having an Animal Mind, and a Spirit, these faculties in him 
 correspond to two worlds the world of the Seen and that of the Unseen. Hence two 
 reasoning powers the " Animal Mind " and Spiritual Reason. Moral ideas are received 
 from Society by the Reason. All ideas of which it may be said, " God is," are of it, a 
 remark in reference to our future state and the grounds of our perpetual progress in it. 
 The question of innate ideas. 
 
 CHAPTER H. 142 
 
 The Spiritual Reason. Its Modes. 1st. Moral Perception; 2d. Moral Feeling; 3d. 
 Moral Principle. These established and illustrated. Mental cultivation is different from 
 moral, and cultivation peculiarly moral is necessary. Is ever the divine Spiritual Rea- 
 son wholly undeveloped ? Answered in the affirmative. The Reason may be developed 
 consciously and unconsciously. 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 151 
 
 There are two states, one of Consciousness another of Unconsciousness. To exhaust 
 man's Consciousness is not to know all his nature. Unconscious teaching of moral truth 
 exemplified Moral application of this and grounds of it. The Reason may receive 
 Spiritual teaching from Spiritual beings unconsciously. Cultivation of the Reason pro- 
 . dnces, first, Moral Harmony; secondly, Moral Progress. Moral teaching of Parents. 
 Viva voce teaching, its power. The Spiritual Reason awakes before the Mental Power 
 is ripe. Spiritual truth may become a family inheritance. Application to Parents and 
 to Children Cultivation of the Reason in ourselves. Perfection of the Reason. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 166 
 
 The highest law of Reason is not Nature, nor the law of the Family, or of the Nation, 
 but the Faith of Christ, and this in a three-fold view. 1st, as written; 2ndly, as 
 enforced by the Church and in the Church ; 3dly, as dwelling in the hearts of the Sancti- 
 fied. Other practical inferences. The source of fanaticism is in denying its food to this 
 faculty. Practical conclusions. Exhortation to those who are the teachers of this 
 faculty to teach without fear.
 
 10 CONTENTS. 
 
 BOOK IV. 
 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 
 
 CHAPTER L 176 
 
 Heart or Affections. Its meaning. Towards Persons. Appetites and Desires towards 
 Things. It is towards Persons in Society. Society in reference to this Power is a 
 School of Love. Errors that may be avoided by this consideration. Use of Instinct in 
 Animals. Moral Principle and Rule of the Affections deducible from this. What is 
 " Nobleness " of Heart, and what Meanness. 
 
 CHAPTER n. 187 
 
 Sympathy. Two kinds. Passive and Active. Passive Sympathy, the sense of har- 
 mony of feeling with others. Illustrations of it and its uses. A moral precept founded 
 upon it. Second kind of Sympathy, the active power of entering voluntarily into the 
 feelings of others. It is vicarious. Misery is in this world more than happiness for man 
 unprotected. But Society in all its forms is defensive against misery. We sympathize 
 more with sorrow than joy. Hence its uses manifest. Sympathy in a great measure 
 voluntary. Natural and acquired deficiency of this affection. Hardheartedness. Its 
 natural punishments. Sentimentalism a disease of the Sympathy. Rousseau. Law of 
 sympathy. Moral conclusions from this arising. 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 204 
 
 Habit; Active and Passive. Passage from Butler quoted, and practically applied. 
 Affectation. Sentimentalism. Unreality, or Romance. Day-dreaming. Remedies for 
 these diseases of the Moral Nature. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 221 
 
 From the Heart proceeds the greatest Evil. Cause of this, Original Sin. Effects : 1st, 
 Uncontrolledness, or Self-will; 2d, Selfishness; 3d, Sensuality. Uncoutrolledness dis- 
 cussed. The Passions. Selfishness. Paley's Theory discussed and refuted. Unselfish- 
 ness. Annihilation of self. Sensuality. There is a threefold instinct to guide Man : of 
 the Spirit; the Mind; the Body; 1st, the Spiritual Powers; 2d, the Desire of Having. 
 The nature and origin of Property, and the immorality of its assailants. 3d, Pleasure 
 and Pain; uses of these last. " Good and Evil" is not determined by " Pleasure and 
 Pahi." Systematic Sensuality. The Christian Home alone cures these three faults. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 241 
 
 The Body it is not evil but it is affected, first, by Self-will, Selfishness and Sensu- 
 ality. Second, by death and disease entering the frame, and by the loss of the Sacra- 
 ment of Life. Third, by weakness of those mental powers that remain, and by total 
 loss of others. False imaginations about a future state recounted and reproved, and true 
 ideas in their stead. Our " body " is not that of brutes, and thereby contemptible, but 
 is to be reverenced; and of this the reason is, that the Word assumed Flesh, was born, 
 lived and died as man And is now as Man upon the throne of heaven. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 254 
 
 The nature of man has, 1st, a capacity of life through the Word Incarnate ; 2d, of 
 Receiving His Body and Blood; 3d, of the Indwelling of the Spirit. Love is the highest 
 Christian state. The Eucharist is hence a school of Works and Love.
 
 CONTENTS. 11 
 
 BOOK V. 
 
 THE HOME AND ITS AFFECTIONS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 265 
 
 Society of Divine institution Coeval with man. Man's nature answering to it, and 
 it answering to man's nature. The fiction of a Social Contract examined and refuted. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 270 
 
 The Family always existent. The Home, its realization in Space and Time. Heathen 
 notions of its institution. The feeling that the Law makes it. Man's nature. Nature 
 of Society, and the express Law of God. These, not mere legislation cause it Pretty 
 fables about marriage. Natural feeling of Unity. Doctrine of the Koman Law. Com- 
 mon Law Doctrine. Doctrine of the Scriptures. Conclusions : 1st, Law does not make 
 marriage; 2d, Marriage is no Sacrament, but a mystery; 3d, All bound to marriage; 
 except, first, it be wrong for them to marry ; secondly, for a religious motive sake. 
 
 CHAPTER HL 282 
 
 Laws of Marriage. 1. Permanence. The Scripture doctrine of divorce discussed. 
 The uses of permanence. Causes of frequency of divorce. St. Paul's advice in regard 
 to Marriage. Adultery a crime, nature and the divine law forbid it. Its evil conse- 
 quences. The causes of Marriage unhappiness. 2d. Law of Mutualness. Marriage a 
 moral good in itself. Highest motive for Marriage is affection. Children should not 
 marry without consent of parents. Third law, the supremacy in Marriage belongs to the 
 Husband. This doctrine is made tolerable by Christianity. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 301 
 
 Law of Parents and Children. Not merely an Animal Relation. Evils arising from 
 this notion. Parents are bound to children: 1st, Corporeally; for maintenance. Limits 
 of this obligation. The State can enforce it. 2d. Mentally ; for Education. Limits of this 
 right. The State has no power of Religious teaching: of moral teaching, only up to a 
 certain point. 3d. Spiritually; for Religious Education. The State ha? no right in this 
 whatever. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 808 
 
 The right of the child to a Spiritual training, from its being always a moral being, and 
 from the needs of its nature. That right extends to, 1st, Direct instruction as to its nature 
 and position, i. e., Ethical Teaching. 2d, As to the nature of God, f. e., Religious Teach- 
 ing 3d, Personal Sanctity in the Father and Mother. 4th, Practical Guidance and 
 Governance. 6th, Baptism or Covenant with God. The perfection of the Home is Love.
 
 12 CONTENTS. 
 
 BOOK VI. 
 
 THE HUMAN WILL. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 318 
 
 Arguments upon the Will generally mere thorny quibbles. The opinion of Milton to 
 this effect. Censure upon its harshness. The opinion of Bishop Beveridge. The Senti- 
 ments of Hooker as to the Will of God and the Nature of His Decrees. St. Augustine, 
 his character and temper. Two ideas held by him to be connected, Grace and Predes- 
 tination. These are not so connected naturally. Evil consequences, on both sides, of 
 taking it to be so. The Theological Controversy waived. The Will discussed as a 
 faculty of our nature. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 328 
 
 Definitions of the Will: three given. Objections answered. Logical and Real exami- 
 nation of the sophism, " The will is determined by motives, and therefore is not free." 
 Motives are of two kinds : Spiritual and Temporal. The first free the Will, the last-men 
 tioned enslave it. Two powers that combine in every Human action, the Will of the 
 Man, and the effect of Circumstance. From this fact a new ground taken upon the sub- 
 ject of the Will. 
 
 CHAPTER HL 335 
 
 The meaning of " Circumstance." It does not imply doom or Physical Necessity .- 
 But an ever-present God acting upon us, according, to the Laws of his nature and the 
 Laws established for us by Hun, and therefore good. The question of Freedom different 
 from that of Power. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 342 
 
 The Will has a power of resistance to Motive. Motives upon the Will do not act 
 necessarily. The evil results of Fatalism. Analogy to the Will and its Motives of the 
 concurrence of forces, Mechanical, Chemical, and Vital. Brute animals are really and 
 truly what the Fatalist thinks man to be. Man has a Will : Brutes have properly no 
 Will. The question of Free-will is a practical one. As a matter of fact there are 
 men whose Will is not free. The two Wills, the " Will of the Flesh," and the Spiritual 
 Will. Society trains the Will. The Spiritual Law sets the Will de facto free : examples 
 from Conscience, the Reason, the Heart. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 358 
 
 The second power of the Will, that of Purpose ; illustrated by a comparison of cases : 
 1st, Sets its object in the Future; 2d, Prescribes a law to the Will. A rebuke of the 
 Heathen Morality, that tells us not to look to the Future. We must, by our being, look 
 towards it. This fact interpreted. True Christian Hope ; 1st, Looking steadily to 
 Christ, and secondly, imposing voluntarily the law of God upon the action, is that only 
 which perfects Purpose of Will. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 368 
 
 The question of Power Man's will originates power, and is not merely an agent of it. 
 The evils of Fatalism exemplified in a quotation from Diderot. Man's Will is free in 
 act and fact when it coincides completely with the Will of God in Choice, in Purpose, 
 and in Power. 
 
 GENERAL CONCLUSION. 872
 
 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE, 
 
 BOOK I. 
 HUMAN NATURE 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Is man's nature ' good or evil' ? There is a nature perfectly indifferent as to 
 good or evil. It is that of the brutes, not of man. Man's nature is not 
 partly good and partly evil. It is not essentially evil. This proved by the 
 monstrous conclusions which would follow. It is then essentially a nature 
 good in itself, not evil in itself "but fallen. 
 
 As I have defined Ethics to be the Science of Man's Nature 
 and Position, it is manifest that the whole subject, scientifically 
 treated, must embrace, at least in effect, all questions that concern 
 his nature and its relation to external things. But as this is a 
 thing plainly impossible, for what scientific system details all its 
 applications, consequences and deductions ? And as the purpose 
 of Science is to render such tediousness unnecessary, by giving 
 principles and propositions that will imply all consequences, it 
 seems to me that such should be the course with a true science of 
 Ethics. And therefore I shall try to establish, in regular order, 
 such conclusions as shall be the most natural, and the most fruit- 
 ful in consequences ; so that if possible, I may be able, principle 
 after principle, and conclusion after conclusion, to give a system 
 at once practical and scientific. 
 
 This being my intention, the question which naturally comes 
 first in a science of man's nature and position is this 
 
 " What is Man's Nature ? Every man having the idea of good 
 13
 
 14 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 and evil what is it with regard to good, and with regard to evil f 
 
 15 IT GOOD, OR IS IT EVIL ?" 
 
 I am aware the question will sound preposterous and absurd to 
 many ; but still it is a deeply important question. There are three 
 modes in which man may have a moral quality, in which what he 
 does may be described as good or evil, his thoughts, his words, 
 his actions. Let the reader mark this. The question is not, are 
 man's thoughts good or evil ? are his words good or evil ? are his 
 actions good or evil ? That is not the question ; that can be plainly 
 answered. His thoughts, words and actions are not his nature. 
 They come from it, certainly, but they are no more his nature than 
 buds, flowers and fruits are the tree from which they come. To 
 decide, then, about thoughts, words and actions, this is quite a 
 different thing from deciding upon the quality of his nature. 
 
 I have said that this question is an important one ; I say that 
 it is more, it is the central and primary one of Natural Ethics ; 
 one without which there can be no science of Ethics, no knowledge 
 of it. It is not a high theoretic question which we may live in the 
 world without discussing, and be better not discussing than enter- 
 ing upon it, as is the question of the " Origin of Evil," the ques- 
 tion " Whence did evil come into the world, since God is all good 
 and Almighty ?" But it is a wholly practical one, the question, 
 " Is this nature, this which I have, this which is my nature as a 
 man, good or evil ?" 
 
 Now, manifestly all the possible answers that may be given to 
 this question are contained in a few words. I may say that " it 
 is good" I may say that "it is evil" I may say that "it is 
 partly good and partly evil" or I may say that it is " perfectly 
 indifferent to either." These four embrace all the possible answers 
 that can be given to the question, and the calm consideration of 
 them all, and the decision of it aright, is absolutely necessary to 
 any progress at all in true Ethical Science. He that will study 
 any science must first master the first principles, and without the 
 complete and accurate knowledge of them he can make no pro- 
 gress ; it is to him an utter impossibility. This question is the 
 first principle in the science of which we treat. Decide it aright, 
 and there is only one right answer of the four, and you shall be 
 able to advance further onward. Take to yourself either of the 
 three that are wrong, and the very foundation of religion and mo- 
 rality shall be astray with you ; and only by God's grace against
 
 HUMAN NATURE. 15 
 
 your convictions, only by the teachings of God's Providence leading 
 you against yourself, against your ideas and fancied knowledge, 
 ehall you go aright. 
 
 Now, the fourth of these says that man's nature is indifferent, 
 having no moral quality at all. Are there such natures in exist- 
 ence? There are. Those beings that we call "animals or brutes" 
 these are of that kind. 
 
 We see in animals the most undoubted proofs that they reason ; 
 of this all natural history of modern times is full, that they argue 
 and reason from premises to conclusions, just as man does. All 
 kinds of that property called reasoning, we see in animals just the 
 same as in man, the same in kind, not the same in degree ; the 
 reasoning power is very manifestly exercised by the 'brutes. True 
 it is, that we see it in them vastly inferior to another power, that 
 of "instinct," which works towards ends of which it is perfectly 
 unconscious. Still the reasoning power is not the distinguishing 
 character of man, that which separates him from the animals, nor 
 is "instinct" the peculiar possession of the Brute creation. For 
 the beasts have reason, and man has instinct ; each of them, how- 
 ever, in an inferior or less degree. The definition, then, that man 
 is a reasoning animal, or an animal whose quality is to reason, is 
 false ; and that an animal is an organized machine, or a being 
 having only instinct, is false also. 
 
 Now, what is the character that really differences the two na- 
 tures, that of man and the beasts ? It is not either reasoning 
 power, nor is it instinct ; still less is it any of the differences given 
 by Locke or his followers. It is this very thing of moral indif- 
 ference, that the nature of beasts and their actions are really 
 neither good nor evil. That the sense and feeling of pleasure 
 and pain is to them all, and that of moral good and moral evil, a 
 good or an evil quality in actions they have no feeling. 
 
 I do not say that man has a moral sense, as some of our mo- 
 dern philosophers talk ; as if there were a peculiar faculty in him 
 Buperadded to appetites, passions, affections and reasoning powers, 
 which has the peculiar charge of moral objects, as reasoning power 
 has of reasoning, &c. ; so that the reasoning power reasons, the 
 moral power feels, c., morally. This is not what I say, but that 
 man has a moral nature ; so that no thought, word or action but 
 has a moral quality, is either good or evil, and will so be judged, 
 both by himself, by his fellow men and by his God.
 
 16 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 With regard to animals, it may be seen at once that their actions 
 have no moral quality ; that there is in them nothing of good or 
 of evil, and that it is only by a metaphor we call them good or 
 evil, as applied to our own uses. That is a good dog that watches 
 best, that sets the best, or that kills rats the best, or that churns 
 the farmer's milk the best, or that draws the beggar's cart the 
 best. Change hands and there is no goodness in them. 
 
 And even temper in animals, to which with more of plausibility 
 we may apply the terms "good" and evil," even in this case it is 
 only with reference to ourselves and our ideas that we apply the 
 term. The generosity of the lion, the ferocity of the wolf, the 
 untameable fierceness of the wild ass, the cruelty of the tiger, the 
 cunning of the fox, all these are but metaphors taken from our 
 own nature. These things instead of being moral, having a good 
 or evil quality, being deserving of praise or blame, are nought 
 else than tempers arising from the conformation of the animal, 
 and absolutely necessary for its physical preservation. A lion is 
 no more really 'noble,' because, with his immense muscular power 
 and capacity of destruction, he stands out boldly in the centre of 
 the African desert, than a fox is mean and to be despised, because 
 he with a feeble and small frame sneaks through the bushes. In 
 the one temper as well as the other there is nothing moral, nothing 
 immoral, nothing good, nothing evil, only a nature which is neither 
 good nor evil, but indifferent perfectly. 
 
 The only apparent exception to this is the dog. The response 
 which he makes to our feelings, his apparent sympathy with us, 
 his faithfulness, all these make us lavish upon him epithets that 
 express primarily moral qualities. This, however, is easily ex- 
 plained by the known fact, that there are some inferior animals 
 that seem to have been created in reference to the wants of supe- 
 rior ones ; with instincts in their natures binding and tying them 
 to the others, and causing them to rejoice in their society. And 
 thus the attachment of the dog to the man is no more capable of 
 a moral interpretation than the attachment of the pilot-fish to the 
 shark. And the same may be said of the horse and the elephant 
 in relation to man. 
 
 But this may be seen, still more plainly seen in the fact that 
 we attribute no crime to brute animals, none of their actions come 
 within the moral law of God and of society. The eagle murders 
 not when he slays his prey ; nor does the wolf commit a crime
 
 HUMAN NATURE. 17 
 
 vrhen we say that he steals ; nor does the scorpion commit suicide 
 or the rattlesnake when they destroy themselves with their own 
 weapons turned against their own life. 
 
 And, indeed, with an old master of subtlety, we need have 
 no doubt that their good and their evil are not " Moral Good" and 
 " Moral Evil ;" but the Good of " Pleasure and Pain" so arranged, 
 as by its operation upon their animal frame, to subserve ends of 
 which they are wholly unconscious. "I have no doubt," says 
 Jerome Cardan, " that if the ox could speak he would call the 
 grazier good, because he feeds oxen, and the butcher bad because 
 he kills them, and yet there is no difference." 
 
 Now, I wish my readers to have it fully and clearly established 
 in their minds, that there is, and exists a class of organized living 
 beings, which has a nature purely indifferent, neither moral or 
 immoral, to which bodily pleasure and pain is the sole guidance 
 from the external world. 
 
 Having laid this idea clearly before them, I shall ask them, 
 appealing only to their own experience of their own nature, while 
 it is manifest that the nature of the beast is an animal nature, of 
 itself neither moral nor immoral, is it not equally manifest that 
 man's nature is moral ; that while " pleasure and pain" are guides 
 to him as an animal, still as a man he has higher guides in justice 
 and honesty, and law and conscience ? 
 
 Thus have we established a broad distinction between man and 
 animals. Thus have we excluded one of the answers upon human 
 nature, the one which supposes it to be indifferent, having no moral 
 quality whatsoever. 
 
 And before we go further, we shall stamp this opinion regarding 
 our nature as one that always goes hand in hand with Atheism 
 and the worst immorality. 
 
 If our nature be indifferent, as that of the brutes is ; and., as 
 theirs have no moral quality, then are we like in the ends we have 
 to fulfil to them, we are incapable of immorality. If our nature 
 be animal or indifferent, then, as in consequence of this in them 
 no act is criminal or sinful, or indeed can be so, in us, it must be 
 the same. Then our sole business shall be to gratify our propen- 
 sities, all of them ; our sole excitement to action, physical plea- 
 sure; our sole check physical pain. Wheresoever this doctrine 
 with regard to the nature of man prevails, there it is the doctrine 
 of Atheism and debauchery, and of grasping and selfish sensuality. 
 
 3
 
 18 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 The next answer to the question, "is the nature of man good or 
 evil," that can be given, is manifestly that it is part good and part 
 evil. The soul good and the body evil ; or, the soul evil and the 
 body good. Two strange varieties of opinion these are, but as 
 strange as they are they have had many advocates. 
 
 The last, that the soul of man is evil, his body good, implies the 
 Transmigration of Souls ; the dogma, that of Spirits that fell there 
 were two classes, they who could rise again and were enwrapped 
 in bodies of clay and passed from one to the other, until being 
 purified they resumed their former state. The first, which answers 
 that the Soul is Good, the Body Evil, implies that there are two 
 Gods. Each omniscient, omnipotent and eternal. The one the 
 God of Good, and the other the God of Evil. These answers, a 
 little thought will show us imply these consequences. 
 
 The tenets themselves were once of great importance, now of 
 none. Man's nature is evidently a unity, although composed of 
 soul and body ; it must be good therefore or it must be evil ; it can- 
 not be both together, the soul good and the body evil, or the soul 
 evil and the body good. We may easily dismiss this the third 
 answer as unsuitable. 
 
 And now we have only two left to us. The one asserts that 
 "man's nature is evil," the other "that it is good;" one or other 
 must be true. It is manifest then that the argument may go on 
 by a two-fold division. The establishing of the one refutes the 
 other ; the refutation of the one is the establishment of the other. 
 The reader we hope will bear this in mind, for the subjects to be 
 considered in this treatise are so many and so important, that 
 when we can clearly decide upon a doctrine, we shall not always 
 say all we could have said in its defence or in its refutation. We 
 shall be content to say what we count enough. 
 
 Now, the nature of man is not indifferent. It is not partly 
 good and partly evil ; it must then be essentially evil or essentially 
 good. 
 
 Say that it is essentially evil the nature of man not merely 
 his words, or his actions, or his thoughts evil, but his nature ; 
 suppose that this is so, and what is the result and consequence ? 
 
 Why, this, that when he acts in accordance with his nature, 
 thenhe acts evilly. Let him feel emotions of pity arising in his 
 breast, and feel that it is in accordance with his nature to aid the 
 distressed, then, as his nature is evil, it should be evil so to do.
 
 HUMAN NATURE. 19 
 
 He feels that to be just, upright and honorable, is according to 
 his nature, but according to the doctrine that nature is essentially 
 evil, justice and uprightness and honesty shall be evil. And the 
 opposite qualities, since opposite of evil is good, shall be good ! 
 Then shall all the affections which are natural be evil, the love of 
 husband to wife, and the love of wife to husband, which is natural, 
 be a thing base and vile and in every way to be shunned ; the love 
 of parents to children to be evil. And all the natural feelings, the 
 natural tendencies, the natural affections, all shall be bad, all evil. 
 
 And then if man desires to live aright, since his nature is of 
 itself wholly evil, his business shall be to oppose nature. All 
 things against nature shall be good, all according to nature shall 
 be bad. To be malevolent shall be good, to be full of pity, evil ; 
 to be kind-hearted shall be evil, to be harsh in life and conduct, 
 good ; to be merciful shall be wrong ; to be cruel shall be right ; 
 to be a peaceable citizen of a State, and an obedient child, shall 
 be evil ; and to be a lawless and desperate outlaw or a parricide, 
 shall be good. The chaste husband or wife, living according to 
 the dictates of nature in marriage, shall be evil in that very thing ; 
 the licentious adulterer shall be good. Monstrous consequences 
 these, and outraging the natural feeling of all ; and yet conse- 
 quences that unavoidably follow from the monstrous paradox that 
 human nature is essentially evil. 
 
 Let us look at this dogma a little more plainly still. If this be 
 so, then man requires no temptation, in fact cannot be tempted, 
 for his nature being wholly evil, all his hopes, desires, fears, are 
 of themselves evil essentially. He cannot be polluted, for of him- 
 self his nature is evil. All crimes are equal, for the nature from 
 which all proceed is equally bad, being in itself essentially evil. 
 All his sins then are equal in the eye of God, each equally deserv- 
 ing condemnation in the eye of infinite justice. And the inno- 
 cent babe, if his nature be essentially evil, is a subject for limitless 
 wrath equally with the hoary murderer and debauchee of eighty 
 years. And all this in direct opposition to the Holy Scriptures. 
 
 Nay, more than this. If man's nature be all evil, as then all 
 his evil temptations, thoughts, feeling and actions must come from 
 himself, then there can be no tempter to evil outside of him, no 
 devil ; but a principle of evil in him. And that principle of evil 
 is in, and is, the nature of man ! In other words, man is Satan, 
 and there is no Satan but man !
 
 20 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 Now, asking of my readers to look this notion straight in the 
 face, to have in their minds the clear idea of it, is asking of them 
 also to bear in mind that "thoughts," "words," and "actions," 
 are not "human nature." I would ask them steadily to look at 
 this doctrine, "that human nature is essentially evil," and ask 
 themselves, do not these consequences follow from it x really and 
 unavoidably ? 
 
 This is a system of Morality, indeed ! which makes it natural 
 to do evil, unnatural to do good ; which puts law and conscience 
 and justice all as evil! And all the things that are naturally 
 good, asserts that they are naturally evil. A strange system of 
 Morality indeed, which begins by denying the possibility of any 
 morals, any goodness, and asserting that all actions are bad, and 
 all equally bad ! 
 
 This is a hideous Moral System, one that nevertheless has 
 existed from very ancient times. They are the tenets of a very 
 ancient sect upon whom the prophet Isaiah pronounces a woe: 
 "Woe be to them that call evil good, and good evil, that put light 
 for darkness and darkness for light ;" to them the apostle Paul 
 alludes, when he speaks of those who in the latter days should 
 " forbid to marry, and command to abstain from meats, which God 
 hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them that believe 
 and know the truth, for every creature of Crod is good, and no- 
 thing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving." 
 
 Of such philosophising has there been an abundance, and unto 
 it man's nature is essentially evil, and unto it from this central 
 fact all nature and all creatures also become evil, and therefore it 
 is that it forbids marriage, and orders to abstain from meats ; 
 whereas the apostle lays it down as plainly that all creatures are 
 good, and " that marriage is honorable in all." 
 
 But in addition to the display of the natural consequences of 
 this doctrine, that human nature is essentially evil, we may appeal 
 to the consciousness of each individual, to the knowledge he has 
 of himself. Does not each man feel that when he acts evilly or 
 sins, that he acts against the laws of his own nature ? That to act 
 rightly and virtuously is in accordance with the law of his nature, 
 and not against it ? Does he not each time that he acts evilly, feel 
 ashamed, condemned by his own nature ? Does he not feel that to 
 cheat, to lie, to murder, so far from being natural, are directly
 
 HUMAN NATURE. 21 
 
 against his nature ? Surely, all the experience that man has of 
 himself, all this tells him that his nature is not essentially evil. 
 
 And I confess that I have been most heartily ashamed of men 
 who from the pulpit preach this horrid notion, never having thought 
 of its consequences or of its nature ; and then, to establish it, have 
 told untruths as great. Tell the man who has bent in agony over 
 the sick bed of a dying wife, who for months, without hope of re- 
 ward, has watched, and wept, and sympathized, tell him this is 
 no good act, but purely evil and sinful ! And then, in order to 
 prove such a monstrous paradox, tell him that it was done from 
 selfish motives, and nature will rise and give you the lie ; and the 
 man will feel and speak as strongly of you as did Paul of the men 
 that preached this doctrine of old, as " speaking lies in hypocrisy, 
 having the conscience seared as with a hot iron." 
 
 Tell him that morality is not only of no good, but downright 
 sinful ; and Nature's law shall tell him directly the contrary, and 
 the Bible will say to him, " When the Gentiles, which have not 
 the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, then are they 
 a law unto themselves." 
 
 Take the hoary desperado, the pirate and cut-throat, and drunk- 
 ard and debauchee, from the Indian seas, and place him side by 
 side on the same level with a yoVing innocent girl, from an unpol- 
 luted home, and nature's consciousness of truth shall declare your 
 notions false. 
 
 It follows, then, that the nature of man cannot be in itself essen- 
 tially evil. 
 
 And by the exclusion of the three of the only four possible 
 answers, it must be that we affirm the one remaining, " that Hu- 
 man Nature is of itself and in itself essentially good." 
 
 We exclude the three, and this affirms the one. The proof, 
 therefore, of it at the present is exclusive and negative, rather 
 than positive. We therefore insist upon it as a right, of logical 
 necessity due to us, that objections against the conclusion be re- 
 served until we come to the positive proof. In the mean time, we 
 would discuss another part of the subject as preparatory to this 
 positive proof.
 
 22 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 NOTE TO CHAPTER I. 
 
 Upon this doctrine, that " Human Nature is essentially evil," 
 it may seem to some persons strange that we should spend so much 
 time in displaying its evil consequences and developing them. Yet 
 let such persons know that all these consequences have not only 
 been deduced as logical conclusions, but they have been preached 
 and acted out by perhaps the vilest and most evil of all the ancient 
 sects, the Manichseans. These men took it that man's nature is 
 essentially evil, and carried out their doctrine to the extremest 
 degree, as history will show. 
 
 For this reason we have brought the dogma, in all its conse- 
 quences, clearly and distinctly before the minds of our readers. 
 We would have them see its untruth distinctly and decidedly. For 
 that man's nature is not essentially evil, but a nature which al- 
 though fallen is in its nature good : this is the first principle of 
 all morality. 
 
 I would also add, that this is the unanimous decision of the early 
 Christian Church. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 What is the nature of Good and Evil ? The highest good, and the means of 
 
 discovering it. 
 
 IN our last chapter we used a phrase " Human Nature," for the 
 constitution of man, as consisting of body, soul and spirit. By 
 this word we meant the whole nature of man considered generally, 
 without reference to the peculiarities of individuals or of nations ; 
 "the man," generally. We asked, then, whether it were "evil 
 or good," as considering this as the first question, the fundamental 
 one of all Ethics. And we decided it in a negative and exclusive 
 way, that Human. Nature must be in itself good, and not evil. 
 
 And now we would have our readers remark, that we have used 
 the terms "good and evil" often. We employed them because 
 we knew that human nature was good, and that therefore each one, 
 without explaining, would readily understand that which we meant.
 
 HUMAN NATUKB. 28 
 
 But now it is time to examine more closely into the meaning of 
 these terms. 
 
 The first remark we shall make is this, that when we establish 
 what is "good," we establish also the highest end of man, that 
 after which he should the most aim, and at the same time we esta- 
 blish the supreme rule of his conduct. 
 
 For instance, if the supreme good of man be in Utility, then as 
 the supreme law of life he should aim only at Utility; he should 
 make this the measure of all his actions, and casting aside all other 
 considerations, he should not ask, is this right, or just, or my duty ? 
 but, is this useful ? And so with regard to all other criterions or 
 tests whatsoever, that have been established of Good and Evil. 
 The establishment of a Highest Good and Evil is the establishment 
 of a highest law for man's actions, and of the highest reach of 
 virtue and perfection to which his nature may climb. 
 
 The question, then, of " good and evil," and their nature and 
 criterion, is a very important one ; the question of the " Highest 
 Good" still more important. They are not theoretical, merely, but 
 practical ; and that in a very great degree, because they imply a 
 law of action first, and secondly, a knowledge and governance of 
 our own nature according to it. 
 
 For clearly, we can see in each individual that he has something 
 which he counts the Highest Good, to which he will sacrifice all 
 inferior ; clearly we can see that this feeling is a law unto his na- 
 ture, acted upon at all times by himself, and always referred to in 
 his actions. I have known Epicures, to whom, by an observation 
 of life and conduct, the Highest Good was the pleasures of the 
 palate. I have known Epicureans to whom general ease and self- 
 gratification was the Highest Good. I have known fathers . and 
 mothers to whom the advancement of their children was the Highest 
 Good ; men to whom the possession of property was the Highest 
 Good ; to whom power was the highest ; to whom domestic happi- 
 ness, or the love of their neighbours, or the sense and performance 
 of their duty, or the doing of justice or of mercy ; I have known, 
 in my short life, instances of all these ; instances in which I could 
 most plainly discover that these objects were severally considered 
 by men as the main object of their lives, the objects which, to ob- 
 tain, they would count the highest good of their existence. And 
 I have taken notice that the feeling of the object being the high- 
 eat, became a rule of action, a law and measure by which all action
 
 24 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 was regulated. Surely, then, the question, What is Good ? What is 
 the Highest Good ? is not unimportant, since each one in life more 
 or less debates upon it, and decides it for himself. 
 
 With regard to the term " Highest Good," if the reader will look 
 at the arrangement of objects of pursuit that I have made, he 
 will see that taken from the beginning, they manifestly mount up 
 from lower to higher. The pleasures of the mere appetites, such 
 as eating and drinking, are the lowest of all ; then the pleasures 
 ef the passions are higher still, of the understanding higher, of 
 the affections higher, and of the moral feeling higher still. 
 
 And thus is one object pursued as a good, higher and loftier 
 than another ; thus, by the fact that man is finite, must there be 
 some that shall be the highest and the loftiest good not merely of 
 the individual man, but of universal Human Nature. And tho 
 pursuit after this must be the supreme law of morality and of na- 
 ture ; and he that shall pursue this, shall fulfil, entirely the end of 
 his being. The idea, then, of the Supreme Good is a practical 
 one entirely. 
 
 Now, in order to understand what this Supreme Good is, the 
 first thing we are to understand is, what do we mean by this term 
 "good" the term "good," I say, as used by moral beings? 
 " That which is useful to us in the physical world, ' some say,' 
 causes pleasure, and that which is destructive gives pain. So ' 
 things that are pleasant you call 'good,' and painful, 'bad.' And 
 so from the sweetness of sugar, we by metaphor apply the idea to 
 sweetness of temper ; from the harshness of an acid taste, to harsh- 
 ness of conduct ; from the destructive nature of poisonous plants, 
 to the destructive nature of vice ; and so we mount up to the idea 
 of Moral Good and Evil, even the highest." 
 
 And then all these ideas of justice, honesty, equity, truth, holi- 
 ness ; all these are no realities in themselves, but metaphors, 
 coming from mere earthly objects of the sense, and brought thence 
 by our own reason ! 
 
 What is good, then ? A higher class answers, it is " that which 
 is useful; has in it the maximum of Utility." Another makes 
 good to be that which is "in the most accordance with our na- 
 ture." And this has in it considerable loftiness, as also has that 
 theory that supposes goodness to be that which is in accordance 
 with the " eternal fitness of things," and that too that imagines 
 good to be " that which is according to the idea of moral beauty,"
 
 HUMAN NATURE. 25 
 
 and a hundred theories besides, of which the man who has patience 
 may examine as many as he likes. 
 
 The last notion is this : that five ideas, Benevolence, Justice, 
 Truth, Honesty, Order, make up the " central idea of morality," 
 or are its elements.* These, undoubtedly, are very good, all of 
 them ; though as for their being the central elements of the su- 
 preme law of action, the Summum Bonum, or Highest Good, I 
 myself being a Christian, should rather prefer the ancient elements 
 of "faith, hope, and charity," which, as there are such facts as a 
 God, a Gospel, a Salvation and a Spirit, I conceive are far more 
 peculiarly central elements of a Christian morality. 
 
 Now, what is the fact ? This it is, that no compounding, adding 
 together, or intensifying of these ideas, or of any ideas whatso- 
 ever, will give us as a result the idea of Moral Goodness. The 
 idea of Moral Goodness is an idea just as simple as any one of 
 these ideas, and manifestly the highest moral idea of them all. 
 
 We could easily show this by the old logical method of the con- 
 sideration of what is technically called the comprehension and 
 extension of the ideas. However, it may be easily seen by another 
 means. In fact we may add a multitude of other qualities, having 
 just as fair a title as these have, for instance, Holiness, Conscien- 
 tiousness, Temperance, Self-denial, &c., besides the three I before 
 mentioned, of " faith, hope, and love." Because you call these mo- 
 rally good, and it is true that they are so, it does not follow that 
 they are the elements of moral good. So, to live according to the 
 eternal fitness of things, or according to " the idea of moral beauty," 
 these are morally good, but it does not follow that the idea of 
 moral goodness is compounded of these. 
 
 In truth, the idea of Moral Good is the highest of all moral ideas, 
 neither made up nor compounded of any, having none above it, 
 itself measuring all other moral ideas, and being measured of 
 none. Of it no definition can be given, therefore ; nothing but illus- 
 tration, by declaring the persons, or events, or qualities in which 
 it is, or by showing how we attain it, but no definition. We may 
 say of a wagon, it is a four-wheeled vehicle, giving thereby a de- 
 scription of its components ; but of this we can give no such 
 definition. When one asks us, " What is the highest moral good ?" 
 we answer, "Moral Good." When he asks, "What is moral 
 
 * Professor Whewell. Elements of Morality. 
 4
 
 26 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 good?" we say, we do not analyze it we cannot; but we point 
 you to your own feelings, and experience of your own nature, and 
 we say that then you feel a perception of a quality that exists in 
 all moral beings, a quality of moral good, or the absence of it, 
 which is evil ; which you feel to have a very real and actual exist- 
 ence in responsible beings, and to which you apply the term moral 
 good. 
 
 We, therefore, enter not into the vain speculation of trying to 
 analyze the nature of Moral Good, or attempting to define it. We 
 say that man is a being whose nature is good, and not evil ; he 
 has the idea of moral good as naturally as he that sees has the 
 idea of sight ; that that idea is the same in one human being as 
 it is in another. And that if we show the means whereby the 
 idea and feeling is brought forth in man, and then increased in 
 him, how it is cultivated, and how it is brought to perfection, then 
 we shall have done somewhat of the work we set out to do, the 
 work of a Christian Ethical Philosophy. 
 
 In the mean time, how are we to measure the abundance of this 
 quality in others or ourselves ? or how are we to learn what we 
 desire to know of it ? In the first place, it is manifest that since our 
 nature is good, and since it is one that is under a law, and its 
 goodness is measured by that law, that that law, more or less, re- 
 veals to us moral goodness. It is manifest that the Home, the 
 Family, the Church, that these all bring the idea to perfection, 
 being all teaching institutions that have ever existed, and that for 
 the purpose of bringing forth the feeling in man, of increasing it, 
 and bringing it to perfection. 
 
 Live, then, according to your nature ; according to what your 
 nature has a feeling, you ought to be. Live according to the 
 duties and teachings of the Family ; for this, too, is a school of 
 good : and to the teachings of the Nation, for this is the same. 
 And above all, remember that there is a Revelation, a Holy Spirit, 
 a Church. The instructions of these agree with, confirm, com- 
 plete, and as it were, round the whole. But to analyze it, and 
 say these are its elements, or to define it, this you cannot do. 
 
 And why is this ? Because, simply, that Moral Good is no notion 
 derived from anything that we see or feel, framed forth by meta- 
 phor and figure from objects presented to us by the senses. The 
 feeling and sense of it is not gotten in any way from them. The 
 absolute complete Moral Good exists not as a quality, but as a
 
 HUMAN NATURE. 27 
 
 reality is GOD.* The idea of moral good, that idea is the feel- 
 ing in our hearts of that which is in us or others like in quality to 
 the absolute moral good, and the knowledge of the qualities of 
 that likeness. This comes to us in no other way than from GOD 
 Himself. 
 
 When we wish to know what is the Highest Good, then, if we 
 mean absolutely, the only answer is, " GOD." If we refer to 
 man and his conduct, "that which is likest God." It is not Na- 
 ture, it is not Utility, it is not Moral Beauty, nor Conscience, nor 
 any one of these moral feelings and moral duties that is to be 
 made the rule of action, and is the Supreme Good it is GOD. 
 
 Men will say, " that is no practical rule ; to try to be benevo- 
 lent is a practical rule, or to try to be useful, or to live according 
 to nature, all these are practical rules ; but to make GOD at once 
 the Supreme Good and the Highest Rule is not practicable !" 
 
 I do not much like answering objections when the further devel- 
 opment of the subject will put aside the objection, and render it 
 unnecessary to make it as well as to answer it. But this I will 
 say ; do you take for your practical rule the Heathen Ethics of 
 Paley, that make " enlightened self-interest" the Supreme Law of 
 Action, or the equally Pagan morality, that makes Benevolence 
 the Supreme Law, or this that makes Justice, Veracity, or anything 
 else the Supreme Law of Action ? Take it, act upon it consistently, 
 and be endowed with all the gifts of nature and knowledge, and I 
 shall take a poor uneducated Christian, who never thought of 
 Ethics, but has taken the Bible in the Church, and by them has 
 cultivated his natural feeling of conscience, and other parts of his 
 moral being, and to ten thousand times more moral perfection than 
 you shall he have arrived. 
 
 For all these are from GOD directly, and by conveying to us 
 
 * " I AM." He doth not say, lam their light, their guide, their strength, or 
 tower, but only I AM. He sets as it were his hand to a blank, that his people 
 may -write under it what they please that is good for them. As if he should 
 say, Are they weak ? I am strength ? Are they poor ? I am riches. Are they 
 in trouble ? / am comfort. Are they sick ? I am health. Are they dying ? 1 
 am life. Have they nothing ? I am all things. 7am wisdom and power. 1 
 am justice and mercy. I am grace and goodness. lam glory, beauty, holi- 
 ness, eminency, super-eminency, perfection, all-sufficiency, eternity ! Jehovah, 
 I am. Whatsoever is amiable in itself, or desirable unto them, that / am. 
 Whatsoever is pure and holy whatsoever is great or pleasant whatsoever is 
 good or needful to make men happy, that I am. BISHOP BE VERIDGE.
 
 28 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 Himself, or a knowledge of that action that is likest Him, they 
 are our established guides. Whereas, you have taken an idea ! a 
 notion ! for your guide. 
 
 This is true, if we believe that God made Nature, and that 
 He made it good, and that man, although fallen, is not a beast, 
 so as to do the evil that he does naturally, or a devil, so as to do 
 nought but evil, and that consciously. It is true, if the Bible be 
 a revelation from God, and not " a collection of Hebrew Poetry 
 of the sublimest kind."* It is true, if the Church be a divinely con- 
 stituted body, to lead men in the way of Religion. If all this be 
 true, then have we the means of ascertaining God, and that which 
 is Godlike, clearly, plainly and distinctly. If it be not true, then 
 you may take anything else you please, and rear up any system 
 you please, make anything the " Highest Good" and the " Highest 
 Object of Pursuit," and your system shall be a system of Heathen 
 Ethics, but certainly not of Christian Morality. And your fame 
 may spread, and your influence may extend, and your eloquence 
 and learning be extolled to the ends of the earth ; and the old 
 woman in the chimney corner, going by her nature, her natural 
 sense of right and wrong, as called out by God's revelation, inter- 
 preted by His Church, and applied by His Spirit, she shall have 
 higher truth, and more of Ethics than you. For to a Christian 
 the Supreme Good is GOD, the Supreme Law of Action is the 
 revelation of God ; " the Pillar and ground of it is the Church," 
 that which applies it the Spirit, and that which receives it the 
 Nature of Man. Any morality that knows not this is Heathen. 
 
 Having made this statement as to " Good," the Supreme or 
 Highest Good, and the Highest Law of Action, we go on to ob- 
 viate several objections that might be made to it, from our ignor- 
 ance or incapability. This shall be the object of the next chapter. 
 
 * German Rationalistic Criticism.
 
 HUMAN NATURE. 29 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 God the Supreme Good, and the only Standard of Good. It must have been 
 so to Christ and to Adam. The case of Adam. Adam's Moral Perfection 
 first, by his nature secondly, by the gift of the Presence of GOD, as a 
 Supreme Rule actually. Our fallen nature differs, first, in the withdrawal 
 of that gift ; secondly, in disturbance and insubordination of faculties. Still, 
 as a matter of each man's experience, and also of History, God is the Law 
 and Standard of Moral Good to the Natural Man. 
 
 HAVING gone so far as to define that " God is the Supreme and 
 Absolute Good, and the sole measure of Good," the question at 
 once comes up, " But is not God afar from nature and from us, 
 ruling us by law, and Himself absent, so that we cannot make of 
 him the measure of Good, or discern its likeness to him ?" 
 
 To this we answered in the last chapter, " Thy nature is of 
 God and good, made in his image, and although fallen, still not 
 brutal or fiendish, but in his image, although that image be im- 
 paired. Still, then, thy nature has a feeling for good, and applies 
 the image as a measure of it. The Bible, and that is the Word 
 of God the Church of God, and that is his organization and 
 lastly, the Spirit of God, all these thou hast, or canst have, and 
 all these are nearer to thee, bring the being, and will, and feeling, 
 and nature of God, closer to man than any other fact can come ; 
 so close, that none in truth ever disbelieved the being and attri- 
 butes of God ; they that say so are only self-deceivers or vain 
 boasters, trying to deceive others, not Atheists." 
 
 But perhaps, in addition to this, our answer to objections, we 
 had better enter a little more closely into the centre of this mat- 
 ter, and view it in another light. We have seen that there is an 
 Animal Nature, one perfectly indifferent. Again, we see that a 
 nature perfectly evil is possible. And neither of these natures is 
 that which man has. 
 
 Now it is manifest, that a perfect Human Nature would be that 
 which did good consciously and perpetually, and never did or had 
 even the experience of an act of evil. This consciousness of doing 
 good constantly, and of not knowing by self-experience what evil 
 is but by its effects upon others, this is manifestly the character 
 given of our Saviour, as shown in the whole of the New Testa-
 
 30 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 ment. It is as manifestly the character given of Adam, our first 
 father, in Paradise. 
 
 And as manifestly it is the ideal image of perfection, after 
 which each man is led by his nature to aspire. It is manifest, that 
 in this aspiration we desire not an animal nature which is not good 
 or evil, but indifferent ; nor a mere innocent nature, whose quality 
 is doing good unconsciously, but one that does good consciously, 
 and that consciously abstains from evil. It is also manifest that 
 this desire of our moral nature is no desire purely imaginary, no 
 image of perfection that never was realized, but one that of itself 
 has had two actual and real exemplars in our LORD JESUS CHRIST, 
 and in Adam in Paradise, the father of the human race. 
 
 To examine, therefore, these exemplars of perfection in reference 
 to that which is the Highest Good of man is to bring the definition 
 we have given of Good, and of the Highest Good, to the actual 
 test of historical experience, and both to confirm it, and also to 
 hold out the very highest model, not as imaginary, but as realized. 
 And we beg the reader to pay a close attention to this part of our 
 discussion, inasmuch as the examination of these models not only 
 will illustrate the nature of Moral Good, but also the nature of 
 man, both as fallen and as in Paradise. 
 
 Now, with regard to our LORD HE was a man ; this is fully 
 and plainly manifest. Human Nature cannot, therefore, be mo- 
 rally indifferent in the same condition as the beasts are, or fiendish 
 essentially, else God could not have taken it ; but it must have 
 been Good in its nature. 
 
 Again. He was Morally Perfect from birth to death. He did 
 no sin in thought, word or deed : for thought is action, word is ac- 
 tion, deed is action. Now seeing that manifestly, therefore, we 
 must call him perfect, what is the idea of Moral Good presented 
 to us by Him as the perfect man ? 
 
 Manifestly it may be put in not sinning, that positively our 
 blessed Lord, as a man, in everything did that which is according 
 to the will of GOD, and negatively he abstained from doing that 
 against his will. 
 
 This is the plain fact, both from his own words and the account 
 we have of his life ; for of all other men, whatsoever height of 
 character they have attained, it is an historical fact, there are 
 none who have not been faulted for sin, either positively or nega- 
 tively, and that He alone was uncensured both by his friends and
 
 HUMAN NATURE. 31 
 
 cotemporaries, and by all since then. That, therefore, by which 
 he was perfect morally, must be the Highest Good, and that which 
 he counted Good must have been Good, and his method of attain- 
 ing to it the method. And no definition of Moral Good, or of the 
 Highest Good, or of man's supreme rule in life, by whatsoever 
 philosopher it be brought forward, is true but this, that " God is 
 the Supreme Good, and the Supreme Law of man His Will, and 
 the Supreme Happiness and Perfection of man a resemblance unto 
 him." 
 
 It is manifest, that to our Lord, the exemplar and model 
 of Perfect Humanity, the Supreme Good was God the Father. 
 His perfection was in his being "the express image of God." And 
 the highest and completest object of his existence to do the will of 
 God. And we can see that he fulfilled the notion of a perfect 
 Humanity, a Human Nature of itself Good, and consciously doing 
 no evil, but all good. 
 
 But we see that he was aided towards this ; the Human Nature 
 was, as it were, upheld and enabled to effect this, and to be raised 
 to its highest possible perfection, by the union of the Divine Na- 
 ture with it. 
 
 But it will be said, " to Him this was the Highest Good, because 
 being God the Word, the will of the FATHER was immediately 
 known to him, but to us that can be no true standard." 
 
 To this we may at once say, " He is the express image of His 
 person, the manifestation of His glory ;" and " he that hath seen 
 him, hath seen the Father also." 
 
 But we go on to another consideration, which will be found to 
 tell upon this part of the subject in a very important way ; that 
 is, to consider the moral condition of the other perfect man, 
 Adam ; and this we shall find to give us great light upon the 
 matter. 
 
 Now, when we look at the situation of Adam, we find enough to 
 lead us to consider that as our nature is good, even although it is 
 injured by the Fall, so was the nature of Adam good, without 
 that injury. 
 
 Next we find that Adam, as Christ, continuously thought, and 
 spoke, and did no evil, and that not as a mere innocent, or as a 
 righteous animal, barely without consciousness, but consciously 
 and knowingly. This is expressed by the declaration that God 
 made Adam in the image of God, in the image that is of GOD the
 
 82 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 WORD, as St. Athanasius interprets it, which implies that his na- 
 ture, as a moral nature, was complete and perfect. 
 
 And secondly, he possessed the endowment of a direct super- 
 natural communication with the ALMIGHTY, whereby man's nature, 
 "the image of God," should reflect God's attributes. So should 
 man's Will directly be under the influence of the FATHER ; man's 
 Higher Reason, of the WORD ; man's Conscience, of the SPIRIT. 
 
 So that thereby his being in the image, this consisted of these 
 two parts : first, the Moral Nature, and secondly, the supernatural 
 endowment corresponding to that nature. This the Supernatural 
 Gift, consisting plainly of the Presence of God with Adam, not 
 as God was present with our SAVIOUR, perpetually united with his 
 Humanity, but as capable of being withdrawn. Which gift the 
 Catholic Church has accounted to be the HOLY SPIRIT dwelling in 
 a nature, 1st, unfallen, 2d, perfectly free, and 3d, untainted from 
 the beginning with any speck of actual sin.* 
 
 This is the account of the First Man and his condition, which 
 seems to have been drawn from the Scriptures by the Universal 
 Reason of the Church. And we can see that it agrees most ex- 
 actly with the various passages of the Scriptures that concern 
 Adam, or speak of man in general, whether they be historical or 
 doctrinal. 
 
 Now, this manifestly implies, with regard to Adam, the same 
 we have shown to be the case with respect to CHRIST, our most 
 Blessed Lord ever to be adored, that His Supreme Absolute Good 
 was God ; the measure and standard unto him of all moral good 
 whatsoever. That of his own nature and actions, their good was 
 a similarity in them to God, and that God's will was his law. And 
 that Adam was not then good of himself, and of his own reason, 
 with no connection with God except that of natural mind, under- 
 standing of its natural ability, that which is good, and then of 
 that natural ability doing it. But Adam was good in a twofold 
 way ; first, of his nature, so made and constituted ; and secondly, 
 of the Supernatural Grift ; the Spirit, thus bringing close to him 
 that GOD WHO in HIMSELF is THE ABSOLUTE GOOD. 
 
 This is the moral doctrine with regard to the position of our 
 first father, which the thought of the Church has wrought out ; 
 f 
 
 * Upon the State of Adam before the Fall, and especially upon the " Su- 
 pernatural Gift," Bp. Bull's fifth discourse may be read.
 
 HUMAN NATURE. 33 
 
 and this we shall see, and this only will satisfy the descriptions 
 given us of man's nature in Paradise, that is, of man perfect, and 
 the demands of our Human Nature, that is, of man imperfect ; 
 and of the nature of GOD and of CHRIST. 
 
 There are, I would also remark, from these conclusions, with 
 regard to Christ our Lord, and with regard to Adam, many in- 
 ferences that concern our present life and future state of perfect 
 being, which are of the most interesting, and to this age that has 
 forgotten the Church, the fountain of all wisdom, of the most 
 novel and startling kind, upon which I would gladly enlarge, but 
 that my limits prevent it. It is, I hope, sufficient to suggest " that 
 as He is, so shall we be also," to enable others to draw these in- 
 ferences, and thus leaving this to Christian meditation, we may 
 pass onward to our task. 
 
 It will, however, be said, "while we acknowledge with regard to 
 Christ and with regard to Adam, what is here laid down, to us it 
 cannot be so. We are not as our Lord, who was God the Word 
 Incarnate, and to whom, therefore, ' God,' the ' Will of God,' 
 the 'Nature of God' were laws." 
 
 We are not, it will again be said, as Adam, who was in the 
 " Image of God," and with whom the Supernatural Gift of God's 
 HOLY SPIRIT, the third person of the Trinity, ever dwelt, and 
 being of himself "Very God," revealed to Adam, the "Nature," 
 the "Will," "the Law" of God, and thus made all these his stand- 
 ard of Moral Goodness and his Supreme Law of Action. " But 
 we are alone," say they, " and therefore we must find out for 
 ourselves some other standard." 
 
 I might have given a sufficient answer to this, first, by saying 
 that it is a heathen objection, one that supposes not that " in Him 
 we live, and move, and have our being," but that he has departed 
 and left other powers to rule the world, that in themselves have 
 no moral and spiritual energies, but blind force. Secondly, I 
 pointed out that our nature being itself good, although fallen, 
 the "Bible in the Church," the Affections as brought forth in the 
 Family, and the Natural Sense of Justice and Equity, as brought 
 forth in the Nation, all these are revelations of God, all these are 
 such that of Him we have more evidence and clearer knowledge 
 than we have of any one of the objects of the senses. 
 
 These answers were enough for objections ; but as my object is
 
 34 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 not to refute or answer, but to teach, perhaps it may be advan- 
 tageous to go farther into the subject. 
 
 And this I will do, not merely as a proof of what I have now 
 asserted, but as a most important advance in the science of Chris- 
 tian Ethics. 
 
 The reader will remember that the objections say, " True : God 
 is the Highest Good ; to be like Him is the Supreme Happiness ; 
 it was so to Christ and so to Adam. It cannot be so to us, because 
 we are not as was Christ, we are not as was Adam." 
 
 We are not as our Lord ; this is manifest. Whether that dis- 
 similarity is of such a nature as to cause that Moral Good shall 
 not be to us the same as to him, or that the Supreme Rule of Ac- 
 tion to our Lord shall not be the Supreme Rule to us, are matters 
 which, however easily settled, I shall not here meddle with. The 
 objection that says, " We are not as Adam, and therefore the rule 
 and law of Adam cannot apply to us," this I shall first take up. 
 
 The objection says, "We are not as Adam." What, then, was 
 Adam ? That which we have above described. 
 
 And what are we ? The answer is, we are " fallen ;" this is the 
 answer of all Christians. "We are fallen." 
 
 But how far fallen to what degree ? The answer with reference 
 to degree is, "so far fallen as yet to be men" not so far as to 
 cease to be men ; but so far as, being still men, we could fall ; fallen, 
 but not so fallen as to be Devils, all evil in nature, or to be beasts, 
 altogether indifferent to good. Man's nature is a fallen nature ; 
 "a* far gone as it can Je"*from Original Righteousness, but not 
 farther ; a nature still Human, not a fiendish nature, or a bestial 
 one. In the first chapter I have shown this ; I have shown that 
 we must count that man's nature yet is good. 
 
 Wherein, then, is the difference, if man's nature before the Fall 
 was good, after the Fall is also good ? Is it not, then, not fatten? 
 We answer that it is fallen, although good, and we proceed to ex- 
 plain how it is fallen. 
 
 In theological language, the state of man now differs from that 
 in Paradise, in Sin, Original and Actual. We have not to discuss 
 the nature of Original or Actual Sin, for this is out of our way at 
 present, only to show how the two states differ as regards the 
 
 * The 9th Article of the Church, "Very far gone;" better translated as 
 above, the Latin being " quam longissime."
 
 HUMAN NATURE. 35 
 
 condition and moral nature of man. We remarked upon the state 
 of man before the Fall ; we showed that his Highest Good was God, 
 his Highest Law the Will of God ; that this was so by his nature, 
 by his being in " the image of God." And then we showed that 
 the Supernatural Gift of the HOLY SPIRIT abode with him, reveal- 
 ing " God," the FATHER, SON, and HOLY GHOST, as a LAW, so that* 
 man, " the image of God," as in a mirror, reflected the perfection 
 of God in his Will, in his Affections, and in his Actions. In his 
 own nature being good, he became, because of that Supernatural 
 Gift, in finite and bounded existence, an image of the Infinite and 
 Supreme. 
 
 To this we shall add two observations to confirm this view. 
 The first is, that " God is a laio unto himself, and has a law 
 under which, so to speak, he is ; the Law of his own infinite per- 
 fections and infinite goodness." He does not make that evil 
 which is good, or that good which was evil by an exertion of 
 Almighty Power ; but that 19 good that is according to his nature, 
 and that is evil which is against his nature. 
 
 And therefore it is, that he alone is the good, all others are good 
 as a quality in them exists, which is kindred to Him. And, so it 
 follows, that of all things that are good, you may use the wojds, 
 " God is."* Men may have them as qualities, but God is them 
 thus " God is Love," " God is Justice," " God is Holiness." Men 
 have them, as I said, as qualities, but God as substantial realties, 
 and parts of his very being. 
 
 Now, the relation of finite beings towards the Infinite God, 
 being such as I have observed, such too being the nature of God, 
 it follows that the Revelation, by the Spirit of God to Adam, must 
 have been to him the supreme law of action in a moral point of 
 view, an indwelling, we may say, of the Spirit of God in his heart 
 with a law infallible of action, thought, and word. And that not 
 as to us, but immediate, intuitive, direct, requiring nought of 
 thought, labor, or experience, but at onoe and immediate to his 
 mind. 
 
 And this immediate discernment, or rather presence of God, as 
 the Supreme Good, the Supreme Rule of Good, brought about by 
 the Supernatural Gift of the Spirit, is that of which mention is 
 made in the Scriptures of the New Testament, as "seeing God." 
 
 * The reader -will please look back to the quotation from Bp. Beveridge, 
 in the note on page 27, as to the phrase, "I am " belonging to God.
 
 36 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 And in this manifestly the highest perfection of a finite being 
 that is good must consist ; this gift being withdrawn he will not 
 be perfect, although his nature still may be good. 
 
 Now I can appeal to every one, whether the yearnings of the 
 heart do not answer back to this picture ; whether we do not yearn 
 after an higher good ; whether we do not feel that an internal good 
 dwelling in us, but not of us, and at once revealing to us the 
 Highest Good, and being it, whether this is not that which we feel 
 at once most suitable and most desirable to our nature ? 
 
 Man feels himself to be no fiend, he feels himself to be no beast, 
 he feels his nature to be essentially, that is, in its own being, good ; 
 but that there is a correlative wanting to it, because of which it is 
 imperfect. This he knows from the first moment of existence to 
 the last. And as this, his Supernatural Gift and aid, has been 
 withdrawn from him, thereby his Nature, although still it is good, 
 is "very far gone from Original Righteousness." 
 
 Now with regard to man's own nature, in its being, is there 
 any change in it ? And if there be, what in kind and what in 
 degree ? 
 
 If my reader will turn back a few pages, he will see that there 
 I recount various objects of pursuit which men make ruling objects 
 of their life. He will see that these range from the very low to 
 the very high, so that very distinctly men shall say, "to make this 
 a governing desire and leading object of life, is base and mean," 
 the pleasures of sense, for instance, and "this" intellectual plea- 
 sure for instance, "is higher," and this moral object, the "sense 
 of duty," for instance, higher still. Which observation, leads at 
 once to the conclusion, that of our whole nature, no part, to speak 
 in a general way, being anything but good in itself there are 
 some parts subordinate and some superior. Hence is it that the 
 perfection of our nature does and must consist in this subordina- 
 tion or due proportion and harmony of the whole nature. 
 
 We will illustrate it a little more. There are manifestly govern- 
 ing powers in man. The Will, the Conscience, the Affections, 
 the Reason these are good always, at all times, as governing 
 jjotvers, guiding man on his course. We say not any one of these 
 separately, but all of them together, as the proper governing 
 powers of man. 
 
 Then come passions, desires, feelings, appetites, instincts. 
 
 These are manifestly good also, but only in their place, and in
 
 HUMAN NATURE. 3T 
 
 their time, and not at all times, or in all places; and not at all as 
 ruling or guiding, but as being ruled and guided. 
 
 Now herein is man's nature of itself, in consequence of the Fall, 
 weakened, that the lower faculties, the passions, desires, feelings, 
 appetites, instincts, these tend to assume the place of the higher, 
 and themselves to rule when they ought to be ruled. 
 
 And secondly, the ruling faculties are weakened so as to permit 
 this insubordination. The Will is weakened, or loses its power in 
 various ways; the Conscience as a faculty, is in various ways 
 injured ; the Affections perverted to unsuitable objects, or wholly 
 alloyed by the passions, and the Reason obscured. 
 
 For this, too, we appeal to no dry discussion, but to man's 
 nature and to the experience of every man that has ever thought. 
 Who is the man that is naturally the best in your circle of ac- 
 quaintance ? Why, it is that man that unites, in the greatest per- 
 fection, these four governing powers, first, the Will, he that 
 having a straight, definite, decided course before him, pursues it 
 with decision and energy from day to day ; second, the Conscience, 
 who in that course makes it his main object to go according to 
 his sense of right and wrong ; third, the Affections, he who, as 
 regards his brethren, observes the great Christian rule of "loving 
 his neighbour as himself;" and fourth, the Reason, who tempers 
 all this into a harmonious and consistent course by a considerate 
 mind. This man manifestly is the man, that of our neighbours 
 we judge and see to be the best, having perhaps the inferior 
 qualities as strong as others have, but ruling them by these poivers, 
 which ougld to rule. 
 
 And again, when we look about for those whom we count the 
 worst, we see that they are the men whose conduct is not ruled by 
 these ruling qualities, but by some of the lower and baser ones. 
 
 And in ourselves, do we not in our inmost soul, whenever we 
 feel that we have acted wrongly, whenever we have a conscious- 
 ness of evil or of sin, do we not always know and feel, " Oh ! that 
 my Will were perfect ; Oh ! that my Conscience were a sure and 
 certain guide, my Affections rightly directed, and my Reason as 
 clear and active as it might be ; if this were so, then would I be 
 perfect!" Manifestly this is the feeling of all men ; an universal 
 persuasion this, of all men and all ages, that declares the one 
 source of man's imperfections of nature, to be in the insubordina- 
 tion of his faculties.
 
 38 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 Man's nature then may be good, nay, each faculty of it may be 
 good, and yet the nature in itself be a fallen one, as an insubordi- 
 nate, a disturbed one. 
 
 The consequences then of the fall, are these : First, that the 
 Supernatural Gift is withdrawn, which revealed God to thy nature 
 immediately ; and Secondly, because of this, thy nature, which 
 would have answered, and did answer, by its law unto God the 
 Supreme Law, is insubordinate. These are, according to the 
 Ethical doctrine of the Christian Church of antiquity, the precise 
 injuries inflicted upon man by the fall. These and none else. 
 
 Now if we shall look at our present nature as fallen, having 
 clearly and distinctly in mind these truths, we shall see what is 
 the real and true measure of good to the present man. We shall 
 see that it is neither more nor less than that "it was to Adam in 
 Paradise, the being and qualities of God, and the being in our- 
 selves like to him. 
 
 And in order that this should be so, when we consider the pre- 
 vious elements of the problem, there must be two things. In the 
 first place, there must be a feeling of this in our nature, existing 
 and capable of looking even blindly and by instinct towards Him. 
 In the second place, there must be outward agencies at work upon 
 us, that will call into action that natural feeling, just as the sun 
 and rain, the influences of the seasons, call forth the germ in the 
 plant. That man's nature is good, that of itself it is not indif- 
 ferent or fiendish, but made "in the image," this aifords the first 
 requisite. The nature of man, of itself, feels its own disorder, 
 and it desires to be ordered and ruled by a superior Will, and 
 looks after and towards it blindly, as the new-born child for the 
 mother's breast will open and close its mouth, and desire what it 
 does not know, but knows yet that something is wanting. 
 
 I could go over the Heathen writers antecedent to Christ, both 
 Greek and Roman, and also the more ancient philosophy of the 
 Hindoos, Chinese and original Persians, now opened to us by the 
 industry of the modern oriental scholars of England, Germany 
 and France, as well as the Northern Mythology, and show by 
 them, that apart from all revelation, and before it, the attempts in 
 Moral Science of unassisted nature rush towards God as the 
 <; Supreme Good," and supreme standard of good, and will be con- 
 tented with no standard lower. 
 
 But I seek not to make a parade of learning, and I merely as-
 
 HUMAN NATURE. 39 
 
 sert the fact that it is so, and leave it to each thinking individual 
 to measure his own experience of his own nature, and he will find 
 it to be so. 
 
 I assert, also, that from these writings evidence just as strong 
 can be given that the evil of nature was felt to be that which I 
 have said, the evil of " insubordination" ; and the perfection of Hu- 
 man Nature, the perfection of the Eternal Presence, or as they 
 phrase it, "the direct contact" of a Supreme Rule and the power 
 of obeying it. 
 
 In fact, in the Ethical writers of the heathen, we can see per- 
 petually the struggle towards these conclusions, and they come 
 the nearer, the higher and loftier their Ethics are. But bring- 
 ing this in merely as confirmatory, I go on the further inquiries 
 connected with the subject. 
 
 Now, having come so far as to give a matter-of-fact example, 
 proving that although man is fallen, still is God to him the Su- 
 preme Good, and the standard of good, we shall make one observ- 
 ation, and then go to the subject of the next chapter. If this be 
 so, is it not manifest that to the natural man there must be natu- 
 rally some revelation of 6rod ? And that not merely to the man, 
 generically considered, but to each individual man, is it not neces- 
 sary that there be a mode which communicates to him the feeling 
 of God, now that his Direct Presence is departed ; and this by 
 nature, apart totally and entirely from Christianity ? So that even 
 to those who have not heard of the name of Christ, still do they 
 make God the measure of moral good, and no other fancied or 
 thought-out standard ; or that, in other words, the Spiritual has 
 an access to man by his position, and by his very constitution and 
 being. 
 
 This manifestly is so, or else all the other truths are useless and 
 invalid. This subject, therefore, how it is that even to man, as he 
 ii at present, God "is the " Supreme Standard of all Morality," 
 is that to which I shall devote the ensuing chapter.
 
 40 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 God has external means whereby he conveys His Knowledge unto Man. 
 1. External Nature. 2dly. Society. The operation of External nature 
 upon man's moral being explained. The operation of Society is two fold- 
 first, of Law ; second, of traditional knowledge or Opinion, whereof Society 
 is a channel. 
 
 OUR first question is, how is it that to man, even as a fallen 
 being, God is still the Supreme Standard of Moral Good, and that 
 his nature having lost its self-governing power, and the direct con- 
 tact of God with it being withdrawn, man still measures all good 
 by God ? 
 
 The answer is, that man's nature being good, the instinct of 
 this, his constitution, must lead him naturally, although blindly, 
 towards God. And secondly, there must be corresponding to that 
 instinctive feeling, external influences that draw forth the instinct 
 of nature into consciousness, as the Sun upon the earth draws up 
 the germ of the plant underneath until it rises into the light. 
 
 Now, in reference to our own nature or internal being, we call 
 all other objects external all those influences that bear upon us 
 from without are external. And things external are divided into*' 
 two parts, Nature and Society. And the question may be easily 
 solved by asking, are there moral ideas connected with Nature and 
 with Society ? For then, since Nature exists before the individual 
 man is born, and he is introduced into the world as into a school, 
 then if there be ideas of God connected naturally with the objects 
 of the external world, we are able to see how the germ in him may 
 be awakened, and the dormant life excited to action. 
 
 And in like manner, as Society existed before him, and he is 
 born into it ; so if Society have the idea of God, it can suggest it 
 to him, and thus awaken his nature and be a school of teaching 
 to it. 
 
 From the earliest times we find an association of ideas that con- 
 nects Nature with God, and makes each object of the material 
 world a letter in the " great alphabet that speaks of Him." Nor 
 is it a vain fancy that of the old Arabs, who, seeing upon the film 
 of the locust's wing the semblance of the letters of their own 
 language, read them into the words, "Desolation of God;" and
 
 HUMAN NATURE. 41 
 
 connecting the stars by lines/ and thereby tracing letters in the 
 heavens, thence strove to discover an alphabet of the heavenly 
 wisdom.* For in truth, had we but the eye, were but our senses 
 sharpened to penetrate into the infinite subtlety of the teachings 
 of this that we call Nature, so that we could discern them and be 
 conscious of them, as we are influenced by them unconsciously, we 
 should see that Nature is nought else than a means of bringing 
 the Knowledge of God close to us ; of awakening in us the sleep- 
 ing germs of Spiritual Knowledge. And we should find that not 
 a leaf upon a tree struck our sight even unnoticed amid the 
 myriads of other leaves, not a sand upon the shore among millions 
 has made its unregarded impression upon our sight, but that has 
 tended to convey to us moral knowledge of God, the Supreme 
 Good. 
 
 And as the drops of rain being countless that have fallen upon 
 a given field, have nevertheless each single drop a definite and 
 estimable amount in the sum of the harvest, only that it would 
 take the calculus of Infinite Knowledge to estimate it ; so the 
 manifold impressions from day to day, from hour to hour, of 
 Natural Objects, these all, although we are unconscious of itj 
 yet tend to form in us the idea of God. Perhaps I should not say 
 to form, but to call out the germs that exist in our own being, as 
 made in the Image, to call them out and bid them expand. 
 
 Perhaps the idea here attempted to be expressed as a fact of 
 Ethical science, the idea, that is, of an Ethical teaching of nature, 
 that is universal and pours its influence unremittingly from the 
 smallest as well as the grandest objects, might be as well set 
 before the reader in half a dozen of verses, which I remember to 
 have seen somewhere, in which the author has expressed the same 
 fVi^norht very nearly. 
 
 " Oh ! that mine ears were open, Lord, 
 Oh ! that mine eyes could see, 
 Then flower, and star, and little bird, 
 Would bloom, and shine, and sing of Thee. 
 
 Then on the world's broad face, 
 Now so opaque and dim, 
 The alphabet of heaven I'd trace, 
 And every line should tell of Him. 
 
 * For this alphabet, see the works of the learned Gataker. 
 6
 
 42 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 Then, sounding clear from ocean's gloom, 
 Like a far-heard organ peal, 
 Then booming up from the central womb 
 Of things I know not, yet can feel 
 
 The sounds that now mysterious sweep 
 Across my saddening soul, 
 As thunder clouds that o'er the deep 
 Their gloomy shadows roll, 
 
 These sounds that now, confused and dim, 
 Vague sorrow bring from far, 
 Clear should they speak niy heart should speak 
 To the heart of every star. 
 
 All living creatures then should speak 
 With wisdom manifold, 
 And wide creation that deep silence break, 
 She held since Adam's fall of old." 
 
 These verses, although. I must say that the verse is of a very 
 unpolished description, seem nevertheless to express the same 
 feeling and persuasion. 
 
 But the same thing is clearly and distinctly asserted in the 
 19th Psalm. " The heavens declare the glory of God, and the 
 firmament showeth his handy work. One day telleth another, 
 and one night certifieth another; there is neither speech nor 
 language, but their voices are heard among them, their sound is 
 gone out into all lands and their words unto the ends of the world." 
 
 In fact, from all languages, and from all nations, we might 
 bring full proofs of this fact, " that all men feel and know that 
 the outward world in all its influences upon man is a teaching of 
 God, an interpretation, as it were, of Him, to our limited intel- 
 lects ; a hiding away, and dimming of His glory, that so it may 
 be softened and adapted to our sight." But still, from the smallest 
 as well as the greatest objects that strike the sense, there flows a 
 teaching, beginning with our life and ending only with our death, 
 which we can never shut out. 
 
 And that this perpetually presents unto us, or rather cherishes 
 in us, in a due measure as we can bear it, the idea of God, his 
 Power, Mercy and Wisdom. And that although men may, be- 
 cause they are not conscious of it, dream that it is not so, still
 
 HUMAN NATURE. 43 
 
 that there is such a thing in the science of Ethics as teaching, 
 which being real is yet unconscious. And that it is so with this. 
 
 Upon which matter of moral teaching being real, although we 
 are unconscious of it, I shall, perhaps, at a future time of this 
 essay have some words to say. In the mean time, I say, that 
 manifestly Nature, the face of outward, inanimate Nature, is a 
 teacher to us of God, and from the greatest and from the smallest 
 objects, at all times, moral teaching is flowing incessantly and per- 
 petually upon each man. And although but seldom we may know 
 of it, and but in extraordinary cases and under extraordinary 
 circumstances are we struck with it, still, at all times, and in all 
 places, is such an influence acting upon us. 
 
 And for the truth of this, I have to appeal to the general sense 
 and persuasion, and the universal reason of mankind. 
 
 But leaving External Nature alone, we shall come now to the 
 other sphere into which man is born, that of Society, and proceed 
 to examine what influence it has upon man in revealing to him 
 God, or bringing forlh the idea or image of God that is in him by 
 nature. 
 
 And here we find a very distinct and manifest influence. An 
 influence that tells upon man in Society as an instructor, in and 
 of the nature of Good. The influence of Law. A second influ- 
 ence, also, the influence of Knowledge, handed down from genera- 
 tion to generation. Upon these two we shall remark. 
 
 And first, upon the influence of Law in general. "We have 
 stated it as our belief that the organizations of Society are un- 
 changeable; that the Family, the Nation and the Church are 
 always to remain as they always have been, and that man is never 
 without them, has never been without them. 
 
 Now, in virtue of this fact of the perpetual duration of these 
 forms of 'organization, there is a ruling spirit in each of them ; in 
 the Family, the Law of Love ; in the Nation, the Law of Justice ; 
 in the Church, the Law of Holiness ; a threefold division of the 
 one Spirit, that influence the manifestation of which we call 
 " Law." Now, what is this ? 
 
 We take a description of it from a book* of our own, satisfied 
 that the reader will not object to this if it give an answer to the 
 question. 
 
 * " Mercy to Babes, a Plea for the Christian Baptism of Infants."
 
 44 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 This is an influence from which in the state none can be free. 
 Through all the institutions of society it speaks, for these are its 
 embodiments. The Magistrate, the Husband, the Parent, are 
 mouth-pieces of this Eternal Spirit. To all men it speaks, to all 
 classes and individuals ; it reaches even to the babe on its mother's 
 knee. To the good, it is the secret plastic force of Society, which 
 works upon them almost unconsciously, framing and forming them 
 ever with a gentle and omnipresent influence ; unfelt, yet not the 
 less real. To the bad, it is a force external and severely felt, 
 sternly thundering out its penalties, its sanctions and its punish- 
 ments, placing against them a barrier they cannot leap, and calling 
 to its aid, even when men the most reject it, powers in man's own 
 breast and being, and in the feelings of his fellows, and even in 
 the elements themselves, which do and will execute its decrees. 
 
 Men have felt this, aad felt that there is something divine in 
 Law, and the loftiest and holiest have concluded that this that we 
 call law is neither more nor less than the influence and operation 
 of the Will, and Power and Justice of " the Almighty and All- 
 governing God." 
 
 Thus having spoken of Law, we ask our readers to avoid one 
 very common error, when they think of it ; the error of imagining 
 corporeal things to be the only realities. A good many do so 
 they think bread and meat, &c., things that we can see, and touch, 
 and taste, and feel the only realities ; whereas there are other 
 things, just as solid and substantial realities, honesty, and jus- 
 tice, and love, and truth, these are just as much realities as if 
 you could handle them, or see them, or feel them. Now, this that 
 we call Law is of this class, a strong and true reality, and yet not 
 to be handled or touched. 
 
 It is, too, that means by which mediately the Will of God is 
 conveyed to us as in a channel, which to the primitive man was di- 
 rectly and immediately given from the Almighty ; it is the veil in 
 which, now that through man's weakness his eyes are feeble, so 
 that he cannot look upon the full blaze of Glory, God shrouds his 
 effulgence and tempers it to our sight ; it is the spirit which from 
 all Nature he pours upon man (as the imponderable fluids of natural 
 philosophy are poured from material things) to teach him of God. 
 
 And well and truly does it teach him, for it, "the Law," is the 
 revealer of God to the natural man. 
 
 For God, being the supreme fountain and standard of Good, 

 
 HUMAN NATURE. 45 
 
 Law, that is, obedience to and compliance with law, is to the 
 natural man the highest rule of all action, that by which as 
 far as natural action goes, he shall attain to the highest truth of 
 life. 
 
 But that not one Law, but ALL LAW in one agreeing and uniting. 
 First, the " Law of man's own nature," the law of the ruling 
 powers of "Conscience," "the Will," "the Affections," "the 
 Reason." These are the faculties that make him capable of obe- 
 dience to the voice of God. And then the Actual and External 
 "Law," which teaching and educating this inward faculty, em- 
 ploys three schools for man ; three, courts, if I may so say, of 
 law. The one which teaches and enforces the law of obedience 
 and the law of the affections, that is the Family. The second, the 
 law of "right" concerning "life and property," which of course 
 implies justice and equity, that is the State. The third, whose 
 teaching is the law of Holiness, the Church. 
 
 Putting these conclusions together, I say, if any one asks me 
 how a natural man, (apart from the influences of Grace,) shall try 
 to reach the good of his nature in the highest degree, and what is 
 the rule that he should make his object to apply in act, thought, 
 and word; I say it is nought but this, "the Law and the whole 
 Law." 
 
 The natural man finds the law of his nature to be virtue* that 
 his conscience should, each moment of his life, be attended to and 
 deferred to, so that he should obey this, for by this faculty it is 
 that the feeling of Law is manifested to us the first. His nature 
 and whole being will assert to him that he ought so to do. Let 
 him then, at any risk, and at any sacrifice, set himself to obey 
 his Conscience, and to go according to its suggestions, and he 
 will find the light, that perhaps at first was a faint twinkle 
 upon the remotest horizon, become brighter, clearer, steadier, 
 larger, he will find obedience easier, and finally it will become 
 habitual. 
 
 And then, having gone upon this for a time with all his might, 
 next will awaken in him the sense and feeling of the Affections as 
 part of the guiding and governing powers of man's life, and he will 
 feel that gentleness, wisdom, patience, love, considerateness, mercy, 
 kindness that these, somehow or other, give him a rule over 
 
 * "Virtue is the law of our nature." BP. BUTLIR.
 
 46 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 himself and over others, which he could not at first comprehend, 
 or, indeed, at all perceive.* 
 
 And then, if he act consistently upon this that he has attained, 
 he shall come to feel the value of the will, of decision and energy 
 in a course of straight forward travel, in a way set out and ap- 
 pointed for him by himself. 
 
 And the Reason, too, shall come in, although the last, and 
 declare and show itself to him ; and to obey these four, which all 
 are the law of our nature, is to cultivate the principles of obedience 
 to all law wherever we find it. 
 
 These four, and in this order, Conscience first, then the Affec- 
 tions, and then the Will, and then the Reason ; each as a rule of 
 conduct is manifested to man when he has actually, and in action, 
 made the other preceding it, a steady rule of his life. 
 
 And as schools and legislative institutions to aid us in this self- 
 discipline, there are the institutions I have mentioned. This is 
 the moral perfection of the natural man ; and for him, as far as 
 his nature and his position is concerned, if he wishes to attain this 
 perfection, the institutions are just as needful as is the moral 
 nature. 
 
 Now, he that shall look at this influence of Society upon man 
 that we call " Law," must see that it is directly and immediately 
 a good one, and that the only thing that possibly can make it evil, 
 is that it is partial occasionally, that interest is made to over- 
 ride the law of Conscience, the law of the State to smother that 
 of the Family, or of the Reason to destroy that of the Conscience ; 
 
 *" Gentleness, virtue, wisdom, and endurance, 
 These are the seals of that most firm assurance, 
 Which bars the pit over destruction's strength. 
 
 And if, with infirm hand, Eternity, 
 Mother of many acts and hours, should free 
 The serpent that would clasp her with its length, 
 These are the spells by which to reassume 
 An empire o'er the disentangled doom. 
 
 To suffer woes which hope thinks infinite, 
 To forgive wrongs darker than death or night, 
 To love and bear, to hope till hope creates 
 From its own wreck, the thing it contemplates, 
 This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be 
 Good, great, and joyous, beautiful and free, 
 This is alone, Life, Joy, Empire and Liberty."
 
 HUMAN NATURE. 47 
 
 these things excepted, the Law is a teacher wholly good, and is 
 the great means of advance to the mere natural man. 
 
 The resolution to uphold it in all difficulties, to defer to it, and 
 to act accordingly, this is the one and only meafis of natural 
 morality to individuals or to States* the only standard and the 
 only source of it. 
 
 I may be permitted here, in opposition to the many sophisters 
 and theorists who have erected standards of Ethics from Hobbes, 
 who thought man to be a ravenous beast of prey at eternal war 
 with his fellows, and therefore concluded that his leading charac- 
 ter was fierce and warlike selfishness, down to Bentham, who took 
 " utility " for the " supreme rule of conduct," I may be permitted 
 in opposition to these men, to urge this view, that Law and Duty, 
 these are the grand standard of morals for the Natural Man, and 
 the grand means of self-development, in a moral way, if he 
 would cultivate his own moral nature, just as I have shown that 
 by means of these, God is ever to man the Supreme Standard of 
 Good. 
 
 And this view is also corroborated by the word of Christ to a 
 mere natural man, who asked him, " Good master, what shall I do 
 that I may have eternal life ?" and his answer was, " Why callest 
 thou me good there is none Good but one, that is God ; if thou 
 wilt enter into life, keep the commandments." 
 
 How completely does this agree with the doctrine above speci- 
 fied, " none Good but one," the supreme fount and source and 
 the supreme law and standard the treasure of Good in every 
 way, is God the Father of Heaven and Earth. And the way in 
 which that is reached is not by knowledge, nor by wisdom, nor by 
 deep penetration, but by Law ; " if thou wilt enter into life, keep 
 the commandments." The great way is to obey the law, by which 
 he manifests himself, the law of God in whatever way it is shown, 
 wherever it is found. 
 
 This is the commandment of Christ to the young man ; and this, 
 
 * Of Law, there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the 
 bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world : all things in heaven 
 do her homage the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not 
 exempted from her power : both angels and men, and creatures of what con- 
 dition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform 
 consent, admire her as the mother of their peace and joy. HOOKER, ECCLKS. 
 POLITY.
 
 48 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 to the man who is of Nature apart from God's Grace, is the only 
 power, the exclusive means of moral advancement. 
 
 And while I have many things to say as a conclusion to this 
 subject upon the relation of the Law to the Gospel, which I cannot 
 take up now, but shall speak of at another time, inasmuch as there 
 is a certain proportion to be observed, which to break through 
 would enlarge this treatise immeasurably, while I must there- 
 fore observe this proportion, I still would ask of my readers to 
 remark the weight of the Principle I have been urging, and exem- 
 plifying as the principle of progress in morality to the Natural 
 Man. 
 
 For you that are unbaptized in Christ's Name and his Faith, 
 "no arrangement of external circumstances, planned and devised 
 by yourselves or others, can give you the beginning and impetus 
 of' moral progress ; no knowledge or learning, no philosophy of 
 mind, or subtle examination of the Nature of Man, search it out ; 
 no acting upon " Fundamental Principles," or Ethical Theories, 
 such as that of "Utility," that of Benevolence, that of " Sym- 
 pathy," that of "Enlightened Selfishness," that of "Nature," or 
 any other theory or fundamental notion ; nor aught else than this, 
 that of acting up to Law and Duty wherever it is found. Wher- 
 ever from Country, from Parents, from Society, from Con- 
 science, from Reason, from Revelation, the Commandments come, 
 there, " if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments." 
 
 Dwell not in mere sensibilities, or in the luxury of feeling ; 
 dream not of some future access of influences, that shall whirl you 
 on to moral perfection by a tornado of overpowering emotion, but 
 at once, and now, yield to and obey the eternal spirit that is by 
 you, and " keep the commandments." For your own natural con- 
 stitution is framed according unto Law, external Nature corres- 
 ponds, and Society guides and directs the influences of Law upon 
 you. And all these are but the appliances and means whereby 
 God, the Standard of Good, is brought nigh to you. 
 
 Central art thou, child of man ! among all these moral influ- 
 ences ; and if thou wouldst be profited of them all, this is the first 
 and the only step the only beginning of moral improvement to 
 man upon the earth. 
 
 And the first and only way to enter upon this path is by the 
 Conscience ; then, as I have said, the Affections, as a Moral Law, 
 begin to exert themselves ; then the Reason, and then the Will.
 
 HUMAN NATURE. 49 
 
 How this is connected with the Gospel, as I have before said, I 
 shall leave to another part of this treatise ; only at present I 
 shall quote two passages of St. Paul, which may indicate to 
 Christians the future course of consideration, and at the same 
 time afford food for thought, even to the mere Natural Man. 
 
 " The Law is Holy, (and spiritual,) and the Commandment Holy, 
 Just and G-ood" And again: the "Law was our schoolmaster, 
 to lead us to Christ." 
 
 With those two passages I shall close the consideration of that 
 one of the two external influences of Society, which I before spoke 
 of, as manifesting unto man God the Supreme Good. 
 
 Again. Another means whereby God works upon man, is what 
 we call Tradition, " the power that is in Society, by which, if any 
 knowledge of God be committed to it, it shall pass down from one 
 generation to another, and be retained as water in a channel, and 
 influence men, even when they do not think of it, even when they 
 are wholly unconscious of its workings." 
 
 That such knowledge shall flow in the channel of "the life of a 
 community as waters in the channel of a river, that it shall imbue 
 the child, the unlearned, the ignorant, with feelings, knowledge 
 and persuasions ; this we know from history." 
 
 We know, for instance, that among all nations the tradition of 
 a deluge remains ; that even now, so many years from the event, 
 etill the narration of this handed down from father to son, in 
 various shapes, is permanent, and abides enduringly, although 
 it have been changed into the form of legend and fable. 
 
 And the Prometheus of the Greek story, who stole fire from 
 heaven, and thereby restored the human race ; he, nailed by angry 
 Jupiter upon the mountains of Caucasus, between heaven and 
 earth, is a true reflex of the old revelation unto Adam. And 
 among the Eastern nations, the character of Gaudama, born of a 
 virgin, to be the Saviour of man, was formed upon the old tradi- 
 tions of Paradise, concerning a future Redeemer. And so Brahma, 
 Vishnu, and Seeva, the Hindu trinity, bear witness to the original 
 revelation of Jehovah. 
 
 For, as I have before said, there is this peculiar constitution in 
 Society, this peculiar force, that nought of revelation or of reli- 
 gion that is entrusted to it escapes it, but all flows onward, from 
 one generation to another, in the channel of tradition. We have 
 
 indications too manifest to be evaded, that arts may have perished 
 
 * o'i acos
 
 50 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 and sciences have been forgotten, loftier and more splendid than 
 are now known to man ; that nations may have forgotten the his- 
 tory of their own renown, and lost the records of their own civil- 
 ization ; but it seems as if there were in Society a power by which 
 that which is moral and that which is religious shall, under mani- 
 fold shapes and obscurations, be retained and enforced. 
 
 For, though the life of each individual man is but short, and 
 our generations are only thirty years in length, still the generation 
 is not as a wave, wherein all the particles of which it is composed 
 break at once, and simultaneously are lost ; it is rather as the flow 
 of a river, in which continuity is preserved from first to last, or 
 as the rope in which the deficiency of one fibre is supplied by 
 others. So it is with the life of Society ; for all purposes of knowl- 
 edge, death actually makes no difference, the stream continues to 
 flow, although old particles are evaporated, and new ones enter 
 within it ; the school abides the same, although the pupils, their 
 education perfected, are called away, for other pupils are entered 
 therein. 
 
 I would dwell upon this a little more. Because of the faults of 
 the speculations of our latter time, I would urge it upon my readers 
 more thoroughly. 
 
 It has seemed to be forgotten that man is in a school, in a state 
 of trial ; and therefore man has got into the notion that he can 
 MAKE the "Law," that which, in the previous part, we have shown 
 to be truly and really the voice of God. So men have thought 
 that they could make this that they call "Public Opinion," and 
 that we have called Tradition. They call it so, because they think 
 that it comes from the men of the present day ; but we give it the 
 other name, because we clearly see that it is an inheritance handed 
 down (tradita) from the Past. 
 
 For as in an agricultural country, there is a certain amount of 
 improvements,* as we call them, houses, and barns, and fences, 
 cleared and cultivated land, which no man can take away, but all 
 must leave behind them ; which descends from one generation to 
 .another, and the importance of which persons having been born 
 to and with it seldom realize until they go to a new country ; so is 
 there in Society a certain amount of teaching upon various sub- 
 jects, and of knowledge that descends from generation to genera- 
 
 * Among Political Economists, this is called " Fixed Capital." The rea- 
 sons for the names are manifest.
 
 HUMAN NATURE. 51 
 
 tion, that we call Tradition, and this knowledge men for the most 
 part learn without appreciating or knowing its value, just as men 
 inherit Fixed Capital without knowing what relation it has to labor 
 and property. 
 
 We would dwell, as we have said, a little more upon this point. 
 We would show how this provision is adapted to our nature. Is * 
 it not a fact that the mind awakens but a short time comparatively 
 after birth, say a year or two years, so that then the child is capa- 
 ble of receiving impressions, opinions, ideas ? 
 
 Certainly this is the case. It receives these, then, while the 
 judgment is immature, the knowledge imperfect, the mind itself 
 feeble ; nay, this reasoning being continues more or less unripe for 
 a period of twenty years, and this very period is the time in which 
 most of its ideas are received. Nine-tenths of all the ideas we 
 hold and act upon, during our life, then are impressed upon us. 
 
 This idea, I confess, was first fixed upon my mind by a conver- 
 sation upon the Evidences of Christianity, in which a clergyman 
 of some ability being asked, "Do you not believe Christianity 
 upon its Evidences?" answered, "No: I believe it because my 
 mother taught me." And, really, any one who will take the pains, 
 may find, as I did, that it is the fact that nine-tenths of his opinions 
 upon any one subject arise from this teaching. 
 
 He will find, too, that it is suited to his nature ; that it is not 
 for nothing that he is so long immature and unripe, but that it is 
 a most gracious and beneficent arrangement of Providence, by 
 which this World is a School to him, and that knowledge is con- 
 veyed to him that is suitable to his nature. Nay, more than this, 
 he shall find that only that kind that is suitable to him, shall be 
 received and taken up by it, all else rejected. 
 
 And this Tradition is a cord made up, as it were, of three 
 strands ; it is a stream from three sources, from the Nation, the 
 Family, and the Church. 
 
 In each of these we shall see that it originates and continues to 
 operate. Let a father and mother be honest, and their honesty 
 shall, they know not how, communicate itself to their children. 
 Let justice, or veracity, or high feeling, or natural delicacy, or 
 any other moral idea, be a leading one of the parents, and the 
 children, by this natural provision we have spoken of, shall take 
 it up. And it shall continue in the family, and its traces be seen 
 after seven generations ; for the child, with undoubting mind and
 
 52 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 unresisting faith, shall receive it from the parents, and so shall it 
 become an element in the channel of Family life, and flow therein, 
 we had almost said, forever. 
 
 Let the pastor in his church have the high and lofty feelings 
 that he should be endued with, and he shall find that by means of 
 this, they shall communicate themselves from one to another ; his 
 flock shall receive them with unresisting faith, and years after he 
 has laid in the grave his Good shall still be working. 
 
 Let the Statesman or the Magistrate think upon it, and he 
 shall see the qualities of a Chatham, a Washington, or an Eliza- 
 beth enter into the channel of the life of a nation, and henceforth 
 be, until the end of time, a formative power over the character of 
 millions. 
 
 For the reverse of what the poet has said is true, " The Good 
 that men do" this it is that lives after them "but the evil is 
 buried with their bones." 
 
 Two things more, in connection with this subject, I would ob- 
 serve. First, that of this teaching there are three authoritative 
 teachers : the Parent, the Magistrate, the Pastor ; and in refer- 
 ence to them none can fill their places, or do that which it is their 
 business to do. For with the Child towards the Parent, in reference 
 to this teaching, belief is easier than unbelief; the child believes 
 until the assertion of his parent be disproved, instead of disbe- 
 lieving until it be proved. 
 
 And so it is with the Citizen in reference to the Magistrate as 
 regards fealty, and the member of a church as regards his Pastor. 
 These are things that in many cases are called prejudices by as- 
 tonished Radicals and Destructionists, and yet are part of the 
 morality of our position, and explain many matters in history and 
 society that men wonder at as unaccountable. 
 
 A second thing I would remark : the peculiar mode of this teach- 
 ing. It seems to have an inclination almost unconquerable for a 
 "vivavoce" or Oral instruction. The parent to the child shall 
 teach more by a little simple talk, than by the best manual, writ- 
 ten or printed. Conversation seems peculiarly the mode of this 
 traditional teaching. With regard to the pastor, also, I have no- 
 ticed that to speak with his people face to face has a predominant 
 influence. 
 
 We have stated that these two influences are teachers, means, 
 and instruments of a peculiar teaching. We are aware that men
 
 HUMAN NATURE. 53 
 
 may dispute it, may even consider it an absurdity, and attribute 
 to the aggregate of individuals that which we attribute to Society 
 as a true and real organization* 
 
 We, however, submit two considerations that may help men to 
 reach out to our apprehension of the matter. 
 
 And previously we will place before them our conception of the 
 position of man. He is under one class of influences from which 
 no being born into the world can be free, those of external nature 
 under the same class of influences to which the animals are sub- 
 ject, and they produce in him moral ideas, while in the animals we 
 have no reason to imagine that they do so. This is one School. 
 
 There is another ; that of Society, with its twofold influences, 
 which we have just explained, of Law and Tradition, its authorized 
 teachers of Parents, Magistrates and Priests, its indestructible 
 organization or threefold school, to which these belong. Now the 
 decisive question as to the true and real existence of these is not, 
 " can men do without them ?" for men's speculations are far dif- 
 ferent from facts, and as a fact men have never been without them ; 
 but this it is "the moral results that are produced by these means, 
 are they producible otherwise ?" 
 
 Take a child in childhood, let him be completely isolated from 
 Parents, from the Church, from Society, and will moral ideas arise 
 spontaneously in his mind ? Will those feelings, opinions and be- 
 liefs, which we see kept, as it were, in solution in the stream of 
 life, imbuing each individual, and thus passed down from one to 
 another generation, will these arise in his mind spontaneously ? 
 
 And as the answer, we have authentic records of perhaps a 
 dozen of children, who were lost before their mind could be so in- 
 fluenced by the Family, the Nation, and the Church, and no moral 
 ideas were developed in them, no intellectual ones they were per- 
 fectly without them. 
 
 From which we draw not the opinion that moral and intellectual 
 ideas are completely artificial but two conclusions, first, that the 
 innate principles of man's being are as those of a bulb or root ; 
 that there is a certain outward condition of things requisite to call 
 them forth, which, if it do not exist, they shall not and cannot be 
 called forth. And secondly, that this outward condition is that 
 state we call Society, with it's threefold schools and its triple ma- 
 gistrates, and that these are absolutely necessary as means of moral 
 culture to the moral nature of man.
 
 54 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 Thus, then, is man placed, and these are his advantages ; he 
 has a nature that is not as a beast's nature is, indifferent to good 
 and evil ; it is not the nature of a devil, wholly evil in itself, but 
 it is in its nature and essence good but fallen. 
 
 And in order that it may be led to Good, it is placed in Society 
 subject to masters and teachers ordained of God, and a member of 
 institutions that by Him are organized, and have their action upon 
 the very roots of man's being. And these teachers teach and in- 
 struct in that which is Good ; these institutions uphold it also. 
 
 And then the Law, in all its phases, enforces it. The Tradition 
 brings to man, consciously or unconsciously, moral elements of 
 Knowledge from the remotest shores of time, the most distant 
 realms of space ; and lastly, External Nature repeats and re-echoes 
 all these teachings, from the smallest herb upon the mountain 
 top ; from the remotest star ; from the stormy sea ; from the calm 
 streamlet in the sunshine ; from the burning fires of the volcano, 
 and the snowy peaks of the sky-piercing Himmaleh : spring and 
 summer, autumn and winter, all natural objects and all natural 
 scenes, when once the sense has been awakened, feed it with a per- 
 petual influence. 
 
 Go, ye that think that man is a beast, to pick up his food as he 
 may, to eat and drink, to live according to his own will, and then 
 to die ; ye that imagine that this world is a large pen for man 
 the beast to live in, a self-acting patent pen, that supplies enough 
 of food and drink lull yourselves with this notion, act upon it, but 
 Btill you shall find that it is not so ; still you will find that all 
 things witness unto God ; and through them all he witnesses of 
 Himself, his Will, and his Law unto man.
 
 HUMAN NATURE. 55 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Society brings to all men the knowledge of Good, and the Rule of it.- 
 Man's nature yearns toward it, being good ; but it finds itself unable it 
 is driven then, inwardly for aids finds within, Conscience, Reason, the 
 Heart, the Will, powers that aid us. From these arise four philosophies, 
 Socratic, Platonic, Epicurean, Stoic. These powers the sources of moral 
 progress. Yet moral perfection by nature unattainable. Original Sin. 
 Answer to the question, " How man does evil although his nature is good ?" 
 Difference between Mental or Physical and Moral inability. Original 
 Sin is primarily in the incapacity of the moral or Governing Powers. 
 
 WE have in the previous chapters examined points the most im- 
 portant, and drawn conclusions which we believe are, to a system 
 of Christian Science, fundamental. The reader will please remem- 
 ber them, they are these first, that the nature of man is good ; 
 secondly, that all outward circumstances, which wait upon man in 
 this world, are ministers to him of moral teaching. 
 
 The first assertion was, that " man's nature is good of itself by 
 nature." This we asserted, with certain limitations. 
 
 But at once the question comes up, " Does not man do evil ?" 
 and then, " How is this consistent with the fact that his nature is 
 good?" 
 
 This is a question of deep importance we will say, and one 
 which, upon this, our theme of Christian Science, has a most 
 vital bearing. 
 
 In answer to it, we say then, that man is not as a beast, he is 
 not as a devil, he is a man still, although he does evil ; we call him 
 not totally depraved, but fallen ; we call not his state a state of 
 total depravity ', but of original sin. Let our reader remark this 
 and ponder it well ; the doctrine we teach in reference to man's 
 state, by nature, declares him "fallen," that is to say, as far 
 gone as, still being a man, he can go from " original righteous- 
 ness," but not so far gone as to be a beast, or a fiend ; it there- 
 fore applies not to him, the term " totally depraved," but the 
 word "fallen." 
 
