of the power of its own
genius than in the contemplation of Him from whom cometh every good and
perfect gift--it has not attained Piety, and its worship is not an
acceptable service. For it is self-worship--worship of the creature's
own conceptions, and an overweening complacency with his own greatness,
in being able to form and so to express them as to win or command the
praise and adoration of his fellow-mortals. Those lofty speculations,
alternately declaimed among the mountains, with an accompaniment of
waterfalls, by men full of fancies and eloquent of speech, elude the
hold of the earnest spirit longing for truth; disappointment and
impatience grow on the humblest and most reverent mind, and escaping
from the multitude of vain words, the neophyte finds in one chapter of a
Book forgotten in that babblement, a light to his way and a support to
his steps, which, following and trusting, he knows will lead him to
everlasting life.

Throughout the poem there is much talk of the light of nature, little of
the light of revelation, and they all speak of the theological
doctrines of which our human reason gives us assurance. Such expressions
as these may easily lead to important error, and do, indeed, seem often
to have been misconceived and misemployed. What those truths are which
human reason, unassisted, would discover to us on these subjects, it is
impossible for us to know, for we have never seen it left absolutely to
itself. Instruction, more or less, in wandering tradition, or in
express, full, and recorded revelation, has always accompanied it; and
we have never had other experience of the human mind than as exerting
its powers under the light of imparted knowledge. In these
circumstances, all that can be properly meant by those expressions which
regard the power of the human mind to guide, to enlighten, or to satisfy
itself in such great inquiries is, not that it can be the discoverer of
truth, but that, with the doctrines of truth set before it, it is able
to deduce arguments from its own independent sources which confirm it in
their belief; or that, with truth and error proposed to its choice, it
has means, to a certain extent, in its own power, of distinguishing one
from the other. For ourselves, we may understand easily that it would be
impossible for us so to shut out from our minds the knowledge which has
been poured in upon them from our earliest years, in order to ascertain
what self-left reason could find