impressions of light and transparency from other objects which,
nevertheless, owing to their necessarily unperceived form, are not
perfectly nor affectingly beautiful. A fair forehead outshines its
diamond diadem. The sparkle of the cascade withdraws not our eyes from
the snowy summits in their evening silence.
Sec. 6. Purity only metaphorically a type of sinlessness.
It may seem strange to many readers that I have not spoken of purity in
that sense in which it is most frequently used, as a type of
sinlessness. I do not deny that the frequent metaphorical use of it in
Scripture may have and ought to have much influence on the sympathies
with which we regard it, and that probably the immediate agreeableness
of it to most minds arises far more from this source than from that to
which I have chosen to attribute it. But, in the first place, if it be
indeed in the signs of Divine and not of human attributes that beauty
consists, I see not how the idea of sin can be formed with respect to
the Deity, for it is an idea of a relation borne by us to Him, and not
in any way to be attached to his abstract nature. And if the idea of sin
is incapable of being formed with respect to Him, so also is its
negative, for we cannot form an idea of negation, where we cannot form
an idea of presence. If for instance one could conceive of taste or
flavor in a proposition of Euclid, so also might we of insipidity, but
if not of the one, then not of the other. So that, in speaking of the
goodness of God, it cannot be that we mean anything more than his Love,
Mercifulness, and Justice, and these attributes I have shown to be
expressed by other qualities of beauty, and I cannot trace any rational
connection between them and the idea of spotlessness in matter. Neither
can I trace any more distinct relation between this idea, and any of the
virtues which make up the righteousness of man, except perhaps those of
truth and openness, of which I have already spoken as more expressed by
the transparency than the mere purity of matter. So that I conceive the
whole use of the terms purity, spotlessness, etc., in moral subjects, to
be merely metaphorical, and that it is rather that we illustrate these
virtues by the desirableness of material purity, than that we desire
material purity because it is illustrative of these virtues.
Sec. 7. Energy, how expressed by purity of matter.
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