 Now the very word "fallen," this itself will aid us to compre- 
 hend this diflicult question, it implies the having lapsed from a 
 higher condition ; it implies inability to come up to a standard ; it 
 implies imperfection in natural qualities. A nation degenerated
 
 56 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 into barbarism would be a "fallen" nation; a hero overthrown, a 
 "fallen" hero ; a man of character, who had lost that character, 
 a " fallen" man ; but still they cease not to be a nation, a hero, a 
 man. So this word " fallen," implies that Adam originally was 
 created perfect, capable of reaching to and satisfying a certain 
 standard, and in fact reaching to and satisfying it ; that to that 
 standard now, no man individually, nor yet the race collectively, 
 can, or do reach that standard being the Law of Crod and his 
 Will 
 
 Now if we look at the third chapter,* we find the subject dis- 
 cussed at some length ; we find there that Adam's perfection con- 
 sisted first in the completeness of his own nature ; secondly, in the 
 Presence of God with Adam as a natural rule of life and complete 
 law of action ; we shall find, too, that the nature of the fall con- 
 sists in the withdrawal of that Gift first after Adam had sinned, 
 and then in the Insubordination of our natural faculties thereon 
 ensuing. And three means of examining, by example, the nature 
 of man unfallen, we find in Holy Writ, Adam first, secondly Christ 
 our Lord, and thirdly Man after the resurrection. 
 
 But our readers may say, if man be thus imperfect, incapable 
 of his nature of reaching a certain standard, surely it is enough 
 for him if he live up to his imperfection, seeing that he is imperfect. 
 
 Certainly if man were alone in this world if his own nature 
 were the only indication that he had of a supreme moral law, then 
 that were enough. But let the objector look to our last chapter, 
 there he shall see that, even supposing the man to be afar from 
 the Church and afar from Christianity, still he is not left to him- 
 self, to his own nature, or to his own standard; but a higher 
 standard is revealed to him by Society, telling him of Law, and 
 through it of the loftiness of duty and the nearness of God ; by 
 Tradition or Opinion, which, through the voice of his fellows, 
 brings him religious knowledge and religious conviction from the 
 remotest ages and climes ; and lastly, by Nature, which re-echoes 
 and confirms all these. 
 
 Let no man then bring forward his imperfection as an excuse, 
 for it is none ; if only he will, in his imperfection, follow after that 
 which is perfect, he will be led unto Christ. 
 
 Yes ! such is the merciful benevolence of the Omniscient and 
 
 * Chapter 3, page 29.
 
 HUMAN NATURE. 57 
 
 Omnipotent, that, if from one born amidst the barbarism of Africa, 
 amid the Fetish-worship and hideous cannibalism and horrible 
 licentiousness of Central Africa, the desire should arise sincerely 
 to follow the Law of God as it is revealed by Society even there ; 
 and the Tradition of religion, faint as it is there ; and the teachings 
 of Nature internal and external ; then circumstances shall form 
 themselves to bless the design, and obstacles yield, and ways open 
 through deserts that seemed trackless, and over mountains without 
 passes, and the man shall, by ways he knew not, be led unto Christ 
 and Christianity.* 
 
 This is the true answer to them who assert that they have had 
 no opportunity. For the God of the whole earth is not unjust ; 
 but in Man's own nature, in the ordinances and arrangements of 
 the outward world and all its circumstances, has he so arrayed 
 the course of things, that "he that will come, may come," and 
 that he who perishes, does so of his own accord, willingly and 
 freely ; and not upon the living God Omnipotent, but also All- 
 Merciful and All-Just, but upon himself is the blame to rest. 
 
 And he, as I have said, that shall look upon the exposition of 
 the Moral teaching of the External World in the preceding chap- 
 ters, shall see that it is so. 
 
 Now, when we assert this fact of a "fall" from an original 
 type ; when we assert that it is in two ways exemplified, in ina- 
 bility to come up to the standard, and, at the same time, in an 
 urgent desire and feeling towards that very standard, manifestly 
 we do a great deal towards settling the moral position of the man 
 and the race. 
 
 For first must there be in man, individually and as a race, an 
 inability or a deficiency that is without example in all other ani- 
 mals, an inability to fulfil functions which we feel we ought to 
 fulfil, and, at the same time, an external moral stimulus urging 
 us to strive and struggle in that direction. 
 
 That such is the fact, as we know by all experience with regard 
 to man. Because he is not evil essentially, or " totally depraved" 
 his natural feeling is towards good. He seeks nothing but as 
 good.^ The Law as manifested in the outward world and the 
 
 * See the Sixth Book, Chapter Second, on the import and meaning of what 
 we call " Circumstance." 
 f Omne quod petit, petit ut bonum. SCHOLASTIC MAXIM.
 
 58 CHKISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 Tradition show him a perfect good that is to be done. And his 
 nature yearns towards it, and he feels that he ought to do it, and 
 that originally there is in him the power to do it. And yet, every 
 struggle he makes, he is thrown back unable and incompetent. 
 Is he not then a wonder and a terror to himself ? 
 
 But it is manifested in more ways than this. The man cannot 
 cease the moral struggle, for, as I have said, the Law is around 
 him, and the Tradition urges him on, and External Nature worka 
 with and confirms these two. And this, his vain strife, then forces 
 him to seek back into himself and his inward being, to see whether 
 in that Internal Nature there are moral elements by which he may 
 be able to penetrate and conquer those others of his lower nature 
 that give the opportunity to evil. 
 
 He at once sees that there are such ; the Conscience he beholds, or 
 feeling of right and wrong. Could he only live according to this 
 exactly, he were absolutely and entirely right, and his nature urges 
 him to struggle toward it. The Will, the power of Self-guidance 
 and Self-determination, could he only guide himself by this ; could 
 he only, by a stern effort, shape out his course, and with firmly set 
 and unrelenting Will pursue it, and hew through all obstacles, all 
 difficulties ; if there be no moral power in this, at least half the 
 the moral weakness, half the misery of life is lost, and the stern 
 thought of an unyielding and self-determined course holds out to 
 him, if not happiness, at least strength and consistency. Or the 
 man sees the value of Reason, of ruling himself in all cases 
 according to the dictates of Reason, of that which is eternally and 
 immortally right, according to the nature and being of the whole 
 world. Or else he makes of the Affections his standard, seeing 
 plainly that if he could follow nature as far as her teachings speak 
 through man's Heart, then he would be happy. 
 
 Now let my readers look at man as he is by nature, and they 
 will see how naturally these philosophies arise, and what they 
 are. In the first class, they will see the Socratic philosophers, 
 those who apprehended the power of Conscience as a guide, a true 
 philosophy, yet inadequate. In the second, the Stoics, with their 
 stern subjection of self, their attempted annihilation of the pas- 
 sions, their ruling of the whole nature by the force of an iron will 
 a true philosophy, and a grand and noble one, yet as the other, 
 inadequate. Again, in the third class, they find the Platonists of 
 old with their Universal Reason and obedience to it, and this obedi-
 
 HUMAN NATURE. 59 
 
 ence, good and meritorious, still inadequate. And last of all, 
 the moral philosophy that makes the Affections all in all, a theory 
 most liable to be corrupted, but still in men who have advocated 
 and practiced upon it, with a pure mind, the loveliest of all. 
 
 Now with reference to these four faculties, is it not plainly 
 manifest that they are to man the avenues and elements of moral 
 progress that exist in his nature, these and none else, for who can 
 seek a beginning of moral progress, or an element of moral im- 
 provement in the "appetites," the "passions," the "desires," 
 while he finds none in Conscience, Will, Reason, the Affections ? 
 And yet by them as little can he climb to moral perfection, or 
 to that height his nature requires, as by the baser parts of his 
 being. 
 
 And therefore it is, that, in one sense, a philosophy of life is 
 impossible ; therefore it is that Christianity has so abhorred this 
 blind Philosophizing ; for the very enigma of our nature is this, that 
 while nature indicates these as moral elements, they, by themselves, 
 only serve to blind and delude. A moral philosophy founded upon 
 the moral elements of our nature only, or upon them apart from 
 revelation, is a delusion. 
 
 For the moral yearning is attended with moral inability, and 
 the feeling towards moral perfection is partly a natural reminis- 
 cence of a past state in the history of our race, partly the yearn- 
 ing after a post-resurrection state of existence. This desire, and 
 longing, and feeling is the germ in us that requires fertilizing 
 elements, that are not in us nor of us, to bring it to perfection. 
 And only this doctrine of Revelation, which I have just ex- 
 pounded,* can explain the enigma, or prevent us launching forth 
 into hopes, desires and speculations in search of moral happiness 
 and moral perfection, that end only in delusion and disappointment. 
 
 Now, to the Christian, baptized in Christ, I say this, as a result 
 of this examination : " Beware of philosophizing ; act according 
 to Conscience, to Will, to Reason, to the Affections, but beware 
 philosophizing, forming theories apart from religion, and notions ; 
 for the moment you do so, you run many risks of wandering to 
 and fro for years, of dreaming and deluding yourselves and others. 
 For this advice, you can see abundant reason in the position and 
 nature of man, as above specified. The vision and feeling of a 
 
 * The doctrine and fact of Original Sin.
 
 60 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 perfection of moral nature constantly flashes up before us ; the 
 conviction that the elements of moral progress exist in man, is 
 instinctively in us. These are in us for purposes and uses con- 
 nected with the Gospel, as we shall see ;* let us not turn them into 
 delusion, and make of them wandering fires to lead us astray, 
 when they are intended for our good and our guidance." 
 
 But in another way, still, must we take a caution upon this 
 point in the leading our nature gives us towards the idea or notion 
 of a "perfect society." Man has a feeling by nature towards 
 such a thing ; he has the assured feeling that such a thing there 
 was once, that such a thing there can be again, and from the 
 earliest times has the vision been before him ; it is before him by 
 nature, and this fact of Original Sin is that which utterly destroys 
 the possibility of it. 
 
 For I will ask, as a matter of fact, can sin, poverty, disease, 
 distress, weakness, and irregularity of the moral and mental 
 powers be eradicated from this world, or from the man in this 
 world ? Then if it be so, man can individually reach by his own 
 power "Moral Perfection," or there can be a "Perfect Society." 
 If not, it cannot be. 
 
 To the Christian, that is to him baptized into Christ's Spirit and 
 Faith, I say look at the doctrine of the Fall, and you will see that 
 what I have said is true, and go on with me that we may examine 
 the facts and truths of man's position in the world, and you will 
 Bee the moral uses of these things. 
 
 To him who is unbaptized in the Faith and Spirit of our Re- 
 deemer, and has no belief in the doctrine of Original Sin, I say 
 TRY, and you will find that no philosophizing will give you power 
 to do that which you feel and know you ought to do ; no schemes 
 or plans will cast away from Society sin, and poverty, and disease, 
 and death. And furthermore no strife of yours, nay, of unani- 
 mous nations, no mass of heaven-high capital or extent of domain, 
 will organize Society otherwise than it has been organized. 
 
 These are truths, which denying the doctrines of the Church, 
 you may think false, while I know them to be true. Go on, then, 
 my friend; strike your head hard harder still very hard in 
 course of time you may come to learn that rocks do not yield, and 
 that hardness of head will not break them in pieces a piece of 
 
 * This subject is afterwards examined.
 
 HUMAN NATURE. 61 
 
 knowledge that is very valuable, indeed, though perhaps hardly 
 worth the trouble of acquiring it by experience. 
 
 Now, I would dwell earnestly upon this. I would request of all 
 students of moral philosophy to ponder well this fact and its bear- 
 ings, that the Law, taking the word in its most extended sense, 
 the Opinion or Teaching of Society and External Nature, all hold 
 up before us the goal and object of a moral perfection to be 
 struggled after. And our nature responds to the call. Nay, it 
 indicates to us the elements in our being that serve to this end ; 
 and these things all perpetually urge us onward and yet of our- 
 selves we cannot reach the limit ! We cannot grasp the object ! 
 We cannot attain to that which we desire to attain ! 
 
 I point out this fact as one of the most important there is in 
 the whole nature of man, and one which at once destroys the 
 whole of many moral philosophies, and renders them, upon the 
 ground of nature, impossible and useless. One, too, which ex- 
 plains the feeling that many have found to arise in themselves, the 
 feeling, "what avail these exact rules, these high speculations, 
 these admirable precepts, when we cannot apply them so as to 
 bring out the results the author desires, and we so much appre- 
 ciate?" This limitation, then, we would desire our readers all to 
 understand, and all to act upon, for a most vital part it is of a 
 true moral philosophy. 
 
 Men may ask, wherefore should it be so ? And from their in- 
 ability to comprehend why it is so, they may, perhaps, incline to 
 deny it to be a fact. We shall tell them why it is so. It is so, 
 that the individual having tried all things, and had recourse to all 
 other means, may finally be led unto Christ ! that all philosophies, 
 all plans of moral progress having been acted upon, and found in- 
 adequate by all men, they all may be led to the Church of God, 
 and therein find, in the Gospel of His Son, ample and full satisfac- 
 tion, y 
 
 We shall, therefore, treat of Moral Science under this limita- 
 tion in reference to Original Sin, as seated in the race naturally, 
 and in the individual ; and for the course of moral action to be 
 pursued by man under it, for man's perfection and man's moral 
 power, we shall refer to the latter part of this treatise. 
 
 Here, then, we are able to answer the question, " How is it 
 that man does evil, although in his nature he is good?" How is 
 it ? Simply it is this ; that the very fault and deficiency of his
 
 62 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 nature is in the natural inability to do that which is in accordance 
 with the Will and Law of God ; in other words, that which ia 
 Good. His nature is good, and aspires towards it ; the Law that 
 speaks to him is good. Tradition teaches him of Good ; all things 
 call forth the desire and the will, but the ability is wanting by 
 nature. 
 
 Now, look at this ! Ye who would make of man a fiend essen- 
 tially evil, say that we have the desire, the wish, the feeling to- 
 wards good ; say that all things lead us towards it naturally, and 
 that there is in man, we will say not the Physical inability or the 
 Mental, but the Moral, what is the case with him ? This, that he 
 does evil. 
 
 And let us remember that voluntary thoughts are action, that 
 speech is action, that deeds are action, and we can see that the 
 nature of man may be good, at the same time that his deeds are 
 evil. For to act, and yet that our action should not be in accord- 
 ance with the law of God, which is the "rule and measure of 
 Good" ; this is that our act should be evil. In other words, a 
 nature may be in itself essentially good, and yet if it have lost 
 the ability to obey God's Law, its actions are evil. So does man 
 sin, although his nature be good. Nay, more, he sins always, in 
 every thought, word and action, wherein he has not Grace. 
 
 We would add another remark, to uphold and confirm that which 
 we say ; and this is, that we have used the word "inability," be- 
 cause we have no other word to express our idea. Now, the very 
 deficiency of the word "inability" is this, that it seems to imply 
 an excuse ; that it seems to acquit, to cast off a responsibility, 
 and thereby to make man guiltless, for men will say, "If he is 
 by nature unable, why is he condemned ?" 
 
 The proper answer to this is, " Physical inability excuses, so 
 does Mental, but Moral, never" ; before the courts of God, or 
 those of man, moral inability voids not guilt. Say that a duty is 
 bound upon a man, that of defending his country from an invader, 
 that of laboring for the support of his family, that of serving in 
 any office the law enjoins upon him ; if the man be bed-ridden, or 
 sick, or deficient in physical ability, then is he not responsible, he 
 is excused. Also, if he is mentally unable, let us say insane, or 
 
 otic in mind, then is he excused, as is both natural and just. 
 But moral inability, so far as it does not make him physically or 
 mentally unable, shall still leave him liable, even in the eyes of
 
 HUMAN NATURE. 63 
 
 man. You may prove before a jury, that the man was feeble in Will, 
 but except it be so great as to have touched his Mental or Physical 
 powers, it shall be no excuse. You may manifest to them that 
 naturally he " had very little Conscientious feelings, or that his 
 Affections were of a nature very imperfect" ; but the moral in- 
 ability shall be no excuse, except it have amounted to physical or 
 mental inability. This is a principle in all law, that natural moral 
 inability, belonging to the race or to the individual, is no excuse, 
 voids no responsibility. And however men may seek to evade this 
 conclusion by verbal paradox, still, in fact, it will stand, thereby 
 showing that Moral Inability is something altogether different 
 from Mental or Physical Inability, and that the difference is, that 
 it does not void responsibility or annul guilt. 
 
 Now in reference to this subject of "Moral Inability," or that 
 consequence of our natural state of Original Sin, by reason of 
 which we cannot of ourselves obey the Law of God, I may be per- 
 mitted to quote from a book, written by myself, a passage, which 
 I hope will give some degree of explanation.* " What then is bap- 
 tism in their case, (that of infants,) considered as a rite for the 
 remission of sins ? This may be seen from the nature of sin. 
 What then is sin ? This, neither more nor less, * the transgression 
 of the Law ;' this is actual sin. And how does this come ? how 
 comes it, that since 'the law is holy, and just, and true,' since 
 * virtue,' or conduct, in obedience to the law of God, ' is the law 
 of man's nature,'f that men transgress the law, for that law is 
 evidently in accordance with man's best interests ? 
 
 " Certainly it is not by the bondage of an iron fate predestinating 
 us to be sinful ; as certainly it is not the force of external circum- 
 stances driving us onward and impelling us to sin, for every man 
 knows, by the fact that he is a man, that man is the lord of cir- 
 cumstances" 
 
 " How then does it come ? By this, that there is a moral inability 
 to keep God's Law perfectly, an inability born with us, and which we 
 clearly see not to have belonged to man's nature originally, but to 
 have been the result of a deterioration, which is called the Fall ?" 
 
 " This inability is in the infant; it developes itself in him just 
 BO soon as reason and responsibility begin to develope themselves. 
 And the great end of remission, of forgiveness, of reconciliation, is 
 
 * " Mercy to Babes," page 135. f Bishop Butler.
 
 64 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 the putting an end to this inability, not in itself, but in actual 
 transgression, and in its own guiltiness. The fact of the inability, 
 and of its origin, every one can see from his own nature." 
 
 " The nature of Original Sin, the cause of this inability, we do 
 not clearly know in this world, even our deepest imaginin'gs cannot 
 penetrate it. The very consideration of it is involved in the 
 deepest mystery. It would seem that there is a hideousness and 
 horror about it, more fearful than we can imagine, when we think 
 that for its remission and pardon, the Eternal Word must take 
 flesh, and be born, suffer, die, and be buried, that it should be 
 remitted." 
 
 " It would seem, too, that if we could only comprehend it, that 
 sin is ultimately an actual and real death, of which the death of 
 this world is only the shadow. It would seem also to be of the 
 nature of an infection, reaching from generation to generation, 
 and from father to son, extending as a disease, loathsome of itself 
 in the eyes of God and Man. It would seem also as if it tainted 
 the nature of all men as unquestionably the infected nature of 
 diseased animals, although undeveloped, still is in their offspring. It 
 would appear also that there is some impenetrable and mysterious 
 connection, as it were, between the souls of all men, between our 
 souls and the souls of all our progenitors, and consequently with 
 the souls of them in whom the deterioration took place." 
 
 " And lastly, it is plainly manifest from the Scripture, that in 
 this world .... we are all born subject to this evil taint. We 
 were by nature, 'children of wrath.'* 'As by one man sin 
 entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon 
 all, for that all have sinned.'f So from all these considerations, 
 would it seem that this natural inability requires remission. The 
 sinfulness that is in us by birth must be pardoned. This is called 
 Original Sin." 
 
 " I need not say that the explanation of it is difficult from the 
 first, in that we, as men born in sin, cannot understand what 
 sin is clearly in this life, or how it looks in the eye of a most Holy 
 God. Only this I will say, that any other opinion than this of 
 Original Sin, will and must force us into difficulties and contradic- 
 tions, overthrowing the whole plan of salvation." 
 
 So far I have quoted, that I may the more clearly explain this 
 
 * Eph. ii. 3. t Rom. v. 12.
 
 HUMAN NATURE. 65 
 
 point. Now, I ask candidly, having, as we must have, by the 
 explanation before given, a feeling of Good and a standard of 
 Good, do we not know from our own consciousness that our fault 
 and the fault of our nature is the inability to reach it ? Can we 
 not also refer that inability to the very part and portion of our 
 nature wherein it rests, the Governing or Moral faculties of the 
 Conscience, the Will, the Reason, the Affections. 
 
 Certainly, therein we feel the inability to exist. For every 
 man knows that in each act, the will, the conscience, the reason, 
 the affections should come in perfectly as the guides and rules of 
 all physical and mental action, so that no act should be done save 
 under their control and by their guidance, just as the helm and 
 compass should influence each movement of the vessel. Every one 
 knows also, that in men's actions naturally these even now come in, 
 more or less, in an enfeebled and weak way ; and feels that if they 
 could influence him as they ought to influence him, and as they 
 are intended by God to do, then would his life be good, under the 
 governance of the Law of God and man. Every man therefore 
 recognizes this weakness and inability in our present moral posi- 
 tion, as an element of the being of an imperfect and fallen nature. 
 Every man also recognizes and clearly understands the seat of this 
 inability to be where* I have placed it. 
 
 This remark being made, I shall go on to examine the moral 
 powers of man as they actually exist. That is the Governing 
 powers of Conscience, Will, Reason, the Affections, in their pre- 
 sent state of weakness and feebleness, doing their work imper- 
 fectly ; and as I go along drawing forth precepts concerning the 
 strengthening of them, and supplying them with their utmost pos- 
 sible ability. 
 
 * I have, as it may be seen, placed the effect of Original Sin primarily in 
 the weakness of the Governing or Spiritual Powers in the race and the indi- 
 vidual. And thereby the Supernatural Gift of the Presence and the Imme- 
 diate Grace being withdrawn, these powers, which, by means of that rule, 
 had the office and the ability to govern the man, have lost, in a degree which 
 we can hardly estimate, that power. Thereby the other powers that ought 
 to be subordinate, are disordered and out of place. The injury then of Original 
 Sin is primarily and causally upon men's Spiritual powers, but in effect 
 upon the whole nature, and all the powers of body, soul and spirit. This dis- 
 tinction, a very important one, I hope my readers will apprehend. 
 
 9
 
 66 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 There are in human nature, Governing Powers and Powers Subordinate. No 
 powers in human nature essentially evil. Anger analyzed as a proof of 
 this assertion. Evil action comes from the weakness of the Governing 
 Powers, not the strength of Passions. Laws of the Governing Powers. 
 1st, Governing Powers should govern Subordinate Powers only subordi- 
 nately act. Dangers from breach of this first law. 2d, They should act 
 always, others onlyjintermittingly. 3d, They govern according to a Law. 
 This is the Law of God, which is also the Law of the harmony of man's 
 nature. The relation of moral to mental power. 
 
 WE have treated, in the previous Chapter, of the inability or 
 weakness of the Governing or moral powers in man, and that we 
 believe, in a manner so plain and clear, that no one who has 
 thought upon his own being gravely and searchingly, can mistake 
 the truth we have brought into view, and the moral principles 
 capable of being educed from it. We have shown that man has 
 in his nature, Governing or moral powers, the peculiar quality of 
 which is, that their office is to rule the rest of his nature according 
 to the Law of God. 
 
 Now the very idea of Governing powers supposes powers Subor- 
 dinate, whose natural state is subjection the being ruled and the 
 being guided ; so that thereby we shall have two classes esta- 
 blished at once, the one of powers governing, whose function is to 
 govern, the other, of powers Subordinate, whose functions is to 
 be governed. This is the first natural division of the powers of 
 man's nature. 
 
 Now upon the mere statement of the distinction, there will arise 
 two most important questions and objections, which must be dis- 
 posed of before any further progress can be made. It may be 
 said, first, " Admitting the division, instead of powers governing 
 and powers subordinate, should it not be powers good and powers 
 evil? Are there not in our nature, powers and faculties and prin- 
 ciples, that of their nature and by themselves are naturally evil, 
 which the Governing powers, the Conscience, Will, Reason, and 
 Affections do check and repress ? So that the Governing powers 
 are good in their nature, the subordinate powers evil in their 
 nature."
 
 HUMAN NATURE. 67 
 
 This manifestly is a most important consideration, one that is 
 to be gone into fully, and fully resolved upon, before we can make 
 any progress. And BO much in its favor we may say, that in all 
 cases of evil action, almost always we can see that it arises from 
 these Subordinate faculties, desires, feelings, &c. Although, of 
 course, this may arise in one of two ways : if they are evil in 
 their nature essentially, the function of the other is to sup- 
 press, annihilate, destroy them. If they are in themselves good, 
 and their function is to be subordinate, of course, then, not being 
 subordinate, will be to be in that case, and that only evil. And 
 therefore upon this last supposition, that evil in action may arise 
 from them, does not prove them evil in nature. 
 
 Now, this is our resolution. Man has faculties that are good in 
 themselves he has none that are evil in themselves he has facul- 
 ties that are benevolent naturally, none that are malevolent or 
 malignant naturally. 
 
 For this resolution we shall appeal to the consciousness of each 
 and every man. All men know wherein they do evil. Each man, 
 therefore, is aware by what desire, or feeling, or emotion of his 
 nature he is betrayed to the evil that he does. Now, let him take 
 that same desire, and by examining it carefully, he shall find that 
 there are cases wherein the exercise of that desire of his nature is 
 not only not evil, but is more than that, is good. Nay, further- 
 more, he shall find the feeling in all cases is good, provided only 
 that it be under the guidance of Reason, and Conscience, and 
 Will, and the Affections, guided by them according to the mea- 
 sure* they prescribe. 
 
 We shall take an instance. One of the most violent passions, 
 and of those that give rise to the greatest amount of evil, is 
 Anger is not that evil in itself, and its nature naturally evil ? 
 Certainly not. Its evil is, that it is not ruled. When it is under 
 the Governing Powers, then it is good, and always good. And so 
 the direction of the Scripture with reference to it is, " Be ye angry 
 and sin not" a permission, nay, almost an injunction to be angry, 
 provided it be so ruled as not to be against the Law of God. 
 Again, " Let not the sun go down upon your wrath" it is not to 
 be permanent so as to take the place of the Affections, which are 
 to be permanent, or to become a guiding quality instead of a Sub- 
 
 * Their measure and rule of course is the Law of God.
 
 68 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 ordinate and momentary one. So far the reason of any and every 
 thoughtful individual can see that the distinctions of the Scripture 
 with reference to Anger agree with the principle laid down, that 
 no subordinate faculty is in itself evil, but that its evil is in its 
 being not ruled by those powers whose function is to rule, for the 
 direction of the Apostle in reference to anger amounts to this : 
 " Let the Will, the Reason, the Conscience, the Affections govern 
 your natural emotion of anger, according to the Law of God, and 
 then its actions shall be good and not evil otherwise evil." 
 
 But further than this we can go, and evince the same thing in a 
 positive manner by an analysis of Anger itself, in its results and 
 its action. We can show that so far from being an aggressive 
 emotion, that it is strictly defensive. That it has prominent in it 
 two feelings, both of them good. The first, the sense of injustice 
 done to ourselves ; the second, the desire of putting an end to it. 
 And whether in momentary Anger or in Resentment, this can be 
 shown to be the case with it always. 
 
 Nay, more, further research will manifest to us that to have 
 been born with the natural faculty of Anger predominant, this is 
 so far from being a disadvantage, that it is a positive and decided 
 advantage, if it be only governed and ruled, giving energy, 
 strength, power, and endurance, which can hardly come from any- 
 thing else. 
 
 By this analysis of that one of the Subordinate emotions which 
 most usually produces evil, I believe I have led the student in 
 Ethics upon the way to see that my assertion is correct, That the 
 Subordinate faculties are not evil in themselves, but actually good, 
 and that their evil is in not being in subjection to the governing 
 faculties. I would refer to the admirable dissertations of Bishop 
 Butler, published under the name of Sermons, for examples at 
 full length of this kind of Ethical Analysis, and would particular- 
 ize it as one of the books most necessary to be read. 
 
 And furthermore, I would to the student point this out as a 
 most important means of improving himself in Ethical Knowledge, 
 that he as an exercise should take Emotions, or Desires, or Feel- 
 ings, examine and analyze them in their action, and determine 
 wherein and under what conditions their action shall be good, and 
 develope the rules prescribed for it by the Governing Faculties. 
 I know not any habit of mind which more than this lays open our 
 own nature to us and the system of God's dealings. I know not
 
 HUMAN NATURE. 69 
 
 any that more tends to make us charitable and considerate to- 
 wards the feelings of our friends and companions, and courageous 
 in reference to the events of life. 
 
 For the ordinary tone of that which many call Moral Philo- 
 sophyj looks upon faults of character and temper as absolute and 
 evil in themselves. And, therefore, instead of seeking down to 
 the good that lies beneath, and trying to guide it and call it forth, 
 and being, therefore, considerate, it is censorious, and gives the 
 individual who has the fault as much credit for natural and in- 
 eradicable evil, as it does the rattlesnake or the viper for venom, 
 injuring thereby both society and the man. 
 
 Secondly. Persons born with any of these " subordinate" quali- 
 ties unusually strong, in the earlier part of their life are deluded 
 into the feeling that these, being evil in themselves, as they think, 
 are to be utterly rooted out ; and they therefore set themselves 
 energetically to this vain task, and often with the most intense 
 agony. Which, when in middle age, they find impossible to be 
 done, they become rebels in a measure, or outlaws to any belief 
 in Moral Government, and give themselves up to live by chance, 
 as may be most pleasant to them. 
 
 For these reasons, and to avoid these very plain evils of the 
 time, I do conceive that the Ethical exercise I have spoken of 
 wilt be very advantageous. 
 
 I might go on with a more extended analysis, and by means of 
 it manifest, in the plainest way, the assertion I have made, that 
 none of the Subordinate Faculties are in their nature evil, nor 
 evil in their action when they are under the guidance of the 
 Governing Faculties ; but I believe that with the reference I have 
 given to Bishop Butler, and the inducement I have held out to 
 Ethical Analysis, what I have said upon the subject is enough. 
 
 Having thus shown that none of the " subordinate" qualities 
 are in themselves evil, and that in their action they are good when 
 guided by the "governing" faculties, the second of these ques- 
 tions comes up. Admitting that there are " governing" powers 
 and " subordinate" powers, you have assented that evil comes 
 from a weakness in the "governing" powers in the race and in 
 the individual. Now " the same consequences will come from an 
 extraordinary strength in the * subordinate' powers naturally ex- 
 isting." 
 
 In answer to this, I say that the relation is that of subordina-
 
 70 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 tion ; and that by the very nature of the Human Being, it cannot 
 be changed from that relation to one of strife and contest between 
 two antagonist powers. The " governing" powers are to govern ; 
 this is their function, and they always will govern, how weak 
 soever they be, if only they go according to their Law. And the 
 " subordinate" powers will always be subordinate to them, how 
 strong soever they may be, for the one is " governing," the other 
 " subordinate." It is the weakness, then, of the one, and not the 
 strength of the other, that originates evil. And the strength of 
 the "governing" powers is according to their law.* 
 
 From this it may be plainly seen that there is no man, how 
 weak soever his Governing powers are, and how strong his Subor- 
 dinate ones, that cannot, if he will, rule and check the last, a 
 truth which the experience of each man will confirm. 
 
 It remains, therefore, in order to the finishing of this chapter, 
 to examine the differences that exist between the " governing" 
 faculties and those that are " subordinate." And the first and most 
 manifest difference is this, that the " governing" faculties are 
 always to govern in him whose life is* moral, and according to the 
 truth of his nature. Reason, the Conscience, the Affections, the 
 guiding influence of a self-determined Will, these are to be seen 
 and felt in each and all his actions and words. These are always 
 to come in, and the "subordinate" faculties not always, but only 
 according to the measure prescribed by these. 
 
 In this fact will be seen the solution of some difficult cases, 
 even of some that may have carried men away with a false glare. 
 For if we take one of the higher "subordinate" faculties, that of 
 Benevolence, for instance, or that of Maternal Affection, and ask, 
 " May so exalted a faculty as this rule and become a ' governing' 
 faculty ?" and the answer is, " No"; from the simple fact that it 
 is "subordinate." 
 
 Nay, not even the natural feeling of Theopathy, or love Godward, 
 not even this is to be a ruling faculty ; but it is to be enlighten-ed 
 and proportionated in its action by Reason, to be measured as to 
 its ends by Conscience, to be adapted to the good of society, soft- 
 ened and humanized by the Affections, and guided in a fixed and 
 determined line of direction by a fore-thoughted and fore-planning 
 Will. 
 
 * This is discussed in the latter part of this chapter.
 
 HUMAN ITATURE. 71 
 
 And he that gives himself up to any Subordinate faculty, even 
 of the highest and purest, and permits this to engross his mind so 
 as to dethrone the " governing" powers from their seat, and puts 
 it in their stead, this man is wholly wrong. This man prepares 
 for himself insanity, if it be made to preponderate over the Will 
 or Reason ; destruction of natural honesty and piety, if his desire 
 preponderate over his Conscience; and fierce fanaticism that de- 
 spises all relations to society, if it overpower the Affections. 
 
 For as we have said, the " governing" faculties ought to govern 
 always. And when they do not govern, when the man knowingly 
 and willingly exalts anything else in their stead, then he prepares 
 the way of his own accord for moral disease; we use not the words 
 merely for moral transgression, but for such a state of his moral 
 constitution as must lead to moral transgression ultimately, or else 
 be saved from it only by insanity or mental incapacity. 
 
 Another inference we would draw from this, which is more im- 
 portant still than the last. It is seen that the business of the 
 governing faculties is to govern always. Of course their weakness 
 is in their non-governance, first, which we have spoken of in the 
 last paragraph ; and secondly, in their intermission. 
 
 For hereby they become as the " subordinate" faculties, which 
 are of their own nature, only intermittent, acting at intervals. 
 Upon this I would remark, first, that the greatest amount of un- 
 happiness that is caused to any individual, is caused by the inter- 
 mission of the " governing" powers, by the person one time ruling, 
 checking, constraining the "subordinate" faculties by them, and 
 again permitting these faculties to take their place and rule. Upon 
 this all weakness and inconsistency of course depends. And he 
 that shall look at the two supposable although never entirely pos- 
 sible cases of a man, on the one side ruled by the superior facul- 
 ties entirely, and one on the other in whom one or more of the 
 " subordinate" faculties, even in a faulty shape, have taken their 
 place entirely, such as ambition or avarice, he shall see that these 
 both admit of something of happiness, which the other is not 
 capable of. And he shall see that inconsistency of thought and 
 word, of resolution and action, of moral knowledge and conduct, 
 and worse than all, the feeling of self-contempt thence ensuing, 
 this state, a state in which the "governing" faculties now rule, 
 and now do not, is one of the most miserable in the world. 
 
 The second moral inference which we had intended to make is
 
 V2 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 this, that the " governing" powers by their nature being intended 
 to be always acting, and therefore, as we have shown in this chap- 
 ter being capable of subduing passions, affections, desires, emo- 
 tions of any degree of strength whatsoever, and proportionating 
 ^hem to their law ; it follows that their strength is in their con- 
 tinuity of action, their weakness in their intermission. When they 
 act always, that is, when their influence is exerted at every mo- 
 ment of life as a principle of supremacy, by the individual man, 
 then will they be able to rule any one of the "subordinate" facul- 
 ties at any time. 
 
 But when the man lives as an animal, indifferent to their action, 
 until it is necessary, in opposition to some of the "subordinate" 
 faculties ; then these powers, merely called up for the occasion, 
 shall be invariably vanquished. For "governing" faculties that 
 do not govern always, have no strength at any particular crisis. 
 The man who, in all things and at all times, rules himself by the 
 ruling powers of his nature, that man shall be able in the one thing 
 wherein he has the most danger to subdue that danger. But he 
 who uses Reason, and Will, and the Affections, and the Conscience 
 only against that one emotion or passion, and only at the time that 
 it rebels, that man shall invariably be overcome. Let the men that 
 are able to rule themselves examine, and the men who are not able, 
 and both classes shall find this account to be true. Hence shall 
 they deduce one of the best practical rules, or rather principles of 
 life and action. 
 
 Another thing we shall note in reference to these two classes. 
 The "governing" faculties, in order to be perfect in their action, 
 must, in addition to the two qualifications that we have laid down, 
 have also another that of governing according to a law, and not 
 according to themselves. The Will that places in itself the reason 
 of its guidance ; the Reason that puts in reason, or its reasoning 
 the cause of acting ; the Conscience that makes of itself the ulti- 
 mate rule, or the Affections that decide wholly by themselves, 
 these are, or become evil. 
 
 And he that has examined the greatest evils inflicted by man 
 upon his fellows, he will find them to have taken place from those 
 who had the power of governing themselves, and that perpetually, 
 but did so, not by a law, but by themselves, a case perhaps per- 
 mitted only for particular purposes by the Almighty. And he 
 that will look at the misery such men are capable of inflicting, per-
 
 HUMAN NATURE. 73 
 
 haps may see good reasons why so many are permitted to be natu- 
 rally deficient in their powers. 
 
 We shall finish this Chapter by making two observations. The 
 first is, that our division of the faculties into "governing" and 
 "subordinate," is a natural one, supported by nature itself. She 
 tells us that unity of action is, in some measure, the perfection of 
 man's nature, that all feelings, powers, faculties, desires, should 
 work on together in moral harmony, that there should be no jar- 
 ring, no discordance ; but, as the Platonists say, there should be 
 in all perfect natures, "unity in multiplicity." 
 
 Now, that very "oneness in multiplicity," man, as a limited 
 being, existing under the conditions of Space and Time, manifestly 
 would have, but for the weakness of the "governing powers," which 
 I have spoken of, and it would consist in the constant subordina- 
 tion of all the other powers to them, or rather through them, to 
 the Law of God, who is the Supreme Good and the Supreme Law. 
 
 And if man had that "oneness," he would be entirely good ac- 
 cording to his nature, as a limited being, without any change in 
 the nature of his present faculties, more than that of complete and 
 entire subordination that change bringing them in their action, 
 and in themselves to the most complete perfection of which they 
 are capable. 
 
 The question comes up here most appropriately of the influence 
 of the moral powers and their cultivation upon the intellectual, or, 
 as they are commonly called, the mental faculties. Now putting 
 aside altogether the fact that Reason is one of the "governing" 
 powers, inasmuch as it will be found, upon referring to the book 
 that treats of it, to be quite a difierent thing from reasoning, Put- 
 ting this aside, I think that the view we have given of " govern- 
 ing" and "subordinate" faculties, will give us, upon this point, 
 principles of the highest importance. 
 
 It is by that view plain that in all right action of our nature, 
 there is first the subordinate faculty or faculties working towards 
 their ends. And secondly, that along with that force, there 
 always exists another, that is the power of all the "governing" 
 faculties, as ruling and guiding. In all mental operations, then, 
 there will be normally a two-fold action that of the mental 
 faculty, and that of the moral faculty ; and in all cases of perfect 
 and appropriate action, these both will come in. 
 
 It follows from this, that there ought to be two ways of increas- 
 
 10
 
 74 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 ing the intellectual powers ; the first by developing the mental 
 power itself; the second, by developing and bringing to perfection 
 the moral powers, so as to act strongly upon the mental power, 
 which we desire to cultivate ; and that this last ought to effect 
 the object as fully as the first. 
 
 For the relation of these two in action will resemble that of a 
 piece of machinery, in which there is the immediate tool that effects 
 the given work, which is united by a certain attachment to a driving 
 power; or it will resemble the axe fitted to hew, the saw to cut, 
 the augur to bore, guided and driven by the arm of the workman. 
 The state then of the instrument in itself, as to adaptedness to its 
 purpose, in metal, weight, sharpness, and so forth, is one requi- 
 site to action ; that of the power that drives it, whether in machi- 
 nery or muscular strength, is a second. 
 
 And much about the same relation do I conceive the intellectual 
 powers bear dynamically to the moral faculty. I have no objec- 
 tion, then, to acknowledge that the mere mental power of many a 
 man have been as great as Shakspeare's originally ; but for effect 
 and dynamic action, something more is necessary than power 
 merely mental. 
 
 This is enough to indicate and illustrate the connection. "We 
 shall, however, announce mose precisely the conclusion we have 
 come to upon this matter first, and then our reasons for it. It is 
 this : " If you wish to develope to the uttermost your own intel- 
 lectual powers, or those of youth, whether your own children or 
 those committed to your care : the first and greatest means is the 
 establishment, to the completest degree that the instance will admit 
 of, of the supremacy of the moral power." 
 
 We shall not claim to demonstrate this ; we shall only give rea- 
 sons that may show its probability. 
 
 In the first place, more persons are kept from a development of 
 their mental powers by impediments to, than by actual deficiency 
 in those powers : and secondly, almost all these are impediments 
 to the "governing" powers. Look at the reasons why children 
 or men cannot develope their mental powers, " He could not fix 
 his mind to study ;" " He could take no interest in studies ;" " I 
 believe he could study well enough but I never could persuade 
 him to do so ;" or, " He knew he could study, and that he ought 
 to do, but he never did it." What are these excuses which we 
 hear so often ? All of them deficiencies of the governing powers,
 
 HUMAN NATURE. 75 
 
 not impairing, but at the very first wholly preventing the exercise 
 of the Mental powers. The first a deficiency of the Will, the 
 second of the Affections, the third of the Reason, the fourth of the 
 Conscience. Actual stupidity in nine cases out of ten is caused, 
 not by deficiency in the Mental faculties, but by inertness of the 
 moral powers ; and he that examines history and sees how the 
 fierce passions which inflame and set the Will, ambition and hatred 
 and avarice, have enabled the mental powers to act, may see this 
 to be true. He, too, that sees how much the Affections will both 
 give a spring and impetus to mental labor shall see the same. 
 
 But most fully it may be observed in teaching. In fact this is 
 the great secret of educational ability, the skill and knowledge of 
 character, to see that " in the moral faculties are the beginnings of 
 mental ability," and the power to discern in the pupil that part 
 of the moral nature that is easiest to cultivate, and then the culti- 
 vation of it so as to apply the moral force mentally. 
 
 This explains the value of a teacher and of teaching in contra- 
 distinction to mere reading. 
 
 But we can, I think, confirm this conclusion by another reason, 
 and that is, that if we look at actions in a moral or religious point 
 of view, we shall find that all immoral actions do more or less 
 impede mental activity. With regard to grosser crimes and sins, 
 it is sufficiently manifest that they decay the mental powers, nay, 
 Bometimes utterly erase them. With regard to others, I think 
 that the experience of most men will show, that not only great 
 sins, but even moral faults, errors, deficiencies do more or less 
 impede the mental powers, and, of course, to take them away will 
 be to give greater freedom to the mental powers, and greater 
 development. 
 
 And he that shall consider the three laws of these governing 
 faculties, as I have laid them out, and then reflect upon the power 
 of Motive upon mental action, the power of Habit and the power 
 of Order, he shall not be slow in concluding that those faculties 
 whose peculiar office it is to guide and govern ; secondly, to act 
 continuously; and thirdly, to act according to a fixed law ; must, 
 from the very nature of the thing, have an exceeding great effect 
 upon intellectual ability. 
 
 But to conclude this subject. I would request the reader to 
 suspend his judgment until he has seen the chapters that treat of 
 these powers separately, and then I hope he shall see so much to
 
 76 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 confirm his view that he will accede to the opinion I have here 
 enounced. 
 
 In the meantime, from a very extended experience, both in 
 teaching and in observation upon society, I will say that there is 
 more mental ability and mental power running to waste in this 
 country than in any other, and that ten thousand times more 
 mental development in general might there be than there is ; and 
 the reason of it is this, that as teachers and parents in general 
 we do not see the relation there is between the "governing" and 
 the "mental" powers, and we often omit altogether the cultivation 
 of the first, and apply ourselves entirely to the development of the 
 second : and for that reason mental ability remains torpid, and 
 powers that otherwise would be in vigorous action do not even 
 germinate. 
 
 The remedy for this is in a careful culture bestowed especially 
 upon the moral power ; a steady and equable discipline that shall 
 exercise and develope to the utmost the Conscience, the Higher 
 Reason, the Affections, and the Will. This alone can remedy the 
 evil of which we speak.
 
 BOOK II. 
 THE CONSCIENCE 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Of Conscience. Mistakes with regard to it. What it is not. It is the sense 
 of responsibility. Socrates and Pythagoras. The action of Conscience is, 
 1st, Prohibiting, 2d, Recording, 3d, Prophetic. The Prohibiting office of 
 Conscience considered. The Recording Conscience. The books that shall 
 be opened. The true solution of the facts of Conscience is the doctrine of 
 the Holy Spirit. Conscience in us is not the Holy Spirit, but the ear that 
 listens to His voice. It is at once infallible and. fallible. 
 
 THIS first chapter we have entitled " of Conscience," because, 
 according to a former enumeration, we consider that he who would 
 enter upon the path of moral improvement must begin with this 
 the first, and therefore we place " Conscience" the first. 
 
 Now we confess candidly, we think that this matter of Con- 
 science has been confused and disturbed beyond all measure. For 
 there are some that confound it with " Consciousness," and thereby 
 make it merely the knowledge that we have internally, by our 
 reasoning power, as to whether we have acted right or wrong. 
 Again, there are others that make it the sense of right or wrong 
 absolutely, by which we perceive those qualities, whereas there are 
 other faculties by which we feel right and wrong the Reason and 
 the Affections by both which we have a perception and measure 
 of right and wrong, as well as by the Conscience. And there are 
 others that call it exclusively the " Moral Sense," as if there were 
 other " immoral senses," whereas all the spiritual faculties are 
 moral, or as if, by it alone, we were guided into morality. And 
 others there are who consider that there is no such thing as a natu- 
 ral faculty, whereby we apprehend a Moral Quality in any action ; 
 
 77
 
 78 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 and, therefore, when we talk of Conscience, conceive that it is but 
 a short method of saying that such a thing is "useful," or 
 "agreeable," or "reasonable," or "consonant to our nature," 
 or to any other standard that is set up. Now with reference to 
 these opinions, we shall meddle with but few of them. Some 
 are decided by principles previously settled ; some others are mere 
 paradoxes which we need not argue against ; and for others, it is 
 not worth arguing for or against. 
 
 We shall therefore state our conclusion. Conscience is not the 
 moral sense exclusively, or that which has exclusively a natural 
 perception of Good. For Reason perceives as a sense that which 
 is good in reference to our individual Self. The Affections per- 
 ceive that which is good in reference to Society, but Conscience 
 that which is good in reference to a future responsibility unto G-od. 
 In other words, the Law of God is manifested to us through Rea- 
 son and through the Affections as through Conscience. By all 
 these faculties we perceive that which is morally Good, or as some 
 choose to style it, "the moral quality in actions." Strictly, there- 
 fore, do we confine the definition of Conscience to the " percep- 
 tion of the good or evil in action with reference to a future respon- 
 sibility." 
 
 Now, let any man look to these three faculties, and he shall see 
 that they embrace a perception of Good, or of accordance with 
 God's will in all things that can possibly come in contact with 
 man the Reason in reference to his nature internally, and the 
 agreement of all its powers with the external system ; the Affec- 
 tions of Good and Evil in reference to the Home, the Family and 
 the Church, and the Conscience of " Good and Evil in relation to 
 a future responsibility," or what may still more plainly declare it, 
 "the relation of Good and Evil in Time and Space to Good and 
 Evil in Eternity." 
 
 The Conscience, therefore, in man, we consider to be the faculty 
 by which he perceives the moral effect of actions in Time in re- 
 ference to their results upon himself in Eternity. It is that sense 
 which over and above the idea of Right and Wrong, has with it 
 the idea of duty, the sense that it is right, and proper, and suita- 
 ble to act this way, and not that ; and the sense that if we do this 
 way, then are we to be declared just ; if we do that way, then are 
 we to be declared unrighteous. That it is the sense of Duty and 
 of Responsibility. An idea manifestly altogether different in
 
 THE CONSCIENCE. 79 
 
 itself from that of a perfect accordance with Reason. For 
 although that which is perfectly in accordance with Reason, shall 
 also be perfectly our duty, yet still in fact the ideas are different. 
 
 It needs no other proof than that in all men and in all nations 
 the feeling " I ought" exists cotemporaneous with the feeling of 
 choice in actions. The child feels it just as soon as the man. And 
 oftentimes this feeling " I ought" shall come in, in an action 
 we shall reject it, yet subsequent experience shall show it to 
 have been right, Reason shall prove it, and Law. It must be, 
 therefore, a separate original faculty. Nay, furthermore, it is the 
 earliest in action of all moral faculties, and that which is the gate 
 of entrance unto all moral action. 
 
 Now, in this stage of our examination, it may be as well to con- 
 firm our assertions, by the opinions of two men antecedent to 
 Christ and Christianity, Socrates and Pythagoras, of whom the 
 first was clearly that man among the Heathen, who, by the force 
 of nature, came nearest to Christianity, and the other was, per- 
 haps, the man of greatest Genius among the Ancients. 
 
 Socrates, as the foundation of his own moral progress, asserted 
 that it depended upon his Demon, or Spiritual Guardian. He 
 asserted that this spiritual being never commanded, but always 
 forbade, so that if he were going to do anything, and he felt no 
 prohib.tion, then he might do it, and its consequences would be 
 good. If not, he felt a peculiar check coming from his Demon, 
 which he could not more particularly describe, and if he did not 
 comply with it and refrain, evil invariably followed. And anec- 
 dotes without number are told by his disciples with reference to 
 circumstances so ensuing. 
 
 Again, with regard to Pythagoras. Although in regard to him 
 we are in more difficulty than in respect of Socrates, in that his 
 lessons were given to a secret society under ambiguous and enig- 
 matic forms, still we can see that his moral philosophy was one 
 founded upon the Conscience and the Reason, as naturally moral 
 and governing powers. His Y was a famous instance of this. The 
 Greek letter upsilon, similar in form to the English Y, was con- 
 sidered by him to be a " deep mystery." 
 
 The reader will see that in the figure of the letter there is one 
 path dividing into two, one to the right and the other to the left. 
 The " mysterious" meaning of it, then, is that at each moment of a 
 man's life he is at the angle of the fork, two paths before him, one
 
 80 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 of duty, leading to happiness, the other of that which is wrong, 
 and leads to misery. That this position is a perpetual and con- 
 stant position for each man from birth to death, and that the 
 commencement of Good is for him ever to turn into the one path 
 instead of the other. A parable this is, which clearly depends 
 upon a Moral Philosophy, having for its basis Conscience and 
 Beason. 
 
 Now, let us consider these two doctrines. In that of Pytha- 
 goras is shadowed forth the twofold nature of action, as right or 
 wrong the possibility of choice the fact that we go right by an 
 effort under instruction that going right, we go upon a path 
 whose terminus, while we know it to be happiness, we do not dis- 
 cern. Surely in this emblem of the great Heathen lover of wis- 
 dom,* there is an instruction even for us who are Christians. 
 
 In that of Socrates we can see that his idea was of a Guiding 
 Power, antecedent to reason, or knowledge, or experience, yet 
 whose decrees were always confirmed by them afterwards ; of a 
 power that was prophetic and foresaw evil, yet never told the 
 nature of that result it foresaw, but only forbade or prohibited. 
 And lastly, we find that Socrates invariably attributed this to a 
 personal influence, existing without himself. If the reader will 
 ' look further on in this treatise, he shall find that stripped of things 
 alien to them, these notions of these philosophers were neither 
 more nor less than the discoveries of the natural mind in refer- 
 ence to the faculties of Conscience and the Reason . 
 
 We will not pretend, as other philosophers have done, to cast 
 ourselves back into the situation of Socrates or Pythagoras, and 
 to enter on the solution of the questions to them insolvable, which 
 the facts presented, upon merely the means that they possessed. 
 For this is " a Christian" Science. And we believe that to the 
 difficulties of Nature there is no other solution than the facts of 
 Grace; to the problem of Natural Religion, nought else suffices 
 save the Gospel. There is no Moral Philosophy true and perfect 
 but one that leads to and ends in Christianity. 
 
 We say, then, that these facts of human nature, so experienced 
 and represented by the heathens, Socrates and Pythagoras, have 
 no solution save in the doctrines of Revelation. 1st. That there 
 
 * The sages before him had been called " wise men" ; Pythagoras took in- 
 stead the name of " Philosophos," lover of wisdom.
 
 THE CONSCIENCE. fci 
 
 is to be a Future Judgment of all men, and all actions of all men. 
 2d. That no man is condemned -without the fullest and most con- 
 stant opportunity and capacity of having done according to God's 
 Will, or without the sense at each moment of life, as to which is 
 the right way of acting, and whether he was doing so or not. And 
 lastly, That this sense is conveyed to him by a Personal Being 
 having a power and authority, and knowledge above reason that 
 is, the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete. 
 
 He that chooses to examine the facts as represented by these 
 Heathens, shall see that of the questions arising from the facts 
 these truths are the only solution. Nay, even he who is unbap- 
 tized in the name of Christ, and that shall take his own experience 
 of his own Conscience, shall find no solution save this, and that 
 this is one perfectly adequate. 
 
 We have already defined sufficiently what we believe Conscience 
 to be ; we have guarded it from being mistaken for Reason or for 
 the Affections. It therefore remains to examine it in and accord- 
 ing to its action. Now when we examine Conscience in reference 
 to its action, we find that its actions are in succession, clearly to 
 be divided into three classes, the first, Prohibitory ; the second, 
 Recording ; the third, Prophetic, that the simple* action of Con- 
 science is so to be considered, and in no other way. 
 
 Now if our reader look at those three distinctions, he will find 
 them represented by three steps, answering to a Sylogism. 
 
 The first is Prohibitory. 
 
 "This act thou shouldest not do." 
 
 The second, Recording. 
 
 " This act I have done." 
 
 The third is Prophetic. 
 
 "Therefore for this act I am responsible." 
 
 He who examines Conscience in all its relations, will find that 
 this embraces the sum of its action. The Prohibitory has reference 
 to the Present ; the Recording to the Past ; the Prophetic to the 
 Future. 
 
 Upon these three phases of Conscience we shall proceed to dis- 
 course, Avarning our reader at the very first, to think that these are 
 not always separate and distinct in time ; but that we so divide them 
 
 * By " simple," I mean considered in itself abstractly not complicated, as 
 it is generally in connection with the other moral powers. 
 
 11
 
 82 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 for the purpose of more fully considering them, and because, in aD 
 act of Conscience, the throe elements always exist in effect. 
 
 Another remark also we would make, that the action of Con- 
 science is in many cases complicated with the action of Reason ; 
 that which, in and because of our own nature, assigns a reason for 
 action, and also with that of the Affections ; but he that wishes to 
 analyze Conscience, shall find that its action is distinct from that 
 of both these ; and that whatsoever we call, in mere ordinary un- 
 scientific discourse, by that name, if it come not under these heads, 
 is to be attributed to the Reason or the Affections. 
 
 The sense of "justice,'' for instance, is an Affection of Society, 
 and to ajct under it, is to act under the influence of the Affections. 
 The feeling which we have, that action upon that sense suits and 
 coincides with our own nature, and is ultimately that which is most 
 appropriate to it, this is Reason. But that emotion which, at 
 the very first, when we are upon the point of doing an unjust ac- 
 tion, says, "this is not to be done," ihonshalt not do it;" and then 
 upon our doing it, says, "this has been done, and the end of the 
 action is not yet;" and then henceforth anxiously looks forth and 
 says, "the end of this action is what I know not, but a something 
 that is to be feared, although unknown," this is Conscience. 
 
 It is manifest, then, that the Affections enjoin having assigned 
 a reason in Society and its laws. Reason does as the Affections, 
 only that it gives for its cause the advantage of the man; not 
 barely his immediate advantage, but his ultimate, complete, and 
 entire advantage. But Conscience prohibits and gives no reason. 
 
 Now we have said that the first office of Conscience, considered 
 exactly and scientifically, is Prohibitory. We say exactly, for 
 that which is called ordinarily "Conscientious conduct," is conduct 
 predicated upon the three moral faculties of "Conscience," "Rea- 
 son," the "Affections," and acted out with the power of a de- 
 termined "Will." But we have said, that the first action of 
 Conscience, abstractly considered, is negative and prohibiting; 
 that its formula is not "thou shalt," but "thou shalt not." We 
 kno~w that this may be objected to as not being sufficient ; but he 
 that considereth, that voluntary action embraces thought, word, 
 and deed, that within voluntary action, all morality and immo- 
 rality lies, that voluntary action is not divided into two parts, 
 the one good as a separate, independent quality, say as the quality 
 of red is, and the other evil, a separate existing quality, as green
 
 THE CONSCIENCE. 83 
 
 is in colors, but the one which is good, an actual and really exist- 
 ing quality ; and the other evil, which is not an actual and really 
 existing quality, but is the negative of good: he may easily see 
 how it is that Conscience is negative, that its object is to shut 
 man out from the evil, by prohibiting it, and thereby to shut him 
 into the good. 
 
 And in illustration of this, we will say, that in children the first 
 clearly marked moral action that we see in them, is from negation. 
 In fact, the very situation and position of childhood renders it so.- 
 For if there were no morality to be taught to children save that 
 which had a Reason sufficient and adequate assigned for it, mo- 
 rality could not exist until the reasoning power had been fully 
 developed; whereas the fact is this, that with voluntary action 
 there awakes this sense of Right, and it is negative and prohibi- 
 tory, not reasoning. And when we look to children, we find a 
 very great capacity and tendency for the Negative, and none, or 
 very little, for that which founds obligation upon reasoning. Let 
 a mother say to a child, "John do not do that, for it is wrong," 
 a something merely negative, for it is a prohibiting command, 
 founded upon a pure negative, and the child shall obey, his inter- 
 nal sense, the first and initial moral sense, agreeing with the exter- 
 nal prohibition ; but reason, argue with, try to persuade, convince 
 and so forth, and the immediate effect is confusion and doubt. 
 Hence we may see how exactly the Internal Nature of the child 
 agrees with the Scripture doctrine of the Authority of Parents, 
 as well as with the account here given of the nature of the Con- 
 science. 
 
 And he that shall listen to the experience of savage nations, 
 and of those without Christ, shall find the experience of all men 
 universally to testify to the existence of an " Inward Check," a 
 something that prohibits and forbids some actions, and is close 
 beside the will and desire to do these actions, and says "No" to 
 that desire. But furthermore, we shall find this observation con- 
 firmed by another remark. Let a man go according to his Con- 
 science, and he shall go easily, without feeling any bond upon him, 
 any guidance, or any direction. Let him go against it, and instantly 
 he shall find obstacles and prohibitions, not for a moment only, but 
 momently and perpetually; showing, that in the right course, 
 voluntarily taken, he can walk freely, without compulsion or sense
 
 84 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 of compulsion, but that the moment he goes -wrong then has he a 
 sense that negatives that wrong each moment of his action. 
 
 It will be seen thereby, that the faculty we are considering is a 
 moral instinct awaking in man the moment voluntary action 
 awakes ; a part and portion of his nature, just as the sense of sight 
 is a portion of his nature. And he that shall consider how the 
 physical instinct of a bee actually works upon a principle that 
 supposes the knowledge of a mathematic investigation of the very 
 deepest kind in him who implanted the instinct, and actually and 
 practically takes the principle for granted unconsciously, he shall 
 have no very great difficulty in believing the existence of this moral 
 instinct* of right and wrong existing in man. 
 
 The second action of Conscience we shall note, is its Recording 
 power ; and when we speak of it in this view, we shall say simply 
 the Recording Conscience. Now with regard to this, the assertion 
 is, that it naturally, in some way we cannot explain, records and 
 keeps recorded each action of the man's life. 
 
 This is a fact of Metaphysical science fully established by all 
 the evidence which is required in Physical science for any law of 
 nature. Of the truth of it enough examples are to he found.f 
 
 * In a volume of the London Quarterly Review, which, being in the coun- 
 try, and far from libraries, I have not access to, the following story is told of 
 Lesage, the mathematician of Geneva. A natural philosopher of the same 
 city came to him and asked him, " what should be the vertical angle of the 
 side of a pyramid with a hexagonal base, so that it should contain the maxi- 
 mum of solid contents with the minimum of surface." 
 
 Lesage took the problem, worked hard at it for a long time, and then told 
 his friend the answer so many degrees, so many minutes, and twenty-one 
 seconds. His friend told him that he was wrong, it was twenty seconds, not 
 twenty-one. Lesage took his papers back, went over his calculations again, 
 at a great cost of time and labor, and found that it was so. He was very 
 curious to know how his friend, who was not much of a mathematician, had 
 solved it. He had taken a mathematical instrument for the measurement of 
 angles, and had measured the angle at the bottom of the cell of the bee, pre- 
 suming that these were the conditions, and then set the mathematician at 
 work to test his experiment. 
 
 And it was so. The bee had unconsciously worked upon a principle and 
 rule that it took the highest intellect and the highest science of that time so 
 long to investigate. 
 
 Is the assertion in the text with regard to the moral instinct of the Con- 
 science in aught more extraordinary than this ? 
 
 t There is a great mystery about the memory. Men have apparently for-
 
 THE CONSCIENCE. 85 
 
 Now, upon this -we assert, that in all acts of the Conscience -what- 
 soever, beside the first Prohibitory or Checking action, there is a 
 second, divided into two parts. The first, for the present, is to 
 "be conscious" of it, to know and feel at the time that it is the 
 "I" that is doing and none else, that the action ia "mine," and 
 excludes all other personal agents. 
 
 This consciousness is manifestly an indispensable and immediate 
 attendant upon all voluntary action, a clear knowledge connecting 
 the individual's " Self " with the action, so as to infer responsibility. 
 And this consciousness, when the action has gone backward into 
 the Past, then becomes a Record, which, from what we have above 
 seen, seems incapable of being erased from the being of the indi- 
 vidual. So does it seem that actually and really the Recording 
 Conscience of the individual man ia a book in which, day after 
 day, and hour after hour, events, as they pass, are enrolled in all 
 their minutest circumstances ; and that, although to me now but a 
 single leaf is open, and I may have forgotten the contents of all 
 the rest, still they may be opened again, and once again the judg- 
 ment of the Withholding Spirit, and of my own self-knowledge or 
 Consciousness upon them, appear.* 
 
 Hence, too, may it appear that at the day of judgment the books 
 that shall be opened may be the Consciousness of our Omniscient 
 Father in Heaven, wherein the actions of all men are perpetually 
 and eternally enrolled ; and secondly, the history of the events of 
 our life that has been written in and upon our being by the Re- 
 
 gotten entirely circumstances and impressions, and then, under the influence 
 of some great stimulus, the memory of them has risen up again clear and dis- 
 tinct, as the sympathetic writing traced upon paper comes out to view under 
 the excitement of the peculiar chemical action it requires. Men have forgotten 
 the language of their childhood, and spoken it again on their death-bed. 
 Under the influence of delirium, the slightest impressions of past life have 
 come up again to consciousness. The flames of fever have brought again tc 
 view the tracery of records long forgotten. 
 
 For these and other facts, for which I have no space in a foot note, I refer 
 to modern investigations into the nature of the mind. The conclusion is, that 
 there is such a thing as " Latent memory." That by it " no impression, no 
 feeling, no thought is ever actually forgotten, but is written down upon our 
 nature ; so that there exists in us and in our being a most exact transcript 
 and record of all the events of life, to be called forth when requisite, according 
 to the wisdom of Almighty God." This is Latent Memory. 
 
 * " The Spirit beareth witness with our spirit"
 
 86 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 cording Conscience, and has gradually rolled back into that which 
 to us seems oblivion and forgetfulness, and yet is not so. 
 
 Some call this " Conscience as Witness, Accuser, and Judge ;" 
 we have preferred the appellations we have given, both for the 
 sake of precision, and also for other reasons which will be seen as 
 we proceed. 
 
 We come now to that last class of operations that we attribute 
 to Conscience ; that is, what we shall call the Prophetic Conscience. 
 By this we mean, that there is a third operation of the faculty, in 
 consequence of and along with the feeling of the Check, which is 
 the first part of the action of Conscience ; and the knowledge that 
 it is Recorded, the second part of its action. Along with these 
 emotions, there is, coexisting with them, an apprehension for the 
 future, a kind of dim vague feeling, hardly explaining itself, yet 
 manifestly existing, of consequences of infinite weight in recom- 
 pence to our act. 
 
 This, as well as each of the other two, we shall find in every 
 action of the Conscience distinctly considered ; and this will and 
 does always exist, and sooner than not be visible and palpable to 
 the man, it will take to itself any shapes whatsoever, even of false 
 religion or superstition. 
 
 And when we look at Conscience, unaided by the light of Reve- 
 lation, this is the most mysterious and unaccountable of all its 
 actions ; but when we think that we are creatures existing in time 
 and yet framed for eternity, then can we see what it is. We can 
 see that it is the stirring of the immortal and the undying within 
 the mortal and perishing ; the dark instinct of our nature lifting its 
 unopened eyes towards heaven ; the peeping of the young bird 
 over the nest out towards its home. And therein is the function 
 of Conscience completed, that it is that sense which in Time pro- 
 phesies of Eternity. 
 
 And at once, when we consider this Prophetic power in it, and 
 when again we look at the revealed facts connected with Eternity, 
 of Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell, we can see that these are 
 the objects towards which its instinctive action points,* prophesy- 
 ing to all of Infinite fear and Infinite pain if they will not be 
 ruled and checked by the law of God. 
 
 * If there be a power in a loadstone that shall point to the north, is it a 
 wonder that in man there should be an instinct that looks blindly to the judg- 
 ment throne of God ?
 
 THE CONSCIENCE. 87 
 
 We have now gone through the characters of this that we call 
 Conscience, according as they appear to the natural man, or what 
 may be called the natural ethics of the Conscience ; and now we 
 come unto that which completes them. 
 
 Let the reader consider the first office of the Conscience, and 
 he will see some things in reference to it that strangely correspond 
 to the facts of revelation. We attribute to this faculty a personal 
 power, as if it were the influence upon us of an individual who is 
 not ourselves. We say "Our Conscience checks us," "We must 
 obey our Conscience," "It is wrong for a man to go against his 
 Conscience." What is this but to say, that this influence is a 
 personal agency, separate and distinct from that of the individual, 
 and operating as such upon him. Again, what is this but to say, 
 that this personal influence has an authority over the man in all 
 his powers and faculties, which authority, without any reason' save 
 its expression, the man is bound to obey, and is therefore that of 
 an entire and complete supremacy, a complete and unqualified 
 veto upon actions of every kind. Moreover, we can see more 
 plainly this notion of a personal being, in the fact of its Recording, 
 in the fact that those things that, with reference to the responsible 
 being, man, are enrolled in the Omniscient Knowledge of God his 
 judge, these things all are known by that Recording Spirit, and 
 at any time may be brought up by it. Herein, since it is the 
 same Spirit that waits upon all, we see Omnipresence and Omni- 
 science manifested. 
 
 Again, in reference to the Prophetic office of the Conscience, in 
 the forethought it has of the Future Judgment, in the fact that it 
 ever attaches the idea of endless pain or happiness in a future 
 eternity, to things that are done in Space and Time in this fact we 
 behold again the attribute of Omniscience. 
 
 These are things that all men see. We do not say that all men 
 are brought to this conclusion, so plainly as we have brought it out ; 
 but this we say, that the facts of the action of Conscience are plain 
 to all, and that these facts are most easily and most naturally 
 classed as we have classed them, when we have separated that 
 which really ought to be separate the Reason and the Affections 
 from Conscience. 
 
 And then, when we come to Natural Religion, we find that if 
 there be an Almighty and Omniscient Being, not only Maker and 
 Creator, but Father also, and Teacher, there ought, upon the very
 
 88 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 idea of Responsibility, of filial relation, of pupilage, to be a Per- 
 ' sonal Influence proceeding from God, and dwelling in God one 
 attached to each individual in the world, and therefore Omnipres- 
 ent ; knowing the hearts of all men and the will of God, past and 
 present and future, and therefore Omniscient ; and commanding 
 all men without reasons assigned, yet infallibly true, and therefore 
 Omnipotent. This influence, thus invested with the attributes of 
 the Deity, ought therefore to exist if we follow up the facts of 
 Natural Ethics, with the reasonings of Natural Religion, and build 
 upon them the edifice which the considerations of Responsibility 
 and of Natural Justice require of us to build. 
 
 And so stringent and imperative are these, that the most ancient 
 philosophy of the east has ever attributed to the influence that pro- 
 duces these actions, the attributes, and all the attributes of di- 
 vinity. And they in modern times, who have begun by denying 
 Christianity, have almost invariably been driven by these motives 
 into making our own personal being to be God ; and that against 
 the very first fact of the Natural Conscience, which clearly dis- 
 tinguishes between our personal being, that which ought to submit, 
 and that other person that acts upon ours, which has the right to 
 command with an unlimited supremacy. 
 
 But we say, that in Revelation alone is to be found the fact that 
 explains all this enigma ; in the doctrine of the Holy Ghost. Reve- 
 lation teaches us that each son of man, from birth to death, is 
 attended by the influences of the Third Person of the Trinity, the 
 Holy Ghost ; that He is "God of one Substance with the Father;" 
 that he "Proceedeth from the Father and the Son," and "is Je- 
 hovah and the Giver of light and life." And the plain doctrine of 
 the Holy Scriptures in regard to the Spirit is, that His operation 
 with regard to all men is to warn them against evil, or that which 
 is not good, and to do this with an influence that carries authority 
 and power with it, and admits of no dispute. That being a per- 
 sonal being, and Omniscient, He knows and records all the actions 
 of the individual man ; and at the same time He knows all the will 
 of God and the things of God, as being of " one substance with 
 the Father," and "one with Him." 
 
 " The Spirit searcheth all things ; yea, the deep things of God," 
 "which no man knoweth but the Spirit of God." 
 
 And thus the actions of Conscience, as Checking, Recording, 
 Prophesying, are explained. Thus is man witnessed against with-
 
 TilE CONSCIENCE. 89 
 
 out possibility of mistake ; thus, at the moment he is warned and 
 the moment passed, his act recorded, so that he cannot deny, and 
 then ultimately before the bar of God, he is convicted ; " his spirit 
 bearing witness with the Spirit," as to evil done in a full sight of 
 his responsibility. And thus the Omniscience of the Holy Spirit, 
 the forethought which He who is one with the Father has of the 
 Future Judgment, the authority with which He enforces his injunc- 
 tions, and the absolute certainty with which He can warn of the 
 future ; all these attributes of the Holy Ghost, as the great agent 
 of prophecy, both to the Church universal as also to the individual ; 
 explain the influences of the Conscience, and show the reason of 
 its prophetic power. 
 
 Thus do the whole of the Facts of Conscience manifest to us the 
 agency of a Personal being who has the knowledge of God, an 
 infinite knowledge that concerns the future as well as the past, 
 an Authoritative Power, to which, without reason assigned, the man 
 must bow, a Recording Power, which has reference to eternity 
 solely, and a future judgment, and a Prophetic power, that con- 
 nects time with eternity, this life with a future existence, and the 
 actions herein done, with the high throne of God. 
 
 We have said that Revelation alone affords a solution "for the 
 facts of nature. And we say, in conclusion, that he that shall 
 look at the facts of the natural Conscience in all its influences 
 upon man, .he shall see that no other solution completely and en- 
 tirely accounts for the facts of Conscience, except this fact of 
 Faith, the doctrine of the being and influences of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 And this leads us onward to another question, which is most 
 important in all matters of Conscience. "Is not our Conscience 
 then, the Spirit of God?" 
 
 How important this is, may be seen by supposing it to be 
 answered in the affirmative ; for if it be, then the sole judge is 
 Conscience ; then a man has in himself the only rule ; then he is 
 the judge of all things ; then he needs no learning, no knowledge, 
 no education ; but only to go according to his Conscience, and he 
 shall go right, infallibly right. Nay, more than this, he shall 
 need no Bible, no Church, no Religion ; for if his Conscience be 
 God, then being Omniscient, it must overrule all external things ; 
 and all he has to do is, go by that rule ; and, with regard to his 
 fellows, he has only to require that they all should submit to him 
 without questioning. These are conclusions which naturally should 
 
 12
 
 90 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 follow from the notion that " Conscience is the Holy Spirit," and 
 which are its legitimate results. And he that shall look to men, 
 shall find that a great many hold these conclusions. A great 
 many consider Conscience as infallible, and make it the sole and 
 ultimate test, who have never thought of the premises upon which 
 the conclusion depends. 
 
 Now this leads us onward unto one of the most important prin- 
 ciples of Ethics ; we will say a fundamental one. That is, the dis- 
 tinction between Conscience, the natural faculty in us, and the 
 voice of the Holy Crhost without us ; Conscience, the eye existing 
 in our nature and being, whereby we see the light, and that Light 
 which we see ; Conscience, the ear wherewith we listen to the 
 voice from heaven, and the Voice from Heaven, the voice of the 
 Holy Spirit that is audible to us through that part of our nature. 
 
 We say, then, that so far as Conscience is considered under the 
 one aspect of a natural faculty, so far it is liable to the same in- 
 firmities as the other natural faculties. For the light may be as 
 the sun, and yet the eye which is blind by nature, or blinded by 
 accident, never see it. The voice may be that of many waters, 
 and yet the deaf ear not hear it. So it is with regard to the Con- 
 science, the faculty in us and in our nature, wherewith we listen 
 to the voice of the Holy Spirit, is a different thing altogether from 
 the Spirit Himself. And yet in the consideration of Conscience, 
 both the Natural Faculty and the Divine Energy to w,hich it an- 
 swers, are to be considered. 
 
 Now, he that shall look at this last principle carefully and con- 
 siderately, in the full light of his own experience, will see many 
 conclusions to follow of the most important and the most interest- 
 ing kind. 
 
 In the first place, the eye and power of sight in man proves to 
 him the existence of things visible, at the same time that it is the 
 means of bringing him to the knowledge of them. And no argu- 
 ment will disprove their existence, simply because he has a natural 
 faculty whose business it is to show and manifest them. So of a 
 Future Eternity, no argument whatsoever can disprove the exist- 
 ence, no absence from sense or sight annul it, because of it the 
 Conscience is our sense, and because, corresponding to the Con- 
 science, there is a power that manifests the Future Eternity to us 
 as far as concerns the actual duties of the present life. This is 
 an inference of great practical importance, binding and connect-
 
 THE CONSCIENCE. 91 
 
 ing, as we have said, finite acts with infinite consequences, Time 
 with Eternity, the limited being of man with the Infinite God, and 
 that through the Eternal Spirit. 
 
 But the most important conclusion that follows from it is this : 
 " So far as the dictates of our Conscience are the dictates of the 
 Holy Spirit of Grod, so far Conscience is infallible." This is the 
 rule of the governing power, Conscience, which follows from its 
 own nature as twofold, a natural ear or a natural eye, with a hea- 
 venly voice or a heavenly light ; and this combined with the other 
 laws of it as a governing power,* shall give us completely and 
 entirely, as a result of Ethical Science, the doctrines and rules of 
 Conscience as applied unto life. This shall be the subject of the 
 next chapter. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The value of Conscience. Our position in consequence of it. An examina- 
 tion of it in action, as, 1st, Withholding; 2d, Recording; 3d, Prophesying. 
 The emotiofus that are sanctions to it, 1st, Moral Restlessness ; 2d, Shame ; 
 3d, Fear. The mark upon the Nature, 1st, the Stain ; 2d, the Guilt. Con- 
 science is not properly a "judge," nor the pain from it properly " punish- 
 ment." 
 
 FROM our examination of the nature of Conscience in the pre- 
 vious chapter, it is manifest what an exceedingly precious endow- 
 ment this is to man. A secret adviser, so secret that although 
 inaudible to all others, it shall yet speak to the man himself, clearly, 
 distinctly, perpetually, upon all emergencies wherein it is neces- 
 sary, and upon all occasions. f One too whose advice is not to be 
 measured by the man's own degree of knowledge or his station, 
 but that gives to the ignorant, the poor and the weak the proper 
 and suitable guidance for the circumstances in which they are. 
 And that with such an accurately proportionate action, that it 
 has, with nO small degree of plausibility, been maintained that 
 
 * See the three laws of the " Governing Powers" Book I. Chap. 3. 
 
 f Of course here is to be made the exception except he have neglected it, 
 and therefore it have become " dull" or " insensible," or " seared, or "dead." 
 For this part of the subject, see an ensuing chapter of this book.
 
 92 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 Conscience always a step, and only a step in advance of us, and 
 this has been by some made one of the laws of the Conscience. 
 
 However, be this as it may, it is such an adviser that to the 
 ignorant it says, " Ignorant as you may be of worldly knowledge, 
 you are still a moral being, and can live as such ; follow me, and 
 you shall be so, and shall do so for the position to which I call 
 you is but a step from your present one within your reach, and 
 to be attained by you, by my help."* 
 
 To the poor the adviser is present, too, with a riches that sur- 
 passes all earthly wealth the announcement from the Eternal 
 Throne, by the Eternal Spirit, through its natural adit to the 
 soul, of its infinite value as a Spiritual Existence. 
 
 To the ignorant it tells of this sure knowledge that ever rises 
 to the level of our necessities. To the self-distrusting of Omnipo- 
 tence it speaks All-holiness and All-justice, ready to support him 
 that will go after its guidance. It tells them that no obstacle 
 shall permanently remain in the way, that all passes shall be 
 opened, all barriers burst that oppose his upward progress, who 
 follows this guide. . 
 
 Such are the advantages to us of this gift and faculty, looking 
 at the matter generally as we have looked upon it, in the twofold 
 
 "* The Christian will see in these words, combined with the account given 
 of Conscience in the preceding chapter, the solution of a great question. "By 
 my help" that is, " Not of you, but of me ; not of your nature alone and 
 unaided, but of it as aided by me, the personal and omnipotent being who 
 speak, through the Conscience, to all men the Holy Spirit." 
 
 Hence is all moral strength and ability of God, coming first unto its from 
 him, and not arising in our nature from nature itself. 
 
 Moral strength given, to the unregenerate first, wholly undeserved, nay, 
 often against their own will, in order to habituate them to the thought of 
 good, to teach them by making them to act upon that power for which they 
 have no merit, to lead on in the way of life by support and secret upholding 
 powers: This probationary moral power in the unregenerate is a help given 
 even to the evil, according to the will of the Holy Ghost, the Infinite Teacher, 
 for his own wise purposes. The solution, therefore, of the question, " Does 
 the natural man do good" ? is this all the good that even the natural man 
 does, he does of God's Grace, given him according to the will of the Spirit, 
 and Grace comes first. 
 
 The regenerate man is in a different position, having from the Word the 
 strength and power of a son, but still not of himself, but of his new birth, and 
 his neio privileges, and new position. But of this last, which is also very in- 
 teresting, more at another time.
 
 THE CONSCIENCE. 93 
 
 point of view of the light outside us, which we see, and the eye in 
 us, by which we see that light, and also not as yet considering the 
 deficiencies or weaknesses of Conscience the faculty, or the rules 
 for its guidance, matters which we shall in a future part of this 
 work consider. 
 
 Having thus seen the advantages to us of Conscience as a gift 
 and faculty, it remains now to examine the position in which we 
 are placed by it the responsibility that is upon us by that gift. 
 
 Now, when we look at the action of Conscience, we see that 
 there are several characters that belong to it, as considered in its 
 relation to our nature, and these we here enumerate by way of 
 summary. 
 
 1st, It is commanding. 
 
 2nd, That commanding is negative, or prohibitory. 
 3d, It is ever present with us. 
 4th, It pronounces upon all our acts. 
 5th, It witnesses of all. 
 6th, We naturally apply personality to it. 
 7th, Making the distinction we have made, as to its twofold 
 nature, Conscience, the faculty in us, we may consider as weak, 
 as liable to errors and mistakes, but Conscience, that which is per- 
 ceived through the faculty, we consider to be incapable of error or 
 of mistake, in one word, to be infallible. 
 
 And, 8th, As the crown of all that we attribute to the Con- 
 science, we may say that it is authoritative it has authority. We 
 consider that it is entitled to rule, and that we are privileged and 
 bound to obey. As the Father, within certain limits, is by his 
 very position as Father entitled to command his children ; as the 
 Magistrate, within the restrictions established by law, can com- 
 mand ; as the Master orders and guides his servants, such is the 
 privilege of the Conscience over the man. It has authority ; its 
 dictates are binding upon us. 
 
 We shall carry out this subject of the authority of Conscience 
 at another point of this treatise ; for the present we would apply 
 it in elucidating the position of the individual man. Observing, 
 then, the rule, that if we would understand fully the Moral Powers, 
 we should consider them rather dynamically as powers in action, 
 than statically as powers at rest, we shall see, as regards the man, 
 plainly what the nature of Conscience is, by considering it in 
 action. All actions, then, having in them a moral quality, and
 
 94 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 Evil being, as we have above said, not the contrary of Good, but 
 the negation of it, the Conscience in its twofold nature is that 
 which checks the man as he is about to do evil. 
 
 It follows from the first principle, that if the conscience does not 
 check him in any action, that action is right, provided his Con- 
 science be in a natural and healthy state. This is in accordance 
 with that which the Scripture says, " If our ' heart' condemn us 
 not, then have we peace with God."* 
 
 In the second case, the man is about to act when he feels con- 
 veyed to him a check, a sort of inward force opposed to and nega- 
 tiving his intended action, yet that in such a way that he can 
 always overcome it if he will ; and has the full consciousness that he 
 can. This authoritative check he feels ; and if the appetite or de- 
 sire which awoke him to action, carry him on to overcome the 
 check, then has he acted against his Conscience. 
 
 The act would be evil in itself but it has immediate conse- 
 quences even in his nature. There are passions of his being which 
 are at once brought into play as sanctions! of such a transgres- 
 sion, and these are properly three, and only three. 
 
 1st, Moral restlessness, or the negation of Peace ; 
 
 2dly, Shame; 
 
 And 3dly, Fear. 
 
 We introduce the consideration of these three in this place, be- 
 cause they are emotions, or passions, or feelings, which we con- 
 sider as being directly and immediately connected with and caused 
 by the Conscience. The first resolution upon them is that they are 
 not faculties, as memory is a faculty ; they are not natural feel- 
 ings or sensibilities, as the sense of honor or the sense of justice 
 is ; they are " emotions," peculiar emotions, whose existence and 
 being depend upon Conscience. But not upon the existence of 
 Conscience do they depend, but upon the fact that it has been dis- 
 obeyed. They are emotions whose possibility only exists in the 
 nature of man, the realization of that possibility depending upon 
 the violation of the law of the Conscience. And so far is this 
 true, that when we come to consider our apprehension of a perfect 
 
 * 1 John iii. 20. This which in our English version is translated " heart," 
 in the Hellenistic Greek means " Conscience," from the Hebrew usage of 
 the word " heart." 
 
 t " Sanction" is the Penalty legally attached to the breach of a law.
 
 THE CONSCIENCE. 95 
 
 man in reference to this part of Nature, we find that our idea IB 
 that he should have the Conscience perfect as a guide, and that he 
 should perfectly obey it, and therefore that in all his actions he 
 should possess a perfect sense of moral approbation, and a perfect 
 consciousness of right. In other words, to such a person moral 
 restlessness and dissatisfaction would be altogether strange and 
 utterly unknown. Moral calmness and peace would of itself be 
 the natural state and condition of his mental atmosphere. 
 
 Again. Shame the sense of stain and pollution this would 
 not exist at all in man unfallen, for the simple reason that evil 
 would not have been done, and that the purity of the nature would 
 not have been polluted in or by any action. Thus Shame is the 
 feeling of an actual Stain upon our moral nature. The emotion 
 that attends our knowledge that we are defiled by sin, never could 
 have 'existed in the man unfallen, in whom the Conscience was un- 
 violated, but in us arises from its violation. 
 
 With regard to the Moral Restlessness and Shame, that they 
 could not exist in an unfallen nature may be easily granted. 
 With regard to the Fear, I know that objections may be taken ; 
 it may be said that Fear is a natural faculty or passion, having 
 reference not to Conscience, but to Pain. Upon this, I say that 
 if my reader will only examine, he will find that caution against 
 pain, or apprehension of it, is not fear ; that the only real and 
 true fear, properly so called, is that which, with violation of Con- 
 science in Time connects consequences in Eternity that is Moral 
 Fear. 
 
 The truth of this view of the nature and origin of these three 
 emotions, Moral Restlessness, Shame and Fear, may be seen in 
 the manifest difference between the unfallen man and the fallen 
 nature of the same person. There is no mark of any of them in 
 Adam unfallen ; but he is represented as calmly dwelling in inno- 
 cence and peace, feeling no sense of Shame, no emotion of Fear, 
 but as a limited being, perfect in his nature, communing with the 
 Unlimited Perfection of the Almighty, and at once upon the turn- 
 ing point of the Fall all these emotions then make their appear- 
 ance. Adam and his wife hide themselves from the presence of 
 the Lord among the trees of the garden ; and in reply to the 
 questioning of the Lord he said, " I heard thy voice in the gar- 
 den, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself." 
 Restlessness, and Shame, and Fear, at once become constituent
 
 96 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 elements of that nature, which before in perfect calmness and 
 tranquil self-assurance, had walked face to face, unreproached, 
 with the God of perfect purity and almighty power. 
 
 This feet that these emotions did not exist in the man unfallen, 
 but that at once they manifest themselves upon the instance of 
 the Fall, this confirms the account I have given of them, as emo- 
 tions depending upon the Conscience. 
 
 And when we come to examine, in reference to this point, the 
 life and acts of our Lord, we find an utter absence of these emo- 
 tions, that Moral restlessness, which is an especial quality of our 
 Human Nature unregenerated by God's Holy Spirit, in fact, of 
 all men that are not "born anew of water and the Spirit," and " re- 
 newed day by day in the spirit of their minds," of 'that restless- 
 ness we cannot discover a trace in- Christ our blessed Lord. There 
 is no sign of it at any period of his life in Him. His self-con- 
 sciousness is calm and quiet, and assured. No evidence is there 
 in Him of "moral progress;"* of "newness of ground," or "ad- 
 vance of position," or "expansion of views;" but the same undis- 
 turbed moral position, he keeps, adequate completely and entirely 
 to the position, and abiding in it patiently. 
 
 And then, with regard to what we call Shame, an emotion that 
 we may plainly say there is none of the Human race b ut Christ 
 that has not felt ; as for this, in all Christ's relations, as a man 
 born of a woman, there is not the smallest evidence that He even 
 felt it in any degree. 
 
 Moral Fear also, he seems not to have felt, while of mental as 
 well as bodily suffering and pain, he seems to have had the appre- 
 hension. But upon this point, I shall not dwell too closely, seeing 
 that it would be to attempt to enter into the gates of a mystery 
 which angels cannot comprehend, the mystery of the Atone- 
 
 * These are part of the ordinary talk of so-called reformers. I need not 
 Bay how they jar upon my mind, whose doctrine is thai expounded in this 
 book, " duiy to God and man, acted upon from childhood to old age." The sole 
 " moral progress," I believe, is Duty better done ; the sole " expansion of 
 views," is the consequent clearer view of God and Heaven. No " advance 
 of position," save in this, no " newness of ground," do I consider possible 
 morally ; no ground in fact can support us save that old ground of " Nature 
 explained and guided by Grace." If I have erred in bringing these cant- 
 phrases of a wretched and self-deluding, yet earnest philosophy, in proximity 
 to the name of our Lord, I hope I may be pardoned by my readers, for this 
 error.
 
 THE CONSCIENCE. 97 
 
 ment of our Most Blessed Lord, both God and man; because 
 while I can see that he endured Physical and Mental agony ; while 
 I can argue that this was Infinite, still from the fact of its Infinity 
 I cannot comprehend but must only believe and adore. 
 
 And, moreover, I know that the Church has, in a measure, de- 
 termined that over and above the agony visible to man, of which 
 man can judge, the infinity of bodily and mental agony, borne by 
 Christ the man, because at one and the same time, he was God ; 
 besides this, the Church has determined in her liturgical prayer, 
 used in the Greek Church, "By all thy sufferings known and 
 unknown, have mercy upon us," that over and above the mental 
 and physical agony, there was another infinity of Spiritual Pain 
 borne by him, to the bare knowledge of which, in our present 
 state, we cannot reach. Into the holy gloom, and the divine mys- 
 teriousness of Christ's sufferings, we shall not then attempt to 
 penetrate ; for, in view of that infinite suffering which he bore for 
 us, it is manifest* that he " feared," nay (Hebrews 5 and 7,) 
 "That he was heard in that he feared." 
 
 Upon this point, therefore, since it is beyond our apprehension, 
 we shall not press, nor shall we suffer it to be pressed against us, 
 but will leave it with two remarks : First, that His suffering he 
 bore not for himself, but for others, and it was infinite ; and 
 secondly, that of either selfish or Moral Fear, we see no speck in 
 his whole life. These two remarks will, I hope, go then rather to 
 confirm than to weaken the view advanced. 
 
 I might also refer to those before Christ, who came nearest to 
 the moral teaching of the Gospel, to show that these emotions, 
 have, by them, ever been connected with the Conscience. In fact, 
 the wisest of their poets and of their philosophers, unhesita- 
 tingly declare it. I might also refer to the experience of all men 
 in these latter days, to declare that calmness of mind and tran- 
 quillity can only come from a Conscience determinately and con- 
 sistently obeyed ; that from such a Conscience only, can come the 
 mind that will abide through life unashamed, and fearless, and 
 that will, if Duty requires it, stand up in its behalf unterrified. 
 This, each man, whose rule is to obey his Conscience always, can 
 say, is the invariable result of that obedience, freedom from 
 Restlessness, that is, Peace of Mind; freedom from Shame, 
 
 * Matthew xxi 39. 
 
 13
 
 98 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 that is, Self-approval ; and freedom from Fear, that is, Moral 
 Courage. 
 
 But the Scriptures fully assert the same, "Brethren, if our Con- 
 science (Heart in the original,) condemn us not, then have we con- 
 fidence towards God."* "The wicked are like the troubled sea, 
 casting out mire and dirt continually, "f Again, "He that be- 
 Heveth in him, shall not be ashamed."! "There is no fear in 
 love, but perfect love casteth out fear; for fear hath torment. " 
 "He that feareth, is not made perfect in love." 
 
 The way in which we connect these texts with our subject is, 
 that the Conscience in its action upon the life of man, can only 
 reach perfection under Christ ; and that in these, and innumerable 
 other passages that can be quoted, the sum and completion of 
 Christianity in its effects, is in an Holy Peace ; first, which is the 
 very opposite of Moral Restlessness, 2ndly, in deliverance from 
 sin and its "Shame," and 3dly, in the freedom from "Fear," 
 which doctrine, it is manifest, fully confirms our statement as 
 to the nature of these emotions, and their relation to the Con- 
 science. 
 
 Having shown, therefore, the nature of the emotions that are 
 the sanctions of the Conscience, we shall now proceed to examine 
 its action. 
 
 The individual man in his course of life, we will say, intends to 
 do some act ; in the moment of intention, before he has acted, he 
 receives the feeling of an internal check, a moral negative to ac- 
 tion, which is suddenly interposed as an obstacle between the inten- 
 tion and the action, under the conditions I have before noted, and 
 which I will not here again repeat. To overcome that obstacle, 
 he must use an effort, and that a conscious voluntary effort; so 
 that he knows, that of his own will, freely and knowingly, he breaks 
 across that obstacle or impediment. Now if the Conscience be in 
 its due state, and perfect, invariably its negative shall be only 
 upon the evil, that which it forbids shall be evil. The man, 
 therefore, in breaking through its obstacle, shall have willingly 
 and consciously done evil, done it freely and knowingly, and 
 therefore have been guilty. 
 
 But to resume, when he has done the action against which the 
 
 * 1 John, iii. 21. J Rom. ix. 33. 
 
 t Isaiah, Ivii. 20. 1 John, iv. 18.
 
 THE CONSCIENCE. 99 
 
 Withholding Conscience protested, freely and knowingly and by 
 an effort overcoming the barrier placed in his way, then at once 
 it is chronicled by the Recording Conscience, and evermore it is 
 liable to be brought up to him, and presented to his view as con- 
 nected with a stain ; a feeling that to his moral nature, being of 
 itself good, this evil action, done freely and knowingly, is that 
 which to pure white a blotch of filth is, a Stain. And this, there- 
 fore, is one effect of evil done the Stain upon the nature producing 
 the Shame. The Stain is the effect on the nature ; the Shame is 
 the mental emotion corresponding to that effect. 
 
 The Recording Conscience has the power, as we know, of bring- 
 ing up that act with its Stain again and again to the individual 
 man ; but under what conditions this takes place, it is in vain for 
 us to guess ; and, so far are we from being able to decide upon the 
 laws by which it happens, that when we attempt to classify them 
 we are perfectly unable to reach any decision. In some men sick- 
 ness or danger shall always bring them up ; in others, peculiar 
 circumstances of life ; in others, mere trifles at long intervals ; and 
 in others, the recalling of these things shall be almost hourly : so 
 that, perhaps, looking at the circumstances that concern the bring- 
 ing up of past misdeeds by the Recording Conscience, the best 
 thing to do, instead of trying to form laws of their re-presentation 
 to the mind, is to say, that they take place according to the pur- 
 pose and will of the Omnipotent and Omnipresent Spirit, whose 
 organ the Conscience is. So far with regard to the action of the 
 Recording Conscience. 
 
 "We come now to the last action of the faculty, that of the Pro- 
 phetic Conscience ; and with regard to this, we have already said that 
 Conscience, " by its very nature, attaches consequences in Eternity 
 to actions done in Time." This, in action, is that part of the offices 
 of the Conscience we call the " Prophetic Conscience ;" and he 
 that shall look at the two-fold nature of the Conscience, the first 
 part as a faculty of man limited in power and in action to Time 
 and Space, and yet immortal ; and the second, the action upon 
 that faculty of the Spirit of God, infinite in power and knowledge, 
 he that shall consider that in this faculty there is thus a concur- 
 rence of the Infinite with the Finite, and of the Spirit of God with 
 the spirit of man, shall be at no loss to see how it is that naturally 
 the idea of infinite consequences is connected with acts done in 
 Time and Space.
 
 100 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 It is in vain to say that it ought not to be so, and thence to 
 argue that it is not so, just as it would be vain to argue against 
 our seeing a star eighty millions of miles away, because one fact 
 and the other takes place by a natural sense receiving an external 
 light. It is a matter of fact, that we have the natural eye ; that 
 the eye receives a light which originates millions of miles away, 
 strange and incredible as it may seem. And so the natural faculty 
 of Conscience is a fact ; the existence of the Holy Spirit is a fact ; 
 his light upon us, connecting Time with Eternity, is a fact : better 
 far make use of these facts for the purpose intended than attempt 
 to argue against their existence ; for facts lose not their reality by 
 assertion, nor yet by argumentation. He that shuts his eyes does 
 not annihilate the sun, nor will the arguments of a man that is 
 blind by accident prove to me that there is no light. Upon all 
 these matters, the universal persuasion of all mankind is naturally 
 taken to be true, and is true. 
 
 Now as with regard to the "Withholding Conscience," it checks, 
 and the Recording Conscience presents again and again the fact 
 of our transgression as a Stain, and the consequence in the man 
 is the emotion of Shame ; so with regard to the Prophetic Con- 
 science, this is its office, that it connects acts of transgression 
 against the Conscience, that have taken place in Time, with a 
 responsibility in Eternity. It tells the man " what you have done 
 here is not ended, although past, apparently come to an end, but it 
 has its consequences there." Thus the Prophetic Conscience, unto 
 the breach of the dictates of Conscience, attaches the peculiar idea 
 of responsibility for evil ; the idea that although our act is done, 
 and no earthly consequences but those that are beneficial may 
 happen, still most certainly evil will, in the future, ensue. 
 
 For I think it a thing not to be denied, but a most certain fact, 
 that men, in some cases, have done evil, from which, in this world, 
 they have received not only no harm, but even good ; so that no 
 law of their own being or of external nature recompenses to them 
 the evil they have deserved. I think it most certain that some 
 men, acting against their own Consciences systematically and 
 habitually, have yet in this world received no harm from it, but 
 rather a superabundance of that which they estimated as good ; 
 and that the penalty of Evil and the reward of Good is not the 
 consequence of a law of nature, but is the immediate infliction of 
 punishment by the Will of a just and intelligent being, who is God,
 
 THE CONSCIENCE. 101 
 
 The Prophetic nature of Conscience, then, consists in this, that 
 by it acts against the Conscience are perpetually brought up and 
 re-presented to the mind, with the intimation that the being who 
 did them is liable to punishment, and that that punishment is in 
 Eternity ; which two ideas, as combined in the mind, we term by 
 that one phrase, " Guilt ;" so that, with regard to an act against 
 the Conscience, the effect of it upon the Conscience, in reference 
 to the future, is the sense of its responsibility to a Judgment and 
 Condemnation in Eternity. This liability we call "Guilt," and 
 the corresponding emotion we call "Fear." 
 
 Now when we look at the facts of human nature, we find this of 
 Responsibility a fundamental fact of our nature, a fact that for all 
 evil we count ourselves " under the liability and obligation of 
 punishment ;" and that this liability exists to & person; not to a 
 physical or natural law, but to a person. 
 
 Secondly, that it implies to the eternal being an eternal punish- 
 ment adequate to each act it has done in time, however numerous 
 the sum total of the acts may have been.* 
 
 And thirdly, that for all men, up to the very date and hour of 
 their death, the Prophetic Conscience places the punishment in the 
 Future. 
 
 Hence may it be seen, from the first point, that the instinct of 
 nature is towards the truth of a personal (rod, when declared to 
 us, as universally it is, by the Tradition of Society ; so that the 
 feeling of Guilt in us is a proof of a personal Deity. The second 
 fact implies that Eternity is a different state from Time in kind, 
 not merely in degree : and the third, that the place of justice and 
 true recompense is that state, and not our present one. We find 
 all these ideas embodied in the feeling of " Guilt" and the emotion 
 of "Fear;" and the truths to which they answer are those of 
 Responsibility to the One God, of a Judgment that gives to all acts 
 their due, in a state that admits of complete justice, the state of 
 Eternity. These are truths which no argumentation will refute, 
 no denial invalidate, because, as we have shown, they are truths 
 of our own nature, evinced by the facts of our own being, and wit- 
 nessed unto by Almighty God through his Spirit. 
 
 * " That servant which knew his Lord's will, and prepared not himself, 
 neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes ; but he 
 that did not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with 
 few stripes." Luke xii. 47, 48.
 
 102 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 Thus do we see that the Prophetic Conscience brings up to ua 
 acts against the Conscience in reference to Eternity, and with 
 that peculiar mark upon them that we call " Guilt," the sense of 
 obligation to a punishment after Time is passed away ; and answer- 
 ing to this is the emotion of "Fear." 
 
 There are two supplementary questions that may be considered 
 in this chapter. The first is this, Is Conscience a Judge ? the 
 second, Does Conscience punish us ? 
 
