IMAGINATION.

Imagination rules the world.--NAPOLEON.

Imagination is the mediatrix, the nurse, the mover of all the several

parts of our spiritual organism. "Without her, all our ideas stagnate,

all our conceptions wither, all our perceptions become rough and

sensual."--FEUCHT ERSLEBEN.

Imagination is that power of the mind by which it forms pictures or

images within itself. Thought is but a shapeless, lifeless entity, until

Imagination moulds it into form. We cannot bring what we know out into

life until Imagination presents it to the Affections as a possible

reality. Thought is an uncreative power, and gives form to nothing.

Imagination is a more positive power, and can impart form to everything

in thought. Thought acts subjectively, while Imagination is more

objective in its operations. Thought is, by itself, a pure abstraction:

passing into the Imagination it becomes a possible reality, and in the

Affections a vital reality. The Affections cannot love or hate anything

while it is a mere Thought; but when it becomes an image, it is at

once an object either of attraction or repulsion. Thought, therefore,

can be lifted up into the Affections, and then be made manifest in life,

only through the medium of the Imagination.

It has been remarked by a celebrated writer, that all great discoverers,

inventors, and mathematicians have been largely endowed with

Imagination. It might with equal truth have been added, that all

successful persons in every department of life are endowed with an

Imagination commensurate in power with that of the other faculties. To

the mechanic in his shop, no less than to the student in his cell, is it

requisite that he should be able to form a distinct image in his mind

of whatever he wishes to perform. So the teacher, the preacher, and the

parent labor in vain unless there is clearly imaged in their minds the

end to be attained by education and discipline. It is idle to seek for

means to accomplish anything until there is a distinct image in the mind

of the thing that is to be done. If there be such a thing as an "airy

nothing," it is a thought before Imagination has given it a "local

habitation and a name." When Shakespeare said it was the office of the

poet to carry on this transformation, he announced one of those great

general facts which are equally true of every other human being. It is

in degree, and not in kind, that one man differs from another. In this,

the poet is but the type of what every human being must be, if he would

be anything better than a dead weight in society, incapable of success

in any department of life.

Let no one fold his hands supinely, and say, I have no Imagination; and

therefore, if this doctrine be true, my life must be a failure. You may

possibly have but one talent while your neighbor has ten, but you

are just as responsible for the cultivation and enlargement of your

endowment as your neighbor for his. Had the parable been reversed, and

had he who was endowed with five talents hidden them in the earth while

he who had one doubled his lord's money, the condemnation and the

acceptance would likewise have been reversed. Unless a man be so far

idiotic that he is not an accountable being, we blaspheme the goodness

of God, if we say there is nothing he is capable of doing well.

The action of the Imagination may be best illustrated by example.

Previous to the days of Columbus, many sea-captains believed that there

was a Western Continent; but their belief was a cold faith, existing

only in Thought. When the ardent mind of Columbus received the

same belief, Imagination speedily formed it into a reality of such

distinctness that faith changed to hope, and then Affection brooded upon

it until his whole being was absorbed by the determination that he would

be the discoverer of this unknown world. The image of this land was

a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of flame by night, leading him

onward in spite of every discouragement and disappointment. Others might

lose their courage, or die of weariness by the way; but his was that

deathless enthusiasm that knows neither despair nor doubt. To this

intense Imagination the world owes a new continent, and it is to

such Imaginations that it owes almost, if not quite, all the great

discoveries and inventions that have ever been made. There are those who

love to believe that such things are in the main the result of accident;

but it is only to the thoughtful and the imaginative that accident

speaks. To the dull and the indifferent it is utterly dumb.

What is life but one long chain of accidents, if by accident we

understand all that falls out without our own intention or volition. We

cannot control these accidents. There is a power above circumstance and

accident that controls them, as gravitation controls the motions of

material things. We can only turn them at our will, and make use of

them, as the machinist turns the power of gravitation to serve his

purposes.

Quick-witted persons are those who have the power of rapidly seeing the

relations of things in every-day life,--whose Thoughts grasp, and whose

Imaginations shape with dextrous rapidity, the little accidents of the

hour, and turn them to advantage. Persons of resource are those who have

a deeper Thought, a more earnest Imagination; and who can therefore

lay hold of great principles, and unusual circumstances, with a

power adequate to meet great 'emergencies, and to make use of great

opportunities. If we trample sluggishness and indifference under our

feet, if we do with a will whatever we undertake, determining to do it

as well as we possibly can, we shall become quick-witted in small works,

and full of resource in large undertakings.

