"Hear now,

his ways, and see whether they are right. house of Israel; is not my way equal? Are not your ways unequal?"—"O my people, what have I done unto thee? and wherein have I wearied thee? Testify against me.". "Thus

saith the Lord, what iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me, and have walked after vanity, and are become vain ?"-" Why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right."- 'Is God unrighteous who taketh vengeance?" If the mere will and command of God were enough, what mean these appeals? If there were no standard of right but the divine will, they would be entirely out of place. But there is a standard of right in the nature of things, to which God himself is conformed, and to which all his works and ways are conformed. This Abraham pleaded, in his intercession for Sodom. "That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked; and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee: shall not the judge of all the earth do right ?" If there is no standard of right but his mere will, it should be, shall not the judge of all the earth do as he pleases?" Moses says, "He is the rock, his work is perfect; for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth, and without iniquity; just and right is he." And the Psalmist says, "The Lord is righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works." All this supposes some standard of right, to which all his ways are conformed, and which is not mere will.

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L. S. Do you feel at liberty then, when a divine command is brought to you, to postpone your obedience, till you can examine and try it, by your imaginary rule of right; and then disregard it if it does not appear to agree?

Th. Certainly not. Having ascertained that God is infinitely wise and good, I know he will command nothing but what is right. When, therefore, his command comes to me, I have no hesitation as to its rectitude. Its being his command, is a suf ficient proof that it is right. But since he has made me a rational being, and invited me to examine his ways, to discover their rectitude; and since he claims my approbation and praise for the rectitude of his ways, I feel it my duty to examine them, and endeavor to discover their excellence; that my praise may be the expression of intelligent and cordial approbation, and not a mere blind adulation of I know not what.

L. S. After all, why may not right be considered that which is most conducive to happiness, and wrong that which produces misery?

Th. I will endeavor to show that it is otherwise. Holiness is clearly exhibited in the Scriptures as something worthy of

approbation in itself; and sin is exhibited as something worthy of disapprobation for its own evil nature. To the Lord Jesus it is said, "Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness; therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows." It is not the love of happiness, and the hatred of misery, that is spoken of as his crowning excellence; but his love of right, and hatred of wrong. "These six things doth the Lord hate; yea seven are an abomination unto him; a proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, a false witness that speaketh lies, and him that soweth discord among brethren.”—“ The fear of the Lord is to hate evil: pride and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth do I hate." "These are the things that ye shall do; speak ye every man the truth to his neighbor; execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates; and let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his neighbor; and love no false oath; for all these are things that I hate, saith the Lord." Speaking of idolatry, he says, "Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate." It is the sin which is here exhibited as the object of his hatred, and not misery. And it is righteousness that he loves, and not happiness. Not that misery is not regarded as an evil to be hated, and happiness a good to be loved; but they are only a natural good and evil; and are not proper objects of approbation and disapprobation, like right and wrong.

God has so made men that they feel under obligation to love right and hate wrong. If they do wrong, they feel condemned for it. They are sensible of shame and remorse for doing wrong. And this is an entirely different sensation from the grief which we feel from having made a poor calculation in our business, by which we have sustained a loss. A sense of guilt, a sense of ill-desert, a self-condemning conscience, could not exist, if the wrong was not worthy of blame in itself, apart from all considerations of loss and gain. So when men perform a good action, the sensation which they feel in view of it, the approbation of their conscience, is an entirely different thing from the exultation derived from the success of an enterprise in the pursuit of gain. There are instances in which men do wrong to procure gain. And sometimes they succeed. And they sometimes, while exulting in their success, think of the wrong they have done, and feel the stings of a guilty conscience. What does that mean? Does their trouble arise solely from the fear that their ill-gotten gains will be taken from them? I believe not. I think there is such a thing as a sense of guilt different from the fear of loss.

What is the case of the sinner under conviction? He feels under obligation to hate sin. It is not merely to hate misery, for that he has always hated. The sinner is awakened from the dread of misery which he already hates. But mere awakening is not conviction. Conviction is a sense of guilt. The sinner is convicted when he feels guilty for not hating sin. If hatred to misery were all, there could be no such thing as conviction, for the sinner has always hated misery. In real and deep conviction, misery is often lost sight of under an overwhelming sense of guilt. Or, if there is a sense of misery, it is not that for which the sinner feels troubled, so much as for his guilt. This proves that sin is the object which ought to be hated, and which God is leading the mind of the sinner to see and feel that he ought to hate.

What is the essence of Christian experience? It is to be brought to hate sin, and love righteousness. All men love happiness and hate misery. If that were holiness, Satan would be holy. Sinners would be all holy. A change in the means by which happiness is sought, cannot be a radical change, but only a circumstantial one. Every one that is born again begins to hate sin. The declaration by the Prophet Ezekiel is fulfilled in them: "Then shall ye remember your own evil ways, and your doings that were not good, and shall loathe yourselves in your own sight, for your iniquities, and for your abominations." It is not for their misery that they loathe themselves, but for their iniquities.

