8 SYMPATHY.—INDIVIDUALITY. English Opium-Eater. To the forming mind, which is yet uninstructed and blind, the discovery by sympathy of their judgments over it, is useful to instruct, to give it knowledge of itself, of them, and of the constitution of things. Shepherd. Didna Adam Smith say something like that, sir?1 North. Yes, James, but not precisely so. English Opium Eater. But when the mind is formed, then it ought to use that sympathy only as a means of tendernessI mean that sympathy which discovers to it the operation of other minds. That sympathy ought to be in subjection to its self-moving principles and powers. Yes, Mr Hogg, Adam Smith is right in thinking that a great part of actual morality is from this operation of sympathy. There are numbers of people to whom it is almost a recognised and stated law or truth, that the approbation and condemnation of society is the reason for doing and not doing. But hear me, sir. The tendency of the Christian Religion is to produce the I—the Ego-and draw out of itself—that is, the Individuality—all the rules of action. Therefore, it is the perfect Law of Liberty. In other words, at the same time that it is perfect liberty, it is perfect law. The Jewish law is wholly external-that is, not that it ends and is completed in things external, but its power is from without, and from without it binds. The other binds from within. Indeed, it does not so much bind as reign. Shepherd. A fine and good distinction. English Opium-Eater. Now, all people who are bound from without, are Jews of this earth. They are held, regulated, constricted, and constructed,-edified, that is, built up, of a quantity of intercatenated ideas given to them, which they had no part in making, in and by which they desire and trust to live. But life is not there, except that life is everywhere. The number of them was great among old-fashioned people, who lived, moved, breathed, and had their being among a set of hereditary rules, many of them good, many indifferent, and many ridiculous-but, on the whole, destroying the Individuality, the I—and lying like a perpetual, although unfelt weight on the will. Shepherd. Strickly speakin, no free augents. 1 In his admirable work entitled The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Adam Smith, born at Kirkcaldy in 1723, died in Edinburgh in 1790. SELF-ANNIHILATION IS SELF-TRIUMPH. 9 English Opium-Eater. Now, my dear James, Poetry is of the earth, a spirit analogous to Christianity. It is free, yet under full law, producing out of itself both action and guidance, both "law and impulse." Poetry is in willing harmony with the world-a vast law voluntarily embraced, and always anew embraced, hence, evermore and to the last, spontaneous. The essence of Christianity, again, is, that the human being becomes without a will, and yet has the strongest will. It is self in the utmost degree triumphant, by means of the utter annihilation of self. For the Christian seeks absolute conformity of his will to the will of God, whatever that may be, and however promulgated. He desires, and is capable of, no other happiness. It would be misery to him to imagine himself divided from that will. The conforming to that will is, then, in the utmost degree, inmost utter spontaneity, perfect liberty, and yet absolute law. But in this state, his own will, which, towards God, is nothing but the resignation of all will, is towards all human beings utter and irresistible. He can speak and act; he can do whatever is to be done; he can rule the spirits of men; he can go conquering nations in the power of the Word, and the sword of the Spirit. Therefore, so he is. at once self-triumphant and self-annihilated. He is selfannihilated, for he has given himself up; he feels himself not -is nothing-mere conformity-passiveness-manifestations of an agency. He feels only the presence, the spirit, the power in which he lives. He lives in God. At the same time he is self-triumphant. For what is self, but the innermost and very nature of the being, the "intima et ipsissima essentia?" All that is subsequent and accidental is not self; but this Christian Love, as it advances, throws off, expels more and more, everything that is subsequent and accidental, bringing out into activity, consciousness, and power, that nature which was given with being to the soul. Moreover, this state of surrendered, happy Love, searches that nature with pleasures nothing short of ecstasy. So that the ultimate extinction of self becomes its unspeakable happiness; and self, annihilated, exalted in glory, and bathed in bliss, is selftriumphant, and Death is Immortality. Shepherd. O man! if them that's kickin up sic a row the noo about the doctrine o' the Christian religion, had looked intil the depths o' their ain natur wi' your een, they had a' 10 RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY.