refuse the indulgence of them when no purpose of improvement or usefulness sanctions their excitement. "It were a wantonness, and would demand Severe reproof, if we were men whose hearts By reason, barren of all future good." And he is right; for if we wish that our actions should be inseparable from virtuous feeling, we must be careful that emotions, however innocent, should not be encouraged to arise and pass away, without tending to the accomplishment of some moral purpose. When, by no agency of our own, emotions are excited, it is therefore our duty to refer them to some principle, to bring them to the support of some habit. The glories of a sunrise, the sublimity of the stormy ocean, the radiant beauties of the night, awaken spontaneous emotions but it is our duty to perpetuate their influence by looking through Nature up to Nature's God." In like manner, we should convert every pang and glow of conscience, every excitement of sympathy, into the nourishment of our moral being: and for the result we may take the word of one who, in his address to Duty, shows that he has obeyed her call, and received her rewards. "Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear Flowers laugh before thee on their beds, Having traced these facts back to their principles, there is a strong temptation to anticipate the operation of these principles on our future being, and their influence on the happiness of another state. But this would lead us into too wide a field. It is sufficient, for the present, to reflect that all beings and all circumstances may be, must be, made to minister to our spiritual life, for good or for evil. We are subject, during every moment of our existence, to influences which we cannot reject, but which will work good or harm within us, according to the dispositions with which they are received. If well received, this world of matter will gradually become to us a spiritual universe: if the contrary, our own nature will become more abject than that of the brutes that perish, and infinitely further removed from happiness. In the one case, all things will minister to our peace; in the other, to our woe. In both it may be said, that "all things are ours: let us be careful "that we are Christ's" and that, through him, we are God's. ESSAY ON THE PROPER USE OF THE RETROSPECTIVE FACULTY. 66 I. Forgetting the things which are behind." THE faculty of memory is of such prime importance in the formation and improvement of mind, that no progress whatever can be made without it. This faculty supplies the materials on which all the others work; and in proportion to its original strength or weakness is the approximation to intellectual power or to idiotcy. It becomes of less importance as the other faculties are developed, as they supersede its office by supplying to each other the elements on which they are to be severally employed: and hence we perceive the cause, and recognise the purpose, for which the memory becomes less tenacious as years advance. The other faculties being brought into play, the essential strength of the memory becomes of less and less importance to the general intellectual improvement; while the correctness of its discipline should be made an object of perpetual attention. A powerful, undisciplined memory is so wearisome a qualification in a companion, that it is only necessary to have known such an one to be aware how its vagaries delay the progress of the mind, and impede the steady advance of its improvement: while instances of a defective memory in eminent men of every class and degree, are so common as to prove that a great tenacity of facts and impressions is not a primary requisite of excellence. It was by applying his extraordinary power of abstraction to the materials furnished by memory, as well as observation, that Newton wrought out stupendous results from a very scanty assortment of facts. While observing that an apple falls, and remembering only that a feather floats, and that rain was once vapor, he was advancing much more rapidly towards his theory of gravi tation, than if his mind had been crowded with remembrances of all the circumstances which happened at the time he was observing feathers and showers. To him the art of forgetting was as serviceable as an unreflecting person would predict it to be disastrous. To have a strong memory under command is an inestimable advantage; but to have a weak one under command has been proved to be sufficient for all needful purposes, while the other faculties are vigorous. This view of the instrumentality of memory, in promoting or delaying the improvement of the intellect, is universally allowed; but most persons appear to act upon an opposite theory in their spiritual concerns. Whereas, not only are the instruments identical in the two cases, but their operation is strictly analogous. All the powers of the intellect are engaged in spiritual processes, and precisely according to their usual method of operation. The only difference is, that in the one case they are employed upon facts; in the other, on impressions. This difference, it is true, involves an important distinction – but a distinction which only serves to corroborate the convictions we are about to offer. Both facts and impressions are important only in their results; as they afford knowledge or exert influence. The results of facts are not necessarily or often immediate; those of impressions are so. The agency of memory is, therefore, more important in the first case than in the last. A fact may lie in the mind, like a seed in the ground, for days, months, and years, preserved by the memory, as the seed by the surrounding soil, before the fit season shall arrive for it to put forth its manifestations of use and beauty; but an impression exerts its influence immediately or not at all. When, for intellectual purposes, the memory recalls facts, their intrinsic value may remain the same, however frequently they may be placed before the mind; but when for spiritual purposes, the effect is different. Impressions become weaker, and their influences more and more impaired or perverted, the more frequently they are acted upon by memory. Though, in their own nature, they are, like all moral influences, imperishable, they are peculiarly susceptible of corruption and perversion; and it is far better that they should subsist (though individually lost to consciousness) as wholesome elements of our moral being, than that they should pass under a change which is injurious to them, and can answer no good purpose whatever. The great object of earthly discipline being to invigorate the spiritual nature, it is clear that whatever causes useless exhilaration on the one hand, or depression on the other, ought to be avoided. The habit of dwelling on the past does both. It needs not a moment's consideration to perceive that the contemplation of past achievements, (as achievements, and not for the sake of their results,) must occasion an elation of heart ill becoming those who are only entering upon the path of spiritual life. It is as if the infant should glory in having put his foot to the ground, and sit down to congratulate himself on the feat, when perhaps his destiny may hereafter call him to traverse the globe. While we employ the memory in presenting and embellishing our own good deeds, we are indulging in the most degrading kind of spiritual voluptuousness, and insulting Him who bestowed our faculties for higher purposes. Many who agree with us, as to the folly and danger of this species of spiritual intoxication, advocate an extreme quite as pernicious, though, as it is less alluring, it is less common. They would depress and debilitate the soul by the indulgence of remorse. Confounding remorse and repentance -things as different in their nature as Memory and Hope — they impose on themselves, and enjoin on others, the injurious penance of recording past sins, and reviving past sorrows, which, having yielded their results, are fit only to be forgotten. They flagellate and macerate their souls as monks of old did their bodies; and the punishment has the analogous effect of weakening the powers which need invigoration, and of superinducing disease to which the penitent is not constitutionally liable. If our meaning be here mistaken, if we be supposed to countenance levity and carelessness in spiritual concerns, or any contempt of the discipline of life, the misapprehension must arise from the error we are endeavouring to expose. Remorse, by which we understand the bitter feeling arising from the belief that in a situation precisely the same we might have acted differently, cannot be rationally indulged by those who maintain that all the circumstances of their external and internal life are foreseen and ordained by God. The sorrow, shame, and fear, which are the elements of repentance, have no necessary connexion with Remorse, which is altogether a fallacious feeling, and like all other fallacies, hurtful to those who entertain it. In its operation |