Take the instance of a man thus partially disenthralled by the power of some one ruling principle, which, becoming his bosom's lord, makes of him a hero or a sage. The conqueror of a hundred battles, whose ambition vaulted into an imperial throne and aspired to grasp the sceptre of the world, had doubtless risen far above that state of passive conformity to surrounding influences in which so many pass their lives. He was striving for the mastery, and therefore he could, and he did, command himself. His senses, his power of will, his understanding, his affections-he had all under control, alert and active to serve him. He moved as one altogether free from the ordinary inertness with which men receive impressions and obey hints from without. He had a force within which made him live, and act, and think, and feel for himself. He gave his own colour to all things around him, and made his own use of them, and his own way through them. Surely here is a man, all activity in the fullest sense of that word. But even in his best estate he was the yielding and passive subject of impressions, at many points, such as the weakest creature of circumstances obeys. His clear eye was darkened by the clouds of intemperate passion. His spirit, formed to lead, was itself led by overmastering vanity at last. His ruling principle could not sustain him. The votary of ambition became its miserable victim; and his impotent warfare with the northern elements, no less than the chafings of his fretted soul, as from his southern rock he surveyed the impassible ocean, proved how little of true greatness or true liberty the most engrossing of all earthly motives can inspire.

Nor will even a motive, higher still, the pure love

of wisdom, the devoted pursuit of science,-suffice to renew the whole man. A partial mastery over things without, the wise man may boast; a very considerable power of independence in the use of his senses, his energy of will, his reason, his affections. But it will be mainly by unequally balancing one of these against the others that this power is gained; and still that is absent which can put an equal and simultaneous spring of activity into them all.

Such, at the best, is that kind of metaphysical and mystical regeneration of which some speak,-that abrupt sort of awakening, of which, at some crisis, a man may be conscious, when starting as from a dream, -as if a new light were suddenly shed on all the past, and a new call addressed to him for the future,—he feels that the wild romance of life is over and its real history begun. He is transplanted at once into a new state. A mere recipient of impressions and impulses no longer, he starts now anew on a career of real activity. But it is a partial awakening after all—a vivifying and enlivening of a part only of his moral being. It is a fitful galvanic energy that is imparted—or it is a sort of half-life, like his who, living himself, was condemned to have a dead comrade always chained to his limbs.

It is the awakening to an apprehension of God which constitutes the only complete regeneration,— the awakening to the apprehension of the eternal God, as still accessible to man through a way of free grace and perfect righteousness-and still willing to be the centre of all action and movement to the reconciled soul. It is the power of the living God, working in that soul, which alone can invigorate and enliven, not one faculty or feeling only of its moral nature, but the whole.

For it is God alone to whom man can be subject, without any sense of constraint-nay, with the feeling of perfect freedom. It is God alone to whom man can be devoted, without the undue predominance of some one part of his nature; for God is to be loved with all his heart, with all his soul, with all his strength, and with all his mind. And finally, it is God alone who, through the manifestation of his Son and by the inspiration of his Spirit, can dwell in man,-so as not to excite one particular power or passion merely, giving it a size disproportionate to the rest, but to fill equally and effectually the entire inner man, purifying what is sensual-prompting the will and directing it to earnest labour-clearing the intellectual eye, that it may see His own glory-and enlarging, elevating, and ennobling the affections, that they may warmly embrace in one cordial grasp, first of all-Himself-and then, in Him, all that is His.

ADDRESSES TO YOUNG MEN.

II.

THE DUTY OF FREE INQUIRY AND PRIVATE JUDGMENT.

"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.”—1 THESS. v. 21.

THESE two precepts embody two antagonist principles, which, when brought together in juxtaposition, mutually qualify and correct one another; the one being opposed to that dogged temper which clings to institutions and opinions merely because they are old; the other, to that restless spirit which is enamoured of every proposal of change, for little or no other reason than because it is new. Nor is it simply on the plan of striking a balance, and hitting an average or mean between two extremes, that this combination of opposite maxims proceeds, according to the doctrine of that ancient school of wisdom, which made virtue to lie in measuring the middle path between pairs of conflicting vices, or according to the less subtle, but more practical notion of not a few, who would make duty merely negative, and count it the very sum of morality to be free from this error or infirmity on the one side, and the counterpart excess on the other, with

scarcely any positive spring of action at all;-as if the swinging of the vessel in mid-stream between the whirlpools, were equivalent to the movement with which it should sweep on towards the desired haven;— or as if the poising of the false prophet's coffin midway between earth and heaven were fitted to be its final rest. Thus to fling together two hostile sins, in expectation of one holy grace resulting from the collision or the rebound, is but the poor expedient of a lifeless formality, putting the cold and artificial sparks of earth's iron and flint, instead of the glow of heaven's own fire. To say to any one,-Be neither prodigal nor parsimonious; beware of credulity on the one hand, and of scepticism on the other; let not wrath prevail, neither yet be too tame; be not too bold, nor yet too wary; so to construct elaborately your antithetical see-saw of moral truisms, is to deal with the living soul as if suspense or oscillation between two contrary attractions were its chief good, without either the energy of an onward impulse of motion, or the charm of a satisfying repose.

This is not the moral wisdom of the Bible. It makes use, indeed, often of a kind of antithesis, guarding or explaining a strong and sweeping generalization in one direction, by a counter and corresponding generalization in another. It does so, however, not on the principle of an equilibrium of forces, but rather according to the law of their combination and composition. It gives impulses to the mind, which, instead of neutralizing, conspire with one another; and the result is, not the mere blamelessness of a certain negative prudence, content to avoid extremes and " to dwell in decencies for ever," but the healthy vigour of an earnest and