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inherited. In one it assumes the form of the lust of wealth, and becoming rich is the great master-motive of his life. In another it assumes the form of the lust of applause, and the man becomes dwarfed and distorted into a beggar of adulation. In another it assumes the form of the lust of power, and his existence is a history of tyranny, as wide as the circle of his operation, and as desperate as the intensity of the lust. In another it assumes the form of the lust of the flesh, and the passions of the beast burn out the nobler tendencies of the man; and the miserable wretch, stultified and imbruted, prowls like a demon among the pure, a curse to society, and a more terrible curse to himself. In another it assumes the form of the lust of pleasure, and his life wears away, a vapid search for excitement, sucking poison from a hundred sources to blast and ruin him at last.

These various forms are all specific manifestations of the generic love of self and of the world. They are specific in each individual, and accord with his specific predisposition. Just as particular localities produce poisonous weeds peculiar to that locality, so individual minds exhibit a tendency to some especial form of this evil of love of self. And just as every locality produces weeds of some kind, so every individual manifests, in some form or another, this universal hereditament. And further, just as the weeds of some localities are more obnoxious in character, and more deeply rooted in the soil than others, so also some forms of this hereditary evil are more terrible in their operations, and more deeply engraved in some individuals than in others,―more productive of misery and more difficult of erasion. Men are truly the children of their fathers, and evil is susceptible of entailment,-a principle pregnant with practical importance to all well-wishers of their kind. Men, too, have especially one sin that hath so easily beset them," -one great enemy of their household, whom it must be the battle of their lives to disable and dislodge.

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Were there no other influents than these hereditary predispositions, then the character of this hereditament would necessarily be the character of the individual. It would be useless to speak of improvement, for in that case improvement would be impossible: earth would already have become a hell, and men only devils with distinct and individual specialities.

The fact that we are able to perceive that these hereditaments are evil, only shows that another class of influents is at work within us. It proves that we are able to see above what we are naturally disposed to love; that is, it proves that our understandings are elevated above our wills, that we can perceive truth superior to the objects of our affec

tions. And this is the fact; and well for us is it that it is the fact. Hence comes the possibility of education; and education commences with the earliest action of our conscious existence. From the first rudiments learned at the mother's bosom, and received from the very expression of the mother's face, the very sounds of the mother's voice, and the tender touch of the mother's hand, to the latest accumulations of a ripe and penetrative old age,—education is constantly going on. It is a merciful Providence that places the beginnings of the young subject of education in a condition where he shall be surrounded by an atmosphere of love, where even vice forbears to corrupt the thoughts of infancy, and where deeds of unselfish devotion, from mother, father, sisters, brothers, serve as examples and preceptors to teach him devotion and self-sacrifice. And this education continues. Every object suggests an idea; every circumstance graves its mark; every companion lends himself as a model and a mould to be imitated by or reflected in the young subject. Some impressions are deep, and then they endure; some only momentarily deflect the buoyancy of the supple subject, and their influence passes away, and with it their very remembrance. A blotted and blurred page is the memory of boyhood!

From the pastimes of childhood to the schools of youth; from the curricula of boyhood to the severer studies of the incipient man; from the transient impulses received from child companions to the stronger influences of maturer friends; from the narrow scene of childish remark to the broader plains of youthful investigation, the growing subject of improvement passes. And from the contact of society, the struggles of business, the deepening perceptions of motive and disposition, the expanding experience of the man,-this influent education pours in upon the individual. From the written books, the spoken books, the books of the countenance, and the broad book of external nature; from books, too, of another class, the watched volume of his own soul, presenting him with shifting pictures of thought and feeling, or the ruddyleaved book of love, felt for one pure being,—the individual continually gathers up the elements out of which character may be formed. And that grandest book of all books, the written Word of God, teaches him more thoroughly to comprehend himself, more searchingly to investigate his own nature, while it shows to him the key to the enigma of human life in unfolding to him the depth of the human fall, with the greatness of the human destiny;-exhibits to him the use and the object of all these influent streams of education, that he might learn to mould in himself the character of a man, and from the slough of the natural to rise into the nobility of a spiritual being.

Facts, the basis of knowledge; principles, the laws of facts; and systems, the congeries of principles, crowd together in the storehouse of his memory;-the meditations of his own mind with the reflections of other men. Confusion and disorder must ensue from the crude and heterogeneous conglomerate, were it not for the action, equally constant, of another faculty. This knowledge, various and extensive as it is,— heaven-embracing, earth-clasping, science-encircling, and all-comprehensive, furnishes only the materials, the elements of character. A new process, that of selection, segregation, appropriation, and rejection, must take place, and its operation is coäctive with the accumulation.

As the fact of man's ability to perceive above what he by nature loves shows that education is possible, so the further fact that he is able voluntarily to receive and adopt his perceptions proves that education is the means of improvement. Herein is the grand humanity of the man. Inclined to evil by the instincts of his nature, he can be induced to resist his instincts by the adoption of truth which he has been previously able to perceive. Of little use would all stores of information be to man, if man were unable to voluntarily adopt and apply the principles he learns to the regulation of his own conduct, the resisting of his passions, the moderation of his tempers, the improvement of himself. This capacity of improvement proves that the predisposition to evil is no more than a predisposition or a tendency,—that it does not link him, iron-yoked and helpless, to the relentless car of a monstrous nécessity,— that it has not formed for him the inevitable track in which he must for ever tread the then weary paces of an existence that would be a slavery,—that it is not an indissoluble chain that must be dragged clankingly from the cradle to the grave, nor an inexorable taskmaster pursuing him in toil, watching him in his rest, and hovering in dark shadows as it haunts the dreams of his sleep.

