HULSEAN LECTURES 
 
 MDCCCXXXVII. 
 
 RATIONALISM AND REVELATION. 
 
(/V4*^ /u^vut. sO-<2^* 
 
 RATIONALISM AND REVELATION 
 
 OR THE 
 
 TESTIMONY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY, 
 
 THE SYSTEM OF NATURE, 
 
 AND THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN, 
 
 TO THE TRUTH OI' 
 
 THE DOCTRINES OF SCRIPTURE; 
 
 IN EIGHT DISCOURSES, 
 
 PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, 
 
 IN THE YEAR 1837; 
 
 WITH A MEMOIR OF THE FOUNDER OF THE LECTURE, 
 THE REV. JOHN HULSE. 
 
 By THE 
 
 rev. richard Parkinson, b. d. 
 
 OP ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, 
 AND FELLOW OP CHRIST'S COLLEGE IN MANCHESTER. 
 
 LONDOxV : 
 J. G. AND F. RIVINGTON, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH YARD. 
 
 MDCCCXXXVIII. 
 
' ND CO., PRINTERS, MANCHESTER. 
 
GILBERT AINSLIE, D. D. 
 
 MASTER OF PEMBROKE COLLEGE, AND LATE VICE-CHANCELLOR: 
 
 CHRISTOPHER WORDSWORTH, D. D. 
 
 MASTER OP TRINITY COLLEGE : 
 
 AND THE VERY REV. JAMES WOOD, D.D. 
 
 DEAN OF ELY, 
 
 AND MASTER OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE: 
 
 TKygTiig ©if thi LieTnyjiao 
 
 FOUNDED BY 
 
 THE REV. JOHN HULSE 
 
 THE FOLLOWING DISCOURSES, 
 
 PREACHED BY THEIR APPOINTMENT, 
 
 ARE VERY RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Memoik of Hulse, with extracts from his will xv 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 THE SUBJECT PROPOSED AND UNFOLDED. 
 
 Job iv. 17. 
 Shall mortal man he more just than God ? Shall a man 
 he more pure than his Maker ? 
 
 THE ARGUMENT. 
 
 Permanence of error, and its unchangeable character — the 
 institution of this Lecture intended hy its Founder to 
 form one of its antagonist powers — subject stated, and 
 contempt for the leading and peculiar doctrines of 
 the gospel asserted to he a prevalent feeling among a 
 portion of the educated classes — causes assigned — reme- 
 dies proposed, such as the works of Palev and Butler — 
 in what respects they do not remove the difficulties of the 
 modern Rationalist — these difficulties stated, and mode 
 of removing them sketched — shewn that they themselves, 
 properly considered, tend to establish, instead of shaking 
 the truth of the doctrines of the gospel — restatement 
 of the results at which it is hoped we may arrive by 
 granting the premises of our opponents, and apology for 
 arguing upwards from the principles of the Rationalist, 
 instead of downwards from the contents of the book oi 
 Revelation ' 
 
Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 PAOB 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Romans iv. 14, 15. 
 For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by 
 nature the things contained in the law, these having not 
 the law, are a law unto themselves : which shew the work 
 of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also 
 bearing witness, and their thoughts mean while accusing 
 or else excusing one another. 
 
 THE ARGUMENT. 
 
 Subject defined to be the testimony of moral philosophy, 
 the system of nature, and the constitution of man to the 
 truth of the doctrines of Revelation — Ethics first 
 treated upon — their antiquity and importance — their 
 various leading principles — Conscience, its power and 
 defects — both shewn to lead directly to an investigation 
 of the doctrines of the gospel — the doctrine of future 
 rewards and punishments shewn to be necessary to 
 secure the supremacy of Conscience — that doctrine 
 shewn to carry the truth of all the others in its train — 
 general remarks on the conclusions arising from the 
 preceding argument 29 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 THE TESTIMONY OE ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Psalm cxix. 96. 
 I have seen an end of all perfection : but thy command- 
 ment is exceeding broad. 
 
CONTENTS. ix 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE ARGUMENT. 
 
 Preliminary observation — the subject of Ethics resumed 
 — the auxiliaries of Conscience discussed — it requires 
 some impelling power to give it authority over the Will 
 — some have proposed utility as the power required — 
 Paley's doctrine on the subject of utility sometimes mis- 
 stated — its defects, arising from man's ignorance, and its 
 want of authority over the feelings — other auxiliaries to 
 Conscience, such as self-love, disinterestedness, associ- 
 ation of ideas — a more powerful and universal auxiliary 
 than all these suggested, the relation of Parent and 
 Child — its beneficial operation enlarged upon — the de- 
 fects of all these auxiliaries specified, and the doctrines 
 of the Gospel shewn to remedy these defects — the rela- 
 tion of Parent and Child, universal in nature, adopted 
 into the system of grace, by the representation of God 
 as our Father, and Christians as the brethren of his 
 Son — important consequences of this view developed ... 51 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 
 
 Hebreivs ii. 9. 
 That he by the grace of God should taste death for every 
 man. 
 
 THE ARGUMENT. 
 
 The Intellectual Powers considered as a Rule of life — in 
 what way the cultivation of the Intellect leads to the 
 principles of Rationalism — the perishable nature of 
 
X CONTENTS. 
 
 PAG* 
 
 Intellectual results — the injustice of considering the In- 
 tellectual powers as a standard of excellence — this not 
 true of a Moral standard — the great doctrine of the 
 Atonement applicable to one and not to the other — this 
 doctrine unfolded, and shewn to be the precise remedy 
 which Philosophy would require for intellectual and mo- 
 ral defects — conclusions drawn from the preceding state- 
 ments 75 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF THE ULTIMATE DESTINY OF THE 
 BODY. 
 
 1 Corinthians xv. 20. 
 Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first 
 fruits of them that slept. 
 
 THE ARGUMENT. 
 
 The importance of the doctrine of the Resurrection of the 
 Body — a peculiar doctrine of the Gospel — shewn to be 
 in accordance with human expectation, though beyond 
 the reach of human sagacity to discover — difficulties as 
 to personal identity discussed — shewn to be those of 
 Philosophy and not of Scripture — solution which the 
 doctrine of the Resurrection affords of the silence of 
 Scripture with respect to the condition of the soul as 
 distinct from the body — the Materialist cannot overthrow 
 this doctrine — general observations on the future resur- 
 rection of the whole moral man as well as of the body... 99 
 
CONTENTS. Xi 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF THE RELATION OF MAN TO EXTERNAL 
 THINGS. 
 
 Romans viii. 19, 20, 21. 
 For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the 
 manifestations of the sons of God. For the creature was 
 made subject to vanity, not willingly, hut by reason of 
 him who hath subjected the same in hope, because the 
 creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of 
 corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of 
 God. 
 
 THE ARGUMENT. 
 
 Proofs of our proposition deduced from the relation of man 
 to the external world — uncertainty and change every 
 where prevail in the external world — Rationalist theory 
 that this condition formed part of the original design — 
 objections to this theory — want of progression in natural 
 things, and deductions from them unjust to the character 
 of the Deity — a passage of Scripture expounded as con- 
 taining a just view of the present condition of the 
 external world, by linking it with the moral condition of 
 man — the relation of external things to the body shewn 
 to be analogous to the relation of Scripture to the soul — 
 each teaches an appropriate lesson, and the second takes 
 us up where the first deserts us 121 
 
XII CONTENTS. 
 
 PAr.E 
 
 LECTURE VII. 
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF THE RELATION OF MEN TO EACH 
 OTHER. 
 
 1 Corinthians i. 20. 
 Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world ? 
 
 THE ARGUMENT. 
 
 The subject pursued with regard to the relation of men to 
 each other — the advances of practical philosophy spring 
 indirectly from the doctrines of the gospel — the interna- 
 tional relations of mankind considered — their social rela- 
 tions, with general remarks on the fallacy of the rationalist 
 system — the relation of husband and wife — Scripture 
 doctrine respecting the Law of marriage — the relation of 
 parent and child — parental education necessarily religious 
 — the relation of the higher to the lower classes of so- 
 ciety — all these shewn to derive their highest efficacy 
 from being based upon the Doctrines of the Gospel 143 
 
 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF THE RELATION OF MAN TO 
 HIMSELF. 
 
 1 Corinthians ii. 14, 15. 
 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit 
 of God : for they are foolishness unto him : neither can 
 he know them, because they are spiritually discerned, 
 but he that is spiritual judgeth all things. 
 
CONTENTS. Xlil 
 
 PACE 
 
 THE ARGUMENT. 
 
 The dissection of man's moral character, as an individual 
 being, shewn to be peculiar to the Gospel — its superi- 
 ority in this respect, to philosophy, to other religions, 
 and to human laws — its mode of proceeding in the re- 
 storation of man shewn to be in accordance with his 
 present acknowledged defects — the assistances of the 
 Spirit — the power of Faith — Christ our example. — 
 Conclusion — duty of adapting our preaching to the 
 exigencies of the times — different effects of addressing 
 the head and the heart — duty of the preacher to do both. 
 — Value of learning in the preacher of the Gospel shewn 
 from Scripture instances. Concluding exhortation to 
 the Students to cultivate human learning with a view to 
 religious usefulness 167 
 
MEMOIR OF MR. HULSE. 
 
 There are few men who have taken more effec- 
 tual means of securing to their names an earthly 
 immortality, than those who have, by donation or 
 bequest, endowed some Fellowship, Exhibition, 
 or Prize, in one of our Universities. There is at 
 least a remembrance of their bounty made once 
 every year. Each triumphant competitor for 
 their crown " adds a stone to their cairn ;" and 
 their name becomes a very household word with 
 thousands, who have no recollections or sympa- 
 thies for heroes and potentates, the effects of 
 whose brilliant exploits have now become mere 
 matters of history. It is, however, much to be 
 regretted that the names alone of too many of 
 these best patrons of religion and science are now 
 remembered. Hulse, one of the greatest bene- 
 factors to the University of Cambridge in modern 
 times, (the value of the estates which he devoted to 
 the encouragement of literature and religion may 
 be stated, in round numbers, as approaching to the 
 
XVI MEMOIR OF HULSE. 
 
 sum of £1000 per annum), is fast following the 
 fate of his predecessors ; the only record of his 
 life being the brief but very interesting particu- 
 lars noticed by Mr. Benson, the first Lecturer 
 on his Foundation, in the first and second of his 
 eloquent and valuable discourses on the Evidences 
 of Christianity. For these particulars he acknow- 
 ledges himself indebted to Dr. Wood, the present 
 venerable Master of St. John's, and Dean of Ely. 
 Dr. Wood is the oldest surviving Trustee under 
 Mr. Hulse's will, and is now the sole depositary 
 of many of the facts which tradition has treasured 
 up respecting his habits and character. It was 
 long his intention to arrange them into the form 
 of a brief memoir ; and it is much to be regretted 
 that he never carried this design into execution, 
 as it cannot be doubted that the clearness of style 
 and vigour of thought which have given perma- 
 nence to his works even on the progressive sub- 
 jects of mathematical science, would have im- 
 parted peculiar interest to his notices, however 
 necessarily scanty, of one, whose unchanging 
 attachment to his own beloved College, must have 
 caused him to be regarded by its Master almost in 
 the light of a friend. Pleading, however, the 
 apology of advancing age, for declining the task 
 which he had long proposed to himself, Dr. Wood 
 has kindly placed the particulars with regard to 
 Mr. Hulse, which he had many years ago collect- 
 ed from his servants and surviving friends, in the 
 
MEMOIR OF HULSE. xvii 
 
 bands of the present Lecturer; with a request 
 that they should be embodied into a brief memoir, 
 and such extracts from his voluminous Will ap- 
 pended, as might put the public in full possession 
 of the benevolence of his designs, and of his 
 judgment in carrying them into execution. From 
 no one is the discharge of this almost filial duty 
 more due, than one who has had the honour, 
 (however unworthily), of holding a conspicuous 
 post on his Foundation ; and scanty as are neces- 
 sarily the materials for biography, which are fur- 
 nished by the life of a retired student, yet there 
 are traits in the history of Mr. Hulse, which, 
 independent of his pious testamentary bequests, 
 may make some notice of him a matter of 
 interest to the reader. 
 
 John Hulse, the subject of this memoir, was 
 the descendant of a respectable, though not what 
 is technically called a county family, in Cheshire.* 
 
 * In Debrett's Baronetage there is a strange mistake. It is 
 there stated that "the Rev. John (who left his estates lor the 
 purpose of promoting religious knowledge in the University of 
 Cambridge,)" was the son of Sir Edward Hulse, the first Baronel 
 of that name. It is difficult to consider an error so circum- 
 stantial as this, as being entirely the result of accident. The 
 blunder is, nevertheless, wholly gratuitous ; there never having 
 been the slightest relationship or connexion between the two 
 families. 
 
 B 
 
XV111 MEMOIR OF HULSE. 
 
 His grandfather, Thomas Plulse, whose conduct 
 towards him had a very considerable influence on 
 his character and fortunes, was the son of Thomas 
 Hulse of Clive, and Catharine, daughter of Tho- 
 mas Malbon, a native of Nantwich. He married 
 Mary Raven, daughter, and, on her brother's 
 death, heiress of William Raven, of Elworth Hall, 
 in Cheshire, which descended to his son Thomas, 
 the father of the subject of the present memoir. 
 Elworth Hall, according to Ormerod, who men- 
 tions it in his History of Cheshire, " is a very 
 respectable mansion, of the second class, situated 
 within the township of Sandbach, but close to 
 Bradwall, surrounded with fine trees, and kept 
 in neat order, according to his (Mr. Hulse's) will. 
 The front is of brick, finished with gables, the 
 rest more ancient, and composed of timber and 
 plaster." 
 
 Thomas Hulse, the father of the Rev. John 
 Hulse, married Anne Webb, a daughter of Mr. 
 Webb, of Middlewich, and a lady of consider- 
 able fortune — probably, says the informant, from 
 £10,000 to £20,000. Her father had a share in 
 what, in the language of the salt-mining district, 
 is called a brine-pit ; and on her giving up her 
 fortune at her marriage, the whole of the Hulse's 
 estates of Elworth, and in Clive and Bradwall, 
 was settled upon her and her eldest son. That 
 eldest son was John, the subject of the present 
 
MEMOIR OF HULSE. XIX 
 
 memoir. He was born at Middlewich, on the 
 15th of March, in the year 1708, and was the 
 eldest of nineteen children ! — of whom, though a 
 considerable number survived to at least middle 
 age, five brothers and two sisters being alive — as 
 appears from his will— in the year 1777 — yet 
 none of them left any offspring behind them. 
 The conduct of his parents towards their eldest 
 son was of a kind difficult to account for. What- 
 ever might have been the cause, John was early 
 removed from under the paternal roof, and was 
 put out to nurse with a cottager on the estate. 
 The account given of this part of his history, by 
 the late Mr. Plant to the Master of St. John's, 
 was as follows : " The grandfather, being desirous 
 of seeing his grandson, proceeded up a dirty green 
 lane, where he observed a girl with a child under 
 one arm, and a pitcher of water in the other hand. 
 He soon heard the old cottager's wife rebuking the 
 girl for not making haste with the water ; and 
 adding, that if she could not bring both the child 
 and the water, she must drop the child in the 
 lane, — which was accordingly done.''' From that 
 hour the grandfather took the child unto his own 
 home. It is probable that the treatment which 
 he experienced at this early period of his life 
 made an impression both on his physical and 
 mental constitution, which determined the whole 
 of his future character. He was of a delicate 
 frame of body, of a contemplative turn of mind, 
 
XX MEMOIR OF HULSE. 
 
 of diminutive stature, and of an irritable temper- 
 ament. He is said to have contracted the bodily 
 ailments, which he could never afterwards shake 
 off, by an early habit of lying on the cold ground 
 observing the heavens. He received his educa- 
 tion at the grammar school of Congleton, near 
 which town Elworth Hall is situated. At the 
 age (which now appears an early one) of sixteen, 
 he was admitted of St. John's College, Cambridge; 
 and it is stated that his grandfather, who was in- 
 deed a father to him, took him thither behind him 
 on horseback, which was at that time the only 
 mode of conveyance for the middle classes, (a rail- 
 road not then running, as it does now, through 
 his estate!), he himself being seventy-eight years of 
 age. Soon after his entrance upon his college 
 career his venerable benefactor died, and the fa- 
 mily estate of course lapsed to his father, as heir 
 under the entail. His father's family, however, 
 was, as has been already stated, exceedingly nu- 
 merous ; and he sent for John from college for 
 the purpose of obtaining his assent to the sale of 
 part of the entailed property. To this he agreed. 
 But on being sent for the second time for a simi- 
 lar purpose, he refused to comply with what 
 he probably thought an unreasonable request. 
 His refusal, it is stated, led to personal ill-treat- 
 ment of him on the part of his father ; and from 
 that time he never returned to the paternal roof; 
 taking up his residence, when not domesticated in 
 
MEMOIR OF HULSE. XXI 
 
 his college, with his grandmother, who was now 
 old, and very much limited in her means of sub- 
 sistence. But here was exemplified the value of 
 those benevolent provisions which have been 
 made in our universities for the necessities of 
 indigent students, and which, I may add, have 
 seldom been more judiciously or liberally dis- 
 pensed, than in the college to which Mr. Hulse 
 belonged. It appears that his career had not 
 been undistinguished ; for it is entered on the 
 college records that he obtained a prize for a 
 Latin Ode. He was carried through the remain- 
 ing expenses of his University course by exhibi- 
 tions granted to him by his college; and this 
 liberality, on its part, accounts for the gratitude 
 towards the place of his education which he 
 always expressed during life, and which he so 
 strikingly exemplified at its close. He never 
 advanced farther in his degrees than that of 
 Bachelor of Arts. He was ordained in the be- 
 ginning of the year 1732, and had a small curacy 
 at Yoxall. He married, in the year 1733, Miss 
 Mary Hall, of Hermitage, near Holmes Chapel, 
 in the neighbourhood of his paternal estate ; a 
 lady of a highly respectable family, and a very 
 near relation to Miss Frances Hall, of Manches- 
 ter, who, on her death in 1828, bequeathed the 
 sum of £40,000 to the various public charities of 
 that town. They had one son, Edward, who was 
 
XX11 MEMOIR OF HULSE. 
 
 born at Hermitage, and died at the age of 22.* 
 He afterwards took the small curacy of Goostry, 
 a chapel under Sandbach, and near Hermitage, 
 which he served till the death of his father, which 
 took place in the year 1753. He then took pos- 
 session of his paternal estate of Elworth, where 
 he resided for the remainder of his life ; resigning, 
 on account of the delicate state of his health, all 
 clerical duties, and devoting himself to such 
 studies as became his situation and profession. 
 He died on the 14th of December, 1790, at the 
 age of 82, of what I find styled in the memoranda 
 before me, nervous atrophy ; that is, doubtless, of 
 old age attended with a total failure of the nervous 
 system, rather than the ordinary and simple decay 
 of the main physical powers. He was, indeed, a 
 valetudinarian through life, and all his habits, as 
 well as the tone of his mind, were influenced by 
 his necessary attention to the precarious state of 
 his health. He was, it is reported, and we may 
 well believe it to have been the case, well versed 
 in the science of medicine ; for his own condition, 
 as well as the taste of his time, would naturally 
 direct his studies into that channel. He played 
 well on the violin and flute, and other instru- 
 
 * Mr. Benson states that Mr. Hulse died unmarried. I have 
 not thought it necessary to point out some other mistakes of a 
 similar kind. They do not much affect the object which he 
 had in view. 
 
MEMOIR OF HULSE. xxiii 
 
 ments ; these were the natural and proper solace 
 of many of his lonely hours. In one of the many 
 codicils to his will, we find that he leaves his 
 " fine organ to Elizabeth Plant, (one of his fa- 
 vourite servants), and disposes of his " violins and 
 flutes, and all Corelli's works, and Purcell's Book 
 of Songs, with his Sonatas, and all his Solos and 
 Sonatas, and single songs for those instruments." 
 And in a subsequent codicil he leaves " his 
 smaller organ, and diagonal mirror, or optical 
 machine, with the large collection of fine co- 
 loured prints to be viewed therein," to Thomas 
 Plant. These were afterwards presented by Mr. 
 Plant to the Master of St. John's, and are now in 
 his possession. His habits of living were strictly 
 abstemious ; but his tastes are recorded to have 
 been somewhat fastidious in these, as they were 
 in matters more important. He drank nothing 
 but water. He was (like most men of recluse 
 habits) somewhat jealous of his rights, and suspi- 
 cious of imposition ; and, though of a most 
 liberal disposition, never forgave or forgot any 
 thing in the shape of meanness or falsehood. 
 The early separation from his family, which has 
 been already detailed, caused a breach in the 
 domestic affections which was never healed, and 
 all communication with his brothers and sisters 
 seems to have been from that time cut off. But 
 though doubtless this melancholy circumstance 
 threw a permanent shade over his natural feelings 
 
XXIV MEMOIR OF HULSE. 
 
 towards his relatives, it is much to his credit to have 
 to record, that he finally did them no injustice in 
 the provisions of his will. His charitable bequests 
 only took effect " after a provision being made 
 by his will for his several relations, he having left 
 no children, nor his relations having any." 
 
 He left his estates in Middlewich and Newton 
 to his brothers and sisters, of whom seven were 
 then living, " for the term of ninety-nine years, if 
 they should so long live, (none of them having 
 any children), with a proviso that his brothers, 
 who were then abroad, should, if they did not 
 return within seven years, be considered as dead. 
 Then to the University of Cambridge, on condition 
 that the clear yearly rents should be divided 
 into six equal parts, of which four should be paid 
 to the author of the Dissertation hereafter to 
 be mentioned, one to the Lecturer, and one for 
 a Scholarship," which he afterwards revoked. 
 His property in Sandbach and Bradwall he de- 
 vised, " in the first place, for the purpose of 
 paying the annual sum of £30 to such brother as 
 was his heir-at-law, provided he was also resident 
 in England ; and after the death of his brothers, 
 the sum of £30 each to two scholarships at St. 
 John's College." 
 
 Thus secluded from society, and with the 
 natural outlets of domestic affection closed in 
 
MEMOIR OF HULSE. XXV 
 
 early life, it is not surprising that he should 
 have transferred his regards to those who were 
 near to him in position, and who became finally 
 clear to him by their conduct. These were 
 his two favourite servants, Thomas and Eliza- 
 beth Plant, who watched over and cared for 
 him during his long and tedious hours of sick- 
 ness and pain, and to whom he bequeathed an 
 interest for life in the estate of Elworth, and a 
 considerable portion of his other property. These 
 favoured servants shewed themselves (what is not 
 always the case in similar circumstances) worthy 
 of the trust reposed in, and bounty extended to 
 them ; and have been excellent stewards of the 
 property thus temporally placed in their power. 
 It is mentioned to the credit of Mr. Plant, that 
 though a provision was made in the will, by 
 which he might have extended the exclusive 
 interest of his family in the estate to another 
 generation, yet he generously forbore to avail 
 himself of it ; and it is but justice to add, that 
 his son, who has succeeded him in the occupation 
 of the property, is the inheritor also of his father's 
 integrity and virtues. 
 
 Mr. Hulse was as judicious in the administra- 
 tion of his property during life, as he was boun- 
 tiful in the disposal of it at his death. He fell 
 neither into the habits of unjustifiable expense, 
 
XXVI MEMOIR OF HULSE. 
 
 nor of avaricious accumulation. " The only addi- 
 tion lie made to his property," says our informant, 
 " was the purchase of Mostyn, containing about 
 50 acres, and he sold about 35 acres at Clive." 
 
 Of Mr. Hulse's habits of constant and sincere 
 piety, we have the most undeniable testimony. 
 Prayer, according to the statement of his faithful 
 domestics, formed a large portion of his daily and 
 nightly occupation. His will commences, as Mr. 
 Benson has observed, " in a strain of fervent and 
 undissembled piety, and refers in a mingled tone 
 of gratitude and resignation to the mercies and 
 miseries of a lengthened life." It opens in the 
 following language : — 
 
 " In the name of God. Amen. I John 
 Hulse, of Elworth, in the county and diocese of 
 Chester, Clerk, and once a member of the college 
 of Saint John the Evangelist, in Cambridge, 
 though at this time in a very infirm state of 
 health, and for many years past afflicted with the 
 stone, and the most acute and extreme pain, yet 
 of sound mind, memory, and understanding, 
 (praised be the great and gracious Author of my 
 being for this and for all his other undeserved 
 mercies,) on a due consideration of the certainty 
 of death, and the uncertain time thereof, do make 
 and publish this my last Will and Testament, in 
 
MEMOIR OF HULSE. XXvii 
 
 manner and form following: and first, I desire, 
 with the deepest reverence and submission, to 
 resign my soul into the hands of Almighty God, 
 the greatest and best of beings, whenever his 
 All-wise Providence shall call for it, humbly 
 relying, (through the gracious influence of his 
 Holy Spirit,) on the merits, mediation, and satis- 
 faction of his blessed Son Jesus Christ, our only 
 Mediator and Redeemer, for the forgiveness of 
 my sins, and a glorious immortality : and my 
 body I commend to the grave, to be interred in 
 such manner as I shall by a note under my hand 
 in writing direct, and for want thereof, in a 
 decent and private manner, at the discretion of 
 my executors. And as to such worldly estate 
 as it has pleased the Divine Goodness so graci- 
 ously of late years to bless me with, I do order 
 and dispose of the same in the following manner :" 
 
 Mr. Hulse left behind him, in manuscript, a 
 small volume of prayers, which were afterwards 
 presented to the master of St. John's, by Mr. 
 Plant, the son of the servants to whom he be- 
 queathed so much of his property. They all 
 breathe a pious spirit, and many of them have a 
 reference to the painful complaints with which he 
 was so long afflicted : a few are here selected from 
 among the shorter, as a specimen of the rest. He 
 left them to his servants with the following me- 
 morandum, signed by his own hand : 
 
XXV111 MEMOIR OF HULSE. 
 
 " Dated the eleventh day of October, one thou- 
 sand seven hundred and eighty six. The above 
 prayers were taken some years ago by Mr. Jo- 
 seph Beckett, schoolmaster, of Middlewich, from 
 the mouth of the Reverend John Hulse, of El- 
 worth, who himself composed them, and who now 
 leaves them to his faithful servants Mr. Thomas 
 Plant and Elizabeth his wife, as a memorial of one 
 that meant well. 
 
 JOHN HULSE. 
 Witness, Richard Darlington, Jim" 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM HIS PRAYERS. 
 
 O Lord, grant me, I beseech thee, a truly 
 Christian and well-grounded Faith ; a Faith that 
 works by Love, and by an unfeigned obedience to 
 all thy laws ; that I may always do my duty as I 
 ought to thee, my good and gracious God, and to 
 my fellow creatures, and to myself — assisted by 
 thy grace, and protected by thy Providence, O 
 sovereign Lord, through Jesus Christ our blessed 
 Saviour and Redeemer. Amen. 
 
 O Lord, grant that I may always have a true 
 notion of my duty, with a sincere resolution to 
 advance thy glory and the real interest and sal- 
 vation of mankind ; and, Lord, vouchsafe to bless 
 my studies and endeavours, through thy sacred 
 wisdom, so that they may always prove effectual 
 
MEMOIR OF HULSE. xxix 
 
 to promote the interest of piety and virtue. And 
 may thy glorious name be praised, and thy most 
 holy will performed, and all thy laws obeyed, by 
 every creature both in heaven and earth, (and by 
 myself especially,) O Lord my God, to everlasting 
 ages ! Amen. 
 
 Many of his prayers are for himself and others 
 in the midst of extreme pain, he having, as he 
 states towards the conclusion of them, " had the 
 severest fits of the stone for more than twenty 
 years." The following seems to have been com- 
 posed towards the close of his life : 
 
 O ever-merciful and glorious Lord, I entreat 
 thee to accept, and favourably to receive, these 
 my prayers, and to sanctify me by thy grace ; 
 and in thy pity grant that, through the merits of 
 thy blessed Son and his most precious death, un- 
 worthy as I am, I may be freed from the guilt of 
 sin ; and released from the power and slavery of 
 satan ; and preserved, in the midst of clangers and 
 temptations, from all evil ; and, above all, from 
 the assaults of evil spirits in this my weak and 
 declining state. And at the awful time of death, 
 and when the hour of death approaches, Lord 
 grant that, through thy grace, I may trium- 
 phantly depart and leave this sinful world, and 
 may joyfully enter upon the glories and the em- 
 ployments of the blessed. Grant this, I beseech 
 
XXX MEMOIR OF HULSE. 
 
 thee, O sovereign Lord, through thy unspeakable 
 and undeserved goodness, and the salvation pur- 
 chased for all those that sincerely repent and 
 humbly return to thee and to their duty; and 
 grant that I may do the same myself, O sovereign 
 Lord, through Jesus Christ, our only mediator 
 and Redeemer. Amen. 
 
 Mr. Hulse lies buried in the parish church of 
 Middlewich, with his grandfather and grandmo- 
 ther ; to whom he was affectionately attached 
 through life, and has not been separated from them 
 in death. The arms of his family, and those of his 
 grandmother Raven, have been presented by Mr. 
 Plant to the library of St. John's College, where 
 they are now preserved. But his memory rests 
 not, there, upon these frail memorials of the past 
 respectability of his house ; he has erected to him- 
 self a monument more durable than brass, in the 
 devotion of his life to God's service, and his sub- 
 stance to His glory, and the spiritual good of 
 mankind.* 
 
 * It is curious, but not surprising, to learn, that the notions 
 regarding him at present entertained by the surrounding pea- 
 santry, are those of strong suspicion as to the origin of what they 
 naturally considered his eccentricities, and of dissatisfaction with 
 regard to the final disposition of his property. These are the 
 usual penalties which the secluded and somewhat hypochondriac 
 student must pay for his exemption from what he considers the 
 pains of social intercourse ; to which has been, in this case, added 
 
MEMOIR OF HULSE. XXXI 
 
 THE WILL. 
 
 This extraordinary document, as it must evi- 
 dently have occupied the thoughts of Mr. Hulse 
 for nearly the whole of his long life, so must the 
 composition of it have formed the (probably most 
 agreeable) employment of a considerable portion 
 of it. It is dated July the 21st, 1777- He was 
 then in his 70th year ; and appears to write in 
 full expectation of the immediate approach of 
 that final event which did not befall him for 
 
 the suspicion as to motives, with which the lower orders always 
 regard the bequest of property to public uses, so long as there 
 exists the remotest (however unworthy) relation in the world. A 
 striking proof that this feeling still exists towards Mr. Hulse, has 
 been related to me. His death, as has been stated, was finally 
 brought on, rather by defective nervous action, than by common 
 bodily decay. His mental faculties were perfect to the last; and 
 he could therefore watch the approach of death, although, as we 
 know he did, with the composure of a Christian, yet doubtless 
 with anxious speculation as to the form which its actual arrival 
 might assume. There being no external symptoms of bodily 
 ailment, animation might be suspended in such a frame as his, who 
 had always'lived a dying life, before it was finally extinct ; and he 
 therefore directed, it is said, that his grave should be kept open for 
 some days after his interment, and his body watched (which, of 
 course, was a necessary part of his design) day and night. 
 This (if such directions were really given) might be eccentric 
 on his part, but it was nothing more. His simple countrymen, 
 however, assigned a reason of their own for it, which no doubt 
 
XXXii MEMOIR OF HULSE. 
 
 twelve long years afterwards. It is his dying 
 confession, as well as his last will and testament. 
 The documentis of very great length. The copy in 
 the possession of the vice-chancellor consists of a 
 folio volume of nearly 400 pages of closely written 
 manuscript. To this are appended nine codicils ; 
 almost one for each year during the remainder of 
 his life. The last is dated Nov. 23rd, 1789, a 
 little more than a year before his death. These 
 consist principally of additional legacies to his 
 favourite servants, Thomas and Elizabeth Plant, 
 to whom he successively transferred the sums 
 which he had previously bequeathed to others, on 
 
 his retired habits, — his reported skill in music, medicine, and 
 divinity, — and above all, perhaps, the wonders displayed by his 
 " diagonal mirror, or optical machine," with the magical reve- 
 lations of which he had doubtless sometimes astonished the eyes 
 of his rustic neighbours on an occasional holiday, — all tended to 
 convince them must be the right one ; viz., that the day of his 
 dealings with the Enemy of souls being over, he wished to be 
 constantly watched lest the Owner should come and cany away 
 the body, — the right to which is always understood to form part 
 of the infernal compact ! They seem to have forgotten that his 
 temerity in directing the grave to be left open, was somewhat 
 inconsistent with their own charitable theory as to the motive ; 
 to say nothing of the insufficiency of the guard (they, it seems, 
 being certainly no conjurors) to whom he had thought proper to 
 entrust the care of his remains. This anecdote, absurd as it is, 
 seems worth recording, as a proof of the disadvantage which 
 always arises to character from seclusion from society, and the 
 slightest symptoms of mystery in conduct. 
 
