"The better seeing and approving,
Towards the worse I still am moving:"
Such is the united testimony of Christian and heathen to that "law of sin and death," through whose tyranny the united decisions of reason, prudence and conscience are powerless, till what the law could not do, "in that it was weak through the flesh," the grace of the Gospel accomplishes; restoring reason and conscience to the throne, giving effect to the conviction, how fully coincident are interest and duty— "that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled by us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit."
Paul's account of this matter may have accommodated to it, what John says of the command to mutual Christian love; that it is an old history, and yet not an old but a new one. Old, in the sense, that, from what time by one man sin came into the world and death by sin, every one in earnest to fulfil the true end of his being, has found the dame impotence attached to good resolves; the same supremacy gained by the baser impulses, in the hour of trial; the same temptation to find an excuse in what seems so like a law unavoidable, as if it were no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me, as if it were not the responsible I that did wrong: this I being controlled by sin, which is fancied as a foreign agent taking up a residence within, and controlling the man in spite of him. And, escaped from this and the like deceits, all have been brought to the stand, "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death!"—that species of self-despair, finishing the preparation for that renewing influence, which "is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy." Thus the enemy is raised in die Luften frei, no more to receive fresh strength from mother Earth, to renew the contest successfully.
But this account, so old in one sense, is not so in another—in the sense of being obsolete, or out of date. It still retains the freshness of novelty, to answer to the last example of a man's ordering life, as, he knows, meets the approval of his Judge, and his own truest welfare.
6. But "the end of the commandment," or the result of the process by which the soul is put into condition to contend successfully with the powers of evil, "is charity." So religion preeminently rebinds men to the rule of not seeking their own advantage at the cost of others; because it implants a principle, which might dispense with the certainty of always calculating prudently in doing right. Charity seeketh not her own—not one's own welfare calculated on the largest scale, exclusively, or at the cost of the greatest good of the whole. Thus it is essentially distinct from a prudence, however refined, and calculating its ends through eternity. It is called "the bond of perfectness," or a most perfect bond; because, if men were all devoted thus disinterestedly, each to the good of the whole, society would be perfectly held together, without other bond. All forms of civil compact and voluntary association might be dispensed with. Even prudence might fail to calculate, how the present sacrifice to general good is to be compensated; and charity would rebind the man to love his neighbor as himself, and do as he would receive again.
It is further called "the perfect law of liberty;" as by a simple rule it perfectly secures to individuals those immunities, which constitutional provisions at best secure but imperfectly by complicated apparatus, and where philosophy halts at the perversities of human selfishness.
7. Faith alone is the sure foundation, whereto to add virtue [courage], and that for the further addition of knowledge. This courage is du Coeur—of the heart, and alone gives that simple love of truth, which, for its sake, dares equally to be new and singular, or to be vulgar and common-place. Without that foundation, assuming to be courageous enough to leave the beaten track, and reject received opinions, one does but attain to the bravery, which, in its efforts to dare danger or opposition, is sure to overact its part. Who holds an even balance in weighing evidence, equally guarded against rejecting the old, because it is old, or the new, because it is new? I know not, unless such as have apprehended the urwahr—the essential truth, which throws all temporal considerations into the shade.
There are two difficulties in the way of attempting changes in the existing state of things, with good prospect of improvement. The first arises from the force of habit, and a reluctance to try a new, it may be, hazardous course. The other form the little discrimination exercised, when men set about in earnest exchanging the old for the new—discrimination to avoid treating the old as necessarily antiquated, and the presumption of "laying again the foundation" of all things. And these difficulties will hardly be met successfully, except by men, in whom the fear of God has cast out other fear.
The intelligent part of the people of southern Europe have been, for many years, more thoroughly divested of reverence for the papacy, than was Luther in the days of his greatest vehemence. But they have quietly taken things as they are. They have wanted Luther's substitute for superstition—a fervently religious spirit. They have had only worldly and political motives, for wishing to see the old imposition done away; and these have been powerless against natural apathy, and the fixedness of old establishment. Infidelity and indifferentism prove poor antagonists to superstition.
But when this apathy is one overcome, then the difficulty is, to temper with discretion the zeal for innovation. Throughout, such only as heartily prize the true, because it is true, will be likely to shun alike, rejecting the old for its antiquity, and the new for its novelty.