ery last the light which they, in their pride, believed to have
emanated from the inner shrine--the penetralia of Philosophy--came from
the temples of the living God. They walked all their lives long---
though they knew it not, or strived to forget it--in the light of
revelation, which, though often darkened to men's eyes by clouds from
earth, was still shining strong in heaven. Had the New Testament never
been--think ye that men in their pride, though

"Poor sons of a day,"

could have discerned the necessity of framing for themselves a _religion
of humility_? No. As by pride we are told the angels fell--so by pride
man, after his miserable fall, strove to lift up his helpless being from
the dust; and though trailing himself, soul and body, along the soiling
earth, and glorying in his own corruption, sought to eternise here his
very sins by naming the stars of heaven after heroes, conquerors,
murderers, violators of the mandates of the Maker whom they had
forgotten, or whose attributes they had debased by their own foul
imaginations. They believed themselves, in the delusion of their own
idolatries, to be "Lords of the world and Demigods of Fame," while they
were the slaves of their own sins and their own sinful Deities. Should
we have been wiser in our generation than they, but for the Bible? If in
moral speculation we hear but little--too little--of the confession of
what it owes to the Christian religion--in all the Philosophy,
nevertheless, that is pure and of good report, we _see_ that "the
dayspring from on high has visited it." In all philosophic inquiry there
is, perhaps, a tendency to the soul's exaltation of itself--which the
spirit and genius of Christianity subdues. It is not sufficient to say
that a natural sense of our own infirmities will do so--for seldom
indeed have Deists been lowly-minded. They have talked proudly of
humility. Compare their moral meditations with those of our great
divines. Their thoughts and feelings are of the "earth earthy;" but when
we listen to those others, we feel that their lore has been God-given.

"It is as if an angel shook his wings."

Thus has Christianity glorified Philosophy; its celestial purity is now
the air in which intellect breathes. In the liberty and equality of that
religion, the soul of the highest Philosopher dare not offend that of
the humblest peasant. Nay, it sometimes stands rebuked before it--and
the lowly dweller in the hut, or the shieling