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There appears a distinction between soul and aught else as respects perfection. Every thing is perfect or imperfect by the standard of its kind, by the fitness to its use, and the fulness of its growth. The perfection of God is not necessarily amenable to the soul's ideal. If we shall find God perfect, well; but even if we do not, eternity is before us, in which, by what ways we know not, God's perfection may yet shine through the clouds of tribulation into our imperfect understanding. The perfection of providence admitted, all things are in one sense perfect in the purpose of their being. Nevertheless a fragment of a cube is not a perfect cube; nor is a limited intelligence a perfect soul. The circle can be completed ; the line cannot. There is a sense in which any body may be called a perfect body, while only God can be a perfect soul. A body may grow to the standard of its species, perfect of its kind. But the standard of ideal intelligence rises with intelligence itself, to God, to whom soul may never grow; nor can it reach the perfection of its kind, for this alone is of divine kindred: this alone declares its own imperfection in the want of infinite expansion.

Man's moral qualities, so called, are the result, not so much of mind's simple action as of its consciousness of action, and of self-speculation or contemplation. Free from this self-contemplation,—free from the knowledge of the infinite beyond him, the brute, (or man in his lowest condition,) may be supposed to be in a low grade of perfection. Food will always fat him, and, free from prophecy, hope, and metaphysical fear, with a full belly he is content. But