some degree the perfected image of his Creator, by sternly laying waste, through consciousness, the wilderness of his own natural desires; for he well knows, that wherever he has extirpated a weed, there, and only there, will God plant a flower, or suffer it to grow. But the epicurean, or false philosopher, makes a direct assault upon the gates of paradise itself. He seeks to return straight into the arms of good, without fighting his way through the strong and innumerable forces of evil. He would reproduce the golden age, without directly confronting and resisting the ages of iron and of brass. By following the footsteps of nature, he imagines that he may be carried back into the paradise from which his forefather was cast forth. But, alas! it is not thus that the happy garden is to be won; for, "at the east of the garden of Eden" hath not God placed "cherubims, and a flaming sword which turns every way, to keep the way of the tree of life"? and, therefore, the epicurean is compelled, at last, to sink down, outside the trenches of paradise, into an inert and dreaming sensualist.
Chapter II.
Neither overrating nor underrating the pretensions of philosophy, let us now, as our final task, demonstrate the entire harmony between her and the scheme of Christian revelation. Philosophy has done much for man, but she cannot do everything for him; she cannot convert a struggling act (consciousness in its antagonism against evil); she cannot convert this act into a permanent and glorified substance. She can give the strife; but she cannot give the repose. This Christianity alone can give. But neither can Christianity do everything for man. She, too, demands her prerequisites; she demands a true consciousness on the part of man of the condition in which he stands. In other words, she demands, on man's own part, a perception of his own want or need of her divine support. This support she can give him, but she cannot give him a sense of his own need of it. This philosophy must supply. Here, therefore, Christianity accepts the assistance of philosophy; true though it be, that the latter, even in her highest and most exhaustive flight, only brings man up to the point at which religion spreads her wings, and carries him on to a higher and more transcendent elevation. Her apex is the basis of Christianity. The highest round in the ladder of philosophy is the lowest in the scale of Christian grace. All that true philosophy can do, or professes to do, is merely to pass man through the preparatory discipline of rendering him conscious of evil, that is, of the only thing of which he can be really conscious on this earth; and thus to place him in such a position as may enable the influences of loftier truth, and of more substantial good, to take due effect upon his heart. The discipline of philosophy is essentially destructive—that of Christianity is essentially constructive. The latter busies herself in the positive reproduction of good; but only after philosophy has, to a certain extent, prepared the ground for her, by putting forth the act of consciousness, and by thus executing her own negative task, which consists in the resistance of evil. Christianity re-impresses us with the positive image of God which we had lost through the fall; but philosophy, in the act of consciousness, must first, to a greater or a less extent, have commenced a defacement of the features of the devil stamped upon our natural hearts, before we can take on, in the least degree, the impress of that divine signature.
Such, we do not fear to say, is the preliminary discipline of man, which Christianity demands at the hands of philosophy. But there are people who imagine that the foundation-stone of the whole Christian scheme consists in this; that man can, and must, do nothing for himself. Therefore, let us speak a few words in refutation of this paralysing doctrine.
Do not the Scriptures themselves say, "ask, and it shall be given unto you"? Here, then, we find asking made the condition of our receiving: and hence it is plain that we are not to receive this asking; for supposing that we do receive it, then this can only be because we have complied with the condition annexed to our receiving it;
