With golden stars above.
He felt the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,
The love of love.
But the loftier moralist can rise higher than this, and can, and will, reject altogether Hate and Scorn from his view of man's better nature. His description would rather be—
The good man in a loving clime was born,
With loving stars above.
He felt sorrow for hate, pity for scorn,
And love of love.
He would, in his conception of such a character, ascribe to it all the virtues which result from the control and extinction of these repulsive and hostile affections:—the virtues of magnanimity, forgivingness, unselfishness, self-devotion, tenderness, sweetness. And these we can conceive in a higher and higher degree, in proportion as our own hearts become tender, forgiving, pure and unselfish. And though in every human stage of such a moral proficiency, we must suppose that there is still some struggle with the remaining vestiges of our unkind, unjust, angry and selfish affections, we can see no limit to the extent to which this struggle may be successful; no limit to the degree in which these traces of the evil of our nature may be worn out by an enduring practice and habit of our better nature. And when we contemplate a human character which has, through a long course of years, and through many trials and conflicts, made a large progress in this career of melioration, and is still capable, if time be given, of further progress towards moral perfection, is it not reasonable to suppose that He who formed man capable of such progress, and who, as we must needs believe, looks with approval on such progress where made, will not allow the progress to stop when it has gone on to the end of man's short earthly life? Is it not rather reasonable to suppose that the pure and elevated and all-embracing affection, extinguishing all vices and including all virtues, to which the good man thus tends, shall continue to prevail in him as a permanent and ever-during condition, in a life after this?
But can man raise himself to such a stage of moral progress, by his own efforts? Such a progress is an approximation towards the perfection of moral Ideas, and therefore an approximation towards the image of God, in whom that perfection resides: is it not then reasonable to suppose that man needs a Divine Influence to enable him to reach this kind of moral completeness? And is it not also reasonable to suppose that, as he needs such aid, in order that the Idea of his moral progress may be realized, so he will receive such aid from the Divine Power which realizes the Idea of Divine Love in the world; and to do so, must realize it in those human souls which are most fitted for such a purpose?