new extent and purity, employs her own means to make them practicable, connects them with her revealed doctrines, and enforces them with her peculiar sanctions; yet the precepts themselves are intelligible to man, address his conscience, fall in with all his convictions as an accountable creature, and have been, in many of their branches, acknowledged in every age and in every part of the world.

A second advantage is the confessions of unbelievers; who with one mouth are compelled to admit the beauty of the Christian morals. They object, indeed, as we might anticipate, to some of the details of them; and they have no real desire, as we shall show, to promote the interests of morality. But their acknowledgments are therefore the more important, when they allow that "the gospel is one continued lesson of the strictest morality; of justice, of benevolence, and of universal charity," and when they declare they would preserve Christianity, for the sake of its moral influence on the common people.

With these points in our favor, let us consider-THE EXTENT AND PURITY of the Christian morals. The manner in which they are RENDERED PRACTICABLE.

Their INSEPARA

BLE CONNEXION With every part of the Revelation, and especially with its peculiar doctrines.

by which they are ultimately enforced.b

And the SANCTIONS

I. The EXTENT AND PURITY of the Christian morals will appear, if we consider that,

1. They embrace all that was really good in the ETHICS OF HEATHEN SAGES, and in the dictates of natural religion;

(a) Bolingbroke-Herbert, also, Shaftsbury, Collins, Woolston, Tindal, Chubb, applaud the Christian Morals. Hume and Gibbon admit the same.

(b) The text contains a summary of each of these particulars:-1. The extent and purity of the Gospel precepts; Denying ungodliness and worldly lusts-live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world-zealous of good works.

2. The manner in which they work: purifying unto himself a peculiar people.

3. The connexion with the doctrines of Revelation:-The grace of God which bringeth salvation, hath appeared unto all men, teaching us. Looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity.

4. The sanction:-the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour, to judge the quick and dead; and in what the closing words of the passage imply; These things speak and exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee.

and re-enact them with greater clearness and authority. The scattered fragments of moral truth which original Revelation, or the responsible nature of man, or the labor and study of philosophers, have dispersed up and down the world, are found to be comprehended in the Christian code. Truth, justice, fortitude, integrity, faithfulness, chastity, benevolence, friendship, obedience to parents, love of our country, and whatever else is praise-worthy, have all their place; only cleared of base admixtures, directed to their proper ends, and clothed with necessary authority for swaying the conscience.

2. There is, in the next place, a COMPLETENESS in the Christian code of precepts. They insist on every virtue and duty for which man was originally formed; and forbid every vice and sin contrary to his real relations and obligations. There is nothing wanting as it respects man's intellectual or moral powers; nothing omitted of the duties which he owes to himself, to his neighbor, and to almighty God: nor is there any thing impure or debasing intermixed with its code. All is holy and consistent; in opposition to the heathen and Mahometan morals, where whatever is good itself, is lost amidst the pernicious usages with which it is incorporated.

3. Then the Christian morals erect the only true and unbending STANDARD OF DUTY to God and man; a standard so high, and yet so reasonable; a standard so unknown to any other religion, and yet, when revealed, so obviously agreeable to the sovereignty of the ever-blessed Creator, and the relation in which man, the work of his hands, stands to him; a standard so intelligible to the meanest capacity, and yet so far surpassing the imagination of the highest, as to have the strong impress of a divine hand upon it. Yes; when our Lord uttered those memorable words, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment, and the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself he raised the true and intelligible standard of morals, which places even a child in a Christian country far above, in this respect, the greatest moral philosophers of the ancient or modern world.

(c) Matt. xxii. 37-39.

4. It follows from this, that the Christian code OMITS MANY FALSE VIRTUES of heathenism, and INSISTS ON MANY REAL ONES unknown to it. Christianity rejects from its catalogue of virtues, vanity, pride, the love of fame, jealousy of honor, resentment, revenge, hatred of enemies, contempt of the low and miserable, self-confidence, apathy under suffering, and patriotism in the sense of pushing conquest and upholding the interests of one nation to the hatred and injury of others; and she inserts humility, meekness, the forgiveness of personal injuries, self-denial, abstraction of heart from earthly things, sympathy with the poor and mean, renunciation of confidence in self, cheerful resignation under affliction."

