gen of moral evil, it was shown, that man, by means of the faculties of reason or rationality and moral liberty, (with which, as man, he was necessarily endowed) had the power of modifying his own thoughts and feelings,—the power, if he chose, of turning them away or drawing them down from heaven to earth, from God to self, and thus of perverting them. Hence originated self-love; whence came pride and a consequent self-dependence, and denial of God,—and thence sprang all other evils. Thus man, though he could not create, had the power to modify, which is a quasi creation; he had power to produce a change in the moral world. Now it has been just shown, that the physical or material world is but an out-birth from the moral or spiritual world, the world of mind;—that the latter is a world of causes, while the former is but a world of effects. All things, consequently, in the physical world, being produced from the Divine through the intermediate spiritual world,—while they in general image the Divine Creator, also in particular correspond or bear analogy to their respectful causes or immediate producing powers in the spiritual or moral world. If then a change be produced in the moral worlds—plainly, a change will follow in the physical or material world. If, as Plato says, from pure hearts or affections exist white lilies,—if the beautiful and useful things in the vegetable and also in the animal and mineral creation spring from and thus represent lovely and benevolent thoughts and feelings,—then, manifestly, when perverted, bad, and ugly ideas and dispositions were, by an abuse of man's freedom, produced in the moral world, corresponding ugly, monstrous, and hurtful things would be produced in the material world, as
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