, are the prepared ladder by which the lower
nature is taken up into, and made to partake of, the highest room,--as
we are taught to give a feeling of reality to the higher 'per medium
commune' with the lower, and thus gradually to see the reality of the
higher (namely, the objects of reason) and finally to know that the
latter are indeed and pre-eminently real, as if you love your earthly
parents whom you see, by these means you will learn to love your
Heavenly Father who is invisible;--yet this holds good only so far as
the reason is the president, and its objects the ultimate aim; and cases
may arise in which the Christ as the Logos or Redemptive Reason
declares, 'He that loves father or mother more than me, is not worthy of
me'; nay, he that can permit his emotions to rise to an equality with
the universal reason, is in enmity with that reason. Here then reason
appears as the love of God; and its antagonist is the attachment to
individuals wherever it exists in diminution of, or in competition with,
the love which is reason.

In these five paragraphs I have enumerated and explained the several
powers or forces belonging or incidental to human nature, which in all
matters of reason the man is bound either to subjugate or subordinate to
reason. The application to Faith follows of its own accord. The first or
most indefinite sense of faith is fidelity: then fidelity under previous
contract or particular moral obligation. In this sense faith is fealty
to a rightful superior: faith is the duty of a faithful subject to a
rightful governor. Then it is allegiance in active service; fidelity to
the liege lord under circumstances, and amid the temptations, of
usurpation, rebellion, and intestine discord. Next we seek for that
rightful superior on our duties to whom all our duties to all other
superiors, on our faithfulness to whom all our bounden relations to all
other objects of fidelity, are founded. We must inquire after that duty
in which all others find their several degrees and dignities, and from
which they derive their obligative force. We are to find a superior,
whose rights, including our duties, are presented to the mind in the
very idea of that Supreme Being, whose sovereign prerogatives are
predicates implied in the subjects, as the essential properties of a
circle are co-assumed in the first assumption of a circle, consequently
underived, unconditional, and as rationally insusceptible, so probably
prohibitive, o