Often has such a writer
or speaker stood in stern and truthfully severe judgment on the weak
"brother in Christ" when he has acted or spoken with an inconsistency
which the mere instinct of the beautiful would in his censor have
prevented. Such censors, however, ought to remember that these weak
brethren, though their instincts be less lofty, their sensibility less
acute, live closer to their principles than they themselves do to their
feelings; for the moment the natural impulse, in cases where that is the
only guide, is enlisted on the side of passion, the perception of the
beautiful is entirely sacrificed to the gratification of the senses.
When the animal nature comes into collision with the spiritual, the
highest dictates of the latter will be unheeded, unless the supremacy of
the spiritual nature be habitually maintained in practice as well as in
theory. In short, that keen perception of the true and the beautiful,
which is an essential ingredient in the formation of a noble character,
becomes, in the case of the self-indulgent worldling, only an increase
of his responsibility, and a deepening dye to his guilt.
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