75 
Here, then, is a great lacuna which philosophy is unable to 
brido-e over. She has no remedy to propose. She can do no 
more for him than she can for the man on whose eye a ray of 
light has never shone. Christianity pronounces that unless a 
dfvine power is breathed into him from without, she has no 
remedy which can reach his case. So far both are in agree- 
ment. Philosophy recognises the fact of maffis power to 
darken his moral and spiritual affections by repeated acts of 
vice. Christianity does the same. Philosophy leaves him in 
that condition. Christianity evokes mighty influences, and 
brings them to bear on him. She says, “ Pear not, only 
believe.” 
63. But there is another aspect of this question to which it is 
necessary that I should advert, but which it is impossible that 
I should discuss in this paper. I cannot pass it over in 
silence, lest it should be supposed that I do not assign it an 
important place in the philosophy of those moral forces which 
have been evoked by Christianity. She has imparted to the 
principle of habituation an efficacy as a moral power capable 
of aiding in the improvement of mankind, to which it was 
previously a stranger. To use the metaphor which I have 
already employed, she has supplied it with a fulcrum, by 
which it is able to act as a powerful lever in the spiritual 
world. That lever is faith, as the purifying and sanctifying 
principle of human nature. We have already shown that what 
habituation wanted was a standing-point on which it could 
commence its operations. This is supplied by Christianity 
when she introduces powerful convictions into the mind. The 
philosopher found the influence of this principle one of the 
most powerful obstacles to human improvement. Christianity 
has rendered it a power equally available for good. 
64. But this is far from being a full statement of what 
Christianity has effected. As we have seen, the only hope of 
a reformation of mankind which the philosopher could bring 
himself to entertain, was placed by him in the possibility of 
getting possession of the legislative powers of political 
society. If he could do this, it afforded him the possibility of 
using the weight of the principle of habituation as a powerful 
influence for good. He therefore sighed for the creation of a 
state in which, by the sanctions of law, he could enforce his 
own ideal of virtue, and educate men in the practice of it, and 
coerce the refractory. How it is impossible to deny that, 
although the philosophic conception was alloyed with many 
and great imperfections, it rests on a substantial truth. It is 
not too much to say, that whatever truth it contained, is ful- 
filled by Christianity in the creation of the Christian Church 
