HKB
stage of my progress. For example: render the words, sanctification of the Spirit, or the sanctifying influences of the Spirit, by Purity in Life and Action from a pure Principle.
We need only reflect on our own experience to be convinced, that the man makes the motive, and not the motive the man. What is a strong motive to one man, is no motive at all to another. If, then, the man determines the motive, what determines the man--to a good and worthy act, we will say, or a virtuous Course of Conduct? The intelligent Will, or the self-determining Power? True, in part it is; and therefore the Will is pre-eminently the spiritual Constituent in our Being. But will any reflecting man admit, that his own Will is the only and sufficient determinant of all he is, and all he does? Is nothing to be attributed to the harmony of the system to which he belongs, and to the pre-established Fitness of the Objects and Agents, known and unknown, that surround him, as acting on the will, though, doubtless, with it likewise? a process, which the co-instantaneous yet reciprocal action of the air and the vital energy of the lungs in breathing may help to render intelligible.
Again: in the world we see every where evidences of a Unity, which the component parts are so far from explaining, that they necessarily pre-suppose it as the cause and condition of their existing as those parts; or even of their existing at all. This antecedent Unity, or Cause and Principle of each Union, it has since the time of Bacon and Kepler been customary to call a law. This crocus, for instance: or any other flower the reader may have in sight or choose to bring before his fancy. That the root, stem, leaves, petals, &c. cohere to one plant, is owing to an antecedent Power or Principle in the Seed, which existed before a single particle of the matters that constitute the size and visibility of the crocus, had been attracted from the surrounding soil, air, and moisture. Shall we turn to the seed? Here too the same necessity meets us. An antecedent Unity (I speak not of the parent plant, but of an agency antecedent in the order of operance, yet remaining present as the conservative and reproductive Power) must here too be supposed. Analyze the seed with the finest tools, and let the Solar Microscope come in aid of your senses, what do you find? Means and instruments, a wondrous Fairy-tale of Nature, magazines of food, stores of various sorts, pipes, spiracles, defences--a house of many chambers, and the owner and inhabitant invisible! Reflect further on the countless millions of seeds of the same name, each more than numerically differenced from every other: and further yet, reflect on the requisite harmony of all surrounding things, each of which necessitates the same process of thought, and the coherence of all of which to a System, a World, demands its own adequate Antecedent Unity, which must therefore of necessity be present to all and in all, yet in no wise excluding or suspending the individual Law or Principle of Union in each. Now will Reason, will common Sense, endure the assumption, that in the material and visible system, it is highly reasonable to believe a Universal Power, as the cause and pre-condition of the harmony of all particular Wholes, each of which involves the working Principle of its own Union--that it is reasonable, I say, to believe this respecting the Aggregate of Objects, which without a Subject (that is, a sentient and intelligent Existence) would be purposeless; and yet unreasonable and even superstitious or enthusiastic to entertain a similar Belief in relation to the System of intelligent and self-conscious Beings, to the moral and personal World? But if in this too, in the great Community of Persons, it is rational to infer a One universal Presence, a One present to all and in all, is it not most irrational to suppose that a finite Will can exclude it?