he best spur
to the understanding, towards the conclusions of a just prudence. "The
entrance of the word giveth understanding to the simple," says the
Psalmist. How often have we found its so! How often the first impulse
to intellectual activity is given by the man's religious interest! How
often they, in whom a taste for reading could never be formed
otherwise, begin to read for satisfying their spiritual wants, and so
develop mental powers which else had ever lain dormant.

If we mark those extremes of social humanity, the masses of Hindostan
and the people of New England--the monotonous stagnation there, and the
progressive enterprize here--we see a difference mainly attributable to
a religion whose very spirit is, forgetting the things behind, and
pressing onward to the things before. And, though this spirit may not
always go forth in accordance with the teaching of that religion, it is
none the less true, that such was its source; mind being awake,
enterprising, on the track of improvement, only where a lively faith in
Christianity has kindled the flame. Every where else, policy at best
presses so hard on the subject individuals, as tolerably to restrain
the passions from breaking out of one against another. Only "where the
spirit of the Lord is," ventured the experiment, of making the pressure
on each so light, as to become the best security for his keeping in
place.

5. Philosophy fails (once more), because it has no adequate malady for
the moral malady under which our race labors. When we speak of men
weighing fairly the present and the future, comparing impartially the
substantial with the showy, the gross with the refined, and choosing
after the decision of a fully informed prudence, we suppose what does
not exist; "The good that I would, I do not; but the evil that I would
not, that I do."

"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."