Page:Sphere and Duties of Government.djvu/98

78 But although the influence of religious ideas unmistakably harmonizes and co-operates with the process of moral perfection, it is no less certain that such ideas are in no way inseparably associated with that process. The simple idea of moral perfection is great, and inspiring, and exalted enough to require no other veil or form ; and every religion is based on personification to a greater or less degree,—represents itself in some shape of appeal to the senses,—some or other modification of anthropomorphism. The idea of perfection will still hover before him who has not been wont to comprise the sum of all moral excellence in one absolute Ideal, and to conceive of himself as in a relation with that being: it will be to him at once the grand incentive to all activity, and the element of all his happiness. Firmly assured by experience of the possibility of raising his soul to a higher degree of moral perfection, he will strive with earnest and unwearying efforts to reach the goal he has set before him. The thought of the possible annihilation of his being will cease to alarm, when his illusive imagination is no longer painfully alive to the sense of nothingness in the non-existence of death. His unalterable dependency on the capricious mutations of fortune no more daunts and dismays him: comparatively indifferent to external joys and privations, he regards only what is purely moral and intellectual; and no mere freak of changeful destiny has power to disturb the calm, inner life of his soul. His spirit is exalted to a proud height of independence through its perfect sense of self-sufficingness—its lofty superiority to external vicissitude—the rich and overflowing fulness of its own ideas—the profound consciousness of its internal, deep-seated strength. And then when he looks back to his eventful journey in the past, and retraces its onward progress, step by step, through doubt and difficulty;