MEMOIR OF HULSE. XXX111 
 
 the bequests becoming void by the death of such 
 legatees, or, as he mentions in one or two cases, 
 by the unworthy conduct of those for whom he 
 had designed them. The main purport of his 
 will, however, was to found the three or rather 
 four offices, in the University of Cambridge, on 
 which his future fame will rest, viz., — The two 
 Divinity Scholarships in St John's College, the 
 Hulsean Prize, the office of Christian Advocate, 
 and that of Hulsean Lecturer, or Christian 
 Preacher. It is evident that he was led to es- 
 tablish these most seasonable endowments from 
 two distinct causes ; the aspect of the times in 
 which he lived, and his own personal condition. 
 He lived in an age when infidel notions were 
 especially rife throughout the land, and when 
 unbelief seemed to have before it a clearer pros- 
 pect of final triumph than has either before or 
 since attended its malignant efforts. He felt, 
 moreover, how inefficiently he had (from causes 
 which he could not control) discharged his own 
 spiritual functions ; and sought by these means to 
 effect, through the agency of others, the good 
 ends which he could so well design, though phy- 
 sical rather than spiritual and mental weakness 
 had deprived him of the power to execute them. 
 The peculiar objects and offices of each of his 
 foundations have been well and eloquently de- 
 scribed by Mr. Benson, in his first course of Hul- 
 sean Lectures; and though these lectures are 
 
XXXIV MEMOIR OF HULSE. 
 
 justly in the hands of almost every reader of 
 divinity, I do not hesitate to transcribe the pas- 
 sage referred to, my object being simply to gather 
 together into one point all that it may seem 
 necessary to know with regard to the history and 
 bequests of Mr. Hulse. 
 
 " The estates which Mr. Hulse has bequeathed 
 to the University of Cambridge are of consider- 
 able value, and the whole of the revenue is 
 directed to one and the same object, the advance- 
 ment and reward of religious learning. This 
 general stream of benevolence is divided, how- 
 ever, into three principal channels, one of which 
 is intended to recompense the exertions of the 
 Hulsean Prizeman ; another, those of the Chris- 
 tian Advocate; and the third, those of the 
 Christian Preacher, or Hulsean Lecturer, by 
 whichever title it may be thought proper to dis- 
 tinguish the character in which I now appear 
 before you. 
 
 " With regard to the first of these institutions, 
 which awards an annual prize of forty pounds " 
 (since advanced to one hundred) " to the writer of 
 the best Dissertation upon some subject con- 
 nected with the direct or collateral evidences of 
 the Christian revelation ; we may observe, that it 
 ought principally to be considered as a means of 
 exciting the zeal, and directing the studies of 
 
MEMOIR OF IIULSE. XXXV 
 
 intelligent and younger men into a course of theo- 
 logical and religious inquiries. It is, in fact, 
 strictly confined to those who are neither of the 
 degree nor of the standing of Masters of Arts, 
 and can be conferred but once upon the same in- 
 dividual; thus plainly proving, that it was in- 
 tended by the Founder to stimulate the industry 
 of the slumbering, and draw forth latent talent in 
 defence of the Gospel. In this point of view it 
 is scarce possible to imagine an appointment more 
 useful in itself, or better calculated to raise up a 
 succession of able and godly men to fill the other 
 and more laborious situations for which Mr. Hulse 
 has provided, and to discharge their duties with 
 such fidelity and power, as may reflect honour 
 upon themselves, bring credit to their University, 
 and communicate to the world the inestimable 
 blessing of a sound instruction in righteousness. 
 
 " The office of Christian Advocate is the second 
 institution of Mr. Hulse, and though it cannot be 
 be more beneficial in its remoter consequences, it 
 certainly may be regarded as more immediately 
 useful and positively important in checking the 
 progress and prevalence of Infidelity and Scep- 
 ticism. The duty of the Christian Advocate is, 
 in the first place, to obviate by annual or more 
 frequent answers, such popular objections as may 
 be raised either against natural or revealed re- 
 ligion, whether those objections be new or old, 
 
XXXV] MEMOIR OF HULSE. 
 
 original or revived. — It is, in the second place, to 
 be ready to satisfy, in a private way, those real 
 scruples and doubts which may be felt by any fair 
 and candid inquirer, who is sorrowfully and per- 
 haps hopelessly struggling, unaided and alone, 
 against the darkness of ignorance and the burthen 
 of difficulties. In one word, the Christian Ad- 
 vocate is to go forth and meet the spirit of 
 infidelity in all the varied forms which it may 
 assume, to unmask the hideousness of its seeming 
 beauty to the eye of the unwary, and to calm the 
 bewildered mind, by shewing it the unsubstantial 
 nature of the phantom of doubt by which it is 
 disturbed. I can scarce conceive of any possible 
 mode of exerting the talents of a man or of a 
 minister, which could be more actually useful 
 and satisfactory than this ; and if the office itself 
 have not hitherto produced so many publications, 
 as the number of years during which it has been 
 established would seem to promise, the deficiency 
 must be referred rather to the circumstances of 
 the times, than to any other cause. Since the 
 year 1803, when the first appointment took 
 place, until the present time, but few novelties 
 have appeared in the unbelieving world. The 
 awful issue of irreligion and insubordination in 
 the crimes and horrors of the French Revolution, 
 gave a practical demonstration of the beneficial 
 influence of Christianity which, for a moment at 
 least, hushed every murmur against its utility, 
 
MEMOIR OF JIULSE. XXXvii 
 
 and silenced every sophism against its truth. 
 But as the remembrance of those calamities and 
 iniquities has gradually died away, and the return 
 of peace has restored men to leisure for other 
 thoughts than those of securing their own imme- 
 diate safety, the voice of daring disbelief has 
 again been heard in our cities and our streets, 
 and it is greatly to be feared that few of the 
 years that are about to come, will come unac- 
 companied with some sneer against what we 
 believe, or some blasphemy against what we 
 adore. Happy is he who has been called to the 
 task, and may possibly become the providential 
 instrument, of enlightening the unlearned and 
 confirming the unstable in the principles and 
 practice of a saving faith ! 
 
 " The third and last appointment of Mr. Hulse, 
 is that of Christian Preacher, and it forms indeed 
 an admirable completion of the whole scheme of 
 this excellent man for the benefit and promotion 
 of religious truth. The task of the Christian 
 Preacher is, as far as relates to the subject matter 
 of his labours, the same with that of the Chris- 
 tian Advocate, and the only difference lies in the 
 method he is to pursue in his religious lucubra- 
 tions. As the Advocate is to guard the frivolous 
 and unwary against the fallacy of prevalent and 
 particular objections to the truth or holiness of 
 religion ; so the Preacher is to employ himself in 
 
XXXV111 MEMOIR OF HULSE. 
 
 a more general statement of the evidences of 
 revelation, and a more copious and systematic 
 elucidation of its difficulties. — The Advocate is to 
 prop the falling or recal the wandering Christian ; 
 the Preacher is to build up the unestablished babe 
 in Christ, in the solidity of a reasonable faith : and 
 both together are to bend their unremitting ener- 
 gies to the same holy end, the glory of God and 
 the salvation of souls, by the propagation of the 
 pure and undefiled religion of the Gospel. 
 
 " Such are the wise foundations of Mr. Hulse. 
 The first is intended to rouse the mind to re- 
 ligious pursuits, the two latter to employ it, when 
 trained, in the actual labours of religious use- 
 fulness." 
 
MEMOIR OF HULSE. XXxix 
 
 The following is an abstract of the principal clauses of the 
 Will, as relating to the several endowments : — 
 
 THE SCHOLARSHIPS. 
 
 " The scholars shall he undergraduates in St. Johns College, 
 and shall he horn in the county of Chester. Such scholar to be 
 elected by the Master and a majority of the senior Fellows of 
 the said college on Christmas-day, or within the first seven days 
 after, and may he distinguished as usual hy the name of" Hulse's 
 scholars," and shall wear a cloth gown with long open sleeves 
 hanging down like those of Bachelors. And in case it should 
 happen that a son of any clergyman who should at any time 
 officiate as curate to the vicar of Sandhach, or next to him the 
 son of any vicar or curate who should then live and officiate in 
 the parish of Middlewich as the proper minister or curate of 
 Middlewich, or, lastly, any minister or curate of the chapel of 
 Witton, or who should reside and live in the town of North - 
 wich or Witton, or the adjacent townships of Castle Northwich 
 and Wilmington, and should do the duty of the said chapel as 
 the proper minister of Witton (all of them in the said county of 
 Chester) shall be admitted as a scholar into the said college : 
 such person being an undergraduate shall have the preference, 
 and be elected before all others. And those horn as above, 
 are to be elected in the order above mentioned. And in default 
 of such persons, then the son of any other clergyman who 
 (that is, which son) shall be born in either of the said parishes 
 
xl MEMOIR OF HULSE. 
 
 of Sandbach and Middlewich, or in the said chapelry of Witton, 
 shall have the preference. And if none shall he admitted, then 
 the son of any other clergyman shall he preferred who shall be 
 bom in the said county of Chester, and next in any of the four 
 following counties of Stafford, Salop, Derby, and Lancaster; 
 or, lastly, elsewhere in any other part of England. Provided 
 that it shall appear that the clergyman who is father of such 
 scholar is not, if living, or if dead, was not at his death posses- 
 sed of any spiritual preferment of more than £140 a year 
 clear income, or whose income in every respect should not 
 exceed the clear yearly value of £200 in the whole. But if no 
 son of any clergyman entitled as aforesaid should be elected into 
 such scholarship, the same shall be given to the son of some lay 
 person whose clear yearly income does not if living, and if dead, 
 did not at the time of his death amount to more than £200, 
 such son being born in the counties of Chester, Stafford, Salop, 
 Derby, or Lancaster, the counties in that order having a pre- 
 ference, or, lastly, elsewhere in England. And such scholar, 
 whether the son of clergyman or layman, to be elected in 
 manner aforesaid, shall continue to enjoy that my benefaction 
 until he shall take or shall be of standing to take his first degree 
 of Bachelor of Arts, unless some other person being the son 
 of some of the officiating ministers at some of the churches or 
 chapels before mentioned, and otherwise qualified as aforesaid, 
 and which qualification, had he been a member of the said 
 college at the time the party in possession of it was elected, 
 would have been entitled to a preference, shall be admitted a 
 member of the said college ; in which case the scholar who shall 
 be then in possession shall only hold the same for that year, and 
 the other, with a prior right, shall be elected to the same the 
 year following. And I do appoint the Master and senior Fel- 
 lows of St. John's College, trustees of the said scholarships." 
 
MEMOIR OF HULSE. xli 
 
 HULSEAN PRIZE. 
 
 " I direct that one other sixth part" (of a certain portion 
 of his rentals) " shall he paid to such other learned and 
 ingenious person in the said university, under the degree of 
 Master of Arts, as shall compose for that year the best Dis- 
 sertation, in the English language, on the evidence in 
 general, or on the Prophecies or Miracles in particular, or any 
 other particular argument, whether the same he direct or col- 
 lateral proofs of the Christian religion, in order to evince its 
 truth and excellence. The subject of which Dissertation shall 
 be given out by the Vice-Chancellor and said two Masters, my 
 trustees above mentioned, or by some of them, on New Year's- 
 day annually; and such Dissertation as shall be by them, or 
 any two of them, on Christmas-day annually, the best ap- 
 proved shall be also printed, and the expense defrayed out of 
 the author's income under my Will, and the remainder given 
 to him on St. John the Evangelist's day following. And he 
 who shall be so rewarded shall not be admitted at any future 
 time as a candidate again in the same way, though he may be 
 elected to the other offices afterwards." 
 
 CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE. 
 
 He gives certain proportions of his property (afterwards 
 modified in the course of his Will and the Codicils to it, till he 
 adopted a fixed principle, not necessary to be detailed) " which 
 shall be given by the Vicc-Chancellor of the University of 
 Cambridge, and by the Master or Head of Trinity College, 
 and the Master of St. John's College, whom I do hereby 
 
xlii MEMOIR OF HULSE. 
 
 appoint as trustees for the disposal of this and all the benefac- 
 tions to the said university (except herein otherwise ordered) or 
 any two of them, for the maintenance and support of one such 
 learned and ingenious person (for a term not exceeding five or 
 six years) of the degree of Master of Arts, or of Bachelor or 
 Doctor of Divinity, of the age of 30 years, and resident in the 
 university ; who is to compose yearly, whilst in office, some 
 proper and judicious answer or answers every year, to all such 
 new and popular, or other cavils and objections, against the 
 Christian or revealed religion, or against the religion of nature, 
 as may, in the opinion of the trustees, or any two of them, seem 
 best or most proper to deserve or require an answer, whether the 
 same be ancient or modem objections, but chiefly such as are 
 most modern, and especially such as have appeared in the 
 English language of late years against Christianity, and which 
 may not seem to have received a full and sufficient answer, if any 
 such there shall be, unto the year preceding his election; as 
 likewise to be ready to satisfy any real scruples or objections in 
 a private way, that may be brought from time to time by any 
 fair and candid enquirer against the same : such writer to be 
 called the Christian Advocate, and such his written answers to 
 be in English, and only against notorious infidels, whether 
 atheists or deists, not descending to any particular controversies 
 or sects among Christians themselves, except some new or dan- 
 gerous error, either of superstition or enthusiasm, as of Popery 
 or Methodism, either in opinion or practice, shall prevail : in 
 which case only it may be necessary for that time to write or to 
 reason against the same ; and such treatise or treatises to be 
 every year printed, the expence whereof shall be deducted out 
 of the temporary stipend or salary ; and the remainder of tbe 
 said stipend or salary, or rents and profits, shall be paid or 
 given every year to the several authors successively as a reward 
 for the same ; but if the person chosen into the said office shall 
 
MEMOIR OF HULSE. xliii 
 
 neglect or not discharge his office as he ought to do, he is to 
 forfeit and lose his salary for that year, which is, in such case, 
 to be equally divided between the six senior Fellows of St. 
 John's College. — The Christian Advocate is not afterwards 
 eligible to the office of Hulsean Lecturer." 
 
 LECTURER. 
 
 " I direct that four parts out of six (of his property in Clive) 
 shall be paid on St. John the Evangelist's day following the 
 preaching the lectures or sermons after-mentioned annually, to 
 such learned and ingenious clergyman in the said university of 
 the degree of Master of Arts, and under the age of 40 years, as 
 shall be duly chosen or elected on Christmas-day, or within 
 seven days after, by the Vice-Chancellor then for the time being, 
 and by the Master or Head of Trinity College, and the Master 
 of St. John's College, or by any two of them, in order to preach 
 twenty sermons in the whole year, (i. e.) ten sermons in the 
 following spring in St. Mary's great church in Cambridge, 
 namely, one sermon on the Friday morning, or else on Sunday 
 afternoon, in every week during the months of April and May, 
 and the two first weeks in June, and likewise ten sermons in 
 the same church in the following autumn, either on the Friday 
 morning or else on the Sunday afternoon in every week during 
 the months of September and October, and during the two first 
 weeks in November. The subject of which discourses shall be 
 as followeth — that is, the subject of five sermons in the spring, 
 and of five sermons in the autumn shall be to shew the evidence 
 for revealed religion, and to demonstrate in the most convincing 
 and persuasive manner the truth and excellence of Christianity, 
 so as to include not only the prophecies and miracles general 
 
Xliv MEMOIR OF HULSE. 
 
 and particular, but also any other proper or useful arguments, 
 whether the same be direct or collateral proofs of the Christian 
 religion, which he may think fittest to discourse upon, either in 
 general or particular, especially the collateral arguments, or else 
 any particular argument or branch thereof, and chiefly against 
 notorious Infidels, whether Atheists or Deists, not descending to 
 any particular sects or controversies (so much to be lamented) 
 among Christians themselves, except some new or dangerous 
 error either of superstition or enthusiasm, as of Popery or 
 Methodism, or the like, either in opinion or practice, should 
 prevail, in which cause only it may be necessary for that time 
 to preach against the. same. Nevertheless the preacher of the 
 ten sermons last mentioned, to shew the truth and excellence of 
 revealed religion and the evidence of Christianity, may at his 
 own discretion preach either more or fewer than ten sermons on 
 this great argument, only provided he shall in consequence 
 thereof lessen or increase the number of the other ten remain- 
 ing sermons which are hereinafter directed to be on the more 
 obscure parts of Holy Scripture in a due proportion, so as that 
 he shall every year preach twenty sermons on those subjects on 
 the whole. 
 
 And as to the ten sermons that remain, of which five were to 
 be preached in the spring and five in the autumn, as before 
 mentioned, the Lecturer or Preacher shall take for his subject 
 some of the more difficult texts or obscure parts of the Holy 
 Scriptures, such as might appear to be more generally useful 
 and necessary to be explained, and which might best admit of 
 such a comment and explanation without presuming to pry too 
 far into the profound secrets or awful mysteries of the Almighty ; 
 and in all the said twenty sermons such practical observations 
 shall be made, and such useful conclusions added, as may in- 
 struct and edify mankind. The said twenty sermons shall be 
 every year printed, and a new preacher every year elected, 
 
MEMOIR OF HULSE. xlv 
 
 (except in the case of the extraordinary merit of the preacher), 
 when it may he sometimes thought proper to continue the same 
 person for five, or at the most six years together ; hut for no 
 longer period, nor shall he ever afterwards be elected to the 
 same duty." 
 
 Substance of the order of the Court of Chancery in the 
 matter of the Hulsean Lectureship, in the university of Cam- 
 bridge, dated 2 1st December, 1830: — 
 
 On the Petition of the Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars of 
 the university of Cambridge. 
 
 After reciting the property left by Mr. Hulse for the endow- 
 ment of a Lectureship in Cambridge, and the conditions at- 
 tached to the office, the petition states that owing to the number 
 of lectures required to be delivered and printed by the Lecturer 
 within the year, no sufficiently qualified person could be in- 
 duced to hold the office, and suggests that the number might be 
 conveniently reduced to eight, which was the number appointed 
 by Mr. Boyle,* or to any other which the Chancellor might 
 think fit. " Whereupon," to use the words of the order, " all 
 parties concerned were ordered to attend his lordship on the 
 matter of the said petition ; and counsel for the petitioners this 
 day attending accordingly, upon hearing of the said petition, and 
 of the said Will of the said John Hulse, dated the 21st day of 
 July, 1777, read, and what was alleged by the counsel of the 
 petitioners, this Court doth order that the numher of the 
 lectures in the petition mentioned be reduced to eight ; and it 
 
 * "Tt was always," says Mr. Hulse in his Will, "my humble and earnest desire 
 and intention, that tin' following donation and devise should be founded, as much 
 as possible, upon the plan of that profoundly learned, and successful inquirer into 
 Nature, and most religious adorer cf Nature's God, I mean the truly great and 
 good (as well as honourable} Robert Voy'c, esquire, who has added so much lustre, 
 and done equal service, both by his learning anil his life, to bis native country 
 and human nature, and to the cause of Christianity and truth." 
 
xlvi MEMOIR OF IIULSE. 
 
 is ordered that the time limited for printing the said lectures be 
 enlarged for the the term of one year from the delivery of the 
 last of such lectures." 
 
 " Mem. — And it is my will that all the clauses relating to 
 the aforesaid endowments, whether in regard to the annual 
 Sermons by the Lecturer, or the Dissertation, or to the Defence 
 of Christianity by the Christian Advocate, expressing also the 
 particular sums or stipends annexed to each office, with the 
 further provision by donation of shares of rents, &c, or other- 
 wise, should every year be printed at large in the beginning of 
 each particular work or treatise respectively, by way of preface 
 or introduction to such respective publications, with an abstract 
 as far as regards the four scholarships ; and that the clause so 
 to be printed shall be introduced and concluded as herein 
 mentioned." 
 
 This injunction he, in a subsecpient part of his Will, modified 
 as follows : — 
 
 " It is now my will to have only such particular clauses as 
 most expressly and at large describe the duty or office of the 
 Lecturer, or Christian Advocate, or Dissertator, to be printed 
 whole and entire, and in the very words of the Will, as to 
 the duty and office to be performed, without alteration or 
 abridgment." 
 
 And he directed that such clause or clauses should always be 
 headed as follows : — 
 
 " Clauses from the Will of the Rev. John Hulse, late of 
 Elworth, in the county of Chester, Clerk, deceased, dated the 
 21st day of July, in the year of our Lord, 1777, expressed in 
 the words of the testator, as he, in order to prevent, mistakes, 
 thought proper to draw and write the same himself, and directed 
 that such clauses should be every year printed, to the intent that 
 the several persons whom it might concern and be of service to 
 might know that there were such special donations and endow- 
 ments left for the encouragement of piety and learning, in an age 
 
MEMOIR OF IIULSE. xlvii 
 
 unfortunately addicted to infidelity and luxury, and that others 
 might be invited to the like charitable, and as he humbly hoped, 
 seasonable and useful benefactions." 
 
 And he directed that such clause or clauses should always be 
 concluded with the following prayer : — 
 
 " May the Divine blessing for ever go along with all my 
 benefactions ; and may the greatest and best of Beings, by his 
 all-wise Providence and gracious influence, make the same 
 effectual to his own glory and the good of my fellow-creatures ! 
 — Amen." 
 
 END OF THE MEMOIR. 
 
HULSEAN LECTURES. 
 
The great subject of the Evidences of Revelation 
 might well seem to be almost exhausted. The 
 truth of Scripture has been established by his- 
 torical testimony ; by its contents ; by its pro- 
 phecies ; by its miracles ; by its analogy with 
 the constitution and course of nature ; and by its 
 perfect adaptation to the character of God and 
 the necessities of man. One line of argument 
 seemed yet open, which has been pursued in the 
 following Lectures ; namely, to call into court 
 the antagonists and rivals of Revelation, and 
 cross-examine them as to the nature and extent 
 of their own pretensions ; and thence to arrive at 
 the conclusion, that the truths involved in the 
 great Doctrines of Scripture, while they are the 
 very results at which these rivals would severally 
 seek to arrive, are, nevertheless, those to which, by 
 their own confession, they are utterly unable to 
 attain. Could this undertaking be accomplished, 
 we should strike entirely at the root of one great 
 
cause of scepticism, — that which arises from rely- 
 ing upon the sufficiency of something else beside 
 scripture. But the subject is, from its very 
 nature, almost boundless, and is capable of as 
 great a variety of treatment as there are varieties 
 of the human mind. It is daily growing in im- 
 portance, and, there can be no doubt, will ulti- 
 mately have to be pursued to an indefinite extent 
 beyond the present suggestions. But to suggest, 
 when truth is on your side, is to succeed. 
 
 The Author will be pardoned for just hinting, 
 — in the shape of an apology for an anticipated 
 objection, — at one difficulty connected with his 
 undertaking, which he had necessarily to en- 
 counter — that of preaching a book ; that is, of 
 uniting the rapid and somewhat figurative lan- 
 guage belonging to a popular address, with the 
 logical reasoning required in a treatise intended 
 for the closet. Such works are in danger of being 
 at once too heavy for the hearer and too light for 
 the reader. The reasonable among both will 
 make allowances for the unavoidable peculiarity. 
 
LECTURE I. 
 
 THE SUBJECT PROPOSED AND UNFOLDED. 
 
 THE ARGUMENT. 
 
 Permanence of error, and its unchangeable cha- 
 racter — the institution of this Lecture intended by 
 its Founder to form one of its antagonist powers — 
 subject stated, and contempt for the leading and 
 'peculiar doctrines of the gospel asserted to be a 
 prevalent feeling among a portion of the educated 
 classes — causes assigned — remedies proposed, such 
 as the works ofPaley and Sutler — in what respects 
 they do not remove the difficulties of the modern 
 Rationalist — these difficulties stated, and mode of 
 removing them sketched — shewn that they themselves, 
 properly considered, tend to establish, instead of 
 shaking the truth of the doctrines of the gospel — re- 
 statement of the results at which it is hoped we may 
 arrive by granting the premises of our opponents, and 
 apology for arguing upwards from the principles oj 
 the Rationalist, instead of d&wnwards from ///<■ 
 contents of the book of Revelation. 
 

 LECTURE I. 
 
 THE SUBJECT PROPOSED AND UNFOLDED. 
 
 Job iv. 17. 
 
 SHALL MORTAL MAN BE MORE JUST THAN GOD ? SHALL A MAN BE 
 MORE PURE THAN HIS MAKER ! 
 
 Error is immortal. The angels which kept not 
 their first estate, lost not their immortality with 
 their happiness. There is in sin no principle of 
 decay ; for though the " soul that sinneth it shall 
 die," yet the death which awaits it is eternal. 
 Hence error, checked on one side, continually 
 shoots out its ramifications in some less ob- 
 structed direction, and bears testimony to the 
 root from whence it springs by the unceasing 
 exercise of its malignant energies. The history 
 of the church militant, viewed on what may be 
 called its negative side, namely, that of restrain- 
 ing evil, in contradistinction to its higher as well 
 as more grateful province of advancing good, is 
 but a melancholy though instructive and most 
 interesting picture of the various shapes which 
 error has assumed, and of the various methods 
 
8 THE SUBJECT PROPOSED 
 
 by which, with different degrees of success, the 
 champions of the gospel have sought to curb its 
 advances, and frustrate its designs. It is a 
 struggle constantly renewing, without peace or 
 truce. It has been the complaint of all times 
 that errors, once apparently subdued, are still 
 springing up as vigorous and fresh as ever. The 
 following is the remark of the philosophical and 
 judicious Powell, made almost an hundred years 
 ago : — " Errors, which we thought buried in 
 oblivion, are again called forth ; and though re- 
 lating only to some nice and difficult subjects, 
 which require the utmost attention of the learned 
 and contemplative, are industriously spread in 
 small treatises among the common people: whilst 
 we, the clergy, are urged to examine anew, mat- 
 ters which we had long considered as certain ; 
 and are told that our system of Christianity, 
 transmitted to us, it seems, from ages of ignor- 
 ance and bigotry, may and ought to receive im- 
 provements, corresponding to those which the 
 present enlightened age has made in every other 
 science. The reputation of modern philosophers 
 is turned to the disgrace of modern divines ; as 
 neither emulating the example, nor accepting the 
 assistance which the discoveries of those strict 
 reasoners might afford them."* 
 
 * See note A, at the end. 
 
AND UNFOLDED. 9 
 
 Who, that looks abroad on the present con- 
 dition of the religions world, would believe that 
 the above passage was not rather a composition 
 of yesterday than of an age gone by ? And yet, 
 doubtless it is but the expression of an universal 
 truth ; and, with a few periodical modifications, 
 might be made to represent the feelings of the 
 church, through every stage of its history, from 
 the days of the apostles to our own. It was a 
 deep conviction of this melancholy truth which 
 seems to have led the pious founder of the Lec- 
 ture which has this day brought me before you, 
 to establish those various benevolent institutions 
 in our University, for which he will be held in 
 everlasting remembrance. He had been im- 
 pressed with this pertinacious vitality of evil, and 
 wished it be encountered, in some of the most 
 important of its strongholds, by as enduring an 
 antagonist. Not requiring, as we would hope, 
 that some new weapon of defence should be in- 
 troduced into the Christian warfare by each suc- 
 ceeding soldier, but with the intention that those 
 which had been tried of old should be kept bur- 
 nished for the field, and such selected for the 
 occasion as seemed best calculated to meet the 
 exigency of the time, and the mode of conducting 
 the contest last adopted by the assailant. He has 
 thus erected, within this religious fortress, a spi- 
 
10 THE SUBJECT PROPOSED 
 
 ritual watch-tower, from whence the signs of the 
 times, and of " those things which are coining," 
 or have come " on the earth," may be most ad- 
 vantageously discerned. You, the guardians and 
 the garrison of this fortress, can take from your 
 high station a wider view, and form, from your 
 erudition, a more accurate estimate of the general 
 position of the enemy, than we who are engaged 
 in the turmoil of personal conflict, and whose 
 views are limited and attention distracted by the 
 pressure and anxiety of active warfare ; yet, 
 coming from the confines, if not from the very 
 midst of the enemy's camp, we may render to this 
 our "fenced city" no trivial service, by indicating 
 the nature of his forces and immediate direction 
 of his march, even though we may have but little 
 strength for the war, or council and advice for 
 securing the victory. It is only in this hope, and 
 for this limited object, that the present Lecturer 
 has ventured to appear before you. 
 
 Taking, then, a broad and general view of the 
 aspect which is now worn by no inconsiderable 
 portion of the educated classes in this country, 
 with regard to religious feelings and opinions, 
 and looking especially to that department of 
 them, towards which, by this foundation, I am 
 directed, there can be little doubt that, along 
 
AND UNFOLDED. 11 
 
 with much sound scriptural erudition among 
 the higher, and much right scriptural feeling 
 among the lower of these classes (for which bles- 
 sings we can never be sufficiently thankful to the 
 source from whence they flow !) — yet that there 
 is still to be discovered, within and between them 
 both, a wide and most alarming prevalence of 
 error — error not only as to the nature, but still 
 more as to the necessity of the leading and pe- 
 culiar doctrines of the gospel. I say not this, 
 nor should I be justified in saying it, as a sweep- 
 ing denunciation of the age ; nor with the un- 
 necessary object of magnifying the extent of the 
 danger, in order to enhance the merit of endea- 
 vouring to avert it ; but I state it as a fact, to 
 which no one who is conversant with the actual 
 condition of the world without, will hesitate to 
 accede, — that there is much laxity of thought 
 and of language with regard to the doctrinal part 
 of our faith, among men of considerable mental 
 acuteness, great worldly experience, and strict 
 probity of life. The evil is thus increased by the 
 very quarter from whence it springs ; for, as a 
 man's life is always the best comment on his 
 creed ; — he who appears to show, in his own 
 person, that the doctrines of religion may be dis- 
 pensed with, is the more likely to be listened to 
 
12 THE SUBJECT PROPOSED 
 
 when he declares them to be unnecessary.* It 
 may not be difficult to account for this condition 
 of things — this tendency rather towards intellec- 
 tual than physical and carnal error, which seems 
 to characterize the class to which we are now re- 
 ferring, by considering their social and economical 
 condition, and the effects which that condition 
 will naturally produce on their habitual modes of 
 thought. The boundless extension of trade, 
 which is at once exciting in its uncertainty, and 
 engrossing in its interests ; the necessity of in- 
 cessant and all-absorbing occupation ; the con- 
 stant and promiscuous intermingling of all classes 
 of men with each other ; the new lights of na- 
 tural and moral philosophy, which, hitherto con- 
 fined to real philosophers, are now " dissemi- 
 nated" (I say it not in condemnation) " in small 
 treatises among the common people," and which 
 dazzle and gratify the mind as yet too weak-eyed 
 to view them in their just proportions — all these, 
 and many more similar circumstances, give mul- 
 tiplicity and prominence to the interests of the 
 passing moment, close up the avenues of con- 
 templative thought, and, while they necessarily 
 place a restraint upon gross and sensual vices, 
 sharpen the edge of the intellectual faculty, and 
 * See note B, at the end. 
 
