# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1857_S162
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

162 On the Doctrine of the Election of Grace and Some Matters Connected Therewith, etc.

which we call heart, with respect to the attraction and repulsion that we
experience by virtue of our own impulses; and inasmuch as no thought
whose basis is merely organic sensation can excite such a thing as a
motive without its coming to consciousness in man — (unless in the
body an excessive resistance against the nerve-activity prevents the
appearance thereof, since this depends on organic conditions of matter,
to which the movement of the thinking substance required for it is
bound —) and in no drive does the free will move without an idea —
(namely with the unfolding of the soul's germ toward choice according
to motives, although the innate idea of the basic desires is not in itself
so bound up with the conditions of the outer senses that it would fall
directly into consciousness —) it forms the transition from thinking to
willing and conversely, the focal point of life. Increases in the effective
influence of desires upon its states, of such vividness that they can
only be transitory, are, properly speaking, the affections, while the
continuing, excessive intensity of certain inclinations turns them into
passions. The generation of the former — where the disposition directs
itself to a higher degree toward certain objects and is drawn away from
others, joined with the fire of meditation whenever it unfolds great
energy in our faculty of thought — is harmful only when the spirit is
not in a position to be able to use its freedom according to its final
end. (The degree of the affection becomes evil in this case; it itself
entirely so, when the desire to which it clings arose through the
perversion of the basic drives, so that it has become wholly degenerate
and nothing good remains in it, as with envy, malicious joy, etc.) If,
however, the will is carried away into a holy, pure ardor, then this
heightening of vitality is of the utmost benefit to the resolve that has
been formed, and increases the zeal and courage to shrink from no
obstacles, but boldly to break through them. Through an inbred
blindness of spirit and a ruinous bent of heart, the desires of the race
that has fallen into discord with God have gone astray; an
extraordinary readiness to be swiftly and suddenly stirred up into vain
affections — which arise partly from confused notions, and partly
darken the understanding ever further — as well as a dreadful multitude
of strivings which have their origin in degeneration and degrade us
below the beasts, have nested themselves in our inward parts. The new
life must proceed from an act of God; for the free, most personal
motive of all human action is nothing but abhorrence of a higher,
superior obligation; against the demand of faith, and of a love
corresponding to it, etc., stands the innermost aversion and
obstinacy — in a word, the "I will not" — together with the inability to
recognize the truth.

God and His grace communicate themselves to faith; He gives Himself
through it and in it, for faith is His work, the sole means of our
salvation