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haps even to be perceptible, in his view of the creation; and to lose all his present partial views in that “far more exceeding and eternal weight” of felicity, which will be as exhaustless as the perfection of Him that " filleth all in all.”

XIV.

ON TORPOR OF MIND WITH REGARD TO SPIRITUAL OBJECTS AND INTERESTS.

WHEN is it most necessary for me to meditate on things spiritual? Precisely when I have least inclination and ability to do so; when I take up the Scriptures, or a book of piety, with almost as little zest as I should a treatise of mensuration; when I seem unimpressible by what is exalted, or remote, or refined; when the mind, like what has been named the "sensitive soul" in the lower creatures, is little better than the mere instrument of the animal, instead of the animal powers and organs being the mere instruments of the spirit. This, to one that has known and felt any thing of its opposite, is a humiliating and comfortless

state of the understanding and affections. What can account for it, but that prone and servile tendency of the human soul, induced by its fall from original rectitude? For, by the supposition, this is not a state of ignorance, nor is it, properly speaking, a state of unbelief, as to the reality and excellency of spiritual objects; since, were it either of these, there could be in it no conscious unhappiness or degradation. It is, in fact, far otherwise. The immensity and majesty of nature have been familiar to my eye, and the glorious secrets which the universe must have to unfold, have been contemplated with awful curiosity. The proofs of its incomprehensible Author's being and perfections have approved themselves to my reason and my conscience; the vastness and condescension of his revealed love have overwhelmed my thoughts; the possible discoveries of an endless life have oppressed me with their undisclosed multitude and grandeur, and this little theatre of sense has seemed to shrink into nothing.And am I yet now compelled to say, with an application of the phrase sadly contrary to the connexion in which an apostle used it, "None of these things move me?" How contrary this to the genuine uncontrolled bias of that new and heavenly nature, which the Scripture declares to be

long to the children of God?—I am like a traveller who has passed along the Appenine ridge, sometimes gazing on the far-empurpled sky, now on the vast masses of southern foliage below, and a bright river dividing the extended valley, then on the calm lake or boundless ocean stretching beyond, and who exclaims, with a glowing heart, How delightful, how magnificent! but soon afterwards finds himself enveloped in the chill vapour of the mal-aria, and looks in vain through the noxious mist, for all the wonders and glories of that splendid prospect. There is danger for the traveller, not only from the unwholesome air through which he passes, but lest, forgetting the refined enjoyments of other hours, he should seek amends in sensuality, for the lost pleasures of contemplation. But there is, in one view, more danger for me; because, in his case, the concealment of the objects does not take away or impair the conviction of their reality. But in mine, there is a sort of doubting, though not disbelief, induced by the want of mental perception. Suspended apprehension, respecting spiritual or "unseen” objects, very much allied to doubt.*

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If it be possible for a reasoner, by dint of subtleties, to bring into question, as the estimable

* At least, they are closely allied in practical effect.

but paradoxical Bishop Berkeley did, the existence of "the things which are seen," how much more easy, through a cessation of the mind s acting upon objects of mere intellect, to lose all realising sense of "the things which are not seen!" There may be, and is, no actual, at least, no abiding disbelief in either case. Bishop Berkeley, it is presumed, could only in a very occasional state of high abstraction from the influence of material things, seriously feel as if that opinion were credible, which his dialogues maintain; and it is only in the state exactly opposite, that of absorption in material things, (when the appetites and varying states, of the body, or thoughts only terminating on what is earthly, quell and suppress the higher action of the soul,) that we are dead to the impression of what is spiritual. But from the lamentable readiness with which, in our degenerate condition, we take impressions and even laws from sense, this last is a common and natural state, while that of Berkeley, if he really doubted, or imagined himself to doubt the existence of matter, has been, probably, unparalleled in any sane mind. If I conclude, that he never could be under this illusion, it equally serves the present purpose to suppose, that some student of his system, whose sanity need not be contended for, some

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