AND UNFOLDED. 13 
 
 give a most undue weight and importance to the 
 subjects with which it is thus incessantly occupied. 
 When the mind is at once habitually and 
 agreeably employed, it seeks not for, but rather 
 willingly excludes other matter of meditation. 
 Engrossed with the delightful exercise of encoun- 
 tering and overcoming difficulties of immediate 
 and ever- varying worldly interest, it either scorns 
 to grapple with, or at once contemptuously 
 decides, questions which, though they present 
 themselves as fraught with the greatest conse- 
 quences, and claiming the deepest investigation, 
 are yet too spiritual in their character, ami appa- 
 rently abstract in their nature, to demand an 
 immediate and attentive consideration. It is only 
 when the mind is sufficiently opened to perceive 
 its own wants, that it seeks for and duly ap- 
 preciates a supply ; and hence these men, con- 
 tented with that condition of things with which 
 they are surrounded, rather pass by and despise, 
 than absolutely reject and disbelieve those doc- 
 trines of the gospel which profess to afford as- 
 sistance that they have never sought, and to 
 explain difficulties and unfold truths, of the 
 existence and importance of which, in their 
 self-satisfied ignorance, they are totally uncon- 
 scious. Now it is evident, that melancholy and 
 unchristian as such a condition of mind may be, 
 
14 THE SUBJECT PROPOSED 
 
 (and that it is wide-spread, and is spreading wider, 
 no one will deny,) it is still a condition which is 
 hardly accessible to the usual processes of reason- 
 ing, whereby, in former days, the champions of 
 our faith have vanquished their opponents, and 
 brought into subjection to the truth every assail- 
 ant band as they successively arose to disturb the 
 peace, and obstruct the quiet and unobtrusive 
 progress of the gospel. You cannot attack them, 
 with much show of reason, on the ground of de- 
 fective morality, nor hope to convince them of 
 the supreme excellence of the doctrines of Chris- 
 tianity, by comparing the refined principles of 
 action which necessarily flow from them, with 
 the infinitely lower standard of virtue exem- 
 plified in their own lives ; for, in point of ex- 
 ternal morality, their general conduct is, as I 
 have already remarked, for the most part clear of 
 obvious reproach ; nor do they hesitate to allow 
 to the moral code of the gospel its full degree of 
 praise, whether assenting, as some do, to its 
 divine original, or arrogating for human reason 
 the merit of discovering and perfecting it. Nor 
 are they, as a body, disbelievers of Revelation in 
 the abstract ; or we might send them to the un- 
 answerable pages of Paley for such proofs of its 
 general truth as ought to lead every philosophical 
 mind to adopt it in all its particulars ; but ex- 
 
AND UNFOLDED. 15 
 
 perience has long shown, that assent to a general 
 proposition is quite compatible with an utter dis- 
 regard of the necessary consequences to which it 
 leads ; and that men will resist the clearest de- 
 monstrations of the truth so long as they can find 
 a plausible reason for adhering to falsehood. If 
 you do not vanquish them on the ground selected 
 by themselves, they will never want an excuse 
 for disputing the reality of the victory. There is, 
 indeed, one mighty mind, from whose fountain, 
 could we persuade them to draw, or were they, 
 alas ! supplied with vessels to draw with, — the 
 pure and living stream of the gospel might yet 
 be theirs, for the strengthening and refreshing 
 of their souls. Butler has trodden, with cautious 
 but unerring step, through the mazes in which 
 many among them are wandering, and would 
 they but follow his path, soon would they dis- 
 cover the light of day. Yet hardly does he 
 meet the case of the great majority of those 
 to whom we are now referring : much of his 
 strength is employed, and with unanswerable 
 force, to remove presumptions against Revela- 
 tion. The class of philosophers with whom he 
 had to contend, were not satisfied with opposing 
 a passive resistance to the truth; they were 
 ready to attack it; and its champion had to 
 ward off their assaults, as well as to pull down 
 
16 THE SUBJECT PROPOSED 
 
 their strong-holds. Those who, in these days, 
 feel themselves equally armed for the battle, I 
 leave to break their spears against the well- 
 polished shield of Butler ; they will find that he 
 is as ready to attack as to repel, and that time 
 has not blunted the edge of his weapons, nor has 
 the advancement of modern skill given efficacy 
 to that instrument, in their own hands, which 
 was powerless in the grasp of their predecessors. 
 To those who are anxious, or at least not un- 
 willing, to believe the truth of Revelation, and 
 wish to see it freed from the strongest objec- 
 tions that philosophy can devise against it, the 
 " Analogy" of Bishop Butler is indeed a treasure, 
 second only in value to that Book of which it 
 is the ablest vindicator. But the free-thinker of 
 our day neither brings objections to Deism, nor, 
 always, to Revelation, from the constitution and 
 course of nature ; he rather makes the con- 
 stitution and course of nature his paramount 
 creed — the very God of his idolatry ; not hesi- 
 tating, at the same time, to take into alli- 
 ance with it Deism, and even Revelation itself, 
 so far as they can be made subservient to the 
 establishment of his favourite theory — the in- 
 dependent advancement, and ultimate perfec- 
 tibility, of man. It is in the maintenance of this 
 theory, that all men of latitudinarian notions 
 
AND UNFOLDED. 17 
 
 with regard to the doctrinal part of Revelation, 
 (under whatever denomination of Christians they 
 may think it prudent to arrange themselves,) 
 will be found eventually to unite. Whatsoever 
 source the fatal aberration may spring from — 
 whether it be an originally misdirected educa- 
 tion, or that all-engrossing devotion of the 
 faculties to the concerns of this world, which 
 blinds the eyes and cools the heart towards the 
 mysteries of the next — or that pride of intel- 
 lect, which scorns to accept at the hand of Re- 
 velation all such facts and doctrines as it cannot 
 thoroughly understand — or that hardness of heart, 
 which will not stoop to the self-denying acknow- 
 ledgments, which are necessarily required for an 
 unqualified reception of the fundamental articles 
 of our faith ; — whatever may be the immediate 
 stumbling-block in each individual case, the re- 
 sult is, under all circumstances, substantially 
 the same; and man sets up himself — his own 
 powers and faculties, and the natural and moral 
 conditions with which he is intimately connected 
 — as a guide, a rule, and an end, independent of 
 that higher guide, that safer rule, and that nobler 
 end, which are to be found solely in the great 
 doctrines of the book of Revelation. In what 
 way, then, are the errors of such a condition of 
 mind, from whatever source they may have their 
 
18 THE SUBJECT PROPOSED 
 
 origin, most effectually to be assailed? — (I speak 
 as unto wise men, who know that when we have 
 recourse to means and instruments, it is because 
 they are the only channels of grace in some mea- 
 sure within our own power ; leaving to Him from 
 whom they flow all higher sources of instruction, 
 and deeply feeling, that even in such as seem to 
 fall more directly within our own province, our 
 sole sufficiency is of God !) — How, then, are we, 
 whose duty it is in all things to vindicate the 
 gospel of God in the eyes of mistaken man, so 
 to encounter this present modification of error, 
 as at least to neutralize its evil, if not to convert 
 it from a curse into a blessing? Clearly, by 
 turning the supposed grounds of hesitation into 
 evidences of the truth : by shewing that the 
 reasons which lead these men to stop short of 
 the doctrines of Christianity, are among some 
 of the very arguments which make most strongly 
 for their adoption ; — that the idolatrous gods 
 which they set up as substitutes for doctrinal 
 religion, are gods which, like the devils of old, 
 proclaim with their own tongues — if their in- 
 fatuated followers would but hearken to them 
 when they are brought reluctantly to tell the 
 truth — that they themselves are but vain idols ; 
 while those who preach the doctrines of revelation 
 — " these men are the servants of the most high 
 
AND UNFOLDED. 19 
 
 God, that shew unto you the way of salvation." 
 Well has it been demonstrated, as of old, so 
 especially in later days,* and with all the force 
 and eloquence that the advancement of scientific 
 knowledge and the high cultivation of the 
 strongest reasoning powers can supply, — that all 
 the works of creation, investigate and sift them 
 as you will, bear testimony which no truly philo- 
 sophical mind can resist, to the power, the wis- 
 dom, and the goodness of God. On this ground, 
 thus ably vindicated, the preacher may safely take 
 his stand; nor will probably many of those hesi- 
 tate to take up the same position, who will never- 
 theless maintain, that it is the highest point to 
 which it is either possible, or indeed necessary, to 
 ascend. What, then, if it should appear, that 
 these very works of creation not only prove that 
 on which all are agreed, but that also, which is 
 the present point of difference — the irresistible 
 consequence, and absolute necessity, of the doc- 
 trinal part of Revelation ? What if it should be 
 shewn, that no reasonable man can acknowledge 
 the truth of the former proposition, without being 
 constrained also to confess the validity of the 
 latter; and that the moral and intellectual con- 
 stitution of man, coupled with the power, wisdom, 
 and goodness of God, so far from being sufficient 
 
 * See the Bridgewater Treatises. 
 
20 THE SUBJECT PROPOSED 
 
 of themselves to constitute the religion of a rea- 
 sonable being, and to disprove the necessity of a 
 still further revelation, are themselves, even in 
 their best estate and highest developement, the 
 strongest proofs of the want of such revelation: 
 and not only so, but that their specific defects are 
 exactly such as meet with their specific remedies in 
 the very revelation which we possess ; that they 
 stop short just where revelation begins ; and that it 
 hence appears, by the deficiency on the one side 
 being exactly met by the supply on the other, that 
 they each form part of one harmonious plan, and 
 were originally designed by the artificer of that 
 plan to be united together for the great end of 
 furthering the moral advancement of man. 
 
 This, then, is our position. We find prevalent 
 in the world — not only in the shape of distinct 
 sects and parties, but among many who, by 
 outward profession at least, are not much dis- 
 tinguished from ourselves, or even sometimes 
 closely associated with us — a worshipping of the 
 intellect, an attachment to outward and sur- 
 rounding circumstances, and a reliance upon the 
 independent powers and native qualities of man, 
 which are utterly destructive in their tendencies 
 to that spiritual character which the gospel pour- 
 trays and inculcates. Sometimes, indeed, this 
 
AND UNFOLDED. 21 
 
 dangerous delusion rises so high upwards towards 
 the truth, as not easily to be distinguished from 
 it. It has been well remarked by a powerful and 
 pious writer, that " Rationalism is taking a subtle 
 " turn, or rather its author, the author of evil, 
 " has been subtly applying it. In the days of 
 " our Deists, it openly attacked Christianity, 
 " and was defeated ; now it appears as the ally 
 " and supporter of the faith which it would un- 
 " dermine ; it supports our evidences ; reconciles 
 " our difficulties ; smooths down the ' hard say- 
 " ings' of the word of God, and steals away our 
 treasure."* It claims also to itself the refined 
 morality of the gospel ; either as being the dis- 
 covery of human reason, or as being a revelation 
 in harmony with, and not at all beyond the 
 limits, of enlarged principles of Deism. Safely 
 might we dispute this extravagant assumption. 
 Clearly might we demonstrate that the sublime 
 morality of the gospel can only flow from its still 
 sublimer doctrines: the divergence of its days 
 necessarily denoting their real focus, even though 
 the eye of the gazer may be too weak to trace 
 them to their source. But this point it is not 
 our present purpose to debate ; — the pure mo- 
 rality of the gospel is now wide abroad in the 
 world ; it now enlightens souls which know not, 
 
 * Pusey — Preface to his work on Regeneration. 
 
22 THE SUBJECT PROPOSED 
 
 and acknowledge not, its origin ; and God forbid 
 that we should deny the benefit of it, any more 
 than that of the sun in heaven, even to those who 
 will not worship Him who has caused both of 
 them to shine. It has become, as it were, public 
 property, and we will not now stop to assign the 
 origin of the blessing to the real benefactor : but 
 allowing, on the one hand, the strongest con- 
 cessions that the Rationalist can fairly claim — 
 the improving and improvable condition of man's 
 physical, moral, and intellectual constitution, with 
 Deism as a rule of faith, and a correct system of 
 morality as a rule of practice ; and assuming, on 
 the other, the fact of the existence of the scheme 
 of Revelation contained in the Bible ; we would 
 attempt to shew that the principles of the former 
 lead directly and inevitably to the latter; and 
 that the Rationalist, when he has arrived at the 
 utmost degree of perfection to which his own 
 theory will permit him to advance, will discover 
 that he has been approaching by a direct path 
 towards the threshold of Revelation, the leading 
 doctrines of which, he will find, will then come 
 to his aid, just at the moment when his former 
 guides have left him bewildered in the dark. It 
 is manifest, that, could this point be, though by 
 but probable arguments, established — could it be 
 made to appear that the undeniable and specific 
 
AND UNFOLDED. 23 
 
 defects of Rationalism are met and remedied by 
 the specific doctrines of Revelation, it would 
 at least cease to be philosophical to reject these 
 doctrines in the abstract; they could no longer be 
 passed by with indifference ; they would demand 
 to be heard on their pretension to form at least a 
 supplementary portion of natural religion ; and 
 the objector must either attack them in detail, 
 or resort to the old system of assailing the whole 
 scheme of Revelation of which they form a part 
 — in which undertaking, from past experience, 
 we know his fate ! He would then be in the 
 condition of him, who holds in his hand one irre- 
 gular half of a page, torn from a document which 
 professes to convey to the reader truths of the 
 highest personal importance ; and who yet obsti- 
 nately persists in trying to decypher its meaning 
 from the unconnected commencements of each 
 mutilated line, even after he is told that the 
 corresponding portion is not only in existence, 
 but within his reach ; and after he is assured, 
 that the dissevered parts would at once prove 
 their genuineness by fitting accurately together, 
 and would, when in conjunction, enable him to 
 read, with ease and edification, a message of the 
 utmost moment to his eternal salvation ! Such 
 a torn page as this, we hold to be the religion of 
 
24 THE SUBJECT PROPOSED 
 
 nature and the religion of grace. The perverse- 
 ness of man may keep them apart from each other; 
 but, even when separated, they shew the pen- 
 manship of the same eternal finger ; and, united, 
 they form the Book of God. — "Those which God 
 hath joined together, let not man put asunder." 
 
 It might not, perhaps, be difficult, were it 
 necessary for our argument, to trace a principle 
 in our nature which will in some degree account 
 for, however little it may justify, this obstinate 
 severance of natural from revealed truth. There 
 are many passions in the human heart, which are 
 flattered in the pursuit of the first, while, in the 
 second, they discover little but what is humiliat- 
 ing. The feeling of merit, natural to man, is 
 closely connected with every discovery in natural 
 truth; every advance is a triumph, and every dis- 
 covery a victory. Whereas the tendency of re- 
 velation is all the other way. The very necessity 
 for it is grounded upon man's ignorance ; and 
 every fact and doctrine contained in it is, as it 
 were, a testimony to the weakness, and a re- 
 proof to the presumption, of the human intellect; 
 for, probably, nothing is revealed, that could have 
 been discovered. This is, indeed, the substance 
 of our argument for the identity of origin, and 
 
AND UNFOLDED. 25 
 
 unity of purpose, which we assign to the systems 
 of nature and grace, that the one begins just 
 where the other fails. 
 
 It would be more in accordance with the office 
 of a "Christian Preacher,"* and possibly tend more 
 to the edification of his immediate audience, with 
 whom (thank God!) he can on this question have 
 no controversy — were he at once to address those 
 whom he would convince, in his high character 
 as a messenger of the Gospel ; and, armed with 
 the authority and language of scripture, boldly to 
 rebuke that spirit of pride and worldly-minded- 
 ness which seems to form the origin of this dan- 
 gerous laxity with regard to religious Doctrines. 
 There is a weight and an influence in the plain 
 word of God which have never yet accompanied 
 the loftiest reasonings of man. But a necessity 
 seems laid upon us, in this particular instance, to 
 adapt our mode of argument to the exigency of 
 the time ; and if we are required, in the words of 
 our Founder, " to shew the evidence for revealed 
 religion, and to demonstrate in the most convinc- 
 ing and persuasive manner, the truth and excel- 
 lence of Christianity ;" " and chiefly against noto- 
 rious infidels, whether Atheists, or Deists ;" — it 
 
 * The title by which the Hulsean Lecturer is designated in 
 Mr. Hulse's will. 
 
26 THE SUBJECT PROPOSED, &C. 
 
 appears incumbent, for such a purpose, to view 
 the question for the moment, as far as we are 
 able, through their own medium ; with the hope 
 of shewing that were not their moral and intel- 
 lectual vision weak or perverted, they would see, 
 with us, that the things with which they are 
 satisfied, are but introductory to higher objects, 
 and form but a vista through which they may 
 discern the heavenly " Temple of the Lamb" 
 glittering in the distance. Our Lord reasoned 
 with the Pharisee on his own traditions, and 
 confuted the Saducee out of his own scripture ; 
 and should we, in imitation of so high an exam- 
 ple, be enabled to show to the Doubter, though 
 but in a faint degree, that the honest conclusion 
 of all his inquiries should be a faith in the 
 Doctrines of the Gospel, all praise, glory, and 
 honour be to him through Avhom all good things 
 do come — the Holy Spirit of God ; who, with the 
 Father and the Son, liveth and reigneth ever, 
 one God, world without end ! 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 THE ARGUMENT. 
 
 Subject defined to be the testimony of moral 
 philosophy, the system of nature, and the constitu- 
 tion of man to the truth of the doctrines of 
 Revelation — Ethics first treated upon — their anti- 
 quity and importance — their various leading prin- 
 ciples — Conscience, its power and defects — both 
 shewn to lead directly to an investigation of the 
 doctrines of the gospel — the doctrine of future 
 rewards and punishments shewn to be necessary to 
 secure the supremacy of Conscience — that doctrine 
 shewn to carry the truth of all the others in its 
 train — general remarks on the conclusions arising 
 from the preceding argument. 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 THE 
 
 TESTIMONY OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Romans iv. 14, 15. 
 
 FOR WHEN THE GENTILES, WHICH HAVE NOT THE LAW, DO BY 
 NATURE THE THINGS CONTAINED IN THE LAW, THESE, HAVING 
 NOT THE LAW, ARE A LAW UNTO THEMSELVES : WHICH SHEW THE 
 WORK OF THE LAW WRITTEN IN THEIR HEARTS, THEIR CON- 
 SCIENCE ALSO BEARING WITNESS, AND THEIR THOUGHTS MEAN 
 WHILE ACCUSING OR ELSE EXCUSING ONE ANOTHER. 
 
 It will have appeared, from the preceding Lec- 
 ture, that our proposed object is to shew, that 
 all those circumstances and qualities connected 
 with the present condition of man, with which 
 men are severally disposed to rest satisfied as 
 substitutes for the doctrines of Revelation, are 
 themselves but links in a chain of inductive argu- 
 ment, which proves the necessity of those very 
 doctrines ; and that, instead of professing to ex- 
 ercise, of themselves, an independent power and 
 authority, they openly confess themselves to be 
 but ministers of a higher master, and fragments 
 of a more perfect system. In brief, we would sug- 
 gest, and attempt in some degree to trace out, an 
 argument for the truth of the leading doctrines of 
 the Gospel, drawn from man's moral and intellec- 
 
30 THE TESTIMONY OF 
 
 tual constitution, and his relation towards exter- 
 nal nature. The subject is almost boundless in its 
 extent ; and little more can be attempted in a 
 course of addresses like the present, than to indi- 
 cate the nature of the argument, and shew, by se- 
 lected examples of its application, the important 
 consequences which would seem to follow from 
 its full development; but it holds out this encour- 
 agement to a popular and cursory examination, 
 that the reasoning, if valid at all, is so from its 
 general outlines, rather than from the minuteness 
 of detail, and depends upon deductions drawn 
 from broad and obvious results rather than nice 
 and intricate processes of thought. Here, in fact, 
 lies the force of our proposed argument : we 
 allow all that the Rationalist can fairly ask in 
 favour of his own system ; we call upon him to 
 bring forward into full view the fair side of his 
 own principle — whether that principle be the 
 moral sense, as a guide of life — the intellectual 
 faculties — the relation of man to his kind and 
 to external nature — his physical structure and 
 condition — or all combined ; we would receive 
 the best account of each or all which the advo- 
 cates of each or all can supply; — only requiring, 
 in return, that they will acknowledge — what 
 they cannot deny — the fact of the existence of 
 the Bible Revelation : and we would attempt 
 
ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 31 
 
 to shew, from the mere apposition of these 
 two given terms, (the principle which they 
 advocate, on the one hand, and the existence of 
 Revelation on the other,) that a conclusion in 
 favour of the necessity of the doctrinal part of 
 Scripture follows, with all the force that a wise 
 man can require, or the case will admit ; and that 
 (to repeat a former simile) the Rationalist is but in 
 possession of a part, and that a small one, of the 
 torn page of God's will, which of itself shews 
 nothing so much as its want of the remainder, 
 in order to become an intelligible document. 
 
 Let us then commence with an examination of 
 the pretensions of that system, which, perhaps, 
 may arrogate to itself the fairest claim of being 
 to man a sufficient rule of faith and practice — 
 the system of Ethics,* including under that name 
 all that is comprised in the terms Metaphysics, 
 Ethics, and Moral Philosophy. 
 
 If antiquity of existence, if wide extent of 
 influence, if to have exercised the thoughts of 
 the wisest of men through every age of intel- 
 lectual history, are any grounds for demanding 
 general veneration and respect, these grounds 
 may surely be alleged in favour of Ethical Phi- 
 
 * See note C, at the end. 
 
32 THE TESTIMONY OF 
 
 losophy when it claims to be a rule of life. 
 Century after century did it guide the destiny of 
 the most polished ages of Greece and Rome. 
 It formed the character of their heroes, it dic- 
 tated the policy of their statesmen ; it was the 
 Inspiration to which we are indebted for those 
 models of heroic enterprise and patriotic self- 
 devotion, of manly eloquence in the orator, and 
 of philosophical narrative in the historian, which 
 have been, in their several departments, the un- 
 rivalled models of all after times, and which, in 
 our own day, continue to form not the least 
 instructive portion of a comprehensive and ge- 
 nerous education. When this system fell before 
 the irresistible assaults of Christianity, it was 
 taken up in a modified form by those who had 
 been the instruments of its downfall ; and 
 Christians themselves, partly from the mental 
 delight which they experienced in grappling 
 with the difficulties that had exercised the in- 
 genuity of the strongest intellects of old ; partly 
 to repose their thoughts on some topic over 
 which party, and passion, and other distracting 
 influences, had no power ; and partly, perhaps, 
 from an irresistible inclination to systematize 
 what nature seemed to have left in so tempting a 
 state of disorder; — Christians themselves took 
 up what the heathen had laid down ; and then, 
 
ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 33 
 
 and all along, have brought the matured powers 
 of their intellect to bear upon the subtle questions 
 of Ethical Philosophy. Hence this science, the 
 storehouse of refined reasoning, forms one of the 
 best schools for training the young mind in habits 
 of precision of language and accuracy of thought. 
 Yet what, after all, has been the result ? — With 
 all the judicious care and nurture which have been 
 bestowed upon it, is it even yet advanced to the 
 maturity of an independent science, and able to 
 go alone ? Were not its heathen advocates, all 
 along, irreconcileably at variance even as to its 
 first and most elementary principles, — admirable, 
 and almost Christian, as was its dissection of hu- 
 man feelings, and its detail of moral duties ; and 
 are not its Christian expounders in our own day, 
 often driven, in their expositions, to take much 
 tacitly for granted, which they have in reality 
 learnt in a higher school than that in which they 
 profess themselves to be students ? I say not this 
 to disparage a study of which the importance 
 cannot easily be overrated, and which, at the 
 present time, by no means receives the attention 
 that its intrinsic merits, as well as incidental 
 advantages deserve ; but I state it as a fact, 
 which those who have entered most deeply into 
 the science will be the readiest to confess, that 
 while from its very structure, and its total want 
 
34 THE TESTIMONY OF 
 
 of fixed and well-defined elementary principles, 
 it can never form a popular rule of faith and 
 practice, the advances which it may have made 
 in modern times have arisen rather from light let 
 in upon it from without, than from any expansion 
 of its inward brightness. During the contests 
 of the Stoic and the Epicurean schools, and 
 down through the more subtle, but not more 
 settled, disputes of the Schoolmen, it was want- 
 ing in two most essential ingredients in the com- 
 position of a science — a commencement and a 
 conclusion. Its professors had not determined 
 from what fixed point they were to start in their 
 common inquiries, and they were equally di- 
 vided as to the point at which it was desirable to 
 arrive. The second question seems still unde- 
 termined; and whether it is the highest excel- 
 lence of the human character to be moved in all 
 matters of duty by the law of utility, or of 
 self-love, or of disinterestedness, is still a sub- 
 ject which admits of much doubt and debate. 
 The former question, the starting-point in the 
 science, if we may so term it — that element which 
 is to the laws of Ethics what gravitation is to 
 the laws of matter — has been finally established 
 and defined, to the satisfaction at least of the 
 most judicious professors of this science, and by 
 one, moreover, to whom the cause of Revelation 
 
ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 35 
 
 as well as that of Ethics is, above all others, in- 
 debted — by Bishop Butler. It was he who, by 
 the confession of all succeeding philosophers, 
 first erected in the mind a court of appeal by 
 which all aberrations from the strict laws of 
 morals are to be heard and judged; and, by 
 establishing the Supremacy of Conscience, placed 
 in every man's bosom a tribunal, from which 
 there was no escape even for his private delin- 
 quencies and most secret vices. He first demon- 
 strated, and succeeding writers have expanded 
 the notion, that had Conscience " strength, as 
 as it has right, it would govern the world." It 
 is found to have fixed its seat in every hu- 
 man bosom. However a neglected or a false 
 education may have perverted or even closed 
 up the other faculties of man — to whatever 
 extent a debasing superstition, a degrading 
 tyranny, or an erroneous system of philosophy 
 may have turned away the feelings, and habits, 
 and appetites from their natural channel — still 
 Conscience is found sitting arbitress over these 
 unruly elements ; and, even when the tumult of 
 their confusion rages too loudly for her feeble 
 voice to be heard, still persevering in the utter- 
 ance of her unbiassed dictates, and asserting 
 the native supremacy of Truth* It is true that 
 
 * See note D, at the end. 
 
36 THE TESTIMONY OF 
 
 instances may be found of conduct so equivocal 
 in point of morals, as to leave rational room for 
 doubt whether Conscience may not have vacated 
 her throne, or have become herself so thoroughly 
 corrupted, as to have confounded, in her deci- 
 sions, the immutable principles of right and 
 wrong. But, in such cases, it is satisfactorily 
 answered, that the passions have for a moment 
 usurped her seat — that it is the conduct, not the 
 Conscience, which is in fault ; and that the trans- 
 gressor himself, if questioned on the grounds of his 
 delinquency, will be found to justify himself not 
 on principles necessarily hostile to the dictates 
 of Conscience, but for reasons which seem, to 
 himself, to take the case out of her jurisdiction. 
 He does not deny her authority. He does not 
 maintain that the difference between virtue and 
 vice is a consideration of no account. But hav- 
 ing either stiffled by discouragement, or perverted 
 by some over-ruling passion, the voice of Con- 
 science, he appeals fearlessly to his inward judge, 
 and finds there no sentence of condemnation. 
 
 Here, then, we have arrived at a most satis- 
 factory point. We have established the exist- 
 ence of an universal principle in the mind, 
 which, whenever it is permitted to operate 
 at all, is always on the side of virtue. But it 
 
ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 37 
 
 cannot be disguised that another principle is still 
 required, before such beneficial results as a per- 
 fect system of ethics should produce, can fairly 
 be expected. We have, indeed, got a controling, 
 but we still want an impelling power, before this 
 moral machine can produce such consequences as 
 the philosopher may build upon as a system, and 
 on which he can safely calculate, as the necessary 
 fruits of sound and well-defined principles. The 
 best that can be said of the impelling powers, 
 such as the will, the passions, propensities, and 
 affections, is that they pursue their several ob- 
 jects with an indifference as to the moral con- 
 sequences of the issue ; and though Conscience, 
 in her capacity of arbitress, may restrain their 
 tendencies towards evil, yet where is the innate 
 power that is to impel them directly towards 
 good ? It seems to have been the impression of 
 Butler, that this power also should be attributed 
 to Conscience ; and he has been accused of at- 
 tempting to establish this point by arguing in a 
 vicious circle ; it is a circle, however, out of 
 which none of his successors seem to have been 
 able to escape ; they may have, in some degree, 
 enlarged the range of their speculations, but they 
 have not approached one whit the nearer to the 
 establishment of a definite boundary. They have 
 attempted to shew, not only that Conscience is 
 
38 THE TESTIMONY OF 
 
 a faculty which directly impels the conduct to- 
 wards virtue (an office, apparently, in some de- 
 gree inconsistent with its legitimate province of 
 arbitress) ; but that it continually adds to its own 
 scope and authority by associating with itself 
 each successive acquisition of moral virtue, and 
 causing it to form a part, as it were, of its own 
 original constitution. " Acts of kindness," they 
 say, " of generosity, of pity, of placability, of 
 humanity, when they are long continued, can 
 hardly fail mainly to flow from the pure fountain 
 of an excellent nature. They are not reducible 
 to rules; and the attempt to enforce them by 
 punishment would destroy them. They are 
 virtues of which the essence consists in a good 
 disposition of mind. As we gradually transfer 
 our desire from praise to praiseworthiness, this 
 principle also is adopted into Conscience."* This 
 is true ; and thus it is that conscience is cul- 
 tivated and improved ; but where is the impel- 
 ling and improving power ? Such graces do 
 indeed " flow from the pure fountain of an ex- 
 cellent nature ;" they are truly " virtues of which 
 the essence consists in a good disposition of 
 mind" — but where these excellent qualities are 
 to be found, and how they are to be generated, 
 is the great problem to be solved, and which still 
 
 * See note E, at the end. 
 
ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 39 
 
 seems, as far as Ethical Philosophy is concerned, 
 to be involved in much of its original obscurity. 
 
