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our moral and spiritual nature. As the great subject of the 
Christian revelation is spiritual and moral truth, it is to this 
portion of our beliefs that the term faith is usually applied 
in Scripture. It is through this portion of our convictions 
that Christianity professes to exert a mighty influence on 
our moral and spiritual being, by bringing before us objects 
suited to generate them, or kindle them into a new vitality. 
Through them she calls into being a power which is capable 
of confirming the holy in their holiness, of restoring the power 
of self-command in those in whom it has been weakened, of 
rescuing the degraded from their degradation, and of kin- 
dling a spiritual and moral vitality in those in whom it was 
previously dormant. What has philosophy to say as to her 
method of procedure ? 
43. I answer, that as far as it goes, her reply is decidedly 
favourable, and that the method adopted by Christianity will 
stand the closest tests of rational inquiry. The voice of philo- 
sophical inquiry points to one conclusion—that if man is to be 
acted on for good, it is only possible to do so by intro- 
ducing a light into his understanding. Such was the conclu- 
sion of pre-Christian philosophy, and all subsequent research 
confirms its truth. We have seen that the ordinary moral and 
spiritual forces at the command of philosophy, even when 
aided by the power of habituation, were wholly unable to 
recall a man from a state of moral and spiritual corruption to 
holiness, or, to. adopt ordinary language, from vice to virtue. 
Philosophy again and again admitted her weakness to deal 
with what she considered even the higher classes of minds. 
No words can express the helpless condition to which she con- 
signed the miserable and degraded. Her only hope of acting 
on the elect of mankind was through the intellect. She at- 
tempted to act by it with her utmost power. Her mistake 
was that she attempted to base her moral forces on purely 
intellectual convictions, instead of those having a direct bearing 
on the affections and the heart. Her method was right, but 
the forces at her command inadequate. The authors of Chris- 
tianity have entered on a course which the philosophers saw 
only in dim outline ; or, to use a phrase borrowed from her 
language, of that which they saw in the faintest type, Chris- 
tianity has produced the complete antitype. 
44, Let us give a brief attention to the analysis which philo- 
sophy has given of the relation of knowledge to moral action. 
She determined that in the strict sense of the word know- 
ledge, when it was an active and not a passive principle, i.e ., 
when it exists in the mind with the force of a conviction, it 
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