graduated principle, of which we are speaking, supplied the law by which he was to make the selection of objects under whose influence he would live; he was to surrender himself up to them in proportion to their tendency to educate his own nature, to develop his powers of self-government, and thus to invest him with the greatest amount of improving influence over others. The value of every act he performed, and of every habit he acquired, was to be estimated by the same rule; from the movement which took him into the immediate presence of the Deity to the lowliest duty of ordinary life.

16. And as the race multiplied, the value and the place of every member of it was to be decided by the same test. In the eye of God's great principle of classification, no two human beings would stand in precisely the same subjective relation to Him, or exercise precisely the same kind and degree of hallowing influence upon others. He who approached nearest to the model of the Divine excellence would necessarily be the object of the greatest admiration. And as admiration leads, by a law of our nature, to imitation, men were to be always advancing towards higher and higher degrees of perfection. Inferior excellence, being constantly drawn upwards by the strong moral attraction of that which was above it, a process of assimilation to the blessed God would have been constantly going on, which would have rendered earth a copy of heaven. The laws of influence and of subordination would have universally prevailed; or every one would have occupied a relation in the great system of means, according to his power of subserving the ultimate end.

CHAPTER XL

OBLIGATION.

"Every human great end of his

1. RELATIONS give rise to obligations. being exists under obligations to promote the existence, commensurate with his relations." So that he is under at least as many obligations as are the relations which he sustains; each of his obligations differs with the corresponding relation; and every change or increase of the relations involves a change and increase of the obligations. What, then, are his relations? We have seen that he sustains relations of depen

dence and influence, of order and subordination. All these he is bound to study, in order that he may know his obligations. He is endowed with intellect expressly that he may know them.

2. Observing the same order as that in which we treated of man's relations, in the seventh chapter, we begin with the obligations which respect his constitution coexistently considered.

There are relations between the various parts of his physical, his organic, and his animal systems respectively; and between these three systems mutually and collectively. Then, each of these relations, as far as he has the means of understanding it, or the power of influencing it, brings with it an obligation which requires him to preserve it in harmony with all the rest, according to its rank in the human constitution. He can neither dwarf nor develope either of these parts of his nature beyond a certain point, without injuriously affecting the claims of every other part, and proportionally unfitting himself for answering the end of his being. Much less can he, either by a slow process, or by a violent act, extinguish his life, without doing violence to every law of obligation he is under. By such an act, he is virtually attempting to take himself out of the loftiest system of relations the universe can ever know; to deface one of the most glorious representations of God the universe contains; and is doing all he can to defeat the great end for which the universe exists.

3. As a sentient being, endowed with intelligence, he is bound to do all he can, consistent with other things, for the protection, activity, and well-being, of the organs and nervous apparatus placed at his disposal.. The impressions received through the medium of one sense, are to be compared with, and corrected by, those received through another, and the whole to be submitted to the judgment, and thus the organs of sense are to beas, indeed, they must have been with the first man - always in a state of education.

4. Man can reflect; and, as such, he is under obligation to bend over, look in upon, and ascertain the properties and laws and ever-varying manifestations of that mental and moral world, unknown to external nature, which exists within him. He is to mark the distinction between thought and its products, between the mind and the truths which the mind excogitates. He is to study the legitimate process of the mind in reasoning, or the logical connection traceable between one state of mind and another; to mark the causes most likely to disturb that connection, and to avoid them; and to observe that the truth of

his own consciousness is the condition of the possibility of all his knowledge.

5. As a being of reason, he is bound to remark that every act of reasoning points to a fact out of himself, and in which it rests; that the particular presupposes the universal; the contingent, the necessary; the subjective, the objective; and that, in reference to these ultimate facts, his intellectual life is a continual series of beliefs. To stop short of the perception of these ultimate facts, is to terminate a voyage in the middle of the Atlantic. By pursuing any truth either to its origin or its end, the mind logically arrives at the infinite-God. Hence the language of the Apostle, "because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God hath showed it unto them; so that they are without excuse."

6. Imagination imposes another obligation. Its sphere is the possible, and its office to create. If it exist in excess, man is in danger of surrounding himself with objects and worlds at variance with the interests of the present, of surrendering himself to the ideal to the neglect of the actual. If it be deficient, another class of dangers are incurred; the mind is liable to be so absorbed by the actual and the present, as to be insensible to the possible and the future, insensible even to those suggestions respecting the invisible to which the visible was intended to lead. Man is under obligation, therefore, to acquaint himself with the mediating faculty of his nature, and to direct, repress, or encourage it, according as its tendency and the measure of its activity may require.

