gratitude--that is, founded on a disinterested act of
kindness--cannot be cancelled by any subsequent unkindness on the part
of our benefactor. If the favor be of a pecuniary nature, we may,
indeed, by returning an equal or greater sum, balance the moneyed part;
but we cannot _liquidate_ the _kind motive_ by the setting off against
it any number of unkind ones. For an after injury can no more _undo_ a
previous kindness, than we can _prevent_ in the future what has happened
in the past. So neither can a good act undo an ill one: a fearful truth!
For good and evil have a moral _life_, which nothing in time can
extinguish; the instant they _exist_, they start for Eternity. How,
then, can a man who has _once_ sinned, and who has not of _himself_
cleansed his soul, be fit for heaven where no sin can enter? I seek not
to enter into the mystery of the _atonement_, "which even the angels
sought to comprehend and could not"; but I feel its truth in an
unutterable conviction, and that, without it, all flesh must perish.
Equally deep, too, and unalienable, is my conviction that "the fruit of
sin is misery." A second birth to the soul is therefore a necessity
which sin _forces_ upon us. Ay,--but not against the desperate _will_
that rejects it.

This conclusion was not anticipated when I wrote the first sentence of
the preceding paragraph. But it does not surprise me. For it is but a
recurrence of what I have repeatedly experienced; namely, that I never
lighted on _any truth_ which I _inwardly felt_ as such, however
apparently remote from our religious being, (as, for instance, in the
philosophy of my art,) that, by following it out, did not find its
illustration and confirmation in some great doctrine of the Bible,--the
only true philosophy, the sole fountain of light, where the dark
questions of the understanding which have so long stood, like chaotic
spectres, between the fallen soul and its reason, at once lose their
darkness and their terror.

The Hypochondriac.[4]

He would not taste, but swallowed life at once;
And scarce had reached his prime ere he had bolted,
With all its garnish, mixed of sweet and sour,
Full fourscore years. For he, in truth, did wot not
What most he craved, and so devoured all;
Then, with his gases, followed Indigestion,
Making it food for night-mares and their foals.

_Bridgen_.[5]

It was the opinion of an ancient philosopher, that we can have no want
for which Nat