 Now, should the above be allowed to be even 
 a tolerably accurate account of the actual state 
 of Ethical science, as far as this elementary 
 question is concerned, the advocate for Revealed 
 Religion could not well devise a position of 
 things more favourable to his views, whether he 
 looks at the advantages or the deficiences of that 
 system which he has thus been induced to con- 
 sider, for the moment, as the rival, or even sub- 
 stitute, of his own. The establishment of the 
 supremacy of Conscience, is indeed a point of 
 the most vital importance to both systems ; cer- 
 tainly not less so to the cause of Revelation than 
 that of Ethics ; and it is of infinite advantage to 
 the former, that it can refer to arguments drawn 
 from a source altogether independent of its own 
 principles, to prove a fact in which it is essen- 
 tially concerned. For it is through the Conscience 
 that Revelation takes hold upon humanity. It 
 requires some corresponding fixed point in man's 
 nature, in addition to and independent of the 
 pure reason, to which it may fasten itself, before 
 any communion between the one and the other 
 can be systematically established. There must 
 be in the human bosom some acknowledged 
 
 o 
 
40 THE TESTIMONY OF 
 
 authority before which it can spread its creden- 
 tials, unfold its pretensions, and explain the 
 various blessings and benefits which it proposes 
 to introduce into the old constitution of man. 
 Such an acknowledged authority is Conscience, 
 — a power, as it has appeared, to which, and to 
 which alone, in all moral questions, the other 
 faculties of man are disposed to bow; and which, 
 it will not be denied, has never yet protested 
 against, but rather, has almost universally acqui- 
 esced in, and heartily embraced, the moral code 
 of the gospel. Indeed, we have already stated, 
 that the Rationalist is generally disposed to adopt 
 this code, as property which he does not hesitate 
 to call his own. Nor is it our wish, as has been 
 also hinted, to deprive him of so inestimable a 
 benefit. But it is clear that he can make no use 
 of it, as a power auxiliary to the efforts of Consci- 
 ence, unless he takes its sanctions also along with 
 its rules. A law is nothing without power to en- 
 force it ; and Conscience will produce no impres- 
 sion on the unruly elements over which it is called 
 to preside, by merely displaying before them the 
 moral law of the gospel, unless it has power also 
 to compel obedience to its dictates by motives 
 much stronger than have yet been found in the 
 natural constitution of man. The law of the 
 gospel is evidently the very element which Con- 
 
ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 41 
 
 science requires — the impelling power which it 
 needs, in order to establish that authority over 
 the moral character of man, without which there 
 can be no systematic progress towards improve- 
 ment. But the Conscience cannot enforce this 
 law without adequate motives ; and these it must 
 seek by examining those sanctions on which the 
 Revelation itself proposes to place them. Thus 
 it is that we are led to the doctrines of the gos- 
 pel ; we are bound by Conscience itself to en- 
 quire into the grounds of this promulgation of a 
 moral code; and unless these grounds be satis- 
 factory, the code itself becomes merely a dead 
 letter — not binding upon the passions, and, 
 therefore, not compulsory in practice. How 
 directly, then, does the system of Ethics lead to, 
 at least, a necessary investigation of the doc- 
 trines of the gospel ! It cannot, in truth, on any 
 sound philosophical principles, go on without, 
 them. It possesses, indeed, already, in the fa- 
 culty of Conscience, a controling power over the 
 mind ; it has, at least, a negative voice in every 
 determination of the will, every impulse of the 
 passions, and every tendency of the sentiments 
 and affections. It summons before it the deepest 
 contrivances of the head, the subtlest emotions 
 of the heart; it unravels and exposes not only 
 their broad and obvious intentions, but their 
 
42 THE TESTIMONY OF 
 
 secret and most latent consequences; but though 
 it seldom fails to enter a solemn protest against 
 the evil of them, it possesses no controling 
 power to divert them authoritatively towards 
 good. In milder and better natures, indeed, its 
 influence may have been so long tacitly acknow- 
 ledged, that it may exercise, as it were, a pre- 
 scriptive control over the whole line of conduct, 
 and be consulted under every moral circumstance 
 of life ; but this obedience is too accidental and 
 too voluntary to be considered a general rule, 
 and to be safely calculated upon when the mind 
 is assailed by strong inducements, and the pas- 
 sions agitated by pressing temptations. It calls, 
 then, for external assistance ; and the moral law 
 of the gospel now comes to its aid ; but only on 
 condition that the gospel shall be permitted to en- 
 force the observance of its own rules, by the irre- 
 sistible sanctions under which they are revealed. 
 These sanctions are the doctrines of the gospel ; 
 and why should Conscience refuse aid under such 
 conditions, unless reason can shew that these 
 doctrines are indefensible, and that the evidences 
 of Christianity are not made to rest upon solid 
 ground ? Into that question we need not enter 
 — it has been discussed by those who still call 
 aloud, but call in vain, for refutation ! It is 
 enough for our purpose to shew, that the doc- 
 
ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 43 
 
 trines of the gospel stand prominently forward in 
 any enquiry as to the sufficiency of Ethical Phi- 
 losophy as a rule of life, and demand not to be 
 passed by for their insignificance, in a question 
 where they are found standing on the threshold ! 
 The conscience requires the aid of Christian 
 principles ; it must seek them through Christian 
 motives. It would — to give one or two instances 
 of its operation — it would check the impulses of 
 pride and ambition — it must do so by shewing, 
 on scriptural grounds, the vanity of this life, and 
 the reality and importance of another. It must 
 lay before the aspiring spirit which would build 
 its tower of strength on this side the grave, 
 the certainty of an eternal existence that awaits 
 it when all these things shall be dissolved ; a fact 
 which, though Conscience itself might darkly 
 conjecture, yet which it could not prove till there 
 came a voice from heaven to confirm its own na- 
 tural surmises. It must press this fact home on 
 the heart of ambition ; and shew, on its own 
 self-centered principles, that as time is to eternity 
 so is the folly of building for itself a tabernacle 
 on earth, compared with the wisdom of having a 
 " name written in heaven." But Conscience has 
 to reign over subjects of a less flexible mould 
 than even pride and ambition ; they will some- 
 times bend to the strength of reason — at least in 
 
44 THE TESTIMONY OF 
 
 their own natural direction. But the Passions 
 are as unreasonable as they are unruly, and rush 
 madly and blindly upon that ruin which pride 
 and ambition seek upon a false principle of cal- 
 culation. Here then Conscience must, in its 
 distress, have recourse to the same Christian 
 motives, but with added reasons, and more power- 
 ful denunciations. It must exhibit that eternity, 
 no longer as a space filled with mere existent 
 beings, and faintly shadowed spiritualities, but 
 with the dead of old, following out the last con- 
 sequences of the evil passions which had their 
 commencement in this state of being. What it 
 has often said in whispers, that vice is immortal, 
 it must now speak in thunder, as authorized by 
 the book of Revelation. To feel that the attribute 
 of immortality is associated with our evil passions, 
 gives to the mind, of itself, a notion of punish- 
 ment, which requires no additional illustrations 
 to fill up its horrors to the brim. " The worm 
 that never dieth, and the fire that is never 
 quenched," are but faint and material emblems 
 of that spiritual and enduring agony which Con- 
 science never fails to intimate as the natural and 
 inherent fruit of sin ; and which intimation the 
 express language of scripture so solemnly ratifies 
 and confirms. The fears of man and the word of 
 God agree, that " our sin will find us out." 
 
ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 45 
 
 It is thus that Conscience is reinforced by 
 Revelation in the discharge of its appropriate 
 office — that of an arbitress among unruly pas- 
 sions and headlong desires. Its higher and more 
 complex operations (according to some authori- 
 ties) shall be discussed in a succeeding Lecture. 
 We have here viewed it in its primary and unde- 
 niable occupation — that of passing a moral sen- 
 tence on every determination of the will, and 
 every inclination of the heart ; and we have 
 shewn that Revelation comes directly to its aid 
 through no new and unexpected channel, by 
 running counter to no acknowledged principle 
 of our moral nature, but simply by giving force 
 and efficacy to those motives which conscience 
 had all along been suggesting to the human heart, 
 but which it wanted power to enforce, whenever 
 strong temptation came into direct collision with 
 probable argument. The ancient philosophers 
 well knew the influence of this appeal to futu- 
 rity. They deterred from vice by the vindictive 
 lash of the Furies, and allured to virtue by 
 the prospective felicities of Elysium ; and it 
 speaks strongly for the harmony of such senti- 
 ments with the common feelings of mankind, 
 that, however irregularly promulgated, they have 
 operated as so powerful a barrier against the 
 inroads of so many opposing elements. We see, 
 
46 THE TESTIMONY OF 
 
 in this, that Ethical science was continually 
 aiming at, though it could not reach, the truth. 
 When, therefore, philosophy finds its own dreams 
 and conjectures unexpectedly sanctioned and ve- 
 rified — when the outwork, which it had thrown 
 up in its terror, is found to be a tower of de- 
 fence erected upon an impregnable foundation, 
 is it then for the first time to hesitate in its cre- 
 dence; and to begin to doubt the truth of its 
 own principles just when they have been tested 
 by the corroborative weight of independent evi- 
 dence? It is right that philosophy should be 
 cautious in admitting facts or inferences, when 
 the mind has either a suspicious facility in enter- 
 taining them, or there are strong probabilities on 
 the other side of the question ; but after phi- 
 losophy itself has made great and independent 
 advances towards certain results ; it deserves 
 another name than wisdom contemptuously to 
 reject the aid of Revelation, when it comes for- 
 ward to follow out these results to their con- 
 sequences, and to dispel the clouds and mists 
 with which the footsteps of Ethical science have 
 been constantly encircled. 
 
 We have now dwelt solely upon those doc- 
 trines of the gospel that hinge directly upon the 
 acknowledged position of Conscience in the hu- 
 
ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 47 
 
 man mind, and have shewn that the promulga- 
 tion of a future state of reward and punishment 
 is but a continuation and completion of the moral 
 law, written originally, in characters more or less 
 legible, on every human heart. But it need 
 hardly be remarked, that the admission of the 
 truth of but one doctrine of Revelation leads 
 necessarily to at least a favourable consideration 
 of the rest ; and especially of those on which the 
 doctrine so admitted is found to be itself de- 
 pendent. The golden chain that binds together 
 all the great truths of the gospel, and suspends 
 them all from heaven, becomes thus the object of 
 contemplation ; and though there are to be found 
 men who will violently tear asunder doctrines 
 which are invaluable when united, and useless 
 when alone, yet the process is too tortuous, and 
 too abhorrent from all sound principles of philo- 
 sophy and criticism, to be deserving of any other 
 than an honest man's reprobation. Let but a 
 single mind be brought to the question, and we 
 doubt not, but that, the grace of God preventing 
 it, the process of its conviction will be this: From 
 the acknowledged relation of Conscience to a 
 future state of reward and punishment as reveal- 
 ed in the gospel, the inquirer will proceed to 
 investigate, in the document thus approved to 
 his own heart, the means by which he may se- 
 
48 THE TESTIMONY OF, &C. 
 
 cure the one and shun the other : his own weak- 
 ness will thus rise up to view : and the great 
 doctrine of the Atonement will then stand before 
 him in all its true dimensions, while the sancti- 
 fying influence of the Holy Spirit will appear a 
 truth as reasonable as it is momentous : thus will 
 he be finally led to confess, with Christ's holy 
 catholic church, that the Son, and the Holy 
 Ghost are, with the Father Almighty, ever one 
 God, world without end ! 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 THE 
 
 TESTIMONY OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 THE ARGUMENT. 
 
 Preliminary observation — the subject of Ethics 
 resumed — the auxiliaries of Conscience discussed 
 — It requires some impelling power to give it au- 
 thority over the TVill — some have proposed utility 
 as the power required — Palefs doctrine on the 
 subject of utility sometimes mis-stated — its defects, 
 arising from man's ignorance, and its want of au- 
 thority over the feelings — other auxiliaries to Con- 
 science, such as self-love, disinterestedness, asso- 
 ciation of ideas — a more poiverful and universal 
 auxiliary than all these suggested, the relation of 
 Parent and Child — its beneficial operation enlarged 
 upon — the defects of all these auxiliaries specified, 
 and the doctrines of the Gospel shewn to remedy 
 these defects — the relation of Parent and Child, 
 universal in nature, adopted into the system of 
 grace, by the representation of God as our Father, 
 and Christians as the brethren of his Son — import- 
 ant consequences of this view developed. 
 
LECTURE III 
 
 THE 
 
 TESTIMONY OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Psalm cxix. 96. 
 
 I HAVE SEEN AN END OF ALL PERFECTION : BUT THY COMMAND- 
 MENT IS EXCEEDING BROAD. 
 
 It may be necessary, for the sake of clearness of 
 view, without which no profitable results can 
 accrue from any discussion whatever, to revert to 
 the peculiar position in which we seem to stand 
 with regard to those with whom an argument is 
 now instituted ; and, by briefly pointing out the 
 difficulties as well as advantages of such position, 
 to shew the precise nature of the conclusions at 
 which we can reasonably expect to arrive. 
 
 We have, then, properly speaking, no tangible 
 antagonist to contend with ; the rationalist being, 
 at least in our own day, for the most part satis- 
 fied with a laudatory and general statement of 
 his own theories, and a tacit and contemptuous 
 rejection of scripture doctrines, without entering 
 either into a formal refutation of our principles, 
 or a systematic vindication of his own. Hence we 
 
52 THE TESTIMONY OF 
 
 labour under the disadvantage of having often to 
 assign the reasons which we would refute, and to 
 imagine arguments, which can be disowned as 
 soon as they are exposed. Whilst, on the other 
 hand, we certainly enjoy this privilege — a pri- 
 vilege of unspeakable value to a minister of the 
 gospel of peace, that against those who present 
 no hostile front, no hostile weapons need be em- 
 ployed ; but a hope is held out, that, since a full 
 and honest statement of the truth is always the 
 most general and the most convincing refutation 
 of error — such a statement may, in this case, 
 leave a blessing behind it, and those who are 
 " wise in their own conceits" may be induced, 
 even by the simple developement of their own 
 principles, to become " wise unto salvation." 
 
 Under the encouragement, then, of this hope, 
 we proceed with the discussion which was com- 
 menced in the last Lecture ; and propose to 
 examine into the nature and extent of those 
 auxiliaries, which it is universally allowed that 
 Conscience requires, in order that it may become, 
 — what, in the perfection of our nature, it would 
 become, — the guide and governor of man. 
 
 The Ethical Philosopher, — partly that his sci- 
 ence may be complete within itself, and not 
 
ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 53 
 
 dependant upon some extraneous principle for any 
 of its constituent elements ; and partly, it is to 
 be feared, because some of those who have pro- 
 secuted the study of it most zealously, have been 
 but little favourable to the doctrinal part of 
 Revelation, — the Ethical Philosopher has sought, 
 and not unnaturally, to discover within the 
 boundaries of his own system all the materials 
 which are necessary for its full developement. 
 We have already shewn the acknowledged limits 
 of Conscience, and hinted at the failure of all 
 the attempts to make it, as it were, both cause 
 and effect in prosecuting the improvement of the 
 human character. The additional impelling 
 powers which have been brought to its aid, are 
 various ; and have received different denomina- 
 tions, according to the different views which phi- 
 losophers have entertained of the predominant 
 faculties of man's mental and moral constitution. 
 It is clear that the power required is, primarily, 
 an influence over the Will; and the problem to be 
 solved is, to discover some general principle, 
 which, applied in all cases of moral trial to the 
 guidance of the Will, may so direct it universally 
 towards good, that every step which a man takes 
 in the path of life may be an advance towards 
 moral perfection. The principle which has been 
 the most widely adopted for this purpose, — whicli 
 
54 THE TESTIMONY OF 
 
 can boast among its advocates of some of the 
 most imposing names, — and which, when fairly 
 stated and honestly applied, is, in truth, pro- 
 ductive of no small degree of beneficial in- 
 fluence on human practice — is that of Utility; 
 or, as it is sometimes denominated, with a shade 
 of distinction as to meaning — Expediency.* 
 Now there does seem something almost, may we 
 not say, altogether Providential, in the circum- 
 stance, that the cause of utility has been taken 
 up and advocated by a mind like Paley's. No 
 one will suspect that justice has not been done 
 to its merits, or that there exist any latent 
 qualities in the system which his searching mind 
 had not penetration to fathom, or his absolute 
 transparency of style was unable to convey. In- 
 deed, we may appeal to the advocates of this 
 theory themselves, as to whether it has not gar- 
 dually retrograded in public estimation under 
 the advocacy of each succeeding champion, and 
 whether the soundness of its principles do not 
 become the more suspected, in proportion as they 
 are more diligently traced to their inevitable con- 
 clusions. Under Paley's treatment of the sub- 
 ject, these conclusions were less obviously seen, 
 on account of that tacit reference in his own 
 mind to the truths of Revelation, which runs like 
 
 * See note F, at the end. 
 
ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 55 
 
 an invisible thread through even the most secular 
 of his speculations ; and it would seem to have 
 been only from a vain hope of constructing a 
 system of moral philosophy complete within itself, 
 that he was led to neglect the arguments drawn 
 from the sanctions of Revelation. The grand 
 basis of his system is this : " that the method of 
 coming at the will of God, concerning any action, 
 by the light of nature, is to inquire into the ten- 
 dency of that action to promote or diminish 
 general happiness."* He is thus bound to the 
 light of nature by definition ; nor have we any 
 right to condemn him for not executing what he 
 never undertook to achieve ; but that his theory 
 is miserably defective in the extent of its appli- 
 cation, and almost impracticable even where it 
 may be applied, is now universally acknowledged. 
 The sterling worth of the book, indeed, is thus 
 but little injured ; for though the image which 
 he would have impressed upon it may be defaced, 
 yet the material is of gold. 
 
 We have said, that his criterion of virtue is 
 almost impracticable even in those cases where 
 it may be applied ; for it is attended with this 
 necessary consequence, that, in each actual event 
 of life, a man's judgment as to the morality of it 
 
 * See note G, at the end. 
 
56 THE TESTIMONY OF 
 
 will depend upon the extent of his knowledge ; 
 and thus, in all doubtful cases, which, in reality, 
 form the sum of the trials of life, — we shall have 
 as many standards of morality as there are de- 
 grees of moral and intellectual proficiency. The 
 system implies, in truth, that the beginner in 
 practical morals should possess all the knowledge 
 which is the last result of experience ; or that 
 every possible case which can arise has been ruled 
 and recorded by the Ethical Philosopher, and en- 
 grafted, moreover, on the mind of his pupil, ready 
 for immediate reference in every emergency of 
 life. We may safely assert, therefore, of the doc- 
 trines of Utility, what Butler has asserted of that 
 of Necessity, " that were this opinion of Utility 
 ever so true ; yet such is, in fact, our condition, 
 and the natural course of things, that whenever 
 we apply it to life and practice, this application 
 of it always misleads us, and cannot but mis- 
 lead us, in a most dreadful manner, with regard 
 to our present interest."* 
 
 But, miserably defective as the rule of utility 
 is found to be, even in cases where it may, at 
 least partially, be applied ; the fatal objection to 
 it is, that to more than one half of the human 
 mind and character it has no application what- 
 
 * Analogy, Part I., Chap. 6. 
 
ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 57 
 
 ever. Its government, if it govern at all, is 
 simply through the instrumentality of the reason; 
 over the feelings, except indirectly through the 
 same channel, it can exercise no influence or 
 control ; and yet no one will deny that on the 
 regulation of the feelings (using that term in its 
 widest sense) depends, more than upon any other 
 circumstance whatever, the moral character of 
 man. Now the object and ultimate aim of the 
 feelings, when roused into active operation, is 
 not utility but enjoyment ; — they are not guided 
 by the benefits, but by the sensations which will 
 arise from any proposed course of action ; and, 
 therefore, any appeal to them through the reason, 
 which they overwhelm, and on the grounds of 
 utility, which they do not recognise, can produce 
 little more impression on their headlong career, 
 than the fears of the rustic for his crops can 
 check the course of an overflowing torrent, or the 
 intreaties of the shipwrecked mariner calm the 
 inexorable ocean. 
 
 The futility of all attempts, indeed, to regu- 
 late the passions and feelings by a principle so 
 incongruous, and so utterly inadequate to the 
 office, as that of utility, has led philosophers to 
 look among the passions themselves, for some 
 motive or motives of cognate origin, and homo- 
 
58 THE TESTIMONY OF 
 
 geneous operation, which may be relied upon as 
 a faithful auxiliary of Conscience, when it would 
 divert the course of these passions towards a 
 beneficial and moral end. Thus it is that some 
 have recognised self-love, — a kind of generous 
 and liberal modification of selfishness,* as an 
 impelling principle which may be considered to 
 stand towards the passions in the same relation 
 as utility towards the pure reason ; others again, 
 justly concluding that this principle of self-love, 
 being analogous to, is liable, likewise, to the 
 same objections and beset with the same defects, 
 as that of utility, have sought out among the 
 feelings for affections of a wider scope and more 
 catholic operation, to which they propose to give 
 the name of Disinterested, — than which we 
 should almost be tempted to say, that a more 
 negative, or, (had it not the sanction of most 
 venerable names,) a more unphilosophical descrip- 
 tion of an active faculty, could not easily be 
 devised. Willingly, however, and thankfully do 
 we acknowledge, that those benevolent feelings 
 which are intended to be expressed under this 
 title, are indeed to be found in the human mind, 
 and are continually operating as a counterbalance 
 to many of the baser tendencies of the affections, 
 and throwing the light of a kind and charitable 
 
 * See note H, at the end. 
 
ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 59 
 
 spirit over many of the dark surfaces of hu- 
 man life. By the process, too, of what has 
 been denominated the association of ideas, new 
 feelings of a like beneficial and moral tend- 
 ency are constantly eliminated from those which 
 are more simple and elementary ; and come 
 successively, and most potently, to the aid of 
 Conscience in the discharge of its high office 
 of controlling and forming the moral character 
 of man. It must be evident, however, that 
 we are at present employed in simply giving 
 names to faculties which are found to exist in 
 the mind, rather than in discovering some ele- 
 mentary impelling principle to which all these 
 faculties should be made subservient. It is well 
 that disinterestedness should be traced by the 
 philosopher, as forming a component part of the 
 natural constitution of man ; it is well, likewise, 
 to have it ascertained, that ideas, by association, 
 often result in sentiments conducive to the cause 
 of virtue and good morals; but to appeal to 
 principles, which have as yet scarcely received 
 even a settled name in science, as simple and 
 fundamental Laws in a popular system of Ethics, 
 would be as unphilosophical in theory, as it would 
 be useless in practice. In a practical sense, a 
 moral rule which is not obvious, is not true. 
 
60 THE TESTIMONY OF 
 
 A reflection must here occur to the mind of 
 every one who has followed us through this in- 
 vestigation into the present condition of Ethical 
 science, which will be properly stated in this 
 place, as leading us a step nearer to the conclu- 
 sions at which we hope ultimately to arrive. It 
 will naturally be asked — if this be neither an 
 unfaithful nor even unfavourable view of the 
 component parts of moral philosophy — if the 
 power of the great arbiter Conscience be thus 
 thwarted, and controlled by opposing influences ; 
 — if one of its main instruments, utility, be thus 
 defective in its application to the reason, while 
 its power over the passions is still more equivocal 
 and obscure, — how can we account for the con- 
 soling, but undeniable fact, that the laws of 
 morality have, after all, been held in honour, 
 and even in no small measure obeyed, in every 
 age, and almost every country of the world? 
 There are, no doubt, not only individuals, but 
 whole nations to be found, so sunk in barbarity 
 and vice, as to have well-nigh obliterated from 
 their minds every vestige of a moral nature ; but 
 these are but melancholy exceptions to the rule 
 which is found universally to prevail — that in 
 all countries, and under every form of religion, 
 wherever a moderate degree of civilization exists, 
 the moral feelings are not only viewed with ap- 
 
ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 61 
 
 probation, but are diligently cultivated and im- 
 proved ; an impelling power is thus 'practically 
 applied, though Philosophy may be unable to 
 trace its laws ; and even where the Conscience is 
 too much darkened to issue or to understand the 
 precept, the heart is often found anticipating the 
 injunction by its practice. What, then, is this 
 school, in which all seem to be taught, in a 
 greater or less degree, the lessons after which 
 Philosophy halts ? It is a school which nature 
 has provided for all — in which all have studied, 
 and in which all must study to the end of time. 
 There is only one universal and immutable rela- 
 tion between man and man — and with it this great 
 school of moral discipline is inseparably joined 
 — the relation of Parent and Child. It is from 
 this root that the best feelings of our nature 
 shoot most vigorously upwards. We may lay down 
 learned and scientific theories as to the best 
 mode of conducting the great work of education 
 — we may talk wisely and philosophically about 
 the powers of the intellect, the value of arts 
 and sciences, and the dignity which is conferred 
 on human nature by expanding its powers of 
 mental vision, and bringing, as it were, the 
 whole range of physical and intellectual crea- 
 tion within its grasp ; — but the moral lessons — 
 the expansion of the feelings — the discipline of 
 
(32 THE TESTIMONY OF 
 
 the heart, which the child learns, during the first 
 feeble years of its existence, in the school where 
 all must study, are of more value to it even as 
 far as this world is concerned, and make even 
 deeper inroads into the dark science of moral 
 philosophy itself, than all the after-lessons of 
 life, with whatever skill conveyed, or eloquence 
 recommended ! It is not a mere rhetorical ex- 
 pression to say, that the best wisdom is learned 
 at a mother's knee. And not only many a philo- 
 sopher, poet, and divine, can trace the first ru- 
 diments of his future proficiency to the natural 
 lessons, inculcated without severity, and imbibed 
 without difficulty, from the lips to which he has 
 looked upwards as oracles as infallible as sacred 
 writ ; but many a youth, in the trials and temp- 
 tations of manhood, has owed his deliverance to 
 the timely and perhaps casual recollection of 
 some early parental admonition; and has ab- 
 stained from the seducing indulgence, less from 
 natural or even religious hesitation, than from 
 the habitual influence of long-continued filial 
 obedience, and from anticipating the painful sen- 
 sations, which the degradation of their child 
 would not fail to awaken in the breasts of his 
 affectionate parents. It is a wise ordination of 
 Providence, that, at our outset in life, we should 
 come in contact with human nature under its 
 
ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. (33 
 
 best aspect, — that, under the relation of parent 
 and child, we should form our first acquaintance 
 with humanity ! As it is impossible for the pa- 
 rent to entertain towards his child any of those 
 feelings of jealousy, rivalry, or hostility of dis- 
 position, which, in our intercourse with the world 
 at large, are the origin of so many of the male- 
 volent passions, his interest and his self-love 
 combine with the dictates of our common nature 
 to awaken within his bosom the purest senti- 
 ments in regard to his offspring ; which, — exhi- 
 bited as affection will exhibit them, — under the 
 most attractive forms, will light up within their 
 breasts a corresponding emotion, till the develope- 
 ment of the benevolent feelings in their minds 
 becomes almost as early, and as untraceable in 
 its first disclosure, as their attention to external 
 objects ; and, having been thus exercised in in- 
 fancy towards those who can most judiciously 
 cherish it, is gradually expanded so as to embrace 
 more distant objects, as experience, and a wider 
 acquaintance with the world, successively bring 
 them within the sphere of its operation. It is 
 from hence that Conscience draws its most active 
 adherents out of the ranks of the Passions; 
 which enable it, in after life, to put a restraint 
 even upon the most dangerous emotions that the 
 
64 THE TESTIMONY OF 
 
 commerce of an evil world but seldom fails to 
 awaken. 
 
 We seem, then, to have arrived, by a chain 
 of reasoning in which no link appears to be 
 w r anting, at two important conclusions. In the 
 first place, that utility, difficult as it may be to 
 find a general principle, which shall altogether 
 supersede it in moral philosophy, is yet but of 
 limited applicability, and, even within its proper 
 sphere, of most uncertain operation ; and, in the 
 second place, that the natural relation of parent 
 and child — a relation liable to all the disturbing 
 forces which absolute ignorance, corruption of 
 manners, and perverted and disordered passions 
 have a perpetual tendency to introduce — is the 
 only recognised ally on which Conscience can 
 safely calculate, in its office of subduing the evil, 
 and training and cherishing the good sentiments, 
 of the human heart. To what quarter, then, 
 shall the philosopher fly in his perplexity, (and 
 especially if assistance can no where else be 
 found) but to the Doctrines of Revelation ? And 
 surely no philosopher that deserves the name 
 will hesitate to receive assistance from such a 
 source, provided it be administered in accordance 
 with his own principles, and may remedy those 
 
ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 65 
 
 defects in his own system which he never ceases 
 to acknowledge and deplore. By his own con- 
 fession, the doctrine of utility labours under two 
 principal defects in its application as a rule of 
 life ; the difficulty of preventing the will from 
 seizing upon a present and less solid good, in 
 preference to one of greater value, but of less 
 immediate acquisition ; and the difficulty, more- 
 over, which common minds must always ex- 
 perience, of correctly ascertaining, amidst per- 
 plexing and often contradictory motives, what is 
 the line of conduct which real utility would pre- 
 scribe, in the various and complicated occurrences 
 of life. Of both these difficulties the doctrines 
 of Revelation supply us with a ready solution. 
 By impressing upon our minds the deepest 
 possible convictions of the essential distinction 
 between right and wrong, through the sanctions 
 of eternal reward for the one, and eternal 
 punishment for the other, utility receives a 
 bolder outline, and presents more distinctive 
 features to the mind, than when seen through 
 the mists and shadows of present and petty in- 
 terests ; the passing considerations which have 
 regard only to time, are lost in the tremendous 
 consequences, which require eternity for their 
 developement. Selfishness itself, when a future 
 state is taken into the account, instead of re- 
 
66 THE TESTIMONY OF 
 
 volving round its own narrow circle, and coming 
 perpetually into hostile contact with the interests 
 of others, who are similarly employed in pursu- 
 ing their own confined estimate of good, becomes 
 infinitely enlarged in its views when its central 
 attraction is transferred into the immeasurable 
 distance of an unseen world ; and can then pur- 
 sue its object in a straight and even course, 
 neither crossing the orbit of its neighbour, nor 
 withholding from him the light of mutual as- 
 sistance and mutual love. Selfishness, upon an 
 infinite scale, becomes the most expanded bene- 
 volence. 
 
 Again, the difficulty of applying the rules of 
 Utility, as gathered from the subtle reasonings of 
 Ethical Philosophy, is at once removed by hav- 
 ing recourse to the comprehensive and recorded 
 moral instructions of the Gospel, as founded 
 upon, and enforced by its doctrines. Cases of 
 conscience, and points of reasonable doubt, may 
 and will occasionally arise even out of the lucid 
 rules of Scripture, from the impossibility of com- 
 prehending under general terms all the complex 
 moral relations of mankind ; but " an honest and 
 good heart" will seldom decide these questions 
 amiss ; and it is an important fact, that while 
 the moral philosopher has often recourse to the 
 
ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 67 
 
 Ethics of the Gospel, to sanction at least, if not 
 to develope, his own principles; the Christian, 
 who is well instructed in his own system of 
 morality, and deeply impressed with the doctrines 
 on which scripture has made them to rest,* is 
 never driven to seek assistance, either as to prin- 
 ciple or details, from the deductions of moral 
 philosophy. He cherishes and adopts them as al- 
 lies, but never acknowledges them as his masters. 
 
 But we hasten to resume the consideration of 
 that branch of moral science in which the rule of 
 Utility is most defective, and wherein its de- 
 ficiences are most strikingly supplied by the doc- 
 trines of revelation — the discipline and control 
 of the feelings. It appears, that upon this de- 
 partment of the mind, utility has no direct bear- 
 ing; and that the indissoluble and universal 
 relation of Parent and Child seems to be the only 
 natural, and innate, and unchangeable principle 
 through which Conscience can impress a bene- 
 ficial tendency upon the sentiments and passions 
 of mankind. Now see the use which Revelation 
 has made of this unfailing instrument ; and mark 
 therein a proof, at once beyond invention and 
 denial, that the Maker of man's heart was the 
 designer also of that wonderful scheme by which 
 
 * See note I, at the end. 
 
68 THE TESTIMONY OF 
 
 the errors of it are to be corrected and reformed. 
 On this immutable and always-operating relation 
 of parent and child, is erected the whole struc- 
 ture of the Gospel ; and to that relation does it 
 appeal to effect what philosophy has shrunk from 
 in despair — a turning of the whole heart and soul 
 of man from the pleasures, and pursuits, and in- 
 terests of earth, to a heartfelt love and systematic 
 prosecution of things in heaven. Though it might 
 be impossible for the philosopher to predicate, 
 a priori, through what channel the Almighty, 
 having determined to vouchsafe a revelation of 
 his will to his creatures, would think it best to 
 convey such revelation to their reason and affec- 
 tions, yet he might safely anticipate that both 
 would be appealed to, as the natural connecting 
 links between things human and divine. But an 
 intangible, infinite, and incomprehensible essence 
 is altogether beyond the range of our intellect 
 and of our sympathies : God can only commu- 
 nicate with man through an intervening medium. 
 The Almighty, therefore, — so we read in the 
 Gospel, — has lessened, as it were, this infinite 
 distance between man and his Maker, by sending 
 into the world his only-begotten Son in the like- 
 ness of human flesh ; he has prepared for us a 
 Mediator, — God, of the substance of the Father, 
 begotten before the worlds, and man, of the 
 
ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 69 
 
 substance of his mother, born in the world ; who 
 by taking of this manhood into God, might make 
 us, who are his brethren by redemption, the sons 
 of God by adoption ; and so joint-heirs with him 
 in the privileges and glories of his Father's king- 
 dom. This, we must bear in mind, is not a mere 
 figurative representation, but, according to Scrip- 
 ture, a literal and actual transaction ; so much 
 so, that the faithful disciple of Christ is as truly, 
 though in a spiritual sense, the son and brother 
 of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, as 
 he stands in these several relations towards his 
 father and brethren according to the flesh. I 
 need not occupy the time of an audience like the 
 present with quoting passages from the New 
 Testament (for no detached passages can ade- 
 quately represent a spirit which pervades the 
 whole)* to shew, that to make us Christ's bre- 
 thren, and God the joint Father of all, is the main 
 object and aim of the Christian dispensation. It 
 seeks to impress on our minds, that by the atone- 
 ment of Christ, " we have received the spirit 
 of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The 
 spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that 
 we are the children of God; and if children, 
 then, heirs ; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with 
 Christ." 
 
 * See note J, at the end. 
 
70 THE TESTIMONY OF 
 
 Thus it is that the Gospel scheme lays its 
 foundations deep in our natural affections, by ap- 
 pealing to the indelible relation of parent and 
 child. It pours its sweet waters into a fountain 
 of which the well-spring is found in every human 
 heart ; and requires us but to cherish, and refine, 
 and elevate the benevolent feelings which we 
 have been taught to entertain towards our earthly 
 parents, in order that we may in some degree 
 comprehend and respond to the affection dis- 
 played towards us by our heavenly Father, when 
 he redeemed us to himself for a peculiar people 
 by the precious blood of his only-begotten Son. 
 It supplies, in short, an infinite motive for the 
 cultivation of those amiable feelings of which 
 nature has implanted the elements in every man's 
 bosom, by transferring them from an earthly to a 
 heavenly object ; and, universal in its design, 
 connects itself with an universal principle, which 
 it moulds to its own holy purposes ! 
 
 Such is the aspect under which the Gospel 
 represents the duty of directing the affections of 
 the heart towards God ; and it uses the same 
 arguments, likewise, for extending the same affec- 
 tions towards all around us. The burthen of it 
 is comprehended in this saying — " Beloved, if 
 God so loved us, we ought also to love one an- 
 
ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 71 
 
 other." The reason of the duty, in both cases, is 
 made to rest upon the doctrines of the Gospel : 
 the heart of man responds to the duties ; why 
 should his pride revolt at the docfrines by which 
 alone they can be enforced ? 
 
