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intensity to human action? I answer, increased conviction. 
It may be said that it is desire. Beyond all doubt the 
affections and desires of our moral nature are the springs of 
our actions; but they can only impel us to action when a 
conviction exists in our minds tbat their objects are attainable, 
the means of realizing them within our grasp, and that if we 
succeed in attaining them it will promote our happiness. 
Some persons allow themselves to talk as if the different parts 
of mam’s nature, which we conceive of as distinct in thought, 
were distinct in fact, and constituted as many separate entities 
within him. Hence language is habitually used as though man 
as a moral being, the subject of affections, appetites, and 
desires, is a distinct being from man as an intellectual and 
rational one. The truth is that God has so closely compacted 
together man^s moral and intellectual nature, that the one 
constantly acts and reacts on the other, rendering it a vain 
attempt to sever what the Creator has indissolubly united. 
The intellect acts on the affections and the passions, and these 
react on the intellect. 
48. I maintain, therefore, that every action presupposes 
belief; and this is alike true of the philosopher, the theo- 
logian, the merchant, and the mechanic, and that each acts 
in proportion to the intensity of his beliefs. As far, there- 
fore, as Christianity proposes to act on men through the in- 
strumentality of faith, it extends into the religious world the 
same principles which govern the active one. In the latter, 
philosophy cannot help recognizing the power of the principle. 
So far her testimony is in favour of the application which 
Christianity makes of it in the former. Where Christianity 
has advanced beyond philosophy is, that she has formed a 
plan for the moral and spiritual regeneration of the human 
race, and created a moral force for that purpose a thing 
which philosophy earnestly desiderated, but could not accom- 
plish. Nor has this been a mere speculation. He that formed 
the plan was convinced that it was a practicable one, and 
proceeded to put it into execution ; and, as it must be allowed 
even by his opponents, with a marvellous success. The history 
of nearly nineteen centuries testifies, whatever we may think of 
Christianity, that it has acted as a moral and spiritual force on 
the mind of man, with a might compared with which all 
previous efforts sink into utter insignificance. 
49. I shall not be trespassing on grounds which are strictly 
theological if I enumerate the chief spiritual forces on which 
the author of Christianity relied for accomplishing the purpose 
which he had in view. In the first place, he enlisted into his 
service every moral power with which philosophers were 
