reflected the light in the face of the people?
At our Revolutionary period, ministers, in their earnestness to preach
to the times, might have come short in preaching eternity. So far
there was a mistake to be rectified; but they did well to preach to the
times. It is among the reasons, why religious so tempered political
zeal; and, accordingly, why, as our Revolution _was_ without a model,
so it _remains_ without a rival. It is well that the struggle came,
before the toad-eaters to capital's feed agents in legislative halls
occupied the high seats of moral influence.

The true successors to the fathers are not the preachers of party
politics, but they who aim to supply the lack of all parties, in that
they fail to make liberty a means, valuable only as affording
facilities to improvement.

We are exceedingly contracted in our notions of the Christian
preacher's just province. If we confine it to administering directly
to the soul's spiritual wants and everlasting interests, we stray wide
from the example, which God himself sets, when he writes a revelation
for man. The Bible is full of histories, maxims, laws, just as might
be expected in a book, which ignored any other life, than that which
now is. One half of it (within bounds) might remain as it is, on the
supposition, that men have neither hopes nor duties, but such as
pertain to them as joint tenants of this earthly life.

If we would keep people superior to the impulses of appetite, and the
solicitations of sensual pleasure, we must attempt _servitute corporis
uti_ by _imperio animi_* [In Sallust's well known sentence _servitute_
may be the object of _utimur_, _imperio_ the ablative of the means; or,
reversing the construction, the sense may be, by keeping the body in
subjection, we better maintain the mind's supremacy. Neither, I
believe, is the common understanding of the passage.]--by training the
mind to know its capacities and powers. If this be neglected, purely
spiritual influences, supposing them forthcoming, will hardly save the
body from unduly controlling the man. Vulgar ambition is to be
forestalled in the same way. _Imperium populi_ may be expected to be
attractive, in proportion as _imperium animi_ is unstudied, unknown;
and of course the full sense missed, in which knowledge is power. He
who knows the greatness of the world within, hears nothing strange in
the declaration-that "greater is he who ruleth his own spirit, than he
who tak