 The answer to the first, from the account we have given, is that 
 in the sense of pronouncing upon the quality of action, as liable to 
 future condemnation, so far metaphorically Conscience may be 
 called a judge ; but in the true and real sense of finally and autho- 
 ritatively pronouncing decision judicially, it is not a judge. It 
 declares to us first the quality of action with great certainty ; then 
 again it records our transgressions, and in the future judgment it 
 shall from that record be a most certain witness. And again, of 
 that trial and its result, it gives us a certain prophecy. All this 
 it does, but this amounts not to being a judge in any strict sense. 
 The Judgment is in Eternity, when, instead of conferring with 
 Him by means and faculties such as this of Conscience is, we shall 
 be brought face to face with the Almighty. 
 
 Still, this warning, this recording, this prophesying has in itself 
 a most important value, from the fact that it is by the Spirit of 
 God, who is God of one substance with the Father,* that it takes 
 place. But, as we have above said, it is, in this world, warning, 
 recording, prophesying of judgment, and not judging. 
 
 The next question is this : Does Conscience punish ? And the 
 answer here again is: "No! Conscience does not punish in any 
 proper sense." 
 
 If we say thatf " suffering pain, in consequence of any action, 
 is the punishment of that action," then we may say that " Con- 
 
 * Nicene Creed. 
 
 f The opinion that " personal suffering is always the ' punishment of per- 
 sonal transgression of the laws of the nniyerse," in other words, of Sin, is, 1 
 am sorry to say it, a very wide spread opinion in these days. It is an old 
 error, held by the Pharisees, those men of hard hearts, in our Saviour's day, 
 and by him rebuked severely. " Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, 
 that he was barn blind? And He said, "Neither this man did sin nor his 
 parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him. Again, 
 they told him of the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their 
 sacrifice. And he said, think ye that these Galileans were sinners above all
 
 THE CONSCIENCE. 103 
 
 science punishes." But the principle is wholly untrue; for suf- 
 fering is not so connected with evil, as to be always its consequence ; 
 so that you can say, that always where there is in this world suffer- 
 ing, 'there has been sin on the part of the sufferer; and in this case, 
 we can see that " Shame" being the sense of Guilt, in no sense is the 
 punishment of the act recorded, but only the feeling coming from 
 the Stain ; and the Fear corresponding to the Guilt is by no means 
 the punishment, but only the anticipation of the punishment. 
 
 To speak, then, of Conscience inflicting punishment upon us, is 
 a thing wholly and entirely wrong; while to speak of the "pain," 
 or the "torments" of an accusing conscience, is perfectly right. 
 
 the Galileans, because they suffered such things. I tell you nay, ... or those 
 eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, think you that they were sinners 
 above all men that dwelt at Jerusalem ? I tell you nay." 
 
 This opinion destroys the doctrine of a future judgment. It tells the man 
 who is robust, healthy and prosperous, that he has broken no law, whatever 
 his conscience may tell him to the contrary. It tells the weak, the diseased, 
 and the poor that their evils are punishments, by them justly deserved. To 
 the one class, then, it puts an end to mercy and compassion ; in the other, 
 to any belief in God's mercy and his justice. It destroys the idea that this 
 world is a state of trial, and that pain may, in God's wisdom, have many 
 other reasons besides punishment, be a moral guide, a preventive of greater 
 evil ; nay, often a positive and actual good. Lastly, it is at variance with the 
 phenomena of hereditary disease, as well as with the facts of that which or- 
 dinary men call accident, and the Christian calls Providence. 
 
 I would ask my reader, as an Ethical exercise, to investigate the consequences 
 of this opinion, and he shall find them as I have said, most pernicious to all 
 moral action, and subversive of all right ideas of God, and of the uses to us 
 of the outward world. 
 
 And if he be a parent, I would, for the sake of his children, warn him 
 against such books as " Combe's Constitution of Man," whereof this notion 
 is the staple. For the idea, as he will see on further thought, by tracing out 
 its extreme consequence, puts God, " the Personal and Ever-present, Omnis- 
 cient, and Omnipotent, Governing Being," out of the world, by substituting 
 for Him an " All-sufficing, Physical Law." It is therefore nothing in spirit, 
 but a coarse Physical and Natural Deism. 
 
 One thing more I would add as not unimportant. This idea, in another 
 shape, " that sin has always attached it as a natural consequence, a Temporal 
 Penalty of bodily pain," a belief as false and as easily refuted, is a pecu- 
 liarly Roman Catholic doctrine, and 1'es at the very root of their doctrine of 
 Purgatory, and of their horrible self-torturing penances. For this, see that 
 most able work, " Palmer's Letters on Romanism." 
 
 So do extremes meet. The Romanist and the Deist unite in preaching the 
 same false doctrine, of the natural and unavoidable connection of sin with 
 bodily pain.
 
 104 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 And upon examination, we shall find that these two phrases have 
 done an immense deal of harm to religion ; for if Conscience be, 
 in this world, a judge, in the true and real sense, and truly and 
 really the pain that comes from Conscience be a punishment in- 
 flicted by it ; then, by a natural and unavoidable logic, the truth 
 that the Holy Spirit is the true agent in the Conscience, combined 
 with these false notions, " that conscience is a real judge," inflict- 
 ing "real punishment," at once leads to the conclusion that the 
 Judgment is already past, an heresy, stamped by St. Paul as 
 ensuring condemnation, and in these days, because these false 
 phrases, very frequent indeed. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The deficiencies of the Conscience and its laws deduced from its nature. The 
 deficiencies of Conscience, the various kinds classified and enumerated. 
 Its Laws are three : First, of Obedience, Examination of this law, Prac- 
 tical inferences from this law. 2d Law of Conscience, Permanence. 
 Its nature and efiects. By means of this second law all passions can be 
 resisted, not otherwise. Reason of sudden and unexpected moral falls. 
 Besetting sins, or obstacles to moral progress. 3d Law of Conscience, 
 The law of Subordination ; that is, " while it rules us, itself must be ruled." 
 The rule of Conscience is the law of God. Evils that arise from ignorance 
 of this law. Morality is eternal and immutable. Scruples of Conscience. 
 Explanation of their nature, and how to treat them. 
 
 IT is our object now, after that which we have said in the pre- 
 vious chapters upon the nature of the Conscience, to consider the 
 two parts that remain toward the completion of the subject : the 
 deficiencies of the Conscience first ; and secondly, the rules by 
 which we shall be able to remedy those deficiencies, and to bring 
 it to perfectness of action. 
 
 Now, upon the subject of its deficiency, we have already in our 
 description of the nature and faculties of Conscience, shown that 
 it consists of two parts, the first of which is the voice of the Holy 
 Spirit of God speaking to us ; the second, the natural faculty in 
 us whereby we listen to that voice. Hence does it follow, as a 
 necessary consequence, that all deficiencies are in the natural 
 faculty, that is, in the man. Hence the moral cultivation of the
 
 THE CONSCIENCE. 105 
 
 faculty in us, is the remedy for deficiencies ; for in this only it is 
 that the deficiency can exist. This we can easily see is a neces- 
 sary and absolute deduction of the Science of Morals. 
 
 Again, there is another deduction, as necessary to be made. 
 When we look at the bodily organs and their deficiencies, we see at 
 once two things. In the first place, there is the organization 
 visible and tangible, and as such formed and purposed for a cer- 
 tain function ; in the second place, there is the function itself. 
 The organization is the means towards effecting that end, and the 
 function is the end. Now in judging of bodily organs, the means 
 being visible and tangible, we are judges of the means to the end ; 
 as for instance, of the arm, we know all its functions, such as 
 reaching, pushing, holding, and so forth, and have in our mind a 
 full notion of all. And more than that, we have all the machinery 
 for those functions before our eyes, and can judge of the suitable- 
 ness of it towards the end. We can say, because such and such a 
 bone, muscle, or nerve is deficient, diseased, or inadequate, there- 
 fore such and such a function of the organ is unfulfilled. But 
 with regard to faculties, moral or mental, the function is actually 
 the only thing that we know ; the organization by which that par- 
 ticular faculty works, of that we know nothing. 
 
 And, therefore, from this at once we come to a conclusion of 
 very great value, as a means of limiting our researches, that is, 
 that it is vain to attempt to penetrate into mental or moral organ- 
 ization, for it cannot be known ; or in some fancied organization, 
 supplied by own over-daring, to place the cause of deficiencies. 
 
 To illustrate this, we shall take the memory ; " the memory is 
 the faculty that remembers ;" we know not the organization of it 
 as a faculty, that is, the means by which remembrance is brought 
 about. We only know its function, " that it remembers." Hence 
 that "memory" shall be good that "remembers well," that re- 
 members firmly, and readily, and fully, and particularly, and so 
 forth: everything that can come under the word "remember," 
 and the word "well;" that shall be a bad "memory," whose func- 
 tion of remembrance is characterized by all those defects which 
 come under the word badly. It is not poivers and organizations 
 that we know, but functions.* 
 
 * In Mathematics, the " function " of a quantity is always expressed in 
 " terms of that quantity," 2x, x a , x s , d.x, all these are functions of x, the 
 
 14
 
 106 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 To apply the principle, then, the deficiencies of the Conscience, 
 arc those by which it does not fulfil the functions that belong 
 to the Conscience ; and if we have fully and truly described its 
 functions in the previous chapter, the perfect Conscience shall be 
 that which effects these functions perfectly, the imperfect Con- 
 science that which effects them imperfectly. A Conscience, then, 
 that Checks or Withholds adequately wten evil approaches, that 
 Records, and, according to its law, re-presents to the man the evil 
 done, and that Prophesies of a future recompense in the same 
 measure, that shall be a good Conscience. A Conscience whose 
 effects are less than this, is not a good Conscience, but an imper- 
 fect one. 
 
 Having thus stated wherein the deficiencies of Conscience are 
 to be found, it now remains for us to enter upon the consideration 
 of them under these limitations. 
 
 The Conscience, then, may be considered as faulty by excess, or 
 as faulty by deficiency in reference to any of its three divisions of 
 function. 
 
 That Conscience, for instance, that does not warn against that 
 which is actually evil, is in one degree a thoughtless Conscience ; 
 in a higher, a careless Conscience ; higher still, a hardened Con- 
 science ; yet higher, a callous Conscience ; and, highest of all, a 
 "seared" or "dead" Conscience, all these terms implying defi- 
 ciency in the sensibility of the faculty to that which is actually 
 evil. 
 
 And then, again, an over sensibility, tending to present to us 
 as evil that which is not actually evil, a tendency which any one 
 that considers the analogy to the eye or the ear can at once com- 
 prehend, is represented to us as a "weak" Conscience, a " scrupu- 
 lous" Conscience, or a "sore" Conscience. The true Withholding 
 Conscience being that which is faulty by neither deficiency or 
 excess, and therefore is called the "sure" or "perfect" Conscience. 
 
 Now with regard to the second part of the Conscience, its defi- 
 ciencies are manifestly in reference to the power of recording or 
 re-presenting, first, faults of deficiency or faults of superabundance, 
 
 original quantity x, is seen in them all. So in the example in the text of 
 " Good memory," " bad memory," " feeble memory," all the phrases -we use 
 bring in and employ the word " memory," they are " functions " of that un- 
 known quantity. The nature and the machinery of the faculty is unknown 
 as far as they are concerned.
 
 x 
 
 THE CONSCIENCE. 107 
 
 wherein that which is evil, when done, is not represented to our 
 minds as evil, that is, the record written is not brought out, and 
 that which is not evil is represented as such. These cases are 
 denoted by the same terms as we have noted in the first. 
 
 But more than this, there is a peculiar fault belonging to the 
 second kind by its very nature, when the actions recorded and 
 re-presented have the peculiar note that we call " Stain" attached 
 to them ; so that they shall be recorded with this note, and when 
 brought up again to the recollection shall have it associated with 
 them, and shall rouse the feeling of " Shame" in the mind. 
 
 This Conscience, in reference to that " Stain," is called a " foul," 
 a "polluted," or a "defiled" Conscience; and the opposite, that 
 in which the record is in a more or less degree without " Stain," a 
 "pure," or "clean," or "undefiled" Conscience. 
 
 Again, with reference to the Prophetic Conscience, the same 
 remarks that were made with reference to the second function of 
 the faculty may be made with regard to it as to deficiency or 
 excess. But with reference to its operation, as it presents actions 
 in respect to the future, and in connection with liability to punish- 
 ment, that is, as we have established it, " G-uilt," in reference to 
 this, the Conscience, in which, when acts donSPand past are pre- 
 sented to the mind in connexion with this liability, is called " a 
 guilty Conscience ;" and that in a degree more or less according 
 to the number and flagrancy of the acts : and a Conscience the 
 opposite is called an " innocent" Conscience. 
 
 Thus does it appear that with regard to the function, the worst 
 of all kinds of Conscience is that which is " insensible," or has 
 lost its warning power, commonly called a " seared" or " dead" 
 Conscience ; that to which evil is good and good evil, the discrimi- 
 nating power being wholly lost. 
 
 With regard to the effect the Conscience that is " foul" or 
 defiled, and that which is "guilty" or covered with " Guilt," this 
 is the worst of all. 
 
 Here comes up a question which once was one very much de- 
 bated, and still is in some measure interesting : " Can there be 
 naturally such a thing as that one should be born without a Con- 
 science ?" This question we believe we have in a degree forestalled, 
 and as it were, given our readers the means of deciding it ; we 
 therefore merely indicate it, and so pass on. 
 
 The best, then, of all shall be that Conscience which in refer-
 
 108 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 ence to these functions, is tender, in reference to the Recording 
 faculty, is pure, or free from Stain, to the Prophetic part, is " in- 
 nocent," or free from Guilt. 
 
 And between these two extremes there are various degrees, all 
 of which are combinations of these elements, and therefore 
 enumerated "in posse" by the enumeration of them. 
 
 And also there is a multitude of practical questions, of the most 
 interesting kind, which it is enough to have indicated, as the ex- 
 amination of them in detail is to our object, which is a "system" 
 of Moral Philosophy, unnecessary. We shall, therefore, in the 
 mode of all proper science, leave the multitude of problems de- 
 ducible from our main principles, to be as exercises for the student 
 in the application of these principles, and content ourselves with 
 those that are leading and absolutely necessary. 
 
 The next subject, therefore, that will most naturally engage our 
 attention is the question, " How and by what means we are to so 
 regulate the Conscience that it shall be for the individual man in 
 the best possible condition that it can be in ; that is, what means 
 shall we pursue, if we would derive all the advantages from the 
 power and faculty of Conscience, which God intended that we 
 should derive ?" This, manifestly, is a question of the most serious 
 importance, for there is no doubt but that the majority of mankind, 
 BO far from subordinating the action of their passions and appetites 
 to any rule or to any governance, are actually led by these appe- 
 tites. And some are actually so audacious as to set forth a philo- 
 sophy that says, " that an appetite, a passion, a desire craves 
 gratification, is a sign that it should be gratified to the fullest 
 extent ! and that the outward frame of Society imposes some 
 restraint, indicates that that frame-work is wholly wrong ! and 
 must make way for a new one, all whose end and rule shall be, 
 * that all appetites, all passions, all desires shall be gratified to the 
 utmost of their demands !' " a horrid and brutal Philosophy, that 
 gives liberty to all vice, and destroys the very basis of all Mo- 
 rality. 
 
 In view of this fact, I think it is of no small importance to 
 vindicate the Supremacy of the " governing" or " moral" powers, 
 and to point out to the individual man, who is desirous to live 
 according to the law of God, the means whereby he shall be 
 enabled to give to the first of these governing powers, the Con-
 
 THE CONSCIENCE. 109 
 
 cience, its due perfection, that is, the " supremacy" which it 
 thould possess over the rest of our nature. 
 
 Now the reader, on looking back to Chapter VI. of Book L, will 
 find there laid down, that there are Governing Faculties whose 
 office, by their very position, is that they are to govern, and that 
 the Conscience is one of them. Again : he will find that of these 
 governing faculties there are laws, in consequence of the obedience 
 to which and by which, from their very nature, they attain and 
 uphold their "supremacy": guided, then, by those rules, they 
 uphold their station ; abandoning these, the laws of their being as 
 Governing faculties, they abandon their sway. 
 
 Their laws, as governing faculties are, first, that they must 
 govern. Secondly, that they must govern always. Thirdly, that 
 they must govern by a law not by themselves. He, then, that 
 would have a Conscience pure and perfect, must apply these rules 
 unto its action upon his nature, and by these rules, and by these 
 alone, can it attain to the completeness that it is by God intended 
 to possess, and is by its nature capable of having. Let us apply 
 these rules. 
 
 The first says, that unto a perfect Conscience it is necessary 
 that it should govern; that is, that no Conscience is a "sure" 
 guide, or can be appealed to as such, or trusted in, save and ex- 
 cept that as a principle of life it be made supreme by the man. 
 
 This may be seen to be so from the very nature of man's consti- 
 tution in even his bodily faculties. When extreme sensibilities 
 are given against any emotion or sensation that is injurious, if 
 that emotion or sensation be pressed upon the feeling, then the 
 sensibility becomes sometimes almost wholly dead, so as to cease 
 being any guard or protection. So would it seem that the faculty 
 that warns against evil, by its warnings being neglected, loses its 
 power altogether, and resigns its seat to inferior competitors. 
 
 This analogy from bodily faculties would be of itself sufficient 
 to illustrate, and to rest our proof upon, backed, as it is, by the 
 experience of the whole world, and of all both heathen and 
 Christian moralists ; for who is there who does . know how easily 
 one step downward from the straight course of steady and con- 
 scientious action, will end in plunging the man in guilt, of which 
 a little before he deemed himself wholly incapable ? Who does not 
 know what a fatal fascination evil once familiarized to us has ? 
 There would be proof enough in defence of the assertion that we
 
 110 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 have made, that Conscience as a principle must govern if we 
 would have it perfect, as showing that once deprived of its posi- 
 tion it loses, as it were, its very nature, and ceases to be that 
 which it was ; for then becoming merely a principle among other 
 principles, it loses its nature, and acts only as the subordinate 
 principles do, at intervals, and neither constantly nor reliably. 
 
 And when we consider the universal persuasion with regard to 
 it, we find that this which I have called the first law of Conscience, 
 is, under various forms and shapes, the solid conviction and belief 
 of all men as to its action. They represent it as a light which we 
 are to follow dim and indistinct at first, but which, if we pursue 
 it steadily, becomes brighter and yet more bright. Again : they 
 paint man as in darkness, gloom and storm, in the midst of a de- 
 sert by night, needing guidance ; and Conscience as the minutest 
 and remotest speck of light, appearing upon the verge of the hori- 
 zon, yet to be followed because it is light, and the only light. 
 
 Here, then, in this comparison, which is a familiar one to all 
 nations, is exemplified its increased value as a rule, as depending 
 upon our constancy and perseverance in following its guidance. 
 The brightness is considered to be always growing as long as we 
 press onward, and never to decay while our face is turned towards 
 it and our footsteps are pursuing it. 
 
 We have given this example, and shall omit any further enumera- 
 tion of instances. Suffice it to say, that in all those metaphors 
 which men have employed to designate this faculty, or to denote 
 the mode of its operation, the conviction of the same law is uni- 
 versally to be discerned, a hint which, while it may set the student 
 upon a more extended examination of this particular point, may 
 serve to excuse our further consideration of it. But, however, as 
 an additional support of the doctrine implied in these illustrations, 
 we beg to refer our readers forwards to our notice of the effect of 
 Habit upon the Moral Nature,* so far as "active" and "passive 
 habit" are concerned, by which he shall find the doctrine of the 
 foregoing paragraphs most strongly supported. And we shall now 
 go forward to the support of our first law from other and more 
 weighty considerations. 
 
 He that looks to the preceding chapters shall see that the con- 
 stitution of the Conscience is two-fold ; of a faculty in us, and 
 
 * Book IV. Chap. 3.
 
 THE CONSCIENCE. Ill 
 
 working upon us through that faculty, the Holy Spirit of God 
 Now the doctrine of the Scriptures as to Him is, that his influence 
 upon the spirit of man is given in proportion, not capriciously, but 
 after a certain proportion, though what the elements of it are we 
 cannot precisely say, it not having been revealed. But this is 
 clearly said, that it is "grace for grace," Grace as a reward for 
 grace well employed, and as a means of obtaining more Grace.* 
 Here, then, in this fact we find the ultimate reason of this first 
 law, that except we are as a matter of principle governed by Con- 
 science, its action is incomplete, for its completeness is in constant 
 progression, depending for light and clearness upon the continual 
 gift of the Spirit, in reward for the continual reception and use of 
 that gift. 
 
 And adding this fact to those others previously noticed, f the 
 conclusion, as a matter both of moral science and inward convic- 
 tion, shall be established, that if we would have Conscience a sure 
 and trustworthy guide, then, as a fixed principle of action, we 
 must obey it. It must rule, and no passion, nor desire, nor appe- 
 tite within us, and without us no object towards which they may 
 lead us must be sought or pursued, if doing so will contravene our 
 Conscience or lead us into evil in the slightest degree. 
 
 This is the first law of the perfection and the governance of Con- 
 science, and the man that takes it to himself, however blasted in 
 character, and condemned by the unanimous verdict of his fellows 
 he may be ; he that shall take, even in the depths of his degrada- 
 tion, this for his guide as a ruling principle, he shall arise out of 
 the deepest pit, he shall be lifted up from his abasement, he shall 
 become a man standing upright in the dignity of manhood. 
 
 Let him rely upon it, "for a man who will do so, how deep soever 
 
 * This, I believe, gives the full sense of the Greek idiom " grace for grace," 
 and this only adequately expresses it. 
 
 t The fact, that is, of man's moral inability, as he is by himself apart from 
 the influences of Grace ; the fact that the Spirit is Jehovah and infallible ; that 
 his Grace comes first unto us and awakens us ; that the dictates of conscience, 
 assigning no reason for themselves, are yet confirmed by all after experience ; 
 that they are authoritative, it is our privilege and duty to obey. All these 
 facts are those referred to in the text. They all, together with this Law of 
 Grace, that'is combined with it, declare and prove that the power of the faculty 
 depends upon " supremacy," that made " subordinate," it loses its natural and 
 normal influence.
 
 112 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 he may be sunk, there is all hope and no fear." This declaration, 
 here written with pen and ink, is written upon the hearts of all in 
 the records of Providence, nay, upon the Very Throne of God ; for 
 the Holy Spirit, co-essential with the Father, whose voice the 
 Conscience is, has made it a first principle, and a primal truth in 
 the self-experience of all : and to all men the course of the outward 
 world, arrayed and set forth as it is by Almighty power and Om- 
 niscient wisdom, echoes hack and reasserts that internal convic- 
 tion. There is none to whom the light does not appear, faint as 
 it may he through their own fault, but still to all, while they are 
 alive upon the earth, it appears and invites to follow ; and therefore 
 to all men, even to the vilest and worst, there is hope, all hope, if 
 they will only follow it. 
 
 And to those most elevated in their moral qualifications, to 
 them, by the very same reason, all fear, if they abandon this 
 supreme guide and ruling power, and permit themselves to be ruled 
 and governed by anything else than this. 
 
 It is a cheap Morality to discourse of virtues and vices, to 
 harangue against this vice and that vice, to give set and common- 
 place argument against the love of money, against luxury, and 
 against licentiousness : but the plain truth is, that these are but 
 the occasions and external causes of falling, as the storm is to the 
 tree that is rotten at the root ; for no external fall has there been 
 into open and flagrant guilt, but first there was an internal fall, a 
 dethronement of the Moral Power from its seat of guidance : and 
 where this once has taken place, then external circumstances may, 
 by the Grace of God, keep the man from the abyss of vice, but he 
 has left the only moral ground, and whatever good he may do, 
 incidentally, yet by his very position, as one closing his eyes upon 
 the light that is given to guide him, and renouncing its guidance, 
 he is ready for the deepest plunge into the foulest degradation. 
 
 Such is the first law of Conscience, the law of " Obedience," the 
 law that it must govern and we obey govern supremely, obey 
 entirely. 
 
 And this matter of the governance of Conscience, its entire and 
 absolute governance, this which to men in ordinary may seem so 
 exceedingly difficult, this depends not upon the agony of a sudden 
 effort, putting forth unusual strength upon emergency, but upon 
 that second rule of "Permanence," so that one law, in some, 
 measure, derives its strength from the other. He whose Conscience
 
 THE CONSCIENCE. 113 
 
 governs permanently, by that very fact attains the habit that it 
 should govern supremely. The permanent and constant habit, that 
 is, of referring all things to Conscience, and as a matter of fixed 
 and steady principle bowing to its decision and acknowledging its 
 "supremacy," this shall give, even to the weakest in mind, the 
 power of resisting the most exceeding temptations. 
 
 Nor does this depend upon the force of Habit as its peculiar 
 cause, though this, too, will confirm the power, so much as upon a 
 vital and real distinction between the nature of that power which 
 the "governing" faculties have, and that which the "passions" 
 have, that the "power of the l governing' faculties is in their con- 
 stancy of action, and the power of 'passion' in its concentration to 
 a small interval of time." This, we have already remarked, comes 
 from their function as "governing," which implies action constant, 
 not intermitted. And he that shall consider the faculty of Con- 
 science with care, shall find that it is so with it. 
 
 To those, then, who may not, at first sight, consider the asser- 
 tion* of our last chapter as credible, to them we say, let them, 
 instead of looking at vice in the mere outside point of view, in 
 reference to injury done as to money, position, character, and so 
 forth : and thus, when they are hurried away by that evil they 
 are hitherto prone to be conquered by, at that moment calling up 
 the moral powers in arms against it, so that the strife is, for the 
 moment, to place the moral powers to war against the temptation ; 
 let them observe the nature of the two as different powers, and 
 give the moral powers a "governing" influence, one that always 
 and in everything reigns ; and because of this, in the one thing 
 wherein is their danger, it shall rule the wildest assaults of "pas- 
 sion" within and temptation without. 
 
 He that does not cheat from the motive only that " honesty is 
 the best of policy," who does not lie from the sole motive that such 
 a character would ruin his trade, who commits no adultery from 
 the mere fear of the law and the verdict of a jury ; this man may 
 be counted a good moral man in the ordinary outside acceptation 
 of the word, even at the very time when inwardly, in his own 
 heart, he knows that he would do all these things but for the out- 
 
 * The assertion, namely, that in any human being, however weak his 
 moral faculty may be by nature, and however violent the force of passions, 
 the moral power is able, by nature, to check and subdue any passion what- 
 soever. 
 
 15
 
 114 CHKISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 ward penalty. And his neighbors and himself may wonder why 
 drunkenness is such a temptation to him, or any other of the 
 twenty vices we may mention, and may laugh us to scorn when we 
 say that even that man's moral power is able to conquer it ; when 
 the fact of the matter is, that the man is hardly a moral being at 
 all. His Conscience never acts efficiently at all, for it is never 
 obeyed systematically. 
 
 To such a man, we say, let your Conscience act, let it act 
 always and in everything, and as a matter of principle; and soon 
 you will find, that in this law of action, it has power to overcome 
 any gust of temptation and hold it under. 
 
 At the same time, we must acknowledge that so far as we have 
 hitherto gone, these two rules of Conscience, as to its action, are 
 more ready to uphold and secure its mastery, when it has been 
 obtained, than to obtain it by themselves. Still, the consideration 
 of them is such, as we conceive, to cast much light and hope upon 
 the course of man. . 
 
 As depending upon this law of "permanence," we will note one 
 other fact, which is sufficiently strange. It often happens that to 
 the individual man there is some little thing that may be wrong to 
 him, not wrong in itself, but wrong to him, relatively wrong 
 that is. And this little matter, it may be the very least thing and 
 the most unimportant in the world, in which none of his friends 
 see any wrong, but which is wrong to him this a man shall often 
 do, through the force of habit, with the feeling full in his own 
 mind that it is wrong. 
 
 And so doing, he breaks the second law of Conscience, and 
 shall make no progress whatsoever. All the good in greater things 
 that is done, is then felt to be good, but is not to him a means of 
 moral progress. When the Conscience declares against any act, 
 how small soever it may be, and in full view of its being wrong 
 that act is done again, then there is no moral progress, no bring- 
 ing to perfection of the power of Conscience. It is as the small 
 impediment that hinders the starting into motion of a body, which, 
 were the body in motion, would be crushed into dust by a thou- 
 sandth part of the power that it impedes. Small things, then, as 
 well as great, there are to be brought under the law to which I 
 allude. 
 
 But to conclude our examination, the immediate effects of this 
 law of "permanence," observed as a principle of life, are very ex-
 
 THE CONSCIENCE. 115 
 
 traordinary to the world, and sometimes even to the persons con- 
 cerned very astounding. In the first place, the individual who 
 has been as I have described the man a little above, with these 
 acts that properly and truly should have been founded upon Con- 
 science, placed upon the false basis of " enlightened selfishness," 
 or mere "external law," or "the custom of Society," this man,* 
 during the time that these things have been so placed, shall have 
 hardly felt the existence of a Conscience, and to him it shall almost 
 be a word without a meaning.* Let him, then, however weak 
 may have been his perception originally, however dim the light, 
 begin to act upon it ; and then, under the influence of this law, 
 there shall spring up within him the stream of a new internal life, 
 It shall be as if a wide extent of unwholesome marshes were trans- 
 formed into the continuous current of a river. The principle then 
 becomes a living principle when it is continuous, and only then. 
 
 It needs but very little experience of men to see how few of 
 them ever make Conscience supreme. But few as these are, fewer 
 still are they who are always guided, in reference to it, by the 
 second law, that of its "permanence." 
 
 The question then of the possible perfection of Conscience, this 
 becomes not a mere theoretic question by any means, but one en- 
 tirely practical. But it is highly probable that no man by nature, 
 apart from Revelation, has ever followed his Conscience so strictly 
 after these two laws, as to perfect it according to them. 
 
 I do not, then, suppose that of natural power any one has ever 
 got beyond these two rules of the Conscience so as to rise above 
 them towards the third, although I can see in divers even of the 
 heathen an appreciation of them. 
 
 But the third law I count to be the most important ; this says, 
 that " Conscience is not to be ruled by itself, or to make itself a 
 rule, but to govern by a law itself is not to be its own law." 
 
 Now, we see many people who keenly appreciate the first law, 
 that " Conscience is to be supreme" ; few, indeed, that know the 
 value of the second ; but in the most of even good men a complete 
 
 * Men, in such a case, usually delude themselves with the idea that Con- 
 science is not a faculty, the organ and sense of the Divine Yoice ; but that 
 it is the mere mental conclusion as to what is " right " or " wrong." And 
 that " right" and " wrong," " good " and " evil," are not immutable in their 
 nature, but depend on circumstances. These two notions do, as I have said 
 in the text, render Conscience " almost a word without a meaning."
 
 116 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 ignorance of the third, and this is in so extraordinary a way, 
 oftentimes, that it makes men torment themselves and others by 
 the most fantastic scruples. They feel the "supremacy" of Con- 
 science as an authoritative governor over the man so strongly, that 
 its rule over them seems to them to exclude any supremacy over 
 it. And thus the disease or derangement of the faculty, which 
 as other faculties of the human constitution is liable to disease, 
 and is manifested in irregular action, this disease of the faculty 
 shall be permitted to tyrannize over themselves and others. There- 
 fore, the man under this idea holds himself bound to bow down 
 to the most ridiculous scruples, and to compel others to yield 
 to them. All this from taking Conscience to be absolutely infal- 
 lible, and from not considering its twofold nature. 
 
 He, however, that shall look at the nature of "moral good," as 
 having in itself an unity and sameness in all individuals ; at the 
 nature and being of man in the world, as under the One Lord, and 
 Father, and Teacher, must conclude that the law of God's good- 
 ness, and justice, and mercy, in other words, the Law of God, 
 must be the Law and Eule of Conscience. And taking especial 
 care to avoid the common mistake by which we attribute " Self- 
 Will" unto God, instead of " Will," the Will of God, which is the 
 Eternal Law of his being, the law of unchangeable and infinite 
 goodness, and mercy, and truth, this, in whatsoever way reached, 
 if it be only reached, is the Law of the Conscience. 
 
 For we shall mistake, if we attribute to God a Will in the sense 
 of self-will, unconnected with these his eternal attributes, as if by 
 the power of Will, that is self-will, he made "good" "bad," or 
 " bad" " good," by an omnipotent fiat ; which is to attribute self- 
 will to God, not Will, is to make him deny himself, and is to 
 destroy the nature of his attributes. Whereas, goodness, mercy, 
 justice, truth, these, as parts of the being of God, are in their 
 nature His nature, and the law of its being and unchangeable. 
 
 And the qualities in us that herein resemble God, these, as 
 qualities, are eternal and immutable in their nature. Mercy is 
 not one thing in me and another in you, and a third thing in a 
 Hindoo or Negro ; but is the same in all men. Evil never can be 
 good, nor good evil nor can one become the other. The laws of 
 Morality are immutable and eternal. 
 
 These things, then, being so, it is manifest that the Will of God, 
 ;he law that is of His being, the law of eternal and immutable
 
 THE CONSCIENCE. 117 
 
 goodness, this is the law of Conscience and by this it must be 
 ruled. 
 
 This has thus been shown from the nature of that with which 
 the Conscience has to deal ; but more plainly still it is manifested 
 from the nature of the Conscience itself being twofold, first, the 
 voice of the Holy Spirit, and secondly, the organ in us that listens 
 to that voice. And the perfection of it will therefore consist in 
 the organ perfectly receiving and perfectly transmitting to us that 
 voice. Now, the office of the Spirit, by the Scripture, is the 
 manifestation of the Will of God, hence by the very nature of the 
 Conscience its law is the Will of God. And by whatsoever means 
 the Will of God is manifested, by this we shall be able to test and 
 examine the dictates of our Conscience, and see that we are not 
 deceived by that part of it which is a faculty in our own nature, 
 and which as such is liable to irregular and abnormal action. 
 
 We can see, then, that each man in measuring the action of his 
 own Conscience over himself, must measure it by the Will of.Crod 
 in whatsoever way revealed, whether in^the Scriptures or the law 
 of Society, or the law of man. 
 
 This, manifestly, is the truth of the case in reference to him- 
 self, but in order to give it a practical tenor, so that men may be 
 able to apply it, I would place it in this position : " When you are 
 afflicted with doubts, or scruples, or questions of conscience ; then 
 your own secret troubles and torments, in the most of cases, will 
 render you unable yourself to apply the law of Grod as a rule to 
 correct the errors of your Conscience ; because had you been able 
 and accustomed so to do, you would never have fallen into this 
 state." 
 
 In this case I would advise you to consult confidentially persons 
 whom you see to be qualified for this very thing those who can 
 understand what scruples are, and sympathize with the real pain 
 that comes from these trifles who are Conscientious in themselves, 
 and familiar with the application of the law of Grod to particular 
 cases. And lastly, who are in the situation naturally of Judges ; 
 as being Parents, so in the family or Clergy, so in the Church 
 or Judges, so in the State. He that has a scruple of Conscience 
 that torments him, if he go and reveal his scruple, under the bond 
 of confidence, to such a man as I have described, in the most of 
 cases he shall get an opinion and advice that shall correct his Con-
 
 118 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 science by the law of G-od.* And if this do not satisfy him, then 
 let him go to a second or a third person having the same qualifica- 
 tions, and for the most part finding them to agree, he shall be set 
 entirely at rest. 
 
 So much importance do I put upon this, that I think that founded 
 as the advice is upon the very nature of Conscience, the sugges- 
 tion acted upon as it may be acted upon, may save persona from 
 an immense amount of secret pain, suffered in secret, because of 
 the unsympathizing nature of men, and often laying the founda- 
 tions of a morbid and brooding temper, whose natural issue is 
 insanity. 
 
 This is all we have to say in reference to what are called " ques- 
 tions" and " scruples of Conscience." And this because we count 
 a living adviser, applying the law of G-od, under a pledge of con- 
 fidence, and himself possessed of a sympathizing tenderness of 
 disposition, a thousand fold preferable to any system of rules laid 
 down upon paper, and to be applied by the person himself whose 
 Conscience is distressed. ^ 
 
 But one caution we add to the individual : " If this free you, as 
 most likely it will, then delay not to let Conscience govern you ; 
 and always, and by a fixed principle and rule, that is the law of 
 G-od. For as to the drowned, where the means have been em- 
 ployed to recal them from the torpor of death, the first sensation 
 is that of intense pain, arising not from, disease, but from the fact 
 
 * To the young, upon these grounds, we say, that the one best adviser in 
 euch a case is a pious and judicious Father or Mother. Here is natural sym- 
 pathy, here natural guidance, here confidence of the purest and most unself- 
 ish kind. If evil thoughts, then, enter into your mind, and you are secretly 
 distressed by them ; if temptations come to you from acquaintances, or school- 
 mates, or from servants, to do that which yon suspect to be evil, but are not 
 certain of it, being shaken by their persuasions ; if you are internally tried 
 by the violence of evil emotions, such as " anger," or " envy," or " malice" : 
 in any and all cases of internal distress, do not brood over it alone, but make 
 your Father or your Mother your confidential adviser. And in such a case, 
 often in half an hour, you shall get relief from that which might, being kept 
 a secret in your own mind, cause even years of torment. 
 
 And let parents sympathize with their children, be tender with them, and 
 be themselves purely and entirely conscientious. And above all, let their chil- 
 dren's confidence be unbroken, and as silent as if it had never been spoken. 
 
 The neglect of this, at the present day, causes a great deal of misery, and 
 permits a great deal of sin. The observance of it would nip much evil in the 
 bud.
 
 THE CONSCIENCE. 119 
 
 that life is again reviving, and the vital principle coming again 
 into action ; so with a Conscience which has not had its due su- 
 premacy, when it is roused to vigorous action from its insensibility ; 
 these scruples are at the first most frequent and most painful, and 
 are signs of returning life. But to the man, when the Conscience 
 is ruled by its laws, they vanish ; or if they come up, are attended 
 by no pain, for at once he can decide them. 
 
 However, to resume. The third rule of Conscience being that 
 instead of being governed by itself, it is to be governed by a law ; 
 and that law being the Will of God, this leads us at once to two 
 subjects of the deepest importance ; the first the adaptedness of 
 our "nature to religion," which in a different way might be ex- 
 pressed, as "the connectedness of natural and revealed religion;" 
 and the second, the deficiencies of the natural Conscience, and 
 the aid that it demands to supply them. These two subjects, with 
 the help of the principles established in this chapter, we hope to 
 expound in the next. 
 
 CHAPTER TV. 
 
 The facts of Conscience render Natural Religion possible and the facts of 
 Revealed Religion perfect Conscience. In whom the Conscience is perfect. 
 Conscience cannot pardon. It leads us towards the Atonement of Christ. 
 
 Note upon the Practical nature of Justification in its connection with the 
 Conscience. 
 
 THE questions which in our last chapter we proposed, were the 
 first with regard to what is called Natural Religion, its extent 
 and possibility. The second, with regard to the deficiencies of the 
 Natural Conscience. 
 
 Now with regard to the first, he that shall look upon the princi- 
 ples we have established, shall have very little difficulty. If 
 "man's nature be in itself good," and its state be that which is 
 expressed by the words fallen, so that it is not the state of a 
 beast, a state of brutal indifference, unconscious of Good and 
 ignorant of God ; if it be not a devilish state, a state of pure, 
 unmixed hatred and abhorrence, and utter antagonism to light ;
 
 120 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 but a state in which all objects sought, are sought as good. If 
 then, our natural deficiency be that of insubordination and of 
 inability in our nature to obey God's Laws, and if Evil is not a 
 positive existence in itself, but truly and really "the absence of 
 Good," and sin is not some mysterious quality having a sub- 
 stantial reality* in nature, but is a trangression of the Law; if, 
 moreover, the Law of God is revealed as a law to man by Society, 
 and by the face of outward Nature, then it is manifest that 
 Religion is a possible thing ; nay, that naturally man is suited and 
 adapted to it, and that it has a foundation for itself in his Nature 
 and Position. 
 
 But when we come to the consideration of the nature of man, 
 and look closely at the Conscience, then we find more clearly and 
 more plainly the correspondency between man's Nature and Re- 
 ligion. We find, that as the earth, in its qualities, considered as 
 fertile and capable of producing crops, answers to the heat, and 
 the light, and the moisture, and the air, and the frost, and the 
 snow ; and all these influences are external to the earth, and yet 
 these, with its qualities of nature, conspire unto fertility ; so it 
 is with our Human nature and Revealed Religion. Between the 
 natural facts of a Conscience understood by all who follow it, and 
 by none else, and the facts of the Gospel incapable of being known 
 save by Revelation, there is precisely that relation. 
 
 The natural Conscience tells us that evil is supremely to be 
 avoided. It even hints to us its own two-fold nature, it gives us 
 even naturally indistinct notions of its personality and its divinity. 
 It feels the guilt, and evermore it leads us towards the idea that 
 this guilt may be wiped away, though not by itself, f It feels that 
 the shame may be wiped off, so that the man may stand upright. 
 It acknowledges also the responsibility. It connects the deeds 
 done in Time with a result in Eternity, a judgment before an 
 Eternal and Almighty Judge, and the same one who has been to 
 us here an Eternal Witness. Of these things, the heart of man 
 speaks to him wherever man exists. 
 
 Not, I say, clearly as now, under the broad light of Christianity, 
 but in that dim, instinctive way in which the root of the willow 
 shall blindly, yet infallibly, direct its course, as I have seen, 
 
 * " For sin is the transgression of the Law." 1 John, iii. Chap. 4 v. 
 
 t " The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin." 1 John i. 7.
 
 THE CONSCIENCE. 121 
 
 twenty and thirty feet towards a well; as the plant that has 
 begun to germinate shall, on being removed to utter darkness, 
 send forth an exploring root of many feet in the direction of the 
 light; as the young shoot, planted in a cleft wherein there is 
 only earth enough for itself at its present age, shall, in its after- 
 growth, send out an exploring fibre towards the deeper earth, 
 which shall root itself there, and ultimately become the main root. 
 So it is with the relation of the natural Conscience to religion, 
 it blindly and ignorantly yearns towards the facts of religion, it 
 does not know them. But it instinctively tends towards them, so 
 that at once, upon their revelation, nature accepts them and con- 
 fesses the facts to correspond to its feelings, and acknowledges 
 that these facts revealed and applied, then are that which brings 
 itself to perfection. 
 
 I have now analyzed the Conscience as to its nature, its opera- 
 tions, its laws and sanctions. I have shown how it works, and that 
 in such a way, that I have no doubt that each man who has thought 
 upon his own nature and striven earnestly, however weakly and 
 feebly, yet earnestly,- to follow that light, has seen that the repre- 
 sentation is a true and correct one of the faculty according to its 
 workings. 
 
 And in the heathen world, antecedent to the coming of our 
 Lord, when the only knowledge of facts they had was from the 
 Tradition of a primitive revelation, I can show the same represen- 
 tation of facts as to the Conscience ; nay, the same facts. I will 
 not say that they were clearly and distinctly set forth in order, but 
 in a confused way, as a stormy sea reflects the image of heaven, 
 in a dim or broken way, as a mirror in fragments shows the human 
 face. But still, in such a way, that to us, to whom the facts of 
 Revelation have been unveiled by Christ, it is manifest that the 
 corresponding facts concerning the Conscience have been known 
 to them by nature.* 
 
 This may be seen in the works of all the Greek Philosophers 
 antecedent to Christ ; chiefly in those of Plato and Aristotle. It 
 may be seen, too, in the philosophy of the remotest Eastern na- 
 
 * " For when the Heathen, (Gentiles,) which have not the law, do by na 
 ture the things contained in the law, these, not having the law, are a law unto 
 themselves : Which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their 
 conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts in the meanwhile accusing 
 or else excusing one another." Romans ii. 14 and 15. 
 
 16
 
 122 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 tions, their leading doctrine of Pantheism, having for itself no 
 other natural foundation than that of the God-head of the Internal 
 Voice ; and the same facts, in the same way, are witnessed by all 
 Heathen nations of modern times, when as yet they have received 
 no knowledge from Europeans, but are fresh from heathenism. Of 
 this I could bring forward the proofs from the authors, but I deal 
 not in the afiectation of learning. It suffices me that these can 
 easily be obtained by my readers that are ordinarily learned, and 
 that those of them who are unlearned have sufficient confidence in 
 me that it is so. 
 
 This being so, the facts of Conscience that come up to all men 
 by nature as enigmas and deep mysteries, these in Revelation 
 have revealed truths that are their solutions, corresponding unto 
 them most accurately and exactly. Revelation tells us' that to 
 avoid sin must be our supreme endeavour a motive that must ever 
 and entirely reign in us. It tells us, too, that no ignorance is an 
 excuse, no absence from the sources of knowledge, no hiddenness 
 in the remotest depths of barbarism, but that there is a light that 
 shines upon all wheresoever they may be, whose brilliancy and 
 illuminating power is measured, not by rank, or riches, or station, 
 or abilities, or knowledge, but by our actual zeal in following it. 
 It tells us that the *6 edov (the divinity), which the philosopher* 
 ascribed to it, and the Su^uv (personal deity) of Socrates, and the 
 personality which in universal speech all men give it, these are no 
 chance dreams or vague illusions, but that it is the voice of the 
 Holy Spirit, " God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very 
 God, of one Substance with the Father ;" and hence that he speaks 
 to each man with the same voice, through a similar faculty and 
 organ. 
 
 And thus the two discordant facts of Conscience infallible, 
 authoritative, controlling with a voice requiring absolute submis- 
 sion, and Conscience fallible, and weak, and needing to be ruled, 
 which otherwise could not be made to agree, are reconciled. 
 
 Hence, too, its insight into Eternity, its dumb speech regarding 
 the Future, its prophecy of judgment, its connexion of Time with 
 Eternity, all these are made clear. 
 
 And, finally, its feelings of Shame, and Stain, and Fear, and 
 Guilt, and of Moral Restlessness, all these manifestly have in the 
 
 * Aristotb.
 
 THE CONSCIENCE. 123 
 
 revealed facts of our Fall in Adam, our Redemption in Christ, 
 their due and only explanation. The facts of the Natural Con- 
 science are only to be explained by the facts of the Gf-ospel. 
 
 Having thus shown how revealed religion is related to natural 
 religion, in reference to that governing faculty that we have ex- 
 amined, we shall go on next to an examination of the deficiencies 
 of Conscience which prevent its being a perfect guide naturally. 
 He that shall look to the illustrations we have just given, will see 
 that its natural perfection only is in this, that it leads the man 
 who follows it onward, and gives him a feeling towards the facts 
 that perfect it, so that if it is to be perfect, it is so only in connex- 
 ion with these facts known and these facts applied. 
 
 So that the Heathen, or he who is left to the natural Conscience, 
 feels the faculty to be a useful one, but very mysterious ; he, again, 
 who knows the facts of Revelation, can explain a great many 
 things to the other deeply mysterious ; but that man only to whom 
 the facts are applied, " who is born of the Spirit," to him the Con- 
 science has obtained its due perfection. 
 
 That is to say, the man " who is born of the Spirit," he who 
 being so by God's grace then governs himself by his Conscience, 
 always guiding his Conscience by God's law, this I count to be 
 that man in whom alone of all men the Conscience is perfect ; for 
 he it is in whom alone the perfection of the three parts of the Con- 
 science exists : and he who shall examine who that man is, or in 
 whom these qualifications meet, shall find they do so only in the 
 " Justified Christian."* 
 
 Now, he that examines the faults of the natural Conscience, and 
 compares it with the perfect Conscience, that is, the Conscience 
 of the man unfallen, he shall find that the Conscience of the man 
 unfallen must have been completely free from all error, and a per- 
 fect guide. The result of the fall, therefore, is that God the Holy 
 Spirit remaining the same, the natural deficiencies of the Con- 
 science, as a faculty, that it has now, it has from it. The' first 
 effect of the Fall upon the nature of man, is the inability of the 
 Conscience adequately to transmit to us the voice of the Spirit. 
 
 Of this deficiency, and the means of correcting it by the restora- 
 tion of its Supremacy, I have already treated ; and there is no 
 
 * See note at the end of this chapter on the practical nature of justifying 
 faith, page 126
 
 124 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 doubt that in a very great degree the sensibility of the Conscience 
 may be restored by these means ; indeed, in so great a degree as 
 to make men almost conclude that Conscience may be made by 
 nature a perfect guide. 
 
 But when we come to the third law of the 'Conscience, and see 
 that it must be governed by the rule of God's law, then at once 
 we see that the natural Conscience is no sure guide ; for to them 
 who are "born of the Spirit," the Spirit dwells in them in conse- 
 quence of that birth, informing and internally guiding their Con- 
 science by an influence which, if it come not within our knowledge 
 by sense, is yet not the less manifest in its effects. And secondly, 
 as an external law, the will of God as manifested in the Scriptures, 
 and interpreted and applied by he Church, is the law by which 
 the Conscience is to be ruled. 
 
 The "Birth of the Spirit," then, in consequence of which He 
 becomes the internal law of the Conscience, and the outward law 
 of G-od's revelation, these are the actual gifts of revealed religion, 
 in consequence of which the Conscience is perfected, and to which 
 no strife of our own moral nature can attain of itself merely. No 
 internal working or struggle of the Conscience of Socrates could 
 cause him to attain unto the gift of Spiritual Regeneration, given 
 in consequence of our Saviour's death, or to a knowledge of the 
 completed canon of the Holy Scripture. 
 
 But again, we shall make another remark which will more fully 
 manifest the truth of that which we have asserted. In the primi- 
 tive man it has been seen that the Conscience was a perfect guide, 
 the natural faculty being perfect, and from the Supernatural Gift 
 the power perfectly to obey it was his. Hence was there no Stain 
 upon it, and no Shame, no Guilt, and thence no Fear. The Re- 
 cording Conscience detailed no transgression of God's will, and 
 the Prophetic Conscience prophesied no punishment ; but the past 
 was without the consciousness of evil, the future without dread of 
 misery. 
 
 Now, herein is a difference, and a vital one ; there is none of 
 fallen men that has a Conscience that is without Guilt and Stain ; 
 this is to each human being an effect of the Fall. Nature tells 
 us at once that there is no natural means of removing this Guilt 
 and Stain. Good is not antagonist to Evil, so that the " plus" 
 of one shall make the "minus" of the other, and that we can 
 keep a debtor and creditor account with Conscience, so much
 
 THE CONSCIENCE. 125 
 
 Good against so much Evil, the surplus of our good balancing 
 accounts against our evil. But Good is the living according to a 
 law which we are bound to live by, and Evil the transgression of 
 that law. We cannot, therefore, balance the one against the 
 other. 
 
 Nor does Conscience reveal to us any way of getting rid of the 
 Stain or the Guilt ; in fact, to express it clearly, Conscience has 
 first a Warning. power, and then a Recording power, and then a 
 Power Prophetic of punishment, but it has no pardoning power 
 naturally. 
 
 Thence are we to seek the completion of Conscience in the 
 Atonement of our Lord Jesus Christ, applied to us by the Spirit; 
 the efiect of His death by which our sins are forgiven, in conse- 
 quence of our Regeneration by his Spirit, the Stain of them 
 wiped out, and the Guilt pardoned 1 , and ourselves set free from the 
 Shame and the Fear. This fully completes, as far as Conscience 
 is concerned, our illustration of the relation that nature bears to 
 grace, and Natural to Revealed Religion. 
 
 And besides illustrating the first part of this chapter, it fully 
 shows the position of Conscience in man as a secret force in the 
 heart of each which he may resist, overthrow, conquer again and 
 again, so as to feel that he is perfectly free from compulsion; and 
 that in his actions, if he do evil, he must act in a full sense of his 
 responsibility and against light and knowledge. 
 
 So that herein the Freedom of Man, the Justice of God, Igno- 
 rance and Unlimited Knowledge, Time and Eternity, Mercy and 
 Judgment, all meet together in this one faculty. 
 
 And by this faculty in its action, the dealings of the Almighty 
 Creator with us his creatures are justified, so that whatever man 
 may have to say to his fellows before their bar, before the judg- 
 ment throne of God, the evidence of the Recording Spirit and of 
 the man himself shall, in each man's case, manifest that "the 
 Judge of the whole earth has not done wrong." 
 
 We have thus examined the nature of Conscience, and shown 
 its uses ; we have gone into its laws, and the means of perfecting 
 the faculty naturally and spiritually. In the next book we shall 
 proceed to consider the Reason as a governing faculty, the second 
 of the governing powers. 
 
 9
 
 126 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 NOTE UPON THE PRACTICAL NATURE OP " JUSTIFICATION BY 
 FAITH," REFERRED TO ON PAGE 123. 
 
 We are "justified by faith," working by love, and showing itself 
 in true Christian works. 
 
 In the justified man there must be first, " faith a sincere be- 
 lief in the Gospel, and an appreciation of the Atonement of Christ 
 as sufficient for the sins of the whole world, and as applied to him- 
 self." 
 
 2dly, This faith must realize itself in his heart by the Spirit of 
 his Lord, that is, true love towards his God and towards his fellow 
 men. 
 
 3rdly. This must issue forth in actual works of love, in " the 
 fruit of the Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gen- 
 tleness, goodness, meekness, temperance, against which there is 
 no law ;" in works of mercy to the wretched ; and in subjection of 
 his own thoughts, words and actions to the Spirit and Law of 
 Christ. 
 
 In the Regenerate Christian it will be seen, if this be so with 
 him during life, that the voice of God, at the last great day of 
 judgment, will declare him just through the blood of Christ ; and 
 even in this world the voice of the Holy Spirit, through his Con- 
 science, will witness to his justification. According to that which 
 the apostle says, " the Spirit beareth witness with our spirit that 
 we are the sons of G-od;" (Rom. viii. 16 ;) and again, " We have 
 not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but we have re- 
 ceived the Spirit of Adoption whereby we cry Abba, Father." 
 Herein is seen the connexion of the natural faculty with the Spirit, 
 and the relation of both under the Gf-ospel to justification. 
 
 This, I conceive, to be the doctrine of the Church, against both 
 the Roman Catholic doctrine, that we are made just by an infused 
 righteousness, instead of being declared just or " acquitted" by 
 the Atonement, and the Solifidian scheme, that says that love and 
 works are not necessary. But for more ample information, I refer 
 the learned to Bishop Bull's treatise, the " Harmonia Apostolica." 
 
 To the unlearned, then, I say, as a practical inference, if, after 
 you are Regenerate, " made a member of Christ, a child of God, 
 an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven," for after this point only
 
 THE CONSCIENCE. 127 
 
 in your existence you have the full filial privileges of the Spirit's 
 power if after this you know that you have true faith, that faith 
 that is vivified by "love" and realized by "works," then you are 
 justified ; justified, if before that secret tribunal which the Spirit 
 of God has erected in your heart, you can, (having faith,} truly 
 say, " I love God according to the measure of his Grace and of 
 my own weakness, with all my heart, and soul, and strength ; and 
 I truly strive to realize this in Christian works of mercy and love." 
 The man is "justified" who with faith in his heart, can truly say 
 this, before his God. 
 
 But if having had faith, and being baptized in the name of 
 Christ, faith becomes dead, and in our hearts we know that we do 
 not love God above all things, but our own will or our own plea- 
 sure ; and that we do not love our neighbors ; if we also do no 
 Christian works of love, but all our works are founded on motives 
 of "Self-will," or "Sensuality," or " Selfishness," so that we 
 care not for our neighbor, but rather despise and evil intreat him, 
 when it suits this Evil Concupiscence in us, THEN are we not jus- 
 tified our faith is not a " living faith ," it neither is enlivened by 
 love nor realized by works. It may not be so dead as that the root 
 should perish, but the growth is stopped, the leaf is withered, and 
 the fruit is blighted. 
 
 How, then, shall the man recover ? Not by any excitement, not 
 by any extraordinary means. He knows what is that inward ob- 
 stacle or outward sin that impedes his course. He knows in his 
 own heart, although others may not know, what is the peculiar 
 besetting sin to which he yields. He knows what that is in thought, 
 in word, or in deed that he does, through interest, through thought- 
 lessness, through pleasure, through habit, through outward tempta- 
 tion or inward feebleness, that is clearly and distinctly against his 
 own convictions of Christian duty, as manifested to his Conscience 
 by the Spirit. While he does this that is so, the Spirit says to 
 his Conscience, "Thou art not justified, thou art condemned;" 
 and his own consciousness tells him the same. His Reason and 
 his knowledge of the Law of God assure him of the same. God 
 to be sure may, in his wise purposes, permit him to remain in the 
 world and in the Church even in that state, but still it is not the 
 state of one who is justified. 
 
 The man, then, in this condition, knowing that he is in the 
 wrong, he should instantly set himself with all his might to ab-
 
 128 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 stain from that particular sin; to wrestle with prayer, with fast- 
 ing, with all the means prescribed both by the Gospel and by his 
 own knowledge of himself to overcome it, according to the direc- 
 tion of the apostle : " Wherefore ... let us lay aside every weight, 
 , and the sin which so easily besets us, and let us run with patience 
 the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and 
 finisher of our Faith, . . . lest ye be wearied and faint in your 
 minds. Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin." 
 
 If in struggling with our besetting sin, it should bring us to our 
 death, or wring drops of blood and agony from the dearest affec- 
 tions of our heart, still are we to persevere. And then, through 
 the prayer of Faith, through God's Grace, through the power of 
 Christ, we shall overcome, and be led on conquering our sins, till 
 we reach that state wherein we are Justified, the state wherein 
 the Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we have Living Faith 
 that acts by love, and realizes itself by true Christian works. 
 
 In this note I have considered only the case of that man who 
 has been once born again. The state of men outside the Covenant 
 is different.
 
 BOOK III. 
 THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 
 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 First, Reasoning is not Reason ; this illustrated. The composition of hummx 
 nature is not double, but three-fold. Man having an Animal Mind and a 
 Spirit, these faculties in him correspond to two worlds, the world of the 
 Seen and that of the Unseen. Hence two reasoning powers, the " Animal 
 Mind" and Spiritual Reason. Moral ideas are received from Society by the 
 Reason. All ideas of which it may be said " God is," are of it. A remark 
 in reference to our future state, and the grounds of our perpetual progress 
 in it. The question of innate ideas. 
 
 OUR readers will have remarked that among the " governing" 
 powers, as we place Conscience the first, so the second is the 
 Reason. To examine the nature and laws of this faculty, there- 
 fore, shall be the object of the present book. 
 
 The subject we acknowledge to be one of considerable difficulty, 
 and yet we believe to the reader who shall give us his considerate 
 attention, we shall be able to bring forth the laws and offices of 
 this great power so that the principles educed may be something 
 of a guide to him in his course of moral study as well as in actual 
 life practically. The first distinction we would have him observe 
 is this, that " reasoning" and Reason are things wholly and entirely 
 different, so different indeed that very often considerable powers 
 of reasoning shall exist in him who has of Reason very little at all. 
 
 A strange paradox, one may say, and yet literally possible, 
 reasoning is properly a logical exercise, the power by which, "pre- 
 mises" being given or assumed, we draw the conclusion this is 
 "reasoning." Now if we look at the definition of insanity, we 
 
 IT 129
 
 130 CHHISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 find it is " that *madmen reason rightly from wrong premises." 
 The reasoning power is unimpaired in them, the Reason is diseased. 
 And this is so well known among physicians attending upon such 
 persons, that it is a rule never to "reason" with them ; and that 
 because their " reasoning" powers are very often even more perfect 
 and vigorous than ordinary, while their Reason is diseased. This 
 shows that there is a real distinction between "reasoning" and 
 Reason. 
 
 But, indeed, it is ordinary to mark it, the man who is forever 
 arguing, proving, disputing ; in short, he that has a taste for " rea- 
 soning," this man seldom we find reasonable, and seldom attribute 
 Reason to him. So far we have gone, and as there are two ways 
 of explaining what we mean, and the first is that of fencing off 
 outwardly from our conception that which does not belong to it, 
 so we beg our readers to mark this first, the distinction that " rea- 
 soning" is not Reason. 
 
 Having thus noticed the verbal distinction which our readers 
 will find brought out still more strongly afterwards, we go on to 
 examine what Reason is in its own nature. 
 
 And here we must be permitted to enter into an examination of 
 a point which is of very great importance to the question in hand, 
 as well to the whole question of Christian ethics, the investigation 
 and decision of which, according to the truth of Christianity and 
 Nature, we count absolutely necessary to a true Ethics and this 
 is the composition of that which we have called " Human Nature," 
 as to its parts. The individual being that we call a man, of how 
 many parts is his " Human Nature" compounded ? " Of two," at 
 once it is answered ; and these two are "body and soul." 
 
 And they that give this answer undoubtedly will be very much 
 astonished to learn that it is not so ; that the two-fold division of 
 Human Nature is not the one given in Holy Writ, but a three-fold 
 division, and that that three-fold partition is not only in express 
 terms made by an Apostle, but also uniformly observed ; so thai 
 the division of man's nature is not into Body and Soul, but into 
 "Body," "Animal Soul," and " Spirit," a division three-fold, not 
 two-fold. " I pray God your whole spirit, (rtvevpa, pneuma), and 
 soul, (tfxrii psuche), and body, (s^a, soma), be preserved blameless 
 unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."f 
 
 * This refers strictly to maniacs or monomaniacs, not to idiots. 
 
 f 1 Thess. v. 23. See upon this passage the commof.taryof the great Eng-
 
 THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 131 
 
 So that here the constituent parts of our nature are enumerated 
 as three, as furthermore when we go through the Scriptures we 
 find that there are in the original three adjectives derived from 
 these three parts, employed to denote three different classes of 
 men or natures, not two. If there were only two kinds of nature, 
 the one "spiritual," under the influence of God's Spirit, and the 
 other "totally depraved," as it is called, of course there would be 
 only two, the "spiritual" and the "carnal," (pneumatikos and 
 sarkikos). But there are three, (pneumatikos,) spiritual, (psuchi- 
 kos,) animal, and (sarkikos,) carnal. " Carnal" being those who 
 are under the dominion of the body and its lusts and desires ; 
 "spiritual," they who are under the Spirit of God ruling their 
 spirit ; and " animal," they who are as animals, are indifferent to 
 all religious feeling, insensible and unawakened, with no spiritual 
 perception and no spiritual feeling. 
 
 Having gone so far, we need not say that the doctrine which 
 this treatise adopts, is that in Human Nature there are the three 
 parts "Body," "Animal Soul," and "Spirit."* It remains to 
 
 lish theologian and saint, Dr. Henry Hammond, in Patrick, Lowth and 
 Whitby. He calls this the ancient and true philosophy ; shows that all the 
 noblest heathen philosophers held it, and also that those eminent fathers of 
 the Church, Clement, Origen, and Irenajus, were of the same opinion. He 
 declares, too, that the conflict between the Spirit and the flesh cannot be 
 understood without believing in an Animal Mind ; and that the governing 
 power in us cannot be comprehended except we suppose a spirit, an infe- 
 rior animal soul, and a body a tripartite existence in man. He furthermore 
 shows how, because of following this mind of the flesh, the man is styled 
 4o)^ix6j, the animal man ; and the body, before the resurrection, is the " animal 
 body," as after it is the " spiritual" body. 
 
 * Perhaps I may add to this another illustration. The Jewish commenta- 
 tors, some of them translate thus: "And the Lord God formed man of the 
 dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of two lives, 
 (nephesh chayim,) and man became a living soul;" a translation of which 
 the original is unquestionably susceptible. 
 
 This, then, will imply in man two principles 01 life ; the one the psuche, or 
 animal soul, which he has in common with the beasts, the mere brute life, 
 with the faculties that belong to it, and the other the spiritual life, which 
 belongs to man peculiarly as a spiritual being. Original sin will thus be ex- 
 pressed as a mortal wound of the spiritual life, whereby the animal mind, 
 with its desires, becomes enabled as against an enfeebled master, to become 
 insubordinate. And thus the spiritual life in man is so diseased, that 
 
 Gen. ii. 7.
 
 132 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 apply these principles to the elucidation of the point in hand, of 
 the Reason as a moral power, or the " Spiritual Reason," as we 
 call it, in opposition to the " Understanding," or, as in this treatise 
 we should choose to call it, the " Animal Mind." 
 
 Now taking it for granted that there are these three divisions 
 of "Body," "Animal mind," and "Spirit," man has the three, 
 the beasts have the two. Whatsoever then we find in the beasts 
 of mental power, that is in man also, this may be considered as 
 belonging to them in virtue of the "Animal Mind ;" and in man it 
 is not as Spiritual, but as Animal, but those powers which man 
 has and they have not, these may be considered as peculiarly 
 spiritual. The powers, then, on the one side of this line, we con- 
 sider to belong to the "Animal Mind," the others to belong to the 
 "Spiritual Reason." 
 
 Now we do not ask this matter to go upon speculation, we are 
 content that it should go upon experiment. And we say this upon 
 the best authority that, acccording to the experiments of the best 
 natural philosophers, there is no operation of the mind that may 
 not in kind (we do not say in degree,) be traced in the Animals, 
 save only moral ideas. So far, then, have we gone closer to the 
 real difference of the "Spiritual Reason," and the "Animal 
 Mind;" the one deals with moral ideas, the other is excluded from 
 them. 
 
 This deduction we have before established, but now we would 
 limit it so as to express it more clearly in reference to the " Rea- 
 son." We have before shown that there is an Animal Mind, and 
 its functions we can determine by a consideration of the sphere 
 from which its impressions are derived. 
 
 Now, when we look at the Universe, at once we feel and know 
 that it is of two parts, the one Corporeal, the other Spiritual, 
 the one Visible, and the other Invisible, the one Finite, the other 
 Infinite, the one of the senses, the other above the senses. In 
 one word, that there is a world material, corporeal, visible, in 
 every way as to itself and its objects, limited in Space and Time : 
 and that we will not say side by side with this world of sense, but 
 
 except the man receive healing from the Word, he will die the second death, 
 undergo that unquenchable and unrcvealable Death Eternal, which is the real 
 death, the substance that, backward into the world of Time, casts that 
 shadow tli at we call death.
 
 THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 133 
 
 co-existing along with it there is another world of things unseen, 
 incorporeal, spiritual. 
 
 Of these two Worlds, their being and their co-existence, we offer 
 no proof. The universal belief of all men, in all ages, is for 
 it ; the natural instinct of the heart of the youngest child, and the 
 highest and surest persuasion of the broadest-winged intelligence, 
 all unite in believing, all agree in asserting that man is a dweller 
 in two worlds, the world of the Senses, and that of the Unseen 
 and Infinite.* 
 
 Not that God made a world material wholly and acting machine- 
 like, and put man in it, shutting out the Spiritual and keeping it 
 somewhere apart, (an idea or notion, upon which a great deal of 
 moclern education is founded,) but that with the Natural World 
 actually and really the Spiritual World co-exists, (we use the 
 phrase only in a figurative sense, in order to express that the im- 
 pressions, sensations, emotions, and teachings from the one are 
 just as many, just as great, just as close to us as from the other.) 
 This Spiritual world co-exists with the Natural one, and as man, 
 one being, lives in the one, so does he live in the other, an idea 
 which is clearly the persuasion of universal human nature, and the 
 doctrine of the Holy Scriptures. 
 
 True it is that man dwells in two Worlds, so that, applying to 
 the Infinite appellations that belong to Space, and Time, and 
 Body, and therefore are only figuratively correct, the Spiritual 
 
 * The Platonists make two worlds, " The world of the things of Sense," 
 " The world of the things of Spirit." The Hebrews named the universe by two 
 words implying the same thing, " heaven and earth," that is to say, the 
 whole compass of the world, things spiritual and things earthly, they ex- 
 pressed by naming the two extremes. And not until Pythagoras, had the 
 ancient Greeks any other name for the whole ; he invented the word, " Cos- 
 mos," as a name for the universe, which we translate world, but really means 
 " the harmonious whole." As identical with this phrase, " heaven and 
 earth," the Greeks used also the words, "all things visible and invisi- 
 ble." This also is in St. Paul : " By him are all things created that are in 
 heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be,"* <Sbe. He 
 speaks to the Jews in their phrase, to the philosophic Greeks in theirs, 
 asserting to both that God is the creator of THE ALL. 
 
 And in the Nicene Creed we recognize the same distinction, that the created 
 universe is composed of two parts, the " Spiritual world," and "the world of 
 Sense," when we term God the Father, " Maker of Heaven and earth, and of 
 all things visibk and invisibk. 
 CoL L 16.
 
 134 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 "World is here and co-exists along with the visible world, we 
 dwell in contact with the one as with the other. 
 
 And as our unconsciousness in sleep of our relation to the one 
 the material universe does not disprove, much less annul the fact 
 of that relation, or of its existence ; so our waking unconscious- 
 ness of the other will not disprove our being and existing in it, and 
 our being influenced by it. 
 
 We have brought this forward and these views precisely at this 
 time, because thereby the reason may be seen in the fact of man's 
 external circumstances as a being dwelling in two worlds that co- 
 exist together, for that other Scriptural doctrine of St. Paul as to 
 the three-fold division of the nature into Body, Animal Mind, and 
 Spirit. Dwelling in the World of Sense, manifestly his Body and 
 his Animal Mind, these he has to deal with the objects of sense, 
 its impressions, feelings and ideas ; dwelling in a Spiritual World, 
 his Spirit is the power by which he is fitted for this. This, 
 then, we conceive, is that fact which lies at the bottom of the di- 
 vision we have given, and to which we adhere. 
 
 Hence then, those natural faculties, common to the animals and 
 to man, and clearly shown so to be by natural science, these we 
 consider to belong to the "Animal Mind," we call them the "Ani- 
 mal Reason," or, if the phrase be preferred, the "Animal Under- 
 standing," both which we shall thenceforth use technically or 
 scientifically. And we shall now form our distinction that the 
 Animal Mind embraces and deals with all ideas or notions derived 
 purely and entirely from the senses, all ideas that is, that are 
 merely physical. 
 
 We know that Mr. Locke deduces* all ideas from the five senses 
 and the reasoning power, internally " compounding," " com- 
 paring," "dividing," and so forth, but how it has happened that 
 the brutes, having the five senses and the reasoningf power, have 
 not got the ideas of " God," and "freedom," and "immortality," 
 and "law," and "worship," and "heaven," and "hell," and "con- 
 science," having, according to Mr. Locke's notion, all the ways 
 and means of getting them that man has, we do not see. 
 
 And we do see that all these ideas connected with the Infinite, 
 
 * See his " Essay on the Human Understanding." 
 
 t This has been distinctly proved by late naturalists, " the same in kind, 
 although not in degree," and is a fatal blow to that philosophy. 
 
 .
 
 THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 135 
 
 man receives first from Society ', and without examination, upon a 
 kind of natural faith dependent upon his inner being. Nor is 
 there any man that has ever existed to whom the knowledge of 
 these tilings has not been conveyed in a language existing before 
 he came into being, and then received, as before mentioned, upon 
 the faith of an inner nature. 
 
 Notwithstanding, therefore, Mr. Locke, we believe in the ex- 
 istence of an " Animal Mind," which deals with the ideas derived 
 by the senses from the world of sense, compounds, compares, 
 divides, and which man has, in virtue of his being an Animal. 
 And then, in another faculty in him, the " Spiritual Reason," 
 which he has in virtue of his being a Spiritual Being, having a 
 Spirit and existing in a Spiritual world. This divine endow- 
 ment, then, we consider to be that which has to the Spiritual, Un- 
 seen, and Incorporeal, the same relation that the "Animal Mind" 
 has to the world of sense. This the man has in virtue of his 
 being a Spirit, as he has the other in virtue of being also an 
 Animal.* 
 
 "We thus make a broad distinction; the "Animal Mind" is that 
 which deals with ideas and notions derived from the World of the 
 Senses, ideas that are finite, sensible, material ; and all these ideas 
 upon examination shall be found to be in reference to Morality 
 purely indifferent. This is the distinction that we here establish. 
 The "Animal Reason," then, or "Understanding," this we by 
 no means place among the ruling or governing powers, but the 
 Spiritual Reason we do. 
 
 From the previous examination one question, doubtless, will 
 arise to all our readers : " Seeing that the Divine Reason obtains 
 not its ideas from the external visible world, from whence does it 
 get them ?" 
 
 The motto of this book, our reader will remember, is, " All 
 things are double, one against another, and God hath made no- 
 
 * It may thus be seen that we do not believe with Locke, that all our ideas 
 come from material objects through (he senses. "We believe they come from two 
 Bources, first, from the Spiritual world ; a.ndfrom it, either through the senses 
 by the teaching of Society,; or else from it, without the medium of sense, as is 
 the influence of the Spirit upon our souls. And secondly, another class of 
 ideas, those of the Animal Mind, come exclusively from the sense and mate- 
 rial objects. The theory of Locke, therefore, in effect denies the existence of 
 a Spiritual World and its connexion with man.
 
 136 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 thing imperfect." If he look to our treatment of Conscience, he 
 will find that we treat of the Conscience as twofold, and in and 
 upon that doubleness rest the explanations we have given of it 
 and their truth. With regard to the Spiritual Reason in man, he 
 has seen the same principle in one way illustrated, and if he look 
 again he may see the same in another. 
 
 Man, as an existence, is what we call a "fixed fact;" he in 
 nature is not a fixed and determined fact, and all around the 
 spontaneous and haphazard accumulation of accident, rubbish, 
 and weeds, and waste, which the ceaseless tides of time and the 
 current of circumstances have caused to accumulate around him. 
 Not so far from it ; as Human Nature is the same in constitu- 
 tion through all ages, so is Society ; as the man is a fixed fact, so 
 it is. The picture is not a fact, and the frame a non-existence ; 
 the gem a fact, and the setting nothing ; the ship a fact, and the 
 river in which it sails nothing. Not so. Society, in its three 
 forms, is the frame, the setting, the channel of Human Nature ; 
 no accumulation of waste rubbish, which is floating up and down 
 by chance, but as true, and real, and fixed a fact as it is. 
 
 And now are we prepared to answer the question. Let our reader 
 look backward in this volume,* he will find that Society serves a 
 twofold purpose, that of supplying externally the Law and the 
 knowledge of God and his attributes ; that it is a channel whereby 
 there is no man, even in the remotest countries, that is without His 
 name. 
 
 "Whence, then, does the Spiritual Reason obtain originally its 
 ideas of the Spiritual, the Infinite, the Unseen ?" We answer, not 
 from the five senses, f or any operation of the Animal Mind upon 
 the ideas therefrom derived ; not from any spontaneous rising up 
 
 * Book I. Chapter IV. 
 
 f There is a plain distinction to be noted here ; an idea may come to me 
 through the senses, and yet not from them ; the one expresses that the senses 
 are the channel merely of an idea which did not originate in them the other 
 that they or material things which they perceive, are the origin of it. The idea 
 of "God," of " freedom," of " immortality," these are conveyed to me in a 
 language the words of which I hear through that sense, therefore but not 
 from it, but originating from the Spiritual world. The idea of green, the 
 colour comes to me through sight, and from the objects of that sense origin- 
 ating in them. Again : the influence of the Spirit upon my spirit is neither 
 from nor through the senses, yet causes in me, as I know by faith, which is 
 " the sense of things unseen," very important ideas.
 
 THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 137 
 
 of these ideas in man's own mind, as some Philosophers have sup- 
 posed, but from an original and primitive revelation of himself, 
 the qualities of his being, made by God unto man. The qualities 
 of God as a Spirit, down through the channel of Society are 
 borne in language, that divine gift, and then by man as a Spirit, 
 received and applied in virtue of his " Spiritual" reason. 
 
 This is the source and origin of these ideas, and let any man 
 examine, by constructing logically a proposition which consists, as 
 every one knows, of "subject" and "predicate," as, for instance, 
 " man is just ;" he shall find that to all ideas of the Spiritual Rea- 
 son, God shall ever stand as the subject, and the idea as the 
 " attribute," as " God is just," " God is holy," " God is true." 
 
 Nay, as before remarked, God shall be the substance in which 
 is all the essence of each of these truths, and the idea shall be 
 only a quality in man, but in God a reality. 
 
 For instance, " God is just," " God is holy," " God is true" 
 these assertions are absolutely and without exception* true of God 
 at all times and under all circumstances ; but of man not so 
 always. And of God they shall be so true as " that God is 
 justice," is "truth," is "holiness," in a sense applicable to none 
 but God. 
 
 These ideas, then, and all that the Spiritual Reason deals with 
 of the "Infinite," the "Unseen," the "Spiritual," these are 
 attributes of God's Nature. And being revealed by him to man, 
 (man's existence as a Spiritual being in a Spiritual world render- 
 ing this possible,) are carried downward, through a channel made 
 for this purpose, to each and every man. And thus, as all fires on 
 earth have been lighted from the sun, so do all moral truths and 
 and moral ideas come from God.f And the Spiritual Reason, this 
 
 * The test of these ideas is, that you may say of each of them " God is," 
 and that of which you can truly say " God is," comes not from the World of 
 Sense, but from the Spiritual World. 
 
 Another test there is of them ; they are " necessary :" we know when we 
 hear them that they are so, and must be so. For instance, the proposition 
 " God is Good," this at once is seen to be " absolute," or necessary ; it must 
 be so, and is so, we at once confess it. But the proposition " man is good" is 
 not so. The same proposition also in reference to God is "universal." " God is 
 Good," there is no exception to this. To man it is not so. It will be seen, 
 then, that these qualities of " necessity" and " universality" belong only to 
 ideas coming from the Spiritual World. 
 
 f Of course by tho very nature of the faculty this may be in a twofold way. 
 
 IS
 
 138 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 is the power in man's Spirit ; or in other words, the spiritual 
 faculty that perceives and applies to the whole being of man these 
 moral ideas and moral laws, that spring from the very being and 
 attributes of the Eternal God. 
 
 And these moral truths are not as some have dreamed, arbitrary 
 enactments of an Omnipotent "Will, making Good to be Good, and 
 Evil to be Evil, because it is omnipotent, and able to make Good 
 Evil, and Evil Good by its decrees ; but Good is Good immu- 
 tably, because God is Good, and Justice is just eternally, because 
 God is just ; and so of all the laws and facts of Morality, they are 
 all immutable and eternal, as being facts of His eternal Being. 
 
 And here would I note, that in this view that notion of later 
 moralists by which, when they see a moral instinct incapable of 
 being analyzed, forthwith they make from it a "faculty," as some 
 have a faculty or sense of "benevolence," of "justice," of "vera- 
 city," and so on, to the amount of as many moral ideas as they can 
 find : all these belong to that one and the same power, the Spiritual 
 Reason. Attributes they all are of God ; and what these moralists 
 call " senses of," are not at all senses, in the way at least that 
 seeing is a sense, but rather the feeling of the one sense, the 
 Spiritual Reason that is, of the eternal moral attributes of the 
 Almighty, the realizing of them and the application of them 
 by it. 
 
 And herein is the wonderfulness of the Spiritual Reason, that 
 when by the will of God one of his attributes is to it revealed, it 
 embraces that one so much with its whole nature, that of that it 
 seems all formed and wholly composed; so much so that men 
 shall talk of a "sense of veracity," of "justice," of "law," of 
 " benevolence," of "holiness ;" the whole truth being that in this 
 one manifold faculty of the finite spirit, that peculiar attribute of 
 the Infinite, is, as it were, mirrored. 
 
 And herein mainly do we consider that the ever-growing and 
 ever-expanding progress of the blessed is to be found in the open- 
 ing and revealing unto the Spiritual Reason of new and still newer 
 
 First, by the ordinary operation of the Spiritual Reason, whereby the teach- 
 ings of Society through Law and Tradition, convey to man spiritual knowl- 
 edge and spiritual ideas. 
 
 The second, whereby the power of the Holy Ghost, the influence of the An- 
 gelic Ministry and of the Communion of Saints, work upon our Spiritual 
 Sense, and cause to rise up in us thoughts and ideas of Good.
 
 THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 139 
 
 moral attributes of God ; and in the consequent awakening in the 
 glorified man of what we should call new spiritual senses, and 
 hence of ever new spiritual enjoyments. 
 
 So that attributes as much higher than the highest we can now 
 feel or express of God, as these are higher than those of the Mosaic 
 dispensation, and these again than those of bare natural religion, 
 may be unveiled to us in eternity ; and increasing knowledge and 
 increasing love, hand in hand, may unceasingly ascend towards 
 the loftiest throne of the inscrutable God. 
 
 This, then, the Spiritual Reason, the sense of the Unseen, the 
 Incorporeal, the Infinite, I count to be in man that power that is 
 peculiarly adapted to apprehend and feel the attributes of the 
 infinite God as applicable to the finite man, as the mirror catches 
 the image of the sun and reduces it to its own size, the proportion 
 being yet retained ; that which brings the Unseen to bear upon 
 the Seen, and which, when awakened in us, is the faculty whereby 
 we are bound to the Spiritual World. This, then, is peculiarly 
 " the moral sense," seeing it is that that has in itself an unbounded 
 aptitude for all moral ideas, all the aspects of His perfection that 
 God may be pleased to reveal. 
 
 Nay, it would seem, therefore, that there is no perfection of His, 
 no loftiness of Glory, no unrevealed splendor, but there is in the 
 Spiritual Reason a feeling towards it, an instinct which, when the 
 ray of new glory strikes upon it, shall open as a bud to the sun, 
 so that "we shall be transformed from glory to glory." 
 
 And so in this, the divinest of the governing powers, in this con- 
 sists the fact told us in the Scriptures, that we are made in the 
 " image of God ;" that in us finite beings, limited both in time and 
 space, there is a faculty that reflects his attributes, and with mani- 
 fold buddings forth and brightenings can be "after his likeness," 
 eternally renewed with new knowledges constantly received, and 
 new senses of them constantly arising in it. 
 
 This, that the "image of God in man" consists in his having 
 "the Reason," is, however, not my private opinion or my argu- 
 mentation, but the continued interpretation of the Universal 
 Church. I invent it not, but only expound it. 
 
 At the same time there are certain moral dogmas that shall lead 
 us to the conclusion if we assert them ; and if we deny them, or 
 any one of them, we shall deny the above conclusion. These are :
 
 140 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 First. " That morality and its laws are eternal and immutable, 
 not factitious or arbitrary." 
 
 Secondly. " That the law and ideas of good originate in and are 
 attributes of God, and are not derived from outward objects of 
 sense, or anything finite or corporeal." 
 
 Thirdly. " That the nature of man is the same in all ages, and 
 does not change from age to age" 
 
 Fourthly. " That there was a* Primitive Revelation of God to 
 man." 
 
 Fifthly. " That Society is a fixed and established channel of 
 moral law and moral knowledge." 
 
 And to these we may add, sixthly, " That language is not an 
 invention of man, so that the primitive men were dumb, and gradu- 
 ally, from the grunts and screams and howlings of mere animals 
 framed themselves that wonder a language ; but that in itself it 
 was the gift of Gf-od, and of his framing." 
 
 Now these six opinions are all taken for granted in that our 
 elucidation as true, drop one, and it falls. 
 
 Another observation will aid us very much to discern the import- 
 ance of the Spiritual Reason in man. We have shown how this, 
 in the peculiar and proper sense in which we have defined it, is 
 that wherein the "image" consists, and so it was held by the 
 Ancient Church universally ; so that in reference to God, it is his 
 image in us ; and truly so since it reflects his attributes and applies 
 the Spiritual, the Unseen, the Infinite to man, who is finite. This, 
 then, is its relation unto God, His image in man is the Spiritual 
 Reason. Now in reference to the first faculty of man's nature, 
 the Conscience, we have before made a remark that we give to it 
 a personality different from our own, and that, especially, when we 
 attribute unto it the high and supreme authority which Conscience 
 has, we speak of it not as "I," but as another being commanding 
 and ruling, by a legitimate and infallible sway, over that which 
 every man understands when he says "I." 
 
 But with reference to the " Spiritual Reason," as an acute 
 author has remarked, the Reason we consider to be our person- 
 ality ; the " I," it is the exponent of our whole nature, that which in 
 action reveals the man, the representative in action of his nature.f 
 
 * For an exposition of the circumstances of this, see first Book. 
 
 t " But though each man's desires and affections belong specially to himself,
 
 THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 141 
 
 Having thus seen the relation of the Reason to the man, we go 
 on now to examine its offices and operations ; and by the descrip- 
 tion we have given of it we see that to perceive the ideas that we 
 call moral is one of its offices, seeing that by means of it alone we 
 receive them, and not from external nature. The second office is 
 manifestly the retaining and keeping them in the mind as rules 
 and laws and patterns after which to model our action : and the 
 third is the applying them to our action. 
 
 Of these we shall at length enter into the examination, but pre- 
 viously to this discussion we would point out to our readers a criti- 
 cal remark of some interest. The attributes of God in the first 
 are perceived, in the second they are retained in the Reason as 
 "rules and models." Now models are in Greek 'Mai, (ideai) ; in us, 
 then, these are ideas, ideai, models, after which to form our conduct. 
 The Platonists transfer these ideas to God, and ask, are not these 
 the " models" in the Eternal Mind after which he made the world ? 
 This I conceive to be a fair representation of the Platonic doctrine 
 of "ideas," in their sense, and of its origin. 
 
 Again, the famous question of "innate ideas" herein is resolved 
 by the same consideration, a question which, as it is discussed, is 
 like the question as to whether the fire is in the flint or the steel : 
 and which we answer in this way, that the "Reason" is in man 
 the image of God, and in it, therefore, all ideas that are not of 
 sense, but of the "Infinite," "Spiritual," and Eternal, are innate 
 and existent as germs ;* but latent, the feeling, aptitude or instinct, 
 rather than the idea, so that of itself spontaneously,' except the 
 same idea in a definite external form be brought to the mind from 
 without, it could never arise to consciousness. But when the 
 Tradition and the Law, through the channel of Society, touches 
 upon it, then, from the union of the two, the idea is consciously 
 developed. The fire is in the flint, it is not in the flint ; it is in 
 
 while Reason is a common faculty in all men, we consider our Reason as 
 being ourselves rather than our Desires and Affections. "We speak of Desire, 
 Love, Anger as mastering us, or of ourselves as controlling them. If we decide 
 to prefer some remote or abstract good to immediate pleasure, or to conform 
 to a rule which brings us present pain, which decision implies the exercise of 
 
 Reason, we more particularly consider such acts as our own acts We 
 
 identify ourselves with our Rational part." Whewell, Elem. of Morality, vol. 
 I. \\ 58, 59. 
 
 * This manifestly can be so only because man is made in the image of God, 
 And only so far as he is so.
 
 142 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 the steel, it is not in the steel, but from the flint and the steel 
 together, it is. This, then, we count the resolution of the problem 
 of innate ideas. 
 
 Having thus touched upon these two questions, we shall now 
 proceed to the examination of the powers of the Spiritual Reason, 
 and their laws, in the next chapter. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Spiritual Reason. Its Modes. 1st. Moral Perception ; 2d. Moral Feel- 
 ing; 3d. Moral Principle. These established and illustrated. Mental 
 cultivation is different from moral, and cultivation peculiarly moral is 
 necessary. Is ever the Divine Spiritual Reason wholly undeveloped ? 
 Answered in the affirmative. The Reason may be developed consciously 
 and unconsciously. 
 
 IN our last chapter we have sufficiently established the existence 
 of the faculty, which we have called the ' Spiritual ' Reason. We 
 have indicated its object in the attributes of God, manifested unto 
 us as moral truths, eternal and immutable truths, brought to 
 bear upon us by the channel of Society. We proceed to examine it 
 a little more fully in reference to its action. 
 
 Now we have divided the operation of the Spiritual Reason in 
 a triple way, and if we take all ideas whatsoever that belong to it, 
 all that belong to the Infinite, the Spiritual, the Unseen, or, in 
 other words, all those qualities of which we may say, "God is," 
 for this is the formula that includes all the truths that are the ob- 
 jects of the Reason ; if we take these in their action upon the 
 mind, we shall find these modes exhaust that action, "It is per- 
 ceived," "It is felt," "It is held as a principle." These, then, we 
 make the faculties of the Reason as regards the eternal truths of 
 God, " Moral Perception," " Moral Feeling," " Moral Principle," 
 three faculties or functions of the reason in man, by which he 
 deals with truth. 
 
 Now at the very first we shall be met with the assertion, that 
 this is strange that we should, as it were, assign in the mind
 
 THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 143 
 
 a particular sense called "Moral Perception," as if one man 
 did not perceive the value of a Moral Truth as well as another. 
 With reference to this, we say that it is so ; that take any two men, 
 one man shall hear the assertion, or make it, that "God is good," 
 or that "man ought to be benevolent," or any other of the same 
 kind of assertions in the same way, as a man in a dream speaks or 
 hears. He shall say that they are true, just as he shall say it is 
 true that "twice two are four." Nay, he may be able to talk 
 about it and argue on it ingeniously and eloquently, but this shall 
 be in an outside, unimpressive, unimpressed, and unrealizing way, 
 a way not realizing his theme as a truth intimately suited to his 
 nature, not feeling it as of any importance, not applying it as 
 a living law of life. 
 
 We have known, we say, men purely and entirely selfish, so far 
 as God will permit man to be so, that had been taught in our Col- 
 leges that most destructive doctrine, that " Enlightened Selfishness 
 is the main and only principle ;" and we have seen their percep- 
 tion as to their own interest, tremblingly alive, watching, with a 
 prophet's eye, the slightest gloom over their horizon, guarding, 
 with an intense sensibility, against the remotest annoyance, 
 searching with microscopic vision for the smallest addition to per- 
 sonal comfort ; we ask, have not these men an intense " Percep- 
 tion " of self -interest and self-gratification, an intense " Feeling " 
 of self, have they not? and a fixed and set "Principle" of self, ' 
 guiding their conduct ? 
 
 And, then, let us try them with regard to any moral idea. 
 They have, as to it, no Moral "Perception," only a verbal, or 
 logical, or a merely mental one. They are like Gallic, who under- 
 stood Greek as a learned Roman, and Law as a wise governor, and 
 heard St. Paul and the Jews disputing about the highest truths of 
 religion, and thought them "words and names," having no reali- 
 ties to correspond ; or, like the acute heathen philosophers, who 
 thought that St. Paul preached certain new deities, because he 
 preached to them "Jesus and the resurrection," taking undoubtedly, 
 as St. Chrysostom remarks, "Jesus" for one new God, "Resur- 
 rection" (Anastasis,) for another. 
 
 This is the aspect such men turn to Moral Truth, an aspect 
 wholly unperceptive, insensible, frozen, dead, because they have 
 merely a verbal perception, while towards self, or ambition, or 
 money, their apprehension is endued with the keenest sensibility.
 
 144 CHKISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 Again, this their object, or passion, or feeling, shall dwell upon 
 their mind anxiously, their thoughts naturally shall run that way, 
 their feelings gather themselves around it as a nucleus of emo- 
 tion, perpetual meditation shall consecrate it, and all moral sub- 
 jects shall be unthought of, unfelt, unregarded. This desire shall 
 be a living spring of action perpetually at work ; consciously, so 
 that the man knows and feels it himself; and also unconsciously, 
 so that others feel and know it when he does not, a principle, in 
 other words an energio spring of action, ever at work, when no 
 moral truth, no moral principle ever abides with them as a motive 
 power. 
 
 Now we have given examples as to immediate deadness of the 
 mind as regards moral truth. And we say, that if we consider any 
 moral truth in these three modes, if we look to one class of men 
 and then to another, the one shall be found to hear a moral truth 
 announced in words, to apprehend the meaning of the words logi- 
 cally, mentally, verbally, yet to have no living and realizing sense 
 of its value, no feeling of its worth, in short, no perception of 
 its relation and connection with themselves. While to the other, 
 the words convey a truth which the individual apprehends as pre- 
 cious and valuable as his very existence ; and the very knowledge 
 of which will seem, as it were, to cast a glory over all nature, and 
 a new light over heaven and earth, to disclose a thousand secrets 
 and a thousand mysterious ties that bind us to all men, to open 
 and awake in our being new founts and sources of joy that before 
 had been hidden. 
 
 These are effects that each one perhaps in the world, at one 
 time, has recognized in himself or in others, a process that is per- 
 petually going on ; either the man becoming hard, and cold, and 
 dead morally, or becoming more and more sensitive to good. 
 
 The power of Moral Perception is as much a power and faculty 
 as that of Sensation, or that of Memory. Its objects are as defi- 
 nite, its action as manifest. We consider it to be determined, and 
 we shall give rules and laws for its exercise when we have suffi- 
 ciently determined the other two modes of the Spiritual Reason. 
 
 The first, then, of the faculties of the Spiritual Reason we con- 
 sider Moral Perception to be and we define it to be the " Spiritual 
 apprehension of the immutable truths of Morality." 
 
 The second mode of the Spiritual Reason, Moral Feeling, is 
 very hard, indeed, to define, or bring clearly out in words, so that
 
 THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 145 
 
 one should be able to recognize it as a moral faculty. Still let 
 the man who has ever felt a spiritual truth or apprehended it, let 
 him reflect, and he shall see that when once it has been spiritually 
 apprehended, it seems as if in the Inner Nature there were a hidden 
 Treasure-house* wherein it is stored up as a peculiar treasure and 
 a possession. It seems that therein the soul dwells with it, and 
 delights in it, and feels it to be a particular and precious acquisi- 
 tion, and rejoices over it. And when the man walks abroad, he 
 recurs to it again and again, with perpetual and constant re- 
 iteration of thought, as to a something that comes to him from 
 without, which he can feel and know to have become his own, and 
 yet cannot reveal in its fulness to others. 
 
 In fact, each Moral Apprehension of the kind I have above 
 specified becomes to the man an internal spring of action and life, 
 independent altogether of outward things, which is to him, if he 
 only avail himself of it duly and properly, what a new sense, un- 
 awakened before, would be as regards this external world. 
 
 We may not be able precisely to define this thing ; but take one 
 man, and you shall find him speak falsely in such a way as to show 
 that he has no sense or feeling of truth. Take another man, who 
 has once, in the way we have spoken of, apprehended morally the 
 value of Truth, and enquire of him and he will tell you, it may be 
 in a very confused and indistinct manner, and yet sufficiently 
 brought forth to declare the truth of this our exposition, " that 
 the feeling of truth dwells, he knows not how, in his being that 
 it is a new element, as it were, of his nature, which he constantly 
 recurs to with affection, and loves it, and struggles to retain the 
 perception as keenly as at first he felt it." 
 
 And so shall you find to be the case with the mind of man as 
 regards all of these that we have defined as Moral Ideas after 
 he has spiritually apprehended them there is a faculty of the Rea- 
 son that retains them, as it were, internally the faculty of Moral 
 Feeling. 
 
 The third mode of the Divine Reason, which we proceed to 
 define, is Moral Principle a thing very easily understood in fact, 
 but very difficult, as all these are, to explain in words. But let us 
 take an illustration. Suppose a man to make up his mind that he 
 
 * This is the Synteresis, or " Spiritual Treasury in the soul," of the ancient 
 moralists, that faculty of holy contemplation and meditation, whereupon 
 mainly the ripeness and mellowness of Christian character depends. 
 
 19
 
 146 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 attain wealth, and to make this the supreme end of his con- 
 duct, without any other rule. There is, we will say, in a neigh- 
 bouring bank an immense amount of specie ; he could lay a plan 
 and rob that bank, and become immensely wealthy ; he does not 
 do so, because " the chances are so great that he will be detected, 
 imprisoned, become infamous, and be prevented thereby from 
 attaining the object of his wishes," and so he does not so ; but he 
 would do so if he were absolutely, entirely certain that he would 
 escape, that he would thereby attain the wealth he desires, and 
 keep it. That man does not act from moral principle, but from 
 policy. His merit is as great, his moral deserving as much, as that 
 of the wolf who refuses the bait upon the trap which he has seen 
 take his brother wolf. 
 
 Again : you shall see another man, who having apprehended a 
 moral truth, having had it established as a feeling, has it also in 
 his Mind as a rule of action, that is not altered by any external 
 consequences that may take place, that holds it as a principle a 
 "principium," or "beginning" of action, before and antecedent 
 to which there stands no motive but itself; which is of itself a 
 fundamental motive, that is not based upon any other ; an ulti- 
 mate rule that decides all disputed points ; a measure which mea- 
 sures all actions, and is itself measured by no consequences. 
 
 Such, to the man of moral principle, is "honesty," "justice," 
 " purity," " veracity," or " mercy." Because he has realized 
 them as principles, he loves them for themselves, not merely for 
 the good they may bring him. And if a time come when they 
 bring evil, still he loves them, and acts upon them the more. For 
 the treasure of a moral principle, first apprehended, then realized 
 as an inward principle, and then applied to action as a law of life, 
 is an inward wealth that countervails and outweighs all earthly 
 gain or loss. This many men have felt and acted upon many 
 men, many women, and many children. This constitutes moral 
 principle ; this, and nothing less than this. 
 
 And we shall find many such persons in this world, men that 
 shall take a principle, because of itself, and suffer no accumula- 
 tion of profits, no pile of temptations, no assurance of impunity 
 to move them; but in little things, in great things, that shall 
 move onward measuring all things external by their internal 
 Law, or Rule, or Principle, saying, " Thus I do because it is 
 honest ; it is just ; it is pure ; it is true, or it is merciful." la
 
 THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 147 
 
 there not a difference between the one person and the other a 
 plain difference, and easily tested ? 
 
 This the old Christian Moralists called the " Spiritual Law," 
 as the other they called the " Spiritual Treasury," and thus I con- 
 sider that this mode of the reason is most manifestly and distinctly 
 established. , 
 
 These, then, are the three modes of the Spiritual Reason : 
 " Moral Perception, Moral Feeling, and Moral Principle." 
 
 Having, then, specified these three modes as to their operation, 
 we shall now proceed further on in the consideration of the sub- 
 ject. The faculty itself has been established. The modes of its 
 operation, and the object upon which it is employed, as well as the 
 channels through which that knowledge that is its object awakens 
 it in man, have been shown. Various observations, then, of the 
 highest importance are here to be made. 
 
 In the first place, from our examination it is manifest that men- 
 tal cultivation is not cultivation of the Spiritual Reason, but there 
 may exist a very high and complete degree of cultivation merely 
 mental, in conjunction with the most neglected and uncultivated 
 state of the Spiritual Reason. A man may be a most complete 
 Geometer, or Mineralogist, or Botanist, or Chemist, with his powers 
 of observation trained to the utmost acuteness of perception, and 
 his mental power, as far as these sciences are concerned, highly 
 exercised, and yet in the higher qualities of the Spiritual Reason 
 be more of a brute than an inhabitant of Caffraria, or a native 
 of New South Wales or New Zealand ; because all these sciences, 
 when reduced to the simplest elements, are founded exclusively 
 upon the ideas of the Visible, the Corporeal, and the Seen, the 
 objects, that is, of the senses ; and upon the Understanding or 
 faculty that deals with the ideas derived from the senses, not upon 
 the High Spiritual Reason, does proficiency in them depend. 
 
