Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/249

Rh point at which religion spreads her wings, and carries him on to a higher and more transcendent elevation. Her apex is the basis of Christianity. The highest round in the ladder of philosophy is the lowest in the scale of Christian grace. All that true philosophy can do, or professes to do, is merely to pass man through the preparatory discipline of rendering him conscious of evil, that is, of the only thing of which he can be really conscious on this earth; and thus to place him in such a position as may enable the influences of loftier truth, and of more substantial good, to take due effect upon his heart. The discipline of philosophy is essentially destructive, that of Christianity is essentially constructive. The latter busies herself in the positive reproduction of good; but only after philosophy has, to a certain extent, prepared the ground for her, by putting forth the act of consciousness, and by thus executing her own negative task, which consists in the resistance of evil. Christianity re-impresses us with the positive image of God which we had lost through the Fall; but philosophy, in the act of consciousness, must first, to a greater or a less extent, have commenced a defacement of the features of the devil stamped upon our natural hearts, before we can take on, in the least degree, the impress of that divine signature.

Such, we do not fear to say, is the preliminary discipline of man, which Christianity demands at the hands of philosophy. But there are people who imagine that the foundation-stone of the whole