55 
individual. The denier of intuitional powers of moral per- 
ception always has, and ever will be, compelled to centre the 
entire moral force by which virtue can be enforced on pure 
deductions of the intellect acting on the single principle of 
self-love, and, according to it, bad logic must necessarily 
result in bad morality. But what if he thought otherwise . 
Ao-ainst this conviction there arose before him, not a specula- 
tion, but a lamentable fact,— that which has tried even the 
patience of the holiest men in every age,— the prosperity of 
the wicked and the sufferings of the good. Such principles, 
surrounded by doubt and uncertainty, could form no moral 
force capable of overbalancing the might of the passions. 
Doubtless, the philosopher had much to say on the importance 
of subjugating them, and tried many devices for accomplishing 
it Stoicism was the highest ideal of the deification of human 
nature, and wielded with the utmost force all the resources 
which philosophy held at its command; but even the most 
exalted speculator must have felt that the moral force with 
which he was acquainted was unable to effect the object o 
the Stoic philosophy, which may be not incorrectly described 
in a single sentence, — the elevation of a man into a go . - 
nerience testified that to talk about virtue is easy ; to practise 
it is hard. Of this, the philosophers were deeply conscious. 
25. If such was the insufficiency of the moral forces when 
they were brought to act on the select few, they were o a y 
inadequate to grapple with a state of corruption and confirmed 
vice. 4 To enable these forces to act at all, it is necessary that 
the mind to which they are applied should be capable ot appre- 
ciating them, and that they should bear some proportion to 
those arrayed in opposition to them. If a sense of the beauty 
of virtue is to become a moral force, the mind must be capab e 
of perceiving its beauty, and that to such a degree as to over- 
balance the weight of the contrary principles. But how was 
this possible when the internal powers of spiritual vision ha 
become corrupted, or the principle of self-control weakened ? 
Philosophy also fully recognized the tendency of a state o 
moral degradation to become more intense, both on society 
and the individual, until the moral principles became abso- 
lutely darkened. But when corruption had once set m, she 
had no forces which were able to arrest its progress, i 
philosopher viewed his mission as being as near y as may e 
the opposite to that which our Lord asserted to be the special 
object of His. While our Lord came not to call the righteous 
but sinners to repentance, the philosopher, as a spmtuaj; 
physician, found that his medicines were possessed ot efficacy 
only in the case of those who were comparatively sound. 
26. But there is one moral force which we have not ye 