 We say, then, with reference to what are called the " Exact 
 Sciences," and the " Sciences of observation," that a training in 
 them does not necessarily awaken the Spiritual Reason in the 
 slightest degree, or exercise in any way its powers. We say not 
 that it is adverse any more than we say that any other exercise of 
 the mental powers is adverse, but merely that increasing the mental 
 powers, it leaves the moral poiver wholly unexerted and unexercised 
 so far as itself goes. i 
 
 And he that shall send his son to a school wherein his mental
 
 148 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 powers are trained in the very fullest way, and expect that by 
 reason of that training his moral powers shall be educated, without 
 a direct training addressed to them, that man has mistaken the 
 very nature of things. To call forth muscular power, you exer- 
 cise the muscles ; to give strength to the lungs, you train them ; 
 enfeebled powers of voice are strengthened by exercise and train- 
 ing directly applied to its organs : how absurd, then, the notion 
 that you add to the Moral Powers by utterly neglecting them, and 
 attending wholly to those powers that are exclusively mental ! 
 
 Teach the youth the Law of the Conscience, the first great step 
 in morality. Teach him how he must act in obedience to it at all 
 risks ; then point out to him its nature, and the progress he shall 
 make heavenward if he will only follow it. Teach him then the 
 law of the Spiritual Reason and its nature ; supply him with the 
 food for that faculty whereby man is in the "image of God." 
 Point him out the nature of the Affections, and the holy balm for 
 misery and sorrow that lies in them, the glory and the light from 
 heaven shed upon the meanest hut by them; the awful conse- 
 quences that arise from their perversion. Then instruct him in 
 the power of the Will, the energy residing in that spring of power. 
 Point out to the youth all this. Say to him, " this is in thee ; 
 all these powers and all these possibilities are in thee, by thyself 
 to be called out and exerted." And then show to him how the 
 Heavenly is a supplement of the Earthly ; how the pillar let down 
 from heaven unites with i^at which springs up from the earth ; 
 that not a want, not a weakness, not a misery, not a deficiency of 
 our Human Nature but has its fulness, its strength, its joy, its 
 sufficiency in the Divine Nature of God the Word, who became 
 Flesh for us. This, methinks, would be a direct moral training. 
 
 In short, I plainly say this, that in order morally to educate, 
 you must not trust to mental education, you must educate morally. 
 You must instruct in two things, which constitute together moral 
 education, and directly develope the Spiritual Reason. The first 
 of these is Christian Ethics, the " Science," as I have defined it, 
 
 "Man's Nature and Position:" and the second, that which is 
 |the crown and complement of this, " Religion." 
 
 And furthermore, the education in these two must not be Mental, 
 it Moral and Religious; not "discussions," "proofs," "essays" 
 uon "prayer," "hope," "good works," but prayer, hope, good 
 works done ; for mental discussings are not religious works done :
 
 THE SPIKITUAL REASON. 149 
 
 not discussions, proofs, essays upon conscience, reason, the will, 
 and so forth, but direct and immediate action and training in the 
 individual of these, the "governing" or moral powers. This I 
 count a distinction of the deepest importance, that " the Mental 
 Powers may be occupied about the Moral Powers, or moral sub- 
 jects derived from them, and the moral powers be at the same time 
 utterly unexercised." And teachers should most exceedingly be 
 on their guard lest at the very time they think they are the most 
 educating the moral powers, the mental powers only may be 
 engaged. A direct exercise of the mental powers is necessary to 
 give mental strength, so is a direct exercise of the moral powers to 
 give moral strength. 
 
 This discussion I have introduced here because here is the most 
 appropriate place for it ; and he that shall look back and consider 
 the nature of the Animal Mind or Understanding, and then shall 
 think upon the Spirit and its faculties, of which, as the first is 
 Conscience, so the most cultivable is the Spiritual Reason, he 
 shall see very plainly and manifestly the cause why it is here 
 introduced. 
 
 Another question concerning this faculty and its modes, is very 
 interesting, that is to say, " Can this faculty of the higher reason 
 be wholly undeveloped in any one ?" The answer is, " not in any 
 one that is in Society ;" for this, in its various organizations, is the 
 channel of " law" and of moral " knowledge" that awakens in each 
 and every one in Society, that is, in every one that speaks a lan- 
 guage, the Spiritual Reason more or less. Men, in order to be 
 brutes, in whom the image of God is not, must be retained apart 
 from all society, all language ; apart from the Family, the Nation, 
 and the Church, that they may be as the beasts are. And then the 
 Animal shall be dumb, without language, with the cunning of the 
 brute, and without the Spiritual Reason. The idea of Pleasure 
 and Pain it shall have as the brutes ; these shall be its whole 
 motives, and from them shall come its various notions. But the 
 ideas that are the objects of the moral power, as Truth, Mercy, 
 Justice, Benevolence, all these of which we may say " God is," of 
 all these it shall have no idea, the sense of them never shall have 
 been awakened : for Society it is that is the channel of these ideas 
 by which they are carried to each; individual, and awaken in 
 him the Spiritual Reason, whether he will or not. But in the case 
 we have supposed, it shall be as the eyesight which from birth has
 
 150 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 been unexcited by the light, when it should have been excited, and 
 is therefore dead and perished. 
 
 This is the only case in which such a thing can be ; but for the 
 man who is in Society, the circumstances of his position and the 
 effect of its schools, will even unconsciously develope in him, to a 
 more or less degree, the Spiritual Reason. 
 
 From this comes a question most exceedingly interesting, it is 
 this: "Can moral truth be learned unconsciously, without our 
 knowing that we learn it f Can the moral faculty be developed in 
 us without our knowing that it is so ?" A question this is, that is 
 most deeply important. It would seem, from the above example, 
 that it can be so. And when we look at the Principle of Imita- 
 tion, implanted as it is in man's nature, when we consider how far 
 Sympathy leads when we see how much the men of a nation, 
 even those that strive the most against it, are formed and moulded 
 into the National Character, we may be inclined to consider that 
 it is perfectly possible that the Spiritual Reason should be capable 
 of development, by means whereof the individual is utterly uncon- 
 scious that they are means, or even that they have any influence 
 at all upon himself or any other. 
 
 And herein do I consider a most important difference to exist 
 between the Conscience and the Spiritual Reason, that in refer- 
 ence to the Conscience, we must be "conscious" and know our 
 own act in order to profit by it; but with reference to the 
 Reason, first, we may act upon it ourselves Consciously; and 
 secondly, others without our knowledge may act upon it, and 
 form it in us of their purpose and knowledge, without our being 
 conscious of it. 
 
 And so the man who, with fixed mind, has trained himself in the 
 practice of the truths of Eternal Morality, he may go forth into 
 the world knowing the Inner Treasure and the Inner Law he pos- 
 sesses, and feel himself rich in them. And not less rich may he be 
 who, from the example of a Holy Home, from his sympathy with 
 pious relatives, and the practice of religion, has developed his moral 
 powers unconsciously, by moral action, learning moral truth by 
 acting upon it, and being taught so to act, and yet not knowing 
 it as teaching, or conscious of it as puch, until brought in contact 
 with temptations to the contrary evils. This to the young is no 
 small blessing.
 
 THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 151 
 
 But with regard to the modes of training and developing the 
 Spiritual Reason, we purpose to resume the discussion in the next 
 chapter. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 There are two states, one of Consciousness another of Unconsciousness. To 
 exhaust man's Consciousness is not to know all his nature. Unconscious 
 teaching of moral truth exemplified. Moral application of this and grounds 
 of it. The Reason may receive Spiritual teaching from Spiritual beings 
 unconsciously. Cultivation of the Reason produces, first, Moral Harmony, 
 secondly, Moral Progress. Moral teaching of Parents. Viva voce teach- 
 ing, its power. The Spiritual Reason awakes before the Mental Power is 
 ripe. Spiritual truth may become a family inheritance. Application to 
 Parents and to Children. Cultivation of the Reason in ourselves. Perfec- 
 tion of the" Reason. 
 
 THE question of the modes of exercising the Reason, this is to 
 be the object of the present chapter. This we account to be one 
 of the most important in all the range of Christian Science. We 
 have shown that the Reason, in one respect, is certainly awakened 
 unconsciously, which we count enough to enable us to go on and 
 advance farther upon the subject. 
 
 Now first, we will remark that in the life of man there are two 
 states, alternating the one with the other, the state of Conscious- 
 ness and the state of Unconsciousness ; the one corresponding gen- 
 erally to the time when the hemisphere which the individual 
 inhabits is presented to the sun, the other to that when its face is 
 withdrawn ; waking corresponding with the light, sleeping with the 
 darkness. We are Conscious in the one, Unconscious in the 
 other. These two are separate and distinct states of being, each 
 of them truly and really belonging unto man, each being a portion 
 of the circle of his existence. 
 
 The Germans, then, in their examination of nature and mind, 
 start upon a ground entirely wrong when they say, " when we 
 have exhausted that which is in mans consciousness, then we see 
 the whole of his mind and the whole of his nature." Herein they
 
 152 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 blunder, for because his "Consciousness" contains a great deal, 
 his "Unconsciousness" does not therefore contain absolutely 
 nothing. The negation of knowledge about it does not imply non- 
 being in it. On the contrary, it is a state, a very peculiar state, 
 and one which may be seen to be necessary for our physical being ; 
 and which, as nature is one, may also be very fairly considered as 
 having, if we only could adequately discern it, in itself a necessity 
 for our mental and moral nature. And so it may possess peculi- 
 arities of mental action, of moral and spiritual impression and 
 emotion, which, if we only could know them, would be of the 
 greatest value in explaining the mysteries of our being. But as 
 we cannot know them by Consciousness, or, indeed, by anything 
 else than by vague speculation on facts that can hardly be system- 
 atized, we will not press this thought any further than merely to 
 assert that the philosophy that says, "there is nothing in man's 
 nature that is not in man's Consciousness," and that "to exhaust 
 our consciousness is to give a complete view of mind," is and must 
 be false. 
 
 For men have gone to rest with the determination to awake at a 
 certain hour, and their minds, unconscious, and by no action of 
 which they were cognizant, has, in their sleep, measured time, and 
 at the appointed hour has awakened them. Students have retired 
 with their mind set upon a lesson half-learned, and have awakened 
 with it wholly understood. Nay, as in a case specified ty Rollin, 
 the anxious mind, without the knowledge of the individual, has 
 awakened his body, and he has gone through the whole process of 
 composing a copy of Latin verses set him as a task, as well as 
 through all the bodily labor of dressing himself, looking for his 
 desk and pens and ink, and writing ; and in the morning he has 
 been utterly unconscious of it. 
 
 Many other facts might be brought forward to show the fallacy 
 of the German fundamental, that " we are to search in our con- 
 sciousness for a complete account of our being ;" and to show that 
 the state of unconsciousness, instead of being a state of blank 
 negation, is a state of mystery, in which most certainly the nature 
 of man, physical, mental, and spiritual, is at all times alive and 
 capable of receiving impressions, and unquestionably is many times 
 actively and energetically at work when we know it not. A full 
 and complete account, then, of man's mind could be given only by 
 cataloguing and classifying the phenomena that occur, first, in the
 
 THE SPIRITUAL SEASON. 153 
 
 mind when it is "conscious," and secondly, when it is "uncon- 
 scious." And as the mind of man is regular, and his nature one, 
 we may not doubt that as we call one set of waking mental actions 
 "Memory," and another " Reasoning," and another " Sensation," 
 so if we could penetrate the " Unconscious" state of our neighbor's 
 mind, we should see belonging to that state peculiar modes of 
 action and impression and feeling needing to be classified by new 
 names and a new Terminology. And therein we should see how 
 it comes to pass that all theories of dreaming, &c., are so imper- 
 fect, being solely the applying to one state of mind of those terms 
 and laws applicable not to it, but to the contrary one ; and we should 
 learn, at least, in the absence of all means of penetrating into the 
 " Unconscious" state, to be a little more cautious in theorizing. 
 
 But more than this, we assert that there is in this world, even 
 in the waking man, a state in which the individual is taught, and 
 taught in the most efficient and powerful way, moral principle and 
 moral truths unconsciously to himself; and that acting first, he 
 then learns, after he has for a long time acted, the truth and ground 
 of action. 
 
 We look upon the child taken by his parents to the house of God, 
 and there, by the principles of Sympathy, Imitation, and Habit, 
 acting as others do, and feeling as others feel, to be thereby learn- 
 ing principles without knowing it, which years after he may apply 
 consciously, with full knowledge of their value. 
 
 We look upon the father, with his rightful authority, the natural 
 respect that he claims, and natural obedience he enforces ; and the 
 mother, with her maternal love and her sympathy and counsel, as 
 both of them thereby guiding their children constantly into action, 
 and habitual action, of which the children cannot fully see the 
 principle and consequences ; and yet by action so enforced upon 
 them, they plant in them that principle in their nature, so that it 
 really exists : and thus children receive moral and religious teach- 
 ing of which they are perfectly unconscious. We look, too, upon 
 the Nation as teaching in the same way, unconsciously ; the citi- 
 zen, from earliest childhood, being trained to act in certain ways 
 and habits and modes of thought that are exclusively national, by 
 means of habit, sympathy, national pride, and all those influences 
 which are comprised in what we call the Spirit of the nation. The 
 Family frames and moulds the child ; the Nation frames and moulds 
 the citizen, at a time when he is perfectly unconscious of that 
 
 20
 
 154 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 teaching ; nay, when he is incapable wholly of judging or of exert- 
 ing his mental powers, we will not say against it, but in any way. 
 The fact is a plain one, and we cannot get rid of it. It is a fact 
 of the moral position of man. 
 
 Another fact is equally plain in Morals. Get a man to act, and 
 act habitually, so that his actions shall imply a principle, although 
 he does not know it, and that shall prepare him for the acknowl- 
 edgment of the principle. This is a fact realized by every one, so 
 that there is indeed a moral teaching that is unconscious, as well 
 as a moral teaching that is conscious. The justice and grounds 
 of this I shall now proceed to examine, and they rest on these facts. 
 
 First. That " moral truths are the eternal facts of God's nature, 
 not factitious or arbitrary notions, but the same for all, and 
 immutable." 
 
 Secondly. That " man has a faculty made expressly for the 
 reception of these truths, which corresponds to them as does the 
 bodily appetite to food." 
 
 And thirdly. That " there are peculiar institutions organized to 
 teach them, for that express purpose the Family, the Nation, 
 and the Church, the teachers of which schools teach with an autho- 
 rity which they possess by their very situation, and are heard with 
 a reverence and obedience which are in their pupils by virtue of 
 their position." 
 
 This, then, I say, that Parents in their houses, in all their 
 actions, are teachers ; unconsciously often to themselves, uncon- 
 sciously, at the .same .time, to their children. The Family is a 
 school in which, of the father that is holy and good and true, of 
 the mother that is affectionate and loving, there is not an act, not 
 a word, not a perceptible emotion that does not teach ; not a com- 
 mand to a child to act in this way or that, even although that child 
 does not understand the principle of the action, that is not a teach- 
 ing of that principle ; and that this is so because of the nature of 
 the things taught, because of his nature in relation to them, and 
 because of the nature of the institution. 
 
 There is, then, a peculiar work intended to be done by certain 
 and peculiar workmen, and not by others.* And ftiis is a work that 
 nature gives to one class of workmen, the training in religion and 
 
 * There is another religious training of the young in the definite and dis- 
 tinct doctrines of the Faith by the Clergy in the Church. Of course this is
 
 THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 155 
 
 morality of the child by the Father and by the Mother in the 
 Home ; and it is capable of being done until the age of maturity ; 
 and is done by none else as it is by them. 
 
 Pious Father and pious Mother, look to this ! There is an influ- 
 ence, a power, an authority you have, by your position, over your 
 children. You can give it or delegate it to none. No amount of 
 talents, or learning, or educational ability, or personal holiness 
 can give to another, who is not their Parent, the power that you 
 have by your position as parent. Although your lips may stam- 
 mer and your knowledge be small, still from you to them (this is 
 the rule by nature) a word shall be as a kindling flame, as an 
 awakening trumpet, as the voice of doom, as the infallible oracles 
 of God. A gesture shall teach, a glance of the eye be remem- 
 bered for a life-time, an action bidden implant a principle. 
 
 For the parent in his home, teaching and acting upon God's 
 laws, has authority which none else has, and which he can transfer 
 to none else. And in tBe heart of the child there is a power, the 
 Spiritual Reason, whose food this teaching is, and which is adapted 
 so to receive it. 
 
 And upon this ground, the ground of the Spiritual Reason and 
 its peculiar powers, we warn parents, whoever may be the teacher 
 of their children in other things, themselves to take a share in the 
 religious and moral education of their own children at home ; for 
 they by their position, by the nature of Divine Truth, and the 
 faculty that receives it, can do what none else can do, and teach 
 as none else can teach. 
 
 And the same we say with regard to the Magistrate his posi- 
 tion is a natural position of authority ; the position of the ordinary 
 citizen towards the Magistrate is by his very situation a position 
 of obedience to him as the executor of the Law. The Magistrate's 
 actions, therefore, unconsciously teach; the acts he does have in 
 themselves a significance that is powerful to the heart of men, that 
 awakens in them knowledge and principle. And none can take the 
 Magistrates place, none can do the work he has to do, and make 
 the impression that he has to make but himself. And this not simply 
 because "we the majority will support him," but because of his 
 
 not excluded by the assertion in the text. A series of similar remarks may 
 be made upon it, as to its teachers, its faculty, and its material of instruction. 
 The student may follow this hint out for himself
 
 156 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 position, and the nature of that position in a divine organization, 
 the State, which cannot fail. 
 
 But we shall follow this out still further. Our reader will re- 
 member that the "Animal Understanding" is especially the sense 
 of the Visible, of those perceptions that come from the senses, and 
 of the ideas that are derivable from them, that the Reason is the 
 faculty of the "Unseen," the "Infinite," the "Spiritual," these 
 which are not perceptible by the senses. Let him then think that 
 close by us is the " Spiritual World" ; that in it we live, and that 
 in it besides facts that are Spiritual, there are beings and persons 
 that are so also. Then may he think that the faculty of the Un- 
 seen may receive instruction from Him who is Unseen and them 
 who are Unseen, and thus unconsciously the faculty of the Infinite 
 be taught by those who do not exist in Time and Space ; the things 
 of Eternity and Immortality be taught to us by beings eternal and 
 immortal, directly acting and influencing us immediately, und yet 
 not felt consciously; the faculty of the Spiritual from Spiritual 
 beings draws Spiritual sustenance. 
 
 Sincerely do I believe that moral teaching, yea, that moral 
 teaching which is the very highest and most effective, may be un- 
 conscious, when I see that the highest agencies to which we are 
 handed over by our Baptism in the Church of God are invisible ; 
 that their instructive influence, working upon us most decidedly 
 and most effectually, is yet wholly imperceptible to the senses, and 
 incapable of being brought to direct Consciousness. 
 
 By this train, therefore, of argument and elucidation, I consider 
 that I am sufficiently authorized to divide moral instruction of the 
 Reason into the " Conscious" and the " Unconscious." 
 
 Having thus come so far, it would, perhaps, be good to enter 
 into an examination of the modes of teaching ; but there are other 
 preliminary questions to be investigated previous to entering upon 
 this. And these are, first, " the effect of a development of the 
 Reason upon man." And secondly, the actual state in which Rea- 
 son is by means of " Original Sin." 
 
 The first of these questions, therefore, we shall first examine, 
 that is, the effect of a development of the Spiritual Reason upon 
 the mind and character of the individual man. Now, we have 
 shown that the Reason is, as it were, the mirror of God in man, 
 so that as the image of the sun is reflected in the mirror and re- . 
 duced, so in the finite man does the Reason receive the image of
 
 THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 157 
 
 God, and confer upon that which is finite the proportion of the 
 Infinite. 
 
 And secondly, that in the Reason awakens by cultivation the 
 sense of God's attributes, which in him are the glorious realities 
 of His being, and to us are the eternal and immutable laws of 
 morality. The two effects, then, I conceive of a cultivation of the 
 Reason to be, first, the establishment in the man of " Moral Har- 
 mony" ; and second, a constant and perpetual Moral Progress in 
 him, a constant and increasing advance in all things that are like 
 unto God. 
 
 And the measure of these is in no standard established by the 
 Society wherein we live, or by our own opinion, nor by the Rea- 
 son itself ; but solely in God and his Eternal Attributes, the stand- 
 ard is whereby we measure our advance. 
 
 And though our Nation should establish another, and by an 
 unanimous decree assert it though philosophers should prove and 
 demonstrate it in the most eloquent and convincing way ; still the 
 invariable institutions of Society, and the instinctive feeling of 
 man's Reason, shall manifest to him that of the "Moral Har- 
 mony" in the man, and of his "Moral Progress," there is no 
 other model, no standard, no means of advance, other than God 
 and His Law. 
 
 With regard to this which I have called "Moral Harmony," 
 when a man calmly and considerately looks at his own moral 
 nature, he shall see that the first stirring of which we call the Spi- 
 ritual Reason in him by nature, was the sense and feeling of the 
 want of "Moral Harmony" in all his powers -of Body, Soul, 
 and Spirit, the sense and feeling of the want (not merely defi- 
 ciency, which is one kind of want, or desire, which is another want, 
 but both together,) of an inner proportion of the facts of his whole 
 nature ; a feeling of incongruity and disjointedness, in which, recog- 
 nizing clearly that there are in him the elements of one harmonious 
 unity, he feels that these elements are all in a state of chaos, a 
 threefold feeling that his nature has a law, and is not yet obedient 
 to that law, but ought so to be. 
 
 This feeling of Insubordination, there is no man that has not 
 felt, the aspiration it is after unity of action in our nature, or 
 what ws have called " Moral Harmony." The feeling is one that 
 arises in almost all, and as the "sense of Responsibility" is the 
 peculiar and instinctive fe^liag of the first of the governing
 
 158 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 powers, the " Conscience," so this is that peculiar to the Spiritual 
 Reason. The one says, "Oh! that I could abstain from that 
 which is evil, and which my conscience tells me to be so, then 
 should I be good," the other says, " Oh ! that my nature in 
 thought, and word, and deed, in body, soul, and spirit, were ruled 
 by one LAW, its own inner law, then should my nature be as it 
 ought to be." 
 
 And then this feeling of the want of Law from internal search- 
 ing, turns the mind externally, and everywhere to the man the 
 same lesson is repeated. Society speaks to him of Law : all things 
 that meet his eye or his mind, suggest Law, Proportion, Harmony 
 of manifold parts, working in unity of end and object. The most 
 ignorant and uneducated sees it and acts upon it, and the deepest 
 natural philosopher, the further he goes the more he feels the pre- 
 sence in all things of Law. In man's nature only seems to be 
 the want of it, and this is combined in him with the deepest esti- 
 mation of its uses and its necessity. 
 
 Now to him who shall ask wherein the Reason in man is affected 
 by Original Sin, or wherein it manifests itself, let him look at 
 this desire of Moral Harmony, this sense of its want, this desire 
 towards it, and this exceeding conviction of its necessity ; and then 
 let him consider, at the same time, the internal conviction that the 
 healing power is not in or of man's own nature, there he shall find 
 Original Sin in the first of its effects upon the Reason. He shall 
 find that that faculty, which ought clearly and distinctly to repro- 
 duce in man, the finite creature of clay and the dust, the moral pro- 
 portions, if I may use the phrase, of the Infinite and Immortal God, 
 and thereby rule by His Law all elements of man's being ; this 
 divine faculty is reduced to the state of natural inability, which 
 I have before illustrated.* 
 
 Again, the consequence of a cultivation of the Divine Reason 
 from the previous examination, our reader shall see to be an 
 awaking, as it were, of his "Moral Apprehension," his "Moral 
 Feeling," and his " Moral Principle," to the truths of God's Being 
 as eternal truths of morality. He looks and sees the very word 
 awaking, implies previous blindness to those truths, he can see 
 also that by nature, apart from Society, man's blindness was total, 
 
 * With regard to " Insubordination of Natural Powers," and " Moral Ina- 
 bility," as effects of Original Sin, see the First Book.
 
 THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 159 
 
 and that even in man existing in Society, there is more or less 
 blindness or insensibility, even to the most striking and the most 
 convincing truths. The exemplification of this, the reader will 
 find under the articles upon " Moral Apprehension," "Moral Feel- 
 ing," and "Moral Principle." The effect, then, of "Original 
 Sin " upon our Reason, may be put down as secondly, " Moral 
 Blindness," or the incapacity of the mind in our present fallen 
 state for apprehending ', feeling, and applying to action moral 
 truths. 
 
 We are now prepared to enter upon the question of the means 
 of cultivation of the Spiritual Reason, the subjects previously dis- 
 cussed having been, as the reader may see, absolutely and entirely 
 necessary to the examination of it. There are manifestly in this, 
 two distinct divisions, the cultivation of it in ourselves first, 
 and then in others, these, for the most part, we shall discuss 
 together. 
 
 Now, according to the principles above stated, the most efficient 
 and most perfect teaching, is that of the Teaching Institutions, 
 embracing, as we have shown, instruction so completely in its 
 whole circle, that even acts not meant to teach, yet shall teach. 
 So mat the Father and the Mother, the Magistrate, the Clergy- 
 man, these of the Reason in the Family, the .Nation, and the 
 Church, are the best Moral Teachers, teaching consciously, and 
 also teaching unconsciously. 
 
 The power of their conscious teaching, seeing it is addressed to 
 a peculiar faculty, which is adapted to receive peculiar truths, 
 peculiarly apprehended, manifestly shall depend upon their hav- 
 ing themselves those truths, so apprehended, and so addressing 
 them. 
 
 Let the father, for instance, as a matter of feeling and of faith, 
 with his heart and soul apprehend the fact that " God is," and 
 that truth so apprehended seems, because of his feeling and faith, 
 easy to be spiritually apprehended by the child. The same truth 
 addressed, without any apprehension on the father's part, shall 
 make no impression upon the spiritual power of Moral Apprehen- 
 sion, whatever it may upon the mental faculty. 
 
 Again, we shall find that of the "Conscious Teaching" of 
 parents the truth must be peculiar. There shall be no difference 
 between the teaching of the parent in Arithmetic and the teaching 
 of any one else in the same ; but there shall be a vast difference,
 
 160 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 admitting both to be in earnest, in matters of Religious Faith. 
 Therein the parent, as we have noted, shall teach by a word what 
 others cannot by the labor of a day. 
 
 And truths of the Gospel shall have a capability of being taught, 
 , that falsehoods have not; for instance, that God -is most merciful, 
 or that there is an eternal punishment : this the parent shall 
 teach the child easily, but " that God, for his mere will and pleas- 
 ure, pre-doomed, irrevocably, an unborn man, millions of years 
 before his birth, to eternal hell, and that for his own glory," this 
 notion shall very hardly be taught by parent to child, because it 
 is so far from being a truth of the Eternal and Infinite God, that 
 it is utterly contradictory to all we know of God, and utterly ab- 
 horrent to His nature.* 
 
 Again, they must be addressed to the peculiar power suited for 
 their reception, not to any other. A mere assertion on the part 
 of father or mother of an eternal and immutable truth in which he 
 or she earnestly believes, in love to the child, this, as before noted, 
 shall convey that truth to the Spiritual Apprehension of the child : 
 let them set themselves to prove it, as Paley does, to demonstrate 
 it, and then they address to the mental powers that which should 
 be addressed to the spiritual faculties, and the immediate effect is 
 to close the mind against it. 
 
 To complete these remarks upon the " Conscious Teaching" of 
 the Parent, I shall adduce one or two other things that, from my 
 own observation, I have noticed ; and the first is, that " in in- 
 struction of a moral kind from parent to child, there is an extra- 
 ordinary power in i vivd voce' teaching above all book instruction;" 
 so much so, indeed, that it would almost seem that the same 
 truths, in the same words, being taught by reading, lose the power 
 of being morally felt and apprehended, and being spoken, have it 
 as if divine truth could be conveyed in its fulness only by the 
 living voice of affection and faith. But that the being read, in 
 
 * These extreme and harsh notions, preached of old by that peculiar class 
 called Supralapsarians, are not, I believe, held now by almost any of the very 
 respectable denominations that call themselves " Calvinistic." They have 
 modified the system by other elements, and soothed and softened such asperi- 
 ties as this is. In fact I believe the bold and harsh declaration in the text is 
 such that it could only be made hundreds of years ago, in a foreign land, by 
 men frenzied with Papal persecution, and fighting vehemently against Papal 
 man-worship, and Romish ideas of human merit.
 
 THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 161 
 
 some measure, should interpose a non-conductor, so that only the 
 mental statement is received, and not the spiritual influence. I 
 cannot account for the fact, but I can, by a long experience, see 
 that it is so. In the moral teaching of parent to child, there is a 
 force in "viva voce" instruction which no printed lesson has. 
 
 Again, another remark I shall make is this, that in the child 
 the Spiritual Reason is awake and acting long before the mental 
 powers I will not say are ripe, but before they begin to act with 
 any degree of perceptible effect. The mother who, under these 
 conditions above specified, shall try it with regard to her baptized* 
 child, shall often find it so ; shall find that of the things of the Infi- 
 nite and the Spiritual, there is an apprehension and a power of 
 Knowledge and Obedience long before that mental f acuity, f whose 
 instructor is experience, shall have reached to anything like ripe- 
 ness of its powers. 
 
 A third remark is this, that the formation of character depends 
 mainly upon the development in youth of the Spiritual Reason as 
 to its appreciation of Divine Truth, its unconscious development, 
 or, if I may use the expression, its institutional development by 
 the Parent in the Family. The Sense of Veracity, for instance, 
 or of Justice, or of Benevolence, or of Honor, or of Purity, when 
 awakened in the Reason, in the family, under the moral tuition of 
 the parent, shall become, as it were, an element of the being of the 
 individual, and a plastic principle whose close adherence to his 
 nature shall frame and mould him to a higher harmony and a 
 nobler type of existence than otherwise the man could have at- 
 tained. And the moral character so formed shall be calm and 
 tranquil and self-possessed ; it shall be living and fresh, and free 
 from the affectation and the tendency to grotesque extremes that 
 now usually pursues those who, by themselves, attain to an insight 
 into any moral truth higher than those around them hold, and then 
 try to realize it and carry it out in their lives and actions. 
 
 To the parent then, we may say : " Here is a sphere wherein, 
 by means of God's ordinance, you are placed, in which your posi- 
 tion makes you a moral teacher, addressing the highest faculty, 
 
 * I say " baptized child," inasmuch as a human Iseing who is really in 
 covenant with God, whether Adult or Infant, in reference to " the things 
 unseen that fade not away," and the " powers of the world to come," is in a 
 quite different position from him who is not within the covenant. 
 
 t The Understanding, a logical or reasoning power. 
 
 21
 
 162 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 and gives your slightest word a weight that your weightiest ex- 
 hortations and most vehement and energetic efforts cannot have 
 out of it, and makes even your unconscious actions means and 
 elements of instruction. Here, then, remember is your great influ- 
 ence ; here, your formative power : before all things the duties of 
 this sphere must be done, and if neglected, then the consequences 
 are, within the same sphere, evils and keen misery such as many 
 Parents have endured and lamented. 
 
 And for the child, let him know that the station of a Father or 
 a mother is of itself to be viewed with the deepest reverence, not 
 merely because of character or mental power or influence, but 
 because of their position as Father and Mother. Let the child 
 know, then, that the first of all injuries to himself is to rise against 
 that influence, to rebel against it, to scorn and despise parents. 
 And that it comes not merely from the Providence of God, or from 
 his threatenings in Holy Scripture, that the child so doing shall 
 be unhappy in life and unsuccessful, but from the law we have 
 specified whereby the Spiritual Reason of the father is made the 
 ruler, former and teacher of the Reason of the child, the one as 
 central, and the other as revolving around it. 
 
 And as if a planet could be supposed endued with rational 
 powers and will, and to desire freedom from the forces that cause 
 it to revolve around the sun ; the accomplishment of that wish ' 
 would be the whirling of it off to the abyss of ruin, and the fulfil- 
 ment of the desire would be of itself destruction : so it is by the 
 natural law of the case with the Child towards the Parent ; the 
 nature of the act makes the nature of the consequences, and the 
 denunciations of the Scripture are prophecies of them. 
 
 We have made these observations so much at length, because 
 we believe that the mass of the moral delinquencies in Society, as 
 well as the deterioration which we see very rapidly taking place in 
 many classes, arises from the neglect of this, the Institutional 
 Education and training of the Reason by Parents in their proper 
 sphere. And therefore we have set forth the law and the grounds 
 and consequences of it, perhaps, a little more amply than we other- 
 wise would, in proportion to the other parts of our work, have done. 
 
 The same doctrine in reference to the State and to the Church, 
 we shall only say applies in the same way in regard to the pecu- 
 liar ideas which it is the intent of these schools to awaken and 
 train in man; the ideas, namely, that concern "right toman"
 
 THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 163 
 
 and " duty to God." We leave them, therefore, to the student to 
 develope for himself. 
 
 Having gone so far in the examination of the Spiritual Reason, 
 it now remains to show the best modes of exercising it, and bringing 
 it to perfection in ourselves, as we have in others. Remembering, 
 then, that the modes of its action are "Moral Apprehension,"* 
 " Moral Feeling," " Moral Principle," and supposing that hitherto 
 the individual has lived by chance, loitering along the pathway of 
 life, without moral cultivation from himself or moral attention to 
 his own state, "how shall he begin?" Suppose that his Spiritual 
 Reason is so blunted, that as an animal his mind is occupied only 
 with animal pleasures, and that the Highest Good, in his estima- 
 tion, is so far from being any of the goods of the Spiritual and 
 the Infinite, that it is altogether of Time and Sense ; so that 
 "truth" to him is nothing, and "holiness" and "purity" nothing, 
 and "justice" nothing, but "names and words invented by dreamers 
 which wise men use to govern them with, but which no man per- 
 mits to stand in the way of his own interest when he safely can do 
 it."* Suppose he take "all men to be rascals if they durst,"* 
 " Each man to have his price,"* " all virtue to be, at bottom only 
 selfishness";* in other words, suppose his Spiritual Reason to be 
 utterly uncultivated, (as far as God permits it to be so,) and utterly 
 blind. And yet should the man, hearing the assertion, or we will 
 say reading it in this very book, that there are Spiritual Truths 
 that are realities that there is a spiritual sense of them that 
 may be awakened as a blind man should hear of the sun, and 
 moon, and stars, and of the sense that perceives them, then 
 honestly desire that in him that sense might be awakened, and 
 those truths by him perceived how should lie proceed ? 
 
 I answer, there being three modes of the operation of the Rea- 
 son in reference to any moral quality, " Justice," we will say, or 
 "Benevolence," or "Honesty," he is not to begin by an endea- 
 vour to sharpen and excite by mental means his apprehension of 
 that quality, for this will not bring it about. Reading about it, 
 even in the most sincere and ardent way this is so far from pro- 
 ducing Moral Apprehension that it may blunt it, and even in some 
 
 * All these are sayings of worldly-wise men, who no doubt drew them from 
 solf-experience.
 
 164 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 men it may altogether eradicate moral principle. This, then, mil 
 not do.* 
 
 Again : he may think that by bringing himself in contact with 
 " circumstances" that shall excite the emotion, and cultivating feel- 
 ing upon the particular virtue or moral quality that he can so 
 stimulate the growth as thereby to cultivate the Reason in the 
 highest degree. This ends in a stimulability of the feeling, a 
 resting in that feeling, an unreality which every one that is honest 
 and true can see ; and may terminate not in moral growth of the 
 affection, but in the mental and literary affectation of extreme sen- 
 sibility. Such has often been the case with those who have begun 
 sincerely to cultivate the Moral Power by the way of exciting their 
 own feelings or their mental powers. 
 
 I have before said that in moral progress the Conscience, and a 
 fixed determination to follow it must be always the first step. 
 Supposing, then, this step to have been taken by the individual, 
 I say, let him try in the way of principle ; that is to say, let him 
 take that moral principle, of whose power he may be utterly igno- 
 rant, may neither feel nor apprehend it, let him take it into life as 
 a rule, a principle of life. He has hitherto not cheated, because 
 of divers and sundry advantages which not to cheat brings him ; 
 let him set aside the " advantages," and their result the non- 
 cheating, and establish for himself as a law of life internal, affected 
 by no external circumstances whatsoever, but measuring them all, 
 honesty. And if for a day he act upon it, if for a day he use it 
 as a principle, if but for a day it be made a " governing princi- 
 ple," so that it rule, secondly, "rule always," and thirdly, "that 
 it rule according to its law," as I have expounded with regard to 
 the principle of the " governing powers :" if this principle to 
 which he was we will say in the morning utterly blind and insen- 
 sible, be willingly and steadfastly adopted for one day as an inner 
 " rule," swaying and bearing supremacy over circumstances: if 
 he act so for a single day, then, before the day is over, his appre- 
 hension of it shall be more or less opened his feeling of it awak- 
 ened, his power to act upon it as a rule increased very perceptibly. 
 The acting upon Principle, not feeling or arguing, is the way 
 wherein, as regards ourselves, we are to cultivate the Spiritual 
 Reason. 
 
 * See upon this subject the Chapter upon Habit, in Book IV.
 
 THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 165 
 
 And when the three powers or modes of the Spiritual Reason 
 are brought, all of them, into action under the condition that it 
 should rule ; secondly, should rule always, and thirdly, should rule 
 according to its law ; then the result upon the character is the 
 gradual growth of that "Moral Harmony" that we have spoken 
 of; that internal law whereby the mind is governed and ruled, so 
 that it is uniform with itself : and there is no jar, no sense of dis- 
 agreement, but all the powers work on together equably ; the 
 manifold workings of the powers and parts of the whole nature, 
 the body, soul and spirit, all consciously uniting in harmony of 
 action : this is the completion and perfection of the Reason, and 
 it is brought about by the Reason as a governing power, guiding 
 its own operation or workings according to its laws. 
 
 This question, then what is the Law of the Reason ? manifestly 
 shall complete our examination of the subject, and show the per- 
 fection of nature as far as this faculty is concerned. This shall be 
 the subject of the next chapter. ^^ $ * 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The highest law of Reason is not Nature, nor the law of the Family, or of the 
 Nation, but the Faith of Christ, and this in a three-fold view. 1st, as 
 written; 2ndly, as enforced by the Church and in the Church; 3dly, as 
 dwelling in the hearts of the Sanctified. Other practical inferences. The 
 source of fanaticism is in denying its food to this faculty. Practical con- 
 clusions. Exhortation to those who are the teachers of this faculty to teach 
 without fear. 
 
 WE have now examined the subject of the Spiritual Reason with 
 the exception of its "Law" and its results; that is to say, that 
 " Law," by which, according to the third principle of the governing 
 powers laid down in the First Book, it may be brought to the 
 highest practical perfection in the man ; and secondly, the effect 
 and consequence upon man's nature of that perfect operation of 
 the faculty, which we have indicated as " Moral Harmony and 
 Moral Progress."
 
 166 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 To enter, then, into the examination of these two subjects, and 
 fully to consider them, this will complete the discussion of the 
 Keason. 
 
 We are now to seek the law of the Spiritual Reason, and as a 
 guide in this, the reader will please bear in mind the principle be- 
 fore maintained, " that no governing Power can be a law to 
 itself." He will also remember, that it is not a "law" of the 
 Reason we seek, but " the supreme Law of the Reason" that which 
 will embrace and in itself contain all others, the Law emphatically. 
 
 For to him that has been separated from all Society, by the 
 very fact of the harmony that goes through the whole world, and 
 the analogy that all things have to one another, and the spiritual 
 meaning that they bear, this the external harmony of Nature shall 
 become a law to his Reason, shall interpret itself with a mani- 
 fold significance, and shall be an awakener of the Moral Appre- 
 hension, the Moral Feeling, and " the Moral Principle " in him. 
 Thus Nature shall be a law, and to him, if Tie have none other, the 
 highest law and bounden therefore upon him. 
 
 Again, to him that is in the first form of Society, the " Family," 
 where there is no Nation nor Church, to him the law of the 
 " Family," enforcing itself upon his actions, is a law of the Rea- 
 eon, and, as we have shown, will, from the primeval revelation, 
 bring him knowledge, and enforce in him, even unconsciously, 
 action that developes the Reason. This, then, becomes to him a 
 higher Law than that of Nature, with higher knowledge, which 
 does not supersede the other, but makes it, as it were, weightier 
 and broader: so that what was the sole law is now associated 
 with another, and transfers to it so far its supreme authority, be- 
 coming itself an auxiliary. 
 
 Again, the man is a member of a Nation and then to his Spi- 
 ritual Reason there are three laws, the one of the harmony and 
 analogy of nature, the other of the Family, and the one that is 
 to him the supreme Law of the Spiritual Reason, the law of the 
 Nation. Not simply its enacted or statute law, but its " Univer- 
 sal Law," its " Common Law," everything that dwells in the uni- 
 versal consciousness of the nation, as a general rule of action and 
 government for all men of that Race, and Nation, and Country ; 
 and this, then, shall be to the man the Supreme Law of hia 
 Reason. 
 
 It will be seen that it is taken for granted that the analogy and
 
 THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 167 
 
 harmony of nature teaches so far the truths of Eternal Morality, 
 that the law and knowledge of the Family teaches the same, 
 and the law of the Nation, even of pagan nations, the same.* 
 
 This may be manifestly seen from the fact that whatsoever "Law" 
 prescribes anywhere, it prescribes it as good, and it is bad by 
 ignorance, "corruption," "mistake," "misapprehension," or by 
 stepping out of its sphere, but not by intention, or by its nature, 
 And everywhere it has a corrective in that which it supersedes, for 
 it cannot contradict, only confirm. 
 
 But higher and higher as these laws go from the outward har- 
 mony of Nature, up to the law of the Family, and from it to the 
 law of the Nation, a 'higher law still is to be sought, in a more 
 complete and perfect declaration of God's Nature and Will, that 
 is to say, in the Revelation of Jesus Christ, the institution of his 
 Church, the Regenerating power of the Spirit of Christ. In Hia 
 truth and His light, it is to be sought: "I am," he says, "the 
 way, the truth, the life; no one cometh to the Father but by 
 
 me."t 
 
 This, then, is the highest law of the Reason, the supreme one, 
 that which does not destroy the other laws of the reason, but con- 
 firms them all and agrees with them all, while itself is supreme in 
 authority over all, the Faith of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 We take "the Faith " for the whole Gospel, all that is written, 
 in the Holy Scriptures as the written word; the same word upheld 
 as doctrine and law of life by the Universal Church ; and the 
 same as enforced by the Holy Spirit in the hearts of the " Com- 
 munion of Saints," the body within the Church of the Sancti- 
 fied. This "the Faith of Christ," as, first, written in the Scriptures ; 
 2ndly, enforced doctrinally and practically by the Church Uni- 
 versal ; and thirdly, as living in the life and actions of the sanc- 
 tified ; the word and faith of Christ in this three-fold aspect is the 
 highest Law of the Spiritual Reason, that which brings it to per- 
 fection, " this Faith of Christ our Lord." 
 
 * I would recommend upon this last point, my readers, to obtain the " Hul- 
 sean Lecture for the year 1846, by Richard Chenevix Trench." The sub- 
 ject hinted at in the above paragraph is there gone into fully, and it is shown, 
 "that Christ" was "the desire of all Nations," and that even "Heathendom 
 prophesied of Him unconsciously." This, in fact, is the title of the book. 
 The style is very beautiful, and the sentiment and argument exceedingly 
 interesting. 
 
 f John xiv. 6,
 
 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 And here natural Ethics and spiritual Ethics touch ; here is seen 
 the truth of that principle, " That Revelation is the complement of 
 natural Religion and Grace of Nature." For here is seen that 
 the Spiritual Reason, in man, can be only perfected by Him who 
 is in God, " the Divine Word ;" or, as it otherwise may be translated 
 the Divine (Logos) Reason. 
 
 Nay, when we look at all those truths of natural Ethics, that 
 upon this subject we have brought forth in our last few chapters, 
 we shall see that each and every one of them has in the Gospel a 
 corresponding truth of Revelation, which completes, perfects, and 
 crowns it so that although Human Nature is by itself a wild tree 
 that bears no fruit ; yet upon it, by its being, as made in the Image, 
 a true and perfect fruit-bearing scion, may be grafted by Almighty 
 Grace, that shall bring forth much fruit. 
 
 To illustrate this, we take " this Spiritual Reason" to be our- 
 selves personally, that which is truly and properly "L/'* or what 
 represents the being and attributes of the individual ; and at the 
 same time, in this, the Reason, the wisest in the Church, nay, 
 even the Heathen, f who have thought most deeply upon it, have 
 placed the "Image," or resemblance of man to God. 
 
 Now when we look to the being of God we see that the Son is 
 in the Father, the "Divine Reason," the "Word," the "Manifesta- 
 tion of his Glory," the "express image of his Person:" being,' 
 therefore, in the Father, as the " Spiritual Reason " is in us ; with 
 the essential difference, that in the Almighty Father, since He is 
 Infinite in power, knowledge, wisdom, and all attributes, the 
 "Word," and "Wisdom," and "Manifestation " of the Father is 
 the Son, a Personal Being, who is "God of God," "Light of 
 Light," " very God o/God."J And we, made in the Image of God, 
 
 * See a previous quotation from Whewell's Morals. 
 
 f Plato for example. 
 
 t The word " of" in the phrases, " God of God," " Light of Light," "Very 
 God of Very God," is often read as if it were the sign of the possessive 
 case, as in the phrases " the son of the king," which is identical with the 
 " king's son," the " nature of God," that is " God's nature." Whereas the 
 word " of" is the emphatic word, answering to "tx " in the Greek original, or 
 " de " in the latin version, being the preposition " of," as in the phrase " he 
 was descended of noble ancestors." 
 
 The English preposition " from," perhaps, would be in our present idiom 
 the clearest and most unambiguous translation, thus, "God from God," 
 "JLight from Light," " Very God from Very God," expressing the great fact
 
 THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 169 
 
 are made in the Image of the Word : and the faculty that shows 
 that Image, the Spiritual Reason, this faculty has for its supreme 
 law, the Faith of Him who is the express Image of His Father's 
 person not the image, as Reason is in us, of the Infinite in the 
 Finite, but, the image in that He is " God of God," Light of 
 Light," "Very God of Very God." 
 
 Such a natural congruity is there between the Relation of the 
 Word to the Father, and the Relation of the Spiritual Reason to 
 the man. And secondly, in the fact that man was made in the 
 " Image of God," that is of the Word, which image, by the Fall, 
 is defaced, but not become the image of the devil, but of Adam, 
 a man fallen, yet still a man. These two natural congruities 
 should surely indicate to us the truth of this that I have asserted, 
 that the perfection of the " Spiritual Reason" in man, is the " Faith 
 of Christ the Word." A natural truth of the higher Ethics is thus 
 completed by a truth of Revelation. 
 
 And he that doubts need not seek far ; in the most ordinary 
 Ethical books of the Heathen before Christ, he shall find the na- 
 tural side of this truth stated as a fact, yet losing itself in 
 theory and speculation, and folly, because the Spiritual comple- 
 ment of it had not yet been revealed. And in the Church's 
 doctrine of the Divinity of the Word, and His relation to the Father, 
 he shall find the other part, a truth of Nature and a truth of Grace, 
 the one answering to and completing the other, from both which 
 combined, we draw our inference, that to that natural faculty in 
 man, which we have called the "Spiritual Reason," the supreme 
 law and means of bringing it to the highest perfection, is " the 
 Faith of our Lord Jesus Christ." 
 
 We might, as other philosophers and other moralists have done, 
 dwell upon the other Laws of Reason, which have been once to 
 
 of the " Eternal Generation of the "Word." That from the Infinite and Un- 
 originate Father came forth eternally a personal being, the Word, who is the 
 "Manifestation of His Glory," the "Express Image of His Person," the se- 
 cond person of the Holy Trinity, who " was incarnate and died for us ! The 
 agent (if we may use the phrase) of the whole power of the Father ; the sole 
 access and adit unto the Father for all men ; the exclusive fountain, the one 
 source of all Spiritual Life to man, is the Word eternally proceeding from the 
 Being of the Father ; and yet eternally dwelling in Him. God then or God, 
 light OF light, very God OF very God, is the Almighty and Eternal Son in his 
 relation to the Almighty and Eternal Father. 
 
 22
 
 170 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 individuals or even to races and nations, supreme laws of the Rea- 
 son ; and which are in being still, but not supreme. We might, as 
 Wordsworth, gaze upon the face of Nature and from it struggle to 
 call forth the Law for man's being. We might bring up, again, the 
 reasonings of Plato, or of Aristotle, or the lofty Stoic guesses at 
 the truth under laws that were to them true and the highest they 
 had, but were iwt the ultimate, the adequate, and supreme law. 
 But we are n-ot as Plato, or the Stoics, or Aristotle. For us the 
 Supreme Law of the Spiritual Reason is in the Faith of Christ, 
 finally revealed and manifested. 
 
 It is literary trifling and absurdity to go back and imagine that 
 we can place ourselves in the situation of the Heathen Philoso- 
 phers. The same train of argument which in them, at their date, 
 was deep and solemn enquiry, in us shall be frivolity and affecta- 
 tion. We cannot place ourselves in their position, and it is absur- 
 dity to imagine it. Instead therefore of going over their speculations 
 to their results, we take the natural facts they had, and show the 
 completion of them in the faith of Christ. For a Supreme Law 
 we point not to outward Nature, to Platonic or Aristotelian Morals ; 
 to the Grecian "sense of Beauty," or the Roman sense and feel- 
 ing of Justice not to these but to that upon which all these 
 rested, u Nature ;" and then to that which all these had not, " The 
 Faith of Jesus Christ;" and then, according to the maxim which 
 makes and constitutes our Philosophy, " Cf-race is the complement 
 of nature.," we say, the Faith of Jesus Christ is that alone which 
 as its Supreme Law perfects the Reason of Man. 
 
 Here then have we reached the highest point of Natural Ethics 
 and the lowest of Spiritual Ethics, the point wherein the one unites 
 with the other ; and as, in reference to the " Natural Con- 
 science, we showed that to the justified alone was the Conscience 
 perfect, so now do we assert that to them who are " Sanctified " 
 only is the " Spiritual Reason" perfected; and this takes place in 
 both its results of "Moral Harmony" and "Moral Progress," by 
 the constant influence of the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ upon 
 the Spiritual Reason of the Sanctified. The examination then of 
 these two points, although we are led in search of them and 
 towards them, and even within a very little of them, still lies out- 
 side the domains of Natural Ethics, and within those of Spiritual 
 Ethics, it is .therefore deferred to a future time. We shall
 
 THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 171 
 
 therefore recall some other characters of the Reason that illustrate 
 the views we have given. 
 
 We would point out that the Reason is the faculty of the " Un- 
 seen," of that which is not tangible by the senses or to be brought 
 under their examination and side by side with this we would place 
 the Apostle's declaration, that "Faith is the substance of things 
 hoped for, the evidence of things unseen ;"* his declaration also 
 that " the things that are seen are temporal,"! that is, they flee 
 away and abide not for ever. So that it would seem that the 
 power in us by which when it is awakened we discern the Unseen, 
 this power is the Spiritual Reason, and Faith is its act when under 
 Grace. And, when God has awakened it, then only can it exert 
 itself in Faith, as the Scripture says, "Faith is the gift of 
 God."{ 
 
 Hence from Natural Ethics and from Revelation we have three 
 truths. 
 
 First, There are things Unseen, which alone are real and fade 
 not away. 
 
 Secondly, There is a power in man that may be awakened to see 
 them, or may be left unawakened, so that it does not see, but still 
 it is the sense of them. 
 
 Thirdly, There is an influence that awakens and perfects that 
 power. This influence is what the Scriptures call the " Grace of 
 our Lord Jesus Christ ;" and the sight by it awakened is called 
 " Faith." Here again Nature rises upward, and the truths of which 
 it speaks in dim enigmas are declared and interpreted by Revela- 
 tion. The nature and effects of living faith and the enlightening 
 and illuminating influence of Grace upon the mind, these explain 
 and make clear this doctrine of natural Ethics. 
 
 Again, that it is the " sense of the Unseen." This, combined 
 with that other fact, that " it may be trained unconsciously" this 
 bears witness to the Church's doctrine of the " Communion of 
 Saints," and the influence that the angels of God and the Holy 
 Departed have upon us. 
 
 For indeed the Spiritual Reason or Sense of the Unseen, is so 
 far the witness and the faculty of a Spiritual World, that as no man 
 who has the eye, the sense of natural vision, can be without a con- 
 
 * Heb. xi. 1. f 2 Cor. iv. 18. J Eph. ii. 8.
 
 172 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 viction that he sees, so with regard to an Unseen World, men may 
 chase away the doctrine, call it absurdity, reason, argue against 
 it as they will, and yet they cannot by all their labor get rid of it. 
 It will cling by them. 
 
 Cultivate, then, in your children the sense of the unseen world 
 of Spiritual things the feeling of the actual and real influence 
 of the Spirit of God, and of the guardianship of his " holy angels," 
 and of the " Communion of Saints," and the sense of the Un- 
 seen shall receive its due nutriment in the truths of Revelation, 
 and shall produce a sanctifying result upon the character, in 
 that calm and holy habit of meditation which seems to be the 
 highest grace of the perfect Christian mind. 
 
 But chase this belief away ; sneer it down ; call it superstition, 
 &c., and you shall find that the faculty will not be deprived of 
 some food ; it sought for that " above human reason,"* and could 
 not reach or obtain it, so it shall take refuge in that which is 
 " against reason." Not being fed with the truths of the Unseen, 
 it will turn to the garbage of the "Absurd." He that cannot 
 believe in "one Baptism for the Remission of sins," he shall 
 
 * There are " things above reason," and " things against reason." This 
 is a plain and manifest distinction, referring to the limited nature of man 
 during his present state of existence with his present faculties. It asserts that 
 there are truths in his life revealed to him which, while he takes them to be 
 true upon the evidence of the revelation of God, still, owing to the limited na- 
 ture of his faculties, and their adaptation only for this gross and earthly state 
 of being, he cannot comprehend the grounds and reasons of them. They lie 
 far above him, in a purer and clearer atmosphere, in which his mental facul- 
 ties cannot live. And to rise to them a change must take place in him, from 
 the animal and earthly to the pure celestial body. 
 
 These facts, whose reason is above our faculties, while we know them to be 
 facts, are called mysteries. Such are the mysteries of the Atonement, of the 
 Incarnation, of the Spiritual Body, of the Marriage Union, of our Regenera- 
 tion and Spiritual Life through Christ, of the nutrition of our souls by His 
 Body and Blood, as our bodies are nourished by the Sacramental symbols of 
 bread and wine all these are mysteries, facts revealed to us by God, to be 
 received in faith, and yet incapable of being comprehended. Above reason, 
 they are not against it ; for we can, by reason, refute all gainsayers, whafr- 
 ever arguments they may bring forward. We can refute the opponents of 
 these truths, but we cannot explain the truths themselves. For the explana- 
 tion we must wait for a future life and a loftier state of intellectual being. 
 Such is the distinction between " things above reason" and " things against 
 reason," a distinction every student must see to be of deep importance in 
 Moral and Religious Science.
 
 THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 173 
 
 believe in "Baptism for the dead" General Washington by Jo- 
 seph Smith, the Mormon. He that " cannot believe in a Church 
 of God existing upon the earth with its Divine Powers," he shall 
 come to believe that " an impostor, half crazy, half knavish as 
 Matthias, was the Shiloh."* And they who from youth upwards 
 had set at nought all the truths of the Christian faith, they shall 
 be converted by the frantic ravings of the Millenarian prophet, 
 announcing the doom of the world, and the triumphant entrance 
 of the Messiah into, not Jerusalem, but New York ! 
 
 Give the man the truths of the Unseen World, the truths " above 
 reason," revealed in the word of God, upheld and interpreted by 
 the Church, impressed by the Holy Spirit ; and " the sense of the 
 Unseen," the "Spiritual Reason" in him shall embrace them na- 
 turally, easily, readily. Keep the truths of the Faith of Jesus 
 Christ away, and any absurdity, any superstition, any folly, he is 
 prepared for. The natural faculty that is deprived of due and ap- 
 propriate food and denied it, this faculty shall, whether in body, 
 soul or spirit, thus become a depraved appetite, feeding upon 
 garbage. 
 
 Upon these grounds, I say, the man who trains up his children 
 without the truths of the Faith of Christ our Lord impressed upon 
 their mind, this man (especially if they be unbaptized) by the very 
 nature and reason of the case, trains them up as victims, by him- 
 self made ready for any absurd and unreasonable fanaticism. If 
 they are baptized in the Church of Christ, then have they the 
 teachings of the Spirit pledged to them, and of the Communion 
 of Saints, and this in its secret operations upon their souls, may 
 perhaps, through God's mercy, in some degree supply the neglect 
 of the parents, without, in any degree, relieving them from the 
 guilt. 
 
 Again : I would point out how much the fact that the Spiritual 
 Reason can be taught and trained by an influence of which it is 
 unconscious, illustrates the operation upon us of God's Spirit, 
 whose teaching is known but by the fruits it brings forth ; how 
 much it agrees with the truth of the Scriptures, that " the angela 
 minister to us," and that " our dead friends may not be apart, but 
 near to us." All these, which are matters of Revelation, at the 
 ame time are matters of natural belief, which, because man has 
 
 * See Stone's " Life of Matthias the Impostor.'*
 
 174 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 a " Sense of the Unseen," he will not give up to any argumenta- 
 tion whatsoever. And the fact and truth which the man can see 
 in his "family," that Moral Teaching may be true and real 
 teaching, although it is not consciously perceptible to the subjects 
 of it, this aids him to see that all these influences, which are as- 
 serted in the Holy Scripture, and yet he feels not consciously, 
 may still exist and be good, and have a true and real effect. 
 
 And again : we find the faculty ever seeking " Moral Harmony," 
 ever testifying by its desire after it to the natural want of it, yet 
 ever struggling towards it as an object. Here, then, in its sense 
 of incongruity, unsuitableness, inability in the natural state here 
 is its testimony to the doctrine of Original Sin. Ten thousand ora- 
 tors may prove to their own satisfaction that " men are now born 
 as the first man came out of the hands of his Creator," but the 
 "Spiritual Reason" of each man shall say "No" to their elo- 
 quence and their arguments. It shall say, " I wish, desire, seek 
 after, aim at ' Moral Harmony ;' and in Nature by itself I feel it 
 not." And the inner voice shall confute the eloquent argumenta- 
 tion of the orator and man of genius, and to the plain preacher 
 of the Gospel, that proclaims the doctrine of Original Sin, that 
 "man is fallen," it shall uphold and support the truth he asserts. 
 
 Having thus brought this subject to a conclusion, so far as it is 
 in the province of Natural Ethics, I would recapitulate ; and from 
 that recapitulation enforce another inference that may be drawn 
 very distinctly. 
 
 First. There is a certain, distinct and clear body of definite, 
 eternal moral truths, which are ever the same, and do not vary 
 with circumstances. 
 
 Secondly. These have Institutions organized for the purpose of 
 teaching them, which do, under all circumstances, teach consci- 
 ously or unconsciously. 
 
 Thirdly. There is a peculiar faculty in each individual man, 
 adapted to receive these truths. 
 
 Therefore to them that have these truths, and know them by 
 earnest and true realization, whether Parent, or Magistrate, or 
 Clergyman these three principles say, " That which you know 
 as Divine Truth of the Spiritual Reason, that teach fearlessly, 
 earnestly ', zealously : and no matter though a multitude were 
 against you ; the Harmony of Nature, the frame of Society, and 
 its institutions, nay, the very unseen world itself, Angel and Arch-
 
 THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 175 
 
 angel, Cherubim and Seraphim, shall lend you aid; and in the 
 very being and frame of the individual man, even cf him who 
 opposes you, therein shall that faculty that is the Image of God 
 desire and yearn after the Eternal Truths that come from God ; 
 and a word of these from you shall be a seed that shall bear fruit 
 after years are gone. 
 
 Let the Parent, then, not fear his own weakness, or the Magis- 
 trate his want of eloquence, or the Clergyman his want of influ- 
 ence : if the "eternal truths" are in him held and acted upon\ 
 really and honestly, he has a power that shall and will tell in- 
 the strongest way. 
 
 But if he only talks, and is " eloquent and impressive," or even 
 learned, in a mere logical, or mental, or rhetorical way, upon things 
 of which he has no "Spiritual Apprehension," or Feeling, or 
 Principle ; he may be sure that he cannot communicate to others 
 that which he has not himself. He need not wonder that in 
 uttering to children, or pupils, or citizens, or congregations, the 
 words and bare verbal enunciation, the outward shell of that Eter- 
 nal Truth, that they should not make quite so great an impression 
 as the same words shall from the mouth of the man who feels, and 
 apprehends, and realizes that truth, as a Law of life more pre- 
 cious than gold or silver, and which he would be hewn asunder 
 before he would transgress. 
 
 This subject, then, of the Divine Reason, we here dismiss, leav- 
 ing it here, because only under the light of Revelation can it be 
 completed ; but yet so far as Natural Ethics go, discussed and 
 examined, we trust satisfactorily. The remainder of the subject, 
 the "Moral Harmony" of the Spiritual Reason, and its progress 
 to perfection, properly belong to Religion.
 
 BOOK IV. 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Heart or Affections. Its meaning. Towards Persons. Appetites and Desires 
 towards Things. It is towards Persons in Society. Society in reference 
 to this Power is a School of Love. Errors that may be avoided by this con- 
 sideration. Use of Instinct in Animals. Moral Principle and Rule of the 
 Affections deducible from this. "What is "Nobleness" of Heart, and what 
 Meanness. 
 
 WE have entitled this book of the "Heart or Affections," 
 thereby manifestly taking the one phrase and the other to be 
 identical, as to that particular class of emotions that they signify. 
 And we have given the two titles to the book, because each of 
 these words is liable to be used in a somewhat varying sense, so 
 that either might be mistaken for something that we do not mean ; 
 but the union of the two in the title, and the use of the one as an 
 equivalent to the other, will, better than any formal definition, 
 convey to our readers that particular idea that we wish to give to 
 them. 
 
 By the "Heart," then, "or the Affections," we mean to imply 
 the third of the " governing " powers of man, those four powers, 
 namely, by which we take him to be a moral being, and which 
 we take him to have, as a living creature having a "Spirit;" 
 and the animals not to have, as not having a "Spirit." While 
 we admit, at the same time, that as being an "Animal," he 
 has the " Animal " Mind and all its qualities ; just as being an 
 "extended" and "material" body, he has the qualities that 
 176
 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 177 
 
 belong to "matter filling space." But as a "man," lie has to 
 these last two, superadded the " Spirit " or "Rational Soul," of 
 which we have taken " Conscience," " Reason," "the Affections," 
 " the Will," to be the four faculties. 
 
 For this word " Heart " which we have employed, there are 
 doubtless many significations which may occupy the attention of 
 those that wish to quarrel and argue upon words ; but there is no 
 doubt at all that the one predominant meaning, setting aside pecu- 
 liarities of idiom and metaphor, is that one which we have given. 
 And he, who in ordinary discourse hears the word, save that its 
 meaning is determined to some other of the other senses by the 
 connection, he shall generally understand "the Affections," and 
 these Affections, as not belonging by any means to the brute crea- 
 tion, but as peculiar to man ; in one word, he shall conceive it to be 
 peculiarly a Human faculty, and only by a very high metaphor, 
 which every one that hears shall understand to be an exaggeration 
 of speech, shall he apply the words to the brute creation. To the 
 Dog, the Horse, or the Elephant, those that come nearest to the 
 human race of all mere animals, the word "Heart" is never ap- 
 plied. This, then, is one distinction which serves to mark off and 
 limit the meaning, that it is a quality that belongs not to brute 
 animals, but to men 
 
 And when we look at it as so limited to man, notwithstanding a 
 multitude of meanings derived from various idioms and various 
 circumstances, still in our own Anglo-American, and, indeed, I be- 
 lieve in all the Gothic dialects, we shall find the predominant sig- 
 nification to be that the Heart means the "Affections." 
 
 True, there are other meanings. It means memory, or seems 
 to do so, in that strange phrase, "getting by heart," commemo- 
 rated and illustrated in the epigram : 
 
 " John has no heart, they say, I do deny it : 
 . He has a heart and gets his speeches by it." 
 
 Again, in the dissolute times that followed close upon the Eng- 
 lish Commonwealth, there was a translation into English of a 
 French Idiom, in which profligate men spoke of "Affairs of the 
 Heart," (affaires du Cceur,) meaning seductions and adulteries; 
 and licentious women spoke of " wanderings of the heart," (egare- 
 mens du Coeur,) meaning thereby adulterous love and profligate 
 amours. And there is undoubtedly a whole range of English 
 
 23
 
 178 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 literature, that of the age of Charles the Second, in which this 
 word is so employed as the vile translation into English of the 
 word coeur, employed in as vile a sense in French. But it is now 
 antiquated, the word has cast off the meaning, and but few would 
 understand it in that sense. This meaning, then, being merely 
 the idiom of a time, and now fallen into almost total disuse, we 
 shall pass by, having noticed it merely for the sake of dis- 
 tinctness. 
 
 Again, there is another idiom which is naturalized in our 
 language, that which makes the " Heart " to be an idiomatic 
 expression for courage or strength of mind as noticeable in the 
 phrases, " Take heart," "Faintness of heart," "In good heart." 
 And this we at once distinguish as an idiom, by using it in the 
 phrase in that sense ; but even in the same words apart from the 
 phrase in an utterly different meaning. For instance, we say such 
 "man is of a good heart," this is a moral commendation, but 
 " be of good heart " denotes courage. 
 
 Again, there is in a passage of the Bible an idiomatical use of 
 it for the " Conscience," by the verbal translation of which, the 
 verse is made almost unintelligible, "Brethren, if our heart condemn 
 us not, then have we peace with God ; if our heart condemn us, 
 God is greater than our hearts, and knoweth all things."* A pas- 
 sage in which the Greek and English are only verbal, not real 
 translation of the Hebrew word, "leb," (heart,) meaning "con- 
 science." 
 
 So far with regard to the idiomatic meanings of the word. We 
 shall now proceed to the metaphoric meaning. It means unques- 
 tionably, in metaphor, the innermost part of anything ; as for 
 instance, "the heart of the earth," "the heart of the country," 
 "the heart 6f a tree," all which are figurative meanings for 
 the " innermost part." And in this sense it may employed as a 
 metaphor for the " whole moral nature " of man as the inner and 
 most mysterious part of his being, but still this shall be only 
 metaphoric, and not a proper and peculiar sense. 
 
 Another metaphoric meaning, derived undoubtedly from the 
 heart, the physical organ, is that which signifies that part wherein 
 the strength lies, as " the farmers are the heart of the country;" 
 and " to give heart," is to give strength. 
 
 * John iii. 20.
 
 THE HEAKT OR AFFECTIONS. 179 
 
 Putting aside all these peculiarities, we come to this conclusion : 
 the word "Heart, "in the idiom and metaphor of the English 
 language, applied to persons in respect to Human Nature, means 
 the " Affections." And this, in our language, is the predominant 
 meaning, and the one generally understood by every one that hears 
 the word, setting aside the peculiar cases under the peculiar cir- 
 cumstances above mentioned, in which each one naturally under- 
 stands the exception, and takes it to be an exception, although 
 perhaps the principle upon which he does so, is not present to his 
 mind. 
 
 Having thus, with regard to this subject, obtained as much 
 knowledge as we can obtain from the verbal examination, we shall 
 now go onward to the examination of the thing itself, that is, the 
 governing power, which we have called by the name of the Heart 
 or Affections. And the first and most evident character of the 
 Affections is this, they are turned towards persons, they dwell 
 upon persons, and in persons have their end and object. We have 
 " Appetites " for things that are immediately required for the sup- 
 port of the body, as for food and sleep ; " Desires " for other 
 things which we would possess, as money, real estate, power. 
 " Appetites " and " Desires " for things, but " affections " for 
 persons. 
 
 It is plain that the " Appetites " belong to the body, and that 
 in a manner so exclusive, as in the animals, almost to shut out the 
 idea of reasoning or mental interference in any way. There 
 seems to be a peculiar conformation in the animal, by which a cer- 
 tain particular kind of food shall, to the sense, give an overpower- 
 ing pleasure. And he that shall look at the intense occupation 
 and hurrying eagerness with which animals eat their food, he need 
 not doubt that " appetite " in the brute is almost entirely exclu- 
 sive of reasoning ; brute-mechanical, if we may use the word, 
 depending upon the " Sensation " almost wholly, and its power of 
 being moved in a particular way, by a particular object. And 
 that these appetites are required for the direct and immediate sup- 
 port of the body. 
 
 Now " desires " are likewise directed towards "things " as well as 
 the " appetites ;" and when we look at these last, we find that there 
 is not one of these that does not tend just as directly, though more 
 remotely to "physical good," the good of the body, as the
 
 180 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 " appetites " do, though it be through a more complex series of 
 channels. 
 
 We find also of each and every one of the desires, that although 
 they exist in a vastly superior degree in man still in as distinct a 
 way do they exist in animals. Desire of applause is very manifest 
 in the dog, and is in him, I conceive, precisely the same quality 
 that in Achilles and Alexander was the "love of immortal fame." 
 " desire of property " is seen in the monkey, the jack-daw, the ant, 
 the marmot, and seems to be the very " wish for accummulation " 
 that works so strongly in the miser and rapacious man ; and so we 
 may go on, and we shall see that there is not a desire, how mightily 
 soever it may have wrought in men the most renowned, that does 
 not exist the same in kind, though not in degree, in the animals. 
 
 These " desires," then, we call Desires of the Animal Mind : and 
 if we are asked, why they are more complete and more perfect in 
 man, being the same in kind ; we say, because in him " the under- 
 standing" or mind that deals with objects of sense, and the notions 
 derived from it, is more perfect ; as in him, it dwells in his nature 
 in union with "the Spirit" or Moral Being of man. *. 
 
 We come next to " the Affections," or Heart, and in their case 
 we see a plain and direct distinction, at once recognized by all 
 men, between them and the Appetites and Desires. These last, as 
 we above said, are towards "things," the appetites directly, with 
 hardly any mental interference in the case of the lower animals ; 
 the " desires," with more interference of the reasoning powers, 
 are towards "things," the Affections towards Persons. 
 
 Having thus established this very important distinction, we shall 
 proceed to the further examination of the subject. There are 
 Affections they tend to persons, not to things, and are thus dis- 
 tinguished from Appetites and Desires. Have not brutes " Affec- 
 tions ?" We answer, they have very manifestly desires directed to 
 the qualities of individual men, who are persons, and to those of 
 other animals, who are not persons, (at least the phrase "person," 
 we have never heard applied to any animal, and we do not believe 
 it can properly be used of such, Spiritual beings only are per- 
 sons). But, omitting altogether the conclusions that might arise 
 from this last consideration, we remark that the " Moral Affec- 
 tions " tend not only to " persons," but to "persons " in "Society" 
 
 This phrase, "Society," we at once see means something else 
 than the instinctive bond that unites a communion of ants or bees
 
 THE HEAKT OR AFFECTIONS. 
 
 181 
 
 together. We have already shown that it is a channel of mani- 
 fold teachings which, by means of the natural principles of Imita- 
 tion, and Sympathy, and Obedience, train the individual man 
 whether he will or no, in moral knowledge, that so it is actually 
 a "School," in reference to the faculty of man's nature, called 
 the Reason. Again, with reference to the " Conscience," as has 
 been seen, Society is to each man a " Probationary Institution," 
 one that exercises in manifold ways the first of his moral powers, 
 the sense of Responsibility. And so, in reference to "his Af- 
 fections," Society is a " Home," a natural place of training, 
 wherein the " Heart " is taught in a congenial atmosphere to ex- 
 pand with "love," and "sympathy," and "respect," and "kind- 
 ness," and all the feelings that tend to our neighbour's good, and 
 seek it mainly and rejoice in it, and so by blessing him do, in a 
 reflex manner, bless ourselves. 
 
 Now Society has, to each maw, these uses, and he feels it and 
 knows it to be a fact. It is, a " School of Knowledge," an " In- 
 stitution that trains him in the law of his nature," a " Proba- 
 tionary state," that exercises his " Conscience," and a " Home," 
 wherein the " Affections " are developed. Then let us take the 
 animals, the ant, or the bee, or the beaver that live in what you 
 may call a sort of society, have they, by it, more knowledge than 
 the ant, or bee, or beaver of a thousand years ago ? are they more 
 disciplined ? or, indeed, disciplined at all ? Is it to them any 
 "trial state" preparatory to another? or, to them, any training 
 school of the " Affections ?" 
 
 No certainly, Society to man is an idea that involves all these 
 things ; to animals their union is entirely mechanical, caused solely 
 by " instincts" and " adaptations of nature." Instinct seems to do 
 for animals that which the Affections do for man ; and to do it in 
 such a way that there shall be no moral, or even mental progress 
 of the individual or the race, no teaching involved or implied. 
 
 Having presented these views in this condensed form, upon the 
 nature of Society, as related to the affections, I would ask, do not 
 these views suppose GOD ever present in this world, in Providence, 
 in Power, in Fatherly Justice, and in Tenderness ; as a God that 
 "teaches" all the sons of men in knowledge of His Law and of 
 His Will ? The Almighty and Omniscient teacher, as the God 
 who from birth unto death, unto each son of man, affords trial 
 after trial, so that no man passes away as guilty before the throne
 
 182 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 of God, that his own spirit shall not acknowledge that he wil- 
 lingly sinned against all light and all knowledge and all opportuni- 
 ties ? Do not these views imply Him, as the Almighty who 
 organized this world as a "home," wherein He, as a father, being 
 present, trains His children's hearts to love ? Is not this so, by 
 our own Nature in its Moral Being, by Society working upon that 
 nature in its several ways ; and by the revelation of God's Nature, 
 as He has manifested Himself in His Holy Scriptures unto 
 man? 
 
 I would ask, then, of the Fatalist, how it is that he, in defiance 
 of all this, has dared to destroy this knowledge and this belief? to 
 put this truth aside and to take the circumstances that happen in 
 these wonderful institutions of nature, and freeze them into an 
 icy sea of destiny and doom? to say "there is no end of good 
 in these, no uses appropriate to the nature of God and man So- 
 ciety is no divine institution for appropriate purposes no, it is an 
 accumulation of circumstances under one fixed law, that of Fate, 
 and absolute Doom!" 
 
 The tenet has been held, and by good and religious men ; 
 I ask, can any man hold it that once casts a thought upon " So- 
 ciety " as a Divine organization, for the express purpose of train- 
 ing the Moral or Spiritual Nature of man, in his Conscience, his 
 Spiritual Keason, his Affections, his Will ? Certainly not. No man 
 who has calmly thought upon the Spiritual Nature of Man, and 
 the uses of Society in reference to this nature, can hold such 
 views. It is only by looking to "Power," as the sole attribute of 
 the Almighty ; and by forgetting that man has a moral Nature ; 
 and that there are means and institutions to train it, which are as 
 permanent as the existence of the Human Race, and are the in- 
 stitutions of an ever present God, that the religious man can 
 possibly hold such views. 
 
 Again, another person sees the phenomena of man and of So- 
 ciety as facts only, and thinks not upon the Moral and Spiritual 
 Nature of man, or the Institutions for instructing it, and then 
 knowing and feeling that "destiny," or "fatalistic doom" is no 
 fit explanation, says " God organized this world upon a system of 
 laws, which laws were to act, and by their infiniteness bring under 
 their rule all natural consequences whatsoever :" and thus with 
 him this world is actually a machine in which physical laws are the 
 wheels, and " cause and effect " the "power and weights;" certain
 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 183 
 
 causes bringing about certain effects mechanically. His theory 
 evidently supposes that God acted at the beginning so far as 
 making a system first, and secondly "setting it a going;" but that 
 He has never acted, nor ever interfered since. To him who holds 
 this Mechanical Theory of the Universe, I say, if he had looked 
 at the nature of man, then had he seen influences above all merely 
 "physical law," in the possession, by man, of an actual Spiritual 
 Nature, one of the very qualities of which must be actions origin- 
 ating in no antecedent physical cause. He hskd seen also influ- 
 ences, which arise not in a single " cause-and-effect," physical 
 law binding all things in a chain to the original movement of the 
 system at the beginning of the world, but in three schools for 
 teaching, each existing in the one many-formed and many-purposed 
 institution of Society, and each working out the Will of a present, 
 ruling God. 
 
 Think of the four links in the chain of being; of God, first; 
 and secondly, of Society, the organization instituted to teach 
 His Will ; and thirdly, of the Spiritual and Moral faculties of 
 man, which by nature belong to him ; fourthly, of Man as the in- 
 dividual to whom they belong ; and hardly shall you fall into these 
 errors. But without considering the existence of Society as a 
 moral fact, and the possession of Spiritual Faculties by the man, 
 look only upon the Power of God, and over the manifold tide of 
 events, the millions upon millions of facts and influences that bear 
 upon the man, and hardly shall you escape manifold errors. The 
 fact that God is a Spirit, and that man has a Spiritual being, these 
 two are united together by the fact that there is a Spiritual Teach- 
 ing, and Institutions for that purpose organized. Forget the two 
 uniting links and there is a great gulf between man and God, 
 which you shall in vain attempt to bridge over with systems, 
 whether Fatalistic or Epicurean, Stoic or Platonic. 
 
 " Society," then, " Human Society," considered as different from 
 mere animal communism, which depends solely upon instinct sup- 
 plying common uses of bodily support by a kind of natural 
 "division of labour" Human Society is distinguished from this 
 brute-mechanical Socialism of the beasts, as spreading over all 
 nature in one wide family, or " School of the Affections," wherein 
 God as "Father of the Family," is the present teacher, to them 
 who will learn. 
 
 A teacher God is in Society, even by the scourge of affliction
 
 184 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 and the fire of suffering, to them that will learn. For clay is har- 
 dened and wax softened by the same fire ; the same punishment 
 which subdues the good, only exasperates the evil : and so con- 
 vinced are we of this, that we will say that there is no affliction, no 
 suffering, even no wrong and no evil or injustice, that is, by his 
 fellows inflicted upon a man, that may not by himself be made the 
 means of calling forth more clearly in his heart the fire of the 
 affections, and rendering him towards man more lovely and more 
 loving ; and no joy of theirs that shall not awake in him a like 
 emotion, and by Sympathy, give him, as it were, a two-fold plea- 
 sure, one of his own and one of his neighbour's. 
 
 Having thus examined these two points* in reference to the 
 "Heart" or the "Affections," we would bring forth a moral in- 
 ference deducible from them, and urge it upon our readers. 
 
 The "Affections" are directed towards "persons" and not 
 " things," and in them receive their full and perfect exercise and 
 gratification. The " Appetites" and the " Desires" these are 
 towards things. This is the law of their nature, and so a rule 
 sf it. 
 
 And from it comes most plainly the principle of Moral Action, 
 that when the affections are directed exclusively towards the Per- 
 son or Individual, without respect to the advantages that may come 
 from the Affection) then are they so far pure and noble. He 
 that has friendship and love towards any individual, must keep 
 altogether out of thought the benefits he may derive from him in 
 consequence of that love of his. If once the thought of these 
 benefits be mixed in with his Affection and calculated upon, then 
 desire takes gradually the place of affection, which becomes de- 
 cayed, and may perish utterly. 
 
 So it is with regard to the child in respect to the parent and the 
 parent in respect to the child. Nature tells us that filial love should 
 be directed to the Parent as Parent ; and the moment the child 
 begins to think of loving, because of benefits or advantages, of 
 measuring its love by these advantages, and weighing so much of 
 the one against so much of the other, so soon does Affection de- 
 part, being adulterated with Desire. So with the Father towards 
 the Child : Paternal Affection, if mixed up with thoughts of benefit, 
 
 * That the affections are towards " persons" and these " persons in So- 
 ciety."
 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 185 
 
 is alloyed and changed into something else that is not " affection," 
 but is selfishness and "calculation." And so of the Husband 
 "towards the Wife," of the betrothed or engaged towards one 
 another. Let Father or Son, or Brother or Sister, or Husband or 
 Wife, or any else whose bounden duty it is to render " Affection," 
 let them permit selfish considerations to enter in, and " the De- 
 sires," whether of money, or comfort, or station, or of anything 
 else to intrude, and they shall find out, that craftily as they may 
 disguise it, there is an instinct that pierces through this conceal- 
 ment. And they may find, too, that even in the Social Nature of 
 man, there is such a law as this : " He that hath, it shall be given 
 unto him, and he shall have more abundance, and from him that 
 hath not shall be taken away even that he hath." 
 
 I say not this under any high romantic feeling, or in any hasty 
 fervor, but in a common sense way, as a natural inference from 
 a natural rule. And seeing the amount of unhappiness that has 
 been in families for the last seventy or eighty years, seeing also 
 how generally men calling themselves Moral Philosophers, have 
 taught actual selfishness as a rule,* I believe that the cause and 
 effect are these two " Selfishness in matters of the Affections," 
 taught by these philosophers and acted upon by persons that 
 knew not the wrong, and then misery as a consequence from that 
 action. 
 
 Now, all the relations existing between persons wherein " Affec- 
 tion" is due, all these are attended with a multitude of actual and 
 real advantages over and above the Affection, upon which, as the 
 Highest Goodf of them all, the relation is founded. Each and 
 all of them, in their natural and proper operation, tend to heighten 
 the "Affection," but if each and all of them were gone, then the 
 Affection should be retained. Now, the assertion we make is this : 
 that if any of them separately, or all of them together, assume 
 the influence, or be the leading principle, then the Affection is de- 
 graded and debased into a " desire," and the relation is injured 
 in its integrity and pureness. 
 
 The husband that truly loves his wife, loves her the more for 
 her various wife-like qualities, for everything that makes him in 
 his house more happy, more comfortable, more respectable. All 
 
 * The Moral Philosophy of Paley haa been commonly called the ''Selfish 
 Philosophy." 
 
 t See in Book I. the doctrine of the Highest Good. 
 
 2-4
 
 186 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 these qualities become, as it were, fuel to increase his affections 
 and love. But he that desires to have all these, and for that reason 
 takes a woman to be a wife, he may find himself disappointed. 
 And so for every relation in life wherein affection is due if men 
 would have all, let them have this the first. 
 
 A parallel case I may state as confirming this conclusion. I 
 have known many men who because they were religious prospered 
 in worldly affairs; and I have noticed that just as soon as they be- 
 gan to substitute the consequence as a motive for its cause, to say 
 in their hearts, " I shall remain religious in order that I may 
 prosper in worldly affairs," just so soon their religious feeling be- 
 gins to decay. The one fact and the other depend upon the same 
 principle. 
 
 Now, wherein " the Affections" are kept clear from the Desires 
 by the man, with his own will, consciously, there is seen a peculiar 
 character of mind easily recognized by all, and in the common 
 language of all given as a distinguishing name. This word is 
 "Nobleness;" and he is "nolle" in Heart who to all to whom 
 affection is due gives that affection unalloyed by the "Desires" 
 and "Appetites." 
 
 "Nobleness of mind" we shall therefore use henceforth as a 
 word to which a distinct and definite meaning in Ethical Science 
 is attached. And opposite to it directly is what we call Meanness, 
 the character of which is that it makes "affection & pretence and 
 a means for gratifying and indulging the "Desires," lawful, in- 
 deed, in themselves, if lawfully used, but when taking the place of 
 the Affections and substituted for them, most evil. 
 
 That the " Affections" are intended for " Persons" in "Society:" 
 from this the second principle, a multitude of practical inferences 
 of the highest moral value are deducible ; but these, most properly, 
 shall come under the particular examination of the several rela- 
 tions to which they are referred, and therein our readers shall find 
 them. In the meantime we go on to another part of this subject.
 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 187 
 
 CHAPTER H. 
 
 Sympathy. Two kinds. Passive and Active. Passive Sympathy, the sense 
 of harmony of feeling with others. Illustrations of it and its uses. A 
 moral precept founded upon it. Second kind of Sympathy, the active 
 power of entering voluntarily into the feelings of others. It is vicarious. 
 Misery is in this world more than happiness for man unprotected. But 
 Society in all its forms is defensive against misery. We sympathize more 
 with sorrow than joy. Hence its uses manifest. Sympathy in a great 
 measure voluntary. Natural and acquired deficiency of this affection. 
 Hardheartedness. Its natural punishments. Sentimentalism a disease of 
 the Sympathy. Rousseau. Law of sympathy. Moral conclusions from 
 this arising. 
 
 THERE is one especial difficulty about Ethics, in that it is a 
 science of which each one has the requisite knowledge in his own 
 consciousness ; and the presentation of it, then, in an external sys- 
 tematic form, is almost impossible. The business, therefore, of 
 the writer, so far as he can, is to present the truths in such a man- 
 ner, that each one may recognize them as facts of his own nature, 
 and accede to the rules drawn forth by the author ; but for putting it 
 in a mechanically systematic order, it is a thing which the very 
 nature of the science forbids. The true system in it is not of ex- 
 ternal arrangement, but of internal sequency, so that fact shall 
 lead to fact, and principle be made a foundation-stone to principle : 
 that so the reader shall be led to think upon his own nature and to 
 see by it, that the principles of the science are true. For often 
 it happens that a fact or truth shall be denied by him under the 
 influence of prejudice or of ignorance, which, had he seen it in its 
 Ethical connexion with others of which he would make no doubt, 
 though they have never been brought up consciously to his mind, 
 he would at once have acknowledged to be true. Let not the rea- 
 der, then, expect this external, mechanically systematic order from 
 us; we are content if we present the various truths of Ethical 
 Science in the peculiar systematic method which we have described 
 above, that form which we feel most appropriate to a science, 
 all the facts of which are in existence in each one's breast. In ac- 
 cordance with these views, we would, in this chapter, as in its
 
 188 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 peculiar and appropriate place, present the subject of Sympathy 
 (and perhaps some kindred truths,) to the thought of our readers. 
 
 The original meaning of the word Sympathy is " Harmony of 
 the Affections," (sympatheia). It originally implied not merely 
 that state in which of two persons the feelings of the one being 
 affected in a particular way, the feelings of the other, because of 
 sympathy, shall be so affected, so that " we rejoice with them 
 which do rejoice, and weep with them which weep," although we 
 have not the motive to rejoicing, or to sorrow, that they have, but 
 only our sympathy with them. It was not taken, then, solely as 
 this the passive effect, but also as a particular power that brings 
 about the effect, and is a part of our nature. 
 
 And by many beautiful comparisons this idea was supported, 
 by marvels of the most wondrous kind it was proved or impressed. 
 The Philosophy of ancient Greece and of Middle-age Europe, teems 
 with the wonders of that miraculous principle, Sympathy. It was 
 pointed out that two harps being tuned alike, and one being played, 
 the chords of the other would follow the tune with a faint, sympa- 
 thetic music. It was believed that precious stones had sympathies 
 with peculiar persons and characters. Nay, even the influence of 
 the stars shed their virtues upon men by Sympathy. And the 
 herbs of the field wrought by " Sympathy." And, stranger still, 
 wounds could be healed at a distance by an ointment whose force 
 depended upon " Sympathy," the ointment being smeared upon the 
 weapon, not upon the wound ! In fact, he that shall look at the 
 works of "Baptista Porta," or "Albertus Magnus," shall find 
 there the strangest Natural Philosophy ever dreamed of, and all 
 of it founded upon the one principle, Sympathy. 
 
 But perhaps the Platonic notion, that supposes marriage to be 
 the union of two souls that once, in their pre-existent state, were 
 one, and the " sympathy" which urges them again to union, to 
 send them unconsciously seeking it over the world, is the most 
 interesting fable upon the point. Although hardly inferior to it 
 may be counted that which supposes the mother's heart to be en- 
 dued with such natural affection towards her child, that after it 
 has been lost, if brought again into her presence, through secret 
 sympathy her heart shall yearn towards it. And then again, that 
 Middle-age persuasion, by which two perfect friends shall, at the 
 remotest distance have, under certain conditions, a true and per- 
 fect knowledge of one another's state ; because of their friendship,
 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 189 
 
 A ,he feelings of their hearts moving with a perfect sympathy. All 
 ihese are interesting fables, showing nevertheless the feeling and 
 persuasion of the existence of a Great Power and Principle in the 
 Being of Man. 
 
 We hold that there is actually and really such a power, perhaps 
 not performing works so wonderful as these attributed to it, and 
 yet rightly understood and rightly employed, very wonderful, and 
 truly bringing about extraordinary results. We say, that taking 
 away the marvels, and fabulous dreams, and high poetic fictions, 
 the idea, as it was conceived of old, of a Sympathy or " Harmony 
 of the Affections," by means of which effects ensue, that come 
 from no mental power or conscious effort of the mind, but from an 
 instinctive "harmony," or "discordance " of that power we have 
 called the " Heart " or the Affections," is most perfectly and en- 
 tirely true. 
 
 The idea, we say, as it was of old conceived, such as we have 
 defined it, and as it is now understood by the ordinary and common 
 mass of men. 
 
 The idea, then, that we may clearly define it, so that men may 
 know precisely what they are required to examine, is this, that 
 " Sympathy is a natural harmony by which, upon matters espe- 
 cially that concern the Affections, one human being shall, under 
 certain conditions, feel, in despite of all concealment of language, 
 the real state of the other." This asserts that there is in some men, 
 under some circumstances, a naturally penetrative power, in a very 
 great degree, that shall see the real state of others in despite all 
 concealment ; and that this power being particularly prominent in 
 some minds, is yet an element in all. 
 
 It asserts, for instance, that for that man that is really and 
 sincerely compassionate in heart, we will say, or meek in temper, 
 or truly pure minded, or affectionate, this feeling does, as it were, 
 give a tone to his thoughts and emotions, all of them, and become 
 a sort of key-note to his mind. Nay, that such is the power of 
 this that we call " feeling," that it frames and forms anew, and 
 gives an expression to all the features and all the gestures. So that 
 really and truly the predominant feeling comes in as a flavor in 
 all actions, a key-note in all thoughts, a subtle writing upon the 
 face, a lauguage that speaks through every limb. And were man's 
 senses as subtle as they are dull, and obtuse, from the slightest 
 glance, the merest gesture, the fullness of the mind might be seen.
 
 190 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 Yet still, though the conscious sense be dull, the mini uncon- 
 sciously will, by the power of sympathy, penetrate into the Heart ; 
 and at a glance, the man knows not how, feelings of suspicion will 
 arise in his mind, or of dislike, or of liking, exactly in accordance 
 with the particular tone and temper of his own mind. So that if 
 the Heart be pure and holy, and just, then shall that heart have a 
 prophetic power ; by which, when the impure, and unholy, and un- 
 just are brought in contact with it, a secret warning shall speak in 
 it, and enjoin caution, and watchfulness, and suspicion, to be mea- 
 sured aftemvards by facts carefully observed and inferences strictly 
 drawn, and proofs ; but still, before all these, a warning, and one 
 not to be neglected. 
 
 Passive Sympathy then is the instinctive feeling of the harmony 
 or discordance of the Moral Affections of others with our own. Per- 
 haps it may be accounted for by the two principles above men- 
 tioned ; first, that the predominant affection frames all the features 
 and gestures to a form peculiar to itself, and gives, if we only had 
 the subtilty to perceive it, a peculiarity to all our words, even to 
 the very tone of our voices ; and secondly, that the mind often 
 acts so swiftly that we are unconscious of the action, and only 
 perceive the result ; as it is when the experienced musician con- 
 tinues to play while he is conversing that so the mind perceives 
 the predominant moral feeling, or the want of it in the face of the 
 man, unconscious of its own action, and presents the result only as 
 a suspicion. These two principles, both which the reader will upon 
 consideration see to be true, perhaps may explain the nature of 
 "Sympathy," perhaps only its operation. 
 
 We are inclined to the latter view, that Sympathy is a separate 
 power, and that these will only show the means by which it may 
 operate. And the following are some of the grounds upon which 
 we do so think. In the first place, we see clearly and distinctly 
 that while men are individuals, and therefore each man is one yet 
 they are not individuals in the same sense in which the grain of 
 sand upon the bank is one. Each man is one individually, but 
 the Human Race is one also. And the race is not one, as the bank 
 of sand is one, by mere aggregation or accumulation of individual 
 particles, but rather is an organized oneness, as is the tree or any 
 other living body ; and hence, because of this, the individual shall 
 not only have tones, tempers, feelings, powers, that terminate in
 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 191 
 
 himself, but even against his own will, even unconsciously those that 
 terminate in others. Hence is "Sympathy" the feeling preserva- 
 tive of that vital oneness of the race, by which the heart of one 
 man shall vibrate in unison with the heart of another ; and even 
 by such things as may appear to be unreasonable, likes or dislikes, 
 jealousies, suspicions, and other movements, of the nature and 
 uses of which the man himself may be unconscious, may the vital 
 coherence and unity of the Human Race be preserved : and then 
 we may, in support of this, point out the fact that all men are of 
 one blood upon the earth, of one heart, and one feeling naturally, 
 and that this oneness of being naturally suggests and warrants 
 such a harmony as we call Sympathy, as well as the sense and feel- 
 ing of it. 
 
 Hence it is that many, in all ages, even of the wisest and best, 
 have believed in this mysterious power and its warnings ; and 
 although we may not be able to establish the rules and laws of its 
 action, still the condition of human nature and of the hearts of 
 men, renders it very probable. We look upon it as at least so far 
 established that a rule of action may be founded upon it, that may 
 not be lightly disregarded. 
 
 Man knows the things of his own heart. Each one knows for in- 
 stance whether in religion he is sincere or an hypocrite ; he knowa 
 whether he is inwardly licentious and adulterous, or inwardly pure ; 
 he knows whether he is inwardly honest or dishonest, and so forth. 
 Now to those who are truly sincere within, truly honest, truly pure, 
 I say, " there is sometimes against individuals a feeling of dislike 
 even at the first ; and this is often a movement of "Natural Sym- 
 pathy," a warning to the pure in heart of the presence of 
 impurity, to the honest of the presence of dishonesty, to the 
 sincere of hypocrisy; not a proof, but only that which if we 
 follow it up and keep it in our mind may lead to proof; a kind 
 of secret caution which secures the good in heart against the 
 wicked, and defeats evil in its most crafty snares. 
 
 This by its nature, as I have said, is not to be taken as a proof 
 or a demonstration, but only as an indication. It is to be taken 
 as for ourselves not for others, a something that we should ponder 
 over, but hardly give currency to against the individual. 
 
 But to the young, who have been reared in a holy Home, in 
 purity of heart and thought, and in the great blessing of having 
 been members from childhood of the Church of God, under
 
 192 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 Parents that have realized and acted up to their duty to them 
 I say: 
 
 "Never neglect the mysterious -warning of Sympathy, if you 
 yourselves know and feel that you have purity of heart internally, 
 and sincerity of religious faith ; if this be so, often shall you find 
 this secret warning, to reveal to you that which to others of 
 maturer minds is perfectly unseen, and this for your own good." 
 
 So far with regard to " Sympathy" in one, and that a very im- 
 portant sense. Sympathy is taken in another sense as " the active 
 power that one man has naturally of entering into the feelings of 
 another, and being himself' affected as that other is :" of this we 
 shall now treat. 
 
 It is a very evident thing, that in all the feelings whatsoever that 
 belong to the Heart, there is a power on the part of all men of 
 entering into those that belong to another, and in it thus making 
 them our own, and that without our having the causes for these 
 feelings that the persons with whom we sympathize have. 
 
 For instance, a neighbour shall lose a husband or a child, and 
 the natural emotion shall excite in her grief and then from the 
 " power of Sympathy," we shall have the ability to feel her grief, 
 actually and really, so that without suffering the sorrow we shall 
 feel the emotion that it causes. 
 
 I do not say, always to such a degree as the person upon whom 
 the affliction has come ; and yet I dare not say that it has never 
 been so, for I myself have seen grief by Sympathy, in which 
 there was, to all appearance, more deep and vehement emotion and 
 more suffering in those who sympathized than in the person with 
 whom they did sympathize. 
 
 But this I do say, that sympathy in this second sense, is a real 
 and distinct power, by which one man is enabled to enter into the 
 emotions of another's heart, all emotions, I say, that belong to 
 the Affections, and actually to take a part in them, to bear them, 
 to suffer them, without the having had himself the original excit- 
 ing cause, or indeed any exciting cause at all, save the Sympathy. 
 A power of transference, as it were, belonging to our Nature, by 
 which the man shall be able to convey to his own Affections and lay 
 upon them the weight which the person with whom he sympathizes 
 is bearing, or ought in proportion to his affliction have borne. A 
 power by which the sorrow of one shall be divided and borne in 
 part by another. A faculty by which, as in the external world, we
 
 THE HEART OK AFFECTIONS. 193 
 
 help by the lever in lifting material burthens, and distribute the 
 weight ; so are we able to distribute the weight of the burthens 
 and sorrow of the heart. 
 
 Active Sympathy therefore we define to be the power of enter- 
 ing into the emotions of a fellow being and bearing them with him 
 vicariously. 
 
 The reasons that justify us in believing it so to be are, first, the 
 divine institution of Society as a real and vital organization, which 
 exists coeval with man. Sympathy, then, we consider, as it were, 
 the vital harmony in the body of Society by which one heart is 
 adapted to the other, and the needs and necessities of the one sup- 
 plied by the other. It arises from that organization which makes 
 humanity to be as it were one great body universally spread over 
 the face of the earth, each member bound to the whole and to each 
 individual by that vital harmony. Thus the oneness of the human 
 race shall not be the oneness of aggregation by which the sands 
 make up a bank of sand, it shall rather be the oneness of vital 
 organization, by which the particles of the human body are one 
 by vital force and vital harmony. This vital harmony in each 
 particle of the human frame we consider in the body of Society to 
 be represented by Sympathy. 
 
 We consider it again to be a separate power, and one primary 
 to the Heart, which may be conjoined with almost all the feelings 
 whatsoever, and which gives them a second range and a further 
 flight that they had not of themselves. For instance, you may be 
 righteously angry for injustice done yourself : again, injustice is 
 done your neighbour; by the "power of Sympathy" your emo- 
 tion of anger shall again be raised, and you shall be angry for 
 him. It is manifest the cause for the emotion, and the emotion 
 itself, may exist in him; and the capability of the emotion of 
 anger being excited, may be in you. But more than this is want- 
 ing, that you may feel indignation for the injury done to him : the 
 faculty in your nature that supplies this power of entering into 
 his feelings vicariously, is " Sympathy." The utmost similarity 
 of nature, temper and habits may exist, but more than this is 
 requisite to connect these parallels, and that is this power. And 
 any one may look at the definition we have given, and by his own 
 experience he shall see and feel that there is such a power ; that 
 it is not the agreement that arises from mere similarity of temper, 
 nor the mere harmony of emotion arising from oneness in any 
 
 25
 
 194 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 emotion, but that it is a separate power that looks to society as an 
 actual organization, not an aggregation, and that it may be united 
 with any one emotion or feeling of the Heart, so as to transfer that 
 emotion to ourselves. 
 
 We have placed it as the primary power of the Heart ; that 
 by which all other affections are extended from ourselves to our 
 brethren in the one common human nature. 
 
