benevolence. It supposes, first, that the fundamental ideas of the true,
the just, and the good, are connate to the human mind; second, that the
native determination of the mind is towards the realization of these
ideas in every mental state and every form of human activity; third,
that there is a constitutional sympathy of reason with the ideas of
truth, and righteousness, and goodness, as they dwell in the reason of
God. And though man be now fallen, there is still within his heart some
vestige of his primal nature. There is still a sense of the divine, a
religious aptitude, "a feeling after God," and some longing to return to
Him. There are still ideas in the reason, which, in their natural and
logical development compel him to recognize a God. There is within his
conscience a sense of duty, of obligation, and accountability to a
Superior Power--"a law of the mind," thought opposed and antagonized by
depraved passions and appetites--"the law in the members." There is yet
a natural, constitutional sympathy of reason with the law of God--"it
delights in that law," and consents "that it is good," but it is
overborne and obstructed by passion. Man, even as unregenerate, "wills
to do that which is good," but "how to perform that which is good he
finds not," and in the agony of his soul he exclaims, "Oh, wretched man
that I am, who shall deliver me!"[849]

[Footnote 848: Plato sought also to attain to the Ultimate Reality
underlying all aesthetic feeling--the Supreme Beauty as well as the
Supreme Good.]

[Footnote 849: Romans, ch. vii.]

The Author of nature is also the Author of revelation. The Eternal
Father of the Eternal Son, who is the grand medium of all God's direct
communications to our race--the revealer of God, is also "the Father of
the spirits of all flesh." That divine inbreathing which first
constituted man "a living soul"--that "inspiration of the Almighty
which giveth man understanding," and still "teacheth him knowledge,"
proceeds from the same Spirit as that which inspires the prophets and
seers of the Old Testament Church, and the Apostles and teachers of the
new. That "true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the
world" shone on the mind of Anaxagoras, and Socrates, and Plato, as well
as on the mind of Abraham and Rahab, Cornelius and the Syro-Phoenician
woman, and, in a higher form, and with a clearer and richer effulgence,
on the mind of Moses, Isaiah, Paul and John. It is not to be won