The Imagination is often talked of as if it were a useless part of our

being, which should be put down and discouraged as much as possible;

as if the Creator had endowed us with a power we did not need. So

imaginative persons are spoken of with contempt, and here there is more

justice; for, in common parlance, to be imaginative means to have the

Imagination developed out of all proportion with the other powers. This

is, perhaps, quite as bad as to have an insufficiency. What we should

desire is a balance of powers. Imagination should not run away with

Thought and Affection, but neither should it lag behind them. All must

act harmoniously and equally in a symmetrically developed Character.

They are like the three legs of a tripod; and if either is longer or

shorter than the others, or worse still, if no two are alike in length,

the tripod must be an awkward and useless piece of lumber, instead of

the graceful and useful article for which it was intended.

Whatever is to be done, from the discovery of a continent to the making

of a shoe or a loaf, can be done well only by a person of Imagination.

Go to a shoemaker and tell him exactly what you wish for a shoe, and it

is your imagination that gives you the power of telling him so that

he can understand your wishes. Every one can think, "I want a pair of

shoes," but one must have Imagination to know what kind of shoe one

wants, and a clear, distinct Imagination to be able to describe it

intelligibly to another. Suppose you have this, and have told the

shoemaker what you desire. Now, whether the man sends home to you a pair

of misfits, quite different from those you ordered, or a pair just such

as you want, depends in no small degree on his powers of Imagination.

Any man can think enough to fasten materials together into the form of a

shoe, and to make them vary in size according to a regular gradation of

numbers; but this is all he can do unless he exercises his Imagination.

Unless the image of a shoe, as you hold it in your Imagination, was

transferred distinctly to the Imagination of the other, you will look in

vain to find it translated into a material reality. So it is with

your cook. She cannot make a nice loaf of bread, or prepare a dinner

properly, by merely thinking as she works. The idea of a light loaf or

of a well-cooked dinner must be distinctly in her mind, or you will eat

with a disappointed palate.

It is needless to multiply examples here. We have but to look around us

and see them everywhere.

Works of Imagination, of course, come in for their share of opprobium

from those who, instead of striving to regenerate all the universal

characteristics of humanity, would cut off and cast from it all those

traits with which they least sympathize. In spite of their opposition,

the mountain of fiction grows higher and higher every day, and the

multitude throng its pathways to gather that food for the Imagination

that is rarely given it in other compositions. Let the moralist talk

and write against this as he may, it will be of no use, for the mass

of human minds will never take an interest in any book that does not

address itself to the Imagination. From the beginning of the world until

now, no teacher and no writer was ever popular unless he addressed

himself, in part at least, to the Imagination of the world.

When the Father of History read his nine books before the Greeks at the

Olympic Games, and the people hung hour after hour and day after day

upon his words, it was not merely because he glorified their victories

that they listened with delight, but because he told the story with such

vividness that every hearer beheld the on-goings of the tale pictured in

his own Imagination. It was no dull recital of dry facts, the mere bone

and muscle of History that he offered them, but the living story, the

warm blood pulsating through it all, and every nerve instinct with life,

In our own day, if the historian would forget the so-called dignity of

History, which is but another name for lifelessness, and after having

filled his mind with a clear, bright image of what he would relate,

would present his story vividly to the Imagination of the reader, we

should have no more complaints of the dulness of History. Who ever found

Irving or Prescott dull? and yet they are accurate and faithful as the

most stately and oracular. The carping critic may sneer at them because

they are not philosophical and profound; but to have been read with

delight by thousands who would never have reached a second chapter had

they been other than they are, may well satisfy their ambition, and make

them careless of the opinion of the critic. Such writers belong to the

_Republic_ of letters, not to that literary _Oligarchy_ which insists

that books should be written according to certain conventional rules

which have been manufactured in the closet, instead of looking at the

wants of the human mind, and then addressing themselves to those wants.