 I know not what effect these conclusions may 
 produce on the minds of others ; but I confess 
 that on my own, the reflection that the Almighty 
 has laid the foundations of the Christian faith on 
 the solid basis of principles which are acknow- 
 ledged, even by its opponents, to form consti- 
 tuent elements of the human mind — that he has 
 appealed to the fixed principle of Conscience in 
 the revelation of future rewards and punishments, 
 — and to the only universal, moral as well as 
 natural, relation between man and man, that of 
 parent and child, by revealing himself to us in 
 the light of a Father, and accounting us his 
 children as the brethren of his only-begotten Son, 
 Jesus Christ ; — I confess, that so striking, in this 
 case, is the correspondence of the excellency of 
 Revelation with the acknowledged deficiency of 
 Philosophy, — so exactly is the supply accom- 
 modated to the necessity, — that a natural miracle 
 would not be more convincing to my judgment, 
 that the worker of it was a messenger from 
 heaven, than this, as it were, moral miracle, is 
 
72 THE TESTIMONY, &C 
 
 satisfactory to my feelings, that he who divulged 
 such a scheme of spiritual philosophy was 
 guided in its promulgation by a Power, which 
 fathomed all the mysteries, understood all the 
 defects, and could remedy all the evils, that are 
 confessedly inherent in the moral constitution 
 of man. And when we reflect, finally, that this 
 Divine Messenger has brought with him into the 
 world a co-ordinate Power, whose especial office 
 it is to purify and pervade every faculty of man 
 which is in any degree susceptible of moral dis- 
 cipline — who strengthens the reason, directs the 
 will, curbs the passions, and sanctifies the affec- 
 tions, by an influence which, though it may not 
 be distinguishable by man from the operations of 
 his natural powers, is yet felt and seen in every 
 step which he takes in his progress towards moral 
 perfection, — it is surely no rash conclusion to say, 
 that the difficulties of philosophy form but a part 
 of the evidences of Christianity ; and we may 
 turn from the consideration of them with the 
 reflection of Holy David : " I have seen an end 
 of all perfection ; but thy commandment is ex- 
 ceeding BROAD." 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 THE 
 
 TESTIMONY OF THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 
 
 THE ARGUMENT. 
 
 The Intellectual Powers considered as a Rule 
 of life — in what way the cultivation of the In- 
 tellect leads to the principles of nationalism — 
 the perishable nature of Intellectual results — the 
 injustice of considering the Intellectual Powers as a 
 standard of excellence — this not true of a Moral 
 standard — the great doctrine of the Atonement ap- 
 plicable to one and not to the other — this doctrine 
 unfolded, and shewn to be the precise remedy which 
 Philosophy would require for intellectual and 
 moral defects — conclusions drawn from the pre- 
 ceding statement. 
 
LECTURE IV 
 
 THE 
 
 TESTIMONY OF THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 
 
 Hebrews ii. 9. 
 
 THAT HE BY THE GRACE OF GOD SHOULD TASTE DEATH FOR 
 EVERY MAN. 
 
 It is a common remark, (with whatever limit- 
 ations it is to be taken,) that men of highly 
 cultivated minds are to be found, in more than 
 an average proportion, among the ranks of those 
 who, to speak in the gentlest terms, think lightly 
 on the subjects of doctrinal revelation. Though 
 it does not appear that this assertion is founded 
 on any satisfactory evidence — for the aberrations 
 of one man of intellect are more conspicuous than 
 those of a whole legion of obscure unbelievers — 
 yet so it has commonly been maintained ; and a 
 conclusion has been drawn from the supposed 
 fact, that this indisposition towards the doctrines 
 of religion arises from the exclusive cultivation 
 of the mental powers. Doubtless, this is too 
 often the case ; but I believe it will frequently 
 be found, that the converse of the proposition is 
 equally true, and that men devote their whole 
 
76 THE TESTIMONY OF 
 
 time and attention to intellectual and secular 
 pursuits not seldom from some original deficiency, 
 or early neglect, of the moral and religious feel- 
 ings ; and from not having on the mind a full 
 impression of the transcendent importance of 
 Scripture doctrines. It is not always, therefore, 
 that mental cultivation leads to scepticism, but 
 often scepticism to mental cultivation. 
 
 And the reasons for this are too obvious to 
 require much illustration. The mind of man 
 demands a pursuit which shall occupy, whether 
 worthily or not, the whole range of its powers. 
 Now if we suppose that sound principles and 
 right feelings with regard to religion have, in 
 early life, been either inaccessible or withheld, 
 we cannot be surprised that other principles and 
 feelings, of less dignity and value, should have 
 usurped their legitimate station and authority. 
 Withhold from a man the knowledge of another 
 life, and you compel him, by a necessary conse- 
 quence, to make the most of this. You give a 
 particular and exclusive direction to his whole 
 system of action; and he views life, and every 
 portion of life, under a totally different aspect, 
 from the man who considers it but as a probation 
 for eternity. That which is as nothing to the 
 one, is every thing to the other ; and it is his 
 
THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 77 
 
 interest and his wisdom, on the soundest prin- 
 ciples of calculation, to gather as much of good 
 as he is able, out of his little day of life. He 
 does not walk by faith, but by sight. The hopes 
 with which the Christian is cheered in his passage 
 through the dark and dreary ways that intersect 
 the course of even the most prosperous life, afford 
 no light to him ; he must smooth the path for 
 himself, by energetic exertion, or patient endu- 
 rance. The strength which the Christian seeks 
 from above, he must find within. Mental and 
 physical self-denial (except so far as worldly 
 prudence dictates) absence of ambition, humility 
 of spirit, the sacrifice of the interests of self to 
 those of other men, the esteeming of the social, 
 and domestic, and private virtues above mental 
 acquirements, worldly distinctions, and personal 
 enjoyments, are but doubtful graces with him 
 whose horizon is limited by time, and who cannot 
 look to the future for recompense of a present 
 sacrifice. He finds himself in possession of 
 various powers and faculties, from the judicious 
 exercise of which certain beneficial or gratifying 
 temporal results may be derived ; and philosophy 
 and self-love combine to urge on him the wisdom 
 of seeking such benefits or gratifications, with a 
 devotedness of purpose, which the Christian, 
 whose views are wider, and principles of a loftier 
 
78 THE TESTIMONY OF 
 
 character, would justly consider to be unworthy 
 of the high vocation to which he knows himself 
 to be called. 
 
 Thus it is that the principles of philosophi- 
 cal Rationalism lead necessarily to the culti- 
 vation of the mental powers ; and what is true 
 of the extreme case here stated, is doubtless 
 true also, of all the varieties of them that exist, 
 from absolute unbelief upwards towards a sound 
 and lively faith; and the estimation of the in- 
 tellectual faculties, as an end and for their own 
 sake, will be found to bear a strong relation to 
 the value which is placed on faith and hope, the 
 cultivation of the virtues of morality, and the 
 acquisition of Christian graces. To the Christian 
 these intellectual faculties are valuable, as means ; 
 to the Rationalist they are everything, as results. 
 To him they are a treasure laid up on earth ; and 
 where his treasure is, there his heart is also. 
 
 While, therefore, the remark is not new, but 
 is, on the contrary, too general, not to have its 
 foundation in truth, that men who take up with 
 low views on the subject of religious doctrines, 
 are mostly found to be men of competent inform- 
 ation, and devoted, in a greater or less degree, to 
 the pursuits of literature and science — a natural 
 
THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 79 
 
 result, as it has appeared, of the absolute value 
 which minds so constituted must necessarily 
 attach to them, — it does not appear that science 
 can be justly chargeable with effects, which 
 spring from causes that have a much earlier and 
 deeper root in the character ; and which lead 
 these men to mingle in the ranks of philosophers 
 from lower and meaner motives than true phi- 
 losophy will ever acknowledge. They have thus 
 been permitted to bring a stigma upon pursuits 
 whose generous and modest spirit they never 
 imbibe; by misleading hasty observers into the 
 notion, that the low and degrading sentiments 
 with regard to religion which they entertain in 
 connexion with their philosophical pursuits, are 
 the consequence instead of the cause of this par- 
 ticular direction of their minds. True philosophy 
 may have found a man an infidel, but it never yet 
 made him one. There is nothing in its nature, 
 there is nothing in its tendency, there is nothing 
 in its results, which can teach the student, of a 
 truly expanded mind, any other lesson, than those 
 which he learns in the revealed will of God : — 
 the incomprehensible greatness and goodness of 
 the Divinity, the weakness of his own mental 
 powers, and the scanty portion of knowledge 
 which these powers can gather in, during the 
 brief section of human life. The wider his sphere 
 
80 THE TESTIMONY OF 
 
 of vision grows, the more clearly does lie see the 
 interminable distance before him ; and the doc- 
 trine, which teaches him to rely on another's 
 strength, acquires additional force with every 
 successive exertion of his own ! 
 
 But the case is quite otherwise with the unbe- 
 liever, who, from very different or even opposite 
 motives, is often found side by side with the 
 Christian philosopher in the path of science. He 
 considers, and with perfect consistency of prin- 
 ciple, that to apply his mental powers to all the 
 ends for which they are applicable, and to deduce 
 from them all the benefits and gratifications which 
 they are capable of producing, is one great object 
 of his being : should he be a simple materialist, 
 almost a sole object ; should he symbolize with 
 some of the various shades of Deism, as a mode 
 of answering the purposes of his present existence, 
 or of qualifying himself for such future aspects of 
 being as his creed may suggest to his hopes here- 
 after. Now he has doubtless a right to expect 
 that his own estimate of the value of these 
 mental acquisitions should be fairly weighed ; nor 
 have we any reason to fear but that, after such 
 an examination, on his part as well as his op- 
 ponents', he will honestly confess, that, should 
 the Christian Religion he true, it exhibits at once 
 
THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 81 
 
 the deficiences of his own theory, and the remedy 
 for those deficiences, in a point of view, which 
 ought not to be hastily dismissed, or lightly 
 regarded. 
 
 The first defect which strikes us as attaching 
 to the Intellectual Faculties, when considered in 
 themselves and independent of their effects ; 
 and which belongs also to their effects, when 
 viewed as ends rather than instruments — is their 
 perishable nature. They are almost as changeable 
 as the faculties of the body. The results of in- 
 tellectual processes never seem to us, like those of 
 our moral faculties, to form a permanent and 
 necessary part of ourselves. Knowledge is, in- 
 deed, interesting to our curiosity, flattering to 
 our pride, and gratifying to our feelings, as well 
 as a most valuable instrument of moral action ; 
 but it always appears to be an acquisition. When 
 present with us, it resides in the mind as an 
 extraneous object ; in our possession indeed, but 
 forming no integral portion of our constitution. 
 It vanishes away ; and we fee] that we have lost 
 an accomplishment, towards which our relation 
 may have ceased for ever. But it is not so with 
 any thought or action in which a moral principle 
 has been involved. We feel that we have never 
 done with it. The thought may, for the present. 
 
82 THE TESTIMONY OF 
 
 be blotted out from our minds, — the action may 
 be erased from our memory ; but the heart of 
 every man acknowledges the momentous truth, 
 that were that thought or action brought back 
 before the recollection, the responsibility for its 
 good or evil tendency would still be engraven on 
 our consciences ; and the cheek would glow with 
 satisfaction, or burn with shame at the remem- 
 brance, as freshly as when the high or the unholy 
 conception of it was first engendered in the 
 recesses of the heart. On the ground, then, of 
 their perishable nature, intellectual powers and 
 acquisitions are not the basis on which a truly 
 philosophical mind would build its hopes of hap- 
 piness, whether it confines its views to this life, 
 or takes into the account the consequences which 
 may arise out of them in another state of 
 existence. 
 
 Again, an intellectual standard is so manifestly 
 inequitable a scale, by which to determine the 
 relative merit of individuals, that the Deist, who 
 takes this element not unfrequently into the ac- 
 count, involves the First Cause in an obscurity 
 as to the equity of his dealings with mankind, of 
 a more serious character than any which he can 
 trace in the scheme of Revelation.* There are 
 so many natural reasons why men should differ 
 
 * See Note K, at the end. 
 
THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 83 
 
 from each other in intellect and intellectual ac- 
 quisitions, — reasons over which it is impossible for 
 individuals to exercise any influence or control ; 
 that to make such powers and results in any 
 essential respect a criterion, by which to deter- 
 mine the degree in which a man has answered 
 the highest object of his existence, in this world, 
 or has qualified himself for the inheritance and 
 enjoyment of another, would be to introduce into 
 the system of nature a principle against which all 
 the objections might justly be alleged, that have 
 so often been assumed to lie against the system 
 of grace — fatalism, partiality, and inaptitude to 
 man's present state. Measured by such a stand- 
 ard, men would differ from each other, not only 
 as individuals but in masses ; and their relative 
 merit might be approximated, by ascertaining 
 the age in which they lived, or the region they 
 inhabited. 
 
 The developement of the powers of the human 
 mind, and the progress of the arts and sciences, 
 have undergone various changes of advance or 
 retrogression in different ages of the world. At 
 one period, light has been widely diffused among 
 extensive portions of the community, which has 
 been succeeded, from causes altogether independ- 
 ent of the control of that community itself, by a 
 
84 THE TESTIMONY OF 
 
 period of equally extended mental darkness; and 
 generation after generation have been suffered to 
 drop into the grave, deprived, on this supposi- 
 tion, of the highest object of their existence, and 
 depressed, for no demerits of their own, beneath 
 their predecessors and their followers in the long 
 chain of mortality, — and as to those essential 
 elements of good, for the possession of which life 
 is alone worth the enjoyment. 
 
 The same remark holds good of contemporary 
 sections, which is true of successive generations 
 of mankind ; and the state of science or educa- 
 tion, liberty or slavery, peace or war; an en- 
 nobling or enervating system of manners and 
 morals, a true or false theory of philosophy or 
 religion, is daily producing, on each division and 
 family of man, a difference in condition as to 
 mental and physical progression, which is as 
 striking as that which appears from comparing 
 distant ages of mankind with each other. Thus 
 does it appear that the boundless and inevitable 
 inequality with which intellectual distinctions are 
 found to be distributed among the human race, 
 renders such distinctions totally inadmissible as 
 a standard of relative excellence, on any princi- 
 ples which involve the notion of a moral govern- 
 ment of the universe ; and are much more con- 
 
THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 85 
 
 sistent with a state of recompense than of proba- 
 tion. 
 
 Now these obvious objections to an intellec- 
 tual, have by no means the same force against a 
 moral scale of merit ; though difficulties are 
 doubtless, in that point of view, to be encoun- 
 tered, of which we can only approximate towards 
 the solution. Men may differ as to the opportu- 
 nities of moral exertion, almost as far as in those 
 of mental culture, but the same inequality and 
 apparent injustice does not therefore arise from 
 making one or the other a standard of relative 
 desert. A man's moral trial depends upon the 
 degree in which he conforms to his own standard 
 of duty. It would indeed, be in him a moral 
 delinquency not to elevate that standard by every 
 means within his reach ; but when he has so 
 elevated it, his degree of moral merit, (we do 
 not speak here in the language of theology, but 
 of Ethical Philosophy) will depend, not upon 
 the altitude of that elevation, but upon the 
 strictness with which he models his heart and life 
 according to this ascertained criterion. " They 
 who have not the Law, are a law unto them- 
 selves." In this sense, all men may be said to 
 be upon a level with regard to moral trial, how- 
 ever widely they may differ in every other cir- 
 
86 THE TESTIMONY OF 
 
 cumstance or condition. A man's intellectual 
 powers may be almost in abeyance — his outward 
 lot in life may be most unfavourable to happiness 
 or to virtue; still, his responsibility is propor- 
 tioned to his opportunities ; and nothing more 
 can equitably be expected from him than that he 
 should in all respects conform to the moral law 
 of his own mind. 
 
 Nor is there, perhaps, such a wide difference 
 among men as to their degrees of moral proba- 
 tion, as we may hastily conclude from a casual 
 glance over the unequal surfaces of human life. 
 Not only are these inequalities corrected by the 
 measure of responsibility being proportioned to 
 the trial, but the trials themselves differ much 
 less, in kind, or in intensity, than we are at 
 first sight aware of. The relations between man 
 and man, out of which these trials for the most 
 part arise, vary but little in their nature through 
 every stage of society, from the highest to the 
 lowest. 
 
 The domestic, and parental, and filial ties, 
 which pervade alike the whole chain of human 
 existence, call forth the same moral emotions 
 from every bosom — elicit the same virtuous affec- 
 tions, or are obstructed by the same vicious pro- 
 
THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 87 
 
 pensities. The poor man's cottage is, in these 
 respects, the same school as the rich man's man- 
 sion ; and peace is found, in both cases, to shed 
 her radiance round the domestic circle, not from 
 the penetrating properties of the head, but the 
 warm recesses of the heart. 
 
 Another universal school of moral trial, is found 
 in the various gradations of rank and station, 
 which run through the whole frame of society, 
 and link together, by the bonds of mutual 
 dependence, and mutual interest, " all sorts and 
 conditions of men." Their conduct under this 
 universal relation, is, likewise, a form of probation 
 to which men are subjected, with scarcely a shade 
 of distinction as to the amount, or even as to the 
 nature, of their discipline. Strict honesty of 
 dealing — a faithful discharge of our appropriated 
 offices — kind and judicious treatment of those 
 beneath us — and faithful and hearty obedience 
 towards those above — are duties which arise evi- 
 dently out of each man's condition as a social 
 being — are equally binding upon, and may be dis- 
 charged with equal ease, by men of every reach 
 of understanding, and in every position of life. 
 
 Thus defective is an intellectual, as compared 
 with a moral standard of excellence, whether 
 
88 THE TESTIMONY OF 
 
 considered as applicable solely to this life, or, 
 also, to the life to come. The intellect marches 
 on by slow and irregular steps towards the goal 
 of its final triumph ; and should it be destined 
 ultimately, as we may fondly hope it may, to 
 place the family of man on a triumphant emi- 
 nence, as to power and proficiency, which it has 
 never yet attained ; yet it must achieve that ob- 
 ject by conferring an undue and unmerited dis- 
 tinction on those races who shall thus be so 
 highly favoured ; and its march must be over the 
 prostrate fortunes of past generations of men, 
 who have been but stepping-stones to the ad- 
 vance of their successors, and who can look for 
 no compensation, either in time or in eternity, 
 for the unjust deprivation of mental blessings 
 which has been so capriciously assigned to them 
 for an inheritance. 
 
 Neither in time nor eternity. For their time 
 here is past, never to be recalled ; nor in eternity 
 can they look for any thing in the nature of a 
 reward for their mental acquisitions, for they 
 were expressly pursued as their own reward. And 
 the inequality and injustice of which we com- 
 plain would be infinitely multiplied, by taking- 
 futurity into the account ; these unfair temporal 
 distinctions being thus carried on into another 
 
THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 89 
 
 sphere, and the unequal fiat of time thereby mag- 
 nified, as it were, into an eternal injustice. 
 
 Nor — what is the most important considera- 
 tion of all — can we understand how these in- 
 equalities can be rectified, on any natural princi- 
 ples, without some proceeding of an arbitrary 
 nature, which would add to the evil complained 
 of, by withdrawing all such preference on the 
 ground of merit as may appear to be due to a 
 higher cultivation of the mental faculties ; and 
 thus rendering the whole of this life at once to- 
 tally nugatory with regard to another, by placing 
 men once more on a perfect level as to claims 
 and qualifications. The idea of atonement has 
 no consistency with merely mental defects : it 
 cannot even in imagination be brought to bear 
 upon any thing not of a moral nature. 
 
 We have now arrived at the point to which 
 the awful solemnities of this day would necessa- 
 rily have directed our attention,* were we not 
 led thus naturally to the consideration of it by 
 the course of our preceding argument. That 
 point is, the death of Jesus Christ, and the mo- 
 mentous consequences which flow from it to the 
 
 * This Lecture was delivered before the University on Good 
 Fridav. 
 
90 THE TESTIMONY OF 
 
 whole race of mankind. We are not concerned, 
 on this occasion, to prove these consequences ; we 
 have only to state fully their nature and extent. 
 We take them as we And them to be set forth 
 in Holy Scripture — leaving Scripture to defend 
 its own positions, and its enemies to overturn 
 them — tasks which have, hitherto, proved as easy 
 for the one, as impracticable for the other. 
 
 According, then, to the account given us in 
 the book of God's revealed will, Christ Jesus 
 came into the world for the express purpose of 
 offering himself a sacrifice for sin. A sacrifice, 
 in the Jewish language, means an atonement, 
 or substitute and compensation ; and the whole 
 impression which the constant tenour of scrip- 
 ture, when speaking on this awful transaction, 
 seems calculated to make on the mind, is this : 
 that by the death of Christ, original or birth-sin 
 is universally atoned for ; and that every moral 
 transgression which has followed upon the Fall 
 of man has been wiped out of the remembrance 
 of infinite Justice, on condition that the trans- 
 gressor is willing to accept, and ready to plead 
 this substituted perfection as the propitiation for 
 his own acknowledged errors and infirmities. 
 (We are compelled to use figurative language in 
 speaking of matters so far beyond our experi- 
 
THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 91 
 
 ence; but figures, on subjects of a spiritual 
 nature, are often the nearest approach that we 
 can make to the literal truth.) Now, supposing 
 the philosopher to have ascertained, — as the 
 wisest of them, (by a process, like that which we 
 have detailed,) have seldom failed to do, — that 
 an intellectual standard of comparative excel- 
 lence, is, of all others, the most fallacious and 
 unequal, and that a moral criterion is the only 
 one in which even the shadow of natural justice 
 can be traced, how cheering to his spirits must 
 be the announcement, that such moral criterion 
 is the very standard which the Governor of the 
 Universe has set up ; and that, since fallen crea- 
 tures can hold no correspondence with a perfect 
 rule, He has provided, in his own infinite wisdom, 
 a substitute for the manifold moral imperfections 
 of man ! I verily believe, that there neither is, 
 nor ever was in the world, a single human being, 
 who had lived long enough on the earth to 
 experience the weakness of his own nature, and 
 who had not been corrupted by some false system 
 of faith or philosophy, who would not rejoice 
 beyond measure at the intelligence that a remedy 
 had been provided for the multiplied transgres- 
 sions of his life; and who would not be filled 
 with joy unspeakable at the prospect that any one 
 rather than himself should be ready, and able, to 
 
92 THE TESTIMONY OF 
 
 become responsible for the sins of which the most 
 obdurate bosom cannot but confess itself to be 
 guilty ! He may be proud of his intellectual 
 acquisitions — he may look on their deficiences 
 with unconcern ; but conscience tells him that 
 his moral condition is by no means so indifferent 
 a question : as regards this life, it is much — as 
 regards the next, it is every thing. Ignorance 
 he can remove by future knowledge, but sin 
 leaves an indelible stain. It hangs on his con- 
 science, it clouds his understanding, it rankles in 
 his heart. He feels it to be a weight which no 
 strength of his own can shake off, a stigma which 
 no after efforts can efface. 
 
 This is but the natural effect of Conscience 
 when left at liberty to speak its own language — 
 it is the almost necessary result of a false, as well 
 as a right system of religion. If, then, the Phi- 
 losopher, by his own reasoning processes, have 
 discovered the defective character of an intel- 
 lectual standard of excellence, let him turn to 
 the Bible to have his own surmises confirmed, 
 and to find the powers of the intellect placed in 
 their just position — as means and instruments of 
 good. Does he feel that strict moral purity is at 
 once unattainable, and yet absolutely necessary 
 for the perfection of his nature ? The Bible con- 
 
THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 93 
 
 firms him in this view, and directs him to look 
 with the eye of faith to a perfect Being, who has 
 made himself the representative, both in punish- 
 ment and in perfection, of the whole race of man ; 
 who took upon himself our nature, that he might 
 obtain power to confer upon us a portion of his 
 own inheritance. Is he still at a loss in what 
 way he can become individually benefited by this 
 act of general amnesty thus proclaimed to the 
 whole race of mankind ? The scripture tells him, 
 Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, — throw thyself 
 unreservedly into the ranks of those who, having 
 discovered their own weakness, and their Re- 
 deemer's power, are willing, on his own con- 
 ditions, to be saved from the wrath to come. 
 
 Still does the Philosopher feel, that his heart 
 and his habits cannot, even by such an act of 
 oblivion, become at once adapted for a region of 
 perfect purity and holiness ; let him turn once 
 more to the Bible, for light upon this doubt also. 
 He will learn that this wonderful scheme embraces 
 not only forgiveness of the past, but sanctifica- 
 tion for the future ; and that the Holy Spirit of 
 God, infused into his moral system by grace, and 
 nourished there by co-operation and by prayer, 
 is ready to cleanse him from all filthiness of the 
 flesh and spirit — to guide his intellectual powers, 
 
94 THE TESTIMONY OF 
 
 and purify his moral principles: so that the seeds 
 of a better nature having been sown in his heart 
 in this world, he may be fitted, on their full ex- 
 pansion in another, for the enjoyment of a life of 
 perfect holiness, and happiness, and immortality. 
 
 The adaptation of the main doctrines of the 
 Gospel to man's intellectual and moral condition, 
 as developed in the preceding outline, is too evi- 
 dent to be denied ; and no good man can fail to 
 entertain, at least the wish, that a system so con- 
 sonant with the wants of man and the wisdom of 
 God, may be found to be based on the rock of 
 truth. Let, then, this very consonance be, of 
 itself, an evidence with the Philosopher, that the 
 systems of nature and of grace are the workman- 
 ship of the same Almighty hand ; and let him 
 not, in defiance of such evidence, and of every 
 sound principle of his own school, rest satisfied 
 with the one without the other, or even array the 
 one against the other, when every law of just 
 reasoning, commence in your course of argument 
 from which system you may, tends to prove that 
 both are necessary to form a consistent and har- 
 monious whole. The intellect, is not the sole, 
 nor even the soundest guide of life ; it is rather 
 a powerful instrument, to minister to the wants 
 and supply food for the healthy developement of 
 
THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 95 
 
 the moral faculties and religious principles ; pro- 
 viding for them, as the body does for the soul, 
 means for their continual expansion, and their 
 training for the enjoyment, hereafter, of a far 
 holier and happier state of existence. The 
 intellectual Philosopher may thus be encouraged 
 to pursue his researches into every region of 
 science which nature has spread open to his 
 view — he may admire, in his successive dis- 
 coveries, the utility, and beauty, and wisdom 
 manifested in every department of created 
 things : they were displayed, among other pur- 
 poses, to excite this feeling of admiration in 
 his mind ; but let him not mistake them for ends 
 to be satisfied with, and the knowledge of them 
 for a substantial good. Let them teach him 
 rather God's power and his own weakness ; and 
 lead him, through the works, to that clearer re- 
 velation of his will — the word of God, in which 
 is displayed, in all its fulness, his goodness in the 
 redemption of mankind through Jesus Christ, in 
 the means of grace afforded us here, and the hope 
 of glory hereafter. Thus will he be led to ac- 
 knowledge that the system of nature is but the 
 hand-maid to that of Revelation ; and that while 
 the enthusiast would sometimes deprecate human 
 knowledge as if it were in itself a sin, and the 
 rationalist would despise the system of grace, as 
 
96 THE TESTIMONY, &C. 
 
 being but foolishness in his eyes — the scribe in- 
 structed to the kingdom of heaven, can trace, 
 in both, the same divine spirit of unbounded be- 
 nevolence, and, uniting both together, can in 
 all things give God the glory, for the sake of 
 his blessed Son Jesus Christ, our only Saviour 
 and Redeemer. 
 
LECTURE V. 
 
 TESTIMONY OF THE ULTIMATE DESTINY 
 OF THE BODY. 
 
 THE ARGUMENT. 
 
 The importance of the doctrine of the Resurrec- 
 tion of the Body — a peculiar doctrine of the 
 Gospel — shewn to be in accordance with human 
 expectation, though beyond the reach of human 
 sagacity to discover — difficulties as to personal 
 identity discussed — shewn to be those of Philoso- 
 phy and not of Scripture — solution which the 
 doctrine of the Resurrection affords of the silence 
 of Scripture with respect to the condition of the 
 soul as distinct from the body — the Materialist 
 cannot overthrow this doctrine — general observa- 
 tions on the future resurrection of the whole moral 
 man as well as of the body. 
 
LECTURE V 
 
 TESTIMONY OF THE ULTIMATE DESTINY 
 OF THE BODY. 
 
 1. Corinthians, xv. 20. 
 
 NOW IS CHRIST RISEN FROM THE DEAD, AND BECOME THE FIRST 
 FRUITS OF THEM THAT SLEPT. 
 
 The fact proclaimed in the text, that the body 
 of Jesus Christ has risen from the grave, and the 
 inference deduced from it, that the body of every 
 human being shall follow in its train, are subjects 
 which, in themselves and their consequences, in- 
 clude the whole circle of natural and revealed 
 religion. On the event which we this day com- 
 memorate,* rests the truth, and the nature also, of 
 that religion which we hold to be the great and 
 final revelation of the Will of God. Establish 
 this point, and all the rest follows of course — 
 subvert it, and the whole fabric of Christianity 
 crumbles at once into ruin. Both the friends 
 and the enemies of the Gospel have felt this ; 
 and it has accordingly formed the ground on 
 
 * This Lecture was delivered on Easter Sunday. 
 
100 THE TESTIMONY OF THE 
 
 which the most violent struggles for victory have 
 taken place. TVe enter not into the conflict ; 
 for, independent of its being unnecessary to 
 " lay help upon one that is mighty" — the course 
 of our argument permits us to assume the fact 
 which has so often been unanswerably establish- 
 ed. We cannot, indeed, nor should we on a 
 day like this, wholly pass by without notice the 
 present benefits, and glorious anticipations of 
 future good, which the Christian derives from 
 the great doctrine of the resurrection of his 
 blessed master from the grave. From his open- 
 ing tomb springs a light, which illuminates the 
 otherwise mysterious dealings of Providence as 
 with the blaze of day. We see, in this wonder- 
 ful event, the strongest practical proof of the 
 truth of our Saviour's declaration that he was 
 the Son of God. He who vanquished that arm 
 before which the mightiest of the sons of men 
 had hitherto stooped in prostrate submission, 
 and, after a voluntary subjection of himself to all 
 the power of Death, rose, by an effort of his 
 own volition, out of the chambers of his dark 
 prison, and at once assumed the perfect functions 
 of a living man, — has done all that the eyes of 
 mortal men can gaze upon, to convince us of his 
 possessing powers at once incomprehensible and 
 unlimited : all evidence beyond this, of majesty 
 
ULTIMATE DESTINY OF THE BODY. 101 
 
 and might, must be addressed to the faculty of 
 imagination, and the eye of faith. When the 
 timid and doubting disciples saw their Lord once 
 more alive in the flesh, all their fears and misgiv- 
 ings vanished for ever, and they were ready to be- 
 lieve and to do all things, in the full conviction 
 that he who promised, and who commanded, was 
 indeed over all, God blessed for ever. The sun 
 which rose on this memorable morning never 
 more set for them ; but they walked in the light 
 thereof, through all the trials of life, into prison 
 and to death, looking forward in faith to the 
 second and glorious appearing of their Redeemer, 
 when they, whether dead or alive at that final 
 hour, should be caught up together to meet the 
 Lord in the air, and so be ever with the Lord. 
 
 But the course of our argument will not 
 permit us to dwell on these, and innumerable 
 other cheering encouragements which the Chris- 
 tian can derive from the doctrine of his Saviour's 
 Resurrection. We must not forget that our 
 business is with " them that are without ;" and 
 to shew, that those doctrines of the gospel 
 which solve the difficulties of natural religion 
 cannot, at least, be objected to on the ground of 
 incompatibility with that system — that he who 
 
102 THE TESTIMONY OF THE 
 
 is determined to disbelieve the great truths of 
 Christianity, must look anywhere rather than 
 in philosophy, for plausible pretences for his 
 incredulity. 
 
