of man, and the doctrine of that book which professes to have been dictated by Him who constructed that nature, and must therefore be acquainted with all its mysteries. There are two remarkable congruities of this kind, which we would shortly notice, as having met our observation in the prosecution of these remarks on the pathology of man. The first relates to the power which the object contemplated has over the springs of human character and conduct the alliance that obtains between that object which is in the eye of the understanding, and that sensibility which is excited thereby within the recesses of the heart; or between the way in which man is looking with his mind, and the way in which he is affected to love or to piety or to moral righteousness. Now there is nought which is so frequently affirmed in scripture, as the power that lies in the mere revelation of the truth, provided that the truth is believed and attended tothe power which lies in it to revolutionize the whole character, and to make a new creature of him who has received it. The phraseology of inspiration is distinct from that of the academy. But if we consider, not the terms, but the substantial truths in which it deals, we shall find, under the guise of such expressions as "being sanctified by faith," as "being born again through the word of truth," as "being renewed in knowledge after the likeness of him that created us," as "beholding with open face" the glory of a bright excellence, and being transformed into that which we admire in the very act of our beholding it we shall find in these and a variety of similar passages, a con

stant recognition of that very dependence between the mind and the heart, to the view of which we are conducted by our own separate reasonings on the pathology of human nature. And we are

further led to perceive that the faith, which so many have traduced as an inert and unproductive dogma, displacing virtue from the rank and pre-eminence which belong to it that this faith is, in fact, the great instrument of such a moral renovation, as shall at length give another aspect to our world, and unite the people of every tongue and nation and kindred who live in it into one common brotherhood-one affectionate and rejoicing family.

52. But there is still another very striking accordancy, that, because of its great practical importance, we cannot forbear to notice. We allude to the whole of that morality, which relates to the management of those evil and seducing influences, that pass under the name of temptations -such as the temptation of corrupt society-the temptation of all those objects that inflame the wrong propensities of our nature the temptation of every thing which, whether present to the senses or to the thoughts, is followed up by an emotion that is any way adverse to the purity or rectitude of the character of man. It may occasionally happen, in our passage through the world, that these temptations meet us on our way, and can only be overcome by dint of a vigorous and determined resistance. But aware how much easier it is, when possible, to shun the encounter than to struggle against that pathological law, by which an object and an emotion stand so closely and causally

related, the one to the other-the uniform deliverance of this book of wisdom is, that, when the alternative is within our reach whether we shall face the temptation or shall flee it-we should take to the latter term of the alternative, as that which is most suited to the real mediocrity of the human powers, and the actual laws of the human constitution. And accordingly in such clauses, as "enter not into temptation," and "lead us not into temptation," and "turn away my sight and mine eyes from viewing vanity," and "flee those evil affections which war against the soul"-in all these it bespeaks its own just and enlightened discernment of the mechanism of our nature.

53. We are the more explicit and the more earnest upon this subject, that to the heedlessness of its principles, we would ascribe many a most affecting overthrow. It is indeed, for the young and interesting boy, of all transitions the most distressingly painful when, in exchange for the delicacies which at once adorned and guarded him, he gathers upon his aspect the hue and the knowing hardihood of vice-when the graces of his opening manhood are thus so unfeelingly and so cruelly scattered away-and the rising hope of his family, whose presence wont to gladden his family circle, and the unsullied purity of whose habits fitted him for the mild and the innocent harmonies of such a companionship, when he becomes a hacknied practitioner in the arts of lowest and loathsomest dissipation. To arrest such a melancholy catastrophe as this, it is necessary to be strong in all the holy determinations of principle-to be resolute in the

discipline of the heart and of the habits-bidding away every unhallowed image from the chambers of thought, and spurning from the presence or from the perception every object that might form an incitement to wickedness.

CHAPTER VII.

On the Final Causes of the Emotions.

*

1. In our Natural Theology, we have appealed, as evidence for a God, to the affections of our Nature. We now subjoin a few additional remarks on this subject, chiefly with the view of demonstrating, that, however little man is to be accredited for moral goodness, when, apart from the consideration of duty he simply obeys these affections—yet, beneficial as they are, nay indispensable to the maintenance of human life and human society, they form most palpable and convincing arguments for the goodness of the Being who implanted them.

2. The emotions, it must now be obvious, enter largely into the pathological department of our nature. They are distinguishable, as we have already intimated, both from the appetites and the external affections, in that they are mental and not bodily-though, in common with these, they are characterized by a peculiar vividness of feeling,

Book IV. Chaps. ii, iii, and ▾

which distinguishes them from the intellectual states of the mind. It may not be easy to express the difference in language; but we never confound them in specific instances-being at no loss to which of the two classes we should refer the acts of memory and judgment; and to which we should refer the sentiments of fear, or gratitude, or shame, or any of the numerous affections and desires of which the mind is susceptible.

3. The first belonging to this class that now remains to be noticed is the desire of knowledge, or the principle of curiosity-having all the appearance and character of a distinct and original tendency in the mind, implanted there for the purpose to which it is so obviously subservient. This principle evinces its reality and strength in very early childhood, even anterior to the faculty of speech-as might be observed in the busy manipulations and exploring looks of the little infant, on any new article that is placed within its reach; and afterwards, by its importunate and neverending questions. It is this avidity of knowledge, which forms the great impellent to the acquisition of it being in fact the hunger of the mind, and strikingly analogous to the corresponding bodily appetite, in those respects by which each is manifested to be the product of a higher wisdom than ours, the effect of a more providential care than man would have taken of himself. The corporeal appetency seeks for food as its terminating obec, without regard to its ulterior effect in the ustaining of life. The mental appetency seeks for knowledge, the food of the mind, as its termi