e.

But to proceed. Consider, moreover, that those who try to obey God
evidently gain a knowledge of themselves at least; and this may be
shown to be the first and principal step towards knowing God. For let
us suppose a child, under God's blessing, profiting by his teacher's
guidance, and trying to do his duty and please God. He will perceive
that there is much in him which ought not to be in him. His own
natural sense of right and wrong tells him that peevishness,
sullenness, deceit, and self-will, are tempers and principles of which
he has cause to be ashamed, and he feels that these bad tempers and
principles are in his heart. As he grows older, he will understand
this more and more. Wishing, then, and striving to act up to the law
of conscience, he will yet find that, with his utmost efforts, and
after his most earnest prayers, he still falls short of what he knows
to be right, and what he aims at. Conscience, however, being
respected, will become a more powerful and enlightened guide than
before; it will become more refined and hard to please; and he will
understand and perceive more clearly the distance that exists between
his own conduct and thoughts, and perfection. He will admire and take
pleasure in the holy law of God, of which he reads in Scripture; but he
will be humbled withal, as understanding himself to be a continual
transgressor against it. Thus he will learn from experience the
doctrine of original sin, before he knows the actual name of it. He
will, in fact, say to himself, what St. Paul describes all beginners in
religion as saying, "What I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that
do I. I delight in the law of God after the inward man, but I see
another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and
bringing me into captivity. I know that in my flesh dwelleth no good
thing[3]." The effect of this experience will be to make him take it
for granted, as an elementary truth, that he cannot gain heaven for
himself; to make him feel himself guilty before God; and to feel,
moreover, that even were he admitted into the Divine presence, yet,
till his heart be (so to say) made over again, he cannot perfectly
enjoy God. This, surely, is the state of self-knowledge; these are the
convictions to which every one is brought on, who attempts honestly to
obey the precepts of God. I do not mean that all that I have been
saying will necessarily pass through his mind, and in the same orde