Jewish religion, "touching the righteousness which
is by the Law" they were blameless, but yet they wanted something more
than that, and they were found on the brink of Jordan imploring the
baptism of John, seeking after a new and higher state than they had
yet attained to,--a significant proof that man cannot be satisfied
with his own works. And again, there is not one of us who has ever
been satisfied with his own performances. There is no man whose doings
are worth anything, who has not felt that he has not yet done that
which he feels himself able to do. While he was doing it, he was kept
up by the spirit of hope; but when done the thing seemed to him
worthless. And therefore it is that the author cannot read his own
book again, nor the sculptor look with pleasure upon his finished
work. With respect to one of the greatest of all modern sculptors, we
are told that he longed for the termination of his earthly career,
for this reason--that he had been satisfied with his own performance:
satisfied for the first time in his life. And this expression of his
satisfaction was but equivalent to saying that he had reached the
goal, beyond which there could be no progress. This impossibility of
being satisfied with his own performances is one of the strongest
proofs of our immortality--a proof of that perfection towards which we
shall for ever tend, but which we can never attain.

A second trace of this infinitude in man's nature we find in the
infinite capacities of the soul. This is true intellectually and
morally. With reference to our intellectual capacities, it would
perhaps be more strictly correct to say that they are indefinite,
rather than infinite; that is we can affix to them no limit. For there
is no man, however low his intellectual powers may be, who has not at
one time or another felt a rush of thought, a glow of inspiration,
which seemed to make all things possible, as if it were merely the
effect of some imperfect organization which stood in the way of his
doing whatever he desired to do. With respect to our moral and
spiritual capacities, we remark that they are not only indefinite, but
absolutely infinite. Let that man answer who has ever truly and
heartily loved another. That man knows what it is to partake of the
infinitude of God. Literally, in the emphatic language of the Apostle
John, he has felt his immortality--"God in him and he in God." For
that moment, infinitu