Page:Letters on the Human Body (John Clowes).djvu/188

168 reigns in heaven, and which is his only qualification for admission into the blessed kingdom. For whether we speak of what is voluntary, or of what is in agreement with man’s ruling love, it is the same thing. But how plain is it to see, that the whole testimony of Divine revelation is opposed to this voluntary principle in which man is born; since this whole testimony is grounded in these two precepts, “Thou shalt love the thy  with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself!” Matt. xxii. 37, 39.]. Divine revelation then, it is manifest, would infuse into man a new voluntary principle as his preparation for eternal bliss; and in so doing, would render his old voluntary principle an involuntary one,—since from the moment that man begins, in good earnest, to love above all things, and his neighbour as himself, in that same moment he must of necessity begin to reject selfish and worldly love, and thus to make that involuntary which was before voluntary.

Thirdly—The consideration of what is voluntary and involuntary in the human mind and its affections is admirably calculated to conduct man to the right discharge of religious duties, by pointing out to him what religion requires of him, and what it does not require. For when it is clearly seen, that what is