life-giving principle, let each one endeavor to make his influence felt
throughout the world; becoming, in his sphere, like one of those fixed
stars that sparkle in the midnight sky--a blazing sun to those that are
near, a gem of sweetest ray to those afar.

Such is the system, and, as we believe, substantially the only universal
system of beneficence, with which God will be well pleased. It grows
out of our relations to him as intellectual and moral beings. Its
life-spring is in the heart. It is purely spiritual or moral in its
character. It rejects all machinery, and can be permanently helped
forward by no scheme of merely external actions. It occupies the whole
soul; with its roots winding round every intellectual and virtuous
principle, it shoots up its stately trunk, sending forth its far-reaching
branches, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.

It is a system forming an essential part of Christian character. It
requires that the great themes of our meditation be spiritual and
eternal, that the mind be so imbued with thoughts of God, his government
and law, of Christ, his love, his sufferings and death, of the
restorative scheme thereby wrought out, of its relation to this apostate
world, of our responsibilities as co-workers with Christ in spreading
the knowledge of his name, and of the consequences both to ourselves and
others of fidelity to our trust--it requires that these thoughts be so
thoroughly impressed, and the heart so permeated, warmed, and animated
by their influence, that they shall become, as it were, inherent
elements of moral action, involuntarily suggesting themselves as often
as occasions for their operation arise. But all this is but another
process of thought and emotion descriptive of the _spiritually minded_.
It also requires the same intellectual and moral discipline which is
essential to the formation of the benevolent character. This does not