TIIE INNER LIEE. 
115 
This sentiment is ennobling, because it springs from 
that deep well of inexhaustible beauty which lies within 
us, unsullied and serene. It is the bond which shall 
unite all men and women together, and form them into 
one great circle of good and generous souls. Love is 
our highest assurance of this inward self, for beneath it 
Nature hides the greatest purpose which she has to accom¬ 
plish, namely, the perpetuity of the species. And if, 
when it shall knock at the door of our hearts, we give 
joy to its divine presence, and greet it as a ray of ethereal 
loveliness flashed out of the abyss of God, it will find us 
young, and keep us so for ever. 
The province of the soul is not the province of the 
intellect. The spring of all feeling is from within, the 
source of all idea from without. The one is the office of 
the mind, the other the possession of the heart. Senti¬ 
ment, an innate moral perception, is self-existent; intel¬ 
lect is the result of experience, and is acquired during 
time. Even Locke admits that “ though it be not sense, 
as having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is 
very like it, and might properly enough be called an 
internal sense.” The perceptions of moral beauty, of 
conscience, of virtue, of infinity, of God, are the facul¬ 
ties of the soul, and that takes cognizance of the outer 
world only to read therein the symbols of its own egres- 
sive law, and the constant exodus of its highest intelli¬ 
gence. It is only through the channel of the memory 
that the mind can take cognizance of a state of feeling or 
a sentiment; for the emotions of the heart—love, friend¬ 
ship, paternal care, pity or remorse, are not processes of 
logical sequence—are independent and foreign to all 
i 2 