 And he that shall fully consider it, shall see that the Appetites 
 or Desires can hardly be objects of Sympathy, but strictly and 
 only the "Affections." For instance, " hunger" and "thirst" 
 the emotion with which we see them is not Sympathy, towards 
 mere hunger we have no such feeling. But let "hunger" be the 
 cause of "misery" and wretchedness, and at once we find our 
 sympathy flow forth, and " compassion" is the result, the feeling 
 that makes the distress of others and their misery our own. 
 Again : it is not united with mere " Desires," the mental emo- 
 tions that turn upon things, "love of property," " love of power," 
 "love of fame," all these, which are turned towards things, we 
 find that hardly can we sympathize with. But all those that 
 are turned towards "persons," all, in other words, that are of the 
 Heart or Affections, whose object is "persons" in "Society," to 
 all these Sympathy may be united, and thence make these emo- 
 tions existing in others our own. Hence we have correctly placed 
 it among the Affections, and as the first of them. 
 
 But there is another observation with regard to its nature that 
 we may make, and that is, that the power we have of entering into 
 the " Affections" or Emotions of others varies very much. And 
 the first broad distinction is this, that far more both in amount of 
 emotion and in easiness of being moved do we sympathize with the 
 sad than with the joyful emotions. This is an assertion which each 
 one's experience will manifest to him as true ; and the uses and 
 ends of this provision of nature are easily seen. For, putting 
 aside the question of Good and Evil, with regard to which it is 
 that preponderates, and confining ourselves solely to that which 
 regards pain and suffering, there is very little doubt that these last, 
 which are not always evil, and are not in every case the attendants 
 or the consequences of evil, do as to their amount greatly prepon- 
 derate. 
 
 This opinion we offer as an opinion, as to the actual amount of 
 pain considered in itself physically, believing, at the same time,
 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 195 
 
 that a great deal of it, even by man, using his moral nature, can 
 be converted into direct moral satisfaction, and that by God as our 
 Father, it is used as the pain inflicted by a Father. This estimate 
 as to the preponderance of pain, we say not unhappiness or evil, 
 but pain we shall support by the opinion of Bishop Butler. 
 
 In his Sermon upon Compassion, he speaks thus : ' 
 
 " Suppose that we are capable of happiness and of misery in 
 degrees equally intense and extreme, yet we are capable for the 
 latter for a much longer time beyond all comparison. We see men 
 in the tortures of pain for hours, days, and except the short sus- 
 pension of sleep, for months together without intermission ; to 
 which no enjoyments of life do, in degree and continuance, bear 
 any sort of proportion. And such is our constitution and that of 
 the world about us, that anything may become the instrument of 
 pain and sorrow to us. Thus almost any one man is capable of 
 doing mischief to any other, although he may not be capable of 
 doing him good ; and if he be capable of doing him some good, 
 he is capable of doing him more evil. And it is in numberless 
 cases, much more in our power to lessen the miseries of others than 
 to promote their positive happiness, any otherwise than as the 
 former often includes the latter ; ease from misery occasioning, for 
 some time, the greatest positive enjoyment." 
 
 " This constitution of nature, namely, that it is so much more 
 in our power to occasion, and likewise to lessen misery, than to 
 promote positive happiness, plainly required a particular affection, 
 to hinder us from abusing, and to incline us to make a right use 
 of the former powers, i. e., the powers both to occasion and to 
 lessen misery ; over and above what was necessary to induce us 
 to make a right use of the latter power, that of promoting posi- 
 tive happiness." 
 
 Hence do we see the opinion of Butler that our nature is far 
 more susceptible of misery than of happiness ; that is, of itself \ 
 apart from all things else, and taking misery merely to be suffer- 
 ing of the nature, not to be " evil." 
 
 From which susceptibility of the nature we may well argue that 
 to man, standing apart from all protection, by himself, as an indi- 
 vidual, misery clearly predominates. This can be, I think, proved 
 distinctly by removing, first, the Church ; secondly, the Nation, 
 and third, the Family ; and by so doing you place Man and Na-
 
 196 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 ture face to face, and see that to him life, apart from these shelter- 
 ing influences, has more misery a thousand fold than pleasure. 
 
 Again : by this we see clearly and distinctly another use of these 
 organizations to be "the sheltering of man from misery," the 
 interposing, as it were, of the shield of a positive institution be- 
 tween him and suffering. He that looks at the state of a well 
 ordered Nation, in which the Law reigns and the national organ- 
 ization is in perfection of action, and considers the security to 
 Life and Property thence ensuing, and then contrasts it with 
 anarchy and its consequences, may truly see that one end which 
 the Nation fulfils, is to fence off from each individual within it 
 sorrows he would have endured but for its existence. He that 
 looks, then, at the Family, shall see that in reference to all its 
 members it is the same. And as a Minister of the Apostolic 
 Church of Christ, I will say that there is no one that has been 
 new-born within her holy fold by "Water and the Spirit," and 
 has fed upon the bread of life from her altars, whether we interro- 
 gate him as to his own experience or that of others, but must say 
 that the Church of Christ is protective against many evils, pre- 
 ventive of much misery. Men who are non-professors may not 
 believe it, but they who are and have been within the fold, know 
 that such are its effects. The Family, the Nation, the Church, 
 are institutions defensive against misery of their very nature, and 
 tend to shield us from it. 
 
 Now, this being seen it being seen, too, how " man is made to 
 mourn," we can see why we have Affections directed towards 
 "persons ;" why those affections are led by one, the first, that en- 
 ables us to enter into the feelings of our fellow men, and why 
 " Sympathy" is so much more with sorrow than with joy. Far 
 more can we "weep with those that weep," than "rejoice with 
 them that do rejoice." 
 
 Hence the uses of the Affection are very clear and manifest ; 
 it causes us directly to ward off misery from our neighbour, by 
 making his sorrow affect us as if it were our own. The Affections 
 are to Persons, and with every one of them it is joined, but chiefly 
 with those that are remedies for the weakness, the woes, the mise- 
 ries of man. In each of these it affects us with the emotions of 
 others, and makes us aid them as so moved we would aid our- 
 selves. 
 
 Another remark we would make that is very important. It is
 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 197 
 
 well known that in the physical world the cause produces the effect 
 infallibly, and by a mechanical operation, by which when the 
 "cause" comes into being, then the "effect" ensues. Now, with 
 regard to instinctive actions in the animals, they are manifestly 
 of the like mechanical nature ; that which is done in man by those 
 peculiar agencies that^we call the Affections, is done in them by 
 an instinct which seems to be necessary, compulsory, mechanical. 
 But with regard to man, it seems as if over the higher qualities of 
 his Spirit this law of "cause and effect" had very little sway 
 these the higher or spiritual qualities seeming to be causes to their 
 own action, or to have the power of originating internally their 
 own operation, just as if a machine should set itself going. So 
 seems it the Conscience can be influenced from without or from 
 within, the motive in this last case coming from the Spiritual na- 
 ture of the man, the Reason be influenced in the same way, and 
 so also the Affections and the Will. 
 
 But external physical circumstances are bound in one law, that 
 of " cause and effect." They form the web that 
 
 " Hither and thither, 
 To and fro, 
 la woven in the thundering loom of Time." 
 
 Within this law, and in this web, are all things not Spiritual. 
 With them "cause" produces "effect," and this again is " cause," 
 again generating "effect." And so as from the first link stricken 
 with the hammer, the sound shall vibrate into the last of the chain ; 
 so is power propagated through things physical, whether they be 
 Organic or animal, but the " Spiritual originates power internally," 
 and can resist that which is externally conveyed to it. 
 
 The animal is, in respect to the emotions towards its fellows, 
 mechanical. The irresistible mechanical force of instinct shall 
 cause the male wolf to aid the female, during the period of nursing 
 the young, with the most anxious solicitude. Let her be wounded, 
 and under another animal law he shall aid in tearing her to pieces. 
 The instinct he cannot resist under its law of " cause and effect." 
 
 But with regard to Sympathy being a spiritual faculty in man, 
 it is manifestly in a great measure a voluntary thing. Misery i3 
 presented to you then, naturally, the Emotion of Sympathy 
 arises you may indulge in it or you may repress it ; this you feel;
 
 198 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 you have power over it more or less nay, in the course of time, 
 you have a power so complete that you may almost entirely eradi- 
 cate it. It is a known fact that men are able so completely to 
 abolish in themselves the feeling of Sympathy that it shall attend 
 upon none of their emotions ; that their own pain, their own weak- 
 ness, their own sorrow, they shall feel with a most acute and sen- 
 sitive affliction ; and shall see in their neighbours the extremest 
 instances of the same, and feel no emotion leading them to aid. 
 This, as the common experience of all, men can see to be a thing 
 that occurs not unfrequently, and that it arises from a free and 
 intentional exercise of the Will over the Sympathy, repressing it 
 so constantly and habitually that finally it ceases to act, at least 
 as to its functional actions, even although the faculty have not 
 been entirely destroyed. The natural deficiency of "Sympathy" 
 in an individual is called " Cold-heartedness," or "Apathy," or 
 an " Unsympathizing Disposition" in the nomenclature of Natural 
 Ethics. For the Ethical systems of so-called philosophers need 
 an artificial and invented nomenclature, but the system of Nature 
 has no deficiency in natural epithets, or in natural arrangement 
 of the subtlest kind. 
 
 The acquired deficiency of " Sympathy" goes by another name, 
 the appellation of " Hard-heartedness." And there is no doubt 
 that there are such men as we have described a few paragraphs 
 above, who have so cut off the fountains of natural sympathy in 
 their bosom, that they shall walk through life with an unfeeling 
 eye, as cold as the gaze of a marble statue,- a heart never warmed 
 by aught of natural sympathy towards their fellows, but cooly cal- 
 culating upon the extra gain of money that the hard pressure of 
 poverty upon their fellow-men, or the agony of distress, may wring 
 out from them for themselves. That such a thing is a very com- 
 mon circumstance indeed, is manifest to all. 
 
 But nature will hardly be defrauded of her dues, and they who 
 have so schooled their hearts, in this "Education of Selfishness," 
 towards their fellows, they often find that for all their gains, God, 
 and truth, and justice, cannot be escaped. For he that shall look 
 at this purposed closing of the heart and the cutting off of the 
 Sympathies, he shall see that naturally it has consequences that 
 flow from itself and do avenge it. 
 
 And first, to shut off from our fellow-men the flow of our sym- 
 pathies, to harden the heart voluntarily, and look upon them
 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 199 
 
 solely with an eye to gain, this Self-discipline, if we know any- 
 thing of the nature of the mind and of its diseases, is neither more 
 nor less than a preparation and a training for Insanity. And 
 were a physician to be asked how a sound-minded man could the 
 Boonest turn himself into a suicidal maniac, by a course of internal 
 and voluntary mental action, he would give this, to cut off and 
 restrain the Sympathies, so that they should not flow towards his 
 fellows, that so the Heart should be perfectly alone and isolated 
 from all participation and communion of feelings with other human 
 beings. 
 
 And when we look at the set and fixed ambition after money of 
 the many, and the keenness with which they are alive to that object 
 alone, and the coldness which they assume to all besides ; and 
 then see the accumulated number of cases of insanity growing 
 year after year, we do connect the one with the other. We do 
 say, if you would have a healthy and a sound mind, free from all 
 taint of disease, then let your Sympathies flow forth freely towards 
 the poor, the distressed, the miserable, all that need succour and 
 aid. " Rejoice with them that rejoice, and weep with them that 
 weep," and so you secure much rejoicing to yourselves, and avert 
 much misery. 
 
 Again : I know not how it is, but it is an observation of nature 
 that I have made myself, and have heard others make, who had 
 good experience and thinking minds, that those, who to their fel- 
 low-beings were " cold-hearted " and " unsympathizing," to them 
 it seemed that Providence reached, in some measure, an avenging 
 hand, through their families, so that these who had secretly, in 
 their own hearts, locked up and closed for selfishness-sake these 
 emotions that should have flowed out in acts of compassion to their 
 fellows, to them, by the retributive justice of God, it has been 
 allotted to find 
 
 " How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is 
 To have a thankless child." 
 
 But this is an observation of Providence, which, while I may 
 bring it up as a confirmatory remark, I cannot clearly assert why 
 it should be so. 
 
 Upon these considerations, regarding the nature of Sympathy, 
 the only question that now remains to us, is the rules that result 
 regarding it. And these come mainly from its nature as we have
 
 200 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 expounded it. It is in fact a most true principle, that the func- 
 tions of a moral faculty, fully and adequately expounded, shall 
 give true rules as to its guidance in reference to the external facts 
 to which it is applicable. Thus Sympathy is in us the " faculty," 
 and the external fact of the world to which it corresponds is 
 " misery." Sympathy, then, bears us onward naturally, to take 
 a share in others grief, this is the nature of it in us, and the 
 action and end of it is that thus we may relieve misery. 
 
 Now we see many persons of naturally acute feelings of Sym- 
 pathy, who are deeply and easily moved by facts of sorrow and 
 misery, or even by high-wrought descriptions of it. They sympa- 
 thize strongly, the feeling is deeply moving, delightful to a gen- 
 erous heart, has in itself something of the noblest and loftiest 
 character. And so is it one that is in a measure pleasurable, an 
 excitement, a stimulus ; nay, a luxury, " the luxury of woe." 
 It ought to be carried out in action, not carried out, it becomes 
 a mere stimulus, and causes a moral disease of the worst kind, the 
 disease of " Sentimentalism." 
 
 Let me not be thought to exaggerate, or to put undue import- 
 ance upon it ; but there is such a disease of the moral powers, and 
 one that is most deeply injurious. Sympathy is given that we may 
 share in and feel the grief of others, and from this be led to alle- 
 viate misery. And it is no harm to be susceptible of its influence ; 
 nay, to be acutely and exquisitely susceptible. But to indulge in 
 the feeling, and to cut it away from the end ; this is to harden 
 the -heart to a degree which hardly can be understood in its mag- 
 nitude. 
 
 And this is Sentimentalism, " the indulging of the feelings of 
 sympathy as a stimulus and a mental excitement, without in any 
 way aiding the distressed or diminishing the sum of Human 
 Misery." 
 
 Now I will say, that upon reading the biography of men of note 
 in the world, some of the least generous, the most selfish, and 
 the most devoid of all true feeling that the world has ever seen, as 
 well as some of the most blood-thirsty and obdurate in heart, 
 villains without pity and without remorse, have been of this kind. 
 
 Look at Rousseau, the base, thieving, lying impostor; the 
 man whose " Confessions" are a record so shameless of all that 
 can degrade man, that the only thing that can in any way acquit 
 him, is the assertion of his insanity; the cold blooded wretch, whose
 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 201 
 
 legitimate children, immediately after birth, were placed in a 
 basket and fastened to the gates of the Foundling Hospital, with 
 a studied and systematic prevention of all future recognition. 
 And this wretched fellow, overflowed with the finest Sympathies ! 
 
 But they made his stock in trade of Eloquence and Pathos. 
 And he made his bread by it, such as it was. And to himself he 
 was, while he lived, a cancerous misery, and to a nation after his 
 death, the cause of infinite corruption and infinite sorrow. This 
 is the character of Rousseau, I believe, fairly and moderately 
 drawn ; and I think I may say that the whole wretchedness 
 of this most miserable man arose from no one thing, besides this, 
 that, possessed of the finer feelings of Sympathy in the highest 
 and naturally the most exquisitely organized mode, he indulged in 
 the feelings, and the excitement, and stimulus arising from them, 
 at the same time never carrying them out into action. And hence 
 the highest gifts that might have ripened into the noblest charac- 
 ter, and might even have corrected all the evils and disadvantages 
 of his youth, actually perverted his nature, and aided in producing 
 a heart thoroughly bad. 
 
 We have dwelt upon him so long that we have hardly time to 
 mention any more, although the tenderness of Robespierre's Sym- 
 pathies are we believe matter of History. And so of many other 
 monsters of the same period. Suflice it to say that examples 
 enough can be found in proof of our position, " that an indulgence 
 in the feelings of Sympathy without carrying them out to the re- 
 lief of actual distress, produces hardness of heart to such a degree 
 that the most pitiless and cruel, the most licentious and unna- 
 tural, and ungrateful conduct shall be joined with the most over- 
 flowing and deeply thrilling sentiment." And so shall natures 
 that were intended to be of the noblest be turned into the basest 
 and vilest. 
 
 Having thus illustrated our position, we will say, as a practical 
 conclusion, " When you feel the emotion of Sympathy towards 
 distress let it always issue forth in actions, and in relief of sor- 
 row. Be even jealous of it having any other issue. Let it not 
 give eloquence to your tongue in describing it, save that this be 
 made a means to aid you in relief. Commit it not to paper elo- 
 quently, nay not at all, but turn the whole current of emotion unto 
 the actual relief of wretchedness ; and drain not one streamlet 
 
 26
 
 202 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 from the full channel to devote to aught magnifying self; and so 
 upon your own heart and moral character in the fullest degree 
 shall you find the effects of this first and most blessed of all natural 
 affections." 
 
 In fact, the highest and most ennobling of all actions of the 
 moral faculty is the exercise of this quality under the laws that 
 result from its own nature, and the laws of the governing powers 
 generally. And if the many who are really and truly anxious to 
 improve their moral nature by the natural means, and who now in 
 vain seek it in books ; if the many Christians in the Church that 
 wish to be ripened in their hearts for Heaven ; if they only could 
 feel and know in practical truth, the effect of that " Sympathy" 
 which in secret, apart from all motives that may "be selfish, "feels" 
 distress and misery, and at the same time "relieves" and aids if 
 they knew this and acted upon it, there would be higher and loftier 
 characters in society, and a deeper and most sanctified Christ- 
 ianity. 
 
 As the "Law" then of '" sympathy" we say that the "feeling" 
 is good of itself morally when it is joined with the " action," bad 
 when it is indulged without the action ; and as the rule we say 
 " never indulge an emotion of Sympathy apart from an attempt to 
 dimmish the sum of misery." 
 
 If you can relieve distress, do it subject to the law of Conscience 
 and of Reason. If it is by any means out of your own power, 
 utterly impossible then at least you can pray to G-od through our 
 Lord Jesus Christ for relief to the individual for prayer is action 
 of the highest and noblest kind ; but never let an emotion of sym- 
 pathy be excited in your heart that you do not aid misery in some 
 way, in this way at the least if none other be possible. 
 
 And never let it be turned by you in any way to yourself, your 
 glory, your praise, your benefit, for it is best directed, according 
 to its nature, when wholly and entirely it tends to the relief ot 
 another's wretchedness. Then best for your own nature when it 
 is wholly directed to another. 
 
 Again, be jealous of opportunities ; and yourself, personally, 
 come in contact with misery and distress for the sake of relieving 
 them delegate as little as you can to others, for in giving aid by 
 the hand of another you give money but you give not that 
 which is more precious than money, personal sympathy ; and you
 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 
 
 lose which is worth a great deal more to you, the moral schooling 
 that the actual and personal exercise of this moral quality in your 
 own Spiritual being shall give to your Heart. 
 
 Two questions more complete the examination of this subject. 
 The first, " are we always to permit the feeling of sympathy when 
 it arises ?" The second, " are we always to relieve distress when 
 it occurs?" 
 
 The first I think we can answer in the affirmative, provided 
 first, that it be not forbidden by the Law of Conscience or the 
 Law of the Spiritual Reason that is, the law of God : and se- 
 condly, that the feeling be made to issue forth in action. 
 
 Again, I think it is manifest that Human misery is always to le 
 diminished under the same conditions. For instance, a cheat and 
 an impostor, or the vilest character you can conceive, is starving 
 and that in consequence of his own villainies, or his own profligate 
 conduct, if you give him money wherewith he may relieve his 
 misery, reason and experience tell you that with that money he 
 will purchase the means of debauchery ; your Conscience and your 
 reason both tell you therefore that the gift of money is wrong 
 but they tell you not that therefore you are to do nothing. The 
 money was only for the purpose of relief of misery, and that 
 under the circumstances it could not relieve ; this only excuses you 
 from aid in that particular way you are still bound to seek some 
 other means, which shall effectually bring about the result. 
 
 Misery is, in all cases, so far as men are individually concerned, 
 to be alleviated and put an end to. As far as men are not con-, 
 cerned individually, but where the .obligation of the Family or the 
 Nation is concerned, it is manifest that it is a different thing. 
 Higher relations here come in ; and the authoritative power of 
 inflicting not merely pain, but actual misery for beneficial pur- 
 poses, is a power which belongs primarily to God, but to them 
 secondarily, as institutions organized by God, and serving to carry 
 out his Law. 
 
 But with regard to personal misery between man and man, I 
 think there is little doubt, that when the emotion of Sympathy car- 
 ries us towards the relief of it, the failure of the readiest means, 
 or even of many means does not at all excuse us from the obliga- 
 tion to relieve it, but only from the using of that particular means. 
 
 And secondly, that it has been the consequence of sin or evil 
 conduct, this by no means is an excuse from action of relief but
 
 204 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 between man and man, the misery of the individual man is ever to 
 be relieved, and aid that shall do this under the above rules and 
 limitations, never to be refused. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Habit; Active and Passive. Passage from Butler quoted, and practically 
 applied. Affectation. Sentimentalism. Unreality, or Romance. Day- 
 dreaming. Remedies for these diseases of the Moral Nature. 
 
 IN our last chapter we treated upon " Sympathy," because we 
 look upon it as the first of the Affections, and as the one which 
 must go with all the rest in reference to our own moral improve- 
 ment and our neighbour's ; a peculiar moral element, that is ca- 
 pable of union with all the others, and therefore to be considered 
 as antecedent to them all. There are some other powers of the 
 same kind, which, if we consider them now as capable of being 
 united with many of the affections, we shall thereby have clear 
 ideas of them ; if we leave them to be considered in their compli- 
 cation with other Affections, we shall be liable to great confusion 
 and indistinctness. 
 
 And the first of these considerations is this : " Upon the Affec- 
 tions, what is the power and influence of Habit ?" There is an 
 "emotion," for instance, of "Compassion;" there is an act of 
 " Compassion ;" there is a habit of " Compassion." What is the 
 moral value and the moral difference of these three modes of the 
 one Affection ? Wherein is the Habit more than the Emotion or 
 the Act ? 
 
 Upon this subject of Habit we shall enter in this chapter, and 
 we clearly tell our readers that the chapter shall be little more 
 than the remarks of Bishop Butler upon the point, with comments 
 of our own, pointing out and illustrating the most important senti- 
 ments in the passage which we quote from him. 
 
 If this book be used in teaching Ethics, we advise the teacher, 
 having himself practically realized, (which is to a teacher of 
 Ethics the most valuable process of Ethical knowledge,) the influ-
 
 THE HEART OB AFFECTIONS. 205 
 
 ence upon morals of these principles of Butler, to turn the atten- 
 tion of his class upon them, and line by line, and word by word, 
 for we count them more precious than gold, to illustrate, enforce, 
 explain, by all the means in his power, until each one feels the 
 principles and their value in relation to his own life ; and to think 
 no time wasted that will bring about this result. 
 
 And if, on the other hand, our reader be a student of Ethics, 
 whose object is as a man to know his own Heart and Nature, and 
 so to use and apply its powers that he may reach the height that 
 his Nature and Position enable him to attain, we ask of him to 
 think, and think again, over this passage. 
 
 And warning him to expect no brilliancy of expression, no elo- 
 quence, no striking point or antithesis ; for as one who was a good 
 writer but no thinker* remarks, " for one who was so wonderful a 
 thinker as Butler there hardly ever was so bad a writer;" I again 
 express the opinion that the passage contains for him who is in 
 pursuit of Ethical truth and Ethical progress, principles more pre- 
 cious than gold. 
 
 These principles are applicable to all the moral powers as well 
 as to the "Heart," but upon it the bearings of them are of the 
 deepest importance. Here, therefore, I introduce the passage, at 
 the same time avowing that it tells upon the whole moral life of 
 Man. Having thus premised, we shall now quote the passage. 
 
 " There are habits of Perception, and habits of Action. An 
 instance of the former is our constant and even involuntary readi- 
 ness in correcting the impressions of our sight concerning magni- 
 tudes and distances, so as to substitute judgment in the room of 
 sensation, imperceptibly to ourselves. And it seems as if all other 
 associations of ideas not naturally connected, might be called 
 passive habits, as properly as our readiness in understanding lan- 
 guages upon sight or hearing of words. And our readiness in 
 speaking and writing them is an instance of the latter, of active 
 habits." 
 
 " For distinctness, we may consider habits as belonging to the 
 body or the mind, and the latter will be explained by tho former. 
 Under the former are comprehended all bodily activities or mo- 
 tions, whether graceful or unbecoming, which are owing to use : 
 
 * Sir James Mackintosh ; a very eloquent composer of beautiful essaya 
 that have nothing in them, a man in his day much overpraised.
 
 206 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 under the latter, general habits of life and conduct, such as obedi- 
 ence and submission to authority as to any particular ; those of 
 veracity, justice and charity; those of attention, industry, self- 
 government, revenge. And habits of this latter kind seem pro- 
 duced by repeated acts as well as the former. And in like manner, 
 as habits belonging to the body are produced by external acts, so 
 habits of the mind are produced by the exertions of inward prac- 
 tical purposes ; i. e., by carrying them into act, or acting upon 
 them, the principles of obedience, of veracity, justice, and cha- 
 rity." 
 
 "Nor can those habits be formed by an external cause of action 
 otherwise than as it proceeds from these principles ; because it is only 
 those inward principles exerted which are strictly acts of obedience, 
 of veracity, of justice, and of charity. So likewise habits of at- 
 tention, industry, self-government, are in the same manner acquired 
 by exercise ; and habits of envy and revenge by indulgence, whe- 
 ther in outward act or in thought and intention ; i. e., inward act, 
 for such intention is an act. Resolutions also to do well are pro- 
 perly acts ; and endeavouring to force upon our own minds a 
 practical sense of virtue, or to beget in others that practical sense 
 of it which a man really has himself, is a virtuous act. All these, 
 therefore, may and will contribute towards forming good habits." 
 
 " But going over the theory of virtue in one's thoughts, talking 
 well, and drawing fine pictures of it, this is so far from necessarily 
 or certainly conducing to form a habit of it in him who thus em- 
 ploys himself, that it may harden the mind in a contrary course, 
 and render it gradually more insensible ; i. e., form a habit of in- 
 sensibility to all moral considerations. For from our very facul- 
 ties of habit, passive impressions by being repeated grow weaker. 
 Thoughts, by often passing through the mind, are felt less sen- 
 sibly ; being accustomed to danger begets intrepidity, i. e., lessens 
 fear ; to distress, lessens the passion of pity ; to instances of other's 
 mortality, lessens the sensible apprehension of our own." 
 
 " And from these two observations together, that practical habits 
 are formed and strengthened by repeated acts, and that passive 
 impressions grow weaker by being repeated upon us, it must fol- 
 low that active habits may be gradually forming and strengthen- 
 ing, by a course of acting upon such and such motives and excite- 
 ments, whilst these motives and excitements themselves, are by 
 proportionable degrees growing less sensible; i. e., are con-
 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 207 
 
 tinually less and less sensibly felt, even as the active habits 
 strengthen." 
 
 " And experience confirms this ; for active principles at the very 
 time that they are less lively in perception than they were, are 
 found to be, somehow, wrought more thoroughly into the temper 
 and character; and become more effectual in influencing our 
 practice." 
 
 " The three things just mentioned may afford instances of it. Per- 
 ception of danger is a natural excitement of passive fear and 
 active caution, and by being inured to danger, habits of the latter 
 are gradually wrought at the same time that the former gradually 
 lessens. Perception of distress in others is a natural excitement, 
 passively to pity and actively to relieve it ; but let a man set him- 
 self to attend to, inquire out, and relieve distressed persons, and 
 he cannot but grow less and less sensibly affected with the various 
 miseries of life with which he must become acquainted, when yet 
 at the same time, benevolence, considered not as a passion but a% 
 a practical principle of action, will strengthen; and whilst he 
 passively compassionates the distressed less, he will acquire a 
 greater aptitude actively to assist and befriend them. So also at 
 the same time that the daily instances of mens dying around us, 
 give us daily a less sensible passive feeling, or apprehension of 
 our own mortality, such instances greatly contribute to the 
 strengthening a practical regard to it in serious men ; i. e., to 
 forming an habit of action with a constant view to it." 
 
 " And this seems again further to show, that passive impressions 
 made upon our minds by admonition, experience, example, though 
 they may have a remote efficacy and a very great one towards 
 forming active habits, yet can have this efficacy no otherwise than 
 by inducing us to such a course of action ; and that it is, not being 
 affected so and so, but acting which forms those habits ; only it 
 must be always remembered that real endeavours to enforce good 
 impressions upon ourselves are a species of virtuous action. Nor 
 do we know how far it is possible, in the nature of things, that 
 effects should be wrought in us at once, equivalent to habits ; i. e. t 
 what is wrought by use and exercise." 
 
 " However, the thing insisted upon is, not what may be possible, 
 but what is in fact the appointment of nature ; which is, that 
 active habits are to be formed by exercise. Their progress may be 
 BO gradual as to be imperceptible in its steps ; it may be hard to
 
 208 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 explain the faculty by which we are capable of habits throughout 
 its several parts, and to trace it up to its original, so as to distin- 
 guish it from all others in our mind ; and it seems as if contrary 
 effects were to be ascribed to it. But the thing in general, that 
 our nature is formed to yield, in some such manner as this, to use 
 and exercise, is matter of certain experience." 
 
 " Thus, by accustoming ourselves to any course of action, we get 
 an aptness to go on, a facility, readiness, and often pleasure in it. 
 The inclinations which rendered us averse to it grow weaker ; the 
 difficulties in it, not only the imaginary but the real ones, lessen; 
 the reasons for it, offer themselves of course to our thoughts upon 
 all occasions, and the least glimpse of them is sufficient to make us 
 go on in a course of action to which we have been accustomed."* 
 
 " And practical principles appear to grow stronger absolutely in 
 themselves by exercise, as well as relatively with regard to contrary 
 principles,^ which by being accustomed to submit, do so habitu- 
 ally and of course ; and thus, a new character in several respects 
 may be formed, and many habitudes of life, not given by nature 
 but which nature directs us to acquire." 
 
 We have taken the liberty, in reference to the truth of these 
 observations from Butler, for the sake of greater distinctness of 
 impression upon the students of this book, first, to divide the ex- 
 tract into paragraphs, and secondly, to mark with italics the 
 passages which we wish them to reflect upon more attentively ; and 
 having made these observations, we shall proceed to consider it in 
 the way of comment and remark. 
 
 Now with regard to the affections, our readers will have seen that 
 there are three modes of their action ; the first is the feeling, or 
 emotion ; the second, the action ; and the third, the habit ; and 
 with regard to these, it is manifestly a thing deserving of considera- 
 tion, to examine wherein does Virtue as regards the Affections 
 consist. 
 
 And first, with regard to the Emotion, when we consider what 
 has been said in the last chapter, we shall see that in respect to 
 any affection of the Heart, the JEmotion considered by itself may 
 exist along with a great degree of viciousness of heart and life, 
 even as regards that very virtue it was intended to promote. 
 i 
 
 * I would wish my reader to weigh this well in reference to Conscience. 
 
 f And this also is most important in regard to all the moral powers. *
 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 209 
 
 For instance, in the vicious sentimentalist, such as Rousseau or 
 Sterne, the Emotion of Pity may be exceeding great, and yet the 
 virtue of Pity have no existence, and the vice of baseness and 
 hardness of heart be most luxuriant in growth. 
 
 Again, in this world, the fact is, that the Heart of the vicious is 
 not entirely hardened, only partially ; and then the emotions that 
 would lead the man against that, his particular vice, these only 
 are steadily checked, while the others are not checked but seem to 
 flourish. So have we in our own experience seen a man utterly 
 licentious, in whom the feeling of justice in money matters was 
 so great that he prided himself upon it to an extraordinary degree. 
 "We have seen one most dishonest, whose sense and feeling of Com- 
 passion was so great, that to his sick and distressed neighbours, 
 that same man, who when they were in health would act in the most 
 rapacious way to them, would be the most -kind-hearted and the 
 most sympathizing of attendants upon the sick-bed. And again, 
 those who to the world have been cruel and harsh, by the force of 
 the natural feeling have overflowed with natural affection towards 
 their own family. 
 
 Nay, from experience and history, we conclude that the heart 
 of no man, while upon this earth, is so utterly hardened, so that 
 the fountain of all his Emotions shall be entirely closed ; but in all 
 men, there remains still some feeling of the Heart which shall flow 
 forth to their fellow-men, so that some shall love them still. The 
 monster Nero had still some fellow-being, who had loved him, to 
 scatter flowers upon his grave ; and the hideous Marat, and the 
 cold-hearted and merciless Robespierre, had surviving friends thai 
 could weep for them. x 
 
 In the mere emotion, then, the moral value of the virtue does 
 not rest ; or rather the highest possible amount of emotion may 
 exist, and yet there be no moral value in it at all. Or to speak 
 more precisely, such an amount of emotion as ought to lead 
 naturally to any one virtue, may exist along with the most utter 
 viciousness of life and action, even in respect to that virtue. In 
 Emotion, therefore, whether considered in reference to intensity, 
 or continuance, the virtue does not consist, not even in the very 
 emotion that is kindred to the virtue and leads naturally to it. 
 
 Again ; with regard to Action, it is perfectly manifest that mo- 
 mentary or irregular actions, in consequence of the Emotion, may 
 be done without any true merit or true value belonging to them. 
 
 27
 
 210 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 For instance, the above persons specified, the dishonest man did 
 acts of true compassion from the emotion of Pity, the licentious 
 man acts of true honesty from the emotion of Honesty, and he 
 who was utterly cruel to the world, acts of true Affection ; and 
 yet none would call them moral men, even in those acts. 
 
 Nay further, it is manifest that acts, which in themselves upon 
 principle had been good, may be done upon grounds entirely unbe- 
 nevolent, and motives entirely selfish, and so be evil. So the man 
 who acts in a strict compliance with the laws of Honesty, or the 
 dictates of Affection, for a course of many years, in order that 
 thereby he may attain to such a character as will put him in a 
 position in which he may be enabled to defraud largely. From these 
 instances, it is manifest that Action, and especially momentary 
 Action, is not necessarily virtuous. 
 
 And in addition to this, we would practically remark, that in 
 accordance with the principle that evil is a deficiency, goodness 
 consists of many elements, all of which, especially as far as con- 
 cerns the Affections, must go to making it up ; and the deficiency 
 of one element shall be evil. And one evil ingredient shall be 
 enough to destroy a whole character. 
 
 But to resume, with regard to the Affections, we have shown 
 that the "Emotion" has not necessarily a moral character, that 
 the Action upon the Emotion in itself, is not of necessity vir- 
 tuous. But the Habit shall be so, according to the principle laid 
 down here by Bishop Butler, that is, the Habit of acting steadily 
 upon the emotion as a *jixed principle and law of life. 
 
 He, therefore, who feels in himself generous and lofty emotions 
 of the Heart, or tenderness and kindness of feeling, if he would im- 
 prove the natural advantages that he has, let him not dwell in the 
 emotion, as something in itself satisfactory ; still less let him con- 
 tent himself with the applause of those he benefits, or even the 
 approval of his own Heart upon straggling and desultory actions, 
 done at hap hazard, upon the spur of the mere emotion. 
 
 Let him act upon it, steadily and habitually, until it form itself 
 as a principle^ of his conduct, and so shall that be easy to him 
 that required effort, and that habitual that was done with a 
 
 * Herein are the Affections connected with the Reason. See in the Second 
 Book, the Chapter \vherein Moral Principle is examined, 
 t See again the rules of Moral Principle, in the Second Book.
 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 211 
 
 struggle. For " Emotion " is not in itself virtuous, or the means of 
 "moral progress," nor is action considered by itself, but virtue is 
 in "Habit" and virtue is a "Habit" And to act steadily and 
 systematically upon one affection of the Heart, until this become a 
 principle, habitual, and even unnoticed in its impression, but con- 
 stant and ever-present, this is the way of moral progress by means 
 of the Affections. 
 
 And as it is in reference to the Spiritual Reason, that he who acts 
 in view of one of the "qualities of God," steadily and calmly so 
 that "moral perception" becomes "moral principle," to him shall 
 another open ; so is it with regard to these emotions of the Heart 
 that bind us to our fellow-men. That the Emotions should lead 
 to the Action, and both be interwoven into the chain of Habit, 
 which finally becomes of our nature, this opens new fountains 
 and leads the way to a greener verdure, a more luxuriant growth. 
 
 Have no emotions, then, towards your fellows, of benevolence, 
 pity, or compassion, that, under the Supremacy of the Conscience 
 and the Law of Reason, you do not act upon ; none that you do 
 not form into a principle and a habit of life. 
 
 For, as in a future world, we must conceive the same bodies to 
 arise and the same features to be possessed by them, and yet shall 
 they be perfect in beauty and radiant with the light of heaven ; 
 and therefore each form and each face here upon earth, must con- 
 tain the elements of a celestial beauty peculiar to itself, and yet 
 of the highest and most exceeding glory ; so even in this world, 
 all characters, even those that have been the most utterly vile, 
 have had, in their Heart, the elements of an exceeding and pecu- 
 liar loveliness of the Affections, which might have shown forth 
 from them as a celestial halo. 
 
 Men know not the power of the Affections, acted upon as habits, 
 to renew the whole character. They are so besotted with mere 
 mental influences and the belief that everything can be done by 
 arguing, and information, and talking, that they do not see the 
 power of the Heart. Here, I will suppose, is a man of the hardest 
 heart, and the most avaricious and grasping habits, or a man of 
 the harshest temper, or of the greatest selfishness. Let that man, 
 seeing his own faults, let him go forth with only the one word, "/ 
 will,"* and translate that word into action of, and upon the Affec- 
 
 * Here Intention or Purpose comes in manifestly, and therefore here IB seen 
 the connexion of the Will with the Affections,
 
 212 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 tions. even although the feeling be almost frozen and dead in him, 
 that action shall awaken the Feeling a little. And this, attended 
 by the " Will," shall move again towards another action. And the 
 Action again shall increase the Feeling, and so until the whole 
 force of the Heart is awakened. And then, under Habit, it shall 
 become a Principle, and way be made for another, and again 
 another, until the man to his neighbour's view is entirely changed. 
 And by a reverse process, the most lovely Nature is capable of 
 being hardened until it be utterly deformed. 
 
 Let no one then despair because of deficiencies of natural tem- 
 per ; for the coldest* heart may glow, the most selfish heart be 
 generous, the most irritable be calm and meek, the most stern and 
 rude become gentle and courteous, but it is no mental effort that 
 does all this, none but a moral one ; the effect of the " Will" and the 
 " Affections" and the Reason acting upon the character by the laws 
 of their nature. 
 
 This is no mysterious or baffling discipline, it is a thing that each 
 man can do ; a practical rule that all can act upon. Let them try 
 it, and they will see it to be a true one. For as the ancient Grecian 
 Sculptor saw in the block of unhewn marble, the statue that in 
 his mind he had pictured forth as to be made from it, and said, 
 " This marble contains that statue, and I shall uncover it ;" and 
 did not say, " I shall make it," but "I shall uncover it," as if all 
 his work were merely the removing of portions of marble that 
 covered and hid the image ; so it is with the mass of men they 
 are, as far as the high Ideal image of moral beauty is concerned, 
 shapeless, and yet there lies in each and every one of them an 
 image and a translucent glory of moral loveliness that even in this 
 life can be " uncovered." 
 
 But Educating as the notion goes will not do it ; Information 
 will not do it ; Knowledge or mere Mental Culture will not do it. 
 The only thing that will produce these results upon the moral cha- 
 racter is direct cultivation of the moral powers of the Affections. 
 And this that we call loveliness of temper is to be reached only in 
 this way, by "the Will" and "the Affections," directly and con- 
 sciously acting. 
 
 Again, we would notice the fact laid down by Butler, that "Pas- 
 sive Habits" as he calls them somewhat infelicitously, or as they 
 might be called " habits of impression," grow weaker from repeated 
 action, while habits of " action upon Principle" grow stronger.
 
 THE HEART OR APFECTIONS. 213 
 
 Two most important conclusions are to be made from this maxim, 
 especially by the young. 
 
 The first is, that he who shall desire to do a moral act, especially 
 one belonging to the affections, an act of compassion or pity : he 
 shall often find himself carried on towards it by a rush and glow 
 of emotion, which shall at the same time be the highest inducement 
 to the action, and in some measure its highest reward. Upon form- 
 ing the principle, and going upon it steadily, this glow shall dimin- 
 ish, he shall no longer feel the emotion as he felt it at first ; but 
 instead of it shall come a calm, settled, tranquil conviction of doing 
 as he should do according to his nature a mingled feeling of kind- 
 liness, and wisdom, and patience, and assurance, and joy, perma- 
 nent and unexcitable, which shall take the place of the first and 
 more vehement emotion. 
 
 Now I would caution the young not to think of that first emo- 
 tion otherwise than as a temporary aid to carry them onward over 
 the gulf of old habit, so as to do that they were unaccustomed to 
 do ; otherwise than as a stimulus to carry out the feeling to action, 
 until it is delivered over to Habit and Principle ; and to think 
 that that feeling must pass away, and that if we would live in it 
 we could not. And the attempt to keep it up in the mind, instead 
 of carrying it out into "Action" and "Principle," and thereby 
 confirming the Habit, and so changing Emotion into virtue, this, 
 shall end as the use of bodily stimulants does upon the body, in 
 ruin and destruction of the tone and health of the moral power. 
 
 But to carry the Emotion into Action, and both by Habit into 
 Principle, this makes and forms a virtue, and from that comes the 
 deep and calm self-assurance that we have spoken of. 
 
 And to those who understand not this, but imagine the " emo- 
 tion" to be a thing especially desirable to keep up, it is a very cus- 
 tomary thing to seek after means whereby they may so stimulate 
 the feeling as to retain it in its original strength. The readiest 
 means to this is, first, our own mental powers internally, and 
 secondly, language, or the speaking much about the matter. 
 These are the usual means employed. 
 
 Now, with regard to these, let any one consider Butler's prin- 
 ciple, " that going over the theory of virtue in one's thoughts, talk- 
 ing well and drawing fine pictures of it, this is so far from neces- 
 sarily or certainly conducing to form a habit of it in him who thus 
 employs himself, that it may harden the mind in a contrary course,
 
 214 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 and gradually render it more insensible ; that is, form a habit of 
 insensibility to all moral considerations " Let a man consider this 
 principle, and he shall plainly see that it is perfectly possible that 
 a man may be led to believe that he is improving his Affections, 
 while at the same time, by trying to stimulate, he is destroying 
 them. For emotion carries us to act, it exists without words and 
 without reasoning, being independent of both, and in a higher 
 sphere; to bring it, then, into words, is so far to destroy its 
 power, seeing that it naturally terminates in actions, and the pro- 
 cess that Butler speaks of is to stop it short of that its end. 
 
 But to bring forth another principle. "Resolutions in the mind 
 to do weU are properly acts" So that over and above the mental 
 actions specified in the extract, which harden the feelings, there 
 are others that are real actions of the mind, that do not do so, but 
 quite the contrary. 
 
 From these two principles, then, we draw the second conclusion, 
 " that all mental action upon ourselves or others that tends merely 
 to stimulate and keep up emotion is directly injurious, and tends 
 to destroy the Affections and the moral powers generally." 
 
 The observations made upon "Sentimentalism," in the last 
 chapter, are more fully confirmed by those upon Habit in this. 
 We, therefore, shall proceed to other diseases of the same kind ; 
 they may be enumerated as "Affectation," "Unreality, or Ro- 
 mance," and "Day-dreaming." 
 
 Now, with regard to Affectation, it is only a slighter form of 
 Sentimentalism, a mental state in which an individual of naturally 
 noble feelings, instead of carrying the feeling out into action, 
 merely speaks of it, and praises it ; at first, from a real and over- 
 flowing apprehension of its moral beauty, and finally, from cus- 
 tom, vanity, or any sort of notion of being "eloquent," or "in- 
 interesting," or " agreeable," or " entertaining" until the tongue 
 comes to run over and parrot a set of phrases that did originally 
 signify and convey feeling, but now have no such meaning or 
 power. A very slight fault this, and very usual in youth. The 
 sorrows and the strifes of life, however, usually amend it, and the 
 man or the woman who has been forced by them really to feel, often 
 looks back with a kind of wonder and astonishment at the mock 
 pathos and affected fervor of his youth. 
 
 Unreality is another thing of the same kind, a feeling towards 
 high, and noble, and generous actions, of admiration and self-
 
 THE HEART OK AFFECTIONS. 215 
 
 esteem, which thinks that these are easy to ourselves, and there- 
 fore is ready to undertake everything of this kind, but has not 
 counted the cost. An uncalculating generosity it is, arising in the 
 very contrary direction from Sentimentalism for the " Senti- 
 mentalist" substitutes his own flights of emotion, and his glowing 
 words for true action ; but the man who is " Unreal," he has 
 looked at things. as they are presented to him ordinarily in litera- 
 ture, surrounded by a glow of Eomance, a halo of rainbow colors ; 
 he takes them to be such as they are represented, and hence no 
 appreciation has he of the truth and the fact. Garlands of flowers 
 for him festoon all circumstances. Odors, not of Araby, but of 
 "Lubin et Cie, a Paris," breathe a soft fragrance; the whole 
 world is a Boudoir to him : and he does not understand what it is 
 to struggle and to endure, to bear and to forbear. 
 
 The Literature of the day has done this, it has created this 
 Unreality, it presents stimulating fiction and sweetly poisonous 
 untruth to the young, who spend upon these dreams the nobleness 
 of feeling, and fervor of heart, that truly cherished and truly ex- 
 pended, would lead to the loftiest action. And then, at the first 
 real contact with life, they find the falsehood and untruth of these 
 Romantic views, they fling them aside, and with them, too often, 
 alas ! the nobleness of feeling that had been thus mislaid upon an 
 imaginary world, and sink into calculating Selfishness, the fixed 
 determination of mind, that all nobleness, all tenderness of thought, 
 all generosity of heart is folly and imagination, and that self is all 
 and in all. 
 
 And hence it is, that they who might have been the noblest, 
 sink into self-enjoying Epicureans, whose business and thought is 
 that of the old pagan: "Eat, drink, enjoy thyself, the rest is 
 not worth a fillip."* Or else the still lower and viler sentiment 
 engraved upon the tomb of the English Poet : 
 
 " Life's a jest, and all things show it ; 
 I thought so once, and now I know it."f 
 
 And this Epicureanism is destroying the Educated Classes : they 
 are perishing and decaying by it. And they who have been led 
 
 * Inscription upon the tomb of Sardanapalus. 
 
 f How wretched in life must the man have been, if these sentiments were 
 really and truly the opinion of his heart. Although perhaps we may charitably
 
 216 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 by their strife with poverty and labor from childhood, to feel the 
 world as it is as a reality, and life as a reality, they fight their 
 way to the wealth the others waste, that their children may go 
 through the same process of self-indulgence and consequent mental 
 and bodily decay. 
 
 We have spoken of this at length ; we say to the rich : " Train 
 your children in religion, a disciplinary religion, a religion, not of 
 emotion, but of duty. Let them feel and know a power superior 
 to Wealth ; let the Home, a holy Home, open their minds to the 
 sense of the Unseen God and His realities, to the Affections of 
 the Heart, to an obedience to the Conscience, and to a sense of 
 the power and glory of the Will. Let the Father train the child 
 to Obedience, and the Mother to Love, and the Clergyman to a 
 Religion verifying itself in Faith and Works. And so shall he 
 
 suppose that they were rather the offspring of that good-natured foolhardi- 
 ness by which, in the last century, men of Genius were seduced into trifling 
 with subjects, upon which they actually believed with trembling, in order 
 to show their wit. * 
 
 That such might have been the case with^potfr good-natured Gay, we may 
 believe. But it was carrying the joke too far, y inscribe such blasphemous 
 flippancy upon a tomb ! 
 
 How much loftier and truer are the lines of our great American poet, Long- 
 fellow: 
 
 " Tell me not in monrnful numbers, 
 Life is but an empty dream, 
 For the soul is dead that slumbers, 
 And things are not what they seem. 
 
 Life is real I life is earnest ! 
 And the Grave is not its goal ; 
 Dust thou art, to dust returnest, 
 Was not spoken to the soul. 
 
 Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, 
 Is our destined end or way, 
 But to act, that each to-morrow 
 Find us further than to-day. 
 
 ******** 
 
 Let us then be up and doing, 
 With a heart for any fate, 
 Still achieving, still pursuing : 
 Learn to labor and to wait."
 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 217 
 
 grow up as a Man, not as an animal whose one idea is that enjoy- 
 ment of the senses is all, and that riches is all-mighty to procure 
 this enjoyment, and that the whole world has for this reason only 
 its existence. And so he shall not, because he has merely grown 
 up as an animal (for it is not Education), be prepared to give up 
 to a stimulating and unreal literature, whatsoever natural earnest- 
 ness and natural nobility there was in his Heart." 
 
 " Let not this be so, but let the child have, and obtain a truly 
 religious training, and then this sense of Unreality, this hankering 
 after stimulants for the mind, this inward Selfishness of Heart 
 shall be abated." 
 
 And for those who feel that Romance and Unreality makes a 
 part of their moral character, and who would themselves get rid 
 of it, I should think that an abstinence from such literature, a 
 direct contact, self-sought, with the misery and sorrow of existence 
 in the way of relief and sympathy, as well as a direct and steady 
 employment and object in life, would be of great service. 
 
 And above all things, I would recommend as a remedy for Un- 
 reality and Romance, a duty enjoined in the -Scriptures as a Spi- 
 ritual discipline, the duty of fasting. I mean not merely the 
 change of one kind of food for another, but an actual abstinence, for 
 a set time, from all food, say once in the week, of course under the 
 advice of a physician, so that it shall not be an injury to the con- 
 stitution, but with this limitation, fasting sharp and severe, so as 
 to acquaint the man with the suffering of hunger. It is astonish- 
 ing how much Unreality this' will do away with, how much Ro- 
 mance it will destroy ; how much sympathy with poverty and 
 misery it will produce. It is a Spiritual Discipline, prescribed in 
 the New Testament, and we here advise it as a remedy, much to 
 be used. 
 
 We now go on to speak of "Day Dreaming," or "Building 
 Castles in the air." 
 
 Now to bring this forward in a book upon morals, may seem, to 
 some, superfluous. And yet, we believe, to notice it, is absolutely 
 necessary, for it is a disease of the two noblest powers of man, the 
 Imagination* and the Affections. And one which, we are con- 
 vinced, from our experience as an educator, wastes more energy 
 
 * What is called Imagination, distinguished rigidly from Fancy, is a great 
 deal more nearly akin to the Spiritual Reason, than men imagine. 
 
 28
 
 218 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 and destroys more naturally high and lofty minds, than perhaps 
 any other. 
 
 The Day-dreamer feels himself limited in power by the situation 
 wherein he is placed ; ordinary life is not enough for him, but he 
 would do wonders of Benevolence, requiring mines of wealth and 
 inexhaustible power. Therefore, he turns away with disgust from 
 active life, and revels in dreams of overflowing wealth, of which he 
 is the possessor and the dispenser, and of lofty and splendid deeds, 
 of which he is the hero ; and inwardly, upon the theatre of a prolific 
 fancy, he enacts many scenes which would, in themselves, be 
 perfectly ridiculous, but for their sad effects upon the mind of the 
 man. 
 
 For life and its duties pass by him unheeded, while he is occu- 
 pied with these inward visions ; mental energy is dissipated by 
 the morbid effect of the Imagination ; decision of action and of 
 aim is utterly lost ; and too often, alas ! it is directly true that, 
 according to the principle of Bishop Butler, " the going over the 
 theory of virtue, and drawing fine pictures of it, is so far from 
 necessarily or certainly conducing to form a habit of virtue in him, 
 who thus employs employs himself, that it may harden the mind in 
 a contrary direction." I consider that this " day-dreaming," 
 upon these grounds, is directly injurious to the Moral powers, 
 directly Evil. 
 
 Hitherto we have supposed it innocent, as far as the thoughts 
 are concerned, but often, especially in those not baptized with the 
 baptism of Christ, it is the introducer to direct sin. It leads in 
 wandering thoughts and these become gradually vicious and evil, 
 thoughts of rioting, lasciviousness, violence, avarice, revenge, in- 
 dulged in, cherished by the Heart, and swarming in it, ready to 
 burst forth into evil words and evil actions, before the man is him- 
 self aware of it. 
 
 For "thought," as Butler remarks, "is action," "words are 
 actions," and " deeds are action." That is, thoughts voluntarily 
 cherished, assented to, agreed with, words freely and intentionally 
 spoken acts willingly done all these are action for which we 
 are responsible. 
 
 And so does it often happen, owing to the seductive influence of 
 this vice of the moral habits, that in the family, unknown to the 
 parents, the youth shall have been laying up for years the materi- 
 als for a moral explosion that shall bring upon him sudden ruin
 
 THE HEAET OR AFFECTIONS. 219 
 
 and destruction. Well was it that our Saviour placed in the Heart 
 the "issues of life and death," truly according to the facts and the 
 reality of our nature, did he insist upon watching over the 
 " Heart ;" for there is the source of almost all evil. 
 
 Now in reference to this disease so expounded, I give this advice ; 
 first : 
 
 Let the person who has fallen into the habit of " Day Dream- 
 ing," let him set before himself, in view, a fixed and determinate end 
 to fulfil, an object and employment in life that he judges worthy of 
 an effort, and let him steadily struggle and labour towards it with 
 all his energies and all his powers. Again, let him avoid solitude, 
 as this especially gives room for these reveries of the Imagination, 
 and keep in society, except so much as may be absolutely neces- 
 sary for the business of life. If alone, let him be employed ; for 
 an idle solitude, an unbusy loneliness, is in itself a temptation to 
 reverie. And lastly, let him avoid long sleep in the morning as 
 enervating to the body and the mind ; for in fact, the state of morn- 
 ing sleep, half dreaming, half awake, is injurious to men's ener- 
 gies, mainly because it leads to this habit of dreaming reverie. 
 
 And as the last and most efficient remedy, especially if those 
 scattered and wandering thoughts have become evil and have led to 
 evil ; I advise the person, especially if a youth under the care of 
 a religious and thoughtful Father and Mother, to lay open to them 
 under strict confidence, the state of his mind, and to be of them 
 guided as to his conduct. For evil thoughts hidden shall rankle 
 and become as ulcers to the moral being; whereas laid open 
 to the eye of a Father or a Mother, they shall by their care be 
 healed. 
 
 And here I would add a remark for the Parent and for the 
 Child. The fact is, that between a " Lawyer " and his " Client" 
 there exists a "Legal confidence," to which the lawyer is sworn 
 that he will maintain it, in consequence of which the client con- 
 sulting with him, may inform him of many matters, that discovered, 
 would bring detriment, but all which the lawyer is bound to con- 
 ceal. Between the "Physician" and his "Patient" there is a 
 confidence also by which the " Physician " is bound to keep secret 
 and entirely unknown, all matters so revealed, if not in law, at 
 least in the common law of honour that exists in the Profession. 
 .And this exists in consequence of the natural position of " Lawyer" 
 and " Client," " Physician " and " Patient ;" and is recognized in
 
 220 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 the law of the land to a degree that but few have any perception 
 or apprehension of. 
 
 And so do I imagine that it is or ought to be by nature between 
 Parent and Child. I do believe that such is the trustful nature 
 of the relation between Parent and Child, that if the Child under- 
 stood clearly that his Father held the principle of "Parental Con- 
 fidence " as a fixed rule, and considered himself thereby bound to 
 a deep and unbroken silence under all circumstances whatsoever, 
 as to that which his children had so confided to his knowledge, if 
 this were so, I believe that the child in nine cases out of ten would 
 lay open to the Parent's eye evils that now are left to rankle and 
 ulcerate, because they are concealed ; and half the injuries that 
 come upon families unawares, would be avoided, and the parent 
 become the repository of the most inward thoughts of the child, 
 his guardian against secret temptation.* So would he be enabled 
 to check those first movements towards evil, whether arising from 
 individuals without, or from evil thoughts, half the power of which 
 depends upon their hiddenness. 
 
 But to do this, manifestly requires a father who is in himself a 
 religious and a truly good man ; for such I leave the suggestion to 
 be considered, and I hope by many to be acted upon. 
 
 In reference to this matter I shall bring forward another thought, 
 which though it may properly appear to belong to another part of 
 this book, yet finds its practical place here. We have seen under 
 the head of the Reason, that we are surrounded by the Unseen 
 World ; nay, that we have a peculiar sense, if I may use the word, 
 by which we feel its reality and are brought in contact with it. We 
 know further that it has good and evil agents, that can and do act 
 upon us. Now I would take notice that there are powers of sug- 
 gestion by which thoughts that are in truth not our own, are pushed 
 forward as it were upon and into our minds, so that they become 
 supposititious, appearing to be our own, and yet not being so. Secret 
 adits there are in the channel of our life, whereby these flow in 
 upon us, and by a sort of immediate unconscious action, may be 
 adopted as ours, or rather unwittingly considered to be the off- 
 spring of our own Hearts. Now these suggestions are especially 
 dangerous, being acquiesced in by many, even at once ; and to 
 
 * The same advice has "been before given in regard to scruples of con- 
 science. I give it now again in reference to a subject more important.
 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 221 
 
 others giving the most distressing feelings of self-accusation, and 
 even of despair. 
 
 I would advise the Person upon whom the name of Christ has 
 been named to bring them forward into full consciousness to in- 
 terrogate them, to say to each " does this agree with my principles, 
 my life, my actions ?" and then finding they do not, to condemn 
 them as suggestions and temptations of the Enemy of Man, and 
 be not disturbed. 
 
 But for those who have not had the seal of the Christian Cove- 
 nant impressed upon their foreheads, for them no doubt these 
 thoughts suggested from without have great advantage in the 
 Habit of Day-dreaming that we have referred to ; and the whole 
 matter, even apart from the principle of Butler that we have cited, 
 may be looked upon as the readiest school that the Evil Unseen 
 World has of training and educating man to Evil. 
 
 There are other mental vices connected with Habit, which we 
 might discuss and examine. But the principles are the same that 
 we have cited from Bishop Butler, and the student can, as an ex- 
 ercise, apply them for himself. We therefore leave to him all 
 further application of them as an exercise of moral study, begging 
 him again to put upon these Principles the high value and estima- 
 tion which they so truly deserve. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 From the Heart proceeds the greatest Evil. Cause of this, Original Sin, 
 Effects : 1st, Uncontrolledness, or Self-vrill ; 2d, Selfishness ; 3d, Sensu- 
 ality. Uncontrolledness discussed. The Passions. Selfishness. Paley's 
 Theory discussed and refuted. Unselfishness. Annihilation of self. Sen- 
 suality. There is a threefold instinct to guide Man : of the Spirit ; the 
 Mind ; the Body : 1st, the Spiritual Powers ; 2d, the Desire of Having. 
 The nature and origin of Property, and the immorality of its assailants. 
 3d, Pleasure and Pain ; uses of these last. " Good and Evil" is not deter- 
 mined by " Pleasure and Pain." Systematic Sensuality. The Christian 
 Home alone cures these three faults. 
 
 OUR readers have seen, we trust, in the last chapter, the truth 
 that the highest moral development possible to man's nature is 
 through and by the Affections ; that therein there lies the germ of
 
 222 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 all that man may become to man, a vessel full to overflowing of 
 all kindly affections and humane and unselfish feelings, blessing 
 his fellow, and therein himself twice blessed. So that because of 
 the capabilities of. moral and spiritual transformation, possessed 
 by this governing power, he that is embruted and debased so far 
 that his fellows shall find no epithet to express his nature save 
 metaphors from the lowest animals, shall be able to arise from this 
 abyss, and deserve and earn all love and affection : the beast trans- 
 formed into a man. And he that is hated, despised, detested, 
 scorned, shall be loved and reverenced almost with worship and 
 adoration. Such is the wonderful power of this faculty of the 
 Spiritual Nature. 
 
 And yet true it is, that this same power is the main adit and 
 entrance to evil. The Heart, in its state of nature, affected by 
 Original Sin, unaided by gracious influences, is the source by which 
 and from which almost all evil flows in upon man. Of almost all 
 moral depravation and moral guilt, these feelings and affections of 
 our nature, which collectively we call the Heart, are the cause ; 
 uncontrolled, that is, and ungoverned, by their own law, the law of 
 man's nature, and the law of Crod, all which are, in their power 
 and their results, the same. So guided perfectly, or even so 
 governed in some degree, these powers are the source of the highest 
 moral perfection and the highest happiness in the relation of man 
 torn an uncontrolled, of the greatest debasement, the worst immo- 
 rality. 
 
 We have stated the one possibility and capability fearlessly; 
 and now do we state the other with as little fear. From the 
 "Heart of Man" those feelings, namely, and emotions, which na- 
 turally should rest upon his fellow for his fellow's good, come the 
 greatest evils and the greatest abasement. And this is the assertion 
 of our incarnate LORD, who assumed our nature: " Out of the Heart 
 proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, 
 false witnesses, blasphemies, these are the things which defile a 
 man." And again, in the Old Testament it is said, "Keep the 
 Heart, for out of it are the issues of life." And everywhere, if 
 we shall take a practical view of human life, we shall find it true, 
 that there is a body of natural feelings which should carry us on 
 to do our duty to our neighbor, which we call the Heart, and that 
 the perversion of these and the corruption of them produces
 
 THE HEAET OR AFFECTIONS. 223 
 
 "evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, thefts, fornications, blasphe- 
 mies," (or as it should properly be rendered,) " slanders." 
 
 And each and every one of these crimes and vices is the perver- 
 sion of some feeling or affection which was in itself good, and 
 which under guidance and control, instead of producing evil might 
 have produced good, unmixed and unalloyed. Murder, for in- 
 stance, is the offspring of Revenge, and Revenge is, as Bacon 
 says, " wild justice" so that the strong sense and feeling of 
 being injured, and the natural desire for justice, this which in itself 
 is perfectly right, provided it be in a legal and just way, becomes, 
 being perverted, the root of murder. And with regard to Adultery 
 this also is the same ; the adulterer lavishes upon his paramour 
 the same feelings and affections which, placed under the law and 
 rule of God and man, would have been innocent conjugal affection 
 towards his lawful wife ; one of the loveliest of all the natural 
 feelings thereby being corrupted into one of the most evil and de- 
 grading of all vices. And so the " desire of Property" in the 
 same way becomes changed into theft ; and the desire of purity in 
 society, and of seeing our brother's life pure, this becomes slan- 
 derousness. So that in the Heart and Affections of man there is 
 hardly one emotion that is not capable of being the cause of the 
 utmost vileness and degradation. This is the experience of all 
 men in all ages ; and howsoever men may declaim of " the dignity 
 of Human Nature and its purity," howsoever we may boast of 
 our nature, yet standing by ourselves, alone and apart from the 
 influences that are brought to bear upon us by the institutions of 
 Society, and the unseen and unfelt hand of an ever-present God, 
 none there are that can adequately feel how easily betrayed into 
 evil is this part of our nature. 
 
 We have already, in the commencement of this our treatise, 
 explained the nature of Original Sin as an inherent insubordina- 
 tion in our nature, whereby " it is not subject unto the law of 
 God," nor can adequately fulfil it;* which law of God is also in a 
 measure the law of man's nature, his Conscience and his Reason, 
 and also his Affections. 
 
 And in our examination of each faculty of the spiritual or 
 governing powers, we have shown how far that particular power 
 
 * " For the carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject unto 
 the law of God, neither indeed can be." Rom. viii. 7.
 
 224 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 was affected, and in what way. This, then, in reference to the 
 Heart, must now be our task to show how and whereby that which 
 is the source and means of the highest loveliness of Humanity 
 may become polluted, so as to be the well-spring and poisonous 
 fountain of its basest degradation. 
 
 We have given some examples already, from which as well as 
 from the Scriptures, students in the science of morals may under- 
 stand the truth of our assertion as to the fact. The question now 
 remains, " How and wherein do the effects of ' Original Sin' show 
 themselves upon the Heart or the Affections ?" 
 
 New, let us look upon man as a being formed for Society, hav- 
 ing therefore relations with persons exactly the same in constitu- 
 tion with himself, and therefore feelings which exist in consequence 
 of these relations, and terminate appropriately in these persons. 
 The perfection of the man, so far, is in these feelings being volun- 
 tarily directed towards these persons, according to a proportion and 
 harmony, which, according to the principles laid down in Book III., 
 shall come from God, and be apprehended by the man. Hence 
 the Law and Knowledge of God, applied by the man's Spiritual 
 Reason ; this is the rule of the Affections, and the Law after which 
 they are to be harmonized. To have, therefore, power over the 
 affections and emotions of the Heart, so as to direct them propor- 
 tionably to the law of God unto the persons to whom they are 
 naturally to be directed, this would be to have the faculty in per- 
 fection. 
 
 So would we have power to direct them aright, as to persons, 
 and as to quantity of emotion. This implies "control," so that 
 the emotion be not too great or too small and that it be under 
 the Law. 
 
 This is the first perfection ; the deficiency of it we shall call 
 " Uncontrolledness." 
 
 Again : it is implied that they be directed to " Persons in So- 
 ciety." And as we have shown that the "Affections" may be so 
 corrupted as to have substituted for them "Desires" which are 
 towards " things" and not " persons ;" hence comes, as we have 
 shown, " Selfishness." This we count the second alloy or corrup- 
 tion of the " Heart." 
 
 Again : we see the " Animals," who are not " Persons ;" but 
 "animals" have desires that are solely "animal" toward their 
 fellows. And so we do see that man, since he has a body, and an
 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 225 
 
 " Animal Mind/' as well as a Spiritual Being, can become, as it 
 were, an "Animal." His "Affections," as they can be alloyed, 
 or rather supplanted by "Desires," and so become selfish, so can 
 they be alloyed or supplanted by ''mere animal appetites" or 
 lusts. The man may make of himself so far a mere animal. This 
 substitution of the appetites for the "Affections," we call " Sen- 
 suality." 
 
 These, then, we count to be by nature the deficiencies of the 
 Heart of man considered in itself, apart from all subduing influ- 
 ences, " Uncontrolledness," or " disobedience to law," Selfishness, 
 and Sensuality. 
 
 And considered apart from all exterior influences that are 
 brought to bear upon man, that is, if man were as Tie hardly can 
 be, shut out from all Gracious influences of his natural position in a 
 world of Probation, and also from the Evangelical influences of 
 the Gospel ; we believe that the situation of the man would be as 
 one having limbs, and muscles, and bones, and nerves to walk 
 with, the very harmony and proportion of which suggested his 
 walking, and yet these all under the influence of palsy. Or, as it 
 may better express the effect of " Original Sin" upon this part of 
 his nature, we believe that he would rather be as the man to whom 
 all his organization naturally, as well as his position in Society, 
 suggests rationality and decorousness of conduct ; and yet in- 
 sanity having taken possession of his frame, overcomes, by the 
 nervous influence, the "mental powers." And thus in him the body 
 may be said to be warring with the mental power in equal strife.; 
 so equal, that to each he may apply the term "I," and say, "/ 
 wish to rule myself that is, the "I" which is.sane, wishes to over- 
 come, and control the "I" which is insane. So it seems would be 
 the situation of man's Heart by nature ; that is, apart from all 
 gracious exterior influences. There would be in it the feeling and 
 strong desire of control according to the harmony of God's law ; but 
 this only a feeling and persuasion, lying unable, insufficient, pal- 
 sied, dead. And close by it would be the three evils that we 
 have mentioned, uncontrolled and carrying the man hither and 
 thither in defiance of all law of God and man ; now swelling and 
 blazing up into exuberant and overpowering Passions, and now 
 sinking into cold and dead callousness and apathy. And the 
 Affections, all of them, would also be perverted from their due 
 ends, and Self-will, and "Selfishness," and "Sensuality" take 
 
 29
 
 226 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 their place, and reign, and rule, having the power, and overbearing 
 the Feeling of right and of control. And thus would the most 
 intense misery be produced between the strife of the Spiritual 
 Sense and the Desire of the Heart, thus left to itself ungov- 
 erned. 
 
 But this can never completely take place, because, as we have 
 urged again and again, " Society" and the " Course of God's 
 providence" give some aid, nay, in many cases very great aid, 
 against such a state of matters. And secondly, to counteract this, 
 the influence of the Holy Spirit, properly called " Grace," acts 
 so as much to prevent it, even in many that know it not. But 
 apart from the influences of God's Moral Government, and apart 
 from God's Grace, such would be the position of every man a 
 position of the most wretched misery and self-torment. 
 
 How far God may permit the Natural Heart in any individual 
 to overpower the influences of Society and of the Spirit, we do 
 not know, and the question is one of the most awful mystery ; but 
 it seems, from the history of our race, as if there had been plain 
 instances in which men had been left to themselves, and that in 
 such men Selfishness, and Sensuality, and ungoverned Passions, 
 that might have been noble-hearted Affections, had reigned, and 
 the acutest misery and bitterness, self-contempt and self-accusa- 
 tion, had been the result. And such would seem to be the destiny 
 of each man by his nature, apart from all external divine influ- 
 ence, operating upon his Heart. 
 
 We proceed now to notice these three natural faults of the 
 Heart. 
 
 The first we have mentioned is " Uncontrolledness," the natural 
 tendency that theve is, because of Original Sin, in each and every 
 affection severally, and in them all as a body, to fall from out their 
 Natural Harmony, imposed upon them by the Law" through the 
 Reason. This might be expressed by the word "Rebelliousness ;" 
 for every one that has had experience of Human Nature, has seen 
 that it is not enough that a course should be rational, and even for 
 the actual and immediate interest of the individual, and that he be 
 clearly convinced that it is so, in order that he should pursue it. 
 Nay, he who shall look at children in the Family, and men in 
 Society, shall see, that because of this very thing, they shall some- 
 times, out of mere "Self-will," as it is called, reject proposed 
 actions that are such. It might be called "Perverseness," or
 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 227 
 
 " Frowardness," or " Self-will," all these express more or less the 
 same thing ; but more fully do I think that this word " Uncon- 
 trolledness," expresses that quality in the " Heart," which is the 
 cause of "rebelliousness," and "self-will," and "frowardness," 
 and " perverseness." 
 
 Now I suspect there are very few, indeed, that comprehend to 
 what an extent this quality of " Uncontrolledness " exists by na- 
 ture in the Heart of man, and what an immensity of Discipline in 
 God's providence is to him administered, consciously or uncon- 
 sciously, by the direct action of Society upon him, the immediate 
 effect of which is to conquer and subdue it. This alone shows how 
 great naturally it is. In fact, to look at it aright, the Scrip- 
 ture is absolutely and scientifically correct, that states froward- 
 ness to be bound up in the heart of a child, for this quality is 
 the first manifested by children, and to give " Self-control " is the 
 direct effect of our providential training in the Family for so long 
 a time as children ; and in the State as men. But the 'amount of 
 this in us by nature, may perhaps be best seen by considering the 
 following extract from Bp. Butler's Analogy. 
 
 " But if we consider a person brought into the world with both 
 these (bodily strength and understanding) in maturity, as far as 
 this is conceivable, he would plainly at first be as unqualified for 
 the human life of mature age as an idiot. 
 
 " He would in a manner be distracted with astonishment and 
 apprehension, and curiosity, and suspense, nor can any one guess 
 how long it would be before he would be familiarized to himself, 
 and the objects about him, enough even to set himself to any- 
 thing. 
 
 " It may be questioned, too, whether the natural information of 
 his sight and hearing would be of any use at all to him in acting 
 before experience. 
 
 " And it seems that men would be strangely headstrong, and self- 
 willed, and disposed to exert themselves with an impetuosity which 
 would render society insupportable, and the living in it impracti- 
 cable, were it not for some acquired moderation and self-govern- 
 ment, some aptitude and readiness in restraining themselves and 
 concealing their sense of things." 
 
 Here, then, is the idea we have been urging plainly set forth, 
 it is here shown, that by nature, the long training from childhood 
 unto manhood, this whether the parent is conscious of it or not,
 
 228 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 is, of effect, to repress the natural " Self-will," to give " Control- 
 ledness " to that which is " Uncontrolled." And he that has seen 
 " Savages," or even the " Semi-civilized," he shall see that the 
 main difference that exists between them and the civilized, is the 
 want of this " Self-control." The Savage's eye is caught by any 
 trifle. He cannot check that desire, govern it, or in any way con- 
 trol it. He will, for the whim of the moment, subject himself to 
 any amount of future misery. The civilized man, on the contrary, 
 by all the training he has got in Civilized Society, is taught to 
 check, rule, govern himself, and this makes all the difference be- 
 tween them. A great difference, indeed, the difference of Law, 
 and of Knowledge, of which, as we have said, Society is the channel 
 to all who are in it, in a degree more or less to all, but highest to 
 those who are in a Christianized Society. 
 
 Again, if any one look at a child from its birth, he will see that 
 this very thing of " Uncontrolledness " is one born with it, a 
 fault of deficiency, which is supplied more or less in all who live 
 under the guidance of Parents in the Family ; but most of all in 
 those who, being brought into Covenant with God, have all the 
 influences attached to that state, the influences of the Spirit 
 promised them, the teachings of God's Providence, the guardian- 
 ship of the Holy Angels, the Communion of Saints, and the 
 influence of an holy home, of a Father and Mother pledged unto 
 God, and training up their children in Faith and Love. 
 
 This is the complete and entire remedy, as we have said, this and 
 this alone. The influences of the G-ospel seen and unseen brought 
 to bear upon the Heart from childhood. And he that is without 
 this may indeed, in latter years, become a Christian, but he shall 
 be a very imperfect one, with many faults, and all of them arising 
 from this one great natural fault of "Uncontrolledness," left in 
 his youth unremedied. For the great cure of this fault is the 
 Grace of God, awaking in the Child the Spiritual Mind in its 
 youth ; the living sense, we say, not the verbal knowledge of Truth, 
 Purity, Justice, Holiness, Gentleness, Goodness ; all these that we 
 have pointed out as truths of the Spiritual Reason. These so held 
 are the proper and only perfect checks of this " Uncontrolledness" 
 natural to man. And we say plainly that this teaching is the only 
 security against this fault, the only complete and entire security. 
 And he who denies it to his child, he does with reference to his 
 moral being as much incapacitate him as the parents of that Ger-
 
 THE HEART OK AFFECTIONS. 229 
 
 man child Caspar Hauser did as regards his body. For he was 
 found in the state which Butler describes, grown to maturity and 
 yet a child, unknowing any language and untrained in any art. 
 
 We have seen ourselves youth who certainly had seen] at home 
 no viciousness, who had lived at home without vice, and then the 
 first time that the external check of a mechanically virtuous Home 
 was cast aside, they rushed off into all sin ; and men wondered, 
 without any cause, for if the .Spiritual Reason, that which is the 
 image of God, is unawakened and inactive, and the Desires un- 
 controlled, the man so far is an animal, and will live and act as 
 an animal. There is no wonder at all in such cases. 
 
 So far with regard to general " TJncontrolledness," as it exists 
 as a quality of the Heart itself; as it is more generally manifested, 
 it comes in connexion with what are called " Passions." 
 
 " This term is applied to Desires and Affections when uncon- 
 trolled by Reason, as if men in such cases were merely passive 
 and acted upon. Thus we speak of a man being in a Passion, 
 meaning an uncontrolled fit of anger, and having a passion for an 
 object, meaning an uncontrolled desire. 
 
 " Still it is to be recollected that man under the influence of 
 such Passions is not really passive when he acts under such in- 
 fluence he adopts the suggestion of Desire or Affection; and 
 rejects the control of Reason. * * * Passion does not pre- 
 vent a man knowing that there is a rule and that he is acting in 
 violation of it. To say that Passion is irresistible is to annihilate 
 Reason and to exclude the most essential condition of Human 
 Action."* 
 
 Upon this matter of the Passions, and their escape from control, 
 we shall at present remark no more than that the Spiritual Rea- 
 son is the Great Governor of them, and that Habit, Sympathy, 
 Time, these are the conditions of its operation. For the very 
 nature of a Passion is that it is momentary, and therefore it can be 
 overcome in its vehement assaults by preparing against it long 
 before, through the awakening of the Spiritual Reason, the chain 
 of Habit, and the shield of a just and equitable Sympathy with 
 those that passion otherwise would have injured ; or else, if this 
 have not beforehand been prepared and habitually established, at 
 the time it can be arrested by delay, occupation, surprise, or any 
 
 * Whewell's Elements of Morality, voL 1, p. 58.
 
 230 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 one of those things that takes its violence from the immediate 
 moment, and spreads it out over a space of time. For what gives 
 a Passion force, is that it is concentrated in a moment, resisted 
 for that space, and its violence by any means expanded over time, 
 . it shall be conquered. 
 
 Hence the mechanical means of conquering anger by saying the 
 Creed, counting one thousand, putting in a mouthful of "water and 
 keeping it there for some time, turning aside for ten minutes, all 
 of these very good because they take advantage of that principle 
 in the very nature of passion, its momentariness. 
 
 But a thousand-fold better is it to prepare beforehand, to think 
 and guard ourselves against it, and thus to conquer it before it 
 arises. 
 
 Another remark we would here make in reference to Passions. 
 "An Affection, it seems, uncontrolled by Reason is a Passion ;" 
 again in the case of the Heart, it would seem that this governing 
 faculty belongs in some measure to the body as well as to the soul ; 
 and that we might say, that when the Body rules then the Affec- 
 tion becomes a Passion, when the Spiritual power then it is an Af- 
 fection. This we say not in a precise scientific way, but in a popu- 
 lar one, in order to explain our meaning more perspicuously. 
 
 Now this being so, it would seem that if the Divine Reason is 
 unawakened, and systematic and habitual controlledness is not 
 established, that the Lusts, Desires, Appetites, bodily Passions and 
 emotions have the power of rising up and taking the sway, but 
 that to awaken the Spiritual powers will be to keep off and keep 
 down the others. Love will render the individual proof against 
 Lust, true Benevolence against Prodigality, the sense and habitual 
 practice of Justice against brute Anger, true Joyfulness against 
 riotous and revelling Emotion, steady Hopefulness against that 
 variation of the same natural feeling that leads men to gambling ; 
 and so each and every emotion of the Heart under the Spiritual 
 Reason, habitually awakened, keeps down a passion or a lust that 
 has hurried multitudes to destruction. But nought else will effect 
 this than that youthful training under the influence of God's Grace 
 which I have above mentioned. 
 
 But from the nature of Passion, from the nature of the Affec- 
 tions, as spreading to Body and Soul, from the nature of the Rea- 
 son also, to seek for momentary remedies instead of permanent 
 ones, is merely to delude ourselves.
 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 231 
 
 It is the Habit only, formed by the Reason and the Will guid- 
 ing, governing, controlling systematically the Affections, and these 
 Affections themselves ruling according to their nature, this is the 
 only thing that can raise the rampart broad and high to resist the 
 momentary rush and thunder-gust of the passions. 
 
 But that a man shall live through his existence, making it his 
 only object to eat, and drink, and enjoy himself; and his only rule 
 of life to be honest enough, and just enough, and fair enough, to 
 go through life, and all this barely external honesty, and justice, 
 and fairness : and then internally to make Self his only rule, and 
 to laugh at the restraints of the Conscience, and overleap them, to 
 set aside the Spiritual Reason, and in his heart despise its laws, 
 and turn Affection into Animal desire and Lust, for a man to do 
 all this, is to make himself ready to be overthrown and destroyed 
 by the assaults of the passions. 
 
 And for ourselves/when we look out upon life and see how many 
 are in the situation we have just described, as to their Inward 
 Heart, satisfying themselves, if they satisfy Society, with an out- 
 ward show, and inwardly destitute of all principle, except a syste- 
 matic Selfishness, the wonder is not to us that so many awful falls 
 into ruin have taken place of late years, but that so many have 
 stood. So far with regard to the Passions, as far as their govern- 
 ance is concerned; and with these observations, we close our 
 remarks upon "Uncontrolledness." 
 
 With regard to the next fault of the Heart, Selfishness, we have 
 already spoken of it in Chapter Second of this book,. we have 
 shown that it is the " turning after things of those Affections that 
 ought to rest upon persons exclusively," and have sufficiently en- 
 larged upon it. 
 
 Another matter in reference to it we would remark, that the 
 most destructive of all modern " theories of Morals," is the doc- 
 trine of Paley, that " Selfishness, moderated and guided by Rea- 
 son, is the leading principle of morality." This in fact is only the 
 theory of Hobbes, " that the state of man naturally is a state of 
 war ; that as birds of prey are supplied with talons and beaks, and 
 beasts of prey with teeth and claws, and both with rapacity to 
 set at work and cunning to employ these natural arms, so is it 
 with man, that he is an animal naturally at war with his fellows, 
 and with all other animals, rapacious by nature, and cunning, 
 with reasoning powers given him to supply and frame the arms
 
 232 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 that he has not by nature." This is the theory of Hobbes, fully 
 and plainly laid out ; the theory of Paley, it will be seen, is much 
 the same. It says that all that man seeks, he seeks for himself, 
 and only for self, that this is the centre of all actions and must be 
 so. Hence that all he can do is to moderate and guide his natural 
 selfishness. 
 
 Hence there can be no Conscience, no natural feeling or know- 
 ledge of Justice, Truth, or Honesty, for these are put aside, if 
 the gratification of self, by nature, is and must be the main 
 object of the Man. Hence there is no natural Heart or Affec- 
 tions for these, say " not ,for Self, but for Persons who are not 
 your Self, should you act; and to bring in Self therein, is to per- 
 vert and destroy." This notion destroys the Conscience, the 
 Reason, the Heart, it reduces man to the level of a beast without 
 governing powers, led by appetites alone. Nay, it brutalizes him 
 wholly, it says "there is no highness, no loftiness, no nobleness of 
 moral being, for all is Appetite, all is Self;" only regulated a little 
 by the consequences to others, and to yourself, so that your 
 " Self" shall last out to the end of your natural life, and not end 
 upon the scaffold or in the prison. 
 
 This is the notion of Paley, a notion which, we will say, every 
 man that thinks a moment, will see to be false ; for the man who 
 acts in obedience to Conscience, acts so not for any motive but 
 that immediate one ; just as in case of " Simple Pleasure," or Pain, 
 with respect to his body ; he that brings his hand in contact with 
 fire takes it away, not from any reasoning upon thoughts of Self, 
 but without any thought of it, from the Pain. And so with regard 
 to simple emotions of Pleasure. Thus also it is with regard to 
 him who obeys Conscience ; "Good" is sought as "Good," "Evil" 
 avoided as "Evil." " Conscience " is the natural sense of these in 
 reference to Eternity, as the physical sensibility is of " Pleasure " 
 and "Pain :" and as the consequence of action, attended by the one, 
 is to the body "preservation" or "destruction," it being certain 
 that such to the physical frame is the use of "Pleasure" and 
 " Pain ;" so to the Moral Being is the consequence of " Good " and 
 " Evil." Each faculty is an instinctive warning, a natural sense, 
 existing in all men without reference to knowledge or experience. 
 And each one who acts upon Conscience, knows as much that he 
 is acting upon it without reference to Self, as he that acts upon
 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 233 
 
 "Pleasure " and "Pain," physically knows His action to be im- 
 mediate upon the instinct. 
 
 Again, in reference to the Spiritual Reason, the man who acts 
 upon moral principle of any kind, upon motives of Justice, 
 Honesty, Veracity, Benevolence, he knows that it is upon the 
 principle he acts, without reference to the consequence ; and the 
 very perfection of the principle is, that upon it he would so act in 
 despite of all consequences to self, strong, and upheld by the 
 principle, 
 
 " Unhurt amid the war of Elements, 
 The wreck of matter and the crash of worlds." 
 
 So in respect of the Affections ; the man who loves his family 
 knows that he loves them for no selfish motives, but for themselves 
 his wife is loved for herself his children for themselves his 
 friends for themselves. As we have before said, the introduction 
 of Self here is the very destruction of the Affection. 
 
 Not according to this moral doctrine of Paley is the doctrine 
 of the Holy Scriptures, but quite otherwise. " Except a man deny 
 himself and take up his cross and follow me, he cannot become 
 my disciple." In fact, herein does the spiritual doctrine unite 
 with and crown the moral one ; herein is the scion of heaven en- 
 grafted upon the progeny of earth ; the scriptural doctrine of Self- 
 denial, this is the crown of the moral doctrine of the Affections ; 
 and in the Home, in the Nation, in the Church, this is in a mea- 
 sure the completion of all practical philosophy, for those whom 
 man is bound to love, to renounce all self and selfishness. If the 
 Husband, the Wife, the Father, the Mother, the Daughter, the 
 Son, the Brother, the Sister, if these love, and for this their love, 
 renounce and deny and give up Self, and cause their desires to 
 be towards the happiness of one another ; then is the Home a 
 pure fount and crystal spring of happiness and sweet calm joy. 
 If those Affections that should be disinterested are set upon the 
 advantages that affection brings, then Selfishness ultimately brings 
 its own punishment, and that which ought to be happy shall be 
 miserable. 
 
 So it is with the Nation ; to labour for the Nation's good, this 
 brings happiness, being disinterested ; but Selfishness spoils and 
 destroys Patriotism : and so it is with the Church. 
 
 30
 
 234 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 To deny oneself, to love whom we ought to love with an affec- 
 tion pure from all motives of self, this is the height and com- 
 pletion of all wisdom of life, in the Home, the Nation, and the 
 Church. 
 
 And as it is the most difficult of all moral tasks, so it is the best 
 rewarded. For if the most selfish soul only knew the calm and 
 certain joy of him who has trained himself to Unselfishness, if he 
 only knew how soon Selfishness is found out and hated when even 
 buried under the deepest disguise ; and how soon Unselfishness is 
 found out and loved and respected, and given of men power and 
 influence and authority, these things which the selfish man most 
 desires to get, and the being baffled in the attainment of which, is 
 his most frequent torment and truest punishment : if he only 
 could find out and experience this, even his selfishness would drive 
 him to cast away selfishness. 
 
 But again, I would impress upon my readers that " Selfishness" 
 is the substitution of Desires for Affections ; and that merely to 
 fling away the Desire or the object of the Desire, this is of no 
 avail except the Affection take its place : and herein lies the differ- 
 ence between Abstinence and Fasting, Benevolence and mere 
 Prodigality, money-careless Goodnature and Compassion. To re- 
 nounce things is not hard ; to have Affections rightly directed, 
 in consequence of which " Desires" are kept away, and " things " 
 renounced, this is the completeness of " Unselfishness." 
 
 One thing more in reference to this and I have done with the 
 subject; "Selfishness" is not "Self" verbally or actually. A 
 man's " Self" is his Being, his Identity, that which makes him 
 what he is. Now there is a religious philosophy that now and then 
 springs up, an error that the noblest often fall into, that confound 
 these two, that says " let us annihilate self;" and then prescribes 
 a denial of all emotions whatsoever, an attempt to be without 
 emotion and almost without being, and calls this Perfection. 
 
 This is the philosophy of the Mystics or Quietists, and plainly 
 takes Self as if it meant " Selfishness." It is a verbal error, one 
 nevertheless that many have fallen into. We mention it here 
 merely for the sake of caution. Selfishness you can annihilate 
 completely by the Grace of God, given in his Covenant " Self," 
 that is your individual emotions and feelings, you cannot annihi- 
 late if you could your situation then would be that of an idiot 
 the Perfect Man of the Mystics only and merely exists as an idiot.
 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 235 
 
 But man as God made him, and as God intended him to be, was to 
 enjoy all the emotions of an Heart overflowing with love to God and 
 man, under the guidance of God's law and the ruling power of his 
 own inward being, and not to dream of annihilating them, for 
 these all are good in themselves and not evil. That they should be 
 guided, governed, controlled, repressed, moderated under God's 
 Law, and by God's Grace, with and by means of the internal 
 governing nature of man, this as a right and true desire ; but the 
 " annihilation" of them is a Quietist dream that has led many 
 astray. 
 
 We come now to the last natural fault of the Affections, that 
 is, Sensuality. Upon this we have already remarked, that it con- 
 sists in the substituting habitually the mere " Animal Desires" 
 for the Affections. 
 
 This, in the Scriptures, is called "Lust," or the "Carnal 
 Mind," these words meaning one and the same thing, the man's 
 acting merely as an Animal, and putting aside altogether his 
 moral' and spiritual being. This we have termed "Sensuality." 
 
 Now, it is worth while to examine the ground and foundation of 
 this. We have seen that man is made up of three elements the 
 Body, the Animal Mind, the Spirit. We have looked at the Spirit, 
 and seen whereunto its desires tend, in our examination of its va- 
 rious powers. Again : we have seen of the Animal Mind that its 
 desire is towards visible things things of the Senses, which, by vir- 
 tue of his organization, man desires to have. Again : we look at the 
 Body, we find that it has Sensibility, the power of being affected 
 by external things, that is, of feeling from them the sense of Plea- 
 sure and of Pain ; that this is strictly and scientifically the sense 
 that preserves the body from disorganization. Hence has man, as 
 such, a threefold natural instinctive guide, born with him and 
 awakened in him to act, by the action upon him of Society and 
 Nature first, the four spiritual senses, that we have so often 
 enumerated, which bind him to God and to things eternal, immor- 
 tal, invisible. 
 
 Secondly : he has with reference to things seen, the sense " of 
 having " the natural feeling of the Possession of Property, of 
 Life, and of Rights this, we take it, belongs to the Mind, as one 
 and the first of its faculties. 
 
 And he that considers the origin of Property, he shall see that 
 there is a natural instinct and ineradicable feeling in Man, by his
 
 236 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 being, the Desire of Having, which urges him to labor of mind 
 and body, and thereby to obtain as his own that which he desires. 
 It is an indestructible and fundamental faculty and feeling of his 
 nature to be ruled, of course, by law and equity, but not origin- 
 ating in them, but in the man's nature, concurring with the exter- 
 nal means of gratifying it. 
 
 The Desire to Have Labor Property these are as the eye 
 its power of sight things visible. They belong to the Indivi- 
 dual Man, as the power of making honey, the desire to make it, 
 and the honey, to the Bee. Inherent in Man, they are connatural, 
 always existing ; belonging to the very nature of the being, and 
 to that of the world wherein that being is. They can be regulated, 
 never destroyed.* This is the second natural tie, and it connects 
 man in a very strong way with the world of things palpable to the 
 senses and perceptible by them. 
 
 Thirdly: the "Body" is manifestly a material organization a 
 living organization, too, in the midst of forces, some of which are 
 destructive, some tend to its support. It needs, evidently, a pro- 
 tective sense, by which it shall be instinctively guarded against 
 those that are destructive, and turned to those that are for its 
 
 * I have stated thus briefly the foundation of Property to be, First, in an 
 inherent faculty of our being, that cannot be eradicated from it. t Secondly, in 
 an action of the man, labor, that is always necessary to man's being, always 
 has its Rights, and always must exist. Thirdly, in the provision in the ex- 
 ternal world of rewards for Labor, and incentives to the Desire of Having. 
 If, then, from the system of the world you would destroy Property, you must 
 be able to eradicate from the nature of man in each individual and in the whole 
 race, an inherent and essential faculty of the mind. You must destroy La- 
 bor, and the value of its rewards. Better rule this desire by wise laws, and 
 true and rational principles of Morality and Policy, than waste strength in 
 doing that which cannot be done. 
 
 Another thing I would just say to those who may read this book. As in 
 beasts, a certain shape of hoof always implies horns, and horns always imply 
 that peculiar shape of hoof, and yet we cannot trace the logical reason, or 
 even the natural one, only as a fact of Natural Science it is so ; so with 
 regard to the doctrine of "Community of Property," always through history 
 as a fact, we see it has implied another " Community that of Wives. These 
 two always have been connected, one always has inferred the other. The 
 "hoof" has always implied the "horns" the "horns" the "hoof." Let 
 those, therefore, who may have been pleased with these notions, be slow look 
 carefully examine cautiously and perhaps they may see the "hoof" and 
 the " horns," and escape from both.
 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 237 
 
 good this is manifestly in what we call Sensibility* " the power 
 of Sensation in the various tissues of the body, by which it has 
 perceptions and emotions of Pleasure and Pain." This is branched 
 out into the five Senses, which, besides their giving us knowledge 
 of many qualities in bodies of which without them we should be 
 otherwise ignorant, are of themselves organs of Pleasure and 
 Pain. 
 
 Now, with reference to this subject, let us consider a little. 
 Here, we will say, is a Child its eyes are delighted naturally 
 with anything bright, clear, sparkling it has never had experi- 
 ence a lamp is brought close at hand to it it puts its hand di- 
 rectly into the flame. And instantly the emotion of pain is caused 
 in a very great degree, and the hand is withdrawn. 
 
 Now observe, had there been no Pain, the hand would have re-j 
 mained there, and have been destroyed ; and secondly, the pain 
 occurs before any material injury takes place, or rather cotempo- 
 raneous with the smallest, so as to be an immediate warning. This 
 emotion, therefore, is in its simplest form, purely defensive and 
 protective. 
 
 Again, look at Physical Pleasure, this in its simplest form tends 
 manifestly to the preservation of the body, guiding us towards 
 those physical things external, that most conduce to that end. To 
 the uncorrupted appetite, the most pleasant food is always the 
 most healthy. The things that to the senses uncorrupted give a 
 natural feeling of pleasure are to them the best and those things 
 that are not pleasant but painful, are destructive. 
 
 Now, when we look at the power of Habit and Experience, we 
 find that these experiences of Pleasure and Pain, by man and by 
 the animals having bodily organization, are enrolled in the memory, 
 so that the experience of the past is a guide to the present and 
 the future, and thus, that the period of infancy in the animals as 
 well as in man is by this means a period of Education with respect 
 to outward things. 
 
 Here then are three guides. The Spiritual Sense in reference 
 to man's Spiritual being. The Sense of Having in reference to the 
 mind. The Sense of Pleasure and Pain in reference to the integ- 
 rity and preservation of the bodily organization. 
 
 Pleasure and Pain then are strictly bodily, for the preservation 
 
 * Sensibility is here used in the Physiological sense.
 
 238 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 of the Body, and when we apply them to the mind it is in a purely 
 figurative sense. The delight for instance that a conscientious 
 man has in obeying his conscience, is not only not bodily pleasure, 
 but is of a kind so wholly and entirely different, that it may exist 
 along with the highest degree of bodily pain, caused by that very 
 action. 
 
 Good and Evil then are not determined by Pleasure and Pain ; 
 for the Good is not always pleasant, nor the Evil always painful. 
 The Good may bring exceeding Pain and the Evil exceeding Plea- 
 sure ; and yet we shall be bound to do the Good and not to do the 
 Evil ; nay, to do the Good when the Pain is so great that it ends 
 in the utter destruction of the body, as martyrs that have suffered 
 death in fire, because they felt themselves bound to maintain the 
 truth ; as patriots that have died in torments for their country's 
 sake ; and as women that have borne all affliction for their children, 
 have found, and received the applause of all ages for it. 
 
 Pleasure and Pain then are for the Good and Evil of the Body. 
 They meddle not with the Good of the Spirit. It is not to be 
 measured by them, but itself is to be superior to them. 
 
 I have already, in the early part of this treatise, shown that each 
 man has in his estimation some one object that he considers to be 
 his Highest Crood : now let us take these ordinary objects we see 
 men pursue, and we shall plainly see that they admit of a three- 
 fold division. If the man places his Highest Good in obeying his 
 Conscience, or living with justice, holiness or truth then shall his 
 Highest Good be in and within the regions of the Spirit or Moral 
 Being. If he places it in "Having," no matter what form of it, 
 having power, or having wealth, or having fame, or having pro- 
 perty ; then it is within the animal mind. The man is Selfish. 
 Again, if his main object be bodily Pleasure, no matter how or 
 in what way it is, the man is Sensual. 
 
 This is the true definition of Sensuality. The Sensual man 
 makes the pleasure of the body his Highest Good he lives for the 
 sake of feeling bodily pleasure and avoiding bodily pain. 
 
 When we consider the glutton, the drunkard, the epicure, the 
 licentious man, in them all we shall see that they are all Sensual, 
 they make the pleasure of the physical frame the end for which 
 they live, and that by which they measure their Good and their 
 Evil. 
 
 And we see plainly that these are the Good and the Evil of the
 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 239 
 
 beasts that perish;* they have no other Good and Evil than 
 physical Pleasure and Pain. 
 
 We have already shown how what is ordinarily called vicious- 
 ness of life is Sensuality in a great degree, properly so called. 
 Another form of Sensuality we would now notice. 
 
 There are persons who look upon vice and its pleasures, and 
 pains ; and who by mere reason argue in this way : " Vice is 
 injurious and destructive even to its own object, the desire of 
 high-wrought Physical happiness and its ecstacies of pleasure are 
 attended by revulsions of the deepest physical distress it shatters, 
 destroys, ruins life and fortune and character, and therefore man 
 ought not to be vicious. But he may take the same desire that urges 
 on the vicious man, the same Sensuality ; he may guide and govern 
 it by reason and so his enjoyment shall be permanent, steady 
 and equable. He may live for it and it only, and suffer no evil." 
 
 There are multitudes that do so ; that look to the Home, only 
 as a place of temperate sensual pleasure ; that steadily and system- 
 
 * Now let my reader look at the Sensualist philosophy of John Locke, and 
 make his choice between it and that in this Treatise. 
 
 " Good and Evil what Things then are Good and Evil only in reference to 
 Pleasure and Pain. That we call Good which is apt to cause or increase 
 Pleasure or diminish Pain in us ; or else to procure or preserve us the pos- 
 session of any other good, or absence of any evil. And on the other hand, 
 we name that evil which is apt to produce or increase any pain or diminish 
 any pleasure in us ; or else to procure any evil or deprive us of any good. 
 By Pleasure or Pain I must be understood to mean of body or mind, as they 
 are commonly distinguished ; though in truth they be only different constitu- 
 tions of the mind, sometimes occasioned by disorder in the body, sometimes 
 by thoughts in the mind." Locke's Essay on Human Understanding, Book 
 II. Chap. 20, Section 2. 
 
 To follow this out we shall show what that philosophy ended in. Listen 
 to the estimate of its result and its tendency, made by Louis Blanc, a bold 
 and daring Socialist, but unquestionably a man of genius. 
 
 " It was in England that Voltaire had drunk in that Epicurean Wisdom, 
 which he carried among the French, * * * he read the works of the 
 wise Locke, ' the only one who has taught the human mind to understand 
 itself/ and he had yielded without effort to the doctrine received from Aristotle, 
 tha't our ideas are derived from our senses. * * * Thus Voltaire, on re- 
 turning to France, carried with him the education England had given him, 
 his religion was Deism, his philosophy Sensation, his system of morality 
 Tolerance. The overthrow of Christianity was his aim." History of French 
 Revolution, Philadelphia, 1848, 1 vol. p. 214. 
 
 Can this Philosophy end in anything else?
 
