Note (return) — Chapter XV

The obstacles to a virtuous life are, however, confessedly numberless, and, humanly speaking, insurmountable. To raise one's self above the clamor of passion, the power of evil, the bondage of the flesh, is acknowledged, in mournful language, to be a hopeless task. A cloud of sadness shades the brow of Plato as he contemplates the fallen state of man. In the "Phædrus" he describes, in gorgeous imagery, the purity, and beauty, and felicity of the soul in its anterior and primeval state, when, charioteering through the highest arch of heaven in company with the Deity, it contemplated the divine justice and beauty; but "this happy life," says he, "we forfeited by our transgression." Allured by strange affections, our souls forgot the sacred things that we were made to contemplate and love--we fell. And now, in our fallen state, the soul has lost its pristine beauty and excellence. It has become more disfigured than was Glaucus, the seaman "whose primitive form was not recognizable, so disfigured had he become by his long dwelling in the sea." 960 To restore this lost image of the good,--to regain "this primitive form," is not the work of man, but God. Man can not save himself. "Virtue is not natural to man, neither is it to be learned, but it comes by a divine influence. Virtue, is the gift of God." 961 He needs a discipline, "an education which is divine." If he is saved from the common wreck, it must be "by the special favor of Heaven." 962 He must be delivered from sin, if ever delivered, by the interposition of God.