The class of minds that crave instruction for its own sake must always

be very small; and it is this class alone that will read books in spite

of their lack of imaginative power. Authors have no right to complain

that their wise books lie unread by the multitude, if they persist in

overlooking the nature of the human mind, and addressing themselves

to what they think it ought to be instead of what it really is. They

expatiate admiringly upon the simplicity and vividness of the style

of Herodotus, and upon the classic taste of the Athenian public in

appreciating him; and then, forgetting that the public of our own day

are quick to admire the same traits, turn to their desks and write their

histories as unlike as possible to him whom they have been praising.

The same repulsive want of Imagination too often characterizes Theology

and Metaphysics, and prevents mankind from receiving the instruction

from works on these topics that they need. In the early days of

man's history, Religion and Philosophy addressed themselves to the

Imagination, and then the people listened to their teachings; but

gradually these heaven-born teachers turned more and more away from

Imagination and towards Thought,--lost themselves in abstractions, dried

up, withered, and changed into Theology and Metaphysics; and then the

people turned wearily away from their words; and were they to blame?

They wanted bread, and only stones were given to them. The multitude

would not have followed the Lord, and listened with admiring wonder

to his instructions, had they not been addressed to the Imagination.

Infinite Wisdom clothed itself in parables, that the people might be

instructed, and the people thronged to hear. The truths of Philosophy

and Religion are of an interest more universal to humanity than the

truths of all other science, for the first is to know one's self, and

the second to know one's God; and yet the majority of teachers cover

them with such a body of technicalities and abstractions, that it is

vain for the mass of mankind to endeavor to penetrate to the soul

within.

If the clergy of the Protestant Church would spend more strength in

illustrating the Infinite Wisdom contained in the parables of the Lord,

and less in amplifying the abstractions of St. Paul, they would gather

around them bands of listeners far more numerous and more devout than

those that now attend their ministrations. It was one of the grand

mistakes of that Church, at its first separation from the Romish, that,

in its terror of the worship of material images, it passed into the

opposite extreme of the worship of abstractions. This is one reason why

Protestantism has made no advance in Europe since the death of the first

Reformers, and why there is so little vital religion among the races by

whom it was adopted.

Much has been done of late to render the natural sciences familiar and

attractive to the popular mind, by lectures and books that bring them

within the comprehension of all: and it is to be hoped, that, beginning

thus with the material parts of the universe, mankind may be gradually

led from matter to mind, from science to religion. The forms of external

things are easily reproduced in the mind as images, and this is why

natural science addresses itself more readily to the mind than any other

branch of learning. When men learn to look within, and perceive that

the things of the mind are as genuine realities as the objects of the

external world, Philosophy will become attractive; and when the preacher

warms Theology into Religion by abandoning the technicalities of

abstractions for the living realities of piety towards God and charity

towards the neighbor, he will rejoice in a listening audience.

The amount and the quality of that which we call originality, creative

power, or genius, is entirely dependent upon the activity, force, and

integrity of the Imagination. Talent belongs to Thought, and works only

with facts and ideas as others have done before. It may be skilful,

sensible, and faithful, but it can walk only in the old, beaten tracks.

It can classify and arrange, but it can never discover or invent. Talent

can understand and admire the mechanical powers; Genius puts them in

harness, and makes them traverse land and sea to do his bidding. Talent

loves to gaze on the fair forms of nature, and depicts them upon canvas

with skill and truth, neither adding to nor subtracting from its model.

Genius seizes upon the hints that nature gives, and without being false

to her, makes use only of that which helps to make up the beautiful, the

sublime, or the terrible; showing the power that is within nature rather

than nature herself. Talent sees life as it is, and so describes it, if

it ventures into the domain of literature. Genius sees life as it is

capable of being, and hence comes poetry and romance, depicting heroes

and heroines, monsters and fiends, types rather than representatives of

the human race. Talent perceives only the actualities of things, Genius

their possibilities. Talent is content with things as they are, while

Genius is ever striving to bring out latent capacities in whatever it

deals with. If true to its higher impulses, Genius is ever striving to

come nearer "the first good, first perfect, and first fair"; if false,

it degrades and deforms everything it touches.

Mankind differ from each other in degree, but not in kind. By his power

of thinking, a man has talent; by his power of imagining, genius.

Quick-wittedness is genius in its lowest form,--genius applied to

material life in its daily ongoings. The power for resource in

emergencies is genius in a higher form. Invention--the putting together

with an adequate purpose two things or ideas that never went together

before--is genius in another form.

