nd moral beings. Its
life-spring is in the heart. It is purely spiritual or moral in its
character. It rejects all machinery, and can be permanently helped
forward by no scheme of merely external actions. It occupies the whole
soul; with its roots winding round every intellectual and virtuous
principle, it shoots up its stately trunk, sending forth its far-reaching
branches, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.

It is a system forming an essential part of Christian character. It
requires that the great themes of our meditation be spiritual and
eternal, that the mind be so imbued with thoughts of God, his government
and law, of Christ, his love, his sufferings and death, of the
restorative scheme thereby wrought out, of its relation to this apostate
world, of our responsibilities as co-workers with Christ in spreading
the knowledge of his name, and of the consequences both to ourselves and
others of fidelity to our trust--it requires that these thoughts be so
thoroughly impressed, and the heart so permeated, warmed, and animated
by their influence, that they shall become, as it were, inherent
elements of moral action, involuntarily suggesting themselves as often
as occasions for their operation arise. But all this is but another
process of thought and emotion descriptive of the _spiritually minded_.
It also requires the same intellectual and moral discipline which is
essential to the formation of the benevolent character. This does not
consist in a single act, a single out-gushing of generous activity, but
in a series of generous actions, flowing from an established principle;
a principle pervading the whole soul, never wavering, never succumbing
to the biddings of selfishness. But the benevolent character thus
deeply laid is the _Christian character_. The scheme further requires
consistency of moral and religious conduct. While it no more demands
regular and persevering beneficent action than it demands other
Christian duties, it imperiously demands regular and persevering
beneficent action as an essential branch of Christian conduct,
inevitably resulting from those immutable principles which form the
basis of the Christ-like character. Thus the particular or individual
system grows, by a moral necessity, out of the general system of
thoughts, affections, and volitions, here unfolded; it being a moral
impossibility for one cordially to adopt the latter, in all its length
and breadth, without deter