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in every such society to choose its spiritual pastors and teachers. It only remains to examine more particularly into the laws which relate to the discipline of societies established upon these principles.

CHAP. IV.

On Discipline.

Peculiar view of the

ing exhibit

ent sciences.

§ 1. NOTHING is more remarkable than the

human be very different associations which the same obed by differ- jects awaken in the minds of individuals whose habits of thinking have been formed by associations of a dissimilar nature. Let an abstract truth of pure science be proposed to the mechanical philosopher, the chemist, and the physiologist; if they arrive at the same conclusions respecting it, it will probably be through a course of ideas, and by the help of figures and abstractions extremely different; a difference which will frequently affect the identity of their conclusions. But let an object not of pure science, the matter of familiar observation, be presented to them, and it is very possible, that in the ideas respectively suggested by it, there will be very little in common; the attention of each will instinctively select those qualities or circumstances attaching to it, which fall within the scope of his most familiar habits of thinking.

Let, for example, the subject be Man,-a

4

subject common to almost all science and all philosophy, as comprising that with which, in some reference or other, they are principally conversant. It is evident, that no view can be taken of the human being, that shall include all that belongs to the complex wonders of his nature. One class of phenomena is selected by one science; a distinct order of facts is appropriated to another; in a third, the pursuit of knowledge is directed to properties of a still different kind; and these several physical, moral, or political views under which men may be contemplated, are susceptible of subdivisions, and modifications, under each of which the attention is fixed upon the object under some peculiar aspect, to the exclusion of all ideas not connected with the particular inquiry. And when the attention has been so long habituated to this particular direction, that it has become the most natural and familiar point of view in which an object can present itself, the person insensibly acquires a mode of thinking, and an intellectual character, bearing in some degree the impress of his favourite pursuit. The physi ologist, for instance, is apt to overlook, and has sometimes been seduced to disbelieve in, the existence of any higher principle in man, than > that which gives impulse to his sentient organization. The politician, in speculating upon the general laws of society, is led to disregard

View of the human be

all that essentially characterizes the individual.

Nor are these partial or contracted views, the result only of habits of abstract inquiry. The ideas of persons whose attention is engrossed with the daily concerns of life, with the petty details of the social economy, and who are in the habit of regarding men exclusively in relation to these concerns, are found to differ from those of men accustomed to regard their fellow creatures with more comprehensive views, as widely as the speculations of the general at the head of his army respecting its human materials, are remote from those of the philosopher in his closet, investigating, with regard to the same beings, the laws of consci

ousness.

Religion claims the prerogative of science in ing peculiar considering Man under an aspect altogether peto Religion. culiar to itself, and in fixing the attention on an order of facts totally distinct from the phenomena which arrest the attention of the anatomist, or which employ the speculations of the philosopher. Religion exhibits to us Man simply as a being possessed of what in Scripture is emphatically termed the soul, in reference not to the living principle common to the animal creation, but to the spiritual faculty, in respect of which he is distinguished from every other creature in this world, and individually sepa

rated from every fellow being, as rational, accountable, and immortal. This view of man is so peculiar to religion, that we discover scarcely any traces of it, either in the ordinary conversation of men, or in any of the speculations of science or of philosophy. It is a view altogether alien and repugnant to the notions of the generality of mankind; one which they can with difficulty be brought to entertain, and which they with reluctance realize. Yet of so much importance is it in the discussion of any religious question, that till the habit be attained of regarding man simply and solely under this aspect, it is impossible to understand aright the purpose and bearings of Christianity.

of Revela

tion relative

to the value

of

the soul.

The view which religion unfolds of the value Discoveries of the human soul, is peculiar in two material respects; first, as regards the integral value of the individual, and secondly, as regards the absolute parity of all human beings. The doctrine of the Gospel, while it exalts the importance of the moral being in the scale of existence, strips him of all the artificial trappings of earthly pride. It passes over all that distinguishes man in the view of his fellow, or that constitutes the subject of his self-complacency, by pronouncing all men to be in a state of spiritual death, "shut up under sin." "All have "sinned;" all must die: these circumstances, in respect of which no one human being is dis

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