would then present us with the thoughts of some other being, not with his own; everything would float before him empty and without significance, because he would be without the sense whereby he might apprehend its reality. He is a blind man, who, upon certain true principles concerning colours which he has learned historically, has built a perfectly correct theory of colour, notwithstanding that there is in reality no colour existing for him;—he can tell how, under certain conditions, it must be; but to him it is not so, because he does not stand under these conditions. The faculty by which we lay hold on Eternal Life is only to be attained by actually renouncing the sensuous and its objects, and sacrificing them to that law which takes cognizance of our will only, and not of our actions;—renouncing them with the firmest conviction that it is reasonable for us to do so,—nay, that it is the only thing reasonable for us. By this renunciation of the Earthly, does faith in the Eternal first arise in our soul, and is there enshrined apart, as the only support to which we can cling after we have given up all else,—as the only animating principle that can elevate our minds and inspire our lives. We must indeed, according to the figure of a sacred doctrine, first “die unto the world and be born again, before we can enter the kingdom of God.”
I see—O I now see clearly before me the cause of my former indifference and blindness concerning spiritual things! Absorbed by mere earthly objects, lost in them with all my thoughts and efforts, moved and urged onward only by the notion of a result to
