The Law of Spiritual Growth [pp. 608-640]

Law of Spiritual Growth.
of intellect, and the aversion of sinful men to the holy commands of God may prodpce scorn, or anger, when science is
reminded of its inferiority. Still it is true that there is no real
wisdom except such as exists in subordination to the Bible, and
in sympathy with that holy church which God himself has constituted the "Pillar and Ground of the Truth."
ART. II.-The Higher Christian Life. By the Rev. W. E.
BOARDMAN. "That ye may be filled with all the fulness of
God." Boston: Henry Hoyt. New York: Sheldon & Co.
1859.
THE importance so justly attached to the subject of Christian experience, in its various phases, and the deep personal
interest which, in the very nature of things, it must always
awaken in the mind of every true believer, cannot fail to render it in the future, as it has been in the past, one of the
standing themes of religious inquiry and discussion. To a person who has known what it is to be under conviction of sin, to
be brought to the point of self-renunciation and self-despair, to
cast himself down in helpless trust upon the only Saviour of
the guilty and perishing, to taste the joy of forgiveness, and to
feel the power of a great hope springing up in his heart, there
is, and there must be, in the history of others who have passed
through a similar process, something of the same freshness and
force of attraction which we find in a painting, or in a graphic
description of scenes which were once familiar. The history
in the one case, like the painting or the description in the
other, is the reproduction of the past. It charms and takes us
captive. We follow whither we are led, and at each successive
step the objects, the associations, and the feelings of other days,
become the vivid realities of the present.
A picture or a description of scenes which exist only in the
imagination of the artist or the author, may possess elements of
surpassing loveliness, and with all the power that taste and
genius can impart, may appeal to the inward sense of beauty;
but, if it be wanting in those features which suggest the asso
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