that he was. This morally brave man was always greatly agitated upon going into action, and used to say, "This little body trembles at what this great soul is about to perform." About this great soul we know nothing; and therefore pass it over as a mere figure of speech. But the trembling of "this little body," that is, the cowardice of the natural man, or, in other words, his want of courage, in so far as courage is a mere affair of nerves, was a fact conspicuous to all. Equally conspicuous and undeniable was the antagonism put forth against this nervous bodily trepidation. And what was this antagonism? What but the struggle between consciousness and cowardice?—a struggle by and through which the latter was dragged into light and vanquished—and then the hero went forth into the thickest ranks of danger, strong in the consciousness of his own weakness, and as if out of very spite of the natural coward that wished to hold him back, and who rode shaking in his saddle as he drove into the hottest of the fight. Natural courage, depending upon temperament, will quail at times, and prove faithless to its trust; the strongest nerves will often shake, in the hour of danger, like an aspen in the gale; but what conceivable terrors can daunt that fortitude (though merely of a negative character), that indomitable discipline, wherewith a man, by a stern and deliberate consciousness of his own heart's frailty, meets, crushes, and subjugates, at every turn, and in its remotest hold, the entire passion of fear?
Human strength, then, has no positive character of its own; it is nothing but the clear consciousness of human weakness. Neither has human morality any positive character of its own; it is nothing but the clear consciousness of human wickedness. The whole rudiments of morality are laid before us, if we will but admit the fact (for which we have Scripture warrant), that all the given modifications of humanity are dark and evil; and that consciousness (which is not a given phenomenon, but a free act) is itself, in every instance, an acting against these states. Out of this strife morality is breathed up like a rainbow between the sun and storm. Moreover, by adopting these views, we get rid of the necessity of postulating a moral sense, and of all the other hypothetical subsidies to which an erroneous philosophy has recourse in explaining the phenomena of man. Our limits at present prevent us from illustrating this subject more fully; but in our next Number we shall show how closely our views are connected with the approved doctrine of man's natural depravity. In order to penetrate still deeper into the secrets of consciousness, we shall discuss the history of the Fall of Man, and shall show what mighty and essential parts are respectively played by the elements of good and evil in the realisation of human liberty; and we shall conclude our whole discussion by showing how consonant our speculations are with the great scheme of Christian Revelation.
