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obstructed, that we are in some sense ❝ partakers of a Divine nature," and that there is scarcely any height or purity of virtue which, by due cultivation, the human powers are not capable of reaching.

It is of the very first moment to have these ideas of what man may be, and actually in living instances has been, in full operation, if we would have our moral sensibility maintained in its highest and purest form;—and, with this view, it is good to be familiar with the study of the pure examples of virtue with which the past history of the world may furnish us. It is on this account, as we formerly noticed, that the "perfect example of the Author of Christianity" is of such unspeakable value for the moral regeneration of the human heart; and, in the same view, it is good to be acquainted with, and in the habit of meditating on, the characters and actions of the eminently good and great of all past times. These, in the dimness of forgotten ages, appear to us with something of the lineaments and the grandeur of a Divine nature;—and thus falling in with the most excited state of our imaginations, they preserve in us a conviction of what human nature may be, and actually has been, and prepare us for seeking in some measure to realize in our own

characters the pure and high conceptions that have become familiar to us, and which we believe to be capable of actual realization.

In the third place, it is of great moment to every man who aims at the cultivation of his moral feelings, to be especially careful as to the characters of those with whom he is most in the habit of associating ;-for a man's intimate friends not only have a great influence on his happiness, but almost form his very character,-and, at any rate, the society of persons of delicate moral perceptions is one of the most obvious and powerful of all means for communicating a corresponding delicacy to those who are familiar with them.

In the fourth place, it is a fact, that all the parts of our sentimental nature are finely connected, and exert an influence on each other;-and an obvious consequence of this fact is, that where there is a tendency to moral sensibility in any character, that tendency will be strengthened by the delicacy given to his sentient nature generally, by familiarity with the fine productions of Art or of Nature. All the fine arts, poetry,-painting,-music,-and the kindred studies;-familiarity, too, with beautiful and

grand views of external nature,-and a habit of daily reverting to the contemplation of them,-are all helps, in a mind already virtuously disposed, for carrying virtuous sentiment to its highest pitch ;—or rather the feelings which these beautiful or grand productions awaken, run, by a very natural process, into that peculiar feeling which is awakened by what is strictly the beautiful in action,—and are thus but portions of one fine mechanism which pervades and distinguishes the human soul.

In the last place, the moral sensibility of the human soul is, in one sense, the most easily affected of all things either for good or evil,—and the most important of all rules for elevating its sensibility, is that which directs that "the very appearance of evil" should be avoided,—and that, even in the apparently least important things, the voice of duty should be instantly obeyed. He who yields to any known sin, loses unavoidably the sensibility of his nature to the beauty of what is good;-and he, on the other hand, who keeps a strict watch over his conduct, may not only maintain through life something of that pure and enviable feeling with which

we commonly enter on it, but may prepare himself

for receiving, as a recompense from the lovingkindness of God, the most blissful presentiments of that divine progress, which his nature, if thus preserved from depravation, is fitted to realize.

VOL. II.

H

SECTION II.

THE ACTUAL.

1 Cor. xvi. 13. Quit you like men,

be strong.

IN entering on that part of the Work which treats of the best method of accomplishing the object proposed to man as a subject of the kingdom of God, we stated our purpose to consider the field of duty laid before man,—as naturally dividing itself into three compartments ;—the first comprising those duties which belong to him as a being capable of forming high and pure ideas of the part assigned him,-ideas which are not seen realized, in all their perfection, in any of the actually existing specimens of creation around him,-but which are yet to serve him as models according to which he is to form