walks on a more elevated path of patriotism, of philanthropy, and honour than another; but all of them walk in the independence of their own counsels. They have in truth cast off the authority of heaven, and it scarcely mingles any perceptible influence with the affairs or the occupations of men. Let there but be a correct analysis of human motives; and, amid the exceeding variety of those which have a deciding ascendancy over the spirit, we shall seldom, almost never, arrive at a simple devotedness to the will of the Maker. There is, on this subject, a very sore and unhappy delusion; and that has veiled the actual truth of the question from the eye of observers. In the absence of all piety, there is still many an upright and honourable motive by which the breast may be actuated; but it were an unphilosophical confounding of one thing with another, to allege these as any evidence of regard to a God, who, during the whole play and operation of these motives, is never perhaps thought of. There are divers principles, all of which may be good in their kind, and yet each of which may be distinct from the others. A sense of honour is good-instinctive humanity is goodthe delicacy that recoils from ought that is unhallowed in word or in imagination is very beautiful and very good-the fidelity which spurns away all the temptations of interest is most unquestionably good-the horror at cruelty; the lively remembrances of gratitude to an earthly benefactor; the tenderness, whether of filial or of parental affection; the constancy of unalterable friendship; the generous love of liberty; the graceful sensibility that,

not only weeps over human wretchedness, but lavishes upon it of its succour as well as its sympathy-these are all so many features of the humanity wherewith we are clothed, and all of them are very good. But, as they are distinct the one from the other, so may they be distinct from that which is strictly and essentially the religious principle. They may exist apart from piety. They might have all a dwelling-place in that heart, within the repositories of which, the practical sense of God, or a principle of deference to His authority is not to be found. The man of native integrity is a nobler and a finer specimen of our kind, than the man of a creeping and ignoble selfishness. Yet the bosom of each may be alike desolate of piety. And this is the universal charge which is preferred against all the men of all the families of our species. It is not that all are destitute of benevolence or justice or truth-for this were experimentally untrue. But it is that all by nature are destitute of piety. It is not that the morality which reciprocates between man and man is extinct; but it is that the morality which connects earth with heaven has been broken asunder; and the world is now disjoined from that God, with whom it stood at one time in high and heavenly relationship. One might imagine the gravitation of our planet to the sun to be suspended; and that it wandered on a strange excursion over the fields of immensity. Yet still it may bear along with it the very laws and processes, which, independently of the great central body in our system, now obtains within the limits of this lower world.

It

may retain, even in the darkness of its wayward and unregulated course-it may retain its chemistry, and its magnetism, and the cohesion of its parts, and the attraction at least which maintains its own spherical form and binds the sea and the atmosphere and all that is around it to its surface. And so in the moral economy. There may be the disruption of our species from their God. The world they inhabit may have become an outcast from the region of the celestial ethics. The great family of mankind may have wandered from Him who is their Head. The affinity which at one time obtained between God and the creatures of this lower world may have been dissolved, and yet there may still be in operation, many a powerful and many a precious affinity among themselves. There may be the reciprocal play, even throughout this alienated planet of ours, of good affections and tender sympathies and many amiable and moral and neighbour-like regards. There is an earth-born virtue that will mingle with the passions and atrocities of the human character, and mitigate the else darker aspect of human affairs-and yet it may remain a truth, not merely announced by scripture, but confirmed by experience, that Nature hath renounced her wonted alliance with the Divinity, that the world hath departed from its God.

15. That indeed is a woful delusion by which the natural graces and virtues of the human character are pled in mitigation of its ungodliness. When beheld in their true light, they enhance and they aggravate the charge. For what after

all are these virtues? Who gave us the moral constitution of which they form a part and an ornament? Who is it that causes the pulse of an honourable man so to beat in the pride of a highminded integrity ? Who poured the milk of human kindness into the economy of our affections? Who is it that attuned the heart to those manifold sympathies by which it is actuated? Who gave the delightful sensibilities of nature their play, and sent forth the charities of life to bless and to gladden the whole aspect of human society? Who is the author of this beneficial mechanism; and by whose hand has so much of this boasted loveliness been spread over the aspect of our species? The very Being who pencilled all the glories of nature's landscape, is the Being who strewed the moral landscape by all the graces wherewith it is adorned. Each virtue, which serves to deck and to dignify our nature, is an additional obligation to Him who is the author of it. It calls for a louder gratitude to Him who has so liberally endowed us; and therefore stamps a deeper atrocity on our ungrateful disregard of Him. These moral accomplishments are so many gifts, that only inflict the stain of a fouller turpitude on our indifference to the Giver, and make the state of practical atheism in which we live to be still more enormous.

16. We have already given an illustration of the moral by the natural philosophy.* In the latter science, we know how to distinguish the facts from the mathematics; and we are perfectly

See our "Natural Theology," Vol. i. Chap. II. Art. 28–36.

It

aware that the mathematics which avail for the terrestrial, avail for the celestial physics also. is conceivable that every object of the celestial physics may somehow or other be shrouded from the discernment of our species; that all which is known of the material heavens might pass into oblivion, and be beyond the power of our recalment; that thus all the celestial of Natural Philosophy might vanish away from the sight and the remembrance of men. This were the ruin of our astronomy; but it would not be the ruin of our mathematics-all the principles of which would still abide in the world, and admit of the same application as before to the objects and the distances on the face of our earth. And so it is with the celestial in Moral Philosophy. There is

a distinction to be made here too; and the distinction is between the objects of the science and the ethics of the science. Here also it is conceivable that the objects of the heavenly region may be forgotten; yet the ethics would remain, and continue to have an application to the objects of the earthly region. Just as there is a mathematics. that would survive the extinction of Astronomyso there is a morals that would survive the extinction of our Theology; and as the mere existence of the mathematics bears no evidence to there being an Astronomy, after that all the objects of this science cease to be remembered-so the mere existence of a morals bears no evidence to the godliness of man, after that God has ceased to be regarded by them.

17. But these considerations, however fit to be addressed to those who philosophize on the subjects