ity to realize them. They are expressed
upon every page of Plato, and it is not surprising that some of the
Christian Fathers should have deemed Platonism, as well as Judaism, to be
a preparation for Christianity, by its bringing man to a sense of his
need of redemption. And it would stimulate Christians in their efforts to
give revealed religion to the heathen, did they ponder the fact which the
journals of the missionary sometimes disclose, that the Divine Spirit is
brooding with His common and preparatory influence over the chaos of
Paganism, and that here and there the heathen mind faintly aspires to be
freed from the bondage of corruption,--that dim stirrings, impulses, and
wishes for deliverance, are awake in the dark heart of Paganism, but that
owing to the strength and inveteracy of sin in that heart they will prove
ineffectual to salvation, unless the gospel is preached, and the Holy
Spirit is specially poured out in answer to the prayers of Christians.

Now, all these phenomena in the human soul go to show the rigid bondage
of sin, and to prove that sin has an element of servitude in it. For when
these impulses, wishes, and aspirations are awakened, and the man
discovers that he is unable to realize them in actual character and
conduct, he is wretchedly and thoroughly conscious that "whosoever
committeth sin is the _slave_ of sin." The immortal, heaven-descended
spirit, feeling the kindling touch of truth and of the Holy Ghost,
thrills under it, and essays to soar. But sin hangs heavy upon it, and it
cannot lift itself from the earth. Never is man so sensible of his
enslavement and his helplessness, as when he has a _wish_ but has no
_will_.[3]

Look, for illustration, at the aspirations of the drunkard to be
delivered from the vice that easily besets him. In his sober moments,
they come thick and fast, and during his sobriety, and while under the
lashings of conscience, he wishes, nay, even _longs_, to be freed from
drunkenness. It may be, that under the impulse of these aspirations he
resolves never to drink again. It may be, that amid the buoyancy that
naturally accompanies the springing of hope and longing in the human
soul, he for a time seems to himself to be actually rising up from his
"wallowing in the mire," and supposes that he shall soon regain his
primitive condition of temperance. But the sin is strong; for the
appetite that feeds it is in his blood. Temptation with its witching
solicitation come