And, escaped from this and the
like deceits, all have been brought to the stand, "O wretched man that
I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death!"--that species
of self-despair, finishing the preparation for that renewing influence,
which "is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God
that showeth mercy." Thus the enemy is raised _in die Luften frei_, no
more to receive fresh strength from mother Earth, to renew the contest
successfully.
But this account, so old in one sense, is not so in another--in the
sense of being obsolete, or out of date. It still retains the
freshness of novelty, to answer to the last example of a man's ordering
life, as, he knows, meets the approval of his Judge, and his own truest
welfare.
6. But "the end of the commandment," or the result of the process by
which the soul is put into condition to contend successfully with the
powers of evil, "is charity." So religion preeminently rebinds men to
the rule of not seeking their own advantage at the cost of others;
because it implants a principle, which might dispense with the
certainty of always calculating prudently in doing right. Charity
seeketh not her own--not one's own welfare calculated on the largest
scale, exclusively, or at the cost of the greatest good of the whole.
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