voice of my own imperfect wisdom, instead of to His voice in my conscience; or of substituting the partial views of a short-sighted individual for His vast plan which embraces the universe. I know that thereby I should lose my own place in His order, and in the order of all spiritual being.
As with calmness and devotion I reverence this higher Providence, so in my actions ought I to reverence the freedom of other beings around me. The question for me is not what they, according to my conceptions, ought to do, but what I may venture to do in order to induce them to do it. I can only desire to act immediately on their conviction and their will, as far as the order of society and their own consent will permit; but by no means, without their conviction and consent, to influence their powers and relations. They do, what they do, on their own responsibility: with this I neither can nor dare intermeddle, and the Eternal Will will dispose all for the best. It concerns me more to respect their freedom, than to hinder or prevent what to me seems evil in its use.
In this point of view I become a new creature, and my whole relations to the existing world are changed. The ties by which my mind was formerly united to this world, and by whose secret guidance I followed all its movements, are for ever sundered, and I stand free, calm and immovable, a universe to myself. No longer through my affections, but by my eye alone, do I apprehend outward objects and am connected with them; and this eye itself is purified by freedom, and looks, through error and deformity, to the True and
