so
detestable a farce. But it seems with all human matters, that as soon as
spiritual truths are petrified into doctrines, it is another name for
their death. They die, corrupt, and breed a pestilence. The doctrine of
good works was hurled away by an instinct of generous feeling, and this
feeling itself has again become dead, and a fresh disease has followed
upon it. Nobody (or, at least, nobody good for anything) will lay a
claim to merit for this or that good action which he may have done.
Exactly in proportion as a man is really good, will be the eagerness
with which he will refuse all credit for it; he will cry out, with all
his soul, 'Not unto us--not unto us.'

And yet, practically, we all know and feel that between man and man
there is an infinite moral difference; one is good, one is bad, another
hovers between the two; the whole of our conduct to each other is
necessarily governed by a recognition of this fact, just as it is in the
analogous question of the will. Ultimately, we are nothing of ourselves;
we know that we are but what God has given us grace to be--we did not
make ourselves--we do not keep ourselves here--we are but what in the
eternal order of Providence we were designed to be--exactly that and
nothing else; and yet we treat each other as responsible; we cannot
help it. The most rigid Calvinist cannot eliminate his instincts; his
loves and hatreds seem rather to deepen in intensity of colouring as,
logically, his creed should lead him to conquer them as foolish. It is
useless, it is impossible, to bring down these celestial mysteries upon
our earth, to try to see our way by them, or determine our feelings by
them; men are good, men are bad, relatively to us and to our
understandings if you will, but still really, and so they must be
treated.

There is no more mischievous falsehood than to persist in railing at
man's nature, as if it were all vile together, as if the best and the
worst which comes of it were in God's sight equally without worth. These
denunciations tend too fatally to realise themselves. Tell a man that no
good which he can do is of any value, and depend upon it he will take
you at your word--most especially will the wealthy, comfortable,
luxurious man, just the man who has most means to do good, and whom of
all things it is most necessary to stimulate to it. Surely we should not
be afraid. The instincts which God has placed in our hearts are too
mighty for us to be able to exti