 240 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 aticallj pervert all the Affections to means of Epicurean enjoy- 
 ment, and quietly make, as far as they can, all things terminate in 
 their own " pleasure," or bodily appetites. This is just as much 
 Sensuality as is that of the openly and lawlessly gluttonous or 
 licentious man. 
 
 Well, is it not lawful to enjoy oneself ? Certainly it is ; but not 
 to make it the main end of life; not to make it the Supreme 
 Grood. It is lawful to keep the home comfortable, but not to make 
 comfort the sole end and object of life. For as I have said about 
 Selfishness, so Sensuality, however tempered and modified, is still 
 Sensuality, and both are immoral in any shape. 
 
 According to Paley, Selfishness so tempered and guided is 
 the right and only spring of action. According to the principles 
 of Locke, in reference to Pleasure and Pain, Sensuality is so too. 
 But not according to what I conceive both natural and Christian 
 morality to be ; the Sensual and the Selfish are as plainly con- 
 demned by Nature and in the Scriptures as may be; and therefore 
 I must conclude that no modification of either quality can be 
 moral. 
 
 What then is the true course of action here and the true remedy ? 
 the same that we spoke of in the case of Selfishness do we give 
 in the case " Sensuality." Make not your home a mere place for 
 the pleasures of Sense, that you there receive, or soon will you 
 cease to love it at all, you will soon become and be /Sensual : but 
 love your home and your family for themselves, and permit not Sel- 
 fishness or Sensuality to come in and to spoil the holiest of all Affec- 
 tions, that of the Family. Let the Home be in your mind for 
 them, for their comforts, for their pleasure, and not for your own ; 
 and so will you find in them and in their love a degree of actual 
 pleasure that you never could have found in Self or Sense. 
 
 But the completion and perfection of this is to be attained only 
 in the Christian Home, this alone can completely and'entirely put 
 an end in the Family to these two evils. The Family is the 
 natural School to unteach* man these two faults of the Affections ; 
 and only as sanctified and perfected by Christianity, is its function 
 to this effect complete. 
 
 Having thus discussed the faults of the Affections that come 
 upon man's heart naturally because of his fallen state, we shall in 
 the next chapter consider the " Body." 
 
 * Dedocet uti. Horace.
 
 THE HEART OB AFFECTIONS. 241 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Body it is not evil but it is afiected, first, by Self-will, Selfishness and 
 Sensuality. Second, by death and disease entering the frame, and by the loss 
 of the Sacrament of Life. Third, by weakness of those mental powers that 
 remain, and by total loss of others. False imaginations about a future 
 state recounted and reproved, and true ideas in their stead. Our " body" is 
 not that of brutes, and thereby contemptible, but is to be reverenced ; and 
 of this the reason is, that the Word assumed Flesh, was born, lived and 
 died as man And is now as Man upon the throne of heaven. 
 
 IT will have been seen in the last chapter that two of the main 
 faults of the Affections arise directly from the "Animal Mind" 
 the one, and from the "body" the other, these feelings taking 
 the place of the Affections, and being substituted for them ; and 
 hence Selfishness and Sensuality both come from the animal part 
 of our nature. 
 
 The question, then, may arise, " Is not this material organization, 
 therefore, that we call the Body the cause in itself of our Evil ?" 
 We answer, that to make the Body rule and be the main object of 
 our Good, this is to be Carnal or Sensual, and is, as we have shown, 
 the source of multitudinous evil ; but the Body in itself, no more 
 than the Spiritual part, is evil. The Body, ruled and governed, 
 is in its proper place, and the Spirit, as ruling and governing, but 
 one is no more evil by its nature than the other. 
 
 The inordinacy that comes from Original Sin, and 'inability to 
 be obedient to the Law of God, run through all parts of man's 
 nature, "the whole head is sick and the whole heart is faint" 
 and the Body is wounded as the Spiritual part is. But the one is 
 not in its nature wholly or essentially evil any more than the 
 other. The Body with its powers is in nature good, but fallen, 
 just as the whole man is ; nay, there is not a function, or a desire, 
 or appetite, or instinct of the Body that is not in itself good, 
 when it is guided and governed by the Law of God. This is the 
 decision of the Ancient Church against the Manichaeans, a decision 
 worthy to be brought up again and again, and impressed and urged 
 upon all men as one of the primal truths of a real Christian 
 Science. 
 
 31
 
 242 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 And this being laid down, the question then will arise, " What, 
 then, is the Body in quality, and what is its condition and nature ?" 
 The answer to this is, good still, but fallen, this its condition. 
 How it is good we shall afterwards determine but how it is fallen 
 is answered in two ways ; first, as concerning its desires, which 
 are "Uncontrolled," " Selfish," " Sensual," which may be seen 
 also to be the resolution of that true Ethical Philosopher, St. 
 James, when he declares that "this wisdom,"* that of the Flesh, 
 is "earthly," "sensual," "devilish" three epithets that most 
 distinctly are identical with Uncontrolled (devilish, rebellious, 
 that is against the Law of God,) Selfish, that is, "Earthly" and 
 Sensual. Hereby, then, do we count that the mere "Animal 
 Nature" is perverted itself, and perverts and destroys the Heart, 
 and through it the whole man. 
 
 This we count to be upon the Animal Nature of man one 
 great injury wrought by " Original Sin," and the three elements 
 of that onef injury are called in the Scriptures by the name of 
 the Will, or Lust of the Flesh ; and are, in the estimate of the 
 Scriptures and of the Ancient Church, the chief bringer in and 
 leader into sin. And indeed, this embracing these three, shall be 
 what St. Augustine calls the " fuel of Sin."J 
 
 This, as we have said, is the first way in which the body is 
 injured by " Original Sin." 
 
 Again : manifestly man was originally an immortal being. God 
 made him not imperfect, but perfect in all his parts. And existing 
 as he did in Time and Space, and the particles of his frame being 
 in a perpetual flow, it must necessarily be that this immortality of 
 his should be an immortality of supply, a power in his frame 
 of supply commensurate with decay, of restorative power, both 
 internally and externally, equal to repair all possible deterioration 
 of particles. 
 
 And accordingly we find that even now, in the very nature and 
 being of man, there are what the physicians call the " Forces 
 Medicatrices de la Nature," the " Medicinal powers of Nature 
 
 * I take it that this " wisdom" or " philosophy" is an Epicurean worldly 
 wisdom, that makes interest and self-gratification its Highest Good. 
 
 t " Self-love," " Selfishness," " Sensuality," together, are the constituent 
 parts of what St. Augustine calls " Concupiscence," or "Evil Desire." 
 
 J " Concupiscentia est fomes peccati." "Concupiscence is the fuel of Sin." 
 St. Augustine.
 
 THE HEAKT OR AFFECTIONS. 243 
 
 Herself;" by which self-restorative power, in fact,, all diseases 
 are cured, the effect of what we call " medicine" being only to 
 remove obstacles in their way, while these cure. So that the human 
 frame is a self-repairing machine, a self-healing animal organiza- 
 tion. And this consideration led one of the greatest minds* of 
 this century at once to pronounce the fact of the original immor- 
 tality of man ; for a- self-repairing machine, if its repairs are or 
 can be equal to its decays, is or can be an always lasting machine. 
 
 And again ; by the Holy Scriptures we find that there was to 
 man externally the means of a perpetual supply in the " Tree of 
 Life" in the centre of the garden, the fruit of which seems to 
 have been, as it were, the Sacrament of Life, a perpetual means 
 whereby from without him a constant and adequate supply was 
 given to the lamp of immortality that burned in his undying Body, 
 the food of life, and appropriate nutriment to the immortal organ- 
 ization. So that as to the Spiritual part there was that Super- 
 natural Gift that we have specified ; in like manner, also, unto the 
 immortal frame there was the corresponding external supernatural 
 supply of immortality. Andf the true difference between man as 
 he was originally in reference to life, and the post-Resurrection 
 man is this that the first man was able not to die, and man as 
 raised shall be not able to die. 
 
 Upon the "Body," then, another effect of Original Sin is this : 
 " Sin entered into the world, and Death by Sin," and " Death has 
 passed upon all, inasmuch as all have sinned." 
 
 But over and above this, or perhaps in consequence of this, it 
 seems that the "Animal Mind," or, as others call it, the " Under- 
 standing," the "Mental Power," that is, which deals with 
 the things of Sense, the objects of the Visible World has been 
 injured. 
 
 And this, we can see, has taken place in a two-fold way : the 
 first by a superinduced imperfection in the action of its faculties ; 
 and the second, by an actual diminution of them in number. 
 These two mental injuries we shall now proceed to examine. 
 
 When we look at the possession of mental powers, we feel in our- 
 selves the sense of imperfection, both in the comparison of some 
 men's powers, with others naturally, and also as to the effect of 
 cultivation. There seems, as regards mental power, to be about 
 
 * Napoleon Bonaparte. f This distinction is St. Augustine's.
 
 244 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 as much difference between a rude European peasant and an 
 American citizen, with an ordinary education, almost as between 
 a beast and a man. 
 
 The effect manifestly this is of Education entirely and com- 
 pletely. For the whole of the Institutions of Society in this 
 country, and the whole of its influences, are Educational ; so that 
 in fact to him who truly contemplates the Republic in this point 
 of view, it is fully manifest that that saying of the ancient Greek 
 philosopher* is, in effect, entirely correct ; " that a True Republic is 
 truly a School." And the more perfect the Republic becomes in 
 spirit and action, the more perfectly all its institutions must have 
 an Educational effect. 
 
 Again ; over and above this difference between one man and 
 another, as to mental culture, each one who lives has the internal 
 feeling of weakness and effort in all his mental exertions. It 
 seems as if there was a feeling that inability, weakness, deficiency, 
 were inherent in the mental powers of every man. 
 
 There is no one that I have ever met that has not, in a measure, 
 acknowledged this ; has not had before his mind constantly an 
 ideal, or mental image, or model of his own powers of mind, to 
 which, if he could reach, his mind would be perfect ; and after or 
 towards which it is his constant struggle to labor. 
 
 And this internal feeling is met and nourished externally by 
 two facts : the first, the fact of Instinct, that animals do, without 
 effort, almost unconsciously, and with unerring precision, things 
 that we do laboriously, strugglingly, and feebly. This seems to 
 cherish in us the feeling that, if perfect, then without labor, or 
 struggle, perfect, complete, and almost unconscious, though still 
 voluntary, would be the action of our mental powers. 
 
 The second fact that responds to and cherishes that sensation 
 of mental imperfection and weakness in all men is, that now and 
 then some powers reach, in individual men, almost, if not alto- 
 gether, to that degree of effortless and perfect action that we attri- 
 bute to them naturally. Mozart had the sense and power of 
 music so strong, that, as an infant, he beat time to the carillons or 
 chimes from a neighboring church. Zisca, the chieftain of the 
 Hussites, had such a perfect sense of locality, that the whole 
 country of Bohemia was so mapped out in his brain, that when he 
 
 * Plato.
 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 245 
 
 had lost both his eyes, he fought pitched battles and conducted 
 the whole operations of the war as if he were able to see. Barret 
 and Magliabechi forgot nothing they had ever read. Colburn per- 
 formed the most difficult arithmetical problems almost without an 
 effort. And Geometers have not been wanting that had in Geo- 
 metry the same power. These facts responding to the internal sense 
 of effort and labor that ordinary men must employ in mental 
 efforts, seem to say that mental imperfection is in weakness and 
 inability. And that strength is that which is required, so that if 
 strength could be given to the mental powers generally, and to 
 each faculty individually, then would they be perfect ; and that 
 perfection would consist in action, unimpaired and complete, as 
 regards the individual faculty, and without effort or labor. This 
 part of our nature, then, shows manifestly the traces of the effect 
 upon Nature that we have attributed to "Original Sin," that is, 
 inability to fulfil the law of its being. 
 
 But it is now time to consider the second effect of Original Sin 
 upon the "Mental Powers." The first we had stated to be 
 " imperfection of those powers that we have;" the second, is "an 
 actual diminution of our Mental Powers in number." I think, 
 from the relation that we can see the Human Nature of man once 
 bore to the external world, and the position of perfect obedience, 
 in which all created beings in it stood towards him, and the 
 dominion which we are told he had over the powers of nature by 
 his very being: from this,' as also from the disjointed way in 
 which, at present, he stands towards the external world, I think 
 that it is a very natural and easy conclusion, that originally there 
 were in man's nature, powers and faculties of body and mind 
 which now he does not possess. 
 
 And that these powers having been fully developed, and in full 
 operation in the Primal Man in his state of Original Kighteous- 
 ness, have, by means of the changed relation of man to all things, 
 in consequence of his sin, shrunk back, as it were, into his being, 
 and been withered up, until hardly the vestiges and indications of 
 them remain. 
 
 So that with regard to man, we may say, in reference to these 
 powers and capabilities, that they lie folded up in his being, never 
 coming to maturity of action or ripeness, as the germ of the fruit 
 in buds that never come to flowers, or as the wings and plumage
 
 246 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 of the butterfly in the chrysalis, or as the ramifications of trunk 
 and branch, twig and foliage in the acorn of the oak. 
 
 This, I would say, seems to be the case with man's being, in 
 reference to a multitude of powers, whose existence and nature we 
 can hardly guess at, save in the one way of analogical conjecture, 
 that they must have been of those that bound the external world 
 in obedience to his commands. The being, nature, and extent of 
 these powers, what they are, or how, in what condition they would 
 place man if now called forth, seems to be wrapped up in utter 
 darkness ; but that such have an actual existence as possibilities, 
 it seems to me all things around us, by their analogies, lead us 
 immediately to conclude. 
 
 The subject is an extensive one, and capable of a great many 
 curious and interesting inferences and conclusions being drawn 
 from it ; but it is enough, for our present purpose, merely to indi- 
 cate it as a thing very probable, and agreeing strictly with man's 
 position as he is at present. 
 
 We shall consider, then, that upon the Body of Man, the effects 
 of Original Sin are : first, Concupiscence, embracing " Self-will, 
 or Uncontrolledness," " Selfishness," and "Sensuality." 
 
 Secondly, the loss of natural immortality, and the Sacrament 
 of it ; and the varied consequences of disease and decay. 
 
 Thirdly, the utter loss and ruin of some mental powers, by 
 their becoming shrunken and decayed in his nature, so that now 
 they exist as germs and possibilities only, not as actual powers. 
 
 And lastly, the weakening and decay of all the remaining men- 
 tal faculties. 
 
 This, I conceive, embraces all the effects of Original Sin upon 
 the Body, so far as we are able, according to the analogy of faith, 
 to draw them from the meditations of the Church for many ages 
 upon Holy Scripture and her practical contemplations upon the 
 nature and being of man. 
 
 And the conclusion practically that we may come to, is this : "it 
 doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when He 
 shall appear, we shall be like him."* 
 
 But one thing I think of sufficient importance to be noted is, 
 that we should look more to changes in ourselves, and less to 
 changes in external things, in reference to our resurrection and its 
 
 * 1 John, ii. 3.
 
 \ 
 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 247 
 
 consequences. For I do think, one of the most predominant faults 
 of this age is, that in reference to the Future Life, men, in a way 
 almost unknown to themselves, a sort of unconscious and unwilling 
 self-deceit, take it for granted that all the weaknesses, feeblenesses, 
 imperfections of their present state of being, shall still remain 
 in them, and be transferred with them to Heaven. And then by 
 the aid of a lively and constructive imagination, they go on to build 
 themselves up a material Paradise, that shall contain in itself 
 externally the supply of all these weaknesses and imperfections. 
 And thereby fall into a Mohammedan dream of a sensual Heaven ; 
 a paradise in which the full supply of bodily wants shall be the 
 happiness ; as if the body were now perfect and Sin Original 
 were not its imperfection, to be removed then with all its conse- 
 quences. 
 
 . To them, we say, if " TJncontrolledness " remain, then the 
 power of doing absolutely whatever we will, under certain limits, 
 shall be a part of the happiness of Heaven. But if this " Self- 
 will" bo a consequence of "Original Sin," and with it is to be 
 taken away, then most likely an absolute and entire obedience to 
 God's Law, so that, like a planet around the sun, we shall eter- 
 nally move round the central light of God in one undeviating 
 course, suspended from his Being by a law ever one, this, 
 if " Uncontrolledness " be taken away, may be our completest 
 happiness. 
 
 We say again, if " Selfishness " still remain, then most likely, 
 in having all possible power, riches, knowledge, everything which 
 in this world we can have, may be a part of our happiness, and it 
 is but a fair and decent employment of the intellect, to build up 
 such an imagined paradise of Having. But if this be not so, and 
 Selfishness is not a part of our nature, but a consequence of the 
 Fall, to be taken away at the resurrection, it may be that having 
 and self-appropriation may not exist in the future life. But our 
 supremest joy may be in perpetually receiving, that we may per- 
 petually pour forth upon others in a less perfect state the favors 
 of God's mercy. Our happiness may not be in possession at ally 
 but in being the channels of benefits to others, vessels of mercy 
 urns wherein, from the crystal sea, the waters are eternally 
 lifted, and wherefrom they are eternally poured forth. 
 
 And if Sensuality still be, in heaven, a defect and tendency of 
 our nature, then in earthly Desires and revellings, in the enjoy-
 
 J 
 
 248 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 nients of the Animal Desires and Appetite we may naturally place 
 one blessedness of a future life. As the old Chiliasts did, who, 
 under decent shapes, as Dionysius, the Bishop of Alexandria, says, 
 "made of heaven a place of sensuality," saying,, in decent terms, 
 that "it was a place " in which "they were to offer sacrifices and 
 feast upon them continually, and to be perpetually celebrating mar- 
 riages." Or else men may, as Mahomet, imagine his heavenly 
 tree of paradise, the Tooba, of which so many different dishes were 
 the fruits, and from which sprung the Houries, damsels of Para- 
 dise, to wait upon the blest ; a sensual and licentious heaven. 
 These follies are fair reasoning if Sensuality yet remain. But if 
 it be as the dross mingled with the gold, an imperfection that is to 
 vanish with this life, then these dreams are evil and absurd, and 
 we are not to attribute to the glorified body the * Concupiscence 
 of that which is fallen, but to content ourselves with the certainty, 
 that "as He is so shall we be also," " when I wake up after thy 
 image I shall be satisfied with it." 
 
 For there is no idea that contains a wider range of mystery and 
 of possible glory than this of a " Spiritual Body," " a body which 
 being material, shall yet come as nearly to the nature of Spirit as 
 being still body it can come."f Nay, even the heathen philosopher 
 Pliny had a glimmering idea of this, when he stated that man 
 was naturally a being, " all eye, all ear, all sense, in each and 
 every part." 
 
 * The Concupiscence of St. Augustine, which he counts to be " the fuel of 
 Sin," (fomes peccati) embraces then these affections, Self-will, Selfishness, Sen- 
 suality. It is properly an affection of the Body and of its representative, the 
 Animal Mind. And through these it rises up against and into that part of 
 the Moral Nature that we call the Heart, and debases and adulterates it, so 
 that for obedience there is rebellion and lawlessness ; for nobleness and Chris- 
 tian beneficence there is meanness and selfishness ; for love and affection 
 there is lust and exorbitant passion. In Scripture, this Concupiscence (evil 
 desire) is called "lust," the "carnal mind," the "Will of the Flesh." It is 
 that by which and in which Sin Original issues forth in actual sin. While 
 we remain on earth it abides in our bodily constitution, and therein existing, it 
 is the occasion to temptation, and this it is that makes our life a constant 
 struggle. But when we rise again we shall arise without Concupiscence. 
 Selfishness, therefore, Sensuality, Self-Will shall have no place in heaven. 
 And Paradises, Selfish, Self-willed, or Sensual are but the dreams of men 
 ignorant of the nature of man on earth, and man in heaven, and untaught in 
 the Spirit of Christ our Lord. 
 
 t See Bishop Nicholson on the Catechism.
 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 249 
 
 Nor would men dream of a Paradise of learning and knowledge 
 and physical science, if they could feel how truly in this world 
 " Knowledge " and " Science " are only helps to imperfection, and 
 how if the man were restored to his Original State, through his 
 Gift of the Holy Spirit, working upon his perfect being, " knowl- 
 edge " would be swallowed up in Intuition and faith in Sight, and 
 from the Spirit of God the omniscience as it were of the Almighty 
 would so dwell in the man as the water in a vessel plunged in the 
 ocean, which being in itself limited, is yet filled unto its fullness, 
 and communicates with the unlimited: and so through this 
 omniscience poured into his soul, according to his measure and his 
 necessity, man with entire and immediate certainty, would then see 
 and know all things necessary to him.* And thus even that which 
 we call " Knowledge," its means, instruments, struggles shall 
 vanish in the fuller and completer sight of the Spiritual being. 
 
 If men could at all see this, would they make a Heaven of 
 knowledge? Would they not rather see that "holiness," and 
 "peace," and "joy," and the calmness of eternal bliss, and the 
 seeing of Him face to face, to whom all things are present, and all 
 things known, would make their happiness ? And this while it con- 
 fers knowledge, yet makes it of but little avail ; as to the Blindr 
 the knowledge that he can gather, from the descriptions of others, 
 of the visible world is most precious while he yet does not see, but 
 when his eyes are opened, then, this otherwise a help becomes 
 useless, and having sight, he thinks of it no more ; so must it be 
 with regard to what we call knowledge, nay more with regard to 
 Faith, when we are brought face to face with the Almighty and 
 enabled to look into the mirror of his omniscience, wherein all 
 things are portrayed. 
 
 Away ! with these dreamings, this wish to frame externally, 
 imaginary modes of supplying imperfections, arising from "Ori- 
 ginal Sin," and idly supposed to be carried into our heavenly 
 abode. " Original Sin" shall pass from us and with it its defects ; 
 and " Self-will " and " Selfishness " and " Sensuality " and " rest- 
 less intellect," these shall perish and die, and have no heavens 
 built for them. But " we shall be as he is;" and the entire removal 
 of these faults and deficiencies, which in itself would make of this 
 
 * This is the effect of the " Vision of God" that seeing Him as He is, we 
 shall see all things in Him. 
 
 32
 
 250 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 earth a heaven, if their root* were cut up and eradicated from 
 man's nature, this shall fit him for the New Heaven and the New 
 Earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. 
 
 But to return from this digression, we have shown wherein the 
 body and the mental powers that belong to man are injured by the 
 taint of Original Sin, and wherein and how it is possible that this 
 may be improved by the casting away, at the gate of the Resurrec- 
 tion, of those deficiencies. 
 
 And this should sufficiently show that this " Body," made by 
 God as part of the whole nature, "which is in his image," is not 
 of man to be despised, is not to be looked at with Cynic scorn or 
 Stoic contempt, not as a " mere envelope of the soul," a " garment 
 coarse and filthy, that we wear only of necessity ;" nor yet in the 
 Platonic style of thought, as "our tomb, the sepulchre of the 
 soul ;" still less with the brute indifference that looks upon it as 
 it would look upon the carcase of a beast, dead and cast out. 
 But that it is the " corporeal " which, the dross being refined away, 
 shall become and be the Spiritual, remaining yet the same, but 
 purified; it is the mortal which, raised up by the Life of God, 
 shall be the immortal ; the Body now crude and imperfect, full of 
 flaws and weaknesses, that shall then be holy and upright and 
 pure and perfect a plant now buried and hidden darkly in the 
 earth of this present life, that shall shoot up yet into the realms 
 of upper day. 
 
 This is a point of Morality which we would have men see, and 
 learn, and feel, and act upon ; for we have seen and know that to 
 despise the Body, to look upon it merely with indifference and 
 contempt, as brutal, or our "brute part," as men have said who 
 thought themselves wise this easily leads to evil: but reverence 
 and respect to our bodily frame, and that of our fellows, this is of 
 itself moral. 
 
 Let the man be supposed to look upon the body of man because 
 of its similarity of function, to be no more than that of a Brute, 
 show me such a man, and if he be a non-professor, I will show you 
 one who has low, and mean, and filthy thoughts and words, and 
 
 * The doctrine of the Church unquestionably is, that even in the regenerate 
 Original Sin remains, although its Stain is blotted out, its Guilt removed. 
 This the Church holds in opposition to the Komanist doctrine, that by regene- 
 ration, all men are put again in the same position as Adam was in Paradise. 
 Query if ao, why then do the baptized die?
 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 251 
 
 by this very thing, if he is young, is likely to be seduced into vice 
 -if he be a religious man, he is one who has a tendency to sen- 
 suality, and is coarse, and hard-minded, and unaffectionate. But 
 he who takes the other view, and reverences the body as, even 
 though fallen, still part of a nature " made in the image of God," 
 his tendencies shall be entirely the other way. And as the conclu- 
 sion of these remarks, I say it is a great moral principle and pre- 
 cept, " Reverence the Body," a dictate which nature herself utters 
 with no faint voice, and which revelation explains and elucidates. 
 
 But this principle that the " body of man, although fallen from 
 its original state, and so infected with the weaknesses that we 
 have specified, is still not a body the same as those of the beasts, 
 but something altogether different ;" as the Apostle says, "there 
 is one flesh of man and another flesh of beasts :"* this principle 
 we say, that the Body is thus to be reverenced, we shall not leave 
 to these proofs only, but we shall seek a higher and loftier reason, 
 one that concerns all humanity, and that gilds it with exceeding 
 and abundant glory. 
 
 And this is, that as a fact and truth, the Eternal Word, the Son 
 of the Father, he who from eternity was " the manifestation of 
 his glory, the express image of his person," "dwelling in light 
 unapproachable," the Word who "was in the beginning," and 
 " was with God, and was God," " by whom all things were made," 
 " in whom was life and that life the light of men" " HE was made 
 flesh, and dwelt among us." 
 
 This is the grand and glorious truth that makes the Body of 
 man, even as it is fallen and imperfect, a glory, not a shame ; a 
 thing to be reverenced and respected, to be thought of with honour 
 and tenderness of feeling. 
 
 This, the fact that the "Everliving Word" of God assumed to 
 himself really and truly, a body, the same as that each of us 
 possesses ; this is the great mystery of godliness, " God manifest 
 in the flesh." 
 
 And see ! how wonderful it is. Here is a babe new-born, upon 
 its mother's knee and that babe, with its undeveloped mind, its 
 speechless tongue, its soft and tender body, with no knowledge, 
 no experience ; this is " God of the whole earth !" its Maker and 
 King ! " God of God ! light of light ! very God of very God !" 
 
 * 1 Cor. xv. 39.
 
 252 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 and all the natural feeblenesses, and weaknesses, and miseries, and 
 distresses of childhood these are his ! God, born a child ! and 
 the Natural Body, this he has assumed and bears ! 
 
 The Body of the child, the Animal Mind, the Spirit all these 
 God the Word has assumed ! and unto them inseparably and eter- 
 nally he is united ! This is a great wonder. 
 
 And surely that Body, that Soul, those Mental Powers, 
 made originally in God's image, and which God assumed, these 
 cannot be in themselves essentially evil ; they must be good 
 " good, though fallen." The Body which the Eternal Word 
 assumed, this is not to be scorned, or despised, or looked upon as 
 brutish, but held in all reverence. 
 
 But more than this : the Word assumed it not as perfect ; all 
 its weaknesses, and deficiencies, and liabilities to temptation were 
 still in the Redeemer's Body, in the Body of " God, who shed for 
 us his blood," were all these by which sin has access to us. " So 
 that he was tempted in all things as we, only without sin ;"* and 
 until he had passed through the resurrection gate of the grave, it to 
 him was a " Natural body," or a " Terrestrial" body. And thus 
 remaining in substance the same, the dross being cleansed away, 
 the weakness having vanished, it became the Spiritual and Celes- 
 tial body. 
 
 So that unto a body having in nature but not in effects the same 
 feebleness, deficiency, weaknesses that our body has, was the Word 
 of God united. Our Bodies, then, we should not despise, or think 
 brutally of for this natural weakness, but rather tenderly, since 
 Christ passed through this life in a body that had the same weak- 
 nesses. 
 
 Again : that body that he assumed of the Virgin Mary, his 
 mother, this same flesh that was born of her was weak and mor- 
 tal; suffered, and died and was buried; this body of the same 
 humanity as mine, of the same blood, the same flesh, the same 
 bones ; this rose with the Word from the grave, a Glorified, 
 Heavenly, Spiritual Body, never dying and perfect, and yet the 
 same that was lorn of the Virgin. And this Human Nature is 
 thenceforth one with God the Word, two natures, f God and Man 
 
 * He had neither at birth Original Sin, nor during life Actual Sin. 
 t This is called the Hypostatical or Substantial Union of the two Natures 
 in one Christ forever.
 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 253 
 
 forever joined and forming one Christ, seated upon the right hand 
 of the glory of God, upon the eternal throne of heaven. 
 
 Thou that wouldst despise the body, look to this ; the " body," 
 the "mind," the Spirit of Man, Human Nature, a true man, 
 and at the Bame time God the Word, is seated upon the throne of 
 Omnipotence ! Man is almighty, omniscient, eternal, immortal ! 
 The Body of Man, the same as this my body, the same Flesh and 
 the same Blood is exalted into heaven, there to sit for evermore 
 upon the right hand of God. 
 
 Should I not, therefore, reverence this my body, seeing that 
 there, in the -council chamber of Omnipotence, in the most inmost 
 shrine of the Presence,, upon the most shining throne of glory, in 
 the central light and unapproachable depths of God's splendor, 
 there is united to the Word for ever, the Body born in Bethlehem, 
 laid in the manger, the Human Body, that suffered and died, was 
 buried and rose again ? 
 
 Great, truly, is the glory to me and to my Body that this is so. 
 And, therefore, with all reverence and respect shall I look upon 
 the " Body of man" even as it is, beset with the effects of Original 
 Sin. To others I shall leave the pagan dreams of scorn and con- 
 tempt for this our earthly frame. And the bodies of the dead, these 
 I shall look at as no carcases,* no cadavres,f but as holy and sacred ; 
 shrines from which the spirit has departed again to return ; 
 dwellings, that by their frame-work and fashioning, were made 
 after His own image, fitted in their nature to receive and be for- 
 ever the dwelling of the sanctified spirit. 
 
 This is the Christian feeling of reverence to the body. And 
 because of this thought of a human frame made, perfect and seated 
 upon the throne of God, because of this thought is it that the 
 aspect of the grave has changed from dreary and blank despair 
 to the calmness of a living hope. Because of this it is that instead 
 of casting out our dead to the birds and the beasts, instead of 
 giving them up to the devouring flame, or of exposing them to the 
 wasting elements as the carcases (caro casa) of dead beasts ; with 
 all reverence and tenderness we wash them free from all pollu- 
 tions ; we dress them in the pure raiment of death ; we weep over 
 them ; we shield them even from the too rude contact of the earth, 
 and we commit them to her bosom in peace and in hope. 
 * Carcase caro casa flesh fallen, or cast away, 
 t Cadavre (French) Caro, data, vermibus, flesh, food for worms.
 
 254 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 These are, as respects the Body, the effects upon our morals of 
 the fact of the Incarnation, the fact that the Word of God was 
 made flesh and dwelt among us, and is now, together with that 
 Human Nature which he took of his mother, seated on the right 
 hand of God. And therefore should man reverence his Body, and 
 neither scorn nor despise it, but even in its weakness count it not 
 evil, but good, although injured by Original Sin. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The nature of man has, 1st, a capacity of life through the Word Incarnate ; 
 2d, of receiving His Body and Blood ; 3d, of the Indwelling of the Spirit. 
 Love is the highest Christian state. The Eucharist is hence a school of 
 Works and Love. 
 
 THE great fact with which we closed our last chapter, while it 
 fully manifests the truth, that the body of man is not of the same 
 kind as the body of the beasts, but an organization wholly different 
 in its nature, inasmuch as it could be united with the Word of 
 God ; and these two natures, the Human and Divine, become and 
 oe eternally one Christ ; while it shows this as a fact, it enables 
 us, upon the strength of that fact, to proceed still further. 
 
 Can the Word, eternally begotten of the Father, assume the 
 flesh of man ? It can be so. Then as made of God, that Human 
 Nature had, by its constitution, as of God created, this capacity 
 of union with the Word, a capacity no other created being has. 
 This is a quality of man's nature which is not manifested by mere 
 organization, and yet which evidently exists and distinguishes 
 clearly between his body and that of the beasts. 
 
 Human Nature, then, has the capacity in it of eternally being 
 in Christ upon the throne of God as God. It must, then, have a 
 capability of Life everlasting through him. There must be in our 
 nature secretly, and it may be unconsciously to us, a capability and 
 a power of having His Life dwelling in us. There must be in 
 nature as it is, the power whereby the same Holy Ghost that in 
 Christ united the Word with Human Nature, so that both should
 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 255 
 
 be one eternally, can implant in our human nature, that is, in 
 our body, our soul, and our spirit, the Life of the Eternal Word. 
 For if the Human Nature, as created in His Image, had the 
 capacity of being united with the Word, so as to be one Christ, then 
 has it of the same constitution the capability of receiving the Life 
 that comes from the Word only. And so of being of Him new born 
 through the same Spirit, so that the man shall become a "member of 
 Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of Heaven." 
 Hence also, it has the capacity that it should receive of the " Body 
 and Blood" of Christ our Lord. For that Humanity which he 
 assumed here upon earth, which was born, "suffered," "died," 
 and was " buried," and all this being " corporeal," "earthly," " na- 
 tural," "fleshly," "rose again," being then "spiritual," heavenly, 
 perfect. For it is most distinctly the doctrine of holy writ that the 
 body, after the resurrection, remains the same and identical as to 
 its actual being ; but all imperfection and incompleteness is then 
 done away. For the Natural body is changed into the Spiritual 
 body, the corruptible into the incorruptible, the earthly into the 
 celestial, not losing its identity, but casting off its imperfections. 
 And the body of our Lord having been, until his burial, a Natural 
 body, as ours, (save only in sin,) at his Resurrection was changed, 
 even as ours shall be through Him. It became a Spiritual and 
 glorious body from having been a Natural body, its qualities 
 being changed, yet did it still remain the same in being that he 
 bore on earth, nay, even the same that was born in the manger 
 at Bethlehem. God-man on Earth, even while yet a speechless 
 and feeble babe on his mother's knee ! God-man in Heaven, 
 seated upon the throne of power ! Great, truly, is the mystery of 
 godliness, that God should be born of a woman and shed his blood 
 and die for us here on earth ! Greater still its crowning glory, 
 that Man should take his seat upon the throne of the universe ! 
 forever to be worshipped ! forever to reign as God ! And thus the 
 Word and the Human Nature, united in one Person, are at the 
 head and on the throne of all being. 
 
 And the Human Nature of the Word, as far at least as his Body 
 and Blood are concerned, this by the Spirit of God, can we, having 
 faith, receive as the food and supply of the Life of Christ in us. 
 For the very fact that Human Nature in Christ is capable of being 
 united with the Word, and being invested with all the attributes 
 of God, this proves that Nature to be capable of bending down
 
 256 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 from its eternal throne and giving itself as the food and supply of 
 the Life to its kindred nature in us here upon the earth. 
 
 Only grant the great central fact that "Man is God," and no 
 Time, no Space, shall prevent "omnipotence," omniscience united 1 
 with Humanity forever, from conferring upon us, really and truly, 
 the gift of his Body and his Blood, not in figure, not in metaphor, 
 but actually, really, and truly, and by means which, while they are 
 not themselves the "Body" and the "Blood," are means of its 
 being most certainly conferred. Think upon the great fact that 
 Human Nature could be joined unto the Word, and Human Na- 
 ture can, by virtue of this capacity, receive that gift of the perfect 
 and glory-crowned " Body and Blood," that now sits upon the 
 throne of eternity, and be fed and cherished by it in body, soul, 
 and spirit. No figure this is of an absent body, no metaphor, 
 save the Incarnation of the Word be a metaphor, and his con- 
 ception of the Holy Ghost a metaphor. 
 
 But if the Human Nature is eternally united with the Word, so 
 that a real man, one who has, as I have, a body, a soul, and a 
 spirit, is seated on God's throne, and is God, then this capacity 
 exists in him to give to me in whom, by spiritual regeneration, is 
 His Life, his glorified, spiritual, heavenly "Body and Blood," as 
 food and nutriment of that His Life in me. Then in me exists, 
 by my "creation in his image," and the suitableness of my very 
 nature, the capacity of receiving that true gift of his real Body 
 and Blood. 
 
 But if "God" and Man are not truly united, the two Natures 
 in one Christ eternally, then this union is but a figure, a meta- 
 phor ; and the reception of the Body and Blood is only a figure 
 and a metaphor ; and the frame and nature of man is as the frame 
 and nature of the beasts, flesh made to live and then to perish ; 
 but having in it no capacity of the divine nature,* no capacity 
 of a Spiritual Life, or of spiritual support to it. 
 
 But it is not so. We can, by our nature, receive this heavenly 
 food. The capacity is in us ; because our very " flesh and blood," 
 the Humanity of Man united with the Eternal Word, is God eter- 
 nally ; and because of this that we are created " in His image." 
 For these reasons we can receive actually, really, and truly His 
 Body and His Blood. 
 
 * " Wherefore unto us are given exceeding great and precious promises, 
 that by them ye might be partakers of the divine nature." 2 Peter, i. 4.
 
 TFE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 257 
 
 This is the doctrine of the *real presence, wnich may thus 
 be seen, not only to be plainly declared in the Scripture, uni- 
 versally upheld by the Ancient Church, the manifest and evi- 
 dent opinion of the Churches of England, and of America in their 
 standards, but also to be the highest reach and pinnacle of the 
 philosophy of Christianity, the doctrine which unites earth with 
 heaven ; and frail and feeble, weak and afflicted as my human 
 Nature may be in body, in soul, and in spirit, yet binds me to 
 the Humanity that now is seated upon the throne of eternity, and 
 tells me, "as he is, so shall I be also." 
 
 We see, moreover, from this also the capacity existing in us, 
 our "Body," our "Soul," and our Spirit, that the Holy Spirit 
 of God, should, as in a temple, dwell in us actually and really, as 
 much as " Jehovah" of old by the Shekinah dwelt in the material 
 temple of human building, in the glory that rested between the 
 Golden Cherubims over the Mercy Seat. So it is possible that the 
 Holy Spirit should dwell in this material temple of our Body, made 
 in God's image originally, as he does also in the Humanity of our 
 Lord, which is by him united with the Word forever. So that as 
 our Soul, a limited Spirit, can dwell in our body, so can the Infi- 
 nite Spirit indwell in the same Humanity to them born of Christ, 
 through his regenerating power, and by an immediate influence, 
 uphold the body, the soul, and the spirit, through his Grace. So 
 it is that through " Christ in him and strengthening him, "'the 
 
 * I would have my readers notice, that -while we believe in a real presence 
 it is, first, spiritual, as not local nor corporeal, but of the Spiritual Body, 
 which is free from the bonds of Time and Space. Secondly, It is spiritual as it 
 is conferred upon us by the gift and operation of the Holy Spirit, the same 
 God who is the Giver of Life, he gives us this Grace to maintain that Life. 
 Thus the Sacrament is a real means of Grace. Thirdly, It is spiritual as 
 received in us by Faith, one of the highest operations of the spiritual being 
 in man. This, with what I have said in the text, distinguishes the Church 
 doctrine from the Romish figment of Transubstantiation. 
 
 One word more. This doctrine is one easily misrepresented, easily misun- 
 derstood. We have in our Services, our Catechism, our Articles, a most com- 
 plete and 'perfect system upon it. To those, then, who think they see incon- 
 sistencies, I would give this advice, let them wait a little before they speak 
 let them in silence use the Prayer-book practically, and the Holy EucJiarist 
 practically, and they may grow up to the measure of this doctrine, they may 
 see that the inconsistency is in their own fragmentary notions, not in the 
 Prayer-book. 
 
 33
 
 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 Christian man can do all things, and yet of himself, of his own 
 power, of his own ability, nothing, but all things through Gf-race. 
 
 These are then facts, first, that Human Nature, a man as we 
 are, with a real body, a real soul, and a real spirit, as mine is, is 
 now and for ever God. 
 
 Secondly, That from this fact comes the truth of our nature's 
 capacity for a new Life and birth derived from him our risen 
 Lord, a spiritual birth of the whole nature, the body, soul and 
 spirit. And that this birth takes place in us through the Word, 
 and by the agency of the Eternal Spirit, the Holy Ghost. 
 
 Thirdly, That this Eternal Spirit and the Eternal Word Incar- 
 nate, the one can and does feed the flame of life in us, with the 
 peculiar gift of his Body and his Blood ; and the other " dwells 
 in us richly," in our bodies, our souls, and our spirits, with Grace 
 and strength. 
 
 These, then, are plain facts of the Gospel, for those that have 
 been redeemed by Christ's blood, and having true faith in that 
 atoning blood, and true repentance, have been " baptized in His 
 name for the remission of sins," and have so been " born anew of 
 water and the Spirit." 
 
 How high, then, can the Affections of the Human Race ascend ? 
 So high by nature and natural capacity that Humanity joined with 
 Deity as one Christ is God ; so high as this, our Lord, ever blessed, 
 yet still a real and true man in all things that appertain to Human 
 Nature, he is God, with all the feelings, all the emotions, all the 
 affections of the heart that belong to our common Humanity. 
 Love, joy, sympathy, pity, hope, all the emotions whereby man in 
 Society is by his Heart carried on towards the good of his fellow- 
 man, and made to rejoice in it all these belong for ever to 
 God the Word Incarnate. So that Compassion is almighty and 
 all-seeing, and "Pity" ever-present, and "Sympathy" omnis- 
 cient, and "Love" is crowned with the diadem of Eternity, clothed 
 with the royal robe of infinite power, gifted with the sceptre of 
 omnipotence. And the same Heart that upon earth overflowed 
 with all emotions of gentleness, and compassion, and kindly feeling 
 towards man, that same Heart has become of the same emotions 
 an infinite fountain towards man, gushing forth from the central 
 throne of God. 
 
 Well might men feel that the highest summit of Humanity is 
 the Affections ; that this, if it cannot reach to Heaven, at least
 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 259 
 
 can rise towards it, and catch the beams of its light, while all 
 beneath is sleeping in darkness. Well might all men put so great 
 a value upon the Heart above the loftiest powers of Reason, when 
 the Human Heart reaches its full glory in the one Incarnate God, 
 risen from the grave and ascended into heaven. ' 
 
 Think not, my reader, and I hope my disciple, of station in this 
 world ; of poverty, or of wealth, of mental ability or mental 
 power ; for deficient in all these, thou hast a loftier and a nobler 
 gift and endowment in the Heart. One internal struggle, to cleanse 
 thy mind from Selfishness one inward strife, to cast away Self- 
 will, and bow to the Will of God one effort, to purify the Heart 
 from Sensuality one emotion of pity towards thy fellow-man, 
 this, through Christ's power and in Christ's name, is worth all 
 these other matters and possessions of visible attainment, and 
 shall outlast them all, and in the balance of Eternity and the 
 judgment of heaven's King outweigh them all. 
 
 This thought of the man Christ with the heart of a man reign- 
 ing for us in almighty and eternal power, this is that which inspired 
 the holy apostle, Paul, with that divine Hymn of his upon "Love," 
 which more than any passage in the Scriptures seems a melody 
 from the tongue of Heaven, translated into the language of 
 earth. 
 
 " Though I speak with the tongue of men and angels, and have 
 not ' love,'* I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal ; 
 and though I have the gift of prophesy, and understand all myste- 
 ries, and all knowledge ; and though I have all faith, so that I 
 could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing ; and 
 and though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I 
 give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me 
 nothing. Love suffereth long, and is kind ; love envieth not ; love 
 vaunteth not itself; is not puffed up ; doth not behave itself 
 unseemly ; seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh 
 no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth ; bear- 
 eth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all 
 things. Love never faileth : but whether there be prophesies, they 
 shall fail ; whether there be tongues, they shall cease ; whether 
 
 * 'oycwtij, in the original, means " love," literally, and cannot mean "charity," 
 in any sense that the word now bears in the English language. So translated, 
 in fact, it is perfectly meaningless.
 
 260 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 there be knowledge, it shall vanish away : for we know in part, 
 and we prophesy in part, but when that which is perfect is come, 
 then that which is in part shall be done away." 
 
 "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, 
 I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away child- 
 ish things. For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face 
 to face, now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I 
 am known ; and now abideth faith, hope, love, these three, but the 
 greatest of these is love. 
 
 The same feeling is manifested also in St. John the Divine. 
 In him manifestly the highest and loftiest feeling is of the affec- 
 tion of Love made perfect in Christ upon the throne, and love 
 made perfect in us in this world through Christ. In him that 
 feeling constantly exists that is seen in St. Paul. " My little 
 children," he says, "Let us not love in word, neither in tongue, 
 but in deed and truth." 
 
 And history tells us that this the Apostle, " beloved of Christ," 
 when in the infirmity of many years, he was, in Ephesus, carried 
 into his church, and could, from feebleness of mind and feebleness 
 of body say no more, he said this, "let us love one another," and 
 when they asked him to say more, he said, " in Christ this is all." 
 
 This, then, is our practical conclusion. The " Heart or the 
 Affections," is the highest of all the Spiritual powers. In and 
 through Christ only can it attain that perfection of which in us it 
 is capable, and this is a state higher than Faith, higher than 
 Hope; so that he may have faith who has not " Love ;" he may 
 have faith and moreover hope, and yet not reach to this ; and that 
 this state, the state of Love, wherein the heart is changed, so that 
 its affections are sanctified and made perfect, this is the highest 
 Christian state that man can reach upon earth, the state in 
 Christianity that answers to the whole spiritual power of nature 
 and brings it all to perfection. 
 
 And when, in some further advance of the Church in Holiness 
 and Sanctification of Heart, it comes to be asked by men of faith 
 and zeal, " how and by what discipline of the Church shall we so 
 cultivate our Hearts, that towards our fellow-men they shall be 
 actuated by complete and perfect Love, according to the capa- 
 bilities of the nature of each?" then may it come to pass, that 
 men shall be enabled to see that in the glorified Humanity of 
 Christ our Lord, there is the perfection of Love, and the Human
 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 261 
 
 affections complete and perfect. Thus may they see, that of that 
 Humanity, that Body and Blood, the Holy Spirit can make the 
 faithful participate. They may then discern, that in our body, 
 our soul, and our spirit, which are his, that His Spirit may eternally 
 abide, as in his temple, as a supply of all deficiencies, a help 
 against all weaknesses an indwelling strength and power not of us 
 but in us. And while by no means they neglect exhortations, 
 prayers, and sermons, yet seeing these things with the eye of 
 faith, they may act practically upon their convictions, and go 
 back to the old universal Christian custom, that the communion 
 should be a stated and systematic part of the worship of every 
 Lord's day. 
 
 When this comes to pass, then shall be seen that which was seen 
 of old, that the sanctifying and humanizing effect of Christianity 
 exerts itself mainly upon the individual man, through the secret 
 influence of the Spirit, and very directly and manifestly through 
 the sacrament of his Body and Blood. 
 
 And, then, the Communion, instead of being a meeting for inci- 
 dental and uncustomary purposes, shall be a Society, organized 
 not of man, but of God, having each week its regular and stated 
 meetings, a Society of "Faith" and "Works," of "Mercy and 
 Love." 
 
 The effect of which, upon the individual's heart, shall be, that it 
 will train him gradually and unconsciously, yet most surely, so 
 that his Faith shall mature into Hope, and Hope be succeeded by 
 the full ripeness of Christian Love. And holiness and sanctifica- 
 tion of Heart, shall be once more a general attribute belonging to 
 all Christians in the Church, and by its tenderness of feeling and 
 freedom from all ordinary faults of the Heart, distinguishing 
 them from common professors of Christianity. 
 
 This would manifestly, from the principles above discussed, in 
 relation to us, be the natural result of such a discipline, habitual, 
 and used not as a thing extraordinary, which there was some 
 peculiar merit and effect in adopting, but, as a matter of course, in 
 the ordinary quiet routine of things. 
 
 For we cannot disguise it from ourselves, that in these our days, 
 even the best motives and the best measures are often adopted and 
 advocated by presumptuous and overweening self-will, and the 
 holiest polluted by party, and the noblest and the loftiest lowered 
 by presumption. So that that which carried out quietly, in faith,
 
 262 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 by the individual, would have been of great use, being made " his 
 great idea' of which "he is the great advocate" comes to be offen- 
 sive to all well judging men. 
 
 For this reason was it that we said that the Holy Eucharist, used 
 weekly, would have such an effect upon the Christian holiness of the 
 individual man, when it comes to be used as a matter of habitual 
 discipline, and not as a thing extraordinary, which there is some 
 peculiar merit and effect in adopting, but as a matter of course in 
 the ordinary routine of things. 
 
 With the exception implied in these words, we believe the effect 
 would be from the principles we have laid down, the training of 
 all Christians onward towards that higher state the apostle calls 
 "Love," instead of its being the attainment of only one or two 
 here and there, as it is at present ; and the rest being left as they 
 are in the first and initial state merely of Christianity, the imper- 
 fection of a crude and unripened faith. 
 
 So should this be for each man baptized into Christ a school, 
 in which Faith would be transformed to Hope, and Hope to Love ; 
 and thus his Heart be filled with the fullness of Christ, and his 
 affections have to all men that sweet and saintly character which 
 they only possess who are made " perfect in Love." 
 
 Again : I look upon this practice to be a school of Works of 
 Mercy, so great and so efficient, that upon the general practice of 
 the Holy Communion Weekly, I place my hopes for the decision 
 practically of a question which theoretically has been the cause 
 of many disputes, the union of Faith with Works, in the great 
 work of our salvation. 
 
 I believe that no sooner would the Church have returned to that 
 practice of "Weekly Communion," as an usual and customary 
 thing, than the feeling in the hearts of those who enjoyed that 
 privilege, would arise to the practical fruits of mercy the clothing 
 of the poor, the feeding of the hungry, the Christian education of 
 youth, the support of Missions. All these things would be effected 
 by as natural a process as is the produce of the fruit from the 
 flower; not under stimulus, not under excitement by means of 
 eloquent addresses, or as something greatly and meritoriously 
 done, but as the unboasted and usual duty of all Christians. 
 
 Let the Weekly Communion come in every Church, then by the 
 very nature of its effects upon the Heart, when it is so established 
 as to be customary and of the usual routine, : by the nature
 
 THE HEART OR AFFECTIONS. 263 
 
 of man's Heart naturally, by the nature of that Heart as sanc- 
 tified, by the nature of Christ our Lord, the God-man, with a 
 Heart human as ours is, by the nature of his Church as giving 
 to those who have faith, his " Body and his Blood," by all these 
 it shall be, that when this takes place, that as of old, the members 
 of his Church come each Lord's day to the Communion of His 
 Body and His Blood, then shall feelings of Faith be poured out 
 in works of Mercy, Almsgiving and Love, and no appeal, no vehe- 
 ment exhortation shall be needful, but the stream of Christian 
 benevolence shall flow from motives purely Christian, fed instru- 
 mentally by that ordinance from week to week, which the most 
 raises in our heart the feelings that are Christ-like towards God 
 our Father in heaven, and our brethren here upon earth. 
 
 And both these effects the Ancient Church experienced through 
 her Weekly Communion and her Weekly Offertory, which went 
 along with it. For during four hundred years the Communion 
 was weekly in all Churches, and there never was a Communion 
 without an Offertory, nor an Offertory without a Communion; 
 and this with Oblations given according to each one's pleasure, 
 was her sole revenue. 
 
 And with these free-will offerings of the people, and the obla- 
 tions at the altars, so abundant was that spring of systematic 
 and principled liberality, Ancient Christianity supported all her 
 Clergy, all her poor, and all her schools ; and never was there a 
 state in which Holiness, and Sanctification, and the perfection of 
 Love was more prevalent. Such, until the fifth century, when 
 Christianity was endowed by the State, and therefore more or less 
 corrupted by it, was the influence of the "Weekly Eucharist" 
 upon Christian Faith and Christian Works. 
 
 And again : the same cause can produce the same effects, ripe- 
 ness of Christian character and fullness of Christian benevolence 
 in us, the first Apostolic Church that is free altogether from the 
 fetters of the State. 
 
 I make no apologies for introducing the subject I have examined 
 in the last few pages. Treating as I am upon the Affections, it 
 was necessary to see in what living man the affections reached unto 
 their highest perfection, and this I found in Christ our Lord, and 
 in the fact of his Humanity still possessed by him in heaven. 
 
 Hence the humanizing influence of His Religion upon the Heart. 
 Hence, too, that highest state of the Christian, the state of Love.
 
 264 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 Hence, too, the influence of the Eucharist upon the Heart, aa 
 nutriment of the Christ-like Affections. Hence the effect of the 
 habitual use of this Holy Sacrament in producing to their perfec- 
 tion Faith and Works, hand in hand. 
 
 These are questions and resolutions of Morality and Ethics of 
 the highest importance. And these I have thought myself bound 
 to enter upon and examine at length, for surely the questions, 
 "What is that which most humanizes the Heart of man?" "What 
 discipline in the Church is thereunto most efficient and most 
 useful?" and "How shall Faith be perfected into Love, and true 
 works of Love and Mercy be done spontaneously?" These are 
 high and lofty questions of Christian Science. 
 
 And all spring from the one great fact of " God in our flesh 
 and our blood," God, our brother, in this flesh forever, and thus 
 as Man, eternally seated upon the throne of power. 
 
 And although in this age, plunged in selfish ambition and the 
 pursuit of pleasure, thfcse things may be thought strange deduc- 
 tions, yet the time shall come when universally it shall be a prac- 
 tice in the Church that all shall come weekly* to the Communion. 
 And then it shall be visible and manifest, as it was of old, that 
 the sacraments, especially the -Eucharist, are, by their relation to 
 the nature of man, peculiarly suited and adapted to work upon 
 that portion of our spiritual being that we call the " Heart," and 
 to ripen Faith into Love, and cause true Works of Mercy and 
 Benevolence to be done in Faith, through Love. 
 
 With this we end this Book, and in the next books we shall 
 discuss the affections of the Home or Family, of the Nation and 
 of the Church. The ensuing Book shall be occupied with those 
 of the Family. 
 
 * While I am so much in favor of the practice, I must say that the adoption 
 of it, on the part of the Clergy as well as of the laity, needs peculiar caution, 
 lest we sin by haste or by presumption. I would, therefore, recommend the 
 careful perusal of " the Tracts upon the Weekly Eucharist," by Dr. Muhlen- 
 burg, of the Church of the Holy Communion, New York.
 
 BOOK Y. 
 THE HOME AND ITS AFFECTIONS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Society. Of Divine institution. Coeval with Man. Man's nature answer- 
 ing to it, and it answering to Man's nature. The fiction of a Social Con- 
 tract examined and refuted. 
 
 WE have in the foregoing book examined the Affections as 
 existing in the heart of the individual man. We have defined 
 them as finding their ends in Persons, and these persons existing 
 in Society. We have again and again expressed our opinion that 
 Society is of a threefold organization, the Home, the Nation, 
 the Church : that it is a divine institution, and coeval with man, 
 an organization for fixed and determined purposes, and in set and 
 determinate forms. These opinions of ours are familiar, as opin- 
 ions, to our readers. 
 
 We have also, at different parts of this book, as it came up 
 according to the subject, shown the uses of Society ; that Society 
 in itself is one grand school of teaching, Divided into three, 
 which teaches in the Family, Love ; in the Nation, Justice and 
 Equity ; in the Church, Holiness. These uses we have, at various 
 periods of our work, illustrated. The uses, however, manifestly 
 are facts ; they could exist as uses of Society, whatsoever its origin : 
 the question now is of its origin. Our opinion that we have 
 expressed is, that it is of Divine Institution, coeval and con- 
 genital with man; the organization, just as much as the indi- 
 vidual, an existence made of God for set purposes, and in fixed, 
 unchangeable forms. 
 
 This it must be, or else made of and by man ; not of divine 
 origin, but made by a multitude of men consenting thereunto, as 
 men, after an unanimous plan, frame and build a house. 
 
 34 265
 
 266 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 There is no alternative either Society is by God intended for 
 the purposes that we see it fulfil, and is of his building ; or else 
 it is made by man after his own will j one thing or the other must 
 be true. 
 
 Now of this latter opinion there have been in modern times 
 many advocates ; their theory is called the " theory of the Social 
 Contract." It is, we conceive, in its main features fairly repre- 
 sented thus : 
 
 " There was a time when there was no Society, but men were 
 in a State of Nature. Then they came voluntarily together, and 
 by contract they constituted Society. Hence that agreement 
 is called the Social Contract : and so doing they each renounced 
 a portion of their individual rights, as the price to Society for 
 the securing of the others." These three clauses will embrace, 
 we believe, all the elements of this theory. 
 
 We shall examine these asseverations one by one. 
 
 Now with regard to the fact of contract, what evidence is there 
 that this which we call Society was constituted by contract among 
 individuals, who formerly not being in society contracted to make 
 it, and after it was made were thenceforth in it ? What evidence 
 is there of the contract which the theory takes to be a fact ? 
 
 Of such a fact there is in existence neither record, witnesses, 
 registry, evidence of time, or place, or any one of those circum- 
 stances which are requisite to the proof of the fact of contract. 
 
 Let us go back, and we shall see there is no evidence to the 
 effect that the theory requires. We go back to our American 
 Constitution, established at the Revolution. We do not see that 
 this answers at all to the "Social Contract," for the theory says 
 that by that contract, Society was constituted ; that previously 
 there was no /Society, but men were in a State of Nature. Now 
 before the American Revolution there was Society, there were 
 families, churches, magistrates : the change then was from one 
 form of Grovernment to another, not from no-government to go- 
 vernment; not from no-society to society. Men were not in a 
 State of Nature before the Revolution, and after it stepped at 
 once into the Social State. Whatsoever the Social Contract may 
 be, and whensoever it may be imagined to have been made, it 
 certainly was not made at the time of the establishment of our 
 G-overnment, and our Constitution does not answer to the descrip- 
 tion given of it.
 
 THE HOME AND ITS AFFECTIONS. 267 
 
 We go back, then, to our English ancestors. We have the 
 history of the nation for a thousand years at least. If a fact so 
 remarkable as this, of a Social Contract, by which a whole nation 
 stepped from a State of Nature in which no Society existed, into 
 the Social state ; if a fact so remarkable ever occurred in that 
 people, we should have, in all reason and common sense, some 
 record of its happening. But there is no record of time or platfe, 
 nor of any thing that can prove this alleged fact of a Contract, 
 in the history of the English nation. 
 
 But we may have evidence of it, perhaps, in the times anterior 
 to the national existence of England : and lo ! in the historical 
 records of the whole world there is not the slightest evidence of 
 such a transaction, such a Contract ! The matter is a supposition, 
 a theory, a fiction, so far as evidence or record of it is required 
 or searched for not a matter of fact. 
 
 Wherever, even in the fewest numbers, the Man is seen, there 
 is he seen in Society ; he enters into Society as member of a 
 Family; where there are only two or three families, there is 
 Government in the Tribe, which is the Nation in little ; and there 
 is Worship. Where there is, either from newness or from desola- 
 tion by famine, pestilence, war, or emigration, only one family 
 in the land, the three elements are seen coexisting in the one 
 social organization, which is at once a Family, a Nation in little, 
 and a Church ; and the head at once is Father, and King or 
 Chief Magistrate, and Priest. These relations are not made by 
 any supposed compact, but are coeval with man, for as far back 
 as we go we see them to exist, and we see no evidence of Con- 
 tract constituting them. 
 
 But again, this theory supposes that there was in existence 
 antecedent to the Social State, a State of Nature! This is a 
 fact asserted, a thing of which we ought to have evidence. It 
 is supposed to be a state opposite to that of Society, a state in 
 which there was no society, but only individuals; in which, of 
 course, there were no Families, no Nations, no Worships; in 
 which therefore there were no husbands and no wives, no property, 
 no magistrates, nothing, in short, but the individual man eating 
 and drinking, and freely doing whatever his heart moved him to ! 
 Was there ever such a state as this ? 
 
 As a matter of fact, there never was : because, as we have said, 
 the very first sight we get of man in the records of our race,
 
 268 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 sacred or profane, shows him in Society; shows all its three forms 
 to exist; and shows his nature too, so framed and adapted for 
 Society, that it is manifest that he was made and organized for 
 it, and it was made and organized for him. So far with regard 
 to the fancied State of Nature as supposed to exist before and in 
 opposition to the Social State. 
 
 But again, the "Man," in acceding to the " Social Contract," 
 and entering into the Social State, is supposed to have surrendered 
 a portion of his "Original Rights." I confess I do not see that 
 in Society any rights belonging to the individual are surrendered. 
 Life and Liberty and Property are certainly secured against out- 
 rage, which, if the Nation did not exist, they would endure. 
 Except, perhaps, that which society makes a crime, is a "right 
 original;" except "rapine," and "theft," and "brutality," and 
 contempt of the marriage bond, except these, which Society calls 
 " Crimes," are " Original Eights."* 
 
 I cannot see how Man in Society " surrenders a portion of his 
 rights." To secure life at the expense of contributing perhaps 
 three days' labour in a whole year, instead of being perpetually 
 in peril and constantly in arms ; to secure property by a like ex- 
 penditure of time, instead of being able only to possess that which 
 with armed hand we can take and hold ; this, so far from a " Sur- 
 render of Rights," seems to me an enlargement of them. 
 
 And looking steadfastly at the civilized man and at the man 
 
 * Here is the immoral element in this theory, the concealed premise, al- 
 ways held back yet always implied and insinuated in various forms, by Rous- 
 seau and his followers, the doctrine that the Law of Society only made those 
 actions vicious, which, before that law, were not only not vicious, but rights 
 of the individual man, at that period, the golden age of Rousseau, when 
 
 " Wild in woods the noble savage ran, / 
 
 Ere arts and manners first corrupted man." 
 
 And so, it seems, murder, theft, rapine, promiscuous concubinage, all these 
 are " original rights" of the individual man, which he surrenders to society 
 by being under the Social Contract, not wrong in themselves by any means ! 
 The evils of this theory are thus manifest to any mind ; they were in fact 
 and reality manifested in the corruption of manners that preceded the French 
 Revolution. This vile theory had taken possession of the whole mind of the 
 nation of France, and such was its result. 
 
 Such is the power unto evil of one base, " bad-hearted" man of Genius. 
 In this has Rousseau a bad pre-eminence. He is the one, the only thoroughly 
 bad-hearted man of true Genius the experience of the past reveals to us.
 
 THE HOME AND ITS AFFECTIONS.' 269 
 
 who approaches nearest to that fancied " State of Nature," so 
 far from a "surrender of rights," the consequence of Society is 
 an enlarging, developing, securing of rights, and the man in a 
 Social State has a thousand rights the savage cannot possess. 
 
 Never, in fact, did this fancied State of Nature exist ; never did 
 a " Social Contract" take place either between men to make So- 
 ciety, or between any Individual to enter into Society ; never 
 were any rights original to man surrendered. And the facts 
 which they twist into proofs of a contract are proofs of this only, 
 " that the 'Individual Man' is made for Society suited and 
 adapted by his nature to dwell therein always and for ever ; and 
 that Society is made for him, so that his nature responds to the 
 organization and the organization to his nature:" and this, in 
 accordance with the principle so often laid down in this book, and 
 urged .as a primary one in Morals, that all things are double, one 
 against another, and God hath made nothing imperfect. In fact, 
 the whole theory existed only in the brain of that man whom 
 before we noticed as the most base and bad-hearted of all writers : 
 
 " The self-torturing sophist, vain Rousseau." 
 
 It was a fiction and a theory, for the time and for the place. 
 When the tyranny of the king and aristocracy of France had 
 become so oppressive as to shake the very grounds of all confi- 
 dence ; when faith had become a mockery to intellect ; and the 
 conduct of men of rank a base and filthy scandal ; so that all 
 things were preparing for downfall and ruin, then came forth this 
 theory of the " Social Contract," as a banner to men who seemed 
 to themselves to see no hope of justice or equity save in the de- 
 struction of all things. 
 
 And these men took this theory for granted, because thus they 
 were enabled to say, "You are bound to us as we to you, by con- 
 tract ; do that duty, or we shall break our contract ; we are en- 
 titled to do it, and if you compel us, why then we recur to our 
 original rights, and one of them is the holy right of insurrection," 
 a phrase ten thousand times employed in the French Revolution. 
 
 It was a theory for the times ; it may be as well put aside now : 
 we may as well found our duties and rights upon truth, and 
 holiness, and equity, and the nature of Man, of God, and of 
 Society, as upon Contract. 
 
 The theory of the "Social Contract" having thus been ex-
 
 270 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 amined and rejected, upon, we conceive, good grounds, we take it, 
 that " Society" is an Institution of God, coeval with man, adapt- 
 ed to his nature as his nature to it, and so fitted to it that it 
 is not only merely the best, but the only condition for him to 
 exist in. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Family always existent. The Home its realization in Space and Time. 
 Heathen notions of its institution. The feeling that the Law makes it. 
 Man's nature. Nature of Society, and the express Law of God. These, 
 not mere legislation cause it. Pretty fables about marriage. Natural 
 feeling of unity. Doctrine of the Roman Law. Common-Law Doctrine. 
 Doctrine of the Scriptures. Conclusions : 1st, Law does not make mar- 
 riage; 2d, Marriage is no Sacrament, but a Mystery; 3d, All bound to 
 marriage, except, first, it is wrong for them to marry secondly, for a 
 religious motive. 
 
 WHEREVER, as we have shown, Man appears, there Society 
 appears, simultaneously as it were, and coeval with his existence. 
 Man as made was one, it is true, at first, but afterwards, when 
 "the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be 
 alone," from his flesh and bones was made a partner for him. 
 And since then, man as lorn has always come into Society he 
 has been born into it. And this society made up of a pair, a 
 Man and a woman living together a Husband* and a wife.f 
 This pair, with their offspring, constitute the Family. Their 
 dwelling is called the Home. 
 
 Hence result a multitude of relations of Persons of Husband 
 to Wife of Wife to Husband of Parents to Children of 
 Children to Parents of Brothers to Sisters of Sisters to Bro- 
 thers. All these manifestly are relations between Persons in 
 Society, and that Society composed of these Persons is the 
 Family. 
 
 And again, owing to the Nature of man, which is a nature in 
 Space and Time, this Society, the Family, has a place of inhabi- 
 tation, a dwelling to itself exclusive, in which only the one 
 
 * " House-band" the union of the house, 
 from " weiben," to weave or unite.
 
 THE HOME AND ITS AFFECTIONS. 271 
 
 Family dwells, or ought naturally to dwell, the Home : and the 
 Society therein is, as it were, set apart from the rest of the 
 world by visible and tangible limits; defined by them to be, 
 although composed of many members and many relations natu- 
 rally, still One only. One by exclusion of others from without ; 
 one by union of interests and feelings and mutual aid within ; 
 one by authority and by love. A oneness of organization with 
 manifoldness of members and relations and affections. There is 
 authority there, in the authority of the Father. And there also 
 naturally exists the unity of love, represented in all its pos- 
 sible relations, and flowing, as it were, from one fountain, the 
 Mother. 
 
 We come now to examine into the nature of this Society, and 
 the Affections that are in the heart towards it. " The Home," 
 we have entitled this book, "and its Affections." 
 v And first, the question is, Whence comes it? How was it 
 organized? Whence its Laws? This I conceive a question 
 worth noting, but not worth examining. I see the man that 
 was made by the hand of God, by him brought into Society 
 but all men that are born, born into a family. The Family, I 
 see, by the most ancient of histories the Bible to have been 
 instituted of God. I then, as a plain matter of fact, take it for 
 granted that it was so : that for one man and one woman to live 
 together as Husband and Wife all their days, that this was the 
 original institution. That those who lived otherwise were not 
 they who lived as at first, but they who broke off and diverged 
 from the original institution. Heathens* may say, 
 
 "First men crawled out from the earth, a brute and dumb 
 class of animals, fighting with fists and nails for acorns and wild 
 fruits, then with cudgels, and then with arms which necessity 
 invented. Then their rude cries they gradually formed into 
 
 * Quum prorepserunt primis animalia terns, 
 
 Mutum ac turpe pecus, glandem atque cubilia propter, 
 Unguibus, et pugnis, dein fustibus, atque ita porro 
 Pugnabant armis, quae post fabricaverat usus : 
 Donee verba, quibus voces sensusque notarent, 
 Nominaque invenere : debinc absistere bello, 
 Oppida coeperunt munire, et ponere leges, 
 Ne quis fur esset, neu latro, neu quis adulter. 
 
 HOB. Sat. lib. i. 3.
 
 272 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 articulate language ; and lawgivers came, who taught them mar- 
 riage and instructed them in law." 
 
 This is the heathen view entirely. The Christian is, that mar- 
 riage was the Original State, and Language a Divine gift,* and 
 Lawf a thing natural to man from his own Reason and from the 
 nature of Society and of God ; and that if men were found in a 
 state such as above described, it was because they had sunk 
 voluntarily into it. 
 
 But to resume: Men, asked any questions with regard to the 
 Family when they are possessed with this Heathen notion, will 
 answer, the Law makes it so ; taking it for granted unwittingly 
 that the Law could make it otherwise. 
 
 But with regard to Marriage, does not the Law enact it? 
 Does it not inflict penalties upon those who shall transgress this 
 enactment ? and thereby first cast the Family into a precise and 
 definite shape, and then by its action so retain it ? 
 
 Granting that it does all this all this will not be to constitute 
 it, but only to protect, guarantee, and define it, by the consent 
 and legislative power of the nation. If the thing be u rigJit^% 
 then legislation sanctioning it is good ; but if it be not "right," 
 then no legislation can make it so. 
 
 The foundation, then, of the Family, and its Law, I seek in 
 the Nature of Man and of Society, and in the express Law of 
 God. These are they that make and constitute the Law of Mar- 
 riage and the Law of the Family ; and human legislation is good 
 so far as it expresses and reflects these. 
 
 But when human legislation upon any point opposes these, 
 and says that it shall not be so, but otherwise, then human legis- 
 lation fails. Mohammed permitted and enacted polygamy and 
 Nature starts up and says, "Nay, it shall not be: polygamy, the 
 allotment of many wives to one man, cannot be the Law of a 
 Nation, for only one woman throughout a nation shall be born 
 for one man." And thence throughout the nation that human 
 law is wholly inoperative as a law, that is, as an universal rule 
 
 * See an essay on the Divine Origin of Language, in Magee on the Atone- 
 ment. 
 
 t See Hooker, first book of the Ecclesiastical Polity. 
 
 % Right rectum, ruled that is, by the inner law of man's moral being ; 
 and by the external law of God corresponding to it, wherever and however 
 revealed.
 
 THE HOME AND ITS AFFECTIONS. 273 
 
 of life ; and the only effect is tolerated licentiousness among the 
 rich and great, and a decay of principle among the poor, and a 
 decrease of happiness and prosperity in the nation.* 
 
 If Law be according to the nature and being of Man and 
 according to the Law of God, then it is Right, and sanctions 
 that which is Right; but if it be not "right," "ruled," that is, 
 according to the Eternal measure of immutable and unchange- 
 able morality, then it is not so good. The will of God exter- 
 nally the Nature of Man internally, as interpreted by the 
 Universal Reason in Society, these are the measure of all 
 human legislation. And these always and for ever agree. 
 
 Having so digressed, we shall, for a while, leave the legal con- 
 sideration of "Marriage," the "Family," and the "Home,"and go 
 to the Ethical consideration, that which examines not its Laws 
 under Legislation, but its foundations in the nature of man, and 
 in the Law of God. 
 
 Now with regard to nature, we find the feelings of the oneness 
 and exclusiveness of the marriage so prevalent among men from 
 the beginning, that it gave rise to many pretty and interesting 
 fables. " The soul of man and woman," says one ancient Greek 
 fable, " was originally one ; it was then divided by Jove into two 
 portions, half to one body, and half to the other ; and hence the 
 one soul, with instinctive patience, seeks its lost half, and will wan- 
 der over the world for it, and, if united with it, shall be happy, 
 if not, miserable." 
 
 Behold a theory which at one blow accounts for all travelling 
 and emigration, as well as all happiness and unhappiness of the 
 marriage tie, and yet expressing sufficiently the sense the author 
 of it had of the Spiritual Harmony of Marriage. 
 
 "Behold," say the Cabalists those Jewish retailers of absurd 
 philosophy and foolish wisdom "man was originally one, both 
 soul and body, the 'Ish Kadmon,' or primitive created being, and 
 then God separated them, and man fell!" a most absurd and 
 ridiculous notion, and yet showing the sense these strange philo- 
 sophers had of the intimate relation of unity which the Masculine 
 character bears to the Feminine. 
 
 * It is, I believe, a well ascertained Statistical fact, that the population of 
 Turkey the exclusively Turkish population has not increased during the 
 last two or three centuries ; and that this is owing exclusively to the legal 
 toleration of Polygamy. 
 
 35
 
 274 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 Strange fables, these, and yet bearing witness to the na- 
 tural fact of unity brought about and realized by the mar- 
 riage tie. 
 
 In fact, through all time antecedent to Christ, the fables of all 
 nations, extravagant as they may be, still bear witness to the feel- 
 ing and persuasions of an union the most intimate between the 
 parties, an union of Body, Soul, and Spirit as effectual as if they 
 had actually become one body, one soul, one spirit. And this 
 persuasion and universal sentiment assumes manifold forms, some 
 amusing and ridiculous, and some interesting and even sublime, 
 according to the nature and temper of the narrators. 
 
 And. in philosophic earnestness and truth, when we examine 
 the nature of Man and of Woman, we shall find that one is, as it 
 were, the complement and counterpart of the other, that which 
 renders it perfect ; so that in the natural quest to feel and deter- 
 mine what would be the perfection of humanity, we should have 
 to combine and unite the various attributes and qualities of both 
 minds, the Masculine and the Feminine, and would find that all 
 qualities of the one nature would, as it were, combine with and 
 perfect those of the other. 
 
 For instance, the intellect of man, being intellect, is still a very 
 different thing in nature from the intellect of woman, but so dif- 
 ferent as to correspond to and complete it. And when we come 
 to imagine the height and perfection of intellect, not barely great 
 intellect, but the utmost degree and topmost summit of all great- 
 ness of mental power, then we naturally fall into a combination 
 of both. We unite the tenderness, the grace, the delicacy of the 
 Female Intellect, with the boldness, and strength, and robustness 
 of the Masculine Mind ; and we find this combination actually to 
 exist in Shakspeare, Dante, Homer, in the men of the highest 
 reach always, but not in men of second-rate powers. 
 
 And when we look at these faces of the loftiest genius, then 
 shall we see the tenderness of the female countenance uniting 
 itself with the strength of the masculine ; as may easily be seen 
 in the portrait of Dante, of Shakspeare, or even of Milton. 
 
 In the same way, if we take the whole nature the Conscience, 
 the Reason, the Affections, the Will, the Understanding in the 
 case of all these, they are the same in both sexes ; but in one there 
 is a certain quality we call " Masculine," and in the other, a quality 
 we call "Feminine," and one is supplementary, as it were, to the
 
 THE HOME AND ITS AFFECTIONS. 275 
 
 other, completes and perfects it. No wonder then that this con- 
 stitutional adaptedness, this natural agreement of two different 
 natures towards unity of end, should be explained by such ex- 
 travagant philosophies, existent as that harmony is in all faculties 
 of the Whole being.* 
 
 But the sense of harmony in two towards one purpose, or 
 rather towards oneness of life, is manifested exceedingly in the 
 ordinations and definitions of legislators. " Nuptiae sive matri- 
 monium," says the Roman law, " est viri et mulieris conjunctio 
 individuam vitae consuetudinem constituens." "Marriage is the 
 union of a man and woman, constituting an united habitual course 
 of life, never to be separated ;" and again the same Roman law 
 defines it to be " Consortium omnis vitae, divini et humani juris 
 communicatio:" a " Partnership of the whole life, a mutual 
 sharing in att rights, human and divine." 
 
 But much as the Homan law acknowledges this natural unity ; 
 or rather tendency and adaptedness for unity of life, much fur- 
 ther the English Common Law goes, for it actually considers, for 
 all legal purposes, man and wife to be " one person ." 
 
 To quote a modern writer, " The English Law goes further, 
 and considers the Husband and Wife as one Person. As the law- 
 yers state it, The very being or legal existence of the woman 
 is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and 
 consolidated in that of her husband, under whose wing, protec- 
 tion, and cover, she performs every thing, and is, therefore, in our 
 law-French, called feme coverte, and her condition during her 
 marriage is called her coverture. 
 
 " Hence a man cannot grant any thing to his wife by a legal act, 
 or enter into covenant with her, for this would be to covenant 
 with himself. The husband is bound by law to provide his wife 
 with the necessaries of life ; if she incur debts for such things, 
 he is obliged to pay them. Even if the debts of the wife have 
 been incurred before marriage, the husband is bound to discharge 
 them, for he has espoused her and her circumstances together. 
 If she suffers an injury, she applies for redress in her husband's 
 name, as well as her own. If any one has a claim upon her, 
 the suit must be directed against her husband also. In criminal 
 
 * I have seen, somewhere, notice of an absurdly ingenious book called 
 " Sex in Souls." To this the reply is easy ; " in Christ there is neither male 
 nor female." Souls are of no sex, although different in quality.
 
 276 . CHEISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 prosecutions, indeed, the wife may be indicted and prosecuted 
 separately, for the union is only a civil union. But even in such 
 cases, husband and wife are not allowed to be evidence for or 
 against each other, 'justly,' say the lawyers, 'because it is impos- 
 sible their testimony should be impartial;' but principally because 
 of the union of Person. For being thus one person, if they were 
 admitted witnesses for each other, they would contradict one 
 maxim of law, 'Nemo in propria" causa" testis esse debet;' 'no 
 one can be a witness in his own cause:' and if against each other, 
 they would contradict another maxim, ' Nemo tenetur se ipsum 
 accusare ;' 'no one is bound to accuse himself.' "* 
 
 This is the doctrine of that English Common Law, which its 
 ablest advocates have pronounced the "Perfection of Reason," 
 and which, undoubtedly, from the oldest Saxon times, has been 
 the Free Element in the constitution of England. This dogma, 
 therefore, that civilly the effect of marriage is the union of the 
 two into one Person, is the decision of the Common Law; a 
 decision, we fear not to say, that nearer expresses the truth than 
 any other. For, as we have shown, the natural feeling of the 
 human heart, expressed in many fables, many philosophies, and 
 many legal enactments, is such that it confesses an union of the 
 closest and most intimate kind between the Husband and the 
 Wife an union so closely drawn and intimate, that by no other 
 words can we clearly express the fulness of it, than by these of 
 the Anglo-Saxon law "these two individuals make one Person." 
 
 So, when we come to the Scriptures, we find the same doctrine 
 most plainly held forth. The doctrine that these, being two in- 
 dividuals, " are one flesh," one humanity ; that is, one, not only 
 in union of interests, will, sympathies, and affections, for this is a 
 figurative oneness, but one as no other oneness is : so one, that 
 by Christ's law nothing but death can disunite them; one, so that 
 the unbelieving husband or wife is sanctified by the believer ; 
 one, as Christ and his church are one; one "in a mystery," that 
 is to say, the fact is to us impossible and incomprehensible as a 
 fact, yet, as being revealed to us by the word of God, is true ; 
 while the means whereby it is so, the grounds, the consequences 
 of it, these lie far beyond us, deep hidden in the limitless power 
 and the inscrutable wisdom of the eternal God. This, as may 
 
 be seen from the words of St. Paul and of our Lord Jesus, 
 
 
 
 * Blackstone's Commentaries.
 
 THE HOME AND ITS AFFECTIONS. 277 
 
 is the true doctrine of the Scripture and the Church concerning 
 the marriage union. 
 
 " Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto 
 the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as 
 Christ is the head of the church : and he is the Saviour of the 
 body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the 
 wives be subject to their own husbands in every thing. Hus- 
 bands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and 
 gave himself for it ; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with 
 the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to 
 himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any 
 such thing ; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So 
 ought men to love their wives as their own body. For Tie that 
 loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his 
 own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the 
 church : for we are members of his body, his flesh, and his bones. 
 For this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother, and 
 shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall become one flesh. 
 This is a, great mystery ; and this I apply to Christ and the 
 church."* 
 
 * Eph. v. 22. It will be seen, in the above citation from St. Paul, that I 
 translate two phrases somewhat differently from what they are in our Eng- 
 lish version. The first, in our version, is, " they shall be one flesh." The 
 Greek expresses it differently ; it is, " they s7iatt be unto one flesh ;" that is, 
 " shall become." There is in the original a Greek word corresponding to 
 our English word " unto," which seems to be wholly neglected in our ver- 
 sion, and yet upon it the stress of the argument lies. The same phrase, 
 " shall be unto," I shall translate in this way in citing our blessed Lord's 
 words : I shall not therefore notice it at that place. 
 
 Again, there is another peculiar phrase, which in the Greek original is, 
 fovtfo Ss xlyw rtspt." I translate it, " and this I apply to." Let my reader 
 examine the passage, and he shall find that the first translation makes a jar 
 in the sequency of the argument ; the second brings it clearly out. The 
 argument is from the idea of the mysterious nature of the marriage union, 
 with which idea every Jew was well acquainted., to the doctrine, entirely 
 new to them, of the vital union of Christ with, His Church. The argument 
 and illustration is from the one to the other ; a logical connexion that is dis- 
 located completely by one version, but expressed by the other in the text. 
 
 But are not the words, " but this I say concerning," the translation, even 
 a literal translation, of the Greek ? Yes. And so of the French, " II fait 
 froid," the English, " It makes cold," is a translation, and yet it is nonsense ; 
 and of the English, " So wo-begone," " Ainsi douleur va-t-en," is a transla- 
 tion. The fact is, as keen old Selden, from whom I take the illustration,
 
 278 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 This is the plain doctrine of Scripture : a doctrine that says 
 that, in the very being and constitution of man by his creation, 
 there is a mystery in reference to marriage. 
 
 A mystery, in the Scripture language, is " a thing declared to 
 us as a fact, and therefore to be received upon the evidence of 
 Almighty God, and yet the reasons and causes of which are hid- 
 den from us." So is "the Incarnation," the fact that God was 
 born of a woman and assumed flesh, this is a "mystery," a fact 
 declared and shown, and for which, on natural grounds, the 
 grounds of mere reason, we cannot account. 
 
 Thus marriage is a "Mystery," and the Mystery is, that as 
 " Christ and the Church" are actually one, so should the hus- 
 band and wife be one, that as we, having mortal bodies here 
 upon earth, are united with his Spiritual and Immortal Human- 
 ity upon the throne, and are thus one with him, so should these 
 two, the Man and the Woman, being two, become and be one flesh. 
 
 And hence that, as the church obeys Christ, so should the 
 wife obey the husband : not through compulsion, force, or fear, 
 but through love, because obedience in love is the natural conse- 
 quence of her position ; and so should the husband love the wife, 
 as Christ loved the church, because this is the natural conse- 
 quence of his position, and because " she is his flesh, and no one 
 hateth his own flesh." 
 
 Here is the mystery. The apostle takes it for granted that 
 they are actually and really one, and argues therefrom as it is 
 so ; but the ground and the reason of the union that makes it so 
 he does not declare only that it is. 
 
 From this fact, then, we shall deduce several consequences. 
 
 1st. Marriage is not an institution of the Law, so that the 
 Law institutes it as it institutes a Savings Bank, a Senate, a 
 
 has remarked, "there are two kinds of translation, literal and idiomatic;" 
 and to translate an idiom literally is no translation, but is nonsense. 
 
 This Greek idiom, then, " this I speak of," or " concerning," is used 
 idiomatically for "I apply unto," or in "illustration of." Of this, any 
 scholar that may think it worth while, as I have done, to search through 
 Stephens' s Greek Thesaurus upon the point, may easily satisfy himself. 
 
 The translation, then, that gives the full sense of the idiom is, " And this" 
 (that is, the mystery of the union of man and woman in marriage assumed 
 as a fact) " I apply to" (illustrate that vital and equally real union of) 
 "Christ and the church."
 
 THE HOME AND ITS AFFECTIONS. 279 
 
 School, or an Observatory, and then can unmake it and reach 
 the same end by another institution of a different kind. This it 
 is not, but an institution of man's being, a law of his nature as 
 created,^ fact antecedent to all Human Law. So is marriage in 
 Society, a law before all laws ; and therefore the work of human 
 law and man's legislation is to enforce upon the citizen these two 
 laws, the innate law of nature, the outward law of God's reve- 
 lation ; but not to dream that they shall be able to make and 
 unmake, form anew and remould that which is superior to them 
 all, and to them all antecedent. 
 
 Another conclusion we would draw from this : As marriage is 
 a Mystery of our nature antecedent to all law, and Law has, as 
 we have said, the power only to enforce, to regulate, and to pro- 
 tect ; hence all marriages wherein the individuals legally declare 
 their desire and intention, before authorities constituted and 
 established by law, to live together in the state of matrimony, 
 are legal and valid* marriages ; the individual thereby enabling 
 the State to maintain and enforce that contract and agreement 
 then made. 
 
 But marriage contracted with prayer and religious rites, and 
 the blessing of God's church, and solemn and appropriate ser- 
 vices this marriage is legal also and valid, and more than this, 
 is blessed, being in accordance with the precept, " Whether ye 
 eat or drink, or whatever ye do, do all to the honour and glory of 
 God." 
 
 And this in accordance with the doctrine of the Church, 
 which holds marriage not to be a Sacrament of the church and 
 instituted by Christ, but to be a mystery of man 8 being, an 
 adaptedness of his nature as originally created. 
 
 And this in opposition to the Romanists, who declare marriage 
 to be a Sacrament ; and therefore, seeing that among themselves 
 they think the only valid sacraments are, do in effect declare all 
 marriages except those among themselves invalid, and bastardize 
 all offspring save their own. Because, instead of being content 
 with the Scripture doctrine, " that marriage is a mystery," they 
 
 * Provided always the law of the State do not contradict the law of God. 
 A Turkish marriage to a second or third living wife may be very legal ac- 
 cording to the Mohammedan law : in the law of God it is adultery, or concu- 
 binage.
 
 280 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 would add to it still greater sanctity and greater effect, ana 
 make of it a " Sacrament." 
 
 Another inference I would draw is this : Except a person be 
 incapacitated for marriage by reason that he cannot support a 
 family, or by any other reason that renders it positively wrong 
 for him to enter upon the marriage state, he is wrong in not 
 being married. 
 
 Marriage is, by its very nature, and by the very nature and 
 being of man, a better state than singleness, a more moral state, 
 a more natural and useful state ; and except, as I have above 
 said, there is some impediment that makes it positively wrong to 
 marry, ALL are bound to marry, and are better mentally ', morally, 
 and physically, because of it. 
 
 And thereby, to remain unmarried merely for expediency- 
 sake, or for mere Self- Will, or capricious motives, this is wrong 
 and evil, from the nature of man and of society. So that, save 
 one. actually is disqualified for marriage so that it shall be wrong 
 for him to marry, he is naturally in a better situation marrying 
 than not so. 
 
 But there is one exception made by our Saviour; that is, "for 
 Religion's sake." "Some are eunuchs made of men, and some 
 have made themselves eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven's 
 sake." " He that is able to receive it, let him receive it." 
 
 "For the Kingdom of Heaven's sake" for a religious motive, 
 our Lord permits men to remain unmarried ; and not only per- 
 mits, but requests and desires them so to do. 
 
 For a religious motive : Say that thou art a son with a 
 widowed and helpless mother and her feeble little children, left 
 with only thyself to look to ; thou canst marry, have a family of 
 thine own, enjoy comfort and satisfaction. Surrender all these; 
 give thyself up to be the support of the feeble mother and her 
 helpless children, and to be a father to them ; and this, done in 
 faith and trust in Grod and his Christ this shall be for thee a 
 blessedness, permitted and sanctified, to remain unmarried for 
 Christ and his kingdom's sake. 
 
 Daughter ! the last child of a widowed mother, who thinkest 
 whether it would not be better to comfort her declining years 
 than to be at the head of thine own family : this the first to 
 do, is to remain unmarried for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake. 
 And so of a multitude of other cases of the same kind, among
 
 THE HOME AND ITS AFFECTIONS. 281 
 
 which come possibly cases of missionary labour,* in which parti- 
 cular men may feel that to preach among the heathen is a duty 
 so bound upon them, that for it, through Christ, they are to 
 remain unmarried. Such was St. Paul. 
 
 But in all such cases, it is a duty of which, first, the individual 
 is to judge himself: "He that is able to receive it, let him re- 
 ceive it." For that Self-denial that is compelled by Law is not 
 Self-denial at all, but compulsion. 
 
 And, secondly, the person must be able to receive it, that is, 
 be a person such by nature and by Grace that he can remain as 
 moral unmarried as married. 
 
 With these two qualifications, Self-denial for religion's sake is 
 an exception made by Christ himself, and blessed of him. But 
 this case and that exception above stated are the only ones that 
 at all exempt men from the principle that says, "Marriage is 
 honourable in all, and the bed undefiled." 
 
 * There is a great deal of good sense in the following passage from the 
 works of Dr. Miller, of Princeton, an eminent Presbyterian. Although I 
 must say that I think " Itinerancy" has done almost all the good it can do, 
 and the sooner it is replaced by a settled parochial clergy, (who, according 
 to the deliberate opinion and primitive usage of the Greek Church, ought 
 always to be a married clergy,} the better. I must say, also, that of all insti- 
 tutions, I believe an unmarried Itinerancy to be the worst. Still, however, 
 on a delicate subject, the following extract contains a great deal of good 
 sense. The small capitals are his : the italics inserted by me. 
 
 " I. In reference to this subject, my first leading suggestion is, THAT 
 
 THERE ARE SOME CLERGYMEN THAT OUGHT NEVER TO MARRY. While I firmly 
 
 believe that the doctrine which enjoins celibacy on the clergy generally is, as 
 the apostle styles it, ' a doctrine of devils,' and that it has led and must 
 always lead to the most enormous evils, I have at the same time no doubt 
 that the minister who deliberately resolves to spend his days as an evangelical 
 itinerant, ought, if he can be happy in a single state, to continue in that 
 state. * * * There ought to be a few such ministers in every church of 
 large extent. Yet no one ought to be constrained or even persuaded to 
 choose this plan of life. Nor should any one adopt it unless it be the object 
 of his deliberate and devout preference. And even after having adopted it, he 
 ought to feel himself at liberty to retract and assume the conjugal bond 
 whenever he is persuaded that he can serve the Church better by doing so." 
 Miller's Clerical Manners, let. xii. sect. 1. 
 
 36
 
 282 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Laws of Marriage : I. Permanence. The Scripture Doctrine of Divorce 
 discussed. The Uses of Permanence. Causes of frequency of Divorce. 
 St. Paul's Advice in regard to Marriage. Adultery a Crime : Nature and 
 the Divine Law forbid it. Its evil Consequences. The Causes of Mar- 
 riage unhappiness. II. Law of Mutualness. Marriage a Moral Good in 
 itself. Highest motive for Marriage is affection. Children should not 
 marry without consent of Parents. Third Law : The Supremacy in Mar- 
 riage belongs to the Husband. This doctrine is made tolerable by Chris- 
 tianity. 
 
 WE come now to the laws of Marriage those principles, 
 namely, of the ordinance, which arise, first, from its nature, as 
 an institution of God in our very being and the being of society ; 
 and, secondly, from the Laws of God concerning it. 
 
 And of these principles the first is its permanence " that it 
 shall be an union for life, capable of being dissolved only for one 
 cause, that of Adultery." 
 
 This is plainly asserted in the words of our Lord : " The 
 Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto 
 him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause ? 
 And he said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made 
 them at the beginning, made them male and female, and said, 
 For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall 
 cleave to his wife: and they twain shall become one flesh? 
 Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What there- 
 fore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. They 
 say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give her a 
 writing of divorcement, and to put her away ? He saith unto 
 them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you 
 to put away your wives : but from the beginning it was not so. 
 And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except 
 it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adul- 
 tery : and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit 
 adultery."* 
 
 * Matt. xix. 39.
 
 THE HOME AND ITS AFFECTIONS. 283 
 
 Here is the word of the Scripture plainly : " He that made 
 them in the beginning, made them Male and Female." 
 
 God made man He was the author of man's constitution and 
 being : and in that being and constitution they were made by 
 him, first, male and female adapted by their very nature as 
 man and woman to union in marriage ; and, secondly, they were 
 only two. 
 
 " And because of this" arising from this harmony of nature 
 originally established by God, so that in every way the one 
 should be the aid and counterpart to the other, the male to the 
 female and the female to the male, by natural being and consti- 
 tution, upon this is founded the law of God, "for this reason, a 
 man shall leave his father and mother, and shall be united to his 
 wife, and they two shall become one flesh." 
 
 " He shall leave father and mother," the dearest ties shall 
 be left of him ; those that by nature are the closest being super- 
 seded by one still dearer and closer. And this in consequence 
 of the mystery of his own being, as so made in the beginning. 
 
 "And shall be closely joined unto his wife,"* united in such a 
 way as to void even the closest natural ties, and to take their 
 place in priority of obligation : so close the bond. 
 
 "And they two shall become one flesh," not "they shall be," 
 but "they shall be unto," "they shall become." 
 
 "Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh." The 
 effect of their marriage union shall be an inseparable union into 
 one humanity. So that as in a Son all the elements of his being 
 come from the Father and the Mother, and the Father and 
 Mother in him are inseparable and indiscernible, so mysteriously 
 are the husband and the wife united into " one flesh," or " one 
 humanity." 
 
 " What God therefore has joined together, let not man put 
 asunder." God has united them "in one flesh" by the original 
 constitution of their nature as made by him, and by his express 
 and positive law in accordance with that nature. Therefore, let 
 no human legislation separate them. 
 
 And then He shows that only in reference to the hardness and 
 brutality of the national heart was the liberty of divorce poli- 
 tically permitted ; but that originally it was not so. 
 
 * " Cleave unto," in our version. The word is in the passive in the ori- 
 ginal. It signifies the closest permanent union.
 
 284 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 And tlie conclusion from these premises is, " Whosoever put- 
 teth away his wife, except for fornication, and marries another, 
 commits adultery." 
 
 Although human legislationmayperm.it divorce, or even decree 
 and enjoin it, for many causes, still the man who is divorced for 
 any other cause, than the adultery of his wife ; or the woman who 
 is divorced for any other cause than the adultery of her husband, 
 and then marries again, that man or that woman, notwithstanding 
 man's legislation and human law, is, by the law of his own being 
 as man, l)y the law under which Society is of the Almighty 
 constituted, by the law of God from the beginning, and by that 
 law as again Declared and promulgated by Christ, the Word Incar- 
 nate AN ADULTERER OR ADULTERESS. And he that marries a 
 wife so divorced, divorced by the la,w of man, but still married 
 by the law of God, is an ADULTERER. THIS is THE LAW OP 
 CHRIST, WHATSOEVER BE THE LAW OP MAN, AND, AS SUCH, IT 
 IS TO BE OBEYED BY ALL CHRISTIANS. X 
 
 And, by a parity of reasoning, since the clause "save for for- 
 nication," excludes him or her who, because of this sin in his or 
 her partner, is divorced and marries again, from the sentence of 
 adultery; it is manifest that he who, because of the adultery of 
 his wife, is divorced from her, is legally separated so as to be 
 entirely free from all fault, even if he do marry again. 
 
 Upon this ground we place the Christian law of marriage, upon 
 nature first, as originally made of God, and secondly, upon the 
 express law of God as cited and re-enacted by Christ. And we 
 believe that as in all cases of the express law of God, so in this, 
 obedience to the express command of the Almighty, even although 
 human law and human wisdom sanction disobedience, shall be 
 found ultimately to confer the greatest amount of lasting and 
 permanent happiness. And more than this, the sincerest wisdom 
 of man shall be ultimately driven to re-enact and re-establish the 
 Law of Grod. 
 
 But still, although upon the Law of God and upon the Nature 
 of man, we found the obligation of permanence, and not upon 
 expediency, yet still it may be advantageous to show the uses of 
 this permanence. We quote, therefore, from a writer* whose 
 principles of morality we dislike, but whose logical acuteness was 
 very great, who, in tracing out the advantages of permanence, 
 
 says: 
 
 * Paley.
 
 THE HOME AND ITS AFFECTIONS. 285 
 
 " A lawgiver whose counsels are directed by views of general 
 utility, and obstructed by no local impediment, would make the 
 marriage contract indissoluble, during the joint lives of the par- 
 ties, for the sake of the following advantages : 
 
 " 1. Because this tends to preserve peace and concord between 
 married persons, by perpetuating their common interest, and by 
 inducing a necessity of mutual compliance. 
 
 " There is great weight and substance in both, these considera- 
 tions. An earlier termination of the union would produce a 
 separate interest, the wife would naturally look forward to the 
 dissolution of the partnership, and endeavour to draw to herself 
 a fund against the timer when she was no longer to have access to 
 the same resources. This would beget peculation on the one side, 
 and mistrust upon the other, evils which at present very little 
 disturb the confidence of the married life. 
 
 " The second effect of making the union determinable only by 
 death, is not less beneficial ; it necessarily happens that adverse 
 tempers, habits, and tastes, oftentimes meet in marriage, in which 
 case each party must take pains to give up what offends, and 
 practise what may gratify the other. A man and woman in love 
 with each other do this insensibly, but love is neither general 
 nor durable, and when that is wanting, no lessons of duty, no 
 delicacy of sentiment will go half so far with the generality of 
 mankind and womankind, as this one intelligible reflection, that 
 they must each make the best of their bargain ; and that, seeing 
 they must either both be miserable or both share in the same hap- 
 piness, neither can find their own comfort but in promoting the 
 pleasure of the other. These compliances, though at first extorted 
 by necessity, become in time easy and mutual, and although less 
 endearing than assiduities which take their rise from affection, 
 generally procure to the married pair a repose and satisfaction 
 sufficient for their happiness." 
 
 There is a great deal of good sense in these remarks, although 
 we see in them the low and mean views Paley had of all things. 
 He argues upon men and women "united in holy matrimony," 
 as a man would upon a pair of oxen united by a yoke, or of dogs 
 in a double collar! " They won't kick or bite, but will learn to 
 run quietly together, when they find they can't be separated!" 
 
 But, to proceed, he goes on to assign other reasons for the per- 
 manence of the marriage tie :
 
 286 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 "Because new objects of desire would be continually sought 
 after, if men could, at will, be released from their subsisting 
 engagements. Suppose the husband once to have preferred his 
 wife to all other women, the duration of this preference cannot 
 be trusted to. There is no other security against the invitations 
 of novelty than the known impossibility of obtaining the object. 
 And, constituted as mankind are, and injured as the repudiated 
 wife generally must be, it is necessary to add a stability to the 
 condition of married women, more secure than the continuance 
 of their husbands' affection. Upon the whole, the power of 
 divorce is evidently and greatly to the disadvantage of the woman, 
 and the only question appears to be, whether the real and perma- 
 nent happiness of one-half the species should be surrendered to 
 the caprice and voluptuousness of the other ? 
 