 We take, then, the fact of the future Resur- 
 rection of the Dead, as a peculiar and charac- 
 teristic doctrine of Revelation. This will not be 
 denied. For often as the restless curiosity, and 
 daring conjectures of the human mind may have 
 advanced, either by accident or sound deduction, 
 towards some faint discoveries of the other doc- 
 trines of Revelation, this, of the Resurrection of 
 the Body, constantly as men's inquiries were 
 naturally directed towards that region of specu- 
 lation, seems seldom to have crossed their minds 
 as even a possible issue of things. Even in the 
 Mosaic Revelation it is rather implied than ex- 
 pressly revealed; and though in our Saviour's 
 day it seems to have become, in some sense, a 
 Jewish doctrine, yet it can hardly be said to 
 have been a recognized article of faith, till our 
 Lord himself illustrated its truth, and typified 
 its universality, by rising, in the body, from the 
 grave, and ascending with that body into heaven. 
 Ever since, it has become a corner stone in the 
 Christian creed. Now let us trace, as briefly as 
 
ULTIMATE DESTINY OF THE BODY. 103 
 
 we may, the light which this doctrine throws on 
 various difficulties in natural and moral philoso- 
 phy, both of ancient and moral date. 
 
 No one can have directed his attention to the 
 opinions entertained by the ancients with regard 
 to a future state of existence, without being 
 struck with the changeable sentiments of each 
 individual philosopher, and the confused notions 
 of all. The existence of a spiritual essence in 
 each man's bosom might almost be said to form 
 a part of their universal creed ; but how to 
 dispose of this immaterial particle after it had 
 taken its departure from the body with which it 
 had been associated, was a problem which they 
 were unable to solve either by experience or 
 induction : and the difficulty, to them insuper- 
 able, lay precisely in their necessary ignorance of 
 the resurrection of the body. They could not 
 conceive, nor is it perhaps possible for the mind 
 of man to conceive, the existence of a spirit 
 totally denuded of material accidents, and yet 
 performing all the functions which are necessary 
 to percipient and intelligent existence. When 
 the mind attempts to embrace the idea of such a 
 spirit, it necessarily clothes it, in imagination at 
 least, with some corporeal substance and definite 
 shape; — we picture the ghost of our departed 
 
104 THE TESTIMONY OF THE 
 
 friend in his fashion as he lived. The early 
 Christians, as we learn from Tertuliian, were 
 wont to assign a body of inconceivable lightness 
 to the spirits of the deceased; and the ancients 
 gave their own well-known forms and features to 
 their heroes and sages, whom they represented, 
 with a pleasing departure from their own prin- 
 ciples of philosophy, as enjoying a life of happi- 
 ness beyond the grave, They felt that the soul 
 without a body would be totally unintelligible as 
 to its modes of action ; and therefore they either 
 sent it from one corporeal form to another, with 
 such gradations in dignity as seemed to them to 
 befit its moral conduct in a previous state of 
 existence ; or they at once absorbed it in the 
 Divinity, of which the major part of them held 
 it to be but a particle and emanation. There 
 appeared to them no alternative but either to 
 merge the individual existence of the soul in the 
 Divine essence, or to assign to it some bodily 
 form through which it might exercise its spiritual 
 energies. The doctrine of the Transmigration of 
 Souls appears, in truth, to be but a complex 
 substitute for that of the Resurrection, planned 
 by the ingenuity of man in the helplessness 
 of his ignorance, and executed with a degree 
 of " wild justice" as to the relative assignment 
 of a new body to each separate spirit, which 
 
ULTIMATE DESTINY OF THE BODY. 105 
 
 shows how natural is the expectation of a future 
 state of rewards and punishments to the heart 
 of man. How acceptable, then, to men in this 
 state of perplexity, would have been the re- 
 velation of the true doctrine of the Resur- 
 rection of the Dead ; and how instantaneously 
 would it have approved itself to their con- 
 victions, by answering at once all the condi- 
 tions which their philosophy had taught them 
 were required for a future state of existence in 
 any degree analogous to the present constitution 
 of humanity.* They would now no longer feel 
 the necessity of absorbing the immaterial part of 
 man in the Divine substance, as a future and 
 independent sphere of active existence was al- 
 ready provided for it. Nor would they be driven 
 to transfer its scene of moral and intellectual 
 action from body to body as instruments of its 
 trial and retribution, when they were informed 
 that that identical body — identical so far as 
 moral responsibility is concerned — which had 
 been its instrument and accomplice in acting 
 and suffering while on earth, and which they 
 had seen mouldering and withering into dust, 
 should hereafter be raised again from the grave ; 
 and, having been fitted once more, by a glorious 
 process of regeneration, to be the receptacle 
 of a spiritual Influence, should become the 
 
 * Sec note L, ;i( the end. 
 
106 THE TESTIMONY OF THE 
 
 companion of its former associate, in weal or 
 woe, through an eternal and unchangeable 
 existence. 
 
 While, therefore, the inability of the utmost 
 efforts of the human mind to discover this doc- 
 trine, ] proves that the ultimate revelation of it 
 must have been from heaven ; its close harmony, 
 when revealed, with the very wants and wishes 
 of philosophy, shews that it had its emanation 
 from the benevolence of that Divine Being, 
 whose knowledge of man's deficiencies is as 
 boundless, as his readiness and ability to relieve 
 them. We cannot but often wish, — however 
 vain and perhaps unjustifiable may be the feel- 
 ing, that this doctrine of the Resurrection of the 
 Body had been at least obscurely intimated to 
 some of the wisest of the sages of old. What a 
 sober hue it would have thrown over their fever- 
 ish aspirations after this world's wisdom and dis- 
 tinctions ! How it would have calmed their 
 troubled spirits, when the unequal fortunes or 
 untimely fates of the good and great led them 
 sometimes almost to doubt the existence of a 
 moral government in the affairs of men ; and, in 
 their last hours, how soothing to them would 
 have been the assurance, that it was neither to a 
 state of annihilation, nor of a degraded existence, 
 that they were now passing, but to one where. 
 
ULTIMATE DESTINY OF THE BODY. 107 
 
 united to a glorified body, they would be per- 
 mitted to continue, as it were, the analogy of 
 their present mode of being, but with added 
 capacities of enjoyment, and clearer perceptions 
 of the wisdom and goodness of their Almighty 
 Creator ! But this light was, doubtless for wise 
 purposes, withheld from their eyes — one of them 
 being clearly this : to teach us, who enjoy this 
 inestimable privilege, to walk worthy of it, in 
 every good word and work ! 
 
 As the whole drift of our argument is, to shew 
 that the doctrines of Revelation, independent of 
 their own intrinsic worth, tend at the same time 
 to throw lidit on the difficulties in which natu- 
 ral and moral philosophy are confessedly involv- 
 ed ; it is only the part of an honest advocate to 
 point out where the converse of the proposition 
 may appear to hold good, and to obviate or 
 to acknowledge the force of the objection. It is 
 well known, that this doctrine of the resurrection 
 of the body, has given occasion to discussions, 
 both friendly and hostile, as to its compatibility 
 with the known laws of nature, and the possi- 
 bility of each dead body being finally restored 
 from the grave in its strict and individual iden- 
 tity. Even supposing this to be a necessary 
 condition, the question still remains to be asked, 
 
108 THE TESTIMONY OF THE 
 
 in what does strict identity of person consist? 
 Now though it may not be easy to convey accu- 
 rately the idea of personal identity, we may 
 safely venture to assert, that it does not consist 
 in the mere insensate particles of which the 
 body is composed. When we judge of the iden- 
 tity of other men, simply by external appear- 
 ance, it is by the conformation of parts, and 
 their correspondence in effect with the idea of 
 them already impressed upon the mind, that we 
 determine the question, — the particles themselves 
 are never once taken, nor can they be taken, 
 into the account ; and, in like manner, when we 
 judge of our own identity, the substance of 
 which our bodies may have been composed at 
 different periods, is never once in our contempla- 
 tion ; we determine the point by the question — 
 are we the person who thought, felt, or acted in 
 a particular manner at a particular period ? and, 
 if so, we hold ourselves to be personally the 
 same at that time and the present. The main 
 difficulty seems to have arisen from confounding 
 personal with actual identity ; — concerning the 
 latter, there can be no dispute ; but personal 
 identity has been well denned to be " the same- 
 ness of a rational being"', and to fulfil the terms 
 of such a definition, no continuation of material 
 parts seems in the smallest degree requisite. 
 
ULTIMATE DESTINY OF THE BODY. 109 
 
 Now the perpetuation to every man of this per- 
 sonal identity, this sameness of a rational being, 
 is, as we have shewn, apparently necessary for 
 the future agency of the soul in any condition of 
 things at all analagous to the present. It forms, 
 likewise, a part of an equitable distribution of 
 future rewards and punishments that the ivhole 
 man should be responsible for his past actions ; 
 and, when his consciousness of their moral cha- 
 racter shall be rendered perfect, should concur in 
 the justice, and participate in the effects, of his 
 final sentence. Man, in this collective sense, as 
 a rational being, consists of various faculties, 
 some peculiar to himself, and others which he 
 has in common with the lower animals ; but all 
 of them either agents or instruments in his 
 moral probation, and, so far, all apparently re- 
 quisite to complete our notion of his personal 
 identity ; but beyond this, neither reason nor 
 revelation requires us to go, in maintaining the 
 doctrine of the resurrection of the body. 
 
 It is worthy of our special notice, that the 
 phrases " resurrection of the body" and " resur- 
 rection of the flesh," are expressions which are 
 not to be found in scripture. They are inserted, 
 and most properly, in our ancient creeds, as ex- 
 pressive of doctrines which are fairly deducible 
 
110 THE TESTIMONY OF THE 
 
 from the language of scripture ; but they are not 
 to be interpreted as if the Church meant to pledge 
 her faith to the notion that identity of particles 
 will be maintained at the resurrection, but simply 
 that we, in our collective sense as men, shall be 
 raised from the dead, and not that the resurrec- 
 tion is a mere figure, as some would say, and 
 " past already," or that the soul will have an 
 eternal existence apart from the body. TVe (is 
 the scripture phrase, and the word expresses all 
 that we require to know) we shall be raised, and 
 we shall be changed. " This corruptible shall put 
 on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on im- 
 mortality." Viewed in this light, the scripture 
 doctrine of the resurrection of the dead not only 
 involves no consideration at which reason should 
 cavil, but fully harmonizes with her own princi- 
 ples and deductions ; and it is an additional testi- 
 mony to the divine origin of this most important 
 doctrine, that in the revelation of it, those very 
 difficulties have been escaped, with which even 
 its friends and believers, with the light of scrip- 
 ture before them, have not unfrequently been 
 entangled. 
 
 In close connection with this doctrine of the 
 Resurrection, and as another proof of its being 
 a divine revelation, let us dwell for a moment 
 
ULTIMATE DESTINY OF THE BODY. Ill 
 
 upon the solution which it affords of the remark- 
 able silence maintained in scripture concerning 
 the history of the soul as distinct from the body. 
 
 It has often been observed, that the inspiration 
 and heavenly guidance of the sacred writers may 
 be traced almost as clearly in what they have 
 not, as in what they have revealed ; the natural 
 curiosity of man being so strongly directed to- 
 wards some topics with which the subjects on 
 which they wrote brought them necessarily into 
 connexion, that it required a restraint beyond 
 the bounds of mere human prudence to withhold 
 them from dropping some hint as to matters 
 which might, with so much plausibility, have 
 been elucidated. The nature of the soul, and its 
 modes of existence and of operation, have formed 
 the subjects of anxious speculation throughout 
 all ages of the world. They seem questions of 
 much interest to ourselves, and on which some 
 light might fairly be looked for in the word of 
 Revelation. Yet they are veiled in the closest 
 and most studious darkness. Not a ray of light 
 is thrown upon them from one end of the Bible to 
 the other. It is with man, the compound being, 
 that the scriptures have, all along, to do. It 
 is of a creature composed of Reason and Will, of 
 sentiments and feelings, and with external organs 
 
112 THE TESTIMONY OF THE 
 
 adapted for the developement of these faculties, 
 that they constantly treat. They never separate 
 this being into his component parts, but treat 
 him constantly as an undivided whole. They 
 describe to us his original creation — dust breathed 
 into life by the breath of the Almighty; — they 
 trace his history, a mixture, like himself, of good 
 and evil ; — they expose to him his corrupt nature ; 
 — they propound to him a complete remedy; — 
 and they prescribe for him rules of conduct, 
 adapted to his condition, from the cradle to the 
 grave ; — and there they leave him. Though every 
 page of the Bible seems to imply the existence 
 of the soul as distinct from the body, yet no 
 essential doctrine of the Gospel is made to rest 
 upon that distinction ; it deals with us as men of 
 a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting; 
 and all its rules are applicable to this intimate 
 conjunction of flesh and spirit. 
 
 Now nothing can be more wise than such a 
 mode of proceeding as this. Since we have no 
 experience of any other condition of existence 
 than the present, we see at once that any rules 
 or any revelation with regard to the soul as 
 distinct from the body would be altogether use- 
 less and misplaced. To what unknown regions 
 the disembodied spirit may wander, or what may 
 
ULTIMATE DESTINY OF THE BODY. 113 
 
 be its condition as to enjoyment or existence, 
 may be questions of speculative interest ; but, 
 as they have nothing to do with the state of 
 humanity, they are most properly omitted in a 
 system of revelation wherein humanity is alone 
 concerned. All that we know of a truth with 
 regard to the condition of the departed, is this — 
 that "Blessed are the dead which die in the 
 Lord. Even so, saith the Spirit ; for they rest 
 from their labours." But though scripture leaves 
 man in the grave, when considered as a proba- 
 tionary being, it does not leave him there for 
 ever. After an undefined interval the man is 
 re-composed once more ; and silent as revelation 
 had been with regard to his history during this 
 period of his dissolution, it takes up the narrative 
 again with its wonted distinctness of language, 
 when the voice of the archangel's trumpet shall 
 penetrate the dull ear of death. Then shall 
 the man be once more reunited in all his facul- 
 ties and powers — but they will be all magnified 
 in intensity, and closely cemented together by 
 the bonds of immortality. The body of earth 
 will be exchanged for a heavenly tabernacle, and 
 time (man's former confined sphere of action) 
 will be swallowed up in eternity. The history 
 now closes in a general but glorious description 
 of man's future destiny, when united with his 
 
114 THE TESTIMONY OF THE 
 
 Lord ; who, having taken the manhood into God, 
 is thus fitted to reign over his household the 
 Church, — as at once its Master and Redeemer, — 
 for ever and ever. 
 
 Nor let the Materialist himself — if any such in 
 truth there be — the man who, in his philosophi- 
 cal researches, has arrived at the conclusion that 
 mind is but a peculiar modification of matter, 
 and intellect the result of organization — let not 
 such an one suppose that he is drawing from 
 nature an argument against the system of grace. 
 If he be sincere, he need not dread lest his con- 
 victions should place him beyond the pale of the 
 Gospel ; if he be but guided by a perverse and 
 self-satisfied incredulity, let him not hope that 
 such a plea will exempt him from the obligations 
 of Christianity ! His notions may militate against 
 the tenour of Scripture language, as well as the 
 common sense and general convictions of man- 
 kind — men may wonder how the philosopher 
 could bring himself to believe that any colloca- 
 tion of material particles whatever could produce 
 (what no experience of our own seems to shew 
 that they have any tendency to produce) Reason, 
 and Will, and passions, and feelings, and all the 
 other phenomena of the living man — but there is 
 nothing in his opinions which necessarily inca- 
 
ULTIMATE DESTINY OF THE BODY. 115 
 
 pacitates him from the duty of believing the 
 doctrines of Scripture — unless it be that mental 
 aberration in physical science is but too often a 
 foreboding sign of laxity on religious questions. 
 It is not as being possessed of an immaterial soul 
 that Scripture constantly addresses itself to man, 
 but as being a rational creature — as a being- 
 capable of distinguishing between right and 
 wrong, and therefore responsible for his conduct. 
 Could therefore the Materialist establish this 
 most unreasonable of all doctrines, at least to his 
 own satisfaction, he would by no means thereby 
 escape the responsibility to which his conscience 
 still confesses itself to be liable — for the Scrip- 
 ture tells us that the body shall rise again. Be 
 it, then, that the mind is material, — it shall be re- 
 suscitated at the last day, and so become capable 
 of eternal punishment or reward. And surely the 
 very last person to deny the possibility of this re- 
 surrection must be the man, whose notions of the 
 capabilities of matter are so exalted, as to permit 
 him to believe that all the wonderful effects of 
 thought, and mind, and feeling, which we see ex- 
 hibited by the living and rational creation, are 
 but the result of various combinations of insensible 
 atoms. The very existence of moral beings 
 so constituted, must be to him a much greater 
 miracle than their future revival from the dead. 
 His faith is much more strongly exercised with 
 
116 THE TESTIMONY OF THE 
 
 that which is present, than by any revelation in 
 Scripture of that which is to come. According 
 .to his own theory, the future resurrection must 
 be the most natural and probable of all conse- 
 quences. The difficulty, with him, would be to 
 suppose, that rational beings of such curious and 
 ingenious mechanism, should have been con- 
 structed for so transient a period as the present 
 life; and the intelligence that he would most 
 reasonably expect to receive, would be that 
 which he finds in Scripture — that this machinery, 
 though for the present disordered, shall here- 
 after be recomposed upon a more perfect princi- 
 ple,, and with additional capabilities and powers. 
 Nor would he dare to call himself an unbeliever, 
 simply because he had taken up a false theory in 
 philosophy. 
 
 It would appear, then, that the doctrine of the 
 Resurrection of the Body has the strongest claims 
 upon the admiration of the Philosopher as well 
 as the reverence of the Divine ; and that in 
 approaching the consideration of it, no prostra- 
 tion of the understanding or " voluntary humi- 
 lity" is required, but that it challenges investi- 
 gation as a fact which unties the knot of many 
 physical and moral difficulties, as well as in- 
 structs the mind in an essential religious truth- 
 It is found to explain the contradictions of an- 
 
ULTIMATE DESTINY OF THE BODY. 117 
 
 cient psychological controversy, and to evade the 
 subtle questions of identity, and of materialism, 
 — while it strengthens the faith and elevates the 
 hopes of the sincere believer in Revelation. 
 
 It is, indeed, in this latter respect, that the 
 pious Christian will principally regard it ; and 
 while he leaves it to the sceptic to weigh its 
 bearings simply as a matter of evidence, he em- 
 braces it within his own heart by faith, as a doc- 
 trine which fills his bosom at once with encour- 
 agement and fear. It is encouraging to him to 
 feel that the apparent inequalities as to good and 
 evil which are allotted to man on this side the 
 grave, will doubtless be rendered equal in another 
 and higher state of existence ; and that he can 
 thus answer to his own mind any casual mis- 
 givings which may occasionally spring up within 
 it, as to the complete justice and benevolence of 
 the Supreme Governor of the Universe. But 
 this feeling of encouragement will not be unat- 
 tended with a sentiment of holy fear, when he 
 recollects that the period to which he is thus 
 looking will be a Resurrection of the body — of 
 the whole man — not merely a continuation but a 
 rehearsal of his whole past state of being. He 
 then calls to mind that he is immortal, not only 
 as to the duration, but as to every circumstance 
 
118 THE TESTIMONY OF THE 
 
 of his existence. Every action of his life in 
 which a moral principle has been developed, 
 shall be raised, as it were from the dead, and 
 form a constituent and inseparable portion of 
 himself, to be enjoyed in its holy results, or to 
 be endured in its evil tendencies, for ever ! 
 What watchful care, then, ought we to exercise 
 over every moral act of our lives. These actions 
 are seeds which never die. They may disappear 
 from our sight, and our memory ; but they will 
 spring up again hereafter with immortal vigour, 
 and form an integral part of that collective man 
 which shall be raised hereafter from the grave ! 
 Well, therefore, may we pray fervently, with all 
 supplication in the Spirit, that all evil desires 
 may be rooted out of our hearts by grace, and 
 that the fruits of purity and holiness may flourish 
 there, and abound. It is here that we must be 
 forgiven, it is here that we must be cleansed — 
 hereafter, is the day of recompense. "Know- 
 ing," therefore, brethren, " that Christ being 
 raised from the dead, dieth no more ; death 
 hath no more dominion over him ; for in that 
 he died, he died unto sin once, but in that he 
 liveth, he liveth unto God; likewise reckon 
 ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, 
 but alive unto God, through Jesus Christ our 
 Lord !" 
 
LECTURE VI. 
 
 TESTIMONY OF THE RELATION OF MAN TO 
 EXTERNAL THINGS. 
 
 THE ARGUMENT. 
 
 Proofs of our proposition deduced from the 
 relation of man to the external world — uncer- 
 tainty and change every where prevail in the exter- 
 nal world — Rationalist theory that this condition 
 formed part of the original design — objections to 
 this theory — leant of progression in natural things, 
 and deductions from them unjust to the character of 
 the Deity — a passage of Scripture expounded as 
 containing a just view of the present condition of 
 the external world, by linking it with the moral 
 condition of man — the relation of external things to 
 the body shewn to be analogous to the relation of 
 Scripture to the soul — each teaches an appropriate 
 lesson, and the second takes us up where the first 
 deserts us. 
 
LECTURE VI. 
 
 TESTIMONY OF THE RELATION OF MAN 
 TO EXTERNAL THINGS. 
 
 Romans^ viii. 19, 20, 21. 
 
 FOR THE EARNEST EXPECTATION OF THE CREATURE WAITETH FOR 
 THE MANIFESTATION OF THE SONS OF GOD. FOR THE CREATURE 
 WAS MADE SUBJECT TO VANITY, NOT WILLINGLY, BUT BY REASON 
 OF HIM WHO HATH SUBJECTED THE SAME IN HOPE, BECAUSE 
 THE CREATURE ITSELF ALSO SHALL BE DELIVERED FROM THE 
 BONDAGE OF CORRUPTION INTO THE GLORIOUS LIBERTY OF THE 
 CHILDREN OF GOD. 
 
 The testimony to the truth of the great doctrines 
 of Christianity which arises out of their adap- 
 tation to the wants of man, and the deficiencies 
 of his natural powers, has already been traced 
 through various departments of an almost bound- 
 less subject. The results of moral philosophy 
 have been shown to form but elements to the 
 great moral revelations of the Gospel; the intel- 
 lectual powers have confessed themselves un- 
 equal to the duty of forming and controling the 
 human character, and becoming a perfect rule of 
 life ; the great doctrine of the Resurrection has 
 been found to be in advance of the whole system 
 of Philosophy, while, in a religious point of 
 
122 THE TESTIMONY OF THE 
 
 view, it reconciles difficulties and awakens spi- 
 ritual hopes, of the very last importance to 
 mankind. Evidence of this nature has been 
 dwelt upon with the more earnestness, because 
 it appears to be of that kind which is least liable 
 to suspicion — the unwilling testimony of a rival. 
 If the systems which men produce as substitutes 
 for the doctrines of the gospel, appear to prove, 
 at best, little more than the necessity for those 
 very doctrines, all feeling of jealousy or rivalry 
 towards such systems is extinguished, and a sup- 
 posed enemy is at once converted into a friend. 
 It is as when Balaam himself was heard, however 
 unwillingly, to utter the language of inspiration, 
 or as when " Saul also" was found " among the 
 prophets." 
 
 Let us then proceed with this our view (cur- 
 sory as, indeed, it must needs be) through other 
 branches of knowledge ; and deduce the same 
 important conclusions, as we do not despair to 
 do, from comparing the doctrines of scripture 
 with the human mind and constitution, as they 
 each relate to the race of man and the external 
 universe. Let us view mankind, in the first 
 place, with reference to the world around them ; 
 secondly, with reference to their intercourse and 
 connexion with each other ; and lastly, with re- 
 
RELATION OF MAN TO EXTERNAL THINGS. 123 
 
 gard to the construction and condition of their 
 own minds ; and see how, in each of these rela- 
 tions, the moral state of man is advanced, and 
 the defects of the relation itself remedied, by 
 the doctrines of the gospel. 
 
 First, then, with regard to the external world. 
 We find ourselves placed upon a globe of earth, 
 vast, massy, and durable ; yet every thing be- 
 yond the mere substratum itself, all its develope- 
 ments of life and organization, seem subject, by 
 some universal law, to constant fluctuation and 
 change. There is no such thing in nature as 
 perpetual progression and advancement. The 
 growth of yesterday leads but to the maturity 
 of to-day, which to-morrow is succeeded by inci- 
 pient corruption and decline. We have promises 
 of good everywhere, their fulfilment nowhere. 
 Nature exhibits to us on all sides her capacities 
 — she shews us specimens of what she is able 
 to effect — she displays before our eyes models 
 of heavenly beauty and perfection, and yet, with 
 a strange and capricious prodigality of creative 
 power, produces but to destroy, and multiplies 
 only to mar, successive races endowed with an 
 incomprehensible vitality ; and which, after being 
 moulded by a Hand of infinite plastic power, are 
 
124 THE TESTIMONY OF THE 
 
 all alike touched by the blighting fingers of im- 
 perfection and decay. 
 
 This anomalous condition of things, which 
 none can deny, it has been one occupation of 
 thoughtful men, in all ages of the world, to 
 account for ; and attempts have been made, 
 sometimes to reconcile it with the absolute 
 knowledge, wisdom, and power of a Creator, 
 and sometimes to throw difficulties in the way 
 of that doctrine, according to the previous bias 
 or prejudices of the reasoner. It appears to 
 be at present, — if we may employ a word which 
 perhaps gives the best philosophical account of 
 the prevalence of any particular mode of reason- 
 ing or thinking, — it seems to be at present the 
 fashion with the rationalist to adopt neither the 
 one nor the other of these courses of argument ; 
 neither to attempt to prove or to disprove the 
 existence of such a Being ; but rather to take the 
 constitution of things as it appears to actual 
 experiment and observation, and, without calling 
 any other element into consideration, from thence 
 to draw deductions, which, in his view, ought to 
 meet and satisfy all the ends of philosophy and 
 religion. Hear the language of one, widely read 
 and popular in his generation, who may fairly be 
 
RELATION OF MAN TO EXTERNAL THINGS. 125 
 
 selected from his brethren as a type and represen- 
 tative of their opinions : — " In our own country," 
 says he, " two views of the constitution of the 
 world and of human nature" (it is with the 
 former that we have at present to do) " have 
 long been prevalent, differing widely from each 
 other, and which, if legitimately followed out, 
 would lead to distinct practical results. The one 
 is, that the world, including both the physical 
 and moral departments, contains within itself the 
 elements of improvement, which time will evolve 
 and bring to maturity ; it having been consti- 
 tuted by the Creator on the principle of a pro- 
 gressive system, like the acorn in reference to 
 the oak. This hypothesis ascribes to the power 
 and wisdom of the Divine Being the whole phe- 
 nomena which nature, animate and inanimate, 
 
 exhibits The other hypothesis is, that the 
 
 world was perfect at first, but fell into derange- 
 ment, continues in disorder, and does not con- 
 tain within itself the elements of its own recti- 
 fication."* We may here remark that as the 
 writer above quoted professes to be a Christian, 
 he the more fitly represents the notions which 
 we are combating, when he so flippantly styles 
 " an hypothesis " that which we recognise as a 
 plain declaration of Scripture ! 
 
 * Combe, on the Constitution of Man. 
 
126 THE TESTIMONY OF THE 
 
 According, then, to this theory, " the physical 
 departments of the world contain within them- 
 selves the elements of improvement ;" but where 
 is the proof? Do we learn from history, or do 
 we observe around us, any tokens of advance- 
 ment in physical things, or signs of their possess- 
 ing within themselves any such powers as are 
 here ascribed to them ? Have we, in truth, one 
 good reason to suppose — nay have we not, 
 rather, the strongest grounds for denying, that 
 the earth has exercised any more vigorous 
 powers of production since the day when she 
 first obliterated the desolation caused by the 
 universal Deluge? And with respect to her 
 productions themselves, whether animate or not, 
 do they possess those powers which we do not 
 discover in the source from whence they spring ? 
 Do we see the vegetable kingdom gradually ad- 
 vancing in vigour and excellence through suc- 
 cessive years? Do the various races of animated 
 beings transmit to their progeny qualities which 
 they themselves do not possess, or give any 
 tokens of an inherent tendency to advance to- 
 wards the perfection of their nature ? Certainly 
 not. The whole creation, in these respects, 
 seems to be at least stationary. It passes through 
 the same cycles, of a mixed character of excel- 
 lence and imperfection, in which it has, to all 
 
RELATION OF MAN TO EXTERNAL THINGS. 127 
 
 appearance, revolved from the earliest times ; 
 nor does it show any symptoms of a capacity to 
 develope new principles, and fresh modes and 
 powers of action, were its duration to be that 
 of eternity. 
 
 Now, according to the above quoted authority, 
 the rationalist " hypothesis ascribes to the power 
 and wisdom of the Divine Being the whole phe- 
 nomena which nature, animate and inanimate, 
 exhibits ; because in conferring on each part the 
 specific qualities and constitution which belong 
 to it, and in placing it in the circumstances in 
 which it is found, he is assumed to have designed, 
 from the very first, the whole results, which these 
 qualities, constitution, and circumstances, are 
 calculated in time to produce." If, then, there 
 be in nature no innate powers of advancement 
 and progression, we see before us all that the 
 Creator designed to effect. The revolutions of 
 time cannot, in these respects, throw any addi- 
 tional light on his attributes ; and we should be 
 justified in arguing as to the extent of his wisdom, 
 power, and goodness, from the mixed exhibitions 
 of them which we see around us. How perplex- 
 ing would be such a process to the mind, and, I 
 may add, how unjust to the Divine Artificer 
 would be conclusions drawn from such premises 
 
128 THE TESTIMONY OF THE 
 
 — no honest reasoner will hesitate to admit. If 
 this be the last result of philosophical discovery, 
 we are almost tempted to draw from it another, 
 though a melancholy argument, on the other side 
 of the question ; and assert that the human mind, 
 like the animal and vegetable creation, when 
 left to the exercise of its own powers, possesses 
 within itself no principle of advancement in wis- 
 dom, or even in experience ! For who will deny, 
 that the philosophers of old, heathen, and there- 
 fore ignorant though they were, did not hesitate 
 to take higher principles than these into their 
 reasonings, and drew loftier conclusions respect- 
 ing the attributes of the Divinity from their pre- 
 mises, than can ever be deduced from considering 
 the present condition of the material universe as 
 the highest evidence of the powers and capacities 
 of its Creator ? The Utilitarian system is, in 
 truth, but a retrogressive movement from the 
 high station to which unaided Intellectual Phi- 
 losophy had already advanced. Philosophy, in 
 this shape, has indeed vacated the throne of its 
 power ; and is but as the great king Nebuchad- 
 nezzar driven from men, and with a beast's heart, 
 eating the grass of the field ! 
 
 Let us turn, then, to Scripture for the eluci- 
 dation of a subject on which it does not profess 
 
RELATION OF MAN TO EXTERNAL THINGS. 129 
 
 directly to treat, and in regard to a question 
 on which its rays can fall but obliquely, for they 
 are intended to illustrate truths of an infinitely 
 loftier import. But Scripture can " feed the 
 hungry soul" with spiritual food, and yet "the 
 fragments that remain" may be found to satisfy 
 the appetite of a meagre philosophy. It is 
 seldom indeed that the word of God uplifts the 
 veil with which the operations of nature are 
 shrouded. They are left to man to unfold ; that 
 he may learn humility from his failure, and 
 adoration in his success. But glimpses are some- 
 times afforded, of such a character as to shew, 
 that the same Spirit which has laid bare the 
 workings of the soul of man, could have revealed 
 the whole construction of the material frame- 
 work with which it is surrounded, had it been 
 his object to " tell us of earthly things," and not, 
 rather, to " make us wise unto salvation." 
 
 The portion of Scripture which has in part 
 been quoted in the text, has always been con- 
 sidered to be as obscure as it is important ; and 
 different interpretations will probably continue 
 to be assigned to it, according to the general 
 views which may be taken of the main drift of 
 the context. But its most literal and obvious 
 meaning, — which is not seldom found to be that 
 
130 THE TESTIMONY OF THE 
 
 nearest the truth, — is one which throws a light 
 on the question before us, which for its con- 
 sistency with actual experience and probable 
 reasoning, is not likely to be eclipsed by the 
 discoveries of philosophy falsely so called. The 
 whole bearing of the Apostle's argument, in this 
 part of his Epistle, is to shew the paramount 
 importance of the spirit over the flesh. The 
 spirit of man purified by the spirit of Christ, 
 is, throughout, contrasted with the carnal man 
 weighed down by the external world. As the 
 Holy Ghost is the instrument of the soul's 
 restoration, so was the corruption of the soul 
 the cause of the deterioration of material things. 
 With the spirit, fell the body, of man; and that 
 still more remote appendage to humanity — the 
 whole visible creation. "Cursed is the ground" — 
 cursed is the whole system of things — " for thy 
 sake." And the Apostle seems to intimate — 
 darkly, indeed, for perhaps no moral purpose 
 could be answered by a clearer revelation — that 
 this materia] system is closely linked to the spi- 
 ritual condition of man in its restoration as well as 
 fall ; and that the new heavens and the new earth 
 will accompany the glorified state of the regene- 
 rated Church of Christ, by the same analogy as the 
 Paradise of Adam disappeared with his primitive 
 innocence, and as the old world shall perish with 
 
RELATION OF MAN TO EXTERNAL THINGS. 131 
 
 our decayed bodily frames, which we shall put 
 away for ever at the final resurrection of the 
 just. Physical is thus represented as subservient 
 to, and in close connexion with Moral nature ; 
 and the anomalies of the one are to be explained 
 by the history of the other. Let us at least, 
 for a moment contemplate the passage under 
 this view ; and we shall discover a consistency 
 with itself and with sound philosophy running 
 through the whole, which it is difficult to trace 
 on any other principle of interpretation. 
 
