xxii INTRODUCTION 



of the moral sense ? When the heart is still young 

 and tender, how spontaneously and sweetly and 

 urgently does every vision of goodness and noble- 

 ness in the conduct of another awaken the impulse 

 to go and do likewise ! And if that impulse is not 

 obeyed, how certainly does the first approving 

 perception of the beauty of goodness become duller, 

 until at last we may even come to hate it where 

 we find it, for its discordance with the ' motions of 

 sins in our members ' ! 



" But not less certainly will every earnest effort to 

 bring the life into unison with what we perceive 

 to be right bring its own reward in a clearer and 

 more joyful perception of what is right, and a 

 keener sensitiveness to every discord in ourselves. 

 How all such discord may be removed, how the 

 chords of the heart may be tuned and the life 

 become music, — these are questions of religion, 

 which are quite beyond our scope. But I take it 

 that every religion which has prevailed among the 

 children of Adam is in itself an evidence that, how- 

 ever debased and perverted the moral sense may 

 have become, the painful consciousness that his 

 heart is ' like sweet bells jangled ' still presses 

 everywhere and always on the spirit of man ; and 

 it is also a conscious or unconscious admission that 

 there is no blessedness for him until his life shall 

 march in step with the music of the ' Eternal 

 Righteousness.' " 



Mr. Aitken's name will be kept green among 