 " We have considered divorces as depending upon the will of 
 the husband, because that is the way in which they have actually 
 obtained in many parts of the world ; but the same objections 
 apply in a great degree to divorces by mutual consent, especially 
 when we consider the indelicate situation and small prospect of 
 happiness which remains to the party who has opposed his or her 
 dissent to the liberty and desire of the other. 
 
 " Milton's story is well known. Upon a quarrel with his wife, 
 he paid his addresses to another woman, and set forth a public 
 vindication of his conduct, by attempting to prove that confirmed 
 dislike was as just a foundation for dissolving the marriage con- 
 tract as adultery; to which position, and to all the arguments by 
 which it can be supported, the above considerations afford a suffi- 
 cient answer."* 
 
 And we proceed, ourselves, to add a few considerations, of a 
 different spirit, we hope. We have shown that man is of three 
 parts, the " body," the " animal soul," and the " spirit ;" of these 
 three is the entire oneness of his nature framed. We have shown 
 that, according to the Scriptures, these two human beings become 
 " one flesh ;" there is an actual union of the nature of the one 
 unto that of the other ; so that they are no more twain, but one 
 flesh. Now, as a preparation for this, there ought to be a meetness 
 and suitableness of the one for the other. I ask, then, is it not 
 a fact that there are masses of men and women in whom the Spi- 
 ritual part is wholly uncultivated, who use not the Conscience, 
 
 * Paley's Moral Philosophy.
 
 THE HOME AND ITS AFFECTIONS. 287 
 
 who have no Spiritual Reason or sense of the Unseen World, but 
 live only for the things of time and sense, -whose Affections, at 
 least so far as the Heart is concerned, are become Sensual and 
 Selfish? 
 
 Every one knows that there are multitudes of such men, multi- 
 tudes of men whose moral faculties are utterly uncultivated and 
 undeveloped, and whose main principle therefore, in life, is either 
 the Sensual one, "to live for pleasure," or the Selfish one, "to 
 live for acquisition." 
 
 If a man be in such a state, then that man's heart is in the 
 state naturally that the hearts of the Hebrews were, his heart is 
 hard ; hard through Sensuality, and hard through Selfishness. 
 
 Say that such a one marries ; he marries, not for higher objects 
 than his nature reaches to, or for higher ends than his Greatest 
 Good will measure. The man that marries for beauty, when the 
 beauty is gone, having had no higher object, and no loftier feel- 
 ing than that mere sensual admiration* of beauty which the 
 ancient heathen and Paley call " love," and the Scriptures call 
 "desire," or "lust," why, if this be the object of his marriage, 
 why should he be confined to one wife ? why not more than one ? 
 why not the utmost latitude ? Surely, if this be the highest end 
 and the highest aim, the real affections will be neglected, and the 
 utmost latitude of divorce sought for and desired. 
 
 And again, if objects merely Selfish be sought for, if the hus- 
 band want a housekeeper only, and the wife only a man who can 
 give " a comfortable home," this very thing this attaching a Self- 
 ish end exclusively to marriage, this too infers, in reasoning upon 
 
 * An old poet beautifully contrasts this with true affection : 
 
 He that loves a rosie cheeke, 
 
 Or a coral lip admires, 
 Or from star-like eyes doth seek 
 
 Fuel to maintain his fires, 
 As Old Time maketh these decay, 
 So his flames must waste away. 
 
 But a smoothe and steadfast minde, 
 
 Gentle thoughts and calme desires, 
 Hearts with equal love combined, 
 
 Kindle never-dying fires ; 
 When these are not, I do despise 
 Lovely cheekes, or lips, or eyes.
 
 288 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 it, the utmost latitude of divorce. For if the man's highest end 
 is to obtain a good housekeeper only, and this is the view he takes 
 of marriage, and he is disappointed, naturally he will think te 
 ought to have the liberty again to try and suit himself. 
 
 Suppose the end of marriage to be either Selfish or Sensual, 
 and that rightly and properly a man can, for these motives, and 
 no higher ones, engage in it. And then, naturally, there is a 
 craving for unlimited divorce ; then, naturally, the Scripture doc- 
 trine is changed, and husband and wife are, and should be on 
 these grounds, allowed to be separated for every cause. 
 
 Now there are, unquestionably, a vast number of divorces at 
 the present day. I trace them to these reasons, in the first place, 
 to the philosophy of the day, which is the Sensual philosophy of 
 John Locke, who asserts that Pleasure and Pain are to be the 
 rules of action, and that Good and Evil are to be measured by 
 them :* and therefore, so far as in him lay, he has made man 
 utterly Sensual and Unspiritual. In the second place, to the 
 "Selfish" philosophy of Paley, which makes "selfishness regu- 
 lated by reason" the rule of action, and is very commonly held 
 among us. And in the third place, to the absence of a regular 
 and systematic cultivation of the Spiritual powers in the mass of 
 our people. 
 
 Because of this, multitudes are even, as were the old Jews, hard- 
 hearted Selfish that is, and Sensual, with no sense or feeling of 
 the sacredness and the mysteriousness of marriage ; looking upon 
 it as upon any other contract made by the consent of two, which 
 by the consent of two can be dissolved. 
 
 This is the case with multitudes of men at the present day ; 
 and therefore I say to Christian men and Christian women, 
 " Keep ye by the law of God and Christ, and it shall bring to you 
 a content and satisfaction that these men cannot comprehend. 
 And as by religion, your moral and spiritual being is educated 
 and developed, so take care that with regard to those with whom 
 you may be united, it be so also, as marriage is an union myste- 
 riously of the whole nature. For otherwise, much suffering, much 
 sorrow, much affliction you will have, if to the Unspiritual, to the 
 Selfish, or to the Sensual, you are united. For in Ethics it is, by 
 the very nature of the scientific principles of it, a true advice, 
 'be not unequally yoked with unbelievers.' "f 
 
 * See note on Book IV. chapter 4. f 2 Cor. vi. 14.
 
 THE HOME AND ITS AFFECTIONS. 289 
 
 The proper preparation for marriage that shall come up to 
 the Christian idea of it, is an adaptedness of the whole nature ; 
 first, a Religious and Moral development of the Spiritual nature, 
 so as to enable the man to appreciate the sacred mysteriousness 
 of marriage, and to exclude Selfishness and Sensuality from being 
 leading motives ; secondly, a development of the mental and intel- 
 ligent part, so as to manage well the affairs of life ; and thirdly, 
 full age and maturity of person. 
 
 When these three are united, there exist then all the qualifica- 
 tions for a Christian love, and then for marriage : but when only 
 the last two, then there always will be a want of the Christian 
 feeling in the most of persons, and a desire that divorce should 
 be easy and unrestrained. 
 
 And the first qualification, the full development of the Moral 
 being, this can exist only in those who are trained up in the reli- 
 gion of our Grod ; and for this reason I do conceive, as I said 
 above, that Christian science supports the advice of St. Paul, 
 "Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers." 
 
 The same reasons in nature and in the law of God that pro- 
 hibit divorce, also may be seen to prohibit Polygamy, or the mar- 
 riage of one man to several women, or one woman to several men, 
 during the life of the parties, whether this be simultaneous or 
 successive : for from the mystery in our nature it is prohibited ; 
 " they .two shall become one flesh," and not they three, or they 
 four. The natural adaptedness is that " two shall become one," 
 and any more than two will violate the law of the nature. 
 
 But in addition to this, and to the other arguments against it, 
 it will be seen by any one who chooses to look at the ordinary 
 tables of statistics, that the number of males and of females born 
 in the world is so very nearly the same, that it never could have 
 been intended that one man should have more wives than one ; 
 for if it were so, then for the one that had four, three must 
 remain unmarried. In fact, again to quote Paley, 
 
 " Polygamy not only violates the constitution of nature and 
 the apparent design of the Deity, but produces to the parties 
 themselves and to the public the following bad effects ; contests 
 and jealousies amongst the wives of the same husband, distract- 
 ed affections or the loss of all affection in the husband himself, 
 a voluptuousness in the rich which dissolves the vigour of their 
 intellectual as well as active faculties, producing that indolence 
 
 87
 
 290 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 and imbecility both of mind and body which have long charac- 
 terized the nations of the East, the abasement of one half of 
 the human species, who, in countries where polygamy obtains, 
 are degraded into instruments of mere sensual pleasure to the 
 other half, neglect of children, and the manifold mischiefs that 
 arise from a scarcity of women." 
 
 Such are the evils of Polygamy evils that manifestly arise 
 from the fact that it is a violation of the natural law and consti- 
 tution of man and of the express revealed law of God. 
 
 Now, the same principles of nature and of God's law, besides 
 that they enjoin an union for life and with only one, not with 
 more than one, these same principles of the junction of two in 
 one, manifestly forbid "Adultery," as an act which severs and 
 disunites the conjugal tie, so that in consequence of this act the 
 Law of God and of Man shall pronounce judicially the marriage 
 at an end. 
 
 In reference to this crime, we shall remark at the very first, 
 that the husband gives himself to the wife and the wife to the 
 husband, so that, in the words of the Roman law, there is 
 "omnis vitse consortium," a "partnership of the whole life," 
 "divini et humani juris communicatio," "a community in all 
 rights, human and divine;" according to the English law, "a 
 oneness of Person" as to all rights of life and property ; accord- 
 ing to the Scriptures, a " oneness of flesh or humanity," so 
 "that they twain are no longer two, but one flesh." All this 
 manifestly confines to the one man and the one woman all the 
 peculiar privileges of Marriage. 
 
 This also establishes the Home as the habitation and realiza- 
 tion of the Family, which, as it were, draws the line expressly, 
 and says, " Within this house there shall be one master and one 
 mistress, one husband and one wife : they have given themselves 
 mutually up to one another, so that the husband's interests are 
 no longer his, but the wife's his pleasures no longer his, but 
 his wife's his profits no longer his, but his wife's ; and her 
 interests, profits, and pleasures no longer her own, but her hus- 
 band's." There is, then, a mutual surrender of Affections and 
 Interests by each to the other in the Home. 
 
 Hence, the most grievous of all injuries of one to the other is 
 Adultery, since it terminates and destroys, by the law of God, 
 pronounced judicially by the State, that union so entire, so inti-
 
 THE HOME AND ITS AFFECTIONS. 291 
 
 mate, and so exclusive. It is therefore, apart from the evils that 
 flow from it, apart from its consequences, a crime of a most ag- 
 gravated and atrocious nature, as breaking up and destroying an 
 union that is for life in all pleasures and interests and pursuits. 
 
 And here I must say, that by the very nature of the Union, 
 as existing in the constitution of man, and by the very nature of 
 Society, as being an organization as real as that of the indivi- 
 dual, marriage is no mere "Civil Contract," the breach of which 
 can be repaired by damages; but "Adultery," the violation of 
 the Marriage vow on the part of man or woman, is a crime that 
 deserves the infliction of punishment a crime in its own nature 
 against the Nation, of the most grievous and ruinous kind, and 
 therefore to be punished. And by-and-by all men will come to 
 the same opinion. 
 
 It is not, as foolish arguers imagine, wholly from the Contract 
 that one is bound not to commit Adultery, as they might con- 
 tract to do or not to do any thing that before that contract was 
 lawful ; nor from the law, so that anterior to the law it was part 
 of man's " Original Rights." Nor is it only because of the con- 
 sequences. But, anterior to all law of man, the law of Nature 
 said so : anterior to all notion of contract or utility, anterior to 
 all sense of consequences, the law of God said, " Thou shalt not 
 commit adultery." And the whole Spiritual part, the Affections, 
 the Conscience, the Reason, the Will, all say the same. The 
 nature of man everywhere accedes to and ratifies the law. 
 
 And even among the most brute and barbarous races, the 
 sense and feeling of the savage heart will receive it; and al- 
 though, in respect to his neighbours, the " Uncontrolledness" 
 and " Selfishness" and " Sensuality" that come from want of 
 cultivation of the moral being impel him, acknowledging the law, 
 yet to break it, still, in reference to himself, he shall feel its breach 
 most acutely, and confess the obligation to be divine. Until 
 finally the evils of such a state, slaughters and savage feuds and 
 fierce revenge, compel Society, for the sake of its own interest, 
 to enforce the law according to the dictates of nature and the 
 express will of God. 
 
 But this commandment, adopted as it was by our Lord with 
 the rest of the decalogue, was not simply left in this way in 
 reference to external law : inwardly it was traced to its founda- 
 tion in the "Sensuality of the Heart;" and therein it was
 
 292 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 branded with the reprobation of the Almighty Judge l( He that 
 looketh upon a woman to lust after her hath already committed 
 adultery with her in his heart;"* "for from within, out of the 
 heart proceed murders, adulteries, fornications, lasciviousness,"f 
 &c. And again, "Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed 
 undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers, God will judge. "J 
 
 And accordingly the spiritual law excludes, as well as Unchas- 
 tity, all things that lead to it, all sensuality, lasciviousness, 
 wantonness ; and all that may feed the tendency to this sin or 
 be a provocation to it, as luxuriousness of diet, idleness of life, 
 indulgence in inward voluptuous thought, corrupt company, las- 
 civious and wanton books, obscene and filthy words, and gestures 
 wanton and loose ; all these, as unchaste in themselves, leading 
 directly to adulterousness, and every thing that in the sphere 
 of human action, in thought, in word, or in deed, is adulterous, 
 is by the spiritual law of Christ forbidden, as of the same nature 
 with actual adultery. And this shall all men's hearts and 
 consciences tell them to be true. And happy are they that 
 act upon it, and avoid the very beginnings of evil: they only 
 are secure. 
 
 And the consequences that follow from this sin and crime to 
 individuals, to families, to nations, these consequences will ever 
 engage, or, I may say, force all men to uphold the law of 
 Nature and of GOD. The consequences are of the worst kind : 
 the breaking up of the family, and rending the heart of the inno- 
 cent with the most agonizing of all afflictions ; the making of 
 orphans by a worse bereavement than that of death, a bereave- 
 ment that renders the name of parent, that ought to be a glory 
 and a joy, a disgrace and shame that separates the children 
 from affection and love, and connects disgrace and sorrow 
 and a suspicious shadow with that household for ever. And 
 then to the guilty party, if it be a woman, strips her of all 
 modesty, all self-respect, all character sends her forth as a 
 branded outcast from Society, and delivers her over almost cer- 
 tainly to the foulest of all lives and the most abandoned of all 
 deaths ; and, if a man, lays the foundation for all abasement of 
 character, and is an easy stepping-stone to all evil the first step 
 in man's progress to the most desperate villanies, and to that 
 
 * Matt. v. 28. f Mark vii. 21. % Heb. xiii. 4.
 
 THE HOME AND ITS AFFECTIONS. 293 
 
 depraved state of profligacy that scorns all public and private 
 obligation. 
 
 What wonder then that, in view of all these consequences, in 
 view too of the " Law" that " gave damages" for " loss of services" 
 and "breach of contract " instead of "punishing for crime," and 
 that with the uniformity and the certainty that alone gives to 
 punishment its restraining power, men, outraged in their dearest 
 rights, should take upon themselves revenge ? And then, that 
 other men, who felt, that although the law made it not so, yet 
 adultery is a " crime," should, under the same influences of feel- 
 ing, with that of sympathy and of pity also, bring in verdicts of 
 insanity to excuse murders of revenge for adultery and seduc- 
 tion ? Let Crimes be crimes upon our statute-book, let them 
 be visited with punishment adequate, certain, and inevitable, and 
 then we shall have no more such " Wild Justice,"* and no more 
 such verdicts. 
 
 But to continue the subject. As "they two are no more 
 twain, but one flesh," it is manifest that the tie of Marriage 
 involves the most complete mutualness, if we may use the ex- 
 pression. And besides this, marriage is a systematic and fixed 
 mode of life, under an external habitude and law ; wherefore the 
 Roman Law rightly calls Marriage "omnis vitse consuetude," 
 "of all the life a custom or habitude.'* 
 
 Let us look at these two facts : Herein is the natural cure 
 for Selfishness ; for under the Law of marriage, by the very con- 
 stitution of nature, be a man or a woman as selfish as they may 
 be originally, another " Self" is substituted which the coldest- 
 hearted are compelled to love, to feel for, to sympathize with. 
 Nay, such is the nature of this mystery of our constitution, that 
 even such persons will feel a high and pure pleasure in loving 
 that other unselfishly and rendering her happy. Even of itself, 
 by its own nature, that is, apart from considerations of duty, 
 mutual love and mutual affection is the law of marriage ; and he 
 that can, in reference to his wife, remain " Selfish," and escape 
 from the mutualness of affection that is natural to this society, 
 must be hardened indeed. In all ordinary cases, it is a natural 
 cure and remedy of "Selfishness," to a certain and indeed a 
 very great degree. 
 
 * " Revenge is a sort of wild justice." Lord Bacon.
 
 294 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 But with regard to " Sensuality," also, the tendency that is to 
 make mere pleasure the object of life, here too exists a natural 
 and efficient preservation against this, in Marriage. It takes an 
 individual apart from the world it opens up to him a new life 
 and new enjoyments. It shows him, as it were, a sphere of un- 
 cloying pleasures in the domestic society of his home and hia 
 fireside. A whole new world, as it were, in the present and in 
 the future, is unsealed to him ; and this world is his, fenced in 
 and shut from external intrusion by the Home. 
 
 And at once to him it says " To these calm joys and uncloy- 
 ing delights will you prefer the lascivious gaudiness of theatres, 
 the revelling of the drunkard and debauchee, the insane frenzy 
 of the gambler, the filthy and abominable conversation of the 
 harlot and the prostitute ?" From these, and from their conse- 
 quences loss of character, destruction, and ruin does the 
 Home and its chaste pleasures and secure happiness preserve 
 multitudes. For because of the mutualness of marriage in all 
 happiness and in all joys, as well as in all sorrows, it is the most 
 complete cure there is naturally for that defect of the Heart that 
 consists in our tendency to make mere pleasure the object of our 
 life ; which tendency we have called " Sensuality," or the inclina- 
 tion to pursue, as the main object, the pleasures of " Sense." 
 
 And, as we have before remarked, the living after a certain 
 habitude and way of life, dependent not wholly upon our own 
 Will, but upon a multitude of other circumstances and laws 
 which all spring from the words "Marriage," "Family," and 
 " Home ;" this, in most men, is a very strong corrective of "Self- 
 will," or " Uncontrolledness." 
 
 So that by the constitution of the relation, the marriage state, 
 in consequence of its mutualness, or identification, is, if. we 
 may so say, a sort of "Natural Grace," or help that God has 
 given us if we will improve it, against the three effects of " Origi- 
 nal sin" upon the Affections or the Heart. I do not say a per- 
 fect or a complete remedy, but still one that is an aid more or 
 less. 
 
 And from this, if we were asked what are those things that 
 will the most destroy the happiness of married life, and turn the 
 most its felicity into sorrow, we say these three " Selfishness/' 
 "Sensuality," "Self-will." They are incongruous to its very 
 nature, unsuitable in every way, elements, which, however evil
 
 THE HOME AND ITS AFFECTIONS. 295 
 
 they are elsewhere, here become tenfold more poisonous, tenfold 
 more destructive, being, to those united in marriage, the very 
 elements and fountains of misery and wretchedness, as being in 
 their very nature antagonist to that Mutualness or complete reci- 
 procal identification of all pleasures, interests, affections, between 
 persons united in marriage, which results from its very nature, 
 and may well be counted the second law of marriage. 
 
 And they that would be happy, let them keep these evils away ; 
 let them ever avoid them, and instead of thinking of "Self" in 
 any way, of will, of pleasure, or possession, let them think of that 
 other " Self" whom God has given them. And of all possessions, 
 all pleasures, all the objects of life, let them make that other 
 Self the end. So, by these simple precautions, shall much sor- 
 row be avoided, and much happiness secured. 
 
 I do not deny but that many are able to hide pure Selfishness 
 under an appearance of carefulness for their families, and even 
 at the time that they appear the best to the world, are most 
 entirely Selfish. I will admit also, that some men are so entirely 
 Sensual as to look upon their Home as a mere means of syste- 
 matic Epicurean comfort. Nay, such men will secretly calculate 
 to hide this, and to escape. But of the TJn-house-like affections, 
 for such are these, then the Family is the true avenger. Children 
 detect these secret feelings of the Heart. They see, with a sub- 
 tlety of discernment few imagine them to possess, whether a 
 father or mother is Selfish, or Self-willed, or Sensual. They 
 pierce through the veils and wrappings whereby these faults are 
 hidden from the outer world. They discern the pretence of that 
 which is claimed, but does not exist, the unreality of that which 
 appears. And thus they are driven to believe that these are real 
 principles of action, and they act upon them. Thus, Selfishness 
 in the parent, especially when disguised, begets Selfishness in the 
 child; so with Sensuality, and so with Self-will. The natural 
 punishment of these offences in parents against the law of the 
 Family, is the same in their children against themselves. Their 
 vengeance is from evil and rebellious children. We do say not 
 that this is always so, for there are many cases in which the good 
 are afflicted in this way. But we will say, that of these things in 
 the family, this is the natural result. And this we say, that one 
 of the wisest men we have known, remarked to us that in this 
 way he had seen the Selfish oftenest punished, in their families.
 
 296 CHKISTIAN- SCIENCE. 
 
 The basis, it has been seen, and foundation of marriage is laid 
 upon the mystery, in us, of our nature, and externally to us, upon 
 the law of God corresponding unto that mysterious constitution 
 of our being. 
 
 The qualifications for it are the adequate and equal perfection, 
 by training and education, of all the parts of the nature, the Spi- 
 ritual, the Mental, the Physical. The completion and perfection 
 of marriage, as to adequacy of these conditions, is that both should 
 have been baptized in the "Name* of Christ," trained in the 
 Law of Christ, and obedient unto the Faith of Christ. A com- 
 pleteness this is of the Spiritual Nature that will compensate for 
 many deficiencies, and ensure much happiness. 
 
 The laws then of marriage are the laws of Permanence and 
 of Mutualness,f from which spring all its duties. 
 
 And, according to these laws, the one cause of divorce is 
 Adultery. 
 
 And the causes of misery in marriage life are " Selfishness," 
 " Sensuality," and " Self- Will ;" and the absence of them a great 
 cause of happiness. 
 
 This synopsis we have here given of the preceding contents of 
 this chapter, that our reader may see the whole matter summed 
 up clearly and distinctly before we enter upon other parts of the . 
 subject, of which we are to speak less certainly. 
 
 The first of these questions is this : " Upon what motive, and 
 upon what inducement, is a man or woman to marry?" Upon 
 this we say, that the completeness and mutualness of the union 
 will enable us to decide. The very basis of marriage is " that 
 they two are henceforth no more twain, but one flesh." Should 
 there not then be such an agreement of affections, such a mutual 
 love, that the one would give up for the other all things, as it 
 were, and make the happiness of the other the main object and 
 end in life ? 
 
 Certainly it seems by the very fact that they two are hence- 
 forth to be one, that no other motive or inducement should be 
 sufficient but that of affection and love. 
 
 And this furthermore will be confirmed by the conclusion 
 before educed, that "Selfishness," and "Sensuality," and " Self- 
 
 * The " Name" here is something more than the mere verbal appellation, 
 t The third law, that of the Supremacy of the Husband, I do not here 
 touch upon, for plain reasons.
 
 THE HOME AND ITS AFFECTIONS. 297 
 
 will," all of these are the most destructive of marriage happiness, 
 and, therefore, naturally before marriage are as motives to be 
 excluded ; this, therefore, I say, is, or ought to be, the measure of 
 the affection upon which, as the highest and purest motive, one 
 may found his desire for marriage and his best prospect of 
 happiness in it ; affection that shall be entirely unselfish, that 
 shall be unsensual, seeking mainly the happiness of the other 
 instead of its own, and steady and determinate, free from ca- 
 price and self-will. 
 
 If a man or a woman feel in themselves such an affection, and 
 measure it thus, they may be assured that this is "Love," such 
 love as is the highest and best qualification for happiness, and the 
 highest and best motive for engaging in marriage. 
 
 At the same time, I do not deny that there may be a multitude 
 of other subordinate inducements upon which it is morally right 
 to found our motives for marriage ; but in all cases, whatsoever 
 else there be, there must be Affection as the great and leading 
 motive,* and, if not, there will afterwards be much unhappiness. 
 
 External circumstances, therefore, such as the natural taste 
 for. female society, the desire of companionship, the inability to 
 manage the cares of a household, or in fact any external cir- 
 cumstances not "selfish" and not "sensual," may induce man or 
 woman to wish for marriage, and to move towards it. And these 
 may be, and are undoubtedly lawful and permissible motives, 
 provided there be real and sincere Affection. 
 
 The other question is, " How far should parents interfere in 
 the marriage of their offspring ?" This question is, within cer- 
 tain limits, decided by the law, which, until a certain age, ren- 
 ders their consent necessary. An extended discussion of the 
 subject we do not wish to enter into, as it is rather a difficult 
 point, and one which would take more ground than we can ap- 
 propriate to it. But we shall give the result of a good deal of 
 thought upon the subject, the conclusion, that is, that we have 
 come to, without the arguments that have led us to it. We think 
 that for Christian children, who are not only baptized, but also 
 communicants, it will be a very safe and useful rule if they im- 
 pose it upon themselves " never to marry without the full consent 
 of their parents ; always, that is, to allow them a full veto upon 
 
 * See, in the first book, the doctrine of the Supreme Good, or the Highest 
 Motive. 
 
 38
 
 298 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 their marriage." This, I think, they will find to be a principle 
 according to the analogy of Christian faith and Christian practice. 
 
 Another, and a most important part of the marriage relation, 
 is the relative position of Husband and Wife as regards control. 
 
 Now, manifestly, if marriage be merely a " Civil Contract," 
 this shall be regulated in the way that the same question is 
 managed in other "civil contracts" or "copartnerships," the 
 one that is able to lead shall lead, and the one that is not able to 
 lead shall obey, in all things that by the contract are common ; 
 and in all other things, each one shall manage in his own way. 
 This must be the case under the Roman notion of " two persons ;" 
 "Person" being not merely an individual, but one who has all 
 legal rights of holding property, suing and being sued, &c. Now 
 between two "persons" in this sense entering upon "a Civil 
 Contract," the idea, it seems to me, of Obedience is very foolish 
 these notions exclude it altogether. The proper idea herein, 
 that is, the idea appropriate to these notions of Roman Law or 
 Heathen Wisdom, is this : " I enter into a contract with you ; I 
 fulfil my part do you fulfil yours; we are two persons still 
 and compliance with the terms of contract, this is all : fulfil- 
 ment of the contract is all that is requisite, and Obedience is 
 quite a different matter." 
 
 But the Common Law and the Scriptures, that teach that hus- 
 band and wife are " One Person," and to be " no more twain, but 
 one flesh," resting as they both do upon the doctrine of a myste- 
 rious union, they imply by these very doctrines that one must 
 govern and one obey. They send them not to a civil contract, to 
 examine and decide upon their mutual rights they set them not 
 up as different "persons," to have a diversity of interest: they 
 say, " You are one person and one interest, and one must lead 
 and govern by your very position, and one be governed." 
 
 Hence the Scriptures are very plain and manifest in their 
 directions to both husbands and wives in this respect : " Wives, 
 be obedient unto your husbands,"* "The husband is the head of 
 the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, "f and so 
 forth. 
 
 And this decision, inferior as it may seem in wisdom to the 
 other, yet shall be seen and felt to be ultimately the wisest ; for 
 
 * Tit. ii. 5. t Eph. v. 23.
 
 THE HOME AND ITS AFFECTIONS. 299 
 
 differences of opinion are very likely to exist, and either they 
 must be decided judicially, by one out of the society, or else one 
 must yield. The first is the Roman notion ; the second, the Chris- 
 tian doctrine. And every one knows how much a separation of 
 interests, a debating upon them, a bringing in of a person ex- 
 traneous as a judge and arbiter, tends to render irreconcilable 
 the disputes and dissensions of marriage. Every one also knows 
 how easily husbands and wives, under the influence of love* and 
 mutual respect, can yield the one to the other. And they who 
 look at the different spheres of action which Husband and Wife 
 fill in unity of life, and consider that the connection is not be- 
 tweeen two men or two women, but between two of different 
 sexes, upon the whole nature of which the difference is imprinted, 
 and this difference in nature manifestly tending unto unity of 
 action, shall see that to two natures so adapted unto unity, occa- 
 sions of disagreement shall be infinitely few, compared to what 
 they would be in those of the same sex. The occasions then of 
 complete and entire unity of action shall be with them innume- 
 rable the occasions of dispute very few indeed ; and, in fact, 
 with those that love sincerely and entirely, if they, as we have 
 said, in the spirit of Christ, avoid Selfishness and Sensuality 
 and Self-will, none at all. And the husband shall maintain his 
 natural position of love towards his wife, and the wife her natural 
 respect towards her husband, and in these be, through mutual 
 and sincere love, entirely and completely happy. But to the 
 fulfilment of this conception of marriage, Christian love is a 
 necessary ingredient of the marriage ; and having it, the hus- 
 band shall not act unjustly, oppressively, or tyrannically towards 
 his wife because he has a right to her obedience, nor shall she 
 feel herself to be wronged in that she has promised to obey. 
 
 And, in truth, he that shall look through life shall see that 
 there are multitudes of facts that will strengthen the belief that 
 this last doctrine is the true one ; of which I shall mention only 
 two. The first is, that the wife shall be the last to see her hus- 
 band's faults, even when she is the most keen-sighted as to those 
 of others. There does seem to be, as it were, a veil cast by 
 nature between her and those things the sight of which would 
 
 * Here I would be understood to mean the natural affection Christianized, 
 tinder the influence of the Spirit of God.
 
 300 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 weaken her obedience. Again, I have noticed that the wife 
 shall feel and see the husband's love to wane when he is as 
 unconscious of it himself, and he in reference to her love shall 
 just be as hard and dull of sight as she of his faults. These 
 things I have myself seen in many cases. 
 
 I have remarked that love on both sides, true and sincere, ren- 
 ders natural and rational the Christian doctrine of the Supremacy 
 of the husband and the obedience of the wife ; and I believe it 
 will be seen that it is the doctrine upheld by reason and con- 
 firmed by experience. 
 
 But Christian faith and Christian holiness, this completes and 
 perfects it this alone is that which completely and -entirely 
 brings forth the marriage vow in its beauty, and enables the 
 Husband and the Wife to estimate the marriage state as "Holy," 
 "Sanctified," "Honourable in all." This alone says, "Hus- 
 bands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave him- 
 self for it:" this compares the marriage union to that of Christ 
 and the church ; this, instead of " Civil Contract," makes it a 
 vow before God, and that a vow of that which no " Civil Con- 
 tract" can prescribe or enforce of mutual love, honour, obe- 
 dience, affection, respect in fact, love unselfish and unsensual. 
 And a true and sincere faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, a living 
 faith in the heart and in the life, these, when they exist, display 
 and manifest unto the married the suitableness unto our nature 
 and the adaptedness to our happiness of the doctrine of the 
 Gospel in reference to the position of husband and wife. 
 
 But a deficiency in these will naturally lead in the way of the 
 other notion. 
 
 And for this reason I should not at all be astonished to view 
 the gradual growth and prevalence of the Roman-Law view of 
 marriage, and the decay of the other, until, finally, only in the 
 Church of Christ may we see those views and that law of mar- 
 riage prevail that are peculiarly Christian.* 
 
 * I would not be understood wholly to condemn the proceedings of the 
 Roman Law. No. I say, only Christianity can render the Common-Law 
 doctrine possible. While the mass of the people, then, are unchristianized 
 in profession and in heart, there must be recourse more or less to the princi- 
 ples of the Civil or Roman Law. Let women, therefore, in their property be 
 protected. But let us the clergy, and others who feel its value, spread the 
 true doctrine of marriage until it again become the sentiment of the whole 
 people.
 
 THE HOME AND ITS AFFECTIONS. 301 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Law of Parents and Children. Not merely an Animal Relation. Evils 
 arising from this notion. Parents are bound to Children : 1st, Corporeal- 
 ly ; for Maintenance. Limits of this Obligation. The State can enforce 
 it. 2d, Mentally; for Education. Limits of this Eight. The State has 
 no Power of Religious Teaching : of Moral Teaching only up to a certain 
 point. 3d, Spiritually; for Religious Education. The State has no right 
 in this whatever. 
 
 THE relation of the parent to the child and of the child to the 
 parent is very simple indeed, if we look upon man as an indivi- 
 dual animally existing, and consider Society as having no exist- 
 ence and no rights. " The animals pair by the force of one 
 instinct, implanted in their nature for that purpose, and so does 
 man." Here is the Animal or Physical account of majriage. 
 " And by another instinct, the animals provide for their young 
 until able to provide for themselves, and so does man. And 
 that's the end of it/' 
 
 Now, I do not say that men precisely and distinctly hold these 
 views ; but this I do say, that there are thousands and hundreds 
 of thousands of parents in our land who act upon these views, 
 and discharge themselves, as far as they can, from all duties of 
 Education, of Religious Training, of Moral influence and super- 
 intendence, and, at the bottom, hold the mere physical view that 
 the Home is not sacred, but is the mere dwelling-place of a pair 
 of Animals having reasoning powers, whose mutual relation is 
 merely to minister to one-another's comfort, and who have posi- 
 tively no moral duty, no religious, no educational one to fulfil to 
 their offspring nothing but a mere physical one : that of giving 
 them food and clothing until they are able to give it to them- 
 selves. 
 
 I say, too, that of so-called religious men, there are multitudes 
 who take precisely the same views, who, upon any and every pre- 
 text, are ready to devolve upon others the duties they themselves 
 should perform towards their children.
 
 302 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 And then have I seen these parents unhonoured by their chil- 
 dren in old age, unreverenced, unobeyed. I have seen the chil- 
 dren despising the age and infirmity of the parents, ashamed of 
 their poverty, speaking openly and contemptuously of their 
 errors, vices and infirmities, froward, rebellious, and disorderly, 
 until, finally, the tie was severed without love and trust upon 
 the one side, without gratitude or filial affection upon the other. 
 And then such parents complain. Wrongly and unjustly ; for 
 this result they themselves did all they could to bring about. 
 
 Man is a threefold being : " Spiritual," " Rational," " Corpo- 
 real, or Animal." If you act in the Home, towards children, as 
 a mere animal, then shall the reward you obtain be nothing but 
 this. I do not conceive that nestlings, when grown to maturity, 
 make any difference between their parents and other full-grown 
 birds that dogs or horses, or any other animals, have any feel- 
 ing towards the parent for a longer time than they are attached 
 to them by physical wants and physical instinct. And so of all 
 other animals wherein that which in man is done by the Affec- 
 tions is done in them by animal instinct. There is no gratitude, 
 no love, no reverence, no respect, after the time of growth is 
 past. Full growth and maturity of age puts the parent upon 
 precisely the same ground as all other animals of the kind. 
 
 But man is a Spiritual being as well. His marriage is not a 
 bare Animal Union, but one moral and spiritual in the highest 
 degree. His Home is Spiritual and Moral too, and parents have 
 Spiritual and Moral duties to do. If they do them not, but 
 evade them, neglect them, free themselves from all obligation of 
 them, so that really only the mere physical duty of supplying 
 food and clothing is done, then the Animal result is the conse- 
 quence thanklessness, disobedience, neglect, want of respect, 
 and want of affection, upon the part of children. I excuse them 
 not for this : children of such temper and conduct sin before 
 God, and are guilty because of it ; but this I do say : the sin of 
 the father is the cause, bringing most certainly, as effect, the sin 
 of the children. 
 
 But let us be clearly understood, and not misapprehended. 
 We said not that these merely animal duties and rights do not 
 exist. We only say that they are not the only duties, so that all 
 should be void except these. The father, in virtue of his three- 
 fold existence, has duties merely and entirely physical towards
 
 THE HOME AND ITS AFFECTIONS. 303 
 
 the child as an animal ; but these are not all. There are, be- 
 sides these duties, duties Intellectual and duties Moral. Let us 
 look at these three in order. 
 
 "Maintenance" is the first. " The duty of parents to provide 
 for the maintenance of their children," says Blackstone, "is a 
 principle of natural law, ' an obligation laid on them,' says Puf- 
 fendorff, * not only by Nature herself, but by their own proper 
 act in bringing them into the world. For they would be in the 
 highest degree injurious to their issue, if they only gave children 
 life that they might afterwards see them perish.' By becoming 
 their parents, therefore, they have entered into a voluntary obli- 
 gation to endeavour, as far as in them lies, that the life they 
 have bestowed shall be supported. And thus the children will 
 have a perfect right to receive maintenance from their parents. 
 * * * The Mumicipal laws of all well-regulated states have 
 taken care to enforce this duty. Though Providence has done 
 it more effectually than any laws, by implanting in the breast 
 of every parent that natural " 2ropyij," or insuperable degree of 
 affection, which not even the deformity of person or mind, not 
 even the wickedness, ingratitude, and rebellion of children, can 
 totally suppress or extinguish." * * * 
 
 " The Civil* law obliges the parent to provide maintenance for 
 his child, and, if he refuses, ' Judex de ea cognoscet,' ('let the 
 judge take cognisance of the matter.')" 
 
 Blackstone then goes on to show how the Common law enacts 
 the same duty, and by what measures it can be enforced. But 
 this belonging to Law and not to Ethics we shall merely say that 
 the principle is maintained by the Laws of all countries, and dis- 
 miss it : only remarking that the duty and the right are purely 
 physical and animal, arising from the fact "that the child has a 
 body and bodily life, that requires daily support, that this life 
 and body he has derived .as part of his whole nature from his 
 parents, and from no other individual or individuals, and that, 
 of himself, he is unable, in every or any way to support that life. 
 These are the whole foundations of that right and that duty, 
 both of them, it is manifest, purely animal, and both done by the 
 animals under the influence of instinct. 
 
 The duration of this maintenance, or rather of the right, mani- 
 festly being until the offspring are perfectly able to support them- 
 
 * That is, Roman.
 
 304 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 selves, is a period depending upon many elements, and usually 
 settled by law. The expensiveness of it depending mainly upon 
 the ordinary manner of life of the parents, is by this to be 
 determined. And because, although it is in and within the 
 Family, still, however, questions of Life and Property are involved ; 
 herein the State comes in, and enforces by its outward Law that 
 which the inward and natural law, or, as it was called by the 
 ancients atopy} (storghe,) or natural, parental, and filial instinct 
 prescribes. 
 
 The parents, then, are bound to give to their children this main- 
 tenance, by the law of their own nature. The State, as an 
 external institution, divinely appointed, and having the power of 
 protecting by law, rights of Life, and rights of Property, has 
 the right to enforce and regulate this question of maintenance, 
 and to compel it from parents that are unwilling to obey the law 
 of their own bosoms. 
 
 These, then, are the first duties of parents, the first rights of 
 children ; the physical and animal rights arising from the body, 
 the rights of helplessness and inability to support. 
 
 And here we shall remark that there is a very great difference, 
 morally, between the ways that these things are done in ; of them- 
 selves they are merely Animal, and may be done merely as such, 
 still are they done. And the same duties may be done in a 
 spirit of love, affection, tenderness of feeling, sympathy; this 
 last ensures love and gratitude ; the first, ingratitude and thank- 
 lessness. 
 
 The same remark may be made with regard to all aid to the 
 hungry and the miserable. Bread, with pity and sympathy, is that 
 which ensures gratitude and thankfulness ; bread, unblessing and 
 unsympathizing, is bread that receives no thanks. 
 
 But we come to a matter higher than the Animal duties. When 
 the bird or the beast arrives at maturity, then it has, by its nature 
 full grown, the capacities to continue its life, to acquire its food 
 by the faculties its organization gives it, and in the way that 
 organization requires. Now this is partly by an unerring instinct, 
 and partly by the Understanding, as instructed by experience. 
 And so we find the parents give the young the benefit of their own 
 experience, as any one may see who will watch a parent bird with 
 her fledgelings, or a cat with her kittens. But mostly are they 
 left to Instinct, and to the effect of that allotment, which, for the
 
 THE HOME AND ITS AFFECTIONS. 305 
 
 most part, causes animals to be born in the peculiar region and 
 place suited to provide them with the support of life. The work 
 of Education is very small in them indeed. 
 
 But in man, on the contrary, the Instinct is very small, and 
 the Understanding, or mental faculty, very great. And hence 
 do we see the time during which men are placed under the direct 
 influence and guidance of their parents, to be very long indeed, 
 and to bear a large proportion to the whole of life, compared with 
 the same period in other animals. Man's growth to maturity is 
 exceedingly slow, the period of subordination and parental con- 
 trol exceedingly long. That which other animals learn by instinct, 
 with only brief hints from the experience of parents, man learns 
 slowly and gradually by the process of mental growth and mental 
 development, through experience, imitation, instruction, example, 
 emulation, sympathy. 
 
 Now, taking the Understanding, or the Animal Reason, as that 
 whereby we reason and think upon things visible and perceptible 
 by the senses, it will be manifest this is the faculty that does in 
 man what instinct, with a few hints from experience, does for 
 the animal nature, when separated from its parents enables it 
 to continue life, and support itself after this separation. 
 
 There is then, manifestly, a duty bounden upon the parents, 
 an express obligation so to educate and train the Mental Powers 
 of children, that they shall be enabled, after separation from 
 their parents, to support themselves honestly and reputably; 
 although the measures and limits of this are manifestly very 
 indefinite. 
 
 And the child has a right to that Education, and that training 
 of its mental powers, and may claim it by law, and the law may 
 enforce it. And it does do so, so far that if parents rear their 
 children as vagabonds, or in occupations evil and immoral, the 
 Law will then step in, take away the children from the parents, 
 and place them under persons who shall give them that training. 
 
 The parents, therefore, are under the obligation to give such 
 an Education. The Children have a legal right to it. The State 
 can enforce that right. But still the Laws of most nations, while 
 they acknowledge the right, seem very little to enforce it, save in 
 such cases as those we have mentioned, or save in the case wherein 
 a parent teaches his children doctrines, that, practically, interfere 
 with Life and Property, and those Rights which the State enforces, 
 
 39
 
 306 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 and the Wrongs that she forbids. If the parent taught the child 
 systematically and practically, thieving, murder or adultery, so 
 that the children were instructed in these crimes as a part of educa- 
 tion, it seems that the Law can step in and put a stop to such 
 Education. But with regard to anything else, it seems the State 
 can hardly interfere. 
 
 In fact, as to the interference of the State in Education, it 
 seems, as it has the office of establishing Rights and forbidding 
 Wrongs, as far as concerns Life and Property, so to have the 
 negative power of forbidding all education that shall train men 
 to Crime. Education in crime it can forbid; a negative and 
 prohibitory power it has to prevent Criminal teaching, so that it 
 can interfere to prevent men being trained to break the Law, this 
 pems to be the limit of the moral teaching of the State, in regard 
 to parents and children. 
 
 But the State cannot interfere with Conscience, or with Reli- 
 gion, or with the Morality taught by the parents on any other 
 grounds than these. The State has no control over the consciences 
 of men. It can neither, under the pretence of Union with the 
 Church, usurp to itself her offices of religious teaching, and 
 thereby make heresies crimes, and opinions penal, and doctrines 
 laws, and dogmas statutes, and compel all to religion by statutory 
 enactments, and by the sanctions of law, fines and imprisonment. 
 Nor can it reach the same end by a different route, pretending 
 that the State is a Moral Teacher, a Religious Institution, for 
 the purpose -of instructing in religion, as the old theory of Pagan 
 Rome, the new theory of Dr. Arnold, has it. " The Church has 
 to deal with Religion, Doctrine, and Spiritual Government and 
 Instruction : these are HER sphere. Her punishments touch nei- 
 ther Life nor Property, but are spiritual. Sin, not Crime, is the 
 transgression of her law ; and although a Sin may be a Crime, 
 and a Crime a Sin, it is only as Sinful that she deals with it, not 
 <M Criminal. 
 
 In fact, the Church is wholly and entirely separate from the 
 State by nature and by the Law of this land. Hence, the State 
 cannot interfere with education given by parents to children, so 
 as to teach any doctrine, or to forbid any doctrine to be taught, 
 except that the doctrine, over and above its character as doctrine, 
 be also criminal. I conceive, then, the right of the State in inter- 
 ference with the education of children to be such that, first, it
 
 THE HOME AND ITS AFFECTIONS. 307 
 
 can require an education that will enable the child in after-life to 
 get its bread honestly and reputably ; and, secondly, that the edu- 
 cation given shall not be criminal. Without these limits, the State 
 cannot touch the Parent in his education of his children. 
 
 Such an education the child can legally claim of the Parent 
 as a right : the parent is bound to give and the Law bound to 
 enforce it. 
 
 This is the second class of rights of Parents and Children ; 
 what may be called their Mental Rights. 
 
 But at the same time, although the State cannot interfere to 
 enforce any above these "rights of maintenance," which are cor- 
 poreal or animal, and "rights of education," which are mental, 
 and cannot interfere as regards religion, still the father and the 
 mother have a Spiritual Nature, and this puts them under the 
 obligation to give a religious education, and to instruct Spirit- 
 ually in every thing that shall exercise and bring to maturity the 
 Conscience, the Spiritual Reason, the Affections, the Will. The 
 training of these powers in the children, this is Religious and 
 Moral Education ; and the parents are bound to this by the Law 
 of Grod and the Moral Law of their position. For the Family is 
 a Moral and Religious institution by its very constitution ; and 
 the parents who are deficient in this culture are deficient in the 
 duties of their position. And the children, too, by the Law of 
 God and by their position, have the right to this Spiritual Educa- 
 tion, are by their position fitted to receive it, and have by their 
 nature capabilities for it that they never have at any other period 
 of their lives. 
 
 So that the whole obligation of parents, human and divine, 
 shall correspond to the three parts of nature, and be three in 
 number: Maintenance Mental Cultivation Religious or Spi- 
 ritual Cultivation. These three must go on simultaneously ; and 
 without fulfilling these three, the duty of the parent to the child 
 shall not be completely and entirely done; nor, without this, 
 shall the fulness of the relation be felt and acted upon by either 
 parent or child. 
 
 We purpose to follow out these remarks by some observations 
 upon the spiritual and moral education of children by their 
 parents, which will be most conveniently discussed in another 
 chapter.
 
 308 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Bight of the Child to a Spiritual Training, from its being always a Moral 
 Being, and from the Needs of its Nature. That Right extends to, 1st, Di- 
 rect Instruction as to its own Nature and Position, i. e. Ethical Teaching 
 2d, As to the Nature of God, i. e. Religious Teaching 3d, Personal Sanc- 
 tity in the Father and Mother 4th, Practical Guidance and Governance 
 5th, Baptism, or Covenant with God. The Perfection of the Home is 
 Love. 
 
 WE have shown, in the last chapter, the claims of the child 
 upon the parent in reference to the Body and the Mental Powers. 
 In this, we shall examine his rights in relation to his Spiritual 
 being. 
 
 Now, the claim for bodily Maintenance, the claim for educa- 
 tion of the mental powers, these come from the needs of the 
 child his having faculties which require them ; the situation of 
 the parent producing at once the responsibility and the capability 
 of fulfilling that responsibility. These four, on the part of the 
 child, the faculties and their needs on the part of the parent, 
 the duty and the capability, manifestly are the foundation of 
 the natural right of the child and the obligation of the parent in 
 reference to the supply of bodily food and of mental training. 
 
 Let us take the child, then; and long before the mental 
 powers awake, there is in it, alive and vigorous in its being, the 
 sense of Right and Wrong. This sense the Conscience awakens 
 as an instinct, at the slightest hint. The Will is seen in the 
 mere child ; the Spiritual Reason, too ; and, chiefly, the Affec- 
 tions. The whole experience of the Human Race manifests that 
 at that precise period when the mental powers, owing to the 
 rapid growth of the frame and the corresponding feebleness of 
 the brain, are weakest and most unsuitable to exertion or to 
 training, then are these most susceptible of impression, most 
 capable of emotion.* So much so, indeed, that men shall often 
 
 * All physicians of knowledge or eminence are now well agreed upon the 
 doctrine that mental education begun before tho seventh year is of itself
 
 THE HOME AND ITS AFFECTIONS. 309 
 
 look back with feelings of wonder, and almost of awe, to the 
 high and radiant glory that they feel to have shed its beams 
 upon their infant sold, the glow, undoubtedly, of the moral 
 powers in their first awaking. Of this emotion in the child, 
 Wordsworth the poet speaks in his celebrated ode : 
 
 " There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, 
 The earth, and every common sight, 
 
 To me did seem 
 Apparell'd in celestial light, 
 The glory and the freshness of a dream. 
 It is not now as it hath been of yore, 
 Turn wheresoe'er I may, 
 
 By night or day, 
 
 The tilings which I have seen I now can see no more : 
 The rainbow comes and goes, 
 
 And lovely is the rose, 
 The moon doth with delight 
 Look round her when the heavens are bare ; 
 Waters on a starry night 
 Are beautiful and fair ; 
 But yet I know, where'er I go, 
 That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth/' 
 
 This glory, which the great poet so justly and beautifully attri- 
 butes to infancy and childhood, we recognise as the first awaking 
 glow of the moral affections of the child, demanding that spiritual 
 food and support to them which the parent is authorized to give ; 
 that training which they are then best qualified to receive. 
 
 highly destructive, as prematurely exciting the nervous system, and laying 
 the foundation for many diseases. The -physiological considerations upon 
 which this is founded, I omit. I shall only remark that this hot-bed forcing 
 of the childish mind into premature action, produces mental feebleness in 
 advancing years ; and in many cases it causes mental oddity and distortion ; 
 just as the forcing a young tree to bear fruit before its maturity, stunts and 
 dwarfs it. No child should learn a letter of the alphabet before seven years of age. 
 
 People, then, will say, What shall we do with them ? Shall we give them 
 no education till then ? 
 
 I say, there is an education that dwarfs not the infant mind, but invigo- 
 rates its powers and enlarges its calibre the training, that is, of the moral 
 faculties. At that time of life, parents are teachers of God appointed, to that 
 end ; and viva-voce moral teaching is worth ten times all the reading done be- 
 fore that age by children even of the most cultivated mental powers. This, 
 I conceive, is answer enough to the objection. The parent will find tha 
 subject further carried out in the text.
 
 310 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 Nor need the "glory pass away," if the parent walk himself 
 in the faith of things Unseen and Eternal ; if the child be trained 
 by him to walk in the " light of heaven," and " under the shadow 
 of the Almighty ;" if the Home be a sanctified temple and dwell- 
 ing-place of God's presence and his teachings. Then, indeed, 
 the eye of the child would in all things continue to see the " Glory 
 of the Unseen God," and not the external world alone be "appa- 
 relled in celestial light ;" but from youth to age the human being 
 so trained would walk through life, canopied by the light from 
 that unspeakable glory ; crowned with a halo and a radiance of 
 moral beauty that we see in few at the present day. 
 
 In few, because, though some appreciate the value of giving 
 Education to their children, and almost all feel the necessity of 
 supplying bodily Maintenance, yet very few seem to know that 
 there is a Spiritual faculty in man, that that faculty needs educa- 
 tion, and that the Parent is the Teacher of that faculty appointed 
 by God, with peculiar privileges, peculiar powers and abilities, 
 unto that purpose adapted, which he can exercise, and no one else. 
 
 Now, the child has a Conscience even from its birth, just as 
 it has mental and bodily powers that will enable it, where they 
 are duly trained, to obtain a livelihood in mature years. The 
 parent is counted cruel that does not so train these powers as to 
 fulfil their end. What shall we say of him who trains them, but 
 trains not the sense of Right and Wrong, or so perverts it by his 
 own negligence that it is by the child neglected or despised? 
 What but this, that, whether he intended it or no, he has sent out 
 his child, without an internal principle to do evil ; and sooner 
 or later to fall upon that external law of God and man that for- 
 bids evil by penalty and suffering ? The man who permits his 
 child to pass into life with a conscience not educated to the utmost 
 of his power, that man prepares for his children countless miseries, 
 and the man who trains it, happiness to an untold extent. 
 
 And he who trains them in the high and lofty truths that come 
 from God's being, and teaches them in childhood to appropriate 
 these to themselves, to walk in and by them as moral principles, 
 how much is he to be praised, compared with the man who either 
 positively, by actual precept, or by example in his house, instructs 
 his children that there is no moral principle or moral truth, but 
 that all a man has to do is to make the most of the world in a 
 moderately selfish and sensual way ? Does not the one teach
 
 THE HOME AND ITS AFFECTIONS. 311 
 
 moral truth, the other moral falsehood ? And has a parent any 
 right thus to corrupt the Spiritual Reason of his child more than 
 he has a right to destroy his Body or his Mind ? 
 
 Again, in reference to the Heart half the miseries of life come 
 from Selfishness, Sensuality, Self-will: have the Parents of a 
 feeble babe any more right to leave the child unprotected from 
 these, untaught and untrained in reference to these, than they 
 have to permit the body to be devoured by wild beasts ? 
 
 Let such persons look at a miserable Byron, look how Selfish- 
 ness, Sensuality, and Self-will tortured him through his whole 
 life ; look, then, at the character and temper of his mother, and 
 I think that it will be very manifest, that her teaching and exam- 
 ple was such as to cherish all these, and that a different mother 
 would have produced different results. And then, looking at the 
 natural nobleness of temper that he seems to have had originally, 
 it would appear that the infant, and the boy, and youth had a 
 right to a direct training of the Affections which would have pre- 
 vented these things ; and that because he went forth with these 
 untrained and untaught, therefore he spent his life in a fiery 
 agony and storm of Self-will, and Sensuality, and Selfishness. 
 
 So might I go on and show that each child has upon its parents 
 the right and claim to a proper development and education of its 
 moral powers ; and that no parent ever sends forth a child in this 
 respect uneducated, without being the cause of great misery to it. 
 
 But I think there is no further need or necessity of illustrating 
 it any more. My first two propositions I consider all men will 
 acknowledge 1st, that "children have, from the earliest years, 
 Moral Faculties which require education ;" and 2dly, " that phy- 
 sical maintenance, and physical training, and mental education, 
 are not that Spiritual Education, but entirely distinct from it, so 
 that one may be mentally educated to the very highest degree of 
 cultivation, and have no spiritual education at all." 
 
 This Moral Education, then, the child has the faculty for, 
 because he has a Moral Nature that requires and needs, yea, and 
 yearns for it, and searches after it. And the man is not perfect 
 as a man without it ; going forth into life without it, he goes forth 
 halt, and maimed, and imperfect, as he would if he went forth 
 with a limb of his body incapable, or a sense destroyed, or a 
 mental faculty decayed. The child from earliest years has a 
 Moral Nature capable of a peculiar moral education, which is dis-
 
 312 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 tinct from mental education ; and the needs and nature of Man's 
 life and of Society demand that training to the future man from 
 his parents. 
 
 Now,* admitting these two primary assertions to be true, that 
 the child has moral faculties, and that they require and need a 
 peculiar training, what shall he the Spiritual or Moral education 
 the child has a right from the parents to claim ? 
 
 Manifestly, the answer shall he, first, a proper training and 
 development of the faculties themselves ; such an education of the 
 Moral Powers as shall strengthen, invigorate, establish them in 
 due operation, correct their faults, and supply their deficiencies ; 
 this in reference to the faculties themselves. Secondly, in refer- 
 ence to their action, the supplying them externally with the 
 proper objects. 
 
 We may compare these two ends of Spiritual education in this 
 way : With the body, the stomach, for instance, is the organ of 
 digestion ; you can strengthen it, considered as an organ, as to 
 its health, its tone, its action : this will correspond to the one 
 kind of education of the Moral faculties. And then you can 
 supply it with healthy and digestible food, in certain measures 
 and after certain laws : this supply of nutriment will correspond 
 to the other. A Parent, then, we consider, is bound, first, to < 
 strengthen and develope the Moral Powers of his child; and, 
 secondly, to supply those powers with suitable and appropriate 
 nutriment. 
 
 With regard to the first obligation, is there a true doctrine of 
 Man's Nature and Position, or is there not ? As there are cer- 
 tain internal principles of physical being that belong to the 
 nature of the dog, the horse, the elephant, which when you 
 know, you know their nature and the way in which that nature 
 works upon external things ; is it so with man ? Has he an 
 internal constitution, with internal faculties of Body and Soul 
 and Spirit, which are the same Internal Nature, corporeal, men- 
 tal, and spiritual, in all men in all to work in the same way 
 upon the external world ? 
 
 Surely, if this be so, the first duty of the parent is to appeal 
 to that Internal Nature, to manifest it, to teach the solution 
 of its various problems to the child, and to trust for the proof 
 to the nature itself. By the very fact that man has an Internal 
 Nature, and that Nature is the same in all, there must be one,
 
 THE HOME AND ITS AFFECTIONS. 313 
 
 and only one true doctrine of Nature and Position; and the 
 highest and chiefest of all duties of the parent is to convey that 
 doctrine to the child, and its solution of the various problems 
 which to every one each part of that Nature suggests. 
 
 For, as I have remarked, most of the moral errors at present 
 in vogue in the world arise from misinterpretation of facts and 
 problems of our nature: and, indeed, when we look at the two- 
 foldness of all Moral facts, we find it, we may say, perfectly im- 
 possible for a person wholly untaught to give a right solution of 
 them. 
 
 For instance, here is the " Conscience," as shown in the second 
 book of this volume. There are two clear and equally distinct 
 impressions naturally of it : the first, that it is fallible ; the 
 second, that it is infallible ; the one as strong as the other. It 
 would seem that here is a very difficult problem. And, indeed, 
 if you look at what it has resulted in, you find that to men un- 
 taught in youth, the solution is generally by rejecting one or the 
 other as untrue. And the practical result has been, in one class of 
 persons, the making of the faculty a God, without any reference 
 to Jehovah or his Law ; or, secondly, the rejecting altogether 
 the Conscience, and the denying its existence. The true solution 
 being that deduced from revelation, as in the second book : " It 
 is fallible so far as it is a faculty of the man, an eye seeing the 
 light, an ear transmitting the voice ; but infallible so far as it is 
 the Light of God's Word, so far as it is the voice of God's Spirit. 
 Fallible and infallible! When governed by the Law of God, 
 habitually obeyed under the influence of the Holy Ghost, morally 
 infallible ; but outside these influences, fallible, and the more so 
 from its very loftiness." Is not this problem one which is of our 
 nature, comes up to every man sooner or later, is impossible 
 almost to be solved without teaching, and yet is absolutely 
 needful to know ? Surely, the fact that man has a Moral Na- 
 ture that is one, implies one solution, one teaching, and the need 
 of that one teaching. 
 
 Again, look at the Heart. The Scriptures tell us that the 
 Heart is the source of all evil. We feel this to be true : we feel 
 it also to be the source of the highest moral good. Two contra- 
 dictories, seemingly, again ; and, as in the other case, the source, 
 m a practical way, of much evil ; and yet both meeting in one, 
 
 40
 
 314 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 and both true, and reconciled only by a true and high scriptural 
 philosophy of our nature. 
 
 But I may refer back to the antecedent pages of this treatise, 
 to manifest the truth I am now illustrating, to show that our 
 Nature is full of the hardest problems, the most contradictory, 
 rising up of themselves in all men, and solved only by a high 
 Christian philosophy the philosophy of Faith and Hope and 
 Love a philosophy that is one, because the Church is one, and 
 Human Nature is one, and the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are 
 one and therefore is to be seen, more or less, in the Church, in 
 all ages, as Her solution of the problems of our nature and situa- 
 tion. In Augustinus, the African, of the fourth century, in 
 Gregory, the Roman, of the seventh, in the church of Egypt, of 
 Constantinople, of Greece, of the whole world, in all ages and 
 times, this one Ethics is everywhere visible. This the Christian 
 view of Human Nature, I conceive, should be taught by every 
 parent to every child. What is man's Nature ? what Conscience ? 
 what Reason? how binding? how guiding? All the proper 
 ethical knowledge that is necessary, could be taught within a 
 small compass, and very easily, even to the young, and would 
 make up a branch of education hitherto very little touched 
 upon, the "Doctrine of man's Nature and Position." 
 
 I conceive, then, that, as a part of the Spiritual Education for 
 which all parents are responsible to their children, one of the 
 first requisites is this, to instruct them in the " doctrine of their 
 own nature and position." 
 
 And corresponding to this system of truths of man's nature, 
 is the system of " truths of the nature of God," or the truths of 
 revealed religion, which explain and illustrate the others, and 
 upon which all truly scientific elucidation of those others de- 
 pends. So that would it seem that there is not a subjective truth 
 of the nature of man, that has not corresponding unto it some 
 objective truth of revelation that illustrates, confirms, teaches it, 
 and, being in this relation, sheds a flood of light over it. Hence, 
 in reference to man's Spiritual Being, the parent is bound to 
 teach the truths of religion and Christianity in their fulness and 
 completeness, as corresponding to and harmonizing with the Spi- 
 ritual nature of the child. 
 
 And so, for his moral nature, shall he supply him with high
 
 THE HOME AND ITS AFFECTIONS. 315 
 
 and holy precepts and laws, which the child will feel and know 
 to be in accordance with his Nature, its necessities and uses. 
 
 But there is more than this : Mental or verbal teaching is not 
 always moral teaching. To act upon a moral truth is to learn it 
 to cause to act is to teach ; hence, the relation of the child to 
 the parent in the Home, demands of the parent, first, that his 
 own life be holy and true. Moral teaching that is merely 
 verbal will not do ; as for a parent in the Home to act is to teach. 
 Children are taught by actions : if holy, just, sober, true, honest, 
 holiness, justice, sobriety, truth, honesty, are taught ; and so of 
 the contrary. 
 
 Thus children may be educated spiritually, by their parents 
 first acting themselves, then causing them to act, upon principles 
 of true morality ; causing them to act first, and then trusting 
 that expanding mental powers and increasing experience will 
 manifest the truth of the principles. 
 
 From this it follows that the Child has a claim upon the Parent 
 for sanctity in his own life and sanctity in the Home ; and not 
 only for instruction, but also for guidance and governance in the 
 ways of true morality. 
 
 And then, if Baptism be not merely a sign of profession, but 
 also a seal of the Covenant of Faith a "means of grace," as 
 the Church holds it, so that "by baptism we are members of 
 Christ, children of God, inheritors of the kingdom of heaven," 
 if this be so, and the faith of parents can place the children in 
 covenant with the Incarnate Word, through the Life-giving Spirit, 
 then is the parent bound, by the Spiritual nature and wants of 
 the child, to secure to it that blessing of being consecrated unto 
 God in the "name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
 Holy Ghost;" and thereby unto them, as the Elect of God, 
 assuring the teaching of God's providence, " so that all things 
 shall work together for good to them ;" assuring to them the 
 Redeeming influences of the Son ; and the instruction and influ- 
 ence of the Holy and Infinite Spirit upon the spirit of the child ; 
 the Spiritual teachings, too, of the Church of God, with all its 
 ministries, from Angel and Archangel, Cherubim and Se- 
 raphim, in heaven, downward unto the ministration of God's 
 Church and ministers on earth. All these benefits is the parent 
 bound to procure for his children. And all these are consum- 
 mated and completed through the parent's faith and vows, and by
 
 316 CHKISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 the dedication solemnly by Baptism of the child unto God, the 
 bringing of it thus within the Church, the fold of God's Elect. 
 
 But upon this point of Christian morality, having already, in a 
 separate treatise more than once referred to, discussed this sub- 
 ject, I shall direct my reader's attention to it, merely remarking 
 that therein the right of the infant to baptism, and the effects of 
 it in sanctifying the Home, are fully examined. 
 
 Here, then, is the last right of children upon parents the 
 right of being dedicated to God by the formal act of their 
 parents. And from it, how many consequences flow ! the right 
 that they should be trained up in His name and His word, that 
 his Law should be made the rule of their lives, that the Written 
 Word should be their study, that the Home should be a Sanc- 
 tified temple of God's presence and graces, and not a mere abid- 
 ing-place to eat and drink in, but a temple, wherein father and 
 mother shall be, as it were, "priests and kings," sanctified 
 teachers and sanctified governors of their household in Christ 
 perpetually !" 
 
 This is the last claim the Child has upon the Parent ; and this 
 claim is verified and established by all parts of the human nature 
 of the child, which cry aloud for such a consecration ; and are 
 then, and then only, placed in their proper position towards man 
 and God, when so dedicated, so united in covenant to the Eternal 
 Son through the Eternal Spirit. This is the highest teaching 
 to the Spiritual Nature, and the most complete and perfect edu- 
 cation that its faculties and its necessities require and demand. 
 
 And for them who have placed their children in this position, 
 and then themselves have, through the sense of their responsi- 
 bility and the grace of God aiding them, lived up to the require- 
 ments of their position, for them we have seen the highest 
 grace of the Christian Home to ensue, the "living in Love." 
 We have seen them, not by constraint nor compulsion, not by the 
 interposition of any Human Law, but by disinterested Love and 
 unselfish devotion, fulfilling all duties, gladly and rejoicingly. 
 
 And from this spirit of Love in parents, we have seen the 
 spirit of affection and love arise on the part of the children. 
 And we have seen that all legal thoughts of right on the one part 
 and obligation on the other have ceased to have any influence 
 the affection of parents to children, and of children to parents, 
 joyously and overflowingly fulfilling all duty, almost without
 
 THE HOME AND ITS AFFECTIONS. 317 
 
 feeling it. So that here -we have seen the truth that " Love is 
 the fulfilling of the law;" and all its duties are done through no 
 external compulsion, but by that internal principle that makes 
 them all, pleasures and springs of happy feeling. 
 
 This, then, we count the perfection of the relation of parents 
 to children and of children to parents, of wives to husbands and 
 of husbands to wives the perfection of the Christian Home : 
 that all within it be sanctified and duly dedicated unto God, and 
 live up to the sum and completion of their profession that is, 
 live in Christian Love : the completion, not only of all happi- 
 ness, but of all Christianity. 
 
 And this being done in the spirit of Christian Faith, we fear 
 not that love, and honour, and reverence, and gratitude, and 
 respect will flow forth naturally from the child unto the parent, 
 that children so educated will feel the truth and incumbency 
 of the precept, " Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy 
 days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God hath given 
 thee." 
 
 Our readers may then say, " But cannot parents and children, 
 apart from religion, live in a state of love ?" 
 
 In respect of this we say, that the feeling is natural to the 
 heart of man, a natural affection, and so comes forth naturally 
 from parent to child, and from child to parent : and so we do not 
 deny but that natural affection may exist in a very great degree ; 
 but not to that degree we have spoken of; never to that perfection. 
 
 And that for this simple reason that our Nature, made in God's 
 image, only obtains its completion and perfection when in direct 
 covenant with the Almighty Father, through his Son, the Media- 
 tor, and therefore directly taught and trained and formed by the 
 Grace of his Holy Spirit. 
 
 With this remark we shall end this book, having brought the 
 duties of the Home upward, until we have seen in it, as in all 
 else that concerns Man's Nature, that duty is perfected by reli- 
 gion, and Nature is crowned by Grace.
 
 BOOK VI. 
 
 
 
 THE HUMAN WILL. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Arguments upon the Will generally mere thorny quibbles. The opinion of 
 Milton to this effect. Censure upon its harshness. The opinion of Bishop 
 Beveridge. The sentiments of Hooker as to the Will of God and the 
 nature of His Decrees. St. Augustine, his character and temper. Two 
 ideas held by him to be connected, Grace and Predestination. These 
 are not so connected naturally. Evil consequences on both sides of taking 
 it to be so. The Theological Controversy waived. The Will discussed as 
 a faculty of our nature. 
 
 IN the works of Thomas Aquinas, there occurs an argument to 
 prove that God has a body, is, in other words, material, which 
 the great Schoolman states gravely, and then as gravely refutes. 
 
 It is from a passage in the book of Job, which reads thus : 
 " Canst thou by searching find out God ? Canst thou find out 
 the Almighty to perfection ? He is as high as heaven, what 
 canst thou do ? Deeper than hell ; what canst thou know ? The 
 measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the 
 sea."* 
 
 Therefore, says the ingenious fool whom Thomas refutes, " God 
 has length, breadth, and thickness, (depth or height,) these are 
 expressly attributed to him in the passage of Job, but these are 
 the three dimensions of body ; God then has the dimensions of 
 body! therefore, God is body!" 
 
 Whatever one may say about the argument above given, we 
 must admit that it is a most ingenious absurdity; so absurd, 
 indeed, that its very folly makes it startling: and yet no one 
 would give any weight to it ; it is merely verbal, a knot of worda 
 that expresses nothing. 
 
 * The quotation is from the Vulgate. 
 818
 
 THE HUMAN WILL. 819 
 
 Such, we humbly conceive, and we have bought our knowledge 
 by dear experience, is the staple of almost all books upon the 
 Will that we have read ingenious absurdities, startling paradoxes, 
 knotted words that bind not nor define the realities, definitions 
 gravely laid down, that, like conjurors' magic boxes, hold secretly 
 all consequences afterwards drawn from them, fruitless ears that 
 seem full, and yield no fruit, and are yet always seeming-ready 
 for threshing. Such are the disputes upon the Will as we have 
 seen them managed, and we believe that the man who has had 
 the most of such discussions, that man will the most see the fruit- 
 lessness of them on the one side and on the other. With all due 
 respect to the illustrious dead, in this quality of a fruitless and 
 thorny verbal logic, the argumentations for "Free-will,"* and 
 those for " Slave- will, "f are upon a par, the one about as un- 
 satisfactory as the other. 
 
 Such has been the effect of them upon many of the greatest, 
 and soberest, and most judicious of men. Such, too, was the 
 effect upon one, who, although certainly great, was as certainly 
 neither sober nor judicious, but fiercely fanatical, and injudicious 
 in the highest degree: we mean John Milton. He places his 
 demons in hell, arguing upon these themes : 
 
 " Others apart sat on a hill retired, 
 In thought more elevate, and reasoned high 
 Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate, 
 Fixed Fate, Free-will, Foreknowledge absolute, 
 And found no end, in wandering mazes lost." 
 
 This, then, is the opinion upon this matter of the great poet 
 who, in his younger days, had been most conversant with these 
 argumentations ; that they are lost in such labyrinths that no clue 
 is to be found ; that they are so difficult, so unsuitable to the calm- 
 ness of Christian faith, that only in the evil angels 
 
 " Late fallen, and weltering on their bed of fire," 
 
 could be found intellect enough, and fierce restlessness enough, 
 to discuss these subjects. In the opinion of John Milton, fallen 
 angels in Pandemonium are the only fit and proper disputants 
 upon the Calvinistic and Arminian controversy ! We excuse not 
 Milton for this strange poetic license. We only point it out as 
 
 * " Liberum Arbitrium." Erasmus. 
 
 f " Servum Arbitrium." Luther and Calvin.
 
 320 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 the expression, in a very strong way, of a very fixed opinion, by 
 a man of great genius, as to the peculiar nature and tendency 
 of this class of disputes. 
 
 And if the reader please, we shall put it into plain, unimagina- 
 tive prose, that Milton had come deliberately to the opinion, that 
 to contemplate the Almighty Father solely as a Being of Infinite 
 Power, is to involve and entangle our minds in the most compli- 
 cated questions, to produce in us, as regards ourselves, the temper 
 of despair, as regards our neighbours, that of unyielding and 
 unsympathizing harshness. Such might be the meaning drawn 
 from this Miltonic parable, when we soften down the hatred and 
 scorn for- this Controversy that manifestly was the motive for 
 such an extraordinary procedure. For surely, whatever Calvin, 
 and Luther, and Erasmus, and the Dort divines, and the Armi- 
 nians had done, they had not deserved this, that the angry theo- 
 logical poet should give a synopsis and summary of their opinions 
 on both sides, and then set them forth as subjects of debate for 
 the devils in Hell ! However, while we protest most fervently 
 against the spirit of this passage of Milton, we cite it here as 
 strong evidence of the matured opinion of that great mind, as to 
 the fruitlessness of this harsh controversy. 
 
 The same impression is made upon Bishop Beveridge of the 
 incompetency of the human mind to deal with such subjects. In 
 his Commentary upon the Articles of the English Church, he 
 expresses himself thus : 
 
 " A cockle-fish may as well crowd the ocean into its narrow 
 shell, as vain man ever comprehend the Decrees of God. And 
 hence it is that, both in public and private, I have still endea- 
 voured to shun discourses upon this subject ; and now that I am 
 unavoidably fallen upon it, I shall speak as little as I possibly 
 can unto it."* 
 
 But that Intellect, the greatest perhaps in the English church, 
 who, by the judgment of all modest and sober men, has earned 
 the title of the "judicious Hooker," he has expressed himself, 
 perhaps, more fully than any upon the inutility of 'bringing into 
 logical and mental examination, the subject of the Will of the 
 Infinite and Eternal God : 
 
 " All things, therefore, do work after a sort according to Law, 
 
 * Beveridge on the Seventeenth Article.
 
 THE HUMAN WILL. 321 
 
 whereof some superior, unto whom they are subject, is author, 
 only the works and operations of God have Him for their worker, 
 and for the law whereby they are wrought. The Being of 6f-od 
 is a kind of Law to his working. * * * [Our purpose] is 
 only to touch upon such operations [of God] as have their begin- 
 ning anjl being by a voluntary purpose wherewith God hath 
 eternally decreed when and how they shall be, which eternal de- 
 cree is that we term an eternal law." 
 
 " Dangerous it were for the feeble brain of man to wade far 
 into the doings of the Most High, whom although to know be 
 life, and joy to make mention of his name, yet our soundest 
 knowledge is to know that we know him not indeed as he is, 
 neither can know him ; and our safest eloquence concerning him 
 is our silence, when we confess without confession that his glory 
 is inexplicable, his greatness above our capacity and reach. He 
 is above, and we upon earth, therefore it behooveth our words to 
 be wary and few."* 
 
 Such are the resolutions of Hooker : 1. God's decrees are the 
 eternal laws of His Nature Justice, Holiness, Wisdom, Truth. 
 Aught, then, unjust, unholy, untrue, cannot be attributed to 
 God. 
 
 2. The finite mind of man cannot comprehend the Infinite by 
 reasoning ; and therefore we should not systematize, argue, or 
 reason, but trust in Him, with faith, and fixedly distrust our- 
 selves and our reasoning concerning His action, knowing that of 
 his Secret Decrees we can neither by argument nor system attain 
 any knowledge, save only that they are not against the eternal 
 laws of his being, holiness, justice, truth, and mercy. 
 
 This seems the doctrine of Hooker, as it is manifestly that of 
 the English church. 
 
 That God has Secret Decrees, the determinations of His Will 
 which were made in the bosom of his Infinity, when no external 
 creation existed, and only the Infinite Father dwelt alone with 
 the Eternal Word and the Eternal Wisdom, this we must ac- 
 knowledge. And our business, then, is to bow before Him in 
 adoration to know that of these we can know nothing, save that 
 they are not contrary to those laws of his being that he has 
 revealed to us ; and, secondly, to be assured, tfcat by no logical 
 
 * Hooker, vol. i. p. 156-7. 
 41
 
 322 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 systematizing can we reach to a comprehension or a knowledge 
 of them. 
 
 We must not argue and reason and systematize, and frame out 
 schemes and plans of this ineffable action of the Eternal, that 
 took place before matter and time had any existence, as Ed- 
 wards, or Hopkins, or Beza, or Calvin ; although, indeed, this 
 controversy, dated, as it usually is, from Calvin, goes far higher 
 up the stream of time. Higher far than Calvin are we to seek 
 the origin of this controversy, in the works of St. Augustine, a 
 Christian father of the fifth century, and unquestionably one of 
 the greatest and holiest men of the church, as well as a man of 
 immense genius and ability. He was the first to introduce into 
 the Church the peculiar views at present called Calvinistic. 
 
 And much as we revere the memory of Augustine, we must 
 say, that we think that in bringing into Christianity the Stoic 
 doctrine of Fate, and the logical and verbal debatings by which 
 it has been sustained, he inflicted a grievous wound upon the 
 simplicity of the Gospel. Far better would it have been fully to 
 confess God's almighty power and man's feebleness of mind to 
 think that there are mysteries above our reach, and to refrain 
 from the vain attempt, by logical and verbal arguing, to shape 
 out a system of action for the Inscrutable and Ineffable Jehovah. 
 
 In fact, there are in the works of St. Augustine, to be found 
 united together in close connection, two ideas : the idea of Original 
 Sin and Grace, a true and real Christian idea ; and another idea, 
 the pagan one of Doom, or Fate. These two are so joined in his 
 mind, by his natural fervour, that one seems to him the logical con- 
 sequence of the other. And even to this day, such is the influence, 
 at the end of fourteen centuries, of that great mind, that to many, 
 these two ideas seem absolutely connected, so that one must infer 
 the other, when they are, in reality, wholly separate. Men can- 
 not conceive how the doctrine of Original Sin and Grace can be 
 held without holding Predestination, or how Predestination can 
 be held without holding Grace ; whereas, as I have said, the 
 ideas are not in any way naturally united : as may be seen from 
 two examples. Mohammed, the Pharisees, the Stoics, Diderot 
 the French infidel, all these held most distinctly the doctrine of 
 Absolute Fate ; and yet no one will say that any of them ap- 
 proach at all to the doctrines of the Grace of God and the 
 Inability of man. And, on the other hand, before the time of
 
 THE HUMAN WILL. 323 
 
 St. Augustine, the Ancient Church universally proclaimed the 
 doctrines of man's fall and the all-sufficing power of Grace ; and 
 yet there is no trace of the doctrine of fate among them. And 
 the Church in America, at the present day, says distinctly that 
 without Grace no man can do any thing pleasing in the sight of 
 God, and yet distinctly reprobates the fatalistic doctrine. 
 
 But in the mind of St. Augustine, the two ideas dwelt together. 
 Penetrated to his inmost soul with the idea of man's fallen state, 
 his inability of himself to do 'any good, or in thought, word, or 
 deed to satisfy the just demands of the law of God, we see the 
 stern will that could have swayed the sceptre of the Roman 
 empire the lofty mind that soars to the most empyrean heights 
 of mental science the great heart so overflowing with love, all 
 this nature bowed before the throne of God, confessing its own 
 unworthiness, its inability to do aught of good, its guiltiness, its 
 deservingness of condemnation before the pure and holy bar of 
 Infinite Justice. And then, as the counterpart of this, is seen 
 his conviction of the mercy of God in Christ his feeling of the 
 all-sufficient and almighty influences of the Grace of God through 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 No greater, no more glorious sight has Christianity ever seen, 
 than the great Augustine,* bowing before the throne of God, 
 and under these convictions crying out, "Not myself, but thee, 
 my God not my power, but thine, Infinite and Eternal 
 Father not my merit, but thy death and thy love by me unde- 
 served, Eternal Son, the Word Incarnate not my ability, or 
 my purity, or my merit, but thy Grace, Almighty Spirit ; proceed- 
 ing from the Father, endued then with his omnipotence ; sent by 
 the Son, conveying then his love and his pardon not myself, 
 then, the creature of clay and the dust, but thee, Father, Son, 
 and Holy Ghost Creator, Saviour, and sole Sanctifier of Man !" 
 Such are the feelings wherewith, throughout the works of this 
 great saint, the doctrines of Grace and Original Sin, practically 
 held by him, abide upon his mind and find vent from his heart. 
 
 Such are and such ought to be the feelings of every true Chris- 
 tian who holds these doctrines, without any reference to Absolute 
 
 * See throughout the Confessions of St. Augustine : a book that perhaps 
 has been never equalled for true Christian feeling, and which every one that 
 desires to know the true spirit of the Gospel should read. There are several 
 English translations of it
 
 324 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 Predestination at all. The two doctrines, in fact, are entirely and 
 completely distinct. Only in the ardent mind of Augustine were 
 they united, by the fact that he held them both. 
 
 For, alas ! the Stoic doctrine of Necessity, or Doom, or Fate, 
 the doctrine that sees power as the sole attribute of God, and 
 considers his sole act to be the issuing of infinite and uncontrolled 
 decrees, this idea, familiarized to the mind of Augustine from 
 his previous philosophic studies, offered apparently an easy solu- 
 tion for the mysteries of Grace, seemed to honour the Almighty 
 sovereign of the universe, and to be a ready answer to all gain- 
 sayers, a ready means of accounting for all mysteries of external 
 nature, and of providence, as well as for all the dark problems 
 of man's nature and position ; and so it was too readily adopted. 
 The fervent genius and glowing heart of Augustine thus united 
 two ideas wholly incongruous the Christian idea of Almighty 
 and All-sufficing Grace, and the Stoic idea of Fate uncontrolled 
 and irresistible, predestinating all things by an absolute doom. 
 
 From that time, in the apprehension of the ordinary mass of 
 Christians, such is the far-descended power of one great soul 
 even in its mistakes, it has be'en found almost impossible to sepa- 
 rate these two ideas. Most probably it may take place even with 
 this very book, that many who read it and see that it upholds so 
 strongly the doctrine of the guiltiness of man before God, and 
 the All-sufficiency of Grace, may wonder that the other idea they 
 think to belong to it, that of Fatalistic Predestination, is so strongly 
 rejected. , Nay, perhaps, they may be inclined to accuse me of 
 inconsistency in accepting the one doctrine, and rejecting the 
 other. 
 
 Let them know then, that for the facts of Creation, of Provi- 
 dence, of Grace, I seek not the solution in the Pagan doctrine 
 of Doom, but in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. God 
 governs not the world by Doom, executes not his decrees by the 
 rigid machinery of an iron Fate, but by the Word, a personal, 
 ever-present being, proceeding from the bosom of the Father; 
 God/rom God, Light from Light, very God from very God; con- 
 substantial, coeternal, coequal with the Father. He is the 
 governing power in this world, HE, and not an impersonal, unin- 
 telligent, mechanical Doom ; a present God He is, and a present 
 King. If I believe in Stoic Doom, I more or less deny the 
 government of the Word, the personal and present agent of the
 
 THE HUMAN WILL. 325 
 
 purposes and decrees of the Almighty. If, on the other hand, I 
 fully conceive and apprehend the Christian doctrine of the Word, 
 I must cast aside the idea that a predestination system is to this 
 world the executor of God's will. One idea destroys the other. 
 I cannot hold them both. I therefore hold to the peculiarly 
 Christian doctrine, and reject that taken by St. Augustine from 
 the Stoics. 
 
 Again, if the way wherein our thoughts are subdued unto 
 Christ, be conceived to be by the infinite power of the Almighty 
 crushing them into conformity with his will by an overwhelming 
 force, this is one idea, a solution for the problem which cuts 
 the knot instead of untying it. And manifestly by this there is 
 no agent can interfere between our thoughts and the power of 
 the Infinite Decree. It is the agent that subdues the soul. Here 
 then again, the idea of Doom is substituted for the Christian idea. 
 The Christian idea is, that a personal being, the Holy Spirit, the 
 Lord, (that is Jehovah,) proceeding from the bosom of the Father, 
 as God from God, and receiving from the Son Life and Light for 
 men, that he, the Love of the Father, the Free Gift of the Son, 
 the Spirit of grace undeserved, and all-embracing, is the agent 
 that works upon our thoughts and turns them to God. HE and 
 not Doom. If I hold, then, in its fulness, the doctrine of the 
 Holy Spirit and His office with regard to men, I cannot hold that 
 other predestination doctrine. If I should hold that doctrine 
 of Doom, I make the Spirit of God, if I admit His existence, 
 a subordinate agent working in consequence of the decree, 
 and only its instrument, and therefore, I am, by my very doctrine, 
 tempted to deny that he is God of God. In the mystery of the 
 Trinity, as I have said, not in any pagan philosophy of fatalism, 
 is to be sought the solution of the problems of Grace. Happy 
 had the church been if Augustine had never united these two 
 ideas together, so discordant as they are, in their sources, in 
 their effects upon the mind and temper of man, and in their con- 
 sequences. 
 
 Happy, too, for modern Christianity, had men been content 
 with the humble and calm views of Hooker, as given a few pages 
 back, but, in both cases, so far from taking this moderate view, 
 they attempted to systematize the admitted facts of God's om- 
 nipotence and of man's subjection, into a rigorous logical theory, 
 and thereby, as the natural consequence of the system, they
 
 826 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 changed the Almighty and Omnipresent "Father of Mercies," 
 into a Lord of rigorous and unbending destiny, predestinating 
 to heaven and reprobating to hell independently of all the laws 
 of his own being, save that of almighty power. The external 
 world, the great school of Probation, whereby, in its various forms, 
 man is taught by a living and present God, they made a machine 
 driven by an eternal Fate, and man so crushed within its wheels, 
 as to be externally bound by infrangible chains, and internally 
 driven by an irresistible Will, not his own. This is the issue of 
 the argument for " Slave-will." 
 
 And then the opponents of this fatalistic system, in attacking 
 it, argued just as unfairly upon the other side. Instead of 
 abstaining from the attempt to measure the Infinite by the Finite, 
 to systematize by man's puny reasoning, the power and the acts 
 of the Eternal God ; they, too, had their system by whieh God 
 made the world ; their reasons why he did every thing ; they, too, 
 could penetrate into the motives upon which, before time was, he 
 decreed; and " being His counsellors, they had instructed Him." 
 And so the end of the one system, as well as the other, came to 
 be false philosophy with reference to the Being and Attributes of 
 God, the uses of the external world, and the nature of man ; and 
 presumptuous dogmatism flying away from all living faith into 
 absurd and unpractical speculation.* 
 
 * The author will, perhaps, be asked, what there is in your own doctrine, 
 seeing you count one scheme to be harsh and unsuitable to the doctrines of 
 the Gospel, and the other, that of Predestination upon foresight of good works, 
 to be presumptuous and evil in its tendencies, what then is your scheme ? 
 
 I answer, that which I think to be the doctrine of the standard of the Pro- 
 testant Episcopal Church in the United States, to which I belong. That is 
 the doctrine of Original Sin and Grace, upon which, as I have dwelt upon 
 them so plainly I need not enlarge. In reference to the Decrees of God, the 
 doctrine of Hooker, that we cannot know any thing of them, only that they 
 are, and that they are not against the revelations of His nature that he hat 
 given us. And with regard to the Election, that every man in this world wh 
 is within the church of God, in the visible covenant, he is Elect, predestinated 
 to those privileges, to an opportunity that is, of all the means of grace, and 
 therefore bound " to make his calling and Election sure." Upon this last 
 point I would refer my readers to Faber on the doctrine of Election. 
 
 I think that the Church is not Calvinist, much less is it Arminian : upon 
 Grace and Original Sin, Her doctrine is that of St. Augustine ; upon the 
 decrees of God and the nature of Election, that of the Greek church ; and 
 upon the whole subject, her desire is due reverence and freedom from the 
 bondage of systematizing dogmatists.
 
 THE HUMAN WILL. 327 
 
 How much better than Calvinistic or Arminian controversialism 
 it is to say, with Hooker and Beveridge, that " His Decrees are 
 tecret and infinite, and therefore by no exercise of mental power 
 vn us to be ascertained or expounded and that they are accord- 
 ing to the unchangeable laws of his being, mercy, goodness, 
 truth, and therefore only by living faith to be contemplated and 
 believed in !" How much better to impute no evil to God, no 
 good to ourselves, but to bow before him in silent adoration and 
 acquiescence in his Will ! 
 
 The reader, then, may consider that we purpose not to take 
 either the one side or the other of these thorny questions. The 
 above resolution of Hooker's is all we shall give upon the point 
 a resolution which excludes the one side as well as the other. 
 Calvinistic and Arminian controversies we meddle not with, as, 
 upon the grounds taken, being profitless and idle. The practical 
 truths of God's Power and of Man's Freedom* we shall not be 
 slow to argue and expound in a practical way ; but these other 
 thorny verbal argumentations we shall, we hope, ever eschew. 
 
 But although a subject may have been abused, still this is no 
 argument against its rational discussion. Although Calvinista or 
 their opponents have talked nonsense about the Human Will, 
 that is no reason why the subject should be neglected no reason 
 why it cannot be treated rationally. And, indeed, that persons 
 have falsely and foolishly discussed any subject, especially if it 
 be of the importance of this one, is a very strong reason why it 
 should be set in a true and sober light before men. This subject, 
 therefore, of the Will of man, we shall take the liberty of rescu- 
 ing from the position it hitherto has had as a part of Theology, 
 and vindicating unto it its own proper place in Philosophy an 
 element, and a most important one, in the Philosophy of Human 
 Nature, which is Ethics. We shall, therefore, as I have said, 
 omit all consideration of the will of Grod and his decrees, as be- 
 longing to Theology, contenting ourselves with the resolution of 
 Hooker that we have given upon this point, and hoping that it 
 will content our readers. But, in the ensuing chapter, we shall 
 
 * A very important distinction must be noted here. The Will is the 
 faculty of freedom, whose function it is to act freely in that sense the vnU 
 is free. The question of fact, " How far it is actually capable of acting, in 
 the race or in any individual," is a different one. The eye is the organ of 
 sight and yet I may be blind. But of this more further on.
 
 328 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 examine the Will of man, as a faculty of his "being, and a most 
 important one, in fact, one of the highest of his moral nature. 
 This shall be the subject of our next chapter. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Definitions of the Will : Three given. Objections answered. Logical and 
 Real Examination of the sophism, " The Will is determined by Motives, 
 and therefore is not free." Motives are of two kinds : Spiritual and 
 Temporal. The first frees the Will ; the last-mentioned enslaves it. Two 
 Powers that combine in every Human Action : the Will of the Man, and 
 the Effect of Circumstance. From this fact, a new ground taken upon the 
 subject of the Will. 
 
 OUR readers will remember that in the last chapter we an- 
 nounced our intention, as far as possible, to keep clear of the 
 Theological questions upon the Will of God, and confine ourselves 
 to the examination of the Human Will as a faculty of man's nature. 
 In conformity with this intention, we ask, What is the Will? 
 " It is the internal power of self-guidance in reference to action." 
 This is one definition. Another, and a very good one, is that of 
 the Greek church universally that " the Will is the faculty of 
 Autexousia, or Self-Power." A third is, that "the Will is the 
 faculty of voluntary choice in man." 
 
 One may say, " If these definitions be true, there is no further 
 need of dispute, for they all take for granted and imply the Free- 
 dom of the Will." "And so," we say, "they do." The ques- 
 tion is not to be decided verbally, at all, but actually by the 
 experience of Human Nature. And we say to each of our 
 readers to decide it so. Let a man read the definitions of the 
 Will, and see whether there be in him in his nature, that is a 
 power answering to them. If he finds in himself existing " an 
 internal power of self-guidance in reference to action" " a fa- 
 culty of self-power" or " a faculty of voluntary choice, whereby 
 he can choose to do or not to do," if he experience this in his own 
 nature ; and if this be the universal experience of man in gene-
 
 THE HUMAN WILL. 329 
 
 ral, all logic and all systems to the contrary notwithstanding, 
 the definitions above given are true. 
 
 Let us see what these imply. First, that the power is internal, 
 proceeding from the inward nature of the man therein origin- 
 ating, in the inward faculty, and not from external circum- 
 stances : in other words, a part and faculty of the Spiritual 
 Nature of the man. 
 
 Secondly, "self-guiding" the power, that is, of guiding the 
 " Self" the person the man. This implies three things : first, 
 the possibility of choice between one act and another ; secondly, 
 the power of determining, or making permanent in the Will, that 
 choice ; and thirdly, the ability, more or less, to carry out into 
 action that choice and that determination. 
 
 If a man tell us that he has felt no internal power of choice, 
 of decision, of action, we say, " Very well ; it is possible in 
 extraordinary cases of malformation of mind," and we do not 
 intermeddle with him, any more than, in writing a treatise upon 
 light and colours, we should with a man born blind. But the 
 mass of men, in all ages, have, in language and in fact, acknow- 
 ledged a power internal, that is not Conscience or Affection or 
 Reason, to which these qualities belong, and which they have 
 called the Will. All, therefore, we can do, is to describe it to 
 ask our readers to look within, and if they see it there, as they 
 shall do, to go on with us to examine it practically, and practi- 
 cally to apply the doctrine to their own moral culture. The full 
 proof of the facts of this science, as we have before said, is the 
 self-knowledge of the reader ; and the writer who truly describes 
 the facts of nature so that his readers can recognise and confess 
 their truth, and who then applies them to practical purposes, he 
 is right, and not the best arguer and debater. It is too late in the 
 day to fill books with such babillations as have been perpetrated 
 in reference to this subject of the Will. If a man have felt no 
 such internal power, we pity him : if, more than this, he prove, 
 or try to prove that no one else has, we leave him to the enjoy- 
 ment of his ingenuity and say no more about it. 
 
 Of like character are such other asseverations as this : " I ac- 
 knowledge a Will to exist, but the Will is not free." That is, 
 the man acknowledges a Will that is not a Will for the very 
 notion of Will implies freedom, in faculty, at least, and function. 
 
 42
 
 330 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 The very idea of a Will, the very meaning of the word, is, that 
 it is the faculty whose function is freedom. 
 
 " He doubts whether the idea of a Will implies freedom ; nay, 
 he proves the Will not free, but Slave." 
 
 And this is his argument : " The Will is determined by mo- 
 tives" "it does not then determine itself, but is determined" 
 " therefore it is not free." 
 
 This is the famous argument for Slave- Will, a mere verbal 
 catch, and nothing more. However, in order that our readers 
 may see it to be so, we shall put it in the shape of a regular 
 syllogism : 
 
 Major premise : " The Will is determined by motives." 
 
 Minor premise : Whatever is determined, does not determine 
 itself. 
 
 Conclusion : Therefore The Will does not determine itself. 
 
 As the logicians say, "Nego minorem," I deny the minor 
 premise to be true. What proof is there that whatever is deter- 
 mined does not determine itself? 
 
 Another syllogism : 
 
 Major : " That which is determined is passive." 
 
 Minor : " That which is passive does not determine itself." 
 
 Conclusion: Therefore That which is determined, does not 
 determine itself. 
 
 A syllogism false through a double Middle Term. That which 
 is passive is the verb "is determined," in the first premise; and 
 in the second it is real, a thing ; the middle term in the major 
 is verbal in the minor, real: the conclusion, then, is incon- 
 sequent it does not follow. So it seems this great argument is 
 merely verbal; a sophism, which proves the Will, the faculty 
 of our being, to be passive, because a verb in a sentence put 
 together by the writer is a passive verb ! The same may be seen 
 l>y multitudes of other arguments constructed upon the same 
 model: e. g. from the premise, "John is loved," you can prove 
 "that he does not love himself;" from the sentence, " This man 
 is slain," that "he has not slain himself;" and so on, through as 
 many false argumentations upon the false model as are required. 
 
 In reality, that "the Will is determined by motive," does not 
 exclude it from being " self-determined :" being so, it still comes 
 under the assertion, "it is determined." 
 
 All Motives are divided into two classes : the External and
 
 THE HUMAN WILL. 331 
 
 the Internal. All that come from the outward, physical world, 
 and work upon us through our senses, are External. Those that 
 come from our internal and Spiritual nature from the Con- 
 science, the Spiritual Reason, the Affections, these are Inter- 
 nal. The first enslave the man ; they bind his Will in an obe- 
 dience to the things of Time and Sense ; they make outward, 
 material and corporeal objects to have the dominion over him. 
 His Will, determined by this class of motives, then, is so far 
 enslaved, not free. Again : Internal motives those that come 
 from our Spiritual nature and from the Spiritual world these 
 are internal ; they do not enslave the Will ; they free it. He, 
 for instance, that is determined by his Conscience to go in the 
 right path, against the temptation to go in the wrong, he feels 
 that, in the one case, determined by one motive, he is free ; in the 
 other, determined by it, he would be a slave. So in matters of 
 Reason : walking by the rule and law of Moral Principle, deter- 
 mined by it as a motive, he is free ; led against it by any motive, 
 he is a slave. And so with respect to the Affections : to be led 
 by them is to be free ; to be led by Sensuality, or Self-will, or 
 Selfishness, is to be enslaved.* This is the truth upon the sub- 
 ject of Determination of the Will by Motive. One class of 
 motives enslaves the Will ; the other frees it. How accordant 
 it is, both in nature and in philosophy, to the truth of our 
 Saviour's words, " If the Son make you free, ye shall be free 
 indeed/'f every one can see; as also how distinctly it agrees 
 with the nature of Motive and of the Will. 
 
 What, then, is the use of entangling ^rbally the mind of 
 uneducated men in such sophisms as that which I have above 
 examined, and of really supposing all Motives to be external, 
 and the Will not to be a faculty, but a mere machine for motives, 
 a water-wheel, whereupon these are poured from without, and 
 which thereby goes ? 
 
 But, although men may not be able to answer these sophisms 
 or logicians enough to put their finger on the unsound part of the 
 argument, they always act and always have acted as beings that 
 have in their nature a faculty whose function is Freedom. Nay, 
 
 * The Sensual and the Dark rebel in vain, 
 Slaves by their own compulsion. 
 
 Coleridge. 
 f John riii. 26.
 
 832 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 the very upholders of these arguments even they act as if their 
 own reasoning were false. No Necessitarian ever yet acted con- 
 sistently with his scheme. Their actions show that the scheme 
 is verbal merely, and not real. We shall, therefore, pass by and 
 neglect as frivolous such argumentations, and go on according to 
 our own consciousness of Human Nature, and our knowledge or 
 penetration into that of the race, describing the moral powers, 
 and leaving the proofs to our reader's knowledge of himself; and 
 then urging moral action and moral culture upon these truths, 
 instead of fruitless speculation and dry verbal paradox. 
 
 We ask, then, any individual, we suppose the one who now 
 has this page open before him, to consider this illustration we 
 are about to give. 
 
 My reader, then, has arrived at a certain point and period of 
 life, that he calls NOW, in reference to Time and events past, and 
 HERE, in reference to place. In reference to Time, a certain 
 definite series of events has happened, through which he has 
 passed; and his present point in the series he calls "NOW," or 
 the "present time." In reference to Space, his course, from 
 beginning to end, might be traced exactly upon the globe ; and , 
 the present point he calls HERE. The result, then, of his course 
 in Space and in Time, is that "NOW the man is HERE." What, 
 then, has produced this result ? What forces have brought him 
 so far that NOW he is HERE ? 
 
 Let him consider, and he shall find that his course hitherto is 
 naturally and aptly described as a voyage the man, as a vessel 
 that started upon the^oyagQ of life, and has got so far. What, then, 
 has brought the vessel so far on its course ? Two forces only 
 the internal power that is within the vessel the external force 
 without : the combination, or rather the resultant* of these two, 
 is that which brings all vessels thus far. So it is with the man : 
 two forces he shall recognise to have brought him so far as he 
 has come on his voyage the force of external circumstances and 
 the force of internal power. And never has there been a life in 
 the course of which up to any given point the two forces do not 
 unite. External circumstances, in their result, are modified by 
 
 * The " Resultant," in Statics, is that force which " results," in direction 
 and amount, from the combined action of two others upon the same body at 
 the same time. 
 
 i
 
 THE HUMAN WILL. 333 
 
 the internal power : and it is modified by external circumstances. 
 The course of the vessel is shaped by the two powers combined. 
 