 "For I reckon," says the Apostle, "that the 
 sufferings of this present time are not worthy to 
 be compared with the glory which shall be re- 
 vealed in us : " That is : It is my clear convic- 
 tion, that the whole mass of evil which attaches 
 to the present condition of things, and of which 
 man is the cause, bears no comparison whatever 
 to the glory which shall hereafter, and also 
 through man, be developed. " For the earnest 
 expectation of the creature" (or rather of the 
 creation) " waiteth for the manifestation of the 
 sons of God :" that is, the period when evil shall 
 be removed from the material universe depends 
 upon the time when the children of God, as 
 joint-heirs with Christ, shall be finally glorified 
 together with him. And the reason of this de- 
 
132 THE TESTIMONY OF THE 
 
 pendence follows : " for the creation was made 
 subject to vanity (i. e. corruption and decay, — 
 juuwenoTuTi,) — " not willingly, but by reason of him 
 who hath subjected the same in hope, because 
 the creation itself also shall be delivered from 
 the bondage of corruption into the glorious 
 liberty of the children of God." That is, — the 
 corruption which exists in the world originated 
 not from its own defect, but in consequence of 
 man's transgression ; and as he fell in hope, so 
 shall creation also be a partaker of this hope, so 
 far as to be entitled to a liberation from the 
 power of evil, along with the restoration of him 
 through whom the evil came. For none, even 
 the best, shall be entirely freed from it till that 
 happy moment arrive. This corruption doth 
 remain, yea, even in them that are regenerate : 
 and it is with this idea, that the Apostle sums 
 up and concludes his remarkable argument : " For 
 we know that the whole creation groaneth and 
 travaileth in pain together until now, and not 
 only they, but ourselves also, which have the 
 first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan 
 within ourselves, waiting for the adoption — to 
 wit, the redemption of our body." 
 
 Hence, then, it would seem that the doctrine 
 of the Fall of man — a fundamental and peculiar 
 
RELATION OF MAN TO EXTERNAL THINGS. 133 
 
 doctrine of Scripture — is the best key to the 
 difficulties which spring out of the imperfections 
 pervading physical nature. The undeniable exist- 
 ence of the latter gives probability to the re- 
 corded history of the former ; while that history, 
 connecting man in a moral point of view, as we 
 know he is naturally connected, with external 
 things, opens out expectations and prospects with 
 regard to the ultimate destiny of creation, and 
 suggests arguments as to the wise and compre- 
 hensive, yet most mysterious dealings of the 
 Almighty with his creatures, which enlarge while 
 they oppress the mind. Whether it be true, 
 as some have conjectured, that modern science 
 has traced a gradual progression from the com- 
 mencement (for progression proves a commence- 
 ment) in the character and qualities of the 
 animal and vegetable world ; and that this pro- 
 gression was continued through an indefinite 
 period of time, till the earth was fitted for the 
 reception of its destined Governor ; — or whether 
 this notion be a dream arising from our com- 
 paring too closely the operations of God with the 
 operations of man ; — still, the main point remains 
 unshaken, — that that condition, to which nature 
 had either gradually arrived, or in which it was 
 originally created, was blighted and deteriorated 
 by the Fall of man. It ceased, then, to advance 
 
134 THE TESTIMONY OF THE 
 
 towards maturity, or even to maintain its previ- 
 ous acquisitions; — its best productions, its sole 
 improvements, are now the result of that labour 
 of man which formed part of the curse upon his 
 transgression ; it thus harmonizes in its character 
 with the imperfect being of which it is the appro- 
 priate dwelling-place ; it will pass away, like 
 him, at a future period of time ; and be replaced 
 by a fairer paradise, when he himself, in the 
 Regeneration, shall be fitted for a nobler habita- 
 tion. 
 
 There is another, and a distinct point of view, 
 in which the relation of man to the external 
 world may be considered ; and from which con- 
 clusions in favour of the doctrines of Scripture, 
 both as being analogous and superior to that re- 
 lation, may be legitimately deduced. The only 
 way in which the connection between us and 
 material things can be cultivated and improved 
 to any noble and really beneficial purpose, is 
 through the operations of the mind. The physi- 
 cal connection between the two is capable of but 
 little variation ; and these variations, where they 
 do occur, depend upon circumstances over which 
 man has little control. It is over the mind of 
 man that external objects exercise their widest 
 influence. It is to the mind that they appeal in 
 
RELATION OF MAN TO EXTERNAL THINGS. 135 
 
 all their multifarious manifestations of utility and 
 beauty. Whilst their effects on the bodily powers 
 are governed by some almost unchangeable law, 
 those upon the mind are infinite, according to 
 the degree or the powers of observation which 
 it may employ upon their wonderful processes. 
 It may be gradually expanded and strengthened 
 by following the operations of nature in all their 
 intricate combinations and almost inexplicable 
 results, till it is enabled to catch some faint 
 notion of their general principles, and to adore 
 if not to comprehend the plans of the first great 
 Artificer. But all this results from the opera- 
 tions of the mind alone. It is with the mind, 
 that man extracts the beneficial uses of nature ; 
 it is through the mind, that nature speaks to 
 man : and is not this in complete analogy with 
 the way in which Scripture proposes to benefit 
 the human race ? Scripture may be styled, the 
 soul's external world. It is as necessary, and as 
 completely adapted to the spiritual life and well- 
 being of the Christian, as material things to the 
 present condition of humanity. All that we see 
 around us in nature, is clearly devised to be in 
 harmonious union with the present state and struc- 
 ture of man, and would be inconsistent with any 
 other conceivable modification of our being ; and 
 all that we read in the word of God, is, in like 
 
136 THE TESTIMONY OF THE 
 
 manner, equally adapted to the present condition 
 of the soul of man. That word betrays such a 
 knowledge of the secret springs of human action, 
 and appeals so invariably to the higher and nobler 
 motives, as to shew at once the wisdom and 
 goodness of its author ; and to prove undeniably, 
 that the same intelligence which constructed the 
 material universe to be an appropriate habitation 
 for humanity, designed also and revealed the 
 scheme of revelation, to be, as it were, a spiritual 
 dwelling-place and home of rest for the soul. 
 
 Both nature and revelation then, are indeed 
 adapted to the state of man ; and both appeal to 
 the mind : but how different is the extent of the 
 information which they respectively convey, on 
 those subjects which are confessedly of the highest 
 interest to mankind ! We may, indeed, by the 
 study of nature, arrive at some faint notion of 
 the existence and attributes of the great First 
 Cause ; we can detect some of the laws which he 
 has impressed upon physical, vital, and moral 
 existences ; but since all these, as at present de- 
 veloped, are confessedly imperfect, any deduc- 
 tions drawn from them, especially when our own 
 imperfect knowledge of them is taken into the 
 account, can be safely relied upon only to a very 
 limited distance beyond the sphere of actual 
 
RELATION OF MAN TO EXTERNAL THINGS. 137 
 
 experience ; and still less can conclusions drawn 
 from the present condition of tilings be legiti- 
 mately applied to another and altogether dif- 
 ferent mode of existence. The laws which govern 
 the material universe, and the present relations 
 between spirit and matter, may have but little 
 analogy to those which shall govern that future 
 state, to which the innate aspirations of man, 
 and the transient character of all terrestrial 
 things, seem alike to prove that we are tending. 
 Here philosophy deserts us. It may conduct us 
 safely to the threshhold, but it cannot open to us 
 the portals, of another world. 
 
 It is in this state of uncertainty that Scripture 
 takes us by the hand. It transfers us, in idea, to 
 another state of being, and treats of every thing 
 around us as having a reference to it. The things 
 with which we are conversant, assume, in the 
 Scripture, a new aspect, and become tendencies 
 rather than results. They are shewn to have a 
 double bearing upon our destiny, and to be sha- 
 dows of a coming substance. With reference to 
 this world they may be ends, but with regard to 
 the next they are only means — roots and fibres 
 of a tree which is to bear immortal fruit here- 
 after. The Scripture proceeds to develope, fully 
 and without disguise, the mode in which the life 
 
138 THE TESTIMONY OF THE 
 
 that now is may be trained into an infancy of a 
 higher state of existence. It shews us, — what 
 the conscience of every man will not hesitate to 
 confess, — our present imperfect condition with 
 regard to spiritual things. It describes the pro- 
 cess by which man is to be born again into a 
 new life. It declares Faith to be the Will, and 
 Grace the Power, in this new life — the impulsive 
 and the efficient principles by which the func- 
 tions of our spiritual vitality are to be carried 
 on. The region in which this existence is to be 
 passed, the external world of the soul, as we 
 have denned it, is the word of God. From 
 thence is that aliment continually to be drawn 
 which shall strengthen its vital powers, refresh 
 its failing energies, correct its errors and back- 
 slidings, and direct its steps into the right path, 
 when involved, as it often must be, in perplexing 
 ways and bewildering mazes. It is the guide of 
 the soul from its spritual infancy to its maturity. 
 It feeds it with milk in childhood, with strong 
 meats in its riper years. It " provideth medicine 
 to heal its sickness," and armour against enemies 
 from without. As the external world is to the 
 body, so is the Gospel to the soul — a home, a 
 guardian, and a passport to better things. If, in 
 the former, we find ourselves surrounded with 
 imperfection and decay, with fragments of what 
 
RELATION OF MAN TO EXTERNAL THINGS. 139 
 
 once was perfect, and ruins which no time or art 
 can restore ; we call to mind that equally ruined 
 and imperfect is that being for whose occupation 
 it is designed, and thus find it especially adapted 
 to be at least his temporary dwelling-place : and 
 when we look to the latter, — that Scripture 
 region in which his soul is to live the life of faith 
 — we find the same adaptation continued, and 
 evidently constructed by the hand of the same 
 Artificer. We see, indeed, no longer that imper- 
 fection which pervades the world without ; for 
 the training of Scripture expires not with time, 
 but looks onward to eternity. But we see the 
 same wise disposal of means for ends ; the same 
 accommodation of the knowledge conveyed to 
 the information required ; the same considera- 
 tion for the wants of man, and skill in adminis- 
 tering to his necessities. It is thus that the 
 soul's evidence for the truth of Scripture is pre- 
 cisely of the same nature with that of the body 
 for the objects and utility of the external world. 
 
 What, then, is there in outward things, or their 
 relation to the moral condition of mankind, which 
 should lead a wise man to esteem them "above 
 that which is written;" nay, what is there, in 
 such relations, which does not proclaim, in lan- 
 guage not to be misunderstood, the paramount 
 
140 THE TESTIMONY, &C. 
 
 authority and importance of the doctrines of 
 Christianity ? We thus not only " pass through 
 nature up to nature's God," but, through both, to 
 his revealed Word. All the things which we 
 see around us, bear testimony to the existence 
 of one all-directing Mind : the existence of such 
 Mind makes it probable that he would commu- 
 nicate with his moral creatures : and the Word 
 which addresses us in his name, — by explaining 
 his visible works, and by unfolding his will in 
 full accordance with (what reason tells us must 
 be) his character, and our own necessities, — is 
 thus established to be our safest guide through 
 this world, as well as our only passport to 
 immortality. 
 
LECTURE VII. 
 
 THE 
 
 TESTIMONY OF THE RELATION OF MEN TO 
 EACH OTHER. 
 
 THE ARGUMENT. 
 
 The subject pursued with regard to the relation 
 of men to each other — the advances of practical 
 philosophy spring indirectly from the doctrines of 
 the gospel — the international relations of mankind 
 considered — their social relations, with general 
 remarks on the fallacy of the rationalist system 
 — the relation of husband and wife — Scripture 
 doctrine respectinq the Law of marriage — the 
 relation of parent and child — parental education 
 necessarily religious — the relation of the higher 
 to the lower classes of society — all these shewn to 
 derive their highest efficacy from being based upon 
 the Doctrines of the Gospel. 
 
LECTURE VII 
 
 THE 
 
 TESTIMONY OF THE RELATION OF MEN 
 TO EACH OTHER. 
 
 1 Corinthians, i. 20. 
 
 HATH NOT GOD MADE FOOLISH THE WISDOM OF THIS WORLD > 
 
 If this were true in the Apostle's days, there is 
 nothing to render it less so in our own. Neither 
 the direction which the wisdom of this world has 
 since taken, nor the results at which it has ar- 
 rived, have been of such a nature as to give to 
 earthly wisdom a character more self-dependent, 
 or to render it more worthy to be brought into 
 comparison with that wisdom which is from 
 above. It has, indeed, made wide advances in 
 many subjects which are eminently conducive to 
 the temporal benefit and well-being of mankind. 
 The arts and sciences have been placed on a 
 sounder basis, and therefore followed out into 
 more beneficial conclusions. They have ceased 
 to be subjects of mere abstract and barren spe- 
 culation, and have become applicable to the 
 practical purposes, and daily conveniences of life. 
 Now, beyond the immediately useful conse- 
 
144 THE TESTIMONY OF THE 
 
 quences arising out of this direction of the 
 powers of the human mind, there are charitable 
 uses and humanizing effects on the mind itself, 
 which render these pursuits, judiciously prose- 
 cuted, of the utmost value in a moral light. 
 The practical philosopher feels that he combines 
 utility with his wisdom. He is not a being ab- 
 stracted from the world and its daily concerns, 
 and, with an avarice of intellectual wealth, exer- 
 cising mental powers, and accumulating specu- 
 lative knowledge, which exist but in his own 
 breast, and perish with their owner ; but he is 
 linking himself and his feelings more closely 
 with his kind, by the very process of conferring 
 benefits upon them; his benevolence expands 
 with his bounty. " It is more blessed to give 
 than to receive," — the impression on the giver's 
 heart and feelings is more deep and lasting ; and 
 hence it is, that those who have already done the 
 most good to others are always the most ready 
 to repeat the kindness. 
 
 It is from this cause that a practical philoso- 
 phy, and one that diffuses temporal and tangible 
 benefits among large masses of the people, has 
 the property, and has already produced, in some 
 degree, the effect, of softening individual and na- 
 tional asperities, — of uniting by mutual benefits 
 
RELATION OF MEN TO EACH OTHER. 145 
 
 hearts which rival interests would continually 
 separate, — and of establishing, by actual experi- 
 ence, the important truth, that no man can, in 
 any enlarged sense, promote his own good, with- 
 out at the same time furthering that of the whole 
 community with which he is connected. 
 
 We concede so far with regard to the beneficial 
 effects, in a moral light, which spring from an 
 extensive and judicious diffusion of useful know- 
 ledge, and the mutual reciprocation of temporal 
 and civil benefits. Nay, we do no justice to our 
 views by placing them on the basis of a conces- 
 sion ; we rather insist upon these facts ; and urge 
 them as grounds for insisting on and enhancing 
 the value of that from which we hold that they 
 mainly arise — the great doctrines of the Gospel. 
 For it is from these doctrines, we maintain, that 
 an impulse has been given to science and know- 
 ledge in this beneficial direction — it is towards 
 their unspeakable importance that they have a 
 direct tendency to turn the unbiassed mind — it is 
 by these doctrines that their truly useful ends are 
 developed, and their obvious and innate deficien- 
 cies supplied : True social philosophy is at once 
 the offspring and the handmaid of the doctrines 
 of revealed religion. We propose to shew this by 
 
146 THE TESTIMONY OF THE 
 
 considering the race of man first in its national, 
 and secondly in its social relations. 
 
 If we look, for a moment, at the great families 
 of mankind, as separated, by soil, language, or 
 blood, into distinct communities, with interests 
 apart from, and sometimes in opj>osition to, the 
 interests of those with which they are surrounded, 
 it will not be denied, that the spirit evinced 
 towards each other, in regard to such relations, 
 is of a more liberal and generous nature among 
 those states which profess Christianity, than 
 among those in which Christianity is unknown. 
 It does not militate against this general truth, 
 should we prove that the heathen or the infidel 
 state has not seldom exhibited a degree of noble- 
 minded forbearance in success, or of chivalrous 
 adherence to the letter of an unfavourable treaty, 
 which might shame its wiser enemy ; or even 
 should we be driven, as we often are, to lament, 
 that the bitterest animosities have frequently 
 sprung from religion itself: for it is not out of 
 religion, as being Christian, that this bitterness 
 arises, but as being the foundation of a strong 
 emotion ; and all strong emotions, misdirected, 
 lead to evil, — the corruption of the best being 
 still the worst. Exceptions like these do not 
 
RELATION OF MEN TO EACH OTHER. 147 
 
 overturn the broad proposition, that the influence 
 of the Gospel has had a softening effect on all 
 international and social relations. And how has 
 this effect been produced ? Not merely, as the 
 rationalist would wish men to believe, by the 
 clearer light which the Gospel has thrown upon 
 the mutual interests of man — by the sounder 
 system of morals which it infuses into the heart 
 — by the love of literature and science which has 
 generally been associated with its true develope- 
 ment, and which awakens a sympathy with all, 
 of whatever country or creed, who are engaged 
 in the same ennobling pursuits. These are, 
 indeed, all effects of the influence of the Gospel 
 on the heart of man ; but then they all emanate 
 from its Doctrines. They may be mistaken, as 
 they too often are, for its substance ; men may 
 rest satisfied with them as the grand results of 
 the Gospel, and may be led to admire and to 
 adopt it solely on their account ; and yet they 
 are all the while but collateral though most 
 cheering effects issuing from the great, and it 
 may be, unseen centre of light — the doctrines of 
 Christianity. 
 
 The means through which the Gospel has 
 mainly, and in the first instance, produced these 
 humanizing results, is by enhancing the value of 
 
148 THE TESTIMONY OF THE 
 
 human life. Whether we look at nations wholly 
 uncivilized, or nations highly civilized but wholly 
 depraved, we find man to be of the lowest 
 account ; his blood is but esteemed as water. 
 It is the doctrines of the Gospel, and they alone, 
 that give him his proper dignity in his brother's 
 eye. When it was once known that the only 
 Son of the eternal Deity had descended upon 
 earth to take man's nature upon him — to atone, 
 by suffering, for his innate corruption — to purify 
 him, by his own in-dwelling, from actual sins — to 
 raise him, finally, from the dead, and clothe him 
 with a glorious and incorruptible body, fitted for 
 the company of his Divine Redeemer, and the 
 habitation of his celestial dwelling-place — when 
 all this was fully understood to be man's present 
 condition, and ultimate destiny, every thing con- 
 nected with him, and more especially that which 
 was of all his earthly possessions the most pre- 
 cious, his life, began to be regarded by his brethren 
 with a solemn reverence. The savage may esteem 
 him but as the highest grade in the animal cre- 
 ation ; the depraved may hold his life as nothing 
 when compared with the gratification of his own 
 selfish passions ; but in the Christian's eye he is 
 a sanctified being, as one among the many bre- 
 thren of the Redeemer of the world. Who 
 would not cherish and in every way befriend 
 
RELATION OF MEN TO EACH OTHER. 1 49 
 
 him whom God hath condescended to honour? 
 Who would look down with scorn upon even 
 the humblest heir of immortality ? Who would 
 wantonly abstract a single moment from that 
 span of life on which hang the issues of an awful 
 eternity ! 
 
 It is from these fundamental facts in the 
 history of our race, and facts which the Gospel 
 alone reveals, that all that kindlier spirit which 
 we see around us has been infused into the civil 
 and social relations of mankind. The rationalist 
 may despise or may not perceive its origin, but 
 even his own vague principles of philanthropy, 
 would he trace them to their source, are but frag- 
 ments broken from this eternal rock, however 
 ingeniously they may have been framed into a 
 system by " the cunning of art, and man's device." 
 The doctrines of the Gospel are thus a blessing 
 even to them that are without. Such men are 
 like the Jews of old, who knew not all the good 
 which they enjoyed ; who, when carnally-minded 
 in the desert, were unwittingly feci with heavenly 
 food ; " they did all eat (then, as now,) the same 
 spiritual meat, and did all drink the same spiritual 
 drink ; for they drank of that spiritual rock that 
 followed them, and that rock was Christ." 
 
150 THE TESTIMONY OF THE 
 
 If we now turn from man in his national and 
 civil relations, to man in his social capacity, and 
 endowed with passions and feelings which form 
 his guide through the domestic, and other the 
 more intimate concerns of life, we are at once 
 supplied with boundless materials for illustrating 
 and confirming our present argument, that the 
 doctrines of the Gospel are still in advance of 
 human wisdom. They are so when they expand, 
 and still more when they oppose and check, the 
 natural passions and propensities of man ; and 
 thus they vindicate their right to rule by the 
 equity and wisdom of their administration. 
 
 Before we descend to particular instances in 
 which this wisdom and equity are more especially 
 exemplified, let us dwell for a moment upon the 
 broad principle which distinguishes the proposed 
 system of moral discipline recommended by the 
 rationalist, from that which is propounded in the 
 Gospel. The rationalist looks upon man as a 
 progressive being, each individual of the race 
 being considered less as an independent existence 
 than as a mere link in the chain which connects 
 him, either for good or evil, with his ancestors 
 and his posterity. His bodily powers and local 
 advantages are subjects of essential moral im- 
 
RELATION OF MEN TO EACH OTHER. 151 
 
 portance and of primary care. His physical de- 
 velopement is the key to his mental capabilities ; 
 and the judicious cultivation of the former is the 
 proper mode of improving the latter. The soul 
 thus becomes a mere emanation of the body — as 
 much dependent upon it in kind and in perfection 
 of excellence, as the individual flower is of the 
 parent tree. The Gospel views all this as seen 
 from the opposite extremity ; and represents the 
 body as being simply the appendage and instru- 
 ment of the soul. It states that the present 
 undeniable imperfection of man began with the 
 soul ; and that, therefore, his restoration must 
 commence there likewise. The transgression 
 which produced the fall was a mental act. It 
 was not the derangement of the flesh that led to 
 the deterioration of the spirit ; but it was the 
 corruption of the soul that brought on the degra- 
 dation of the body. The Gospel, therefore, pro- 
 poses to remedy the cause and not the effect. It 
 addresses its arguments to the mind — it would 
 direct the perverted will — it would reform the 
 depraved passions — it would heal the wounds of 
 the spirit of man by infusing into it some portion 
 of the spirit of God. It represents man not as 
 naturally a progressive being, but as, in the first 
 instance, a fallen being, to be restored; and 
 considers each individual of our race as capable 
 
152 THE TESTIMONY OF THE 
 
 of being brought back to the perfection of his 
 nature, whatever may be his local and physical 
 condition, provided the spiritual remedies which 
 it proposes are heartily accepted, and faithfully 
 applied. I need not further contrast these sys- 
 tems. They are diametrically opposed, from 
 their very root upwards ; and, it is to be feared, 
 are as different in their consequences as their 
 origin. Nor need I suggest which, — considering 
 them merely as rival systems of philosophy, 
 evinces a deeper knowledge of human character 
 or is more likely to effect its end.* 
 
 From this general evidence in favour of the 
 doctrines of the Gospel, when viewed as a guide 
 and corrective of the passions and feelings of 
 man, let us turn our attention to one or two 
 individual instances in which their influence has 
 been conspicuous in improving the social con- 
 dition, and regulating the natural affections of 
 our race. When the cases are so numerous, our 
 only task is to select the best ; and there are two, 
 which seem especially to present themselves to 
 our notice, because they exert the most powerful 
 influence on the general well-being of society, 
 and because they are those to which philosophical 
 reasoning has often, and particularly in later times, 
 * See Note M, at the end. 
 
RELATION OF MEN TO EACH OTHER. 153 
 
 been especially directed. These are, the relation 
 of husband. and wife, and that of parent and child. 
 
 These relations form the very corner-stone of 
 every social system. Morality and human hap- 
 piness depend upon the principles on which 
 these relations are regulated, beyond any other 
 elements that policy or religion has introduced 
 into the social economy. How do the doctrines 
 of the Gospel, with regard to these questions, 
 bear comparison with the wisdom and experience 
 of modern times ? 
 
 First, with regard to the law of Marriage. 
 
 It is well known that the Gospel has placed this 
 law upon a different basis from that of any other 
 earlier human legislation, or general custom. 
 Attempts may have been instituted to discourage 
 the practice of polygamy ; and approaches were 
 sometimes made towards the right system by 
 civilized nations ; and these approaches often 
 near in proportion to the degree of their civiliza- 
 tion. But it was left to our Saviour to legislate 
 upon this subject on principles which can never 
 be shaken. He makes the union of one husband 
 with one wife a divine command — impressed 
 upon the whole human race by the very act of 
 
154 THE TESTIMONY OF THE 
 
 their original creation ; God having made one 
 woman for one man. " Have ye not read," 
 says he, " that he which made them at the be- 
 ginning, made them male and female," (that is, 
 one male and one female,) " and said, For this 
 cause shall a man leave father and mother, and 
 shall cleave to his wife ; and they twain shall be 
 one flesh ? Wherefore, they are no more twain, 
 but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined 
 together, let not man put asunder."* Here, then, 
 marriage is placed on its right foundation. It is 
 an union of two persons by God himself; and it 
 is an ordination of nature ; — and one, we may 
 add, from which nature has never swerved, the 
 equality of numbers between the sexes being still 
 preserved, to an extent as wonderful as it is clearly 
 indicative of the object contemplated in that 
 equality. And who can estimate the beneficial 
 consequences which have flowed from this simple, 
 and (if it be not an indignity thus to designate it) 
 most philosophical exposition of the doctrine of 
 Marriage, by our blessed Lord ? Thenceforth it 
 has been the recognised law of the Christian world. 
 Marriage has, almost universally, ever since, been 
 considered a religious obligation, and been re- 
 stricted to the union of one husband with one 
 wife. And hence have sprung benefits which it is 
 * Matthew xix. 4, d, 6. 
 
RELATION OF MEN TO EACH OTHER. 155 
 
 impossible to estimate, or even briefly to recount ; 
 the elevation of one sex and the refinement of 
 the other ; the regulation of the passions ; the 
 cherishing of the best feelings of our nature ; the 
 very existence of the domestic charities ; the ob- 
 servance of the decencies and moralities of life, 
 even when the principle of them is wanting ; and 
 a courtesy of demeanour towards those around 
 us, which is a shadowing forth and a preparation 
 for the adoption of many graces, which the spirit 
 of the Gospel constantly infuses into the heart of 
 man. It is not too much to assert, that the main 
 cause of the inferiority in manners and morals, 
 and, by consequence, in the arts and usages of 
 life, which is found to exist among infidel when 
 compared with Christian states, arises from their 
 neglect of this important precept, or rather, as 
 we may justly style it, doctrine of the Gospel. 
 And one symptom of retrogression among Chris- 
 tian states themselves, has always been a laxity of 
 opinion and practice with respect to the religious 
 obligation of marriage. If any such symptom 
 should appear among ourselves — if the rationalist 
 notion of its being merely a civil contract, should 
 ever gain any considerable footing in this hitherto 
 Christian nation, let us look upon such a depar- 
 ture from the express ordinance of our Lord as a 
 sign that the days " in which they will not bear 
 
156 THE TESTIMONY OF THE 
 
 sound doctrine" are fast approaching, and prepare 
 ourselves for all those " mysteries of iniquity" 
 which have constantly attended the desecration 
 of the married state * 
 
 When the Gospel had thus given to marriage 
 (an original law of nature) a religious sanction, — 
 thereby establishing, in this respect, the kingdom 
 of heaven upon earth, by taking, as it were, to 
 itself the reins of government out of the hands 
 of the ordinary constitution and course of things, 
 — when marriage had thus become an adopted rite 
 of Christianity, the consequences of it received 
 a religious complexion also. When the first fruits 
 are holy, the lump is also holy. The relation of 
 Parent and Child, became, now, not only a tie of 
 nature, but a law of Christ ; and mutual obliga- 
 tions of the most important character, have 
 sprung out of this altered aspect of that re- 
 lation. The great tie of nature, indeed, still 
 remains in all its original strength. The duties 
 on the one part, and the dependence on the other, 
 still link together Parent and Child by a law as 
 ancient, as universal, and as binding, as that 
 which gives motion and stability to the globe on 
 which we dwell. And we have already enlarged, 
 in a previous Lecture, upon the wise ordination of 
 
 * See Note N, at the end. 
 
RELATION OF MEN TO EACH OTHER. 157 
 
 Providence in instituting the indissoluble connec- 
 tion of Parent and Child, and the affections 
 which attach to that relation, as a gracious pro- 
 vision for securing to all men some degree of 
 training in propriety of feeling and morality of 
 life. Upon this natural tie between man and 
 man the gospel fixes, and makes it its own. 
 Having adopted marriage as a religious union, 
 it adds a religious sanction to man's natural affec- 
 tion for its fruits. As members of the kingdom 
 of nature, each parent is bound to provide for the 
 bodily well-being of his child, while his child is 
 bound, by the same law, to render all due obe- 
 dience to his parent. As members of the king- 
 dom of heaven, each parent has the additional 
 obligation of providing for the soul of his child, 
 and the child is equally bound to serve his parent 
 with a religious service. They have thus a new 
 relation to each other from the very commence- 
 ment of their connection, which neither party, as 
 Christians, can ever safely forget. Wherever 
 this relation is alluded to in the New Testament, 
 it is always in a religious light. " Children," says 
 St. Paul, " obey your Parents in the Lord : for 
 this is right." And, " ye fathers, provoke not 
 your children to wrath : but bring them up 
 in the nurture and admonition of the Lord* 
 
 * Ephesians, vi. 1.4. 
 
158 THE TESTIMONY OF THE 
 
 Here, then, the law of the Gospel does not, 
 indeed, supersede, but absorbs and makes ad- 
 ditions to the law of nature. There is no op- 
 position, or even broad distinction between the 
 two, any more than there was between the Law 
 of Moses and the Law of Christ. The lesser 
 light is merged in, but not extinguished by the 
 greater — and the feeble stream still flows on, 
 though its waters may not be distinguishable in 
 the mighty river with which it has mingled its 
 waves. The Christian parent, as a member of 
 the kingdom of heaven, is bound to teach his 
 child even secular knowledge on Christian princi- 
 ples — all is to be " as to the Lord, and not to 
 men." And as the Jew was not permitted to 
 retain the legal observances of his law, and add 
 to them the new doctrines of the Gospel, as mere 
 appendages to his ancient creed, but was to com- 
 mence, conduct, and conclude his whole career 
 under the guidance of the Faith which he had 
 embraced : so should the Christian parent edu- 
 cate his child, even in those departments of 
 knowledge which have a primary reference to the 
 concerns of this life, on principles which have 
 their root, and will therefore bring forth their 
 fruit, in the kingdom of heaven. If, then, we 
 see a tendency, in the present age, to go back to 
 the dark times before the gospel was promulgat- 
 
RELATION OF MEN TO EACH OTHER. 159 
 
 ed ; to recede from " the kingdom of heaven," 
 into which the Christian is even here exalted, for 
 the very purpose of secularizing the mind in se- 
 cular things, — to shut out gospel light in order 
 that the light of common day may be the 
 brighter, — we may rest assured that, so far as this 
 principle prevails, there is a falling back into the 
 ignorance of earlier times, there is a voluntary 
 departure out of the spiritual Garden of Eden 
 into the desolate waste that surrounds it — and a 
 dividing of the kingdom of heaven between its 
 rightful Sovereign, and the ruler of the darkness 
 of this world — " the Spirit that now worketh in 
 the children of disobedience." Whenever edu- 
 cation is cultivated, even as regards secular 
 things, apart from religious considerations, and 
 without reference, however remotely, to the spi- 
 ritual state of man, the true position of the Chris- 
 tian, as a member of Christ's kingdom, is lost 
 sight of, and there is a voluntary renunciation of 
 those mental as well as spiritual privileges to 
 which we have been advanced by being made 
 " children of God, and inheritors of the king- 
 dom of heaven." 
 
