ted as a part of
religion in many of the old Paganisms. Religion and fanaticism are in
the embryo but one and the same; to purify and elevate them we want a
cultivation of the understanding, without which our moral code may be
indefinitely depraved. Natural kindness and strong sense are aids and
guides, which the most spiritual man cannot afford to despise.

I became conscious that I _had_ despised "mere moral men," as they
were called in the phraseology of my school. They were merged in the
vague appellation of "the world," with sinners of every class; and it
was habitually assumed, if not asserted, that they were necessarily
Pharisaic, because they had not been born again. For some time after I
had misgivings as to my fairness of judgment towards them, I could not
disentangle myself from great bewilderment concerning their state
in the sight of God: for it was an essential part of my Calvinistic
Creed, that (as one of the 39 Articles states it) the very good works
of the unregenerate "undoubtedly have the nature of sin," as indeed
the very nature with which they were born "deserveth God's wrath and
damnation." I began to mourn over the unlovely conduct into which I
had been betrayed by this creed, long before I could thoroughly get
rid of the creed that justified it: and a considerable time had to
elapse, ere my new perceptions shaped themselves distinctly into
the propositions: "Morality is the end. Spirituality is the means:
Religion is the handmaid to Morals: we must be spiritual, in order
that we may be in the highest and truest sense moral." Then at last I
saw, that the deficiency of "mere moral men" is, that their
morality is apt to be too external or merely negative, and therefore
incomplete: that the man who worships a fiend for a God may be in some
sense spiritual, but his spirituality will be a devilish fanaticism,
having nothing in it to admire or approve: that the moral man deserves
approval or love for all the absolute good that he has attained,
though there be a higher good to which he aspires not; and that the
truly and rightly spiritual is he who aims at an indefinitely high
moral excellence, of which GOD is the embodiment to his heart and
soul. If the absolute excellence of morality be denied, there is
nothing for spirituality to aspire after, and nothing in God to
worship. Years before I saw this as clearly as here stated; the
general train of thought was very wholesome, in giving me increased
kindl