TALBOYS.
From this state, which is that to which every human being is bound to aspire, you would deduce grounds of judging of those inferior moral conditions which tend to the attainment of this highest?
NORTH.
I would; and it will be found that these are moral, either because they bear an imperfect and broken resemblance to this state, or because they have a visible tendency towards it.
TALBOYS.
Believing, then, that the Human Soul only reaches the fulness of its nature, and the exaltation of its powers, when it Knows itself in the presence of God, when it looks up to Him, and endeavours, not in hidden thought merely, but in action and life, to adore His Will, we must not allow as possessing the same excellence, and participating in the same Nature of Morality, any state in which we cannot discern footsteps of the same Deity, where the breath of the same spirit cannot be felt? That, on the other hand, we embrace with affection, and with moral anticipation, whatever seems even remotely to be animated with this influence, and to tend to this result?
NORTH.
Yes. To an observer looking in this spirit upon the affairs of men, there will be no difficulty in approving and condemning those who, in the same light as he himself enjoys, conform to or contemn what he acknowledges as the highest Law. The two extremes of virtue and crime fall distinctly and decisively under the test which he recognises. The nature of the merit, the nature of the Guilt, of those who in the highest degree conform to this Law, and of those who most audaciously trample upon it, cannot be mistaken.
SEWARD.
But between these there are infinite degrees, to which it may often be extremely difficult to apply the same rule of Moral Estimation.