 Now, by looking at the matter in this way, the individual shall 
 see that, in each act of life, these two powers the internal and 
 the external both exist : the Will is never so weak in any man 
 that it does not modify the effect of the external influences ; nor 
 is it, again, so strong in any, that by its force, exclusively and 
 entirely, the man's course is guided. The external force and the 
 inward power exist together in bringing to an issue all actions. 
 The sternest and strongest Human Will never was so potent as 
 to annihilate the influence of circumstances, so that this last 
 force should become nothing : and the most crushing force of 
 circumstances never did nor could reduce to nothing the effect 
 on action of the internal power ; but both, in degrees that vary 
 much in relative power, exist in each act of man's life. 
 
 As a practical matter of the consciousness of all men, they 
 know and feel the internal force to exist : the external force also 
 to show itself in each action, in all actions ; and that neither in 
 the course of the whole life, nor yet in any one single action, 
 does this twofoldness cease to exist, or one of the forces become 
 all and the other become nothing. 
 
 Now, before we go further, it is worth while to see how para- 
 dox upon this matter arises. The Fatalist supposes Circum- 
 stance to bind man in with an irresistible chain, so that all 
 actions are predoomed by an eternal fate. Is not this to exag- 
 gerate the one force, to suppose it irresistible, and to suppose the 
 other to come to nothing, a mere theory that each one's own 
 experience can assure him to be false ? For each one in each 
 circumstance feels the two powers, and knows that the one, as 
 well as the other, ever exists. Because things are to be touched, 
 have I no sense of touch ? Because things visible are to be seen, 
 have I no sight ? Because there is a power without me, which 
 can and does act upon me in a degree which I cannot measure, 
 have I no power within ? 
 
 And, on the other hand, there are some men who eke out an 
 Atheistic philosophy by an argument for what they call "Free- 
 will," but which, in all senses and meanings of the word, is not 
 "Free-will," but "Self-omnipotence." They first take it for 
 granted that mere physical laws embrace all action ; and then that 
 by his internal power man can modify, as he likes, all these laws.
 
 334 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 And so man is wholly and entirely free, no external power upon 
 him, his inward power is lord of all. That is, that internally he 
 has an intelligent power which meets nothing from without but 
 unintelligent physical laws, and so is entirely without control. 
 
 So might the dove, that by chance had fallen into the grosser 
 element of water, and found it to obstruct its flight upon rising 
 into the thinner fluid of air, imagine that all resistance was gone ; 
 or that the more it was diminished the more progress it would 
 make.* Whereas, for all external resistance to vanish entirely, 
 would be for all its inner power to be rendered wholly unable. Just 
 so it is with these men, they imagine away the outward Intelli- 
 gent Power that bears upon man through what we call " circum- 
 stance," and think in this of freedom ! If this dream were 
 realized, their " Will," would be as the doves' wings, idly fluttering 
 in vacuum, unable and useless. 
 
 And their dream of an internal Will, with no external Will 
 modifying it, this is just as vain a paradox as that of the Fatal- 
 ists ; just as vain, for the same- consciousness that tells me and all 
 men of an inward power, the Will, that can modify all external 
 circumstances, that same knowledge of myself and of the world shall 
 tell me of an external power working through what I call circum- 
 stances that shall modify the result of my action. 
 
 The so-called arguments or verbal riddles, that deny, the one 
 the internal power, the other the external power, occupy, in 
 some books a great space, with us they shall take up none. The 
 evidence that I have for the internal power, the Will, that same 
 evidence, I have in my own experience, and in that of all men, 
 for the. external power that acts upon me through the " Circum- 
 stance." 
 
 And my course of life, both in itself as a whole, and in each 
 act of it singly, is a resultant of these two powers, varied in 
 force, it may be, but still existent each of them in each event, 
 and in the whole result, or entire sum total of my life. I think 
 the experience of each considerate man, apart from prejudice or 
 system, will show him that this is true ; and that it is not only in 
 
 * This illustration is taken from a well-known, but not well-understood 
 German writer. I use it because as an illustration it suits my purpose 
 admirably. And I mention it lest some censorious person should bring a 
 charge of plagiarism.
 
 THE HUMAN WILL. 335 
 
 accordance with his own experience, but with the nature of power 
 and of action. 
 
 And so the two powers being established, the matter of dis- 
 cussion is changed from the old ground which was, whether the 
 Will was self-omnipotent entirely, or entirely a slave to circum- 
 stances to a new ground, which, instead of denying one force or 
 the other to exist, and arguing for the irresistibility of that which 
 it supposes, admits both to exist, and then discusses their relative 
 powers and effect. This new ground having taken, and thus fairly 
 opened the subject, we shall leave our readers to meditate upon 
 it, and go on to another chapter, wherein we shall discuss the 
 meaning and purport of this that we call "circumstance." 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The meaning of " Circumstance." It does not imply Doom or Physical 
 Necessity, but an ever-present God acting upon us, according to the 
 Laws of his nature and the laws established for us by Him, and therefore 
 good. The question of Freedom different from that of Power. 
 
 IN the last chapter, we have shown that in each and every 
 human action, two forces conspire the internal power and the 
 external " circumstance." It is manifestly necessary to discuss 
 the meaning of this thing " circumstance." 
 
 Now the origin of the word, I believe, is not classical, but of 
 the Lower Ages, and it implies "things standing around" us, not 
 simply "things" that exist, but things that are around and act 
 upon us. 
 
 And I conceive that the word, whosoever invented it, is a good 
 and an useful one, for, from birth to death, we find that the "I," 
 the being to which we apply "Personality," is ever brought in 
 contact with external forces that act upon it, modifying circum- 
 stances itself, and being modified by them. And howsoever men 
 may exaggerate the one force or the other, this is true, in our 
 being, the internal force exists, nay, is at the centre of the sphere ; 
 and the external force of "circumstances," "circum stat,"
 
 336 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 " stands around," is everywhere in contact with us. So much for 
 the meaning of the word. 
 
 For the meaning of the thing, how are we to interpret it? 
 Circumstances are manifold, various, innumerable. Are we to 
 take it, that by chance and accident they roll upon us, as the sea- 
 weed and marine rubbish from the storm rolls upon the rock, and 
 along with the fortuitous sand surrounds it ? Are circumstances 
 the product of chance ? 
 
 Certainly not. The same marks of design, of purpose, of 
 will, which we discern in the acts that spring from ourselves, and 
 which manifest them to be those of & per son those same evidences 
 we see in the circumstances that operate upon us. 
 
 If our own acts are those of a Person, the influences that act 
 upon us show "Will" and "Personality" as much. In fact, by 
 the unanimous agreement and sense of all men, by all the indi- 
 cations that we have from the thing itself, external Circumstance 
 is taken to manifest an external personal agent. The internal 
 power by which we act upon outward things, this is so far analo- 
 gous to that external power, that we feel personality as ours is, 
 to be its natural explanation. 
 
 And corresponding unto this interpretation is the Revelation 
 primevally given, and thence passing downward through the chan- 
 nel of the knowledge of all nations, of a Being that wields that 
 external power that we find to bear upon us ; against whom we 
 can raise no ramparts or circling fortress strong enough to keep 
 Him out : for, from the Heavens above, He shall rush down upon 
 us ; from the earth beneath, He shall rise up against us : nay, 
 the very armour with which we gird and enclose ourselves against 
 that Power, becomes means and ways of access against us to that 
 Power. 
 
 Yes, let man as he will cut himself away from Christianity, 
 and from Revelation, and still, in the sphere of Circumstance by 
 which he is enclosed and environed, he has evidence of another 
 power than his own, that works upon and modifies his action. 
 And even he who in fact has left God, he shall be forced to say, 
 
 "Who can feel and dare to say, I believe him not? 
 The Ail-Embracing, the All-Sustaining, 
 Does he not embrace and sustain us himself? 
 Does not the heaven arch itself above, and earth lie firm below?"
 
 THE HUMAN WILL. 337 
 
 Even such a man as the writer* of this, from the hare consi- 
 deration of the relation of an external power to the internal 
 force, had to confess an " All-emhracer," an " All-sustainer." 
 
 But to the Christian, and, in fact, to all men, save those that 
 have of set design placed themselves apart from knowledge, this 
 fact and feeling receives its true interpretation, in the belief of a 
 Personal, Omnipotent, Omnipresent, Omniscient God, surround- 
 ing each man, embracing each man within the sphere of Circum- 
 stance. 
 
 Such, of the two facts of the internal force and of " Circum- 
 stance," is the interpretation given by the primeval revelation, 
 and henceforth, in the Tradition of the Nations, taught by one 
 generation perpetually to another. 
 
 But, more than this, the World, as I have shown, is a school 
 of probation, and teaches us this eternally, by the one great idea 
 of Law perpetually suggested the Law of the Affections, that 
 is, of Love in the Family ; of Justice and Equity in the Nation ; 
 of Holiness in the Church: and so are "Circumstances" ar- 
 ranged under these three natural organizations, that not as a 
 God of Power only He appears, but a Being of Love, of Justice, 
 of Holiness ; for all these moral qualities we, by the fact that the 
 world is a "School of Probation," must attribute to the Almighty, 
 in addition to that of Personality. God is Good, both in name 
 and in reality; and each idea of Him that Society or Nature 
 awakens in our Reason, each manifestation of his glory that He 
 makes unto man, at the same time enables us to see in Him a 
 higher degree of goodness, to feel it, and to reach after it. The 
 interpretation, then, that we give to the action of Circumstance 
 upon us, is this : 
 
 First, that " God is not absent," that he has not made the 
 world to go by the machinery of an all-embracing Fate, or of an 
 universal physical law or system of laws embracing all possible 
 contingencies, and then has departed, having by his own ma- 
 chinery filled up the world he had made so that he no longer 
 works personally therein, or is therein present, save by the De- 
 cree or by the Law. But, on the contrary, that he is here, pre- 
 sent, acting, and that all power comes from him."f This is the 
 
 * Goethe. 
 
 t The reader will remember that it is with regard to the physical system 
 
 of the universe that I speak here, and not in reference to the acts of intelli 
 
 43
 
 338 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 doctrine of the Scriptures as to God and his acting, plainly and 
 manifestly laid down. 
 
 And he that shall take it and the objections against it, and 
 then take the mechanical theory, whether the fatalistic one of 
 Doom, or the other of a machinery of Physical Laws, and the 
 objections against them, he shall find more objections against- 
 the Unchristian* than the Christian doctrine. 
 
 The objections which may be brought against the Christian 
 doctrine of an ever-present God, are such as this : " I see the 
 phenomena to be regular, and therefore I argue that they are 
 effected by a law, and not by the direct action of a personal 
 being." 
 
 To this the answer is easy : Such arguments will exclude a 
 finite personal being, not an Infinite. The action of an Infinite 
 Being is and must be regular, according to the laws of Infinite 
 Perfection. Man's action is and must be irregular ; but the ac- 
 tion of God upon the physical world is, and must be by his na- 
 ture, regular, according to the law of his perfection. To see, 
 then, the world so regular that we can express some sequences of 
 its events in regular geometrical formulas, which we call "Laws," 
 this shows the presence of an " Infinite Cause," whose acts are 
 regular. And to be incapable of expressing all, but day by day 
 to be attaining new perceptions of regularity, this expresses the 
 same idea of one cause working in manifold ways. The sense of 
 regularity excludes a finite personal agent, but not an Infinite 
 one. 
 
 Again, it will be said, " When a personal being acts, we see 
 Will, but not here." 
 
 Will, we answer, in all finite beings, is more or less Self- 
 will, more or less capricious, unsteady, faulty; but the more 
 perfect it is, the more it approaches to a Law. And God's Will 
 is and must be a Law, not capricious, not Self-willed as is man's 
 Will, but uniform. Hence, the actions of God's Will are not 
 
 gent beings. All personal agents have the capability of exerting self-derived 
 power by their own being. The evil, then, that they do, they do themselves : 
 God does not do it. Spiritual beings, of their own nature and constitution, 
 as formed by the Almighty, have the capability of originating power> sepa- 
 rate and apart from material and physical causation. 
 
 * I say " Unchristian," because Fatalism, in its perfection, has been held 
 only in Mohammedan or in pagan countries.
 
 THE HUMAN WILL. 339 
 
 arbitrary decrees, but uniform laws. That no "Self-will," or 
 "arbitrariness," or capriciousness, is seen, this is so far from 
 arguing against an Infinite Agent, that it argues for it. He 
 whose eternal decrees are determined by the eternal laws of his 
 nature, justice, holiness, and truth, his Will must act regu- 
 larly, and without variableness, caprice, or shadow of turning. 
 
 But in reference to all theories that suppose a machinery of 
 Doom or of Physical Law, the grand reply is, that this supposes 
 mere power, but that our own constant feeling is not of mere 
 power, but of gentleness, kindness, mercy, benevolence, wisdom, 
 forethought, in short, not of Power only, but of all and every 
 one of the moral powers ; to beings possessed of which alone we 
 attribute personality. In each "circumstance" that is brought 
 to bear upon the life of man, we see moral influence in manifold 
 ways, not power only, and therefore we naturally conclude the 
 presence of an Infinite Moral Being that is, God. 
 
 This, then, is our estimate of "Circumstance:" In reference 
 to its agent, it is the external force of the Will of an Infinite 
 Moral Being, Personal and Ever-Present, applied unto Man. 
 And this not according to arbitrary decrees, or the caprice of 
 self-will, having no other motive but its own consciousness of 
 power, but according to the eternal laws of a Being infinitely 
 good, just, gracious, holy, merciful a Father, a moral Governor, 
 a God to be worshipped, and not merely a being conceived as 
 possessing only the one attribute of Infinite Power and Will om- 
 nipotent and unchecked. 
 
 This, then, is the interpretation : That not the machinery of 
 an Infinite Doom, or of an all-embracing physical law, but an 
 ever-present God, Father, and Moral Governor, with a Will so 
 determined, creates all Circumstances surrounding me, and by 
 them exerts, in all things, upon each action of mine, an influence 
 whose extent I cannot comprehend nor measure; which yet I 
 know is not an influence contradictory to his nature, and, al- 
 though I see not its end or extent, still must consider it to be 
 good and to tend to good. 
 
 And while with regard to the material world I may form sys- 
 tems, and say that events are bound together by Physical Laws, but 
 with regard to my own voluntary action I must suppose it above 
 Physical Law, and to be expressed by no formula; so with regard 
 to the Circumstances that bear upon me, no formula will express
 
 340 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 them, no physical law emhrace them: they show the personal 
 action of a moral agent who is ever present, acting voluntarily 
 upon me. Such is the moral interpretation of " Circumstance," 
 an interpretation which men put naturally and easily, which 
 agrees with the express words of Scripture, and only by a false 
 philosophy can be put aside from the persuasion of any human 
 being. 
 
 If this explanation be true, then it may be said, " Man is not 
 free, for of the two forces that determine any act, and from 
 which it results, one is the finite Will of man, the other, the 
 infinite Will of God; the Finite must ever be overpowered by 
 the Infinite." 
 
 In answer to this, we say that the force, put forth by a being of 
 Infinite Power is not necessarily infinite. God has infinite 
 power, but in his dealings with man, of his own will he modifies his 
 power. When my finite will comes in contact with an obstacle 
 and overcomes it, such an amount of hindrance has been put in 
 my way as I can overcome; and I can easily conceive, that 
 for wise purposes the infinite God might have put only such 
 an amount, and yet it certainly is not the less an exertion of 
 His power. 
 
 Again, he may put such an amount as will be insuperable ; 
 according then to His measure, which is His wisdom, He may 
 direct his influences upon us, so that in various ways our actions 
 shall be modified. But in each circumstance the influence of 
 the finite Will is seen, and the influence of the Infinite. 
 
 This then is the result : Central amid a sphere of Circum- 
 stances, man feels that external things and actions he can modify 
 by an internal power. He feels, too, that they can and do modify 
 his action. These two forces he is conscious of in each action of 
 life, and the sum total of life is made up of the results of these 
 two. He, therefore, by his constitution feels these both to exist ; 
 he feels that one does not annihilate the other, but that both 
 coexist, the Free-will of Man, the Power of God. 
 
 This he knows by his own knowledge, and his own feeling of his 
 actions both singly and in the mass, and it is in vain to argue the 
 non-existence of the one or the other. Such arguments to all men 
 are mere verbal knots that touch not the reality of things. The 
 question is a simple one : " Do I, by action springing from an 
 internal, self-guiding power, modify external circumstance ?" If
 
 THE HUMAN WILL. 341 
 
 a man knows this to be so, according to his own experience, then 
 argument against it is mere babbling, mere talk. For the thing 
 must be decided by man's consciousness of the fact, and not by 
 metaphysics. If a man be conscious that it is so, and the race 
 generally have the same consciousness, millions of treatises are 
 unavailing against the fact of such self-knowledge. 
 
 The question of the existence of Free-will is sometimes 
 confused with another, as to the extent of its results. " Have I 
 the power, according to internal choice, to modify external cir- 
 cumstances more or less?" this is the question of Free-will. 
 "What is the extent of that modification ?" is a different question. 
 " Can I do what I will, uncontrolled by any outward power ?" 
 This does not ask "Am I free ?" but "Am I omnipotent ?" 
 
 The question as to the extent of the power of a Free agent is 
 quite a different one from the question of his Freedom. God may 
 grant me such a power of Will, that all external circumstances 
 that come in contact with me shall be ruled, swayed, and governed 
 by it. He may grant me no such power of Will, and yet make 
 the outward Circumstances to yield to my weakness. And so in 
 manifold ways may modify, guide, govern, direct, teach, rule ; but 
 all this action is according to the laws of his infinite being. And 
 if evil is brought about, it is not of God's action upon man, but 
 by his permission that it exists. 
 
 The rules of his action are the laws of his eternal being. 
 Thus " God cannot lie," the Scripture tells us : this we shall take 
 for a law of his being, no power of God, then, can make man 
 lie. " God cannot sin ;" God's Almighty power, then, cannot 
 pre-doom man to sin, and so forth. 
 
 And again, God is of himself infinitely free ; he has made man 
 free ; it is a part of his constitution established by God ; God, then, 
 cannot make man un-free, save by annihilating the constitution 
 he has made. In like manner, he cannot make two bodies at 
 once to occupy the same space, because it is a fact of the con- 
 stitution of body, that it cannot be so. So it is a part of the 
 constitution of man that he shall be free, that of each action, 
 one force should be the power of man's Will, and the other a 
 portion of external power, brought to operate upon him by the 
 Will of God, for his most holy and most secret purposes. 
 
 This, then, I conceive to be the interpretation of " Cir- 
 cumstance;" that it shows neither Chance, nor yet Fate, but a
 
 342 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 Personal and Ever-present Being, Almighty, All-just, and All-holy, 
 directing, according to his wisdom, a portion of his power upon us. 
 
 And from that external power and our internal power, both 
 existing in each act, all our acts do come. 
 
 And the relative proportions of these two forces we know not, 
 only that they both exist, and that the power of God works upon 
 us, not according to caprice, but according to the Laws of His 
 Being, and according to the Constitution wherewith he has 
 framed us. 
 
 These are practical decisions, which the experience and know- 
 ledge of our race has a thousand times affirmed, and which only 
 false philosophy as to the nature of God, the being of this world, 
 and the constitution of man could deny. 
 
 We have placed them here because, so placed, they will enable 
 us, in their light, more fully to examine the internal power which 
 thus acts along with the external power of God. We shall go on, 
 then, in the next chapter, to examine the nature of the internal 
 power which we call the Will, as to the modes of its action, which 
 we before have enumerated. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The Will has a Power of Resistance to Motive. Motives upon the Will do 
 not act necessarily. The evil Results of Fatalism. Analogy to the Will 
 and its Motives of the Concurrence of Forces, Mechanical, Chemical, and 
 Vital. Brute Animals are really and truly what the Fatalist thinks Man 
 to be. Man has a Will : Brutes have properly no Will. The question 
 of Free-will is a practical one. As a matter of fact, there are Men whose 
 Will is not free. The Two Wills: The "Will of the Flesh," and the 
 Spiritual Will. Society trains the Will. The Spiritual Law sets the Will 
 de facto free. Examples from Conscience, the Reason, the Heart. 
 
 HAVING thus examined the nature of Circumstance, and shown 
 that herein the power of man meets with and is united with the 
 power of God, we go forward to examine the nature of the Will 
 in itself. 
 
 The Will is " inward and spiritual :" this is the first part of 
 our definition. By this we mean that the faculty, as far as it ia
 
 THE HUMAN WILL. 343 
 
 a faculty of our nature, is one that belongs to man as a Spiritual 
 being. , . 
 
 The answer is not hard to this question : " Admit that your 
 Will is capable of being influenced by external motives has it 
 yet such a power that all these, by its own internal force, it can 
 reject, and go contrary to the course they indicate ?" If this be 
 so, it is internal, and, at the same time, Spiritual. 
 
 Is there an inward power by which, giving riches their full 
 value, and on certain occasions pursuing them, upon certain other 
 occasions I shall permit the desire of them to have no power over 
 my actions ? Is there an inward force by which, desiring food, I 
 shall, at certain times and upon certain occasions, abstain from 
 it ? desiring pleasure, I shall resist it ? being tempted to evil, I 
 shall oppose the temptation ? being excited unto anger, I shall 
 yet quell it ? Certainly : every child feels within himself this 
 power of resistance. He may not feel it to a perfect degree ; but 
 a power he does feel whose faculty this is, and which may be 
 brought to greater perfection by exercise. It is a testimony of 
 all men, that there exists in all this internal power of resistance 
 to external inducements to action. 
 
 We shall put the question again, in this way : " Cause and 
 Effect," we shall say, " in Physical Science, is a law absolute 
 and certain. In consequence of this, it is in Physics a true 
 axiom, ' Like causes produce like effects,' and therefore, without 
 exception, when you find the identity of cause, from it invariably 
 follows the identity of effect in physical science." This we believe 
 to be invariably true. Now, "Motive" we shall define to be an 
 " external cause of action." Is the law of " cause and effect" true 
 in reference to human actions ? If it be, the same amount of exter- 
 nal cause shall always produce the same effect the Will shall al- 
 ways be determined by motives, and shall not be free in any way. 
 
 But each man's reason can tell him that it is not so that 
 although Motives to action are upon the will as "causes" in 
 Physical Philosophy, still there is an internal power of resist- 
 ance, by which the "effect" of motives is limited in a very ex- 
 ceeding degree, so that no amount of " motive" shall compel or 
 force or determine, physically, the Will of any, if it freely from 
 within resist. 
 
 And so the law of " cause and effect," however well it may do 
 in Physics, has no power in Ethics. No external motives compel
 
 344 CHKISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 or necessarily determine the "Will of man." Apart from reli- 
 gion, we shall say, even the weakest and the most vicious knows 
 that his acts are uncompelled that the external temptation may 
 have been very strong, but yet never so strong as to necessitate 
 his action upon it. 
 
 So would it seem that man has an inward force, which, even 
 while he is in the world, sets him free, by a faculty dwelling in 
 him, from the general laws of Physics, and puts his action upon 
 a loftier ground, an inward power of resistance to the causation 
 of outward motives. This is a fact of our knowledge ; we see it 
 with regard to ourselves, and we see it in our intercourse with 
 our fellow men. And they who deny it, either do so out of 
 vicious motives, that they may be enabled to cast the blame of 
 their vices upon external circumstances, as the woman and the 
 man, our first parents, in paradise, did, or else they do so under 
 a false notion that by applying the doctrine of " Cause and Ef- 
 fect" to the Spiritual part of man, in the shape of " motive" and 
 "determination," they thereby do honour to God's power, by 
 making man's acts, all of them, to be determined and doomed of 
 God. A false philosophy this, and one that would be immoral, 
 but for the fact that the very men that preach it do not act upon 
 it, but in their every act of life proclaim that they believe it 
 untrue. 
 
 And yet, as Mohammed and Gengis and Bonaparte bear wit- 
 ness, not without its danger is this dogma. For never in the 
 course of history has military and religious frenzy been united, 
 that it has not for its fulcrum had this doctrine, that human 
 action is predoomed by an irresistible chain of external motive. 
 This is that force that urged the swarthy Saracen over half the 
 world, until the larger frames and sterner souls of the Frankish 
 war-king and his Germans flung back from France and Europe 
 the tide of Mohammedan invasion, and the light limbs and 
 slender sabre of the Arab were crushed by the iron mace of 
 Charles Martel.* This that doctrine that drove the count- 
 
 * Charles the Hammerman, so called from his weapon and his exploits ia 
 the great battle at Poitiers, against the host of the Arab general Abder- 
 rhame. But for this victory, Europe, historians say, had been Mohamme- 
 dan. But men are made for their times ; and if a Mohammed is sent to 
 wreak God's vengeance against a corrupt church and a degenerate nation, 
 again a Charles Martel is raised up to turn back the scourge.
 
 THE HUMAN WILL. 345 
 
 less hordes of Tartar horsemen over the world, and made China 
 and Russia, Persia and the shores of the Baltic Sea, and the wild 
 regions of Siberia, alike to groan and tremble at the barbarous 
 names of Baatou and Houlagou, the vicegerents of the " Uni- 
 versal Sovereign," "Lord Predestined of the Universe!"* This 
 also the doctrine that urged incessantly for two centuries the iLili- 
 tary fanaticism of Turkey against European civilization. 
 
 And this the doctrine of each vain man who, living like an 
 animal, has not cultivated his moral or spiritual powers, but has 
 permitted his Conscience to cry in vain, has lived without the 
 control of Reason, has given up his heart inwardly to Selfishness, 
 Sensuality, and Self-will, merely keeping up decent appearance, 
 and complying with the outward requirements of society. And 
 such a man, with his moral faculty wholly uncultivated the fort- 
 ress it was given to protect wholly unguarded this man, hav- 
 ing neglected all inward moral preparation, yields to outward 
 temptation, and then cries out, " It was too strong for my Will, 
 and determined it!" and "I was predoomed !" or " Overpowered 
 by the influence of circumstances !" 
 
 I do not say that they who hold this doctrine are always 
 vicious ; for, as I have said before, nature often corrects the 
 effect of doctrine that is untrue to it, and truly pious men have 
 held it. But this I do say, that history represents it as an ele- 
 ment that gives an immense strength to military fanaticism ; and 
 the experience of life and nature tell me, that whatsoever may be 
 its effects upon the good, when believed in by the weak or the bad, 
 or taught to them, it is a ready excuse for all vice, a ready means 
 of shifting blame from themselves, and justifying a continuance 
 in sin. And this the author has seen, both in case of the Fatal- 
 ism of Absolute Predestination, and the Fatalism that supposes 
 our affections and moral state to be the consequence of mere 
 physical organization, f 
 
 * " The nation held a convention on the banks of the Sellinga. A Khodsha, 
 or Sage, revered for his age and virtues, rose up in the assembly, and said, 
 Brethren, I have seen a vision. The Great God of Heaven, OH his flaming 
 throne, surrounded by the spirits on high, sat in judgment on the nations of 
 the earth: sentence was pronounced, and he gave the dominion of the world to 
 our chief, Temudsin, whom he appointed Gengis Khan, or Universal Sow- 
 reign." Universal History, by John von Muller. 
 
 f The author here alludes to the principles that ensue from the doctrines 
 of Combe on the Constitution of Man. 
 
 44
 
 346 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 The author then will be asked, does he suppose this internal 
 power of resistance in the Will to external motive to be, in its 
 immediate action, entirely free from the law of " cause and effect," 
 so that if the man will, he can resist the highest and weightiest 
 motives that can be brought to bear upon him, or admit the very 
 feeblest and weakest. 
 
 I consider that it is so ; that so far the Will of man, when 
 under its law, is independent of the law of Causation. And this 
 as a part of the constitution of man, in virtue of his being a spi- 
 ritual being, made in the image of God. I consider that of the 
 Almighty, all His acts are from within, none caused from without, 
 so that He is purely, perfectly, absolutely free. And so he has 
 made man that he has the inward power of Will, capable, under 
 its law,* of resisting all external motive, how weighty so ever it 
 be ; that he has this power as a spiritual being, endued with the 
 faculty by God. 
 
 Men may say this is speculation, " man is body, and under 
 the laws of body." 
 
 And we say, "No more than it is speculation to say Man has 
 eyes." The fact every one knows and acknowledges to himself 
 and to others a hundred times every day of his life. We admit, 
 then, that man is body, and we say more, we say man is 
 matter, and subject to the law of matter; man is living or 
 animal body, and subject to its law; and man is spirit, and sub- 
 ject to its law ; the laws coexist, and the higher outrules the lower. 
 The man is matter, the mechanical forces then act upon each 
 particle of his frame; the chemical forces, too, act upon him 
 as matter, and their result would be 'decay; but he is also an 
 animal body, and the vital forces neutralize the chemical and me- 
 chanical forces, and cause their effects not to ensue. And so say 
 we : the mere physical motives would have overcome man, if he 
 were only an animal ; but since he is a spiritual being as well, 
 he has the power of resistance by an inward Will that is not 
 animal, but spiritual. The truth of this to nature and to our con- 
 stitution may be seen from the above analogy. 
 
 And this leads us to the remark that the brute animals do 
 really and entirely fulfil the notion of beings led altogether by 
 circumstance ; for in them we see that external motives, appealing 
 
 * See the next chapter.
 
 THE HUMAN WILL. 347 
 
 to animal desires, invariably bring about the same result, act as 
 cause and effect in determining action, sufficient cause producing 
 the proportionate action invariably. Nor is there, in the brute, 
 any power of internal resistance, that cannot be overcome by an 
 additional force of external motive. Instincts are irresistible in 
 the animal nature, and appetites in their nature addressed by 
 external motives in sufficient degree, can become irresistible; 
 such motives are incapable of being resisted ; in fact, there is no 
 internal power to resist them. 
 
 The man of the Fatalist is no real man, made in the image of 
 God with a Spiritual Nature, and having thence free-will as a 
 faculty ; only in those vertebrated mammalia that are the likest in 
 physical organization unto man, the pongo or the ourang-outang, 
 is it realized. 
 
 It may, perhaps, add a good deal of clearness to these illus- 
 trations, if we ask, since the animals act, and have therefore 
 some guidance unto their action, what is there in them that 
 corresponds to the "Will"? We answer, that the immediate 
 desire, which is the strongest towards any thing external, that is to 
 them for a "Will." The Desires, as it were, reign by turns in 
 them, and, answering to the variety of external motive, each 
 Desire, in its turn, is in some measure a sort of Will. The exter- 
 nal allurement addresses the animal appetite, so as to arouse it 
 into action, and this rushes onward toward the outward object, 
 with a force that leads the whole animal : thus, in them animal 
 desire is produced by " external motive," under the law of cause 
 and effect; the motive producing the emotion of the appetite, 
 and that again the action of the animal according to that law. 
 And we must say that, in most cases, it is not a single motive, 
 but a complication of motives external, and that these tend gene- 
 rally to the preservation of the animal, and to its uses in the 
 system of Nature, as of course we should expect from the creation 
 of a Being infinitely wise. 
 
 But the general distinction that man has by his nature a " Will 
 capable of resisting all motives from without, how weighty and 
 forcible soever," and that the animals, on the contrary, are wholly 
 and entirely governed by Desire, external circumstances acting 
 upon their appetites, according to the law of cause and effect, 
 this I count so generally true, that every one at once will see the 
 distinction in Will between man and animals. Man has a Will
 
 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 inward, and spiritual, and free ; animals an appetite, wholly 
 animal, and under the dominion of outward motive. Animals 
 properly have no will. 
 
 And this brings us to the examination of a most important 
 question with regard to the action of man. We have shown that 
 there is no action of man's life wherein will not come in man's 
 power; and then that man is not a puppet or a machine, driven 
 by irresistible power, and dreaming that he moves when he only 
 seems to move, but that in all circumstances he has power coming 
 from himself: we have shown, too, that he has an internal faculty 
 whereby he can resist all motives coming from without, and 
 accordingly admit or not admit their influence. And from this 
 last train of argument and illustration that we have employed, 
 our readers may see that this power of free-will is a natural 
 faculty of his constitution, not animal, but spiritual and internal. 
 And now comes the question of fact, "as to Free Action upon 
 Tree-will, how far is man free?" 
 
 This I conceive to be a plain matter-of-fact question, as to 
 each individual of our race, a practical and scientific question 
 also, which, in this last point of view, may be put in this way : 
 " Seeing that I have the faculty, by my constitution, of freedom, 
 how shall I train it so that the power in itself and in its action 
 shall attain the highest degree of perfection ? And, on the con- 
 trary, what is that course of action by which, if I pursue it, the 
 faculty may be so injured as to lose its natural powers, and not 
 to have its natural effects?" This to answer, I conceive, would 
 be to examine the subject practically and scientifically, with a 
 view to life. We shall proceed, then, to this examination. 
 
 Now, taking it for granted that man's power manifests itself, 
 and is not wholly extinguished in any, and that each one has this 
 faculty of resisting outward motive according to an inward power ; 
 as a matter of fact, are there men that do not exert this power, 
 but are led as the animals, by external circumstances, and there- 
 fore are not, in fact and in effect, free ? 
 
 We answer, and each one who has looked upon the world can 
 answer, that in fact and in effect there are men so led, and not 
 free. And secondly, that the men themselves, every man and 
 all men that are under such bondage, know that it is not by an 
 external irresistible power they have been so enslaved, nor by 
 the want of an internal faculty of resistance, but because of
 
 THE HUMAN WILL. 349 
 
 themselves that they have not used that faculty they had, habit- 
 ually,* and under the guidance and governance of the Conscience, 
 the Reason, and the Affections. 
 
 And the situation of persons under such bondage, we shall see 
 to be truly and really the situation of brute animals, roused to 
 action, and stimulated by the animal appetite, and the outward 
 circumstance that awakens and excites that appetite, so that the 
 peculiar desire, whatsoever it be, takes the place of the Will in 
 the man, and is to him for a Will. 
 
 This is the state of the man that is enslaved. We have seen 
 gluttons, and drunkards, and licentious men, and liars, and misers, 
 and vain men, and ambitious men ; and while we saw the faculty 
 or power in them of Free-will to exist, we saw that in effect they 
 were " slaves," as much perhaps as if the faculty had no action 
 and no existence. And we saw, moreover, that in each step 
 of their progress towards this state, their own power and their 
 own Will had been exerted suicidally, until both power and 
 Will, as against the ruling appetite, ceased almost to have any 
 being. 
 
 As a matter of fact, I have seen a drunkard, who, against all 
 motives of religion, against all of reason and conscience, against 
 all of happiness and self-interest, knowing that he was ruining 
 and destroying his own life, and rendering miserable all those 
 that he loved and was bounden to, and against all this, the man 
 indulged the one appetite, and would indulge it. Now, as a 
 matter of fact, that man's Will was in bondage, he was not free. 
 And as a matter of fact, there are thousands and tens of thousands 
 that are so. 
 
 Is it not, then, just as well, while we admit that in all Man's 
 acts, his own power comes in, and that he ever has the faculty 
 of Free-will, to consider these cases that are before our eyes, 
 and, instead of arguing that they are free, and closing our eyes 
 to the fact that they are not, to examine how the faculty may 
 become diseased and lose its strength and its power, and the man 
 become a slave. Abstract proofs that " all men have the faculty 
 and power of sight," avail not much to him whose eyes are dis- 
 eased so that he cannot see ; nor will the fullest demonstration 
 of the laws of Optics be of much use to him : the practic 
 
 * See particularly the chapter upon Habit, and generally, the second, 
 third, and fourth books of this treatise.
 
 350 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 science of the surgeon is much better in such a case than the 
 abstract theory of the philosopher. 
 
 We are treating of the "Will" ethically, with a view to practice, 
 and not metaphysically ; and we remark that, having established 
 as a fact of the constitution and being of man, a faculty of free- 
 dom and as a fact of man's position, that he is not actuated by 
 an irresistible power not his own, these two things being esta- 
 blished, then, as a matter of fact and of daily experience, men are 
 in action oftentimes as completely enslaved as any of the animals 
 that have no will. 
 
 We shall go on to examine this state of disease, the causes 
 and the cure of it. And we shall ask our readers to go along 
 with us and to realize our principles, and if they think them true, 
 to employ them upon their own life, and upon the life of others 
 dependent upon them. This, then, brings us onward towards 
 another part of the examination that is very important, and is, 
 in fact, a further step in our progress. The fact that there are 
 two wills* in man, if we may use the phrase : he is an animal, he 
 is also a spiritual being ; as an animal, he has the Animal Mind, 
 which corresponds to external things and external motives, which, 
 were he an animal only, would place him as all the animals that 
 have no spiritual faculties are, completely under the power of 
 external circumstances ; that is, completely in bondage and in 
 slavery. And this appetite perpetually exists in him, being an 
 animal ; external appeals to it perpetually arise ; and the tendency 
 of them is to have their full force to produce action in him neces- 
 sarily, and therefore to enslave him, in one point of view to cir- 
 cumstance, and in another to his own appetites. 
 
 Now, this animal will that is in man, this perpetual tendency 
 to follow Desire, and to be under the control of outward circum- 
 stance, this is called in Scripture the Will of the Flesh ; and the 
 man that considers it shall see that it is indeed a power in man 
 which is the insubordinacy, the ingovernance of the lower part 
 of his nature, which, were he without the spiritual faculty of the 
 Will, in despite of Reason, and Conscience, and the Affections, 
 would make him even as the other animals, but most wretched, 
 inasmuch as then he would feel the Good and love it, and yet be 
 enslaved to the Evil. 
 
 * We use the word not scientifically, but in ordinary language, and not 
 strictly.
 
 THE HUMAN WILL. 351 
 
 And then, if a man look at the true Will, he shall find that 
 it, by the power we have specified, can resist these mere external 
 motives, this is its faculty, and thus free the man from the out- 
 ward dominion of circumstance and motive, so that he shall not be 
 governed by them. 
 
 Now, were man's nature perfect, "that is, free entirely from the 
 deficiency and inability of the spiritual powers that is the conse- 
 quence of Original Sin," his Will would be perfect also, and his 
 nature in entire subordination ; and then this that we call " the 
 Will of the Flesh," would exist only as desire completely con- 
 trolled by the Will; and the man, as far as internal desire and 
 external temptation is concerned, would rule himself according to 
 the measure of a Will perfectly free from disease and deficiency. 
 
 This, to use cases often cited, was the case with Adam and the 
 case with Christ our Lord. Adam had the most perfect control 
 of his Will over his animal part, yet he could sin ; and this possi- 
 bility of sinning shows the essay of outward circumstance upon 
 him. And our Lord and Saviour, he too " was tempted in all 
 points, like as we are," he had all parts of human nature as we 
 have, the Animal part as well as the Spiritual, and we find that 
 external circumstances acted as temptations upon Him. And yet 
 the "Will" was perfect in him through the Godhead supporting 
 the Humanity, so that he sinned not. So I suppose it must be 
 with the perfect nature, the Will is perfect in its functions, and 
 consequently the Will of the flesh does not exist, save as desire 
 governed, and directed, and perfectly subordinate to the superior 
 spiritual power. 
 
 But has not man the faculty yet ? Certainly he has. His 
 own feeling shows him that he has, but the same feeling tells him 
 also, that it is impaired in its powers, that it is injured in its 
 functions and in its effects. This is the universal feeling of man, 
 and his universal experience. And this also is the experience of 
 each individual of us. Now, this of the Will, that it is impaired 
 in its functions and in its effects, this is the consequence of 
 Original Sin. 
 
 Thus, through this faculty also of the Spiritual Nature is car- 
 ried on the great problem of contradictions. "I can rule and 
 govern myself, and I will do it," says one, feeling truly ; and the 
 interpretation pf it is this : "I have by nature a faculty whose 
 function and effect is self-governance, and I fully wish and desire
 
 352 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 to employ that faculty." And then the other side as truly says, 
 " I cannot rule and govern myself, nor am I able," a truth also, 
 the interpretation of which is, that this natural and spiritual 
 faculty of the Will is decayed and weakened' in function and 
 effect, so that only very imperfectly does it fulfil its uses. The 
 two truths of nature that are contradictory, both being true in 
 the solution given of the existence of the faculty as an endowment 
 of our Spiritual Being, and of its injury by Original Sin. 
 
 If this be so, one would say, " Shall not life then be an inter- 
 nal struggle between the faculty whereby man is free, the Will, 
 and that other inclination called the 'Will of the flesh,' or the 
 animal desire ?" 
 
 Certainly it shall be so. If man were a beast as the beasts 
 are, without any Spiritual Nature, and therefore without the Will, 
 and completely under the dominion of external things, he would 
 feel no misery because of this, being a brute : if he had the 
 faculty of Will perfect in itself and in its action, then would he 
 have under his dominion completely that external desire, and he 
 would be happy. But now he has the faculty, weakened and 
 unable ; and therefore, sometimes overcoming, sometimes being 
 overcome : there is then by nature in him a strife in his nature, 
 which is in his very being, and exists in its existence, and cannot 
 be stopped or put an end to by any thing save that which will 
 restore the Will unto its whole power. 
 
 That strife is in all men by nature ; all have felt it, and all 
 must feel it, for it is in their being. Xenophon, before the 
 coming of Christ, testifies to the existence of that strife. Seneca, 
 too, a Heathen, in his fifty-second Epistle, testifies the same 
 thing : " What is this, Lucilius, which, while we are going one 
 way, drags us another, and impels us thither from whence we are 
 struggling to recede ? What is this that struggles with our soul, 
 and never permits us to will any thing ? We vacillate between 
 two opinions : we will nothing freely, nothing perfectly, nothing 
 always." 
 
 Again, the trite lines, 
 
 Video meliora proboque 
 Deteriora sequor, 
 
 bear witness to the same feeling and the same experience. And 
 Lactantius, in his treatise upon true wisdom, has put into the
 
 THE HUMAN WILL. 353 
 
 mouth of a .Heathen these words : "I wish, indeed, not to sin ; 
 but I am overcome, for I am clothed in weak and frail flesh. 
 This it is which lusts, which grows angry, which grieves, which 
 fears to die. And so I am led away against my will, and I sin, 
 not because I wish to do so, but because I am compelled. I feel 
 that I am sinning, but my frailty, which I cannot withstand, 
 urges me on." 
 
 These testimonies to the actual existence of that internal 
 strife, as a fact of man's nature, are sufficient ; but, indeed, they 
 might be multiplied a hundredfold ; for that this exists in man by 
 nature, as fallen and apart from grace, is the universal expe- 
 rience of all, both of Heathen, who, by their position, knew not 
 the cause of it, and of Christians, who, by revelation, are ac- 
 quainted with the fact of the Fall. 
 
 But perhaps the most vivid description that is given of man in 
 respect to this internal strife of Will, is given by St. Paul, in his 
 description of the natural man : 
 
 "For we know that the law is Spiritual: but I am carnal, 
 sold under sin. For that which I do, I allow not : for what I 
 would, that I do not ; but what I hate, that do I. If then I do 
 that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. 
 Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. 
 For I know that in me, (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good 
 thing : for to will is present with me ; but how to perform that 
 which is good I find not. For the good that I would, I do 
 not : but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do 
 that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth 
 in me. I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is 
 present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the in- 
 ward man : but I see another law in my members, warring against 
 the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law 
 of sin which is in my members."* 
 
 Here is the experience of all men's nature, of this inward strife, 
 most vividly portrayed; a strife that has no end until, of set 
 purpose and constantly, the man has sought after the law of Grod"s 
 Grace, and found it, and given himself up to be ruled by it, 
 through the set purpose of his will or until he, with his eyes 
 open, voluntarily, and of set purpose, has given himself up to be 
 
 * Romans vii. 14-23. 
 45
 
 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 ruled by this other law, the will that is of the flesh, and its law, 
 the law of sin and death.* 
 
 We can see then the deficiency of the Will, that, being in us an 
 internal and spiritual faculty, the faculty of freedom, it partici- 
 pates, through Original Sin, of the deficiency and inability of the 
 rest of our nature ; and of itself it is unable, weak, deficient, 
 both in its power and in its results. 
 
 Hence, when it is utterly apart from all Divine influences a 
 situation in which we cannot believe the ever-blessed God has 
 left any of our race the man would be the most miserable of all 
 beings, knowing, willing, desiring, feeling the duty of resistance 
 to temptation, and yet being the absolute and utter slave of cir- 
 cumstance and appetite. This would man be of his nature, apart 
 from all Divine influences, in consequence of the infirmity of his 
 Will, its inability to resist external impressions, and the influence 
 of external motives on it. 
 
 But, as we have shown that Society is a school for the other 
 spiritual parts of man, so is it a very strong discipline for this. 
 And, indeed, if a man will look at the course of events through 
 which he has passed in this life, that is to say, the effects of 
 God's providence upon him, each one, in his own course, shall 
 hardly miss to say, that the schooling of the Almighty, which is 
 so strong an exercise and trial to the rest of our Moral Nature, 
 in no small degree tends to develope the powers of the Will, in 
 all men that are teachable by circumstance and the course of 
 events. So far are none apart from influences that come from 
 God, and directly tend to strengthen the Will and give it control 
 over the mere power of Desire and Appetite. 
 
 Taking into account, then, and allowing it as a fact, that there 
 is this external education of the Will in various degrees conferred 
 upon men by God, setting, I say, this case aside, as mainly 
 beyond our examination and our powers of explanation, let us 
 come to the consideration of the Freedom de facto of the Will, or 
 of that which enables it to control the Will of the Flesh. 
 
 And here I think that we shall find that the motives which 
 free the Will are, of its own nature, inward and Spiritual, not 
 Animal ; and that that man whose Will is so guided, he shall 
 
 * I would refer my reader to the fourth book, for the description of Con- 
 cupiscence, or Evil Desire, which is the origin of that strife here described, 
 that comes up to man's self-knowledge in his Will.
 
 THE HUMAN WILL. 355 
 
 have the power of resistance to enslaving circumstance, in a de- 
 gree greater or less, just in proportion as his Will is so actuated. 
 
 The Will is like the other Spiritual faculties : it is not a law 
 to itself ; it seeks not its perfection in itself, hut hy an influence 
 from without is it perfected. 
 
 And if a man, the most having the control over himself, if 
 he looks at it clearly, he shall find that to be steadily under the 
 Law of Conscience, this gives freedom, this sets a man apart 
 from the enslaving influence of external things. It tells the 
 man " Thou art no slave to gold ; for, under the law of Con- 
 science, the Will so actuated can resist all amount of treasure 
 rather than do evil, rather than break through the checks of the 
 conscience, rather than incur the Stain and the Guilt written 
 down by it, or bear its Fear and Shame." Conscience, in its 
 action upon the Will, sets a man free from a multitude of evils, 
 from the strength of a multitude of appetites and lusts. 
 
 It avails not that men, with vain babble and idle logic, say, 
 "Then you are not free, for you are governed." Certainly, go- 
 verned ; but, as certainly, by an inward power, which is my own 
 highest and loftiest faculty. And, as certainly, by this freed 
 from the heavy dominion of external circumstance and the hard 
 and unhealthy rule of the lower parts of nature. 
 
 Certainly free, for when, under the sway of Conscience, the 
 Will is determined by it, then is it determined by the highest and 
 most perfect faculty of my nature. And, according to a similar 
 harmony, the rule, that is, of His Infinite Perfections, is God's 
 Will determined. And therefore, as He, being Infinite, is free, 
 so am I, in like proportion, free, according to my finite nature. 
 So that in vain shall men, with verbal quibbling, argue, " that 
 since the Will is determined by the Conscience, then it is not 
 free ;" seeing that men whose will is determined by appetite, 
 know and/eeZ that then the Will is certainly not free. And most 
 certainly do we and all men know by experience, and feel, that 
 determined and ruled by the conscience, it is then free, and en- 
 ables the man to resist all enslaving circumstances. 
 
 In like manner, if we look at the Spiritual Reason, and see the 
 man under its guidance, each fact and attribute of the nature of 
 the Most Holy GOD that by it he receives and applies,. in the 
 shape of Moral Principle and Moral Habit, each one of these 
 frees the Will, each one of these sets and places man apart from
 
 356 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 the possibility of a heavy burthen and grievous yoke, which many 
 have borne and groaned beneath. He in whose life the feeling 
 and sentiment of Justice reigns as a Principle, or of Benevolence, 
 or of Purity, or of Holiness, that man, by the Spiritual Principle 
 so upheld, is freed from a multitude of heavy burthens and griev- 
 ous sorrows that are laid upon the unjust, the cruel, the impure, 
 the unholy, besides that greatest burthen of all, the internal strife, 
 the inward agony of self-reproach, the despair of a nature feeling 
 the sinfulness of sin, and repugnant to it, and wrestling against 
 it, and yet, by the chain of appetite and outward temptation, tied 
 down and bound beneath the burthen /* 
 
 Tell me not " that for the Will to be determined by Moral 
 Principle is a proof that it is not free ! just as much as when it 
 is determined by appetite !" when I see that one is Spiritual, 
 according to the height and perfect harmony of the whole nature, 
 and the other, Animal, and against its perfection, when I see 
 that the one is a state such as is that of God, Willing according 
 to the perfection of his attributes, and the other makes a man 
 a beast, and ruled, as the beasts are, by Circumstance and Ap- 
 petite ! 
 
 And, lastly, that the "Will" should be determined by the Af- 
 
 * Perhaps the great Stoic poet, Persius, expresses more distinctly than 
 any Heathen the despair and agony of being conquered in that Life-struggle, 
 the strife which each man has to undergo, between the " Will of the Flesh" 
 and the Spiritual Will, when he makes it for the highest criminals the 
 greatest punishment : 
 
 Magne Pater Divom, saevos punire tyrannos 
 Haud alia ratione velis, cum dira libido 
 Moverit ingenium, ferventi tincta veneno ; 
 Virtutem videant intabescantque rdicia. 
 Anne magis Siculi gemuerunt sera juvenci, 
 Aut magis auratis pendens laquearibus ensis 
 Purpureas subter cervices terruit, imus ' 
 Imus prcecipites, quam si sibi dicat ? 
 
 His prayer for them is, " When the poison of evil desires fires the soul, 
 then let them in despair look back with longing to the virtue they have de- 
 sertedthen let them, in their certainty of utter and unavoidable ruin, cry, 
 'We fall, we fall, and there is no help for us.' " This, in the opinion of the 
 Stoic, is the most agonizing torture of life. And truly, I must think that he 
 is right. I have been told so, in so many words, by those in whom the will 
 was habitually enslaved by appetite.
 
 THE HUMAN WILL. 357 
 
 fections, this frees from Slavery, that instead of being deter- 
 mined by Selfishness, it be by Unselfish Motives, instead of 
 being ruled by Froward desires, it be obedient unto law, instead 
 of being Sensual, it be Pure. Manifestly, when we look upon 
 the evils brought upon man by Concupiscence, or Evil Desire, 
 ('Erti0v/*ia it is called by the apostle,) embracing these three, 
 " Sensuality, Selfishness, and Self-will," and see how opposite 
 the Affections are to these, it is the highest degree of freedom 
 that the Will should be by the Affections determined, instead of 
 by Concupiscence. 
 
 This, then, is that which enables the faculty of Freedom to be 
 in action and effect most free, that its action be determined by 
 internal Motive, that motive, namely, that is Spiritual, arises 
 from the Spiritual part of man's being. 
 
 Let a man draw the line between the good of the animal being, 
 body as well as mind, let him suppose the highest object and 
 aim of a man to be without and below the line of Spiritual Good, 
 then, how lofty soever it may seem in the eyes of the World, it 
 confers no Freedom. But let the motive be Spiritual, from the 
 Spiritual nature, then at once Freedom is manifested, and we 
 see it and feel it to be so. The power of resistance is given by 
 this, of emancipation from appetite and external circumstance. 
 Whatsoever men may talk in their logical and verbal way, the 
 man of Conscience, of Moral Principle, of pure Heart, knows 
 and feels in this his freedom to exist ; and freedom just so far 
 as he has perfection in and of his Spiritual Nature. He, and he 
 alone, has that inward power that enables the man to resist the 
 external action of that law of Cause and Effect under which the 
 animals are bound, and to be, according to his limited nature, as 
 God is free ! And it is manifest that this shall take place only 
 when the measure according to which these inner faculties deter- 
 mine the Will, shall be the Will and Law of God. " Not my 
 will, but thine be done," was the prayer of our Lord and Saviour 
 Jesus Christ unto the Father. And, secondly, the means of 
 bringing this result about, the agency that shall subdue our Will 
 unto the will of the Father, this is only Grace, Grace given 
 through all the means of Grace, and Grace given without means, 
 according to the Will of God. But if we despise the first, we 
 may be certain that in the last we shall have no share.
 
 358 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Second Power of the Will that of Purpose ; illustrated by a comparison 
 of cases: 1. Sets its object in the Future. 2. Prescribes a law to the 
 Will. A rebuke of the Heathen Morality that tells us not to look to the 
 Future : we must, by our being, look towards it. This fact interpreted. 
 True Christian Hope, 1st, looking steadily to Christ, and, 2dly, imposing 
 voluntarily the Law of God upon the action, is that only which perfects 
 Purpose of Will. " 
 
 IN the last chapter we have examined the first part of the 
 power of the Will the liberty, that is, of choice ; and we have 
 shown its relation to human life and action. In this chapter, we 
 enter upon the consideration of the second power of the Will, 
 the power of Purpose, as we have defined it, " the power of fixing 
 and determining choice." 
 
 This we consider a separate and distinct power altogether from 
 that of liberty of choice ; the one consisting in the ability of re- 
 sistance to motive, however strong, and, consequently, of the admit- 
 ting voluntarily of it, however weak and the other, the motive 
 being received, of a determination of the will, or a fixation of 
 purpose, subsequent in time to the admittance of the motive, and 
 distinct from it. In fact, the word, " I will," embraces, when you 
 examine it closely, the two ideas the first, of choice, in which 
 "I will" is equivalent to "I wish," "I desire," or "I choose," 
 the second, that of determination or purpose, "I am fixed 
 and set in that choice which I have made." "Will you go to 
 the city?" is equivalent to, "Is it your wish," or "desire," or 
 "choice, so to do?" "I will," the answer, expresses determina- 
 tion or purpose. 
 
 This would, perhaps, make the idea plain enough, and suffi- 
 ciently show that the power of Choice in the Will is different 
 from the power of Purpose ; but perhaps we may be able to illus- 
 trate it still more, and to make it still clearer. When we look 
 at men in life, we see some men whose Wills are at the moment 
 vehemently impressible by motives both internal and external,
 
 THE HUMAN WILL. 359 
 
 and their action thereupon correspondingly energetic, who, in a 
 little time, are just as vehemently excited in an opposite direc- 
 tion. The Will is impressed now by one motive, then it is again 
 impressed by another; and no impression seems to have the 
 power of lasting, or of enduring for any time. Others there are, 
 who, when they come under the influence of motive, seem to have 
 the power of fixing that motive in their Will as a future guide, 
 of stamping, as it were, the immediate volition* in the Will, and 
 sealing it therein, as a set decree and law of future action. This 
 power of determinate Purpose, this capacity of ordaining a pre- 
 sent decree, upon present motives, that shall be an inward law 
 and rule for future action, is manifestly quite a different thing 
 from that other of admitting or not admitting motive. We can 
 distinguish them in the action of our own minds ; we can see them 
 as distinctly in other men's actions; and we mark them by a 
 variety of words, implying the difference : the words "freedom," 
 "choice," "liberty," express the one action of the will; "pur- 
 pose," "determination," "fixedness," "decision," the other. 
 
 Nay, this fact of Purpose you shall see manifest itself in 
 every department of life. Enter into a school, and you shall find 
 one class sent there by their parents, and there for that reason ; 
 rising in the morning at the appointed hour, because of another 
 external circumstance, studying because there are lessons set, 
 and there are tutors that teach, obeying for the reason that 
 obedience is the law of the place, and so making circumstance 
 their law, and never once looking forward beyond the day, never 
 troubling themselves for any thing beyond the circumstance im- 
 mediate to them in time and place. What is their Purpose ? they 
 have no Purpose ; they mean to get through. What their deter- 
 mination ? they have no determination : they let Chance and 
 Circumstance, Position, and the Will of any that think it worth 
 while to rule them, decide for them. Such persons I have seen 
 in all states and conditions of life, in schools, in colleges, in pro- 
 fessions, in trades, in society, in whom the faculty and power of 
 Purpose and predetermination either had never been trained to 
 action, or else had perished ; floating weeds upon the waves of 
 circumstance ; ships, with sails and helm, but unprovided with 
 chart and compass, or hand to hold the helm, such are men with- 
 out the power of Purpose. 
 
 * Volition means an act of the Will.
 
 360 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 Others I have seen quite different from these : who look 
 around them, that they may see their relation to existing circum- 
 stance, and what they can do in modifying it for their good ; who 
 look inwardly upon themselves, their hopes and fears, and power 
 and desires, and see what they wish, what is their Will, and their 
 Desire ; and who then form steady purposes, which, inwardly 
 framed and inwardly settled, are laws of life and of action, bind- 
 ing, self-imposed upon the Will, ruling it as the helmsman's hand 
 and eye rules the helm of a vessel, and who henceforth guide 
 it, according to that inner law of Purpose, across the waves, and 
 through them, against the wind or with it, but still according to 
 the inward law self-imposed, of set Purpose, and fixed determi- 
 nation.* 
 
 So, while the power of resistance to external motive is in the 
 will by nature, and in it is freedom, the power of Purpose is that 
 by which the will sets and establishes to itself a Law of action ; 
 appoints to itself an end in the future, after which to struggle, 
 lifts its eye up from the present, its objects and its delights, or 
 its miseries and sorrows, and setting to itself a distant point, 
 perhaps in tracts of time so distant that it only may reach them, 
 perhaps upon the extremest bounds of possibility, fixes its aim 
 upon that remote and distant point. 
 
 Ask whether there are such men, and who they are ? And 
 the same experience that shows us the one class, the men of infirm 
 and uncultivated Purpose, wandering through the wastes of life 
 as animals that now rest upon a sunny bank, now move a few 
 steps towards a greener patch of herbage, now flee from the heat 
 to the shelter of a grove, the same experience that shows to us 
 these men without purpose, will show us that other class, that 
 have an aim to which they are pressing, that know what they 
 want to obtain, and are struggling towards it, that have an object 
 and an end in view, and are not mere animals, chance loiterers 
 in the paths of life.f And wherever they are, in whatever situa- 
 
 * I would, of course, have my readers note here that there may be a 
 power of purpose, which, being determined and set to evil, may, because of 
 this, be evil. Still the same might have been set to good as strongly. This 
 faculty, then, of fixedness and decision, is, in itself good ; only by being set 
 towards evil is it bad. 
 
 t The lofty Stoic poet, whom I before quoted, illustrates this well. The 
 Stoics placed all virtue in a self-governing Will exerting itself by a fixed and
 
 THE HUMAN WILL. 361 
 
 tion of life they may be, of whatever sex or age, they have 
 respect from others, and they respect themselves. The man with- 
 out a Purpose is a mere animal, the man with a Purpose is so far 
 a man. 
 
 Let us look at this faculty of Purpose, and upon analysis we 
 shall find in it indications of many things Spiritual. Every one 
 sees that to have Purpose, this is man-like ; to be purposeless, 
 this is to be like the animals : and, therefore, that to have an aim 
 to the future, according to an inward law of the Will superior to 
 external motive, this is most in accordance with man's true being. 
 Three things are there in this : 1st, an object ; 2d, in the future ; 
 3d, a law of the Will self-imposed, which has the power of reject- 
 ing other motives. Look at all men of Purpose, and these three 
 things are clearly and distinctly seen in them. Men place the 
 object in the future. There is no man would say, I would be con- 
 tent with the Present and all its circumstances, and see it esta- 
 blished as one eternal NOW. All men desire the Present to pass 
 away, and the Future to arrive. And, although they may, as tra- 
 vellers do, set limits to themselves, and establish in their imagina- 
 tion a period and a station further on, wherein they shall desire no 
 Future, and pursue no object after they have arrived at them ; 
 still, when they reach the destined point on their journey, greener 
 vales and shadier hills expand to their view, another object further 
 on is marked out for their final resting-place, the terminal station, 
 which reached, they shall no further purpose, but dwell and abide 
 there satisfied and no more desiring ; is not this the nature of 
 Man, and this his doom? 
 
 Philosophers have talked of this as a "fault of Human Nature," 
 a "delusion," and have said to men that they should repress it, 
 that they should rest in the Present and enjoy it, and think not 
 of the Future, and so forth. In short, they have talked an im- 
 
 stable Purpose, and I must say, not without a considerable degree of truth, 
 although not all, for assuredly half the miseries of life come from weak- 
 ness and instability. In conformity with this, he addresses such a character 
 as those whom we have spoken of in tHe text as " chance loiterers in the paths 
 of life," 
 
 " Est aliquid quo tendis, et in quod dirigis arcum ? 
 An passim sequeris corvos testaque lutoque, 
 Securus quo pes ferat, et ex tempore vivis ? 
 46
 
 362 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 mense amount of that vain babble of Heathenism, those "morals 
 of Seneca," that might have done well enough in a pagan, to 
 whom the Present is absolutely certain, the Future and any exist- 
 ence in it, a shadowy possibility, and a vague uncertainty ; and 
 feeble, narrow-minded Moralists have vented a great deal of this 
 heathenish philosophy, and thought it Christianity, and have 
 wondered how absurd and perverse men are, that they cannot be 
 prevailed on to live in the Present, and to set for themselves no 
 object in the Future. 
 
 We give no such advice. We say, "Here is a power of mind 
 and a peculiar action, by which you, by your nature, are compelled 
 to travel onward in aims and desires towards the Future ; this is 
 no vain desire to be repressed by moralizing or self-restraining 
 effort, but a power and an instinct having its proof and its perfec- 
 tion in Revelation and in God, a living proof that there is an end 
 in view onward still and onward, where there is rest and content- 
 ment : a sure inward proof that man is no animal, to dwell in the 
 Present and its delights, but a traveller onward through a road 
 which he wishes perpetually to end, and which will end. And 
 in despite of Heathen Morality upon the duty of dwelling in the 
 Present, in despite of Heathenism of belief, this* " feeling of the 
 Traveller," as the middle age Christians call it, ever shall make 
 man know that his dwelling is not here, but out of Time, out of 
 Space, in Eternity ! 
 
 We then tell not men to dwell in the Present, to fix no object in 
 the Future. We tell them to look through that flitting and change- 
 able future of things temporal that hitherto has been so unsatis- 
 factory, to look through this painted veil, this gorgeous bank of 
 sun-tinted clouds that we call Time, upon Eternity, and there 
 they shall find their true and satisfactory object of Purpose. The 
 power of purpose in us that exists in Time, leads us of its own 
 nature towards Eternity, thereunto it points, therein its proper 
 and peculiar end and object is. 
 
 Again, in this power of Purpose in the Will, besides this look- 
 ing to the Future, we see the fact of a self-imposed law. The Will 
 is not in man simple in action, but it acts according to Law ; in 
 the case of Purpose, to a law self-imposed and self-applied. A 
 motive, for instance, engrosses the mind of a man ; this motive he 
 
 * Animus Viatoris.
 
 THE HUMAN WILL. 
 
 has the power of making to be a law of his Will that shall hence- 
 forth work upon its action, and make it within him capable of 
 resisting, habitually and constantly, even stronger powers than 
 the original one has been. This is essentially one of the elements 
 of Purpose, the bringing of the will under the rule of a volun- 
 tary Law, for such it may be seen is the act of Purpose. The 
 man who says "I will," in reference to future action, he evidently 
 prescribes a law of action for that amount of time, to his Will. 
 
 Hence we see the relation of the Will, the faculty of Action, 
 to the Reason, the faculty of Law ; hence, too, we see the perma- 
 nent freedom of the Will reconciled to the fact of its being under 
 fixed law, that so far as it freely makes the principles of Eternal 
 Morality its Law of Purpose, so far it is permanently free : but 
 this subject has been so fully discussed in other parts of the book, 
 that we need not now more than indicate it. 
 
 But one may say, do not we see this second law of Purpose to 
 exist in the animals, this of a law self-imposed, that shall control 
 immediate desires ? 
 
 And we say, No ; you may see long and continuous action upon 
 a present motive, giving an appearance of Purpose, but when you 
 examine it closely, it is no Purpose, no law of action self-imposed, 
 but the permanence of an animal motive, inducing permanence 
 of action. The lion lies for days by the one lonely spring in the 
 African desert ; the wolves follow the track of a deer for days 
 together : here is continuance of action, from permanence of the 
 animal motive of hunger, that gone, the action comes to an end : 
 there is permanent action continuing under a motive as long as 
 that motive exists, but no Purpose. The animal not hungry 
 would not hunt, the man without hunger chases after animals 
 with the same perseverance, from a set purpose for the future, 
 under a determination self-imposed, and not necessarily under the 
 movement of an immediate appetite. 
 
 And when it is necessary that something should be done for 
 the Future by the mere animals, we find it done in them by an 
 irresistible instinct, framed and formed in entire accordance with 
 the circumstances of their natural habitation : and to confirm this 
 view of ours, that the animals have not, in such cases, any real 
 Purpose, but an instinct that in its stead prepares for the Future ; 
 when they are transferred to climates wherein circumstances are 
 different, we see them still acting upon the instinct, although it
 
 364 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 be idle ;* for purpose, properly so called, there is none in the 
 animals. Indeed, it is very hard to think that they have any 
 proper idea of the Future ; purpose and thought for the Future 
 belong to man as modes of Will, and Will is his as a part of his 
 Spiritual Nature. 
 
 Now, again and again, in the course of this book, we have 
 insisted upon the truth that there is a Spiritual Education an 
 education peculiarly belonging to the Moral Powers, and to be 
 conducted under its own rules and modes of training, and after 
 its own methods. And this is distinct entirely from Mental 
 Education, so distinct that the highest degree of Mental Cul- 
 tivation may exist with the lowest of moral development and of 
 Spiritual Education : and, then, we have laid it down again, that 
 Physical Education is distinct from the other two, each of the 
 three needing and requiring its peculiar knowledge in the teacher 
 and in the pupil, and its peculiar education, whether given by 
 another or self-imposed. 
 
 As an instance, we point out this Law of Purpose to parents 
 and instructors as a power of the Will peculiarly to be cultivated, 
 and the cultivation of which is a peculiar benefit. We mean, not 
 verbally but practically cultivated, not by a teacher who should 
 set a verbal lesson to memory, to be learned by rote, but by one 
 who had felt and known himself the facts we have noted and 
 their power. 
 
 Let such an one take a youth who is growing up, and is ordi- 
 narily intelligent; let him bring him, as Socrates brought his 
 pupils, to think upon his Spiritual Nature practically, to recog- 
 nise its powers and their relations, so that he shall have a gene- 
 ral view. 
 
 Then let him take this of the Will and its Purpose, and, by 
 easy illustrations, make him feel the power of Purpose, the 
 
 * Birds that migrate from one climate to another, about the particular time 
 show a great and overpowering uneasiness, the working of instinct preparing 
 them for their flight. Hibernating animals, on being transferred to tempe- 
 rate climates, do not sleep through the winter ; nevertheless, although the 
 need of it be gone, they often make all preparation for their winter's repose. 
 But perhaps the most ridiculous instance given in Natural History, is that 
 of a beaver, who, being kept as a pet in a gentleman's house in London, at 
 the set time built himself a dam out of the best materials he could find, 
 across the floor of a bed-chamber !
 
 THE HUMAN WILL. 365 
 
 capability of governance of the Will by a fixed Law, and the 
 duty of looking to the future with a fixed object ; and he shall 
 have done more for that youth than by giving him the knowledge 
 of twenty books of science or art.* And, then, if having his 
 confidence, and thence knowing his deficiencies, mentally or 
 morally, he shall teach him how to apply this knowledge he 
 shall realize his instruction, and make the youth feel it as true 
 and precious. 
 
 For, as regards talents or mental power, when we look at the 
 history of men celebrated for this, in nine cases out of ten we 
 shall find that it was some circumstance apparently fortuitous 
 that called into vehement action and vehemently developed some 
 one of those that we have called the Governing Powers, the 
 Conscience, the Heart, the Spiritual Keason, or the Will. And 
 that this, then, has awakened to action and developed the Mental 
 Powers ; especially manifest is this with regard to the Will. 
 Let any teacher, then, who is in doubt about the general prin- 
 ciple, let him take the most stupid, seemingly, of all his scholars, 
 get his confidence, instruct him practically with regard to the 
 power of the law of Purpose, teach him to apply it, and he 
 soon shall see, under its influence, mental power developing and 
 acting that perhaps he had not dreamed to exist. This I have 
 seen myself, in reference to many pupils who have come under 
 my care, and I believe others that try it will find it true, and 
 thence perhaps may be encouraged to test the assertion, and, 
 finding it true, to act upon it systematically. 
 
 * There has been, in this country, a great deal of good done, and a great 
 deal of harm, by "Foster's Essay upon Decision of Character." A great 
 deal of good, because in that essay he manifested, to many who had not 
 before known it, the power of a fixed and determined Will, and showed 
 practically, by very interesting narratives, what such a Will can effect. 
 
 A great deal of harm, because he taught the bare power of Will apart 
 from any law, and making itself its own law ; and, therefore, by the third 
 general principle of the governing powers, being in that evil. For the Will 
 that is ruled by itself, when it should be governed by Conscience, the Reason, 
 the Affections, is a curse. And to be taught merely the power of Will, 
 apart from its connection with these, is no advantage, but harm. 
 
 However, making this exception, I would advise all students of Ethical 
 Science, to read and think upon that essay. They will find it a most 
 important contribution to the Science of Morality. But, without this 
 exception, I recommend the book to no one ; and, to a certain character 
 of mind, I conceive it is capable of doing great and permanent injury.
 
 366 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 I have shown how the law of Purpose fixes for a man an ob- 
 ject in the Future, and how its leading and tendency is only 
 satisfied by an object in Eternity. I have shown, also, how 
 naturally and easily, through the same power, the man imposes 
 upon his Will a law and rule of action, internal and spiritual, 
 which is a Law. And yet, in it is freedom, in that very Law, 
 and in being ruled by it. 
 
 Now, the Christian who steadily looks at this power and in- 
 stinct of the inner man, he in it shall see how the faculties of 
 nature answer to the gospel privileges. The Unseen World, with 
 its joys and its crown of Life Eternal, held out for us to look 
 towards with the eyes of Faith ; this is that object upon 
 which the Purpose that is truly perfect must be fixed. And, so 
 directed, so guided, the action of the natural faculty is changed 
 into the Christian grace of Hope, fixing its sight upon the throne 
 and mount of God, and upon our Lord and Saviour Christ, there 
 sitting and making intercession for us. 
 
 Perfected then is Purpose of Will, when, illumined by the 
 light of heaven, it pierces through all the temporal things of 
 this visible world, glories alike and clouds, and sees through 
 them all the effulgence of Eternity. Then is the path of the 
 vessel directed across the waters, then it is guided aright by the 
 chart, steadied by the helmsman's hand, when Purpose is trans- 
 muted into Christian Hope, by means of faith, which, as the 
 Apostle tells us, is " the substance of things hoped for." 
 
 And then the Law of faith, the royal law of liberty, the 
 inward grace of the Holy Spirit, reigning and ruling in the 
 heart, this becomes the law of action that the Will imposes upon 
 itself. And, so governing itself by an inward Law, in accord- 
 ance with the inward faith, the Will is entirely under subjection 
 to the Law of Christ, and, by this, rules and guides itself. By 
 this, the natural faculty of Purpose, through the inward law of a 
 living faith, becomes the "assurance of (Christian) Hope," 
 the " anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast, and which entereth 
 into that within the veil."* 
 
 This is that alone which can render our Purpose perfect, both 
 in the object upon which it is fixed and in the Law self-imposed. 
 This only can make the Will perfect in this part of its faculties. 
 
 * Heb. vi. 19.
 
 THE HUMAN WILL. 367 
 
 And this will do it. This is that sure hope which "looks to 
 Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith," and thus finds in 
 Him alone its object in Eternity, and its rule and inward law for 
 the Will. So the inward faculty of Purpose of Will, this is con- 
 verted into a living Hope, looking immovably unto Christ the 
 Saviour, and as immovably ruling the man by the " law of the 
 liberty of the Gospel." 
 
 Purpose of Will becomes not Christian Hope of itself, by any 
 effort or struggle of its own ; but it is so crowned and perfected 
 by the influence of the Holy Spirit. Earthly faculties are 
 changed into heavenly powers and gifts, not of themselves, but 
 only by the "engrafted Word" and the "grace of the Spirit." 
 
 To him, therefore, who is regenerated, to him we would say, 
 to cease not to improve the grace of faith already possessed, by 
 ruling the Will inwardly, according to the " Law of Love," 
 the "perfect law of liberty," the "royal law" of our King, 
 making this, with the most inward earnestness of the Heart, the 
 rule of all purposes, and by all means of meditation and prayer 
 and inward thought, fixing the eye of faith steadily upon Christ 
 our Lord. 
 
 Thus shall the faculty and power of Purpose of Will be com- 
 pleted and perfected, and this world, which to the unstable is a 
 delusive and unsteady wilderness of changing objects, bewilder- 
 ing and confusing, this shall be seen with the "Mind of the 
 traveller." And, neither desirous to hasten our course nor yet 
 to loiter by the wayside, we shall travel onward with clear views 
 and distinct hopes until we reach our home ; for there is nothing 
 that so directs our course and so clears our views as "true Chris- 
 tian Hope :" this alone is that which perfects the faculty of Pur- 
 pose, and enables it to be complete, both in its action and in its 
 objects.
 
 368 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The question of Power. Man's Will originates Power, and is not merely 
 an agent of it. The evils of Fatalism, exemplified in a quotation from 
 Diderot. Man's Will is free in act and fact, when it coincides completely 
 with the Will of God, in Choice, in Purpose, in Power. 
 
 WE come now to the third prerogative of the Will, that of 
 Power ; a very difficult question, we admit, but still, one that 
 may be made, we believe, sufficiently plain, if first we clear away 
 the thorns and brambles of pertinacious and self-centred contro- 
 versy ; the arguments of men who uphold various modifications 
 of the fatalistic system, under the idea that such a scheme is 
 absolutely necessary for religion, and the counter arguments of 
 others, who cared nothing for truth, but only wished to be free 
 from restraint. Such, we think, are, on either side, the argu- 
 ments that have perplexed, not decided, this question. 
 
 Strange arguments ! of which the one side proves, that man 
 has no power, can do absolutely nothing ! and the other, that he 
 can do any thing he pleases ! is absolutely omnipotent ! and both 
 unite in relying upon abstract and verbal argument, and agree in 
 considering human nature and man's experience as generally de- 
 lusive ! We put these argumentations aside, and go straight to 
 the question, " Is there Power in the Will of Man ?" 
 
 Now, we have shown the vainness of the argument, with refer- 
 ence to " Cause and Effect," upon Choice and Liberty; manifest- 
 ing, in reference to that power of the Will, that while the Physical 
 World of the mere animals is bound up in a Causal system, 
 which, from without, predetermines their choice, man, because 
 he is a spiritual being, is free. And that this freedom consists 
 in this, that, as a spiritual being, man has the power of resisting 
 or admitting the motives which, so far as he is merely an animal, 
 would absolutely determine his Will. Again, the Power of Pur- 
 pose, which we have treated of in the last chapter, may be seen 
 to belong to man peculiarly as a spiritual being, inasmuch as no
 
 THE HUMAN WILL. 369 
 
 animal has Purpose. This, too, will set man apart from " the 
 great external system of Physical Causation. 
 
 In the same manner, by self-experience, we know, that we, 
 under certain conditions, exert Power, which originates from 
 ourselves, and is not under a physical law of causation in its 
 origin, or an absolute law of doom in its operation ; both of which 
 theories leave to man only an appearance of doing, and a self- 
 delusion by which he vainly imagines he does that which he only 
 seems to do. And both theories employ as their argument the 
 Law of Causation, the assertion that the system of the world is 
 driven by it, and that man is a mere part of that system or 
 machine. A mechanical system of the universe, in other words, 
 that asserts, that in His world, God does nothing, and is absent 
 himself, and that the only thing present is Power exerted ac- 
 cording to fixed law. 
 
 These three theories, viz. : first, of a Mechanical System of the 
 universe; secondly, of an Absent God; and, thirdly, of Mere 
 Power ; these are the premises that deny the Freedom of the 
 Will, whatever talk men may make about other matters and other 
 motives. Get men to believe in a Present God, a Father, a 
 Governor, a holy God, to be worshipped and loved, "upholding 
 all things by the Word of his power," " in whom we live and move 
 and have our being," and the fatalistic arguments soon vanish. 
 And then there is no difficulty in admitting of Free-will or free 
 Power in man. 
 
 But take these three vile and abominable notions, and the 
 man who takes them as true, consciously or unconsciously, must be 
 a physical and mechanical atheist, (so far as atheism is possible 
 to man,) or else an absolute Fatalist.* 
 
 *We speak advisedly, for such they are, being contradictory to the expiess 
 declaration of the Scriptures, to the truths of God's nature and being, and 
 to man's experience of his own inward constitution, and of the outward 
 face of the world, and the course of events. We say, then, that they are 
 vile and abominable, and their vileness consists in this, that the man who 
 holds them has no escape from a Pantheistic Atheism, save in a system of 
 Fatalistic Doom. For, if God be absent, I have no proof in the outward 
 world, and in my experience of a God. If I meet only power, I cannot argue 
 for a father most gracious, or for a moral governor, but only for one maker, 
 working on one plan, or twenty makers working on the same plan. And not 
 for an Almighty maker, but only for one sufficient in power to the work of 
 
 this material world. If it be only a mechanical system, this, with the other 
 
 47
 
 370 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 And but small choice there is between any kinds of fatalism, 
 if only they be consistent to their own principles. Although we 
 must always remark, that Human Nature in practice, to a greater 
 or less degree, renders men inconsistent in evil principle ; yet the 
 evil may be seen by the ensuing passage : it is a citation from 
 Denys Diderot, a physical and organical atheist; we take it 
 from "Upham on the Will:*" 
 
 "Examine it as you will," says M. Diderot, "and you will 
 see that the word liberty is a word devoid of meaning. That 
 there are not, and there cannot be, free beings ; that we are only 
 what accords with the general order, with our organization, our 
 education, and the chain of events. These dispose of us invin- 
 cibly. We can no more conceive of a being acting without a 
 motive, than we can of one of the arms of a balance acting 
 without a weight. The motive is always exterior and foreign, 
 fastened upon us by some cause distinct from ourselves. What 
 deceives us is the prodigious variety of our actions, joined to the 
 habit, which we catch at our birth, of confounding the voluntary 
 and the free. We have been so often praised and blamed, and have 
 so often praised and blamed others, that we contract an invete- 
 rate prejudice of believing that we and they will and act freely. 
 But, if there is no liberty, there is no action that merits either* 
 praise or blame, neither vice nor virtue, nothing that ought to be 
 either rewarded or punished," &c. 
 
 Here is physical Fatalism boldly and without subterfuge pro- 
 fessed ; founded and distinctly placed upon that " Cause and 
 Effect" doctrine from which we have shown man's Spiritual Na- 
 ture is free ; urged upon that logical quibble of motive, external 
 and irresistible, that we have exposed ; and boldly then driven out 
 to its natural consequences, that there is neither " vice nor virtue " 
 nothing that " ought to be rewarded or punished, praised or 
 blamed." 
 
 And that these are the natural consequences of a physical 
 fatalistic philosophy, every one can see who shall take the pre- 
 mises of Diderot, and go onward to his conclusions. The pro- 
 two, cuts off personality, makes all power and action mechanical, makes 
 all individuality vanish, all persons become parts of the great All, and 
 all things to be parts of the one machine. So that, to escape Atheistic 
 Pantheism, the reader must believe in a God of rigorous Destiny. 
 
 * Page 271.
 
 THE HUMAN WILL. 371 
 
 mises once established, the conclusions follow as a matter of course. 
 Only teach man that " motive externally and irresistibly deter- 
 mines the action and Will of man," and the morality of M. Dide- 
 rot follows as a matter of course, his theoretic morality we will 
 say, and his practical morality, both which were on a par ; 
 M. Diderot at least was consistent. 
 
 What then was his doctrine ? This that we have rejected, that 
 "motive acts upon man necessarily and invincibly;" so that his 
 Will is in every thing externally determined, and consequently 
 that all power in him existing, and by him exerted, is not in him 
 really, or by him actually exerted, but only apparently, in conse- 
 quence of this "causal machinery of sufficient motive." 
 
 The axe splits wood, and were it intelligent, would say, "I 
 split ;" but yet it is only the agent of power, not itself originating, 
 not itself exerting power : such is the man of the fatalist, a mere 
 tool through whom power flows, and by means of whom it is ex- 
 erted, but nothing more. And therefore, naturally the man that 
 holds this doctrine comes to the doctrinal and practical morality 
 of the celebrated Encyclopaedist, M. Denys Diderot. 
 
 Now, in opposition to this, we shall say that man has these two 
 qualities : first, that he originates power, and secondly, that he 
 voluntarily exerts it and applies it. I say not, that all the power 
 that he exerts and applies is originated in himself, for this would 
 not be true; but some power unquestionably he does originate, and 
 other power he applies, and both independently of the law of 
 Causation. 
 
 Let one look at it, and seeing man " is made in the image of God," 
 he shall find it no more difficult to believe that God has made man 
 capable, voluntarily and freely, of originating power by his being 
 and nature, than that he should have made plants capable of pro- 
 ducing particular fruit. And everywhere this is the natural feeling 
 and the natural persuasion of the race : they feel that it is a faculty 
 belonging to their being, they feel it to be theirs, in their consti- 
 tution, truly and really belonging to them. And why men should 
 allow " this is your faculty of sight, this is your faculty of muscular 
 action, this your faculty of thought," and then turn round and 
 assert that the sum total of these, which they had allowed in 
 separate items to be man's, was not his ! is very hard to say, 
 except that the mind is preoccupied with these three prejudices 
 above mentioned, framed into a system. Why as to other parts
 
 372 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 of our nature, men should acknowledge that this, because you feel 
 it to be so, is a faculty of nature having such and such products, 
 you call them yours, and such they are, for you have had a 
 life-long knowledge and consciousness of their possession, and 
 your neighbours see and know the same ; " but with regard to 
 this one only, you are mistaken, your Will that you count free is 
 not free ; the Power that you exert, you only seem to exert ; 
 your will is bound ; of that power you are only the agent, you are 
 a puppet, and although you feel no wires, yet they are there, and 
 you are a puppet, made of wood and leather, completely and 
 entirely 1" Why men should talk in this way, it is very hard 
 to see. 
 
 And by what means they have got it into their head that such 
 notions, which make of man a mere machine, tend to exalt the 
 character of God ! is stranger still. 
 
 But the persuasion and knowledge of man that he can act by a 
 power originating in his Will, is a sufficient refutation of all these 
 specious paradoxes. The fact that to hold them does, if we are 
 consistent, lead at once, as in the case of Diderot, to the denial of 
 any responsibility and to the destruction of all moral distinctions,* 
 this I think is sufficient to exclude them from being held by any 
 who desire to think of man as a moral being. 
 
 We hold then that man is no mere agent and instrument of 
 Power through whom it flows, as the lever is, physically ; that he 
 is no puppet made of wood and pulled by a wire or string, at 
 the same time that he thinks he acts ; that he is not a part of a 
 piece of machinery, driven by the same force as the rest, and 
 imagining that he is an individual being, when he is only a 
 wheel or pinion of one machine; we believe not that he is the 
 agent of an infinite doom, or a resistless physical law that actuates 
 him unconquerably. This, man is not. 
 
 * I ask honestly and calmly of any thinking man, to take the premises of 
 Diderot, and go over them, and he shall see that they absolutely infer Dide- 
 rot's conclusion, that is, the denial of all morality, and the freedom unto all 
 vice and wickedness. Fatalism, Jield consistently and acted upon, implies- 
 viciousness of life. I would also ask the same person to go over the ethical 
 doctrines of Christianity, and to ask himself, Do not these doctrines encou- 
 rage morality ? "Will not every husband and wife, every father and mother, 
 every son and daughter, who attempts to go earnestly and consistently upon 
 these principles, be more virtuous, more pure, more lovely in the eyes of God 
 and of man ? Surely it is and must be so.
 
 THE HUMAN WILL. 373 
 
 But "made in the image of God," as God has of himself 
 power, so is man given of himself to have power, to originate it, 
 to apply it : it is a faculty of his being, a gift that God has given 
 him ; originating in himself freely, apart from the causal neces- 
 sity of motive, save so far as he will permit himself to be ruled by 
 the Animal Nature, which in him is conjoined with the Spiritual. 
 
 The first objection that will be made is, Shall not this then 
 give too much to man ? is not man then made a God, and able to 
 do precisely as he will ? The answer to this I have given in the 
 chapter upon Circumstance ; and there it will be seen, that while 
 man really and truly, by an inward force, exerts power, yet is 
 there another personal force externally applied, that controls the 
 result in a very remarkable way, a power, to use the beautiful 
 language of the poet : 
 
 " That shapes our ends, 
 Rough-hew them as we may." 
 
 Our reader, then, will see that strongly soever as we may act, 
 there is, external to us, a personal Being, gracious, merciful, and 
 holy, as well as omnipotent, who guides all our efforts and controls 
 their results, not according to doom or a fatalistic decree, but with 
 the all-seeing wisdom of a present and personal God. 
 
 So are there two forces that guide the course of man's life, of 
 which two it is the resultant, his power and the power of God, 
 and this gives, as the practical solution of the question of Free- 
 dom, this answer : " When the two powers coincide and are one 
 completely and entirely, then is the man free : when his will, in 
 the direction that he spontaneously gives it, coincides with the 
 Will of God, then these two forces become one, and the man goes 
 onward entirely and completely free as far as regards effect and 
 power." Then his own power from himself arising, and the power 
 and operation of external circumstance so unite, that the waves 
 that ordinarily do oppose, bear him onward, the winds favour, 
 and all things outward coincide with all things inward, in driving 
 the man onward upon his course. 
 
 That such is the case often, the experience of all men can tell ; 
 that it is not exclusively the case with the good, but that for par- 
 ticular purposes, by the wisdom of the Almighty, such a power, 
 and such a direction of Will, and such success are often given to
 
 374 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 the evil, is the experience of all ages.* And the meditative wis- 
 dom of ancient Greece considered such invariable success in those 
 that were evil, a proof of Divine wrath and jealousy, and pro- 
 phetic of utter ruin. And, indeed, such it often is. 
 
 With regard to the Christian who lives in Faith fixed upon the 
 Unseen, according to the law of grace, he shall find that in him, 
 if he live under the law of God's grace, that his "Will coinciding 
 and agreeing with God's Will, he is free perfectly and completely, 
 and he alone ; Circumstances may not yield to his power, but may 
 control it ; success may be denied to his best efforts, prosperity 
 may not be granted, yet let him bind his Will to that of Gf-od, and 
 therein he shall find Freedom. And more than this, Providence 
 protecting him, with the invisible foresight of omniscience, from 
 perils which himself could not have avoided ; sheltering him from 
 accidents no power of his own could ward off, no subtlety escape ; 
 upholding him with the mind of a father, staying and guiding the 
 steps of a feeble infant ; and correcting and destroying, by the 
 action of circumstance, faults that he himself could never become 
 conscious of: almighty power, omniscient wisdom, infinite mer- 
 cy ; these thus wait upon and belong unto that man who, in cove- 
 nant with Grod, rules and guides his Will according to the Will 
 of the Eternal, the Law of Holiness and Grace ! 
 
 He is free in thought and act, free in the power of Grace 
 through Jesus Christ ! and to him, thus perfect, and to him alone, 
 his nature fulfils its intended purposes. To him the external 
 world is that which to all men it should be. And Society, in 
 reference to him, exerts its complete effect as a school of teaching. 
 All things internal and all things external coincide ; inward Na- 
 ture and outward Circumstance are brought into that harmony of 
 
 * Often this stern energy of Will and the invariable success attending it are 
 wondered at, and attributed to the man by all around him, and even by him- 
 self, when it is a truth, that the vessel is only in the current of Almighty 
 power, sweeping onward to a certain point, as a vessel of deserved wrath, or 
 laden with mercy. And succeeding ages begin to see, when the results have 
 unfolded themselves in History, that behind the man lay the purpose of God, 
 behind his Will, the almighty Will of the omniscient God. The thought is 
 gradually unfolding itself, especially in respect to the Emperor Napoleon ; 
 men are beginning to see how uses and ends in the policy of the world that 
 lie never intended, have come forth from his strong will set firmly toward selfish 
 ends, and wholly unconscious of the power that lay behind him, and of the 
 issues that were in the future.
 
 THE HUMAN WILL. 375 
 
 action and reaction that ought to exist between them, and the 
 man is free. And this is not, as I have said, of himself or by him- 
 self, but the nature of man is harmonized with the sphere of 
 external circumstance only by Grace. And the height and com- 
 pletion of this is, that his Will should be under the Will of God, 
 perfectly and entirely obedient to it, in its three faculties of 
 Choice, of Purpose, and of Action. Upon these three we have 
 treated, and this completes our discussion of the Will. 
 
 GENERAL CONCLUDING REMARKS. 
 
 WE have now brought our work to a conclusion. The Affec- 
 tions we have treated upon in two books. The Affections in 
 the Nation, this we might have discussed in another book, but 
 it would have made the volume too large. And Law in the Na- 
 tion is to one part of Ethics what Religion in the Church is to 
 another division of the same science, the completion of it ; Law 
 is the objective and external science, which is the completion of 
 the Ethical discussion : the sum, therefore of that which we would 
 have said would have been these two practical precepts : " Obey 
 the Law at all risks, and in every way uphold it and support it, 
 and give it in the State the supremacy over all Self-will." And 
 secondly, " Do your best that it may come as near the Eternal 
 Law of the Almighty, that which is written upon Man's heart inter- 
 nally, and manifested by God externally, as may be," these two 
 and their reasons in man's nature and position, would have afford- 
 ed a wide field. We give the precepts, and omit the Ethical 
 illustrations and development, for the reasons above given. 
 
 The Affections in the Church, this we have also omitted, 
 for a reason very plain indeed ; it leads us directly into the dis- 
 cussion of "Spiritual Ethics," or of "Practical Christianity," 
 that is, of the Ethics that ensues from the peculiar position of 
 Human Nature in Covenant with God. The Ethics of a human 
 being endued with this high privilege, placed in this lofty position, 
 while manifestly it is not opposite to that of the man who is
 
 376 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 of Nature only, not of Grace ; has only the capabilities, instead 
 of the gifts, but is the crowning and completion of it, is 
 still something infinitely higher and infinitely more perfect. As 
 the stately palm in the desert, crowned with its diadem of leaves 
 at once, and flowers and fruit, is to the date borne in the hand of 
 the wandering Arab, so is the true Science of the Christian Life 
 to the loftiest and truest philosophy of Nature apart from Grace. 
 In both cases, it is true, the germ exists the same, but in the latter 
 the influences are wanting that shall develope it. 
 
 That germ in the case of the natural man, the Spiritual Nature 
 that is in him existing, which renders him capable of Grace, I 
 have in this book treated of. Spiritual Ethics, the Ethics of Man 
 in Covenant with God, is a distinct and higher part of the same 
 science, and is practical Christianity. At some future time in 
 the ripeness of maturer years, and by the light of fuller know- 
 ledge, I may enter upon the examination of this loftier science. 
 
 In the mean time I would say, upon these elements, in this book 
 developed, even this depends: just as the highest Astronomy 
 takes for granted the humbler science of elementary Geometry, 
 so the highest Christian philosophy is founded upon these doc- 
 trines of Man's Nature, these that bring forth and manifest its 
 adaptedness to all external influences, to Society, to the system 
 of God's Providence, and of his Creation, and through all these 
 means to the Infinite and Eternal God himself ! And the reli- 
 gion that denies or falsifies these truths may, by adventitious 
 circumstances, remain for a time, but it is about to perish and be 
 taken away. The true doctrines of the Internal Nature of Man 
 nd of his Position, are the very elements of all practical reli- 
 gion, even of the loftiest. 
 
 I must now, in all justice to my reader, tell him that the system 
 I have here laid before him is not a system of my own, invented 
 by myself, but that it is the Ethical Science of the first Christians, 
 as far as I have been able to distinguish and feel it. This I have, 
 as it were, translated into the thought of our age and time, out of 
 the thought of men of different ages and different times. That 
 is, I have attempted to present, in a scientific form, as a system, 
 before the ordinary reader, the Ethics of Christianity, as held by 
 the church unbroken, before the ambition of Rome and the prag- 
 matical spirit of Constantinople had rent the church in two. For 
 much as men may have forgotten the idea, there was a time, and
 
 THE HUMAN WILL. 377 
 
 that time lasted for ten centuries, when the church was one. 
 This Ethics of the church undivided, I have then attempted to 
 present to the men of this age and this time. 
 
 I have not said all I could say upon each point, only that which 
 I counted enough to convince, and therefore the reader or teacher 
 will often find a multitude of confirmatory arguments and facts 
 capable of being adduced, which I have not adduced. To the 
 teacher, this will be a good exercise of teaching, to the reader, 
 of thought. But I have been forced to omit a multitude of such 
 things, even thoughts and facts that were to me most delightful, 
 and which I was convinced would be to the reader very interest- 
 ing. The nature of the science as "Subjective," resting for a 
 good part of its proof upon the self-experience of the man and 
 of the race, will sufficiently account for this. 
 
 I would now, as respects my readers, address to them a few 
 words in reference to the book and its results upon them. If the 
 reader who has gone thus far is contented with it, thinks that it 
 gives a sufficient and satisfactory account of Human Nature, its 
 problems, and their solution, in the first place I claim from him 
 no praise, personally, in this book. I profess to present the Ethics 
 of the Ancient Church. Augustine, Athanasius, Cyril, Cyprian, 
 Origen, Tertullian, these men whom every puny writer of the present 
 day thinks himself privileged to scorn at, these are the sources 
 from which I have obtained the principles here presented in a 
 connected form, men who, often by the meditation of a whole 
 life of holiness and self-denial, thought out and established for 
 ever the Christian solution of a single one of the problems of 
 nature herein discussed ! These results the theologian will often 
 discern in these pages, given in a few lines, while, in the original, 
 volumes hardly embrace their discussion. For myself, therefore, 
 I claim no praise of originality or of genius ; but that one, of bring- 
 ing again before the world, in a shape to every one tangible, the 
 Ethical Science of Apostolic Christianity, undivided and at 
 unity with itself. 
 
 So far, with regard to myself, I have said to him, who has thus 
 far read the treatise, with satisfaction ; now, with regard to him- 
 self, I say, if he be convinced of the truth of these principles, 
 let him not for a moment abide in a barren philosophy, but act 
 upon the principles herein laid down. Let him begin to cultivate 
 
 his Spiritual Inward Nature at all risks, and under all pain and 
 
 48
 
 378 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 loss to make it the ruling and supreme governor of his action, 
 it as perfected and aided by the external influences, through 
 which alone it can be complete in its functions and in its action. 
 This he must do, if he would draw the proper advantage from 
 this book ; and the book itself in its several parts, I believe, will 
 be found to contain directions for this mode of action. So far 
 with regard to moral Self-cultivation. 
 
 And if, with regard to himself, he has found these principles 
 of the Science of ancient Christianity efficient, I would most 
 vehemently urge upon him to exemplify them in the family, the 
 Home wherein, by God's decree, he has been placed, not to live 
 as an unit, an individual, but as part of a divinely appointed 
 institution. In the Home, then, I would urge the Father, the 
 Mother, the Sister, the Brother, to live up to and distinctly to 
 exemplify the principles herein laid down ; for, too much has it 
 been forgotten, that the Home is, for those within it, a sphere 
 peculiar and exclusive, wherein there is for its members a pecu- 
 liar religious and moral work to do, which there can be done and 
 nowhere else, by them and by no one else. There is moral teach- 
 ing, "with which no man meddleth," as well as sorrow and joy, 
 exclusive of those that are without. 
 
 But, moreover, I would urge the person who has read this 
 attempt toward a Christian science, and approves of it for him- 
 self and for his family, to put it into the hand of the growing 
 and intelligent youth with whom he is acquainted. The expe- 
 rience of the writer tells him, that for those especially who, in 
 childhood and youth, have been neglected by parents, untrained 
 in the holy teachings of the gospel, there is a period wherein all 
 the problems " of our nature and of our position" rush up and 
 demand a solution ; and the youth then is in great doubt ; his 
 nature demands a true answer ; and, alas ! so false is the ordinary 
 Ethics of Christianity, that but seldom that true answer is given. 
 Hence are multitudes in our land Non-professors, for the want of 
 a true Christian philosophy of man's Nature and his Position. 
 This the author has tried to give, not as his own, but as that of 
 the old Christian church. If the reader, then, clerical or lay, 
 finds then, that, even in a degree, this book answers that want, 
 the author would ask of him, whithersoever this book may wander, 
 to bring it into the hands of thoughtful and serious youth, who 
 are in that crisis of life alluded to.
 
 THE HUMAN WILL. 379 
 
 And, with this remark, the author will bid his reader God 
 speed. He has now come to the end of a laborious work, which 
 he felt to be needed. He has worked upon it sincerely and 
 ardently, for he knew of no book embracing the subjects treated 
 upon herein, so as to be accessible to the mass of readers, and at 
 the same time pleasing to them. How he has succeeded time 
 will tell ; but if the reader feels that the author has so far suc- 
 ceeded as to supply, even in a small degree, the great want of a 
 book upon these subjects, the author would ask of him, not to let 
 the book rest upon his shelves, but to bring it before the notice 
 of those to whom it is likely to be of service. 
 
 And, if the author has not succeeded, at least, he has at- 
 tempted that which must one day or other be done, the answer- 
 ing truly, according to the sentiment of the Ancient Church, the 
 problems that arise in the mind of all men born upon the earth. 
 He has felt that one great want of Christianity, at this day, is 
 the want of a true Christian Ethics, and in his measure, accord- 
 ing to his ability, has done his best to supply it. And if he have 
 not succeeded, still to have felt the want, to have known where- 
 from it could be supplied, and to have laboured towards that end 
 sincerely, is enough. 
 
 But he has better hopes, that this his book will be found to 
 give true answers to these questions, according to the plan pro- 
 posed, to remove the difficulties that have hitherto kept away 
 multitudes from Christianity, to satisfy objections, and to hold up 
 the clear light of Christian philosophy upon the dark and dubi- 
 ous problems which so perplex, in this day, all men, and especially 
 the young. 
 
 And this if he have done in one case, if he have cleared the 
 path of one from the obstructions that a Heathen Philosophy 
 places in the way of men "who would enter in," if he thus, 
 from the way of one individual, has been efficient to remove " an 
 offence," the author has faith to believe, that in the final account 
 he shall not be without his due reward. With this hope he bids 
 his reader God speed. 
 
 THE END.
 
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