Admitting that men differ from each other, not in kind, but in degree,

the question arises, Are all men capable of an equal degree of

development? This may best be answered by comparison. All men are alike

in the general conformation of their bodies; all have the same number of

physical organs, designed for the same purposes. The relative power of

these organs is, however, very different in different individuals.

One has a fine muscular frame, and delights in exercises of physical

strength, while effort of the brain is a weariness to him. Another has

a finely developed brain, and delights in intellectual labor, while his

strength of muscle is hardly sufficient for the absolute needs of life.

One has the digestion of an ostrich, while another lives only by painful

abstinence; and so on with indefinite variety. We know that much may

be done by well-directed effort to overcome the weaknesses and

imperfections of the body; but still there is a limit to this, and all

men cannot be strong and healthy alike. So it is with the powers of the

mind. All men have the same number of powers,--this constitutes their

humanity; but the relative force of their development varies in each

individual. We know that a determined will works wonders in overcoming

the defects of the body, and it can do more in overcoming the defects

of the mind, because the spiritual body of man is far more docile

and flexible to the will than the natural body; but there must be

limitations here likewise: still, progress is eternal, and no man can

tell beforehand of how much he is capable.

In cultivating the powers of the mind, the first step is to admit

distinctly to one's self the fact of human responsibility; to feel that

we are stewards to whom the Lord has intrusted certain talents, and that

we are responsible to him for the use we make of them. Indolence will

perhaps tell us that we are of very little consequence, and that it

is not worth while for us to trouble ourselves about developing our

understandings; that it is vanity in us to suppose that we can be of

much use in the world; that we have but little leisure, and may as well

amuse ourselves with books and society; for we need recreation, wearied

as we are with the cares of life. Let us answer each of these excuses by

itself; and first, we are of so little consequence. If the tempter

take this form to slacken your efforts, tell him you are one of God's

children, and therefore, by your birthright, of eternal consequence;

that he who is faithful in the least things thereby proves his capacity

for being faithful in much, and that by showing your willingness to

serve the Lord in the small things of life, you are fitting yourself for

serving him in large things, if not in this world, yet in the world to

come. Moreover, is not every one of the highest consequence to himself;

and is not the least of human beings as much interested to save his own

soul as the greatest? Then, as to use in this world, you are responsible

to the fullest extent of your abilities for the influence you exert in

your sphere as entirely as is the greatest of human beings in his. No

one is so small that he brings no influence to bear upon the social

circle; no one so insignificant that he does not exert an influence,

even by the expression of his countenance, though he may speak no word.

Where can we find a circle that is not shadowed, as by a cloud, if one

countenance appears within it darkened by sullenness, ill-humor, or

discontent? Where one that is not warmed and cheered, as by a sunbeam,

if one enters it whose features glow with good-humor, contentment, and

satisfaction? Then does not the command to love our neighbor make us

even responsible for the expressions our faces wear? In relation to the

plea for recreation and amusement, it can readily be shown how these may

be made subservient to a true and high cultivation of the understanding.

While few are slow to admit our accountability in all that relates to

the cultivation of the Affections, many seem to suppose, that in what

relates to the Understanding we may, without wrong, follow our own

inclinations. This opinion comes from a false estimate of the nature

and uses of the Understanding. If considered as a mere receptacle for

Latin and Greek, Mathematics and Metaphysics, Science and Literature, we

may, without moral turpitude or virtue, abstractly considered, follow

our own inclinations; but the Understanding will all the time be growing

either stronger or weaker, wiser or more foolish, whether we study them

or whether we let them alone. This action of the Understanding cannot go

on without influencing the Affections. The one is as much the gift of

God as the other, and each alike demands a healthful nutriment. An

Understanding whose attributes are ignorance and folly can never promote

a healthful growth of the Affections.

It has been already said that the Understanding of a great majority of

human beings can be reached only through its imaginative side. Every one

who is accustomed to children knows that this is universally true of

them. Tell a child an abstract truth, and it falls dead upon his ear;

but illustrate the same truth in a little story, and he is quick to

estimate its justice. This continues true of most persons during their

whole lives, so that it is vain to attempt touching their minds in any

other way than by presenting them with some image illustrating the truth

inculcated. Those who are capable of receiving an abstract truth without

such an image are frequently so from the fact that the moment such a

truth is presented to their Understanding, their Imagination is prompt

to furnish the corresponding image. Unless this is done either by the

speaker or the listener, the truth is apt to be only a useless piece of

lumber stored away in the thoughts. The whole secret of the fascinating

power of the novelist lies in his telling us of all that is most

interesting to humanity, and presenting everything to the mind in

images.

