An unclouded clearness of mind, an unimpeded play
of thought, is what this bent drives at. The governing idea of Hellenism
is _spontaneity of consciousness_; that of Hebraism, _strictness of
conscience_.
Christianity changed nothing in this essential bent of Hebraism to set
doing above knowing. Self-conquest, self-devotion, the following not our
own individual will, but the will of God, _obedience_, is the
fundamental idea of this form, also, of the discipline to which we have
attached the general name of Hebraism. Only, as the old law and the
network of prescriptions with which it enveloped human life were
evidently a motive-power not driving and searching enough to produce the
result aimed at,--patient continuance in well-doing, self-conquest,--
Christianity substituted for them boundless devotion to that inspiring
and affecting pattern of self-conquest offered by Jesus Christ; and by
the new motive-power, of which the essence was this, though the love and
admiration of Christian churches have for centuries been employed in
varying, amplifying, and adorning the plain description of it,
Christianity, as St.
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