Yea, verily, Amen and Amen!  For this short heroic paragraph contains the sum and substance, the heighth and the depth of all true philosophy.  Most assuredly right difficult it is for us, while we are yet in the narrow chamber of death, with our faces to the dusky falsifying looking-glass that covers the scant end-side of the blind passage from floor to ceiling,—­right difficult for us, so wedged between its walls that we cannot turn round, nor have other escape possible but by walking backward, to understand that all we behold or have any memory of having ever beholden, yea, our very selves as seen by us, are but shadows, and when the forms that we loved vanish, impossible not to feel as if they were real.

Ib. p. 197.

  Nothing that is good proceedeth out of the works of the law, except
  grace be present; for what we are forced to do, the same goeth not
  from the heart, neither is acceptable.

A law supposes a law-giver, and implies an actuator and executor, and consequently rewards and punishments publicly announced, and distinctly assigned to the deeds enjoined or forbidden; and correlatively in the subjects of the law, there are supposed, first, assurance of the being, the power, the veracity and seeingness of the law-giver, in whom I here comprise the legislative, judicial and executive functions; and secondly, self-interest, desire, hope and fear.  Now from this view, it is evident that the deeds or works of the Law are themselves null and dead, deriving their whole significance from their attachment or alligation to the rewards and punishments, even as this diversely shaped and ink colored paper has its value wholly from the words or meanings, which have been arbitrarily connected therewith; or as a ladder, or flight of stairs, of a provision-loft, or treasury.  If the architect or master of the house had chosen to place the store-room or treasury on the ground floor, the ladder or steps would have been useless.  The life is divided between the rewards and punishments on the one hand, and the hope and fear on the other:  namely, the active life or excitancy belongs to the former, the passive life or excitability to the latter.  Call the former the afficients, the latter the affections, the deeds being merely the signs or impresses of the former, as the seal, on the latter as the wax.  Equally evident is it, that the affections are wholly formed by the deeds, which are themselves but the lifeless unsubstantial shapes of the actual forms (’formae formantes’), namely, the rewards and punishments.  Now contrast with this the process of the Gospel.  There the affections are formed in the first instance, not by any reference to works or deeds, but by an unmerited rescue from death, liberation from slavish task-work; by faith, gratitude, love, and affectionate contemplation of the exceeding goodness and loveliness of the Saviour, Redeemer, Benefactor:  from the affections flow the deeds, or rather the affections