God threatens to punish sin, but he does not threaten to punish misery. And he does punish sin, both in this world and in the next. He inflicts a natural evil as a punishment for moral evil. Both are evils, but they are evils of a different nature. The disapprobation he feels towards moral evil, is not of the same nature as the disapprobation he feels towards misery. God's hatred of sin is greater than his hatred of misery, because it is in itself a greater evil. For he punishes sin by the infliction of misery. God loves righteousness, and rewards it with happiness, which proves that righteousness is a greater good than happiness. His approbation of righteousness is not of the same nature as his approbation of happiness. He bestows happiness upon the righteous as a testimony of his approbation of their righteousness. Right and wrong are evidently the great and primary objects of the divine approbation and disapprobation, and happiness and misery are made the instruments of expressing his love of the one, and hatred of the other.

If sin were to be hated and punished only for its consequences, then in many instances it should have little or no pun

ishment. The sin of Joseph's brethren in sending him into Egypt was made the means of good to Joseph, and to all his father's house. But it deserved punishment for the wrong there was in itself. Joseph said, "As for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good.' Judas, in betraying Christ, committed a great sin, which deserved the token of divine disapprobation for its own evil nature. But God made its consequences a great blessing to the world, as through it the Lord Jesus Christ was brought to the cross, to shed his blood for the sin of mankind. Indeed, all the sin that is ever committed, though wrong in itself, and therefore worthy of the divine disapprobation and punishment for its own evil nature, and the evil designs of those that commit it, will be made, by the power of God, to result in good. "The wrath of man shall praise thee: the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain." If the consequences were all that sin is to be hated for, and it shall appear at last to have been overruled for good in every instance, then no punishment at all should be inflicted upon it but it should receive a reward, as a public benefit.

L. S. And so I think your scheme of doctrines makes it out And if I should believe such doctrines, I should become a Un versalist at once.

Th. Very likely you would; for you seem to embrace many of their principles already.

CHAPTER LV.

Ardent. There is one practice of the new-measure men, which I think needlessly exposes religion to contempt; I mean that of using low and vulgar language.

Love-self. Did not the apostle study "great plainness of speech ?"

Th. Yes; but plainness is not the same thing as vulgarity. One minister says: I have not yet attended any protracted meeting, in which I did not hear a great deal of low and vulgar language, adapted to expose divine things to contempt; and that too, sometimes, from educated men, who, in this respect, seemed to copy the defects of the ignorant and uneducated We ought to study great plainness of speech, and to seek after language which is intelligible to the most uncultivated mind. This I think is the duty of the preacher. But vulgarity is not necessary; and for one who is capable of any thing better, to

indulge in it, in the pulpit, is intolerable. It is degrading the Gospel, and unnecessarily exposing it to contempt.'

Ard. I have noticed that men of education, sometimes, seem to consider the adoption of common vulgarisms as a great attainment; and labor after it, as if they could not otherwise preach the Gospel with plainness and simplicity. I could not but think they were greatly deceived in this matter.

Th. A kind of infatuation seems to have come over them. Perhaps they thought they could not otherwise make themselves intelligible; but that is a great mistake. The language of the Scriptures is language of great simplicity; and yet it has none of those vulgarisms of which men of good taste complain. Perhaps they have been men who have formerly labored after high-sounding expressions, and far-fetched phrases, and thought to excite admiration by them; but now, having become conscious of the wrong of so doing, they have hastily concluded that the opposite of wrong must be right; and so they have descended to a very low phraseology. I have frequently been struck with the unseemly intermixture of words and phrases which were exceptionable on both these accounts. Mr. Bold was a man of little education, of low and vulgar mind, and of such habits and associations, before his profession of religion, as would render low language familiar to him. He came into the church, and into the ministry, with these habits. As he proceeded in his ministry, very little correction seems to have been made. His wonderful success seemed to invest with a sort of sacredness every thing which belonged to him. And he became the model for a host of imitators. As usual, these imitated the worst things with more exactness than they did the best. And when educated men fell in with Mr. Bold's measures, they were commonly carried away into an imitation of his manners. Hence the familiar, talking manner of their public prayers. Hence the frequent use of the common terms of profane swearing, with a tone and manner greatly resembling that of the lowest profane swearers in the streets. Hence the attempts to imitate a sort of theatrical action in the pulpit, and make the preacher personate, now the great God, in pronouncing judgment, and now the sinner in justifying himself, and insulting his Maker. An instance of which is mentioned by a minister, after Mr. Bold had left the vicinity. "I was extremely shocked, on a late occasion, to hear a preacher, for perhaps a quarter of an hour, personate the sinner, and tell God how little he cared for his favors or his frowns. His language, his action, his tone, and whole manner, seemed copied from that which is employed by the lowest classes in expressing their contempt for their fellows, when greatly provoked by them."