Whatever is vigorous and healthful in the one kind of existence, or holy
and happy in the other, is of God, whose power and goodness are,
throughout the universe, the natural, not the supernatural cause of
whatever is not evil. It were then a strange supposition to imagine that
this impartation of virtue and happiness may be perceptible to the
subject of it, like the access of a foreign and extraordinary influence;
or that while the creative agency is altogether undistinguishable amid
the movements of animal and intellectual life, the spiritual agency
which conveys the warmth and activity of virtue to the soul, is
otherwise than inscrutable in its mode of operation. As the one kind of
divine energy does not display its presence by convulsive or capricious
irregularities, but by the unnoticed vigor and promptitude of the
functions of life; so the other energy cannot, without irreverence, be
thought of as making itself felt by præter-natural impulses, or sensible
shocks upon the intellectual system; but must rather be imagined as an
equable pulse of life, throbbing from within, and diffusing softness,
sensibility and force through the soul.
It is indeed true that if death or torpor has long held the moral powers
in a state of suspended action, the returning principle of life, while
working its way in contrariety to such a derangement of the system, may
make itself felt otherwise than where no similar obstruction has to be
overcome; yet will it only be perceived by its collision with the evils
that have usurped the heart; not by its own spontaneous movements. These
are, in truth, the foreign and disturbing influences; it is these that
make themselves known by their abrupt and capricious activity, by their
convulsive or feverish force. Meanwhile the heavenly emanation which
heals, cleanses, and blesses the spirit is still, and constant, and
transparent, as "a well of water springing up unto eternal life."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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