5. Indeed, the Christian religion chiefly dwells on the MILD AND RETIRING VIRTUES, in opposition to those which are of a more hardy and obtrusive character. She omits not, indeed, courage, vigor of resolution, eagerness of zeal, fortitude, perseverance, contempt of danger; but she dwells chiefly on lowliness, patience, silent and meek returns for ill usage, gentleness, compassion, allowances for the prejudices and failings of others. It is a consequence of this, that she founds her code on humility and self-denial, though she avoids moroseness, austerities, and whatever might verge towards melancholy and misanthropy. By laying man low, and giving him a just impression of his unworthiness before God and man, and then, by teaching him to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, she fixes the only firm foundation of consistent morality, and especially of the milder virtues. But whilst all other religions, when they attempt this, fall into foolish and absurd injunctions, sever

(d) The form of the argument from the mere purity and clearness of the Gospel morals, is thus illustrated by an able American writer:-"There are certain primary principles of jurisprudence, beneficial to mankind under all circumstances. But no actual system of human jurisprudence has recognized such principles, and such alone. Every where private cupidity, political ambition, ecclesiastical or professional superstition, prejudices of education, old habits, personal interests, encumber municipal Jaw with idle forms, unmeaning distinctions, &c. If a code were to be presented professedly from heaven, and if it were found on examination, to embody all that was excellent in human laws, to avoid imperfections, to supply deficiencies, to suit every form of civil polity, and all understandings, &c., would such a claim be without foundation?"-Verplank.

ities without reason, privations which vex without purifying man, Christianity is as lovely as she is self-denying. She is friendly and tender-hearted, and full of the social and domestic affections and sympathies.

can.

6. Once more, the Christian religion requires an ABSTINENCE FROM THE PROXIMATE CAUSES OF EVIL, and demands what is right in motive and intention, as well as in the overt act. Human laws chiefly deal with the manifest action, when capable of proof. They argue back very feebly to the intention, which they still do aim at reaching as they The divine law lays the restraint upon the intention, the first element of the moral nature of man; the divine law considers nothing to be virtuous, unless the motive as well as the material action be right; the divine law regulates the inward wheels and structure, of which the outward movement is the indication; the divine law demands an abstinence from every appearance of evil, from the proximate causes of crime, from the scenes, the places, the books, the persons which create the temptation. The divine law forbids doubtful indulgencies, questionable pleasures, the approach towards the line of demarcation between virtue and vice, and bids men cultivate a decided intention. and study of obeying God.

7. Accordingly, Christian morality regards all outward forms of devotion and piety as MEANS TO A HIGHER END, and as only acceptable to God when connected with that higher end. In this it stands opposed to all false religions, which invariably connive at the substitution of ceremonies and ablutions, for moral duty. What should be the end of religion is lost in the means. Christianity knows nothing of such compromise. Bring no more vain oblations, is the remonstrance of the Lord by his prophet with the hypocritical people of his day-incense is an abomination unto me; your new moons and your appointed feasts, my soul hateth; they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.

8. Further, the Christian precepts all hang together and AID EACH OTHER; and, indeed, are necessary the one to the

(e) Isaiah i. 13, 14.

other. This is a mark of a divine system. The morality of the gospel coheres, depends each part on every other, and springs out from a few main principles. Humility is essential to self-denial, and both to benevolence and compassion: these last are indispensable to the love of our neighbor as ourselves; and all are required to subdue rancor, envy, ambition, hatred: and when these are subjugated, the mild and retired virtues flourish; whilst the same genuine love to our fellow-men keeps them from falling into moroseness, and from being leavened with misanthropy. And thus the completeness of the Christian code, and the high standard which it erects, answer to the beautiful harmony of the various particular graces in the actual character of the Christian disciple.

9. For this is the last remark which I offer under this head, The Christian morals go to form A PARTICULAR SORT OF CHARACTER, of such excellence as no other system of ethics ever aimed at. Some of the separate duties of the gospel were not unknown to heathen philosophy;-fortitude, chastity, truth, justice, equanimity, the doing to others as we would they should do unto us, &c.; but the extent and purity of the Christian morals appear, as in the other points already mentioned, so especially in this, that they go to form a character perfectly attainable, and yet altogether new and lovely-a character in which humility and selfknowledge are so interwoven with meekness, spirituality, disregard to earthly things, denial of selfishness in all its forms, prompt and sympathizing benevolence, active zeal in advancing the temporal and spiritual welfare of mankind, patience under sufferings, forgiveness of injuries, persevering effort in every good word and work, as to form a temper and conduct so excellent and praiseworthy, and yet so unknown to heathen moralists, as to stamp upon Christianity the seal of its heavenly origin. And this is the more remarkable because Christianity considers all separate acts of virtue as essentially defective, unless they are directed to the formation of this very character, and are adorned with -what is completely understood to be the summary of moral excellence-the Christian spirit and temper.