of a
portico to a vast temple. The intellect is itself destined to survive
the body, and as the instrument through which the heart is to be
disciplined and fitted for this condition of exalted humanity, is to be
informed with all that truth most essential for this purpose. Whatever
there be in the heavens or the earth--in books or works of men, to
discipline, enlarge and exalt the mind, to that we shall be attracted. A
right heart breathes in an atmosphere of truth; it grows and rejoices in
communion with all the light that shines upon it from the works or word
of God. All truth, indeed, is not of the same importance. There is that
which is primary and essential; there is that which adds to the
completeness, without going to the foundation of character. The truths
that enter a well cultivated mind, animated by right sentiments, will
arrange themselves by a natural law in the relative positions they hold
as the exponents of the character of God, and the means more or less
adapted to promote the purity and elevation of man. All truth is of God;
yet it is not all of equal value as an educational influence. There are
different circles--some central, some remote. The crystals of the rock,
the stratification of the globe, and the facts of a like character, will
fill an outer circle, as beautiful, or skillful, or wonderful, in the
demonstration of divine powers, but not so in themselves unfolding the
highest attributes of God. The architecture of animate nature, the
processes of vegetable life, the composition of the atmosphere, the
clouds and the water, will range themselves in another circle, within
the former, and gradually blending with it, as the manifestations of the
wisdom and benificence of God. Then the unfoldings of his moral
character in the government of nations, in the facts of history, and in
the general revelation of himself in the Scriptures, will constitute
another band of truth concentric with the others, yet brighter and
nearer the center. While at length in the cross and person of Christ--in
the system of redemption, and all the great facts which it embodies, we
behold the innermost circle that, sweeping round Jehovah as its center,
reflects the light of his being, most luminously upon the universe. Such
is obviously the relative order of the truth we seek to know. It is the
different manifestations of God, ascending from the lowest attributes of
divinity, to those which constitute a character worthy the hom