This faculty of voluntary selection is the grand formative of character. With as just and accurate a logic as his perceptions have enabled him to acquire and his reflections taught him to employ, he arranges and classifies the facts he gathers from observation, gleans from reading, or learns from experience; infers from them principles, or accepts the inferences of others, and these principles he adopts as the laws of his life. He receives them as true, and strives to measure his conduct according to them. Systems of physiological principles teach him to regulate the body; systems of economics teach him to conduct his business; systems of mental philosophy help him to comprehend, and direct him in the use of his mind; systems of religion reveal to him his own heart and its lusts, guide him in the control of his passions, and

assist him in self-restraint, self-conquest, and self-purification. As he selects, so he strives to live; as he lives, so he has really selected; as he selects and lives, so his character is formed; and as his character is formed by selection, so it becomes established by conduct, confirmed into habit, and grows into becoming more thoroughly his own.

I have spoken of influents, as yet, only under the one form of conscious and external, because based on the perceptions of the external. There is another class of influents which play no small nor unimportant part in aiding this formative faculty in making its selection. Man is only an organised receptacle of life from the Lord, and with this constant influx of life, dispositions to love truth and to desire good flow in, so that there is a God-given inclination to admire, adopt, appropriate truth wherever seen, and a wish to model his conduct according to its dictates, continually received by man. That this might operate on men, however sunk and fallen, the Lord assumed a Humanity and glorified it, in order that it might be the medium between God and corporeal and sensual man, "the mediator with the Father, even the MAN Christ Jesus." Were it not for this "striving of His Spirit with man," truth might be perceived, perhaps admired, but certainly not adopted nor obeyed. This influx is unconscious to man, or it would paralyze his freedom and stultify his humanity. With this influx man can coöperate in the reception of truth and the rejection of evil. This influx counterbalances the weight of hereditary evil, holds hell in check, and maintains the great equilibrium that man's free-will alone can derange either to the one side or the other. This renders improvement possible, because it renders adoption of truth possible; and improvement being thus rendered possible, education becomes the means of improvement.

On this sublime eminence of freedom; this power voluntarily to choose his motives of action, which are affections; his modes of action, which are his thoughts; and his actions, which are the embodiments of his affections and his thoughts: man stands exalted above every other living thing. The elements of character,-noble or mean, lofty or debased, holy or impure, tender or irascible, angel-like or devil-like,-are around and before him. He can select which he will. He wills those which he selects; and as he chooses, so he is.

This selection is coëtaneous with the accumulation of knowledge, and is the acceptance as true, or the rejection as false, of the information acquired. And coëtaneous and consentaneous with this acquisition and selection is the effluent process,-the goings-out in actions, words, and other expressions of character. Ideas are accepted as true, and appropriated by the will or love-principle of the man. From love springs [Enl. Series.-No. 98, vol. ix.]

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action, because action is love in operation. Acquisition, selection, expression, these three form a one in every individual. The influent, the formative, and the effluent of character are thus welded inseparably together. Man must learn, and is continually learning. Learning, man must adopt or reject; adopting or rejecting, man must act, and is continually acting. His actions, consequently, are the adequate expressions, because they are the necessary results, of the two former processes. By his fruits he is known. Man is as is his life. Every action of the individual is characteristic of the individual, because every action is in agreement with, and is an expression of, his character, stamped with the seal of his individuality. If that be faint and indistinct, then vague and uncertain must be the expression; if that be marked and defined, then determinate and distinguishable will the expression be. It will tone his voice, direct his movements, mould his gestures, model his style, modify his carriage, and speak out from the changes of the features, till it circles around him, as it were, like a sphere, exercising influence upon, and occasioning circumstances about, every other individual with whom he comes into contact. In all this the individual exhibits only his character, which is the sum of his original powers modified by education.

It will be observed that I use the term education in its broadest and fullest sense; not only in the sense of informing the understanding by the communication of facts, nor yet the training of the mind to digest and scrutinise, observe and arrange such facts alone, but likewise the cultivation of elevated affections, by resisting and subduing the evil, and by the adoption and practice of the good: the whole of that process by which the hereditarily malformed individuality is reformed, and the degenerate man becomes regenerate. Inadequate and deficient must that education be that penetrates no farther than the mere understanding,— that fills the laboratory of the mind with crude materials, but which the man never mingles, compounds, nor transforms, that burdens the table with rich luxuries, but of which the man never partakes, nor appropriates, nor assimilates.

The character of the man is not as is the education of his understanding, but as is the education of his understanding and affections. Indeed, such as is man's heart or will, such must be his dispositions ; and such as are his dispositions, such must be his character. Every action is but the manifestation of his dispositions, hence every action is an expression of character. The motive that prompts the action is the suggestion of his will,-the mode of the action is guided by his understanding. "Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh," and we may add, the hand acteth, the foot walketh, the voice singeth,

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