consolation remote from Earth, is not to be ascribed to a Disposition to
substitute one emotion for another, as if it hoped to find relief in
dispelling and blotting out the vain passion with which it laboured
before: but, in the very constitution of the Soul, the capacities of
human and of divine affection are linked together; and it is the very
depth of its passion that leads it over from the one to the other. Nor
is its consolation forgetfulness. But that affection which was wounded
becomes even more deep and tender in the midst of the calm which it
attains.
SEWARD.
Assuredly such a spectator of human nature as we have imagined could not
be indifferent to such a tendency of these natural emotions. He could
not observe with unconcern even the nascent streaks of light, the
dawning of a religious mind. He would call that GOOD which, though it
had no distinct and conscious reference to anything above the Earth, did
yet, by the very preparation it made in the Soul for the reception of
something more holy, vindicate to itself a heavenly origin.
NORTH.
Even the Ancients, contemplating that Power in the Mind which judges so
supremely of Right and Wrong, could call it nothing else than a God
within us. He then who, in the highest light of knowledge, contemplates
the human mind, will be yet more strongly impressed with this SANCTITY
of the Conscience, which affected even minds lying under much darkness
and abasement, and therefore alienated from such perceptions. He
undoubtedly will regard this principle as a part of original Religion
not yet extinct in the Soul: will, as such, esteem and revere it; and
conceiving the highest perfection of human nature to consist in its
known and willed Conformity to the Divine Will, will regard with kindred
feelings even this imperfect and unconscious conformity to that Law,
which is thus maintained by the human spirit, resolutely and proudly
struggling, in the midst of its errors, against a yet deeper fall.
TALBOYS.
And, sir, it must be remembered that, as the degrees of moral goodness
are different in the various dispositions and actions of men, though
they all fall under the description of one morality; so, too, the
feeling of moral approbation exists in very different degrees in
different minds, though in all it bears a common name. If the moral
sensibility is not enlightened and quickened by those feelings which
belong to its most perfect state, its judgments will be proportionally
faint and low. As in its virtue there is a lower virtue, which tends
merely to a Harmony with the Divine Will, so, in the judgment of virtue,
there is a lower judgment, which implies no more than that he who judges
has his own mind brought into a state in which there is a tendency to
the same sacred and solemn apprehensions.
NORTH.
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