-DUTY. been as mum as mice keekin roun' the end o' a pew, in place o' scrauchin like pyats on the leads, or a hoodie wi' a sair throat. English Opium-Eater. I know not to what you allude, Mr Hogg, for I live out of what is called the Religious World. Shepherd. A loud, noisy, vulgar, bawlin, brawlin, wranglin, branglin, routin, and roarin warld-maist unfittin indeed for the likes o' you, sir, wha, under the shadows o' woods and mountains, at midnight, communes wi' your ain heart, and is still. English Opium-Eater. No religious controversy in modern days, sir, ever seemed to me to reach back into those recesses in my spirit where the sources lie from which well out the bitter or the sweet waters-the sins and the miseries-the holinesses and the happinesses, of our incomprehensible being! Shepherd. And if they ever do, hoo drumly the stream! English Opium-Eater. Better even a mere sentimental religion, which, though shallow, is pure, than those audacious doctrines broached by Pride-in-Humility, who, blind as the bat, essays the flight of the eagle, and ignorant o' the lowest natures, yet claims acquaintance with the decrees of the Most High. Shepherd. Ay-better far a sentimental-a poetical religion, as you say, sir-though that's far frae being the true thing either-for o' a' the Three Blessings o' Man, the last is the best-Love, Poetry, and Religion. What'n a book micht be written, I've aften thocht—and aiblins may hae said—on thae three words! English Opium-Eater. Yes, my dear James-Beauty, the soul of Poetry, is indeed divine-but there is that which is diviner still-and that is DUTY. "Flowers laugh before her on their beds, She doth preserve the stars from wrong, And the eternal heavens through her are fresh and strong.” Shepherd. Wha said that? English Opium-Eater. Who?-Wordsworth. And the Edinburgh Review-laughed. THE SOUL IN ITS TRUE FORM. 11 Shepherd. He has made it, sin' syne, lauch out o' the wrang side o' its mouth. He soars. North. Human life is always, in its highest moral exhibitions, sublime rather than beautiful-and the sublimity is not that of the imagination, but of the soul. Shepherd. That's very fine, sir; I wish you would say it ower again-do. North. The setting or the rising sun, being mere matter, are in themselves, James, nothing, unless they are clothed in light by the imagination, unless the east and the west are irradiated by poetry. But the spirit that is within us is an existence, in itself vast and imperishable, and we see and know its nature-its essence then best, when we regard it with the steadiest, most solemn, and unimpassioned gazenot veiling it in earthly imagery, and adorning it with the garments of sense, and then worshipping its imagined grandeur and beauty with such emotions as we creatures of the clay, children of the dust, have been wont to cherish towards transitory shadows-the fleeting phantoms of our own raising -but stripping it rather bare of all vain and idle, however bright and endearing colours, poured over it by the yearnings, and longings, and passions of an earthly love-and trying to behold it in its true form and lineaments, not afraid that even when it stands forth in its own proper lights and proportions, Virtue will ever seem less than angelical and divine-although her countenance may be somewhat sad, her eyes alternately raised to heaven in hope, and cast down in fear to the earth— her voice, it may be, tremulous-or mute, as she stands before her Creator, her Saviour, and her Judge,-her beauty visible, perhaps, to the intelligences, to the bright Ardours round the throne-but all unknown to herself, for she is humble, awestruck, and sore afraid. And so, too, were all the countless multitudes of human beings, who have in this life—so evanescent-put their trust, perhaps, too much in her—although her name was Virtue,-for still she was but human-and there is a strong taint-a dire corruption in all most bright and beautiful—that was once but an apparition of this earth. Shepherd. Mr De Quinshy, dinna ye admire that? English Opium-Eater. I do. North. It will, I believe, be found, that in the highest moral 127 THE HIGHEST MORAL EMOTIONS judgment of the characters of men, the feeling or emotion of beauty will not exist at all—but that it will have melted away and disappeared in a state of mind more suitable to the solemn, the sacred subject. A human being has done his duty, and gone to his reward. "God grant, in His infinite mercy, that I may do mine, and escape from darkness into eternal light!" That is, or ought to be—the first feeling, or thought of selfso suddenly interfused with the moral judgment on our dead brother, that it is as one and the same feeling and thoughttoo awful-too dreadful to be beautiful,-for the soul is with gloom overshadowed-and the only light that breaks through it is light straight from Heaven,-light ineffable, and that must not be profaned by an earthly name, whose very meaning evanishes with the earth, and is merged into another state of being when we can only say, "Come then, expressive Silence, muse his praise." English Opium-Eater. And so, sir, in like manner, many descriptions may be given, and ought to be given, of suffering virtue, in which the sense or feeling of beauty is strong-for the love of virtue is thus excited and encouraged by delight. But carry on the representation of the trials of virtue to the last extremity defeated or triumphant, failing or victorious -and then the moral mind-the conscience-will not be satisfied with the beautiful-nay, will be impatient of it—will turn from it austerely away-and will be satisfied and elevated by the calm, clear perception, that the poor, frail, erring, and sinful creature, lying, perhaps, on its forsaken bed of straw, has striven, with all its heart and all its soul, to do the will of its heavenly Father-and dares to hope that, by the atonement, it may see the face of God. In such a scene as this, the spirit of the looker-on is gathered up into one Thought—and that is a Mystery of its own origin and of its own destiny-and all other thoughts would be felt repugnant to that awe-struck mood, nor would they coalesce with feelings breathed on it from the promised land lying in light unvisited beyond death and the grave. North. You pause—and, therefore, I say that such states of mind as these cannot be of long endurance. For they belong only to the most awful hours and events of this life. They pass away, either entirely, to rise up again with renovated |