7. The power of employing language, with which man is endowed, increases his obligations. For although we are not now speaking of the use which he makes of it in his communication with others, his obligations respecting it are logically prior to his actual employment of it in speech. There is an internal discourse (sermo internus) as well as an external discourse. Language is an instrument of thought, as well as a means of imparting our thoughts. And there is a tendency in words to become "incantations." "Like the Tartar's bow, they direct their attack backward on the intellect, whence they have had their origin." Or, if a man breathe the softest whisper in soliloquy, it reacts with certain effect upon himself. His own mind is a whispering-gallery in which the lightest utterance reverberates for ever.

8. As a being capable of motives, he is bound to mark what part of his nature is most easily moved his appetites, his self

love, his affections, or his sense of duty; what view of an ob ject most easily moves it; and what the degree is to which it is moved. It is only in this way that he can become acquainted with that natural character imparted by physical temperament, which, however susceptible of modification and direction, always gives a complexion to the moral character of its possessor, and distinguishes him from every other human being. The discovery of the precise locality of the poles, would be as nothing to him, compared with the knowledge of his own character.

9. Man is a voluntary being, and is bound to remember the high and solemn office of his will; that to will is to act; that his will is the executive power of the kingdom within him. He is to mark its individual character, whether it be hasty or deliberate in its decisions, feeble or energetic in carrying them into effect that it may receive the appropriate treatment.

10. But each volition sustains a relation to his conscience, as a movement which ought, or ought not, to be. Then he is bound, before he wills or resolves on an action, to be satisfied that it is morally right; to pause if he even doubts respecting its rectitude; to respect the softest whisper, the least movement, of conscience; and thus to "make conscience" of everything. When he has performed it, he ought to examine the intention with which he acted; to live in the salutary dread of violating conscience; and thus to recognize its sacredness and supremacy. As he is a voluntary being, he is not to expect that conscience will speak in thunder and lightning except in extreme cases; but is to act on the remembrance that the perfection of conscience is that it speaks loud enough to be heard by the attentive ear, but not so loud as to affright or force the voluntary part of his nature.

11. Not only does every part of man's nature bring with it a corresponding obligation, but every moment in which it exists continues, and even increases, each of these obligations. His internal nature has a history no less than his external proceedings. Let it be conceived that each faculty and function of his intellectual constitution has been bestowed on him separately and in slow succession, and the profound interest which would have been attached to his internal history may be easily imagined. But that interest is not really less because they all coexist potentially from the first. For their actual awakening takes place gradually. They become adjusted and related to their proper objects in slow succession. And as this awakening of the internal relations is from the less to the greater, the change

of the man's obligations is from the less to the more numerous and imperative. It is impossible for him to do what he is bound to do in reference to the different parts of his constitution, without becoming more and more capable of virtue; and for this progressive capacity he is held responsible. He cannot legitimately exercise his intellectual powers, for instance, without obtaining an increase of knowledge: his memory retains the past; his attention acquires a command over the present; and habit facilitates his acquisition for the future. He cannot rightly cultivate the emotional part of his nature, without finding himself increasingly moved by objects according to their real worth. The appropriate exercise of conscience, every time it is called into action, cannot fail to increase the promptitude and authority of its decisions. While the habit of thus knowing, appreciating, and morally discriminating, which these voluntary acts tend to form, increases his means of improvement for all time to come.

12. Besides this, the different parts of his nature are mutually related and as their progressive enlargement depends on the harmonious combination of the whole, he is answerable for that. They range in a graduated scale in which each has its place, so that the lowest cannot be disparaged nor the highest overrated, without injury to the whole. At every moment of his existence, he is responsible for such a capacity for virtue as he would have acquired by the perfect cultivation, through every previous moment of his being, of all his powers in harmonious combination; such a capacity for virtue being the only capacity "adapted to the responsibilities of that particular moment." Mere sinlessness, even for a moment, is impossible. The nature of a moral being involves the necessity, at every moment, of actual compliance with every known claim of law, or else the actual refusal of such compliance. He is held responsible, from moment to moment, not merely for sinlessness, but also for all the positive excellence which it had been in his power to attain. "That is to say, under the present moral constitution, every man is justly held responsible, at every period of his existence, for that degree of virtue of which he would have been capable, had he, from the first moment of his existence, improved his moral nature, in every respect, just as he ought to have done." * It can hardly be necessary to repeat, that, in order to justify this ever-increasing responsibility, man is sup

* Wayland's Moral Science, c. iii. § 2.