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CHAPTER V.

Powers of Intuition in the soul-Effect of neglecting them-Degree of Perfection to which they may be developed-Destructive instincts of Kant-Direction of the spiritual instinct-Ruinous result of disobedience to it.

THERE is a native power of spiritual judgment in man, if he had been habituated to exercise it, before which the universe might be almost as full of light as the pages of Divine Revelation. On one occasion, our Blessed Lord, in reasoning with the Jews, puts their ability to judge and decide concerning spiritual things, on the same level with their ability to judge from the appearances in the sky the nature of the weather. It is a most striking appeal, which is thus made. "When ye see a cloud rise. out of the West, straightway ye say, There cometh a shower; and so it is. And when ye see the South wind blow, ye say, There will be heat; and it cometh to pass. Ye hypocrites! Ye can discern the face of the sky and of the earth, but how is it that ye do not discern this time? YEA, AND WHY EVEN OF YOURSELVES, JUDGE YE NOT WHAT IS RIGHT?"

This is a great and important argument; full of meaning more than meets the eye; appealing to the mysterious depths

of our own nature, depths out of which we not only judge, but shall be judged, and in which God hath not only set a counterpart of the world that now is, but an image of that which is to

come.

The world of nature is as a series of signals to a prisoner, signals arranged for his deliverance; for the soul of man is in a dungeon, until a communion is established with God, and a man becomes "the Lord's freeman." In order to rescue the prisoner, the deliverer must first gain his attention, must make him consider the meaning of the signs and sounds around him. He hears a familiar harp-melody, like King Richard sleeping in his prison, and awakened by the minstrelsy of his faithrul follower. The Spirit breathes upon the Word, or some providence of solemn power awakes him, and he begins to listen to his God. Nature herself speaks, now no longer unheeded. Now he watches and interprets. Now what vast, infinite, glorious meanings, what grand awakening lessons shine and speak around him.

"Enough of science and of art!

Close up these barren leaves,

Come forth, and bring with you a heart,

That watches and receives."

The poet and the painter see a world of their own in nature. They see what is reflected in the depths of their own being, what is wakened into life in an intelligent sensibility by the presentation of nature, or formed by the power of a creative imagination. A great English landscape painter is said to have been engaged on one of his works, while a lady of rank and taste, looking on, remarked, "But, Mr. Turner, I do not see in nature

all that you describe there." "Ah, Madam," answered the painter, "do you not wish you could?"

This inward and intuitive sight is indeed a great possession. And there is vast power in that which is instinctive and spontaneous. The greatest proof of genius is perhaps its spontaneous, irrepressible, natural activity. It is rather intuitive impulse than conscious power. A soul richly endowed, is alive to all elements of beauty, to all the things that God has made to act upon the mind, and they produce their full effect upon a sensitive nature, and set the life of genius in motion, even as the wind breathes upon an Eolian Harp, as the sun quickens the leaves, the trees, the flowers. It is an enviable thing to be so constituted; such a mind enjoys creation; such a mind works spontaneously, not because its path of action or of feeling, or its object of attainment, or its work in hand, has been pronounced by critical philosophy in accordance with the nature of the beautiful; but because it is the instinctive impulse and spontaneous activity of the individual mind, seeking to give expression, realization, to its original imaginings and impressions. But this excessively susceptible constitution of mind is given to few; and of those who do partake of the power of genius, the greater part have debased it, dimmed its clearness, destroyed its purity and simplicity, blunted its susceptibility, and put out its light.

And how universally do men strive, by the putrid joys of sense and passion, to keep themselves ever from the knowledge of the fineness of the sensibilities which God has given them! This mind, which might behold a world of glory in created things, and look through them as through a transparent veil to things infinitely more glorious, signified, or contained within the covering, is as dull and heavy as a piece of anthracite coal.

Who made it so? Alas, habits of sense and sin have done this. If from childhood the soul had been educated for God, in habits accordant with its spiritual nature, it would be full of life, love, and sensibility, in harmony with all lovely things in the natural world, beholding the spiritual world through the natural, alive to all excitement from natural and intellectual beauty, and as ready to its duty as a child to its play. What a dreadful destruction of the mind's nicer sensibilities results from a sensual life! What a decline, decay, and paralysis of its intuitive powers, so that the very existence of such a thing as spiritual intuition, in reference to a spiritual world, may be questioned, if not denied!

A man may be frightfully successful in such a process of destruction, if long enough continued, upon his own nature. "Who can read without indignation of Kant," remarks De Quincy, "that at his own table in social sincerity and confidential talk, let him say what he would in his books, he exulted in the prospect of absolute and ultimate annihilation; that he planted his glory in the grave, and was ambitious of rotting forever! The king of Prussia, though a personal friend of Kant's, found himself obliged to level his state thunders at some of his doctrines, and terrified him in his advance; else I am persuaded that Kant would have formally delivered Atheism from the Professor's chair, and would have enthroned the horrid ghoulish creed, which privately he professed, in the University of Königsberg. It required the artillery of a great king to make him pause. The fact is, that as the stomach has been known by means of its natural secretion, to attack not only whatsoever alien body is introduced within it, but also (as John Hunter first showed), sometimes to attack itself and its own organic structure; so, and

with the same preternatural extension of instinct, did Kant carry forward his destroying functions, until he turned them upon his own hopes, and the pledges of his own superiority to the dog, the ape, the worm."

This is exceedingly striking and illustrative. But according to the argument and train of thought we are now pursuing, it was not Kant's instinct thus working for destruction, and laboring downwards to the brute, but his habit of materialism and Atheism, working against instinct, and at length overcoming it, and deadening it in a paralytic silence. De Quincy in this passage uses the word instinct for a personal and peculiar perversion and depravity of instinct, contrary to the immortal and heaven-created instinct of mankind.

It is impossible to say what would be, what might not be, the power of spiritual discernment in man, if it were carefully cultivated from the beginning. For it is a power sometimes exercised even in the midst of the ruin and obtuseness produced by depravity, and in spite of the supreme prevalence of a selfish will. Poetical minds have recognized this power, and described as exercised within the ruins of our nature, in striking, though highly figurative language. They tell us,

That in a season of calm weather,

Though inland far we be,

Our souls have sight of that immortal sea

Which brought us hither;

Can in a moment travel thither,

And see the children sport upon the shore,

And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore!

Yes! we do hear them! They roll, and dash, and roar, sublime in their infinity, and we cannot but hear them; it is diffi

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