DEPENDENCE ON ACCOUNT OF THE MORAL SERVITUDE OF THE WILL.

4. Finally, a consciousness of a state of Moral Servitude, together with the conviction, that in the exercise of the spirit of dependence, we can rise to the “Glorious Liberty of the Sons of God;” that in the absence of this spirit, our Moral Servitude is perfectly certain; all these, together with the conviction which the belief of the doctrine of Liberty induces (to wit: that the exercise of the spirit of dependence is always practicable to us), tends only to one result, to induce the exercise of that spirit, and to the total annihilation of the opposite spirit.

While, therefore, the doctrine of Liberty sanctifies, in the mind, the feeling of obligation to do the right and avoid the wrong, a feeling which the doctrine of Necessity tends to annihilate, the former (an effect which the latter cannot produce) tends only to the annihilation of the spirit of pride and self-confidence, and to induce that spirit of filial dependence which cries “Abba, Father!”