Most persons have so many duties to perform, that they have little time

for voluntary employment, and then they want recreation, which, if they

read, they say they can gain only through works of Imagination. There is

nothing to object to in this, if such works be well selected and read

wisely. There are many bad ways of reading novels; but there are two

to be especially avoided; firstly, vitiating the Affections by reading

impure novels; and secondly, weakening the powers of the Understanding

by glancing through novels merely for the sake of the story. To

read novels of doubtful or bad morality is as likely to corrupt the

Affections as to associate with low and wicked companions. There is an

abundant supply of pure and noble compositions of this sort on which the

Imagination may feed without fear. If it morbidly craves the licentious

pictures that come from the pen of such writers as Ainsworth or George

Sand, its longings should be resisted as steadfastly as those which

incline us to the gaming table or other scenes of licentious indulgence.

On the other hand, the danger to the Understanding from skimming novels

is far too much overlooked. It is not recreation, but dissipation, not

a renewal, but a destruction, of the powers to read in this way. If you

would be benefited by what you read, learn to read critically. Look at

the characters, and see if they be natural and well drawn; observe the

morality, and see if it be true or false; examine the style, and see if

it be good or bad, graceful or awkward, distinct or vague. Novel-writing

is one of the fine arts, and by looking upon it as such, you may

cultivate your taste and discrimination to an extent you little dream

of.

Imagination is the marriage of Thought and Affection, and the Fine Arts

are its first-born children, and represent humanity in all its phases

more fully and truly than any other department of art or science. What

we know as the useful arts, which are born of man's love for physical

ease and pleasure, are of comparatively modern date; but history

goes not back to the time when the mind of man first took delight in

fashioning and admiring the products of the fine arts. Many suppose them

God-given and coeval with the birth of man. Music, painting, sculpture,

poetry, and romance are the five departments of the fine arts. When

these are studied and loved merely for amusement, they are of little or

no use; if they are made vehicles for filling the mind with impure and

evil images, they are shocking abuses; but if they subserve pure and

holy purposes, elevating the soul towards all that is beautiful and

good, they are true Apostles of the Word. Their ministrations are almost

if not quite universal. It would be hard to find a human being whose

soul is not stirred by one or other of them.

Comparatively few persons have it in their power to enjoy the delight

and the refining influence that are derived from the highest exhibitions

of skill in those departments of the fine arts that address themselves

to the eye and the ear; but poetry and romance, the most intellectual

and the most varied of them all, are accessible to every one. As those

blessings that are far off and difficult to be attained are usually

those which are most highly prized, we often find persons sighing for

the culture to be obtained from music, painting, and sculpture, and

overlooking or undervaluing the higher culture to be derived from poetry

and romance. The best gifts of Heaven are always those which are most

universal. Let any one read the plays of Shakespeare, the poems of

Milton, and the novels of Scott carefully and critically as he would

study a gallery of pictures, and he will find his taste refined and

elevated as much as it could be by a visit to the Vatican. The genius of

these authors is to the full as high and noble and original as that of

Raphael, Angelo, or Titian. The means of culture are not far-fetched and

dear-bought. They lie around us everywhere, and to make use of them is a

luxurious recreation of the mind. What mother, wearied and worn by the

cares of maternity, what laborer, exhausted with toil, what student,

faint with striving for fame, but would be refreshed and renewed for

the warfare of life by forgetting it all for a little while in the

realms of the ideal world?

The common, vulgar misuse of novel-reading by the silly, the

empty-headed, and the corrupt, should not blind us to its benefits.

There are those who in music, painting, and sculpture find only

nutriment for sensuality and impurity. Shall we, therefore, deny to all,

and banish from the world the refining ministrations of beauty in form

and color and sweet sounds? As justly may we wage war upon the wayside

flowers because the children are now and then tardy at school from

stopping to gather them. The Creator could never have strown beauty

broadcast upon the face of the earth if it had no use. The very

abundance of this nutriment offered to our love of beauty is evidence

of its value; the very fact that we can abuse this love so fearfully is

proof of its capacity for elevated usefulness.

