Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/224

214 conceivable; and if this act does not embody the whole of such love, it at any rate forms a very important element in its composition. In virtue of the tone and active character given to it by this element, the love of our enemies may be called moral love, in contradistinction to the love of our friends, which, on account of its purely passive character, we have called natural love.

And let it not be thought that this act is one of inconsiderable moment. It is, indeed, a mighty act, in the putting forth of which man is in nowise passive. In this act he directly thwarts, mortifies, and sacrifices one of the strongest susceptibilities of his nature. He transacts it in the freedom of an original activity, and, most assuredly, nature lends him no helping hand towards its performance. On the contrary, she endeavours to obstruct it by every means in her power. The voice of human nature cries, "By all means, trample your enemies beneath your feet." "No," says the Gospel of Christ, "rather tread down into the dust that hatred which impels you to crush them."

But now comes another question, What is it that, in this instance, gives a supreme and irreversible sanction to the voice of the Gospel, rendering this resistance of our natural hatred of our enemies right, and our non-resistance of that hatred wrong?

We have but to admit that freedom, or, in other words, emancipation from the thraldom of a foreign causality, a causality which, ever since the Fall of