such men are "never the better in reality
in themselves and God judges all things as they are." "While men
continue in their wickedness, they do but vainly dream of a device to
tie the hands of Almighty Vengeance."[21]

True religion, on the other hand, is absolutely another thing, sundered
by the width of the sky from either superstition or legalistic
religion. It is a reception and assimilation of the Life of God within
the soul of man which is predisposed by its fundamental nature to the
influx and formative influence of the Spirit of God, who is the
environing Life and inner atmosphere of all human spirits: "_Spiritual
Life comes from God's breath within us and from the formation of Christ
within the soul_."[22]

Like all of his kind, Smith begins with what to him is an axiomatic
fact, that the human soul has a "royal pedigree and noble extraction,"
that, "as the best philosophers have alwaies taught, we must enquire
for God within ourselves," that "Principles of Divine Truth have been
engraven on man's Heart by the finger of God," that we can find "a
clear impression of some Eternal Nature and Perfect Being stamped upon
our own souls," that there are "Radical Principles of Divine Knowledge"
{311} and "Seeds of Divine Nature" hidden within us and that a Divine
Spirit blows and breathes upon men's hearts, assisting the soul to
participate in the Life of God.[23] In one of his bold sayings this
position is summed up as follows: "Religion is a Heaven-born thing, the
Seed of God in the spirits of men, whereby they are formed to a
similitude and likeness of Himself. A true Christian is every way of a
most noble extraction, of an heavenly and divine pedigree."[24]

He finds the mark of man's excelling dignity in the inexhaustible depth
of his nature and in his noble discontent with every finite and mutable
thing. The soul of man is "too big for earthly designs and interests."
There is forever a restless appetite within man for some infinite Good
without which he can never be satisfied. Everything which he attains
or achieves still leaves him in "pinching penury," unsatiated with
"the thin and spare diet which he finds in his finite home." His
soul, "like the daughters of the Horseleach is always crying: 'Give,
give.'" No happiness worth having ever arises, nor through a whole
eternity could arise, for any soul sequestered like a hermit in
the narrow confines of its own private cell, sundered from "the
Fountain