trines of Revelation, all is inefficient, unless the authority which it brings to bear upon the conscience, and the rewards and punishments attached to it are weighty, solemn, efficacious.

A hand dissevered from the body, might as well be represented as sufficient for the purpose of labor, as unconnected and unauthoritative principles for the purposes of morality.

Heathen morals, in addition to innumerable other deficiencies, labored under one which was fatal to the whole system; they had no sanction, no authority, no knowledge. clear and definite of a future state or an eternal judgment. The faint Light of reason, the voice of conscience, the fragments of tradition, were utterly insufficient to bind men. It was the state, the civil law, usage, convenience, which formed the quicksand on which their edifice was reared. Infidelity builds on no firmer foundation, when she pretends to raise her morals on the love of glory, honor, interest, utility, and the progress of civilization, with some feeble admissions of the belief of a future life.

Christianity stands forth in the midst of mankind, the only religion which asserts the will of God to be the clear and unbending rule of duty, and refers men to an eternal judgment as its ultimate sanction. Her morality conduces, indeed, to the welfare of man, it is agreeable to the reason of things, it responds to the voice of conscience; but none of these is its foundation-to argue morals out on these principles has been proved, by the experience of all ages, to be impossible.

THE WILL OF GOD is the brief, undeviating authority of moral obedience. And what majesty doth this throw around the precepts of the Bible! Thus saith the Lord, is the introduction, the reason, the obligation of every command. God appears as the legislator, the moral governor, the Lord of his accountable creatures. He speaks-and all the earth keeps silence before him! ▾

And why should I contrast the partial guesses of Paganism or Infidelity on a future state of rewards and punish

(v) Hab. ii, 20.

It adds incomparably to the force of these sanctions, that they are propounded continually by our Lord and his apostles, in the course of those very discoveries of grace, which at first sight might appear to interfere with them. In the midst of the discourses of Christ, and his exposition of the gospel to the Jews, there are interposed those direct assertions of the universal judgment and its invariable decisions, which prevent any abuse of the grace and privileges offered -whilst the apostles are perpetually reminding their converts, that God is not mocked, that we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, and that every man shall receive the things done in the body.

Nor is it a slight matter, that in the description given by our Saviour of the proceedings of that last day, happiness. and misery are adjudged, not on the footing of faith or love, which are hidden principles known only to Almighty God, but on the footing of works, good or evil, manifested before men, and shown to flow from faith in the merits of the Redeemer in the one case, and contempt of him in the other.z

On the whole, then, I must confess, when I review this great subject, that the morals taught in the gospel seem to me to place Revelation as far above the reach of merely human invention, and to carry along with them as clear an impress of a divine hand, as the general adaptation of Christianity to the state of man, or the grand and sublime plan of human salvation developed in its doctrines. In fact, the argument from the Christian morals, is, if possible, stronger than that from the preceding topics, because, as I have said, it is more intelligible to every human being.

1. The morality of the gospel makes it IMPOSSIBLE, IN

THE NATURE OF THINGS, THAT CHRISTIANITY SHOULD BE AN IMPOSTURE. This is my first remark in concluding this lecture. I do not merely affirm, that the Christian morals strengthen the impression of truth derived from the external evidences (which is all my argument demands,) but I assert that no wicked men could have invented, or could have wished to propose, or could have succeeded in establishing, (y) Gal. vi, 7. 2 Cor. v, 10. (z) Matt. xxv. (a) Lect. xiv, and xv.

such a religion, with such a code of precepts so inseparably united with it and springing from it. From the creation of the world to the present hour, the schemes of impostors have partaken, and from the very constitution of the human mind must partake, of the pride, the ambition, the restlessness, the cunning, the sensuality, the personal interests, the contempt of authority, from which they spring. All the superstitions of Paganism, as well as the imposture of the false prophet, explain themselves on this ground. We see, in the laxity and turpitude of their moral systems, a sufficient agreement with their pretended revelations.

I ask, then, with regard to Christianity, what could be the object-the CUI BONO-of an imposture, accompanied with a code of precepts so consistent, pure, elevated, complete, and in harmony with every part of the religion? The case speaks for itself. Such precepts could only have come down from the Father of lights, and have formed part of a Revelation sustained, as Christianity was, by every other species of external and internal testimony.

In fact, the fishermen of Galilee, even if they had been ever so pure in heart, (which the supposition of imposture makes impossible) could never have composed a system of duty so new, so peculiar, so holy, so perfect. See how slowly and laboriously the science of morals, as a philosophical effort, is wrought out, even at the present day, by professed Christians, and with all the aid of long experience, acute talents, and assiduous study--the defects, the gross defects of these systems are notorious. And yet the morals of the gospel, without any pretensions to scientific arrangement, and composed by men of ordinary talents, amidst persecutions, and exile, and imprisonments, are found to contain the most pure and harmonious system of moral truth. That is, the only perfect code bursts suddenly upon the world complete at once; and the improvement which two thousand years have produced, in those who judge of this subject, and bring the gospel to the trial concerning it, only serves to illustrate the wisdom of divine Revelation by the contrast with human weakness and folly.c

(b) See Reid, Stewart, Brown, &c. (c) Dr. Hey's Lect. in Bp. Burd Sumner.

But this consideration is incomparably strengthened, if we turn to the WRETCHED SYSTEMS WHICH MODERN INFIDELS PROPOSE FOR THE DIRECTION OF MANKIND. I should rather say their want of system-nay, their want of any honest intention to promote morality. They talk sometimes of moral duty, they commend the gospel precepts, they vaunt the light of nature and the sufficiency of human reason; but when you watch them in detail, you discover that there is neither foundation nor superstructure; neither principles nor duties; neither rules nor exhortations in their code of morality. As to authority and sanction, the ablest of them doubt of the immortality of the soul, doubt of a last judgment, doubt of eternal happiness and misery. Were their systems, therefore, ever so perfect, they would have far less force to bind the conscience than the very morals of heathenism. But what, after all, are their systems? They agree in excluding the divine Being from their theories; but upon no other point. One resolves all morality into self-love-another into the law of the state-another into motives of interest-another into what is useful in society-whilst another has recourse to feeling, and asserts that whatever he feels to be right, is right. On these quicksands what durable edifice can arise? None. There is no bond of society so sacred which they do not burst asunder-there is no personal duty so universally admitted, which they do not impugn-female modesty itself cannot maintain its ground before their coarse depravity. I do not scruple to say that the tendency, and I believe in most cases the design, of our infidel writings, is to dig up the foundation of morals, to efface the distinctions of good and evil, and resign men to the wretched contest of base interests and civil restraints, without a God, without a providence, without a day of retribution, without a futurity.

From such darkness we turn to the soft and healing light of the Christian morality, as the traveller hails the dawn of day after a howling, tempestuous night.

(d) Hume, Gibbon, &c. (e) See Leland, and Fuller.