Reading good works of Imagination in the thoughtful way that has been

described will be very likely to rouse an action in the mind that will

make it crave something more solid; and all should learn, if possible,

to love instructive books. The brain that is overtasked by muscular

labor--for the nervous energy of the brain is exhausted by physical

effort as well as by mental--is the only one that is excusable for

refreshing itself only with images from the ideal world. There are

Sabbaths of rest to all sometimes, when opportunity may be found to gain

something of a more nutritious quality; when, through biography we may

learn to know some good and great character that will ever after stand

in the mind an image of excellence to cheer us on our way, and make us

feel with joy that there is power in us to do likewise; or perhaps some

book of science that will enlarge our ideas of the wisdom and goodness

of the Creator of us all. It should ever be remembered, that those

whose minds are empty of images of goodness and truth are, almost of

necessity, constantly becoming more and more full of images of evil and

falsehood. Jealousy, envy, discontent, and love of scandal, are among

the earliest products of an idle, empty mind. We are not, however,

dependent upon, books for the means of cultivating the Imagination.

There is a training of this power within itself, a morality of

Imagination, that daily life compels us to observe if we would be

practical, moral beings.

The first requisites in a healthy, well-developed Imagination are truth

and distinctness. To those who deem Imagination but another name for

fiction and falsehood, it may seem a contradiction in terms to talk of a

true Imagination; but it is not so. Works of fiction charm us always in

proportion as they seem true, and it is the morbid Imagination only that

delights in falsehood. We sometimes see persons who, without apparent

intention of falsehood, seem incapable of speaking the truth. If they

relate a circumstance that has passed under their own observation, or

describe anything that they have seen, they add here and diminish there,

distort this and give a new color to that, in such a manner that the

hearer receives an impression of nothing as it really is. If there seem

to be no malicious or evil design in all this, such persons are commonly

called very imaginative; they should be called persons of unregulated,

unprincipled Imaginations. They do not bring Imagination under the sway

of conscience, and their power of appreciating the truth will grow less

and less until Imagination becomes a living lie.

Visionary persons form another class of those who do not regulate

Imagination by the laws of him who is truth itself. With these,

Imagination is as false in relation to that which is to come, as with

the last described in relation to that which has already been. In their

plans of life they reason from fancy instead of from fact, and their

Imaginations are filled with fantastic visions of things impossible,

instead of the clear, bright images of that, which may rationally be

expected to come to pass. Such persons perpetually wasting their powers

by trying to do so many things that they can do nothing well, or by

striving to do some one thing that is impossible; thus rendering

themselves comparatively useless in society, and often even mischievous.

To avoid this error, it is needful to go back perpetually to Thought in

order to obtain a solid foundation for Imagination to build upon. As

Imagination passes to and fro between Thought and Affection, it must

remember that it is a messenger from one to the other, and must not

invent tales on the way, and so deceive Affection into acts of folly.

The facts of the message must be precisely such as Thought gave them,

while their costume may be such as Imagination would have it. Thus the

Affections will be roused to action in proportion as the eloquence of

the Imagination is more or less intense, When it speaks in "words that

burn," if it speak from itself, it will rouse the Affections to wild

fanaticism; but if it speak from Thought, it will waken enthusiasm in

the heart, such as shall bear it steadfastly onward in the path of duty,

"without haste and without rest." Distinctness of Imagination may be

cultivated by carefully observing things we wish to remember, and

then calling up their forms before the mind's eye, and endeavoring to

describe them just as they are, in words, by writing, or by drawing;

and then reexamining to see where we have erred, and correcting our

mistakes. If this be done from a genuine love of truth, the Imagination

will soon become accurate and trustworthy. In reading, strive to bring

what is read before the mind's eye, and so impress it upon the memory

in images. This process quickens the power of memory, and enables it to

retain much more than it otherwise could. If the writer be imaginative,

it is easily done; but if not, we must strive to make up for his

deficiencies by our own efforts. Reading history and travels,

constant reference to maps and pictures fixes facts upon the memory

simply by transferring them to the Imagination. Memory is not a faculty

by itself. What we only think about we remember feebly; what we image in

our minds we remember much more strongly; what we love we never forget

while we continue to love it.

