arning or example, of those that wallow or of
those that soar, of the fiend-hunted swine by the Gennesaret lake, or of
the dove returning to its ark of rest; in our right accepting and
reading of all this, consists, I say, the ultimately perfect condition
of that noble theoretic faculty, whose place in the system of our nature
I have already partly vindicated with respect to typical, but which can
only fully be established with respect to vital beauty.

Sec. 2. The perfection of the theoretic faculty as concerned with vital
beauty, is charity.

Its first perfection, therefore, relating to vital beauty, is the
kindness and unselfish fulness of heart, which receives the utmost
amount of pleasure from the happiness of all things. Of which in high
degree the heart of man is incapable, neither what intense enjoyment the
angels may have in all that they see of things that move and live, and
in the part they take in the shedding of God's kindness upon them, can
we know or conceive: only in proportion as we draw near to God, and are
made in measure like unto him, can we increase this our possession of
charity, of which the entire essence is in God only.

Wherefore it is evident that even the ordinary exercise of this faculty
implies a condition of the whole moral being in some measure right and
healthy, and that to the entire exercise of it there is necessary the
entire perfection of the Christian character, for he who loves not God,
nor his brother, cannot love the grass beneath his feet and the
creatures that fill those spaces in the universe which he needs not, and
which live not for his uses; nay, he has seldom grace to be grateful
even to those that love him and serve him, while, on the other hand,
none can love God nor his human brother without loving all things which
his Father loves, nor without looking upon them every one as in that
respect his brethren also, and perhaps worthier than he, if in the under
concords they have to fill, their part is touched more truly. Wherefore
it is good to read of that kindness and humbleness of St. Francis of
Assisi, who spoke never to bird nor to cicala, nor even to wolf and
beast of prey, but as his brother; and so we find are moved the minds of
all good and mighty men, as in the lesson that we have from the Mariner
of Coleridge, and yet more truly and rightly taught in the Heartleap
well,

"Never to blend our pleasure, or our pride,
With s