What a full Confession do we make of our dissatisfaction with the
Objects of our bodily senses, that in our attempts to express what we
conceive the Best of Beings, and the Greatest of Felicities to be, we
describe by the exact Contraries of all, that we experience here--the
one as _In_finite, _In_comprehensible, _Im_mutable, &c., the other as
_in_corruptible, _un_defiled, and that passeth _not_ away. At all
events, this Coincidence, say rather, Identity of Attributes, is
sufficient to apprize us, that to be inheritors of bliss we must
become the children of God.
This remark of Leighton's is ingenious and startling. Another, and
more fruitful, perhaps more solid inference from the fact would be,
that there is something in the human mind which makes it know (as soon
as it is sufficiently awakened to reflect on its own thoughts and
notices), that in all finite Quantity there is an Infinite, in all
measures of Time an Eternal; that the latter are the basis, the
substance, the true and abiding _reality_ of the former; and that as
we truly _are_, only as far as God is with us, so neither can we truly
_possess_ (that is, enjoy) our Being or any other real Good, but by
living in the sense of his holy presence.
A life of wickedness is a life of lies; and an evil being, or the
being of evil, the last and darkest mystery.