Heaven, yet fearing to seek the way but in by-paths; who, for the scorn of an infatuated world, dare not hold up their faces towards the holy light of God; blinded to our best glory in being assimilated to divine perfection, and blinded to this awful denunciation from Christ, "Whosoever shall be ashamed of me before men, of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed when he cometh in the glory of his Father and of his holy angels." If the dread of ridicule is such a restraint on a man's devotion, what shall become of his religion, if, on account thereof, he be exposed to all manner of reproach and all manner of persecution ? CHAPTER III. PRIDE OF INTELLECT. be lowly wise; Think only what concerns thee and thy being; Not of earth only, but of highest heaven. MILTON. The most magnanimous resolution rests in the Christian religion, which trampleth on pride, and sits on the neck of ambition. SIR THOMAS BROWN'S HYDRIOTAPHIA. WHAT is this in man? In reference to God our Creator, who also ordained the many wonders of the universe, by whom we are upheld in all our powers, and they in theirs, and all the arrangements of their beauty, it is well,— His praise and our gratitude,-that we are gladly conscious of an existence higher than of mere matter, and an intelligence beyond all living things on earth; yea, that we are proud of those powers to which these arrangements have been submitted, to be judged in their first aspects,and farther found out in their more hid den relations; yea, that we glory in thus being partakers of a divine intelligence,―emanations from the Eternal Spirit that can never be destroyed. In this pride there is much religion, when, in every higher exercise of our powers, we find new wonders of His glory who made all; and are more alive, in the gratitude of our conscious and aspiring souls, to the same Being whose inspiration hath given us understanding. But the praise of our highest musings cannot be marked beyond this collateral and just subordination, that we feel ourselves of His strength, and bound to submit our regards to whatever direction He may appoint. In His last Revelation, he hath appointed them a peculiar direction, in the paramount worship of the redeeming Son and sanctifying Spirit, and a necesary obedience to the many duties derived to man from these new relations. It is the abuse of our high privilege, that self-sufficiency of human reason, which assumes an authority to set aside the dictates, particularly of revealed Religion, beyond what corroborate our natural impressions regarding the worship of a Supreme Being; which sneers at the peculiarities of Christianity, because mysterious and above our calculation, to a contempt of the whole, or the admission only of false and partial representations, that mutilate its doctrines and render imperfect its scheme of duties. It is a pride of intellect to be brought down, vain and presumptuous, which, building itself on its growing strength, and the acquirements of farther ingenuity; aspiring to the planets of night, and settling their laws of motion,-grows in consciousness of strength, almost absolute and independent of God. Full of the doctrine of our nature's infinite perfectibility, it goes up to the Heavens, but cannot see God, being hoodwinked to upward views. Pluming itself on success in subordinate inquiries, it aspires to deduce the beginning of all things from natural causes; and believing that "the thing that has been, is the thing that shall be,” invests with an independent existence this material universe, as if there were no higher control, and not that Power whose slightest wish could at once trammel the sun and the sun-pursuing stars. This is the pride of intellect against natural religion,—the sin and folly, in the face of earth and heaven, of the practical atheist. The same spirit, even though it may bow down before God the Creator, makes a man bold to reject Christianity, because of doctrines above, but falsely styled contrary to, reason; despite of a thousand positive evidences in its behalf, and notwithstanding the analogies of nature and God's daily providence, which, as well shewn by Butler, must, rather than otherwise, have led us to expect things above our comprehension in such a Revelation,—yet peculiarities and providences of Grace, not more disproportioned to our present peculiar situation in sin, than the natural adoration of the Deity was fitting to the first innocence of man. The special folly in all this is, that the standard of reason is not fixed at the utmost point at which it hath already evinced its perfectibility; but the foolish principle is conceded to men of a varying measure, according to their |