In cultivating the Imagination, we must be sure to allow Thought to go

with it hand in hand; remembering that the two together make up the

Understanding. We must be careful to search conscientiously for true

thoughts before allowing Imagination to shape them into forms. In order

to find the truth, we must love it for its own sake, and must seek it

with straightforward earnestness, because we believe it needful to the

building up of Character. If we seek it from any less worthy motive, our

sight will become morbid, we shall lose the power of knowing it when

it is found, and shall be liable to mistake for it some miserable

falsehood. If we allow Imagination too much liberty, zeal will run

before knowledge; if we allow it too little, knowledge will run before

zeal. In the former, case we shall be liable to fanaticism; in the

latter, to sluggishness. In the former case we shall be ready to

undertake to do anything that attracts us, whether we know how to do

it or not; in the latter, we shall not be willing to try to do what we

might. The lack of Affection prevents us from desiring to do a thing,

the lack of Imagination makes us think we cannot do a thing, the lack of

Thought of course makes it impossible to do a thing; for we cannot do a

thing till we know that it is to be done.

In our religion, Thought gives us faith, Imagination gives us hope, and

Affection gives us charity. Religion does not become a personal matter

to us until it takes the form of hope. While it is simply a thing of

thought it is cold, barren faith, and we care nothing for it; but when

Imagination touches it, faith is changed to hope, and we begin to

perceive that religion is a thing to be desired in our own persons.

Religious fear, too, is the child of Imagination. Devils believe and

tremble, because they hate goodness. Angels believe and hope, because

they love it.

Every one has within his mind an imaginary heaven, within and around

which all cherished images arrange themselves, according as they are

more or less dear. We should search our minds, and learn what are the

attributes of our heaven, if we would know whether we are tending

towards the true heaven that is prepared for those who order their lives

aright. We shall, if we do this, be sure to find that there are certain

images rising very often in our minds, into which our thoughts seem to

crystallize when disturbed by no interruption from without; and these.

images make up all that we believe of heaven; they are the kingdom of

heaven within us. We may, with our lips, acknowledge faith in a pure

heaven wherein dwelleth righteousness; but unless our ideas fall

habitually into forms of purity, there is no genuine faith in such a

heavenly kingdom. We truly believe only in what we love. We may learn

from books and from instructors a great deal about the science of

goodness, and may talk of such knowledge until we fancy that we should

be happy in a heaven where goodness reigned triumphant; and yet we may

be entirely deceived in this fancy, and our hearts may all the while be

fixed on things so entirely apart from the true heaven, that nothing

could make us more miserable than the being forced to dwell within its

gates. If we would test the quality of our faith, we must watch the

images and pictures that rise habitually before our mind's eye in our

hours of reverie; for they faithfully represent the secret affections of

the heart. If these images are forms of purity and goodness, it is well

with us; the kingdom of heaven is truly there; but if they represent

only forms of things that belong to this world, if dress and equipage

and social distinction haunt our longings, if visions of pride,

vain-glory, and luxury are ever prompt to rise,--visions that belong

only to the love of self and of the world,--visions that do not beckon

us onward to the performance of duty, but only entice us with the

allurements of sensuality and self-indulgence; or still worse, if

discontent, envy, and malice darken the temple of Imagination with their

scowls, the kingdom of heaven is far from us as the antipodes. This

imaginary heaven that selfishness and worldliness have built up within

us is in truth but an emanation from hell. We may talk of heaven, and

observe its outward forms all our lives while harboring this demoniacal

crew within; and we shall grow ever harder and colder with intolerance

and bigotry under their influence; nor can we ever have that joy in

heavenly hope that belongs to those whose hearts cleave to all that is

pure and true, and whose souls are therefore filled with the imagery of

virtue.

We cannot expect, in this life, to attain to a state of regeneration so

entire that no images of evil shall ever come to our souls; but we may

hope to become so far advanced that we shall not welcome and entertain

them when they come; but shall recognize them at once as often as they

appear, and drive them from us. This much, however, we cannot do with

our own strength, for that is weakness; but if we strive, looking ever

to the Lord, whose strength is freely given to all who devoutly ask his

aid, we shall be armed as with the flaming sword of cherubim, turning

every way to guard the tree of life.