I. OF PIETY, AND THE RELATION THEREOF TO MANLY LIFE. - - Matt. THOU SHALT LOVE THE LORD THY GOD WITH ALL THY HEART, AND WITH ALL THY SOUL, AND WITH ALL THY MIND. xxii. 37. THERE are two things requisite for complete and perfect religion, the love of God and the love of man; one I will call Piety, the other Goodness. In their natural development they are not so sharply separated as this language would seem to imply; for piety and goodness run into one another, so that you cannot tell where one begins and the other ends. But I will distinguish the two by their centre, where they are most unlike; not by their circumference, where they meet and mingle. The part of man which is not body I will call the Spirit; under that term including all the faculties not sensual. Let me, for convenience' sake, distribute these faculties of the human spirit into æs four classes: the intellectual,- including the asthetic, moral, affectional, and religious. Let Mind be the name of the intellectual faculty,including the threefold mental powers, reason, imagination, and understanding; Conscience shall be the short name for the moral, Heart for the affectional, and Soul for the religious faculties. I shall take it for granted that the great work of mankind on earth is to live a manly life, to use, develop, and enjoy every limb of the body, every faculty of the spirit, each in its just proportion, all in their proper place, duly coördinating what is merely personal, and for the present time, with what is universal and for ever. This being so, what place ought piety, the love of God, to hold in a manly life? It seems to me, that piety lies at the basis of all manly excellence. It represents the universal action of man according to his nature. This universal action, the bent of the whole man in his normal direction, is the logical condition of any special action of man in a right direction, of any particular bent that way. If I have a universal idea of universal causality in my mind, I can then understand a special cause; but without that universal idea of causality in my mind, patent or latent, I could not understand any particular cause whatever. My eye might see the fact of a man cut ting down a tree, but my mind would comprehend only the conjunction in time and space, not their connection in causality. If you have not a universal idea of beauty, you do not know that this is a handsome and that a homely dress; you notice only the form and color, the texture and the fit, but see no relation to an ideal loveliness. If you have not a universal idea of the true, the just, the holy, you do not comprehend the odds betwixt a correct statement and a lie, between the deed of the priest and that of the good Samaritan, between the fidelity of Jesus and the falseness of Iscariot. This rule runs through all human nature. The universal is the logical condition of the generic, the special, and the particular. So the love of God, the universal object of the human spirit, is the logical condition of all manly life. This is clear, if you look at man acting in each of the four modes just spoken of, intellectual, moral, affectional, and religious. The Mind contemplates God as manifested in truth; for truth-in the wide meaning of the word including also a comprehension of the useful and the beautiful-is the universal category of intellectual cognition. To love God with the mind, is to love him as manifesting himself in the truth, or to the mind; it is to love truth, not for its uses, but for itself, because it is true, absolutely beauti |