 And if this necessary connexion between edu- 
 cation and religion, as resulting from the reli- 
 gious union of parent and child, be the Christian 
 
lb'O THE TESTIMONY OF THE 
 
 view of the subject, the rationalist himself cannot 
 deny that benefits arise to society, from acting 
 upon this view, which it is difficult to secure on 
 any of the more lax principles of expediency, 
 utility, or even moral duty. The authority of 
 the parent over the child, as well as the submis- 
 sion of the child towards the parent, can be 
 maintained by no instrument so effectual, as the 
 bond of religious obligation. The severe laws of 
 antiquity, with regard to filial obedience, are at 
 once superseded, not only in their severity, but 
 their efficacy, by the gently restraining but all- 
 powerful influence of the love of God.* 
 
 The time would fail us were we to attempt to 
 follow out our argument through all the passions 
 and affections which are called into action by the 
 social state of man, and shew, as might easily be 
 made to appear, that the peculiar doctrines of 
 the Gospel exercise upon each and all an influ- 
 ence, not only beneficial in its result, but beyond 
 that which philosophy, even in its best shape, has 
 ever proposed. Look, for instance, at the rela- 
 tion between owner and slave ; between master 
 and servant ; between superior and inferior as to 
 worldly station ; and see what a change has been 
 gradually, but most beneficially effected, among 
 
 * See Note O, at the end. 
 
RELATION OF MEN TO EACH OTHER. 161 
 
 Christian states, in the sentiments entertained, 
 and the line of conduct pursued, with regard to 
 each other. The rationalist may maintain that 
 these changes have sprung out of the rapid 
 march of intelligence, and the sounder notions 
 which are now entertained as to the mutual in- 
 terests of men : but this is merely gliding over 
 the surface of the question. The root of the 
 matter lies much deeper, even in the peculiar 
 doctrines of Christianity. There is nothing 
 which gives so real an equality to the whole race 
 of man as the doctrine of the Redemption of the 
 world by the sacrifice of the Son of God. If 
 men are equal in that which is greatest, they 
 may well afford to be unequal in that which is 
 least ; if they stand on the same footing with 
 regard to eternity, the slight differences of time 
 (especially when they are differences that affect 
 not the soul) become but as dust in the balance. 
 It is from this view that master and servant, 
 high and low, rich and poor, learn to regard each 
 other's outward state with equal charity — (for 
 charity is required alike from both.) They look 
 upon one another as men with the same privi- 
 leges but different duties — travelling through the 
 world by distinct paths, some less flowery than 
 others, but all short and dangerous ; and all alike 
 leading to the same final scene, where the mi- 
 
 L 
 
lt>2 THE TESTIMONY OF THE 
 
 nute inequalities of time will be lost in the 
 infinite distance and unspeakable glories of eter- 
 nity. 
 
 In producing the testimony to the truth of the 
 doctrines of the Gospel which arises out of the 
 relation of men to each other, we have necessa- 
 rily confined ourselves to such relations as are 
 most prominent, and spring directly out of the 
 natural constitution of things. There are others 
 to which we might have alluded, of a more com- 
 plex character, and from which evidence to the 
 same effect might be deduced, less obvious, in- 
 deed, but perhaps, on that very account, the 
 more convincing. We have, however, adhered 
 in our instances to the broad and universal rela- 
 tions of life, — those of nation and nation, hus- 
 band and wife, parent and child, and high and 
 low estate — as being bold and prominent fea- 
 tures, in their application to which the advan- 
 tages or defects of the doctrines of the gospel 
 might be most distinctly seen ; and as giving 
 also to the rationalist every reasonable advan- 
 tage in the comparison thus instituted; since, 
 though these are but inferior questions, and the 
 right solution of them but secondary benefits, 
 with regard to the gospel scheme, they are with 
 the rationalist the leading subjects of his philo- 
 
RELATION OF MEN TO EACH OTHER. 163 
 
 sophy, and the most momentous considerations of 
 life. To all, nevertheless, they are questions, 
 whether in respect to this life or the next, of the 
 most serious import ; and when we find that the 
 doctrines of the gospel are our safest guide in 
 subjects of this nature, which are within the 
 comprehension at least, though not the control, 
 of human wisdom and experience, we can with 
 the less hesitation entrust ourselves to their di- 
 rection when they carry us beyond the confines 
 of this material world, and undertake to lead us 
 through a path, otherwise dark and slippery, to 
 the regions of eternal light. 
 
LECTURE VIII 
 
 THE 
 
 TESTIMONY OF THE RELATION OF MAN 
 TO HIMSELF. 
 
 THE ARGUMENT. 
 
 The dissection of marts moral character, as an 
 individual being, shewn to be peculiar to the Gospel 
 — its superiority in this respect, to philosophy, to 
 other religions, and to human laws — its mode of 
 proceeding in the restoration of man shewn to be 
 in accordance with his present acknowledged defects 
 — the assistances of the Spirit — the power of 
 Faith — Christ our example. — Conclusion — duty 
 of adapting our preaching to the exigencies of the 
 times — different effects of addressing the head and 
 the heart — duty of the preacher to do both. — 
 Value of learning in the preacher of the Gospel 
 shewn from Scripture instances. Concluding ex- 
 hortation to the Students to cultivate human learn- 
 ing with a view to religious usefulness. 
 
LECTURE VIII. 
 
 TESTIMONY OF THE RELATION OF MAN 
 TO HIMSELF. 
 
 1 Corinthians, ii. 14, 15. 
 
 BUT THE NATURAL MAN RECEIVETH NOT THE THINGS OF THE SPIRIT 
 OF GOD : FOR THEY ARE FOOLISHNESS UNTO HIM: NEITHER CAN 
 HE KNOW THEM, BECAUSE THEY ARE SPIRITUALLY DISCERNED. 
 BUT HE THAT IS SPIRITUAL JUDGETH ALL THINGS. 
 
 It now only remains, in pursuing our proposed 
 line of argument through the course marked 
 out for it, that we consider the bearing of the 
 Doctrines of the Gospel on the relation of man 
 to himself; their special adaptation to the con- 
 struction of his mind, to the nature of his 
 motives, and the character of his passions and 
 affections. Here we stand upon familiar ground : 
 the great and well-trodden field of popular theo- 
 logy lies spread out before us, — and we have 
 every cultivator of it as an associate and ally. It 
 may almost be said to be the main duty of every 
 preacher of the Gospel, to demonstrate to the 
 moral and practical conviction of his hearers the 
 doctrine here propounded, and shew the infinite 
 superiority of the Gospel over every other civil 
 
168 THE TESTIMONY OF THE 
 
 or religious system, when considered as a scheme 
 of individual application, as a guide to the mind, 
 and a corrector of the heart ; as an instrument of 
 self-discipline ; and as bearing directly upon the 
 condition of man apart from all external consider- 
 ations, and in reference to /wnselj' alone. This is, 
 in fact, the distinguishing feature of the Gospel. 
 It does not, like other creeds, satisfy itself with 
 proposing improvements, and dictating sounder 
 principles of thinking and acting, grounded upon 
 probable reasons, and enforced by arguments of 
 interest, expedience, or necessity ; nor does it 
 treat men, as human laws must necessarily do, 
 with reference solely to their external conduct ; 
 but it comes more closely to the question, and 
 grapples with the heart. It takes each individual 
 out from his kind and his associations ; it strips 
 him bare of all accidental and extrinsic circum- 
 stances ; and dissects the whole anatomy of his 
 mental and moral constitution with an unsparing 
 but most skilful hand. Each man, therefore, 
 may look upon the word of God as the written 
 report of his Creator as to his own individual 
 condition — as addressed especially to himself — 
 and, since it comes directly from his original 
 Framer, as worthy to be fully relied upon in all 
 its directions and details. It contains, in truth, 
 the Creator's proposed method of repairing the 
 
RELATION OF MAN TO HIMSELF. 169 
 
 derangement which sin has caused in the moral 
 state of man — the means by which he can 
 alone be restored to his original position in the 
 universe. 
 
 It opens with a description of man's constitu- 
 tion and character, as at first created, and an 
 account of the causes and consequences of his 
 corruption ; it gives us, in the subsequent history 
 of our race, melancholy instances of the results 
 which universally followed, when the will lost its 
 control over the conduct, and the passions their 
 harmony with each other, and with the dictates 
 of conscience. Having thus fully laid before us 
 the exact position of man as regards his relation 
 to himself and his Creator, as it has existed ever 
 since the Fall, the word of God then proceeds to 
 develope the means devised by Divine benevo- 
 lence, for restoring man ultimately to that state 
 of personal purity, and of capacity for happiness, 
 of which the Fall had deprived him ; and in pro- 
 secuting this task, it is remarkable that the 
 primary and fundamental character of Creator is 
 still strictly maintained by the Almighty towards 
 his people, and that all the remedies of man's 
 disorganized constitution are still represented to 
 flow from him, and to be dispensed by him to 
 man, with a close analogy to the process by 
 
170 THE TESTIMONY OF THE 
 
 which he was at first created, and to the means 
 by which he was to have been sustained in his 
 original purity and happiness. No one will deny 
 that there is at once a probability and a philosophy 
 in this, to which false religions have not attained, 
 and from which modern wisdom can at least 
 draw no objections. The effects of the Fall were 
 universal ; the mental and bodily corruptions of 
 our first parents are represented in scripture to 
 have descended to all their posterity. There is 
 little in reason, and still less in experience, to 
 contradict this. The cause may be doubted, but 
 nothing can be more evident than that hereditary 
 succession of infirmity is the undeviating charac- 
 teristic of man. Now scripture tells us, that the 
 original Framer of our nature has provided a 
 remedy for this evil, as universal as the evil 
 itself; "for as in Adam all die, even so, in Christ, 
 shall all be made alive." But the enjoyment of 
 this remedy is, like Adam's retention of his per- 
 fection, made dependent upon conditions. There 
 is, as it were, a spiritual Eden, in which man is to be 
 placed — and to be placed in it by a regeneration 
 or new birth ; there he is to receive a new series 
 of commands, as tests of his obedience. Adam had 
 but one ; but having in his thirst for knowledge 
 acquired a wide comprehension and a fatal love of 
 evil, the number of the prohibitions enjoined on 
 
RELATION OF MAN TO HIMSELF. 171 
 
 his race is now increased to the number of his 
 evil propensities ; and the thorns and thistles 
 which his condition brings forth are now as 
 abundant and as spontaneously produced in the 
 mind, as they are declared, and found by experi- 
 ence to be, in the natural world. All these he is 
 bound to check ; and the way in which scripture 
 detects and exposes them all, is not one of the 
 weakest evidences that it has the source of all 
 wisdom and knowledge for its author. 
 
 But by what aid, and with what power is man 
 to discharge the duty here imposed upon him ? — 
 By the same which would have kept Adam safe 
 in his integrity — assistance from above. Man 
 hears, once more, the voice of God walking in 
 the garden, wilderness though it be. The Holy 
 Spirit, a monitor from heaven, a restorer of that 
 divine image in which man was originally created, 
 is imparted to each man, according to the zeal 
 and fidelity with which He is sought, for the pur- 
 pose of aiding him in the purification of his heart 
 from every evil passion, and the cultivation of 
 every better and holier affection. He is the new 
 principle of life communicated to the moral 
 creation for the purpose of counteracting the 
 fatal poison of sin which was, gradually perhaps, 
 
172 THE TESTIMONY OF THE 
 
 but most inevitably, hurrying the whole of that 
 creation to a state of spiritual death. 
 
 And how is each individual, — for this is in- 
 deed a personal question between every man and 
 his God, — how is each individual to partake of 
 this spiritual life, and be " delivered from the 
 body of this death ?" — Still the same analogy 
 holds good ; and that in which our first parents 
 were found, on trial, to be wanting, must now 
 be our only strength — even Faith itself. This is 
 the new principle, the substitute of a corrupted 
 Will, which is to be the prime mover of man, 
 both as a thinking and an acting being, through 
 every stage of his new existence as " a member 
 of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the 
 kingdom of heaven." The Will of man, origi- 
 nally given for his guide, fell under the first 
 assault of temptation ; and its power over the 
 passions, once lost, could never be restored ; it, 
 on the other hand, grew weaker with each inef- 
 fectual struggle against an adversary continually 
 advancing in power ; or rather, with an exertion 
 of suicidal strength, it sided in the fatal contest 
 with its own most inveterate enemy ! Hence, 
 under the Gospel, was placed over it as a watch- 
 ful guardian and guide, the power of Faith ; a 
 
RELATION OF MAN TO HIMSELF. 173 
 
 power which, unlike the will, can be restored 
 when at the feeblest, and revived into a blaze of 
 light even when it appear just flickering into 
 darkness ; a power which can draw its aliment 
 alike from every faculty of the human mind, 
 from the will itself, from the feelings and pas- 
 sions, from the judgment and the conscience, 
 from the memory and the imagination. A power 
 whose strength lies in man's very weakness, for 
 its essence consists in the acknowledgment of 
 another's power; and the might of man thus be- 
 comes measured by the degree of his reliance 
 upon the might of God ! It is to this faculty in 
 man that the doctrines of Scripture make their 
 most direct appeal, and on which they especially 
 rely for bringing him under their authority, and 
 leading him onward in that new path of life, 
 through which it is their object to conduct him 
 back to the heavenly Eden of his rest. By faitli 
 he apprehends the bearing of these doctrines on 
 the condition of a fallen world ; by faith he ap- 
 plies them to his own individual case ; by faith 
 he comprehends and appropriates the great mys- 
 tery of the Redemption, — brings down into his 
 own heart the strengthening and refreshing in- 
 fluence of the Holy Spirit, — subdues the will and 
 the passions into obedience to the law of Christ, 
 and walks through the trials and troubles of this 
 
174 THE TESTIMONY OF THE, &C 
 
 life with feelings of pious resignation, with a 
 resolution to turn miseries into mercies, and 
 with hopes full of immortality. 
 
 Looking, then, at the scheme of the Gospel 
 in this light, — as a system rather parallel than in 
 opposition to the system of nature, and propos- 
 ing remedies not only according to the wants, 
 but according to the analogy of our natural con- 
 dition, it cannot be denied that they both seem 
 at least to have the same author, the original 
 Framer of All. And if we finally suggest, what 
 our limits will not permit us to enlarge upon, 
 the singular advantage which the Christian pos- 
 sesses, in having the precepts of his religion 
 illustrated by a perfect Example, we need not 
 further pursue a branch of the subject which is 
 as inexhaustible as it is decisive of our argument. 
 The rationalist can appeal to no exemplar of his 
 system in its full developement ; not one of its 
 disciples " has left us an example that we should 
 follow his steps !" 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 We have now arrived, though by a hasty and 
 unequal progress, at the conclusion of our pro- 
 posed discussion ; and have shewn, by reasonings 
 which it appears easier to pass by than to gainsay, 
 that all human knowledge and all legitimate philo- 
 sophy lead directly to this inevitable conclusion, 
 that the doctrines of the Gospel are the ends at 
 which they aim, and the aids which they require, 
 as systems of faith and rules of life. Instead of 
 rehearsing the steps through which we have gra- 
 dually arrived at these invaluable results, let 
 us rather, in conformity with our founder's bene- 
 volent direction, attempt to draw from the whole 
 such useful conclusions, as may (in his own words) 
 tend to "instruct and edify mankind."* 
 
 It will, doubtless, have appeared, that the 
 preacher has all along been impressed with the 
 conviction, that one tendency of our times is 
 towards the notion, that human wisdom can dis- 
 pense with scripture doctrine ; that both may be 
 true, but that one is sufficient ; that the weak 
 
 * From Mr. Hulse's will. 
 
17C) CONCLUSION. 
 
 and the ignorant may require faith, and miracles, 
 and mysteries, but that the wise have another 
 system, more gratifying to the human intellect, 
 more tangible and philosophical, and sufficient 
 for all the practical purposes of life. That these 
 notions, under various modifications, are widely 
 diffusing themselves, it would be useless to deny. 
 The causes appear too obvious, in the circum- 
 stances of the times : it is with the remedies that 
 we, as ministers of the gospel, are most intimately 
 concerned. Now if it be the duty of the ambas- 
 sadors of Christ to become all things to all men 
 that they may gain some, it is not less certain 
 that they should so modify — not the doctrines of 
 the Gospel themselves, for they are immutable — 
 but the aspect under which they are presented, 
 as to meet the prevailing errors of the period. 
 
 It is much to be feared that deviations from 
 those pure and apostolical views of the Gospel 
 which are taken by the formularies of the Church 
 of England, whether towards enthusiasm on the 
 one hand, or towards rationalism on the other, 
 have not seldom been increased by the preacher, 
 perhaps unwittingly, pressing too strongly upon 
 that side of his hearer's disposition which had 
 already too great a preponderance in the com- 
 position of his character ; or by neglecting 
 
CONCLUSION. 177 
 
 altogether to present the Gospel to that faculty of 
 his mind through which alone he had any inclina- 
 tion or even capacity to receive it. There are 
 two distinct ruling powers by which the conduct 
 of man is governed ; and which, either separately, 
 or blended in an infinite variety of proportions, 
 guide and control the moral actions of the whole 
 human race — the Reason and the Affections. 
 In some men the reason is almost every thing ; 
 they refer the whole of their conduct to its dic- 
 tates ; and nothing weighs with them except so 
 far as it is based upon sound argument and logi- 
 cal deduction. In others again, the feelings are 
 the predominant faculties ; the heart governs the 
 practice ; they have an almost innate perception 
 of what is right, and holy, and beautiful, and stop 
 not for reasons for that which, strongly presented, 
 at once fastens itself upon their deepest and best 
 affections. Of course, as I have observed, these 
 two distinct powers are found blended in the 
 human character in an infinite variety of propor- 
 tions : and in some men are so well balanced, 
 that either or both together may be appealed to, 
 and will be obeyed, with equal facility. No 
 preacher of the Gospel should forget this, for 
 the Gospel itself never forgets it. It is one of 
 the strongest evidences of its divine origin that it 
 
1 78 CONCLUSION. 
 
 so nicely adapts itself to the whole character of 
 man by addressing him constantly, and often 
 simultaneously, through all his faculties ; con- 
 vincing his reason, exciting his imagination, and 
 stirring up his affections, by blending Faith with 
 Love, and both with Duty. If the head be im- 
 penetrable to reason, it wins the heart by the 
 mercies of Redemption, and the graces of the 
 Redeemer's character ; or wrings it by pictures 
 of the essential deformity of sin, and the horrors 
 of an impending judgment. It touches the 
 whole man in every point of his character. It 
 cannot, then, be denied, that " the whole counsel 
 of God" is not declared, and the comprehensive 
 nature, and boundless resources of the Gospel 
 not developed, when the individual teacher, and 
 still more, when the church at large, has a ten- 
 dency to appeal, almost exclusively, to the one 
 or the other of the ruling faculties of man ; to 
 the reason independent of the affections, or to 
 the affections independent of the reason. 
 
 Let us call to our recollection the conse- 
 quences of this attempt to divide what is inse- 
 parable, in an age which is but just gone by. 
 While the clergy were labouring, and doubtless 
 with the best intentions, (having been justly 
 
CONCLUSION. 179 
 
 alarmed by the sad effects of religious fanaticism 
 on a preceding generation,) to impress the truths 
 of the Gospel almost exclusively on the reason 
 and judgment of their hearers, it was found that 
 numbers were daily departing from the fold of 
 the church, and seeking out for themselves other 
 pastures. The hungry flock had looked up and 
 were not fed — not from want of food, but because 
 the food supplied was not their natural aliment. 
 It was as if " the lion should eat straw like the 
 ox," to expect that those whose hearts were open 
 to religious impressions — who wished to feel 
 fully the wretchedness of their natural state — the 
 unutterable danger of sin — the love of God in 
 Christ reconciling the world to himself — the 
 cheering influences of the grace of God on the 
 heart of man — and the glories of a world to 
 come shining through the dark clouds of this 
 mortal life ; — it was altogether hopeless to ex- 
 pect that such spirits would, or indeed ought, to 
 rest satisfied with the abstract truths of the Gos- 
 pel proposed coldly to the reason, and impressed 
 solely on the intellect. They wished to love, as 
 well as to believe ; and they sought out for them- 
 selves teachers who could lead them captive at 
 will, by appealing to the strongest passions of 
 our nature. 
 
180 CONCLUSION. 
 
 The clergy have taken warning by the event. 
 The fault was in the system rather than in their 
 hearts. Of intellectual habits themselves, they 
 naturally attached great, perhaps too great, im- 
 portance to truths addressed to that faculty of 
 the mind. Accustomed, in their own practice, 
 to subject their feelings to the dominion of the 
 reason, they had not been sufficiently mindful, 
 that, with the majority of mankind the very re- 
 verse is not seldom the case, and the heart 
 governs the head. To the heart, then, they 
 once more directed their appeals ; and the result 
 has been such as to stir up within the popular 
 breast a deeper interest in the cause of the 
 Gospel, and to awaken fresh hopes of success 
 among the anxious champions of the Church. 
 Still, when the passions alone are fed, excess of 
 appetite always grows with the supply. The 
 reason, the great counterbalancing power in man, 
 soon loses its legitimate influence, when, un- 
 trained for the struggle, it has to contend against 
 passions the more uncontrolable because they are 
 conscious of moving in a right direction ; and 
 thus the religious position of each individual 
 comes at last to be measured by the intensity of 
 his feelings and affections, and is therefore as un- 
 certain and changeable as the basis on which it 
 
CONCLUSION. 181 
 
 rests. Passion is a dangerous criterion of prin- 
 ciple. 
 
 While, then, it is our duty, — for the character 
 of the Gospel requires, and the practice of our 
 blessed Master himself authorizes it, — to enlist 
 on our side, and to call into beneficial action, 
 the best feelings of our common nature, as the 
 most effectual agents in practically exemplifying 
 the doctrines and precepts of the Gospel ; let us 
 still keep them in their proper position, as the 
 instruments and allies of the Judgment, and not its 
 lord and master. Evil may arise, and indeed has 
 arisen, from treating religion as a simple appeal 
 to the feelings and passions of mankind, evil as 
 essential in its nature, and even still more per- 
 nicious in its effects, than that which has too 
 often sprung from addressing it exclusively to 
 the Judgment. Carried along by our own best 
 feelings, and sympathizing with those of the flock 
 over whose religious interests we are appointed 
 to watch, we are still not to forget that there 
 is another door through which the Gospel can 
 make its way into the heart, and one which 
 may alone stand open to receive it. The human 
 intellect is making rapid advances, on the right 
 hand and on the left. There are more occupa- 
 tions for it, and a more urgent demand upon its 
 
1 82 CONCLUSION. 
 
 powers, in the business of common life. The 
 number of individuals who are compelled, from 
 absolute necessity, to think for themselves, is daily 
 increasing; and a habit is thus gradually spreading, 
 (which it is impossible either to restrain or re- 
 sist), of weighing, each man for himself, and by 
 an intellectual rather than a moral standard, the 
 force and value of every proposition addressed to 
 them. With men like these, mere appeals to the 
 feelings will produce little effect. The passions 
 are not the channel through which they are most 
 easily to be approached. They are accustomed 
 to bring earthly things to the test of their own 
 judgments, and they are unwilling to accept even 
 of heavenly things on any other conditions. We 
 may lament this want of the spirit of humility, 
 but we cannot command it — it will be the result, 
 as we may hope, of true religion, but it is not 
 the natural growth of the human heart. What 
 then remains for us, but that we assail them on the 
 side where they are most open to attack ? The 
 Gospel has made provision for this, and has au- 
 thorized us to " speak wisdom to them that are 
 perfect ;" yea, and to them that are wise in their 
 own conceits. It does not, indeed, permit us to 
 rely upon " the wisdom of this world,'" for that 
 is " foolishness with God ;" but it supplies us 
 with heavenly weapons to take the wise in their 
 
CONCLUSION. 183 
 
 own craftiness, and out of their own mouths to 
 condemn them. They can discern the evidence of 
 natural tilings, " the signs in the heavens and in 
 the earth," the " putting forth of the fig-tree and 
 all the trees," but cannot from thence deduce the 
 signs of the kingdom of God. Here we are called 
 upon to meet them on their own ground, and with 
 such learning as that on which they themselves 
 are content to put the issue of the argument. 
 " Foolish and unlearned questions," indeed, we 
 are justly warned to shun ; " the oppositions of 
 sciences falsely so called," we are to avoid ; but 
 learning and science, which are truly such, should 
 neither be neglected by the Christian teacher 
 himself, nor condemned by him in others. They 
 are modes of developing the character of God's 
 works, and should be converted by his minister 
 into evidence of his word. If, as has been well 
 said, God has no need of human knowledge, still 
 less need has he of human ignorance ; and no 
 faculty has he given to man which he does not 
 wish him to cultivate to the utmost reach of its 
 powers. 
 
 Look at the instruments which God employed 
 of old in the propagation of his word, and you will 
 see no signs of a contempt for learning, or tokens 
 of his wisli to fetter the powers of the intellect 
 
i84s CONCLUSION. 
 
 any more than the expansion of the affections. 
 Moses, his first legislator, was deeply versed in 
 ul I the learning of the Egyptians as well as the 
 mysteries of the Divine Will — he knew all the 
 arts of the craftiest magicians, and surpassed 
 them by wonders in kind as well as in degree. 
 Solomon was no novice in science, nor David in 
 song. The lips of Isaiah had, indeed, been 
 touched with fire from the altar, but that fire 
 ffave but brilliance to the natural flame which 
 had long glowed within his bosom. The Apostles 
 of our Lord were doubtless, at first, but igno- 
 rant and unlearned men ; but it was as scholars, 
 not as teachers. When they went forth to con- 
 vert the world, it was with power to proclaim to 
 every man in his own tongue the wonderful 
 works of God, and with a wisdom and a know- 
 ledge such as none of their adversaries could 
 either gainsay or resist. And what shall we say 
 of St. Paul, either as to his learning, or his 
 method of using it ? He never attempted to bear 
 down his adversary by weapons which he re- 
 jected, or knew not how to wield. To the Jews 
 he became as a Jew, and to the Gentile almost as 
 a Gentile, that he might gain the more. When 
 he stood forward to be tried by his own law, see 
 how he brings confusion on his enemies by shew- 
 ing them that they are sitting in judgment on 
 
CONCLUSION. ] 85 
 
 their own doctrines ! — " I am a pharisee, the son 
 of a pharisee ; of the hope and resurrection of 
 the dead I am called in question." Mark how 
 he encounters the advocate Tertullus before the 
 Roman, with a courtesy as subtle as his own ; and 
 when he stood on Mars' Hill, in the very heart of 
 the two great antagonist powers of the Gospel — 
 powers that still assail it in close but unnatural 
 union, Superstition and Infidelity — observe how he 
 converts the very extent of the Athenian idolatry 
 into an argument for their turning to the worship 
 of the Unknown God; and how Stoics and Epicu- 
 reans alike are at once supplied with a key to 
 unlock the mysteries of their own systems, by 
 being led on to look for a Resurrection, and a day 
 of final Judgment ! And all this in a strain of 
 eloquence and fervour, which the most scoffing 
 Athenian could not but admire amid his scorn ! 
 
 Resting, then, our justification on these high 
 examples, and perceiving how much intellectual 
 error is the danger of our times, we seem not 
 merely authorized but bound, trusting indeed 
 only " in the Lord, and in the power of his 
 might," to shrink from no encounter to which 
 the honour of God and the success of his Gospel 
 may seem even indirectly to invite us. The am- 
 bassador of heaven should not forego his high 
 
186 CONCLUSION. 
 
 privilege of guiding the whole sphere of thought : 
 " He that is spiritual judgeth all things." 
 
 If, then, I may be permitted, as one who has at 
 least had experience enough to discover his own 
 deficiency, to leave a parting word of exhortation 
 with those who are to follow me into the field 
 where the Truth must be contended for amidst 
 fightings without and fears within — it is this : 
 that they omit no opportunity of storing up all 
 the knowledge, human and divine, which is pro- 
 vided for them in this place, and at this auspi- 
 cious moment of their lives. They will require 
 it all in the word without ! And let them not 
 separate too much the one from the other ; for 
 all knowledge is divine, which is devoted to a di- 
 vine object. Translated into the kingdom of hea- 
 ven by Baptism, from henceforth every thing 
 within and around them is of that kingdom, — 
 when viewed through the eye of faith, and consi- 
 dered as part of a new life. The discoveries of 
 science, the cultivation of the intellectual powers, 
 the arts and usages and even elegancies, as well 
 as the duties of life, become sanctified, by being- 
 attached to beings who have an immortal destiny, 
 and enforced as tests of obedience, and means of 
 moral trial and purification. Let them look upon 
 human knowledge habitually in this light, as an 
 
CONCLUSION. 187 
 
 instrument of God for their salvation. Let all 
 their efforts, whether directed toward the works 
 or the word of God, be accompanied by Prayer, 
 which will teach them that humility is the best 
 proof of knowledge. Then let them go forth, in 
 the name of the Lord, and in full reliance on his 
 grace, to disseminate his saving truths among 
 mankind ; and let them " not doubt, but earnestly 
 believe," that the word of God, thus recommend- 
 ed to the feelings and the judgment of man, will 
 prosper in their hands, and that the Church, of 
 which they are the ministers, will become at once 
 the stability and glory of their own land, and a 
 light " even unto the ends of the earth." 
 
 THE END. 
 
NOTES. 
 
NOTE A. PAGE 8. 
 
 POWELL, CHARGE III. "ON THE USE AND ABUSE OF PHILOSOPHY 
 IN THE STUDY OF RELIGION." 
 
 To shew that the system of opposition to the church, here so 
 clearly stated by Dr. Powell, is still pursued with a servile and 
 almost literal adherence to the ancient, and it might have been 
 hoped, now exploded model, (but nothing is so utterly devoid 
 of originality as error,) we need only quote the following passage 
 from a modern work by Mr. George Combe, a lecturer on the 
 science (so called) of Phrenology, and which is entitled " The 
 Constitution of Man in relation to External Objects." This 
 book has had a wide circulation. There are various reasons for 
 this. The topic on which it treats is in itself one of much 
 interest. The author possesses considerable knowledge of his 
 subject, and still more of the world. He is, moreover, an 
 itinerant lecturer on the " science " on which the theories of his 
 work are made to rest, and therefore possesses advantages in 
 assisting its circulation which are denied to ordinary authors. 
 But what has doubtless operated most strongly in its favour, 
 and which renders this work a singularity in literary history is, 
 that it is not dependent upon the "voluntary principle," for 
 its success, but possesses, and is sustained in its cheapness by, a 
 fixed "Endowment!'' The following is an extract from the 
 preface : — " On 27th May, 1829, the late W. R. Henderson, 
 Esq., younger, of Warriston and Eildon Hall, executed a deed of 
 settlement, by which he conveyed to certain trustees such funds 
 
192 NOTES. 
 
 as he should die possessed of; and, in the event of his dying with- 
 out leaving children, he appointed them to pay certain legacies 
 and annuities to individual friends, and gave the following in- 
 structions regarding the application of the residue of his funds. 
 
 " ' And, lastly, the whole residue of my means and estate 
 shall, after answering the purposes ahove written, be applied by 
 my said trustees in whatever manner they may judge best for the 
 advancement and diffusion of the science of Phrenology, and 
 the practical application thereof in particular ; giving hereby and 
 committing to my said trustees the most full and unlimited 
 power to manage and dispose of the said residue, in whatever 
 manner shall appear to them best suited to promote the ends in 
 view : Declaring, that if I had less confidence in my trustees, 
 I would make it imperative on them to print and publish one or 
 more editions of an ' Essay on the Constitution of Man con- 
 sidered in Relation to External Objects, by George Combe,' — 
 in a cheap form, so as to be easily purchased by the more intel- 
 ligent individuals of the poorer classes, and Mechanics' Institu- 
 tions, &c. ; but that I consider it better only to request their 
 particular attention to this suggestion, and to leave them quite 
 at liberty to act as circumstances may seem to them to render 
 expedient ; seeing that the state of the country, and things 
 impossible to foresee, may make what would be of unquestion- 
 able advantage now, not advisable at some future period of time. 
 But if my decease shall happen before any material change 
 affecting this subject, I request them to act agreeably to my 
 suggestion. And I think it proper here to declare, that I 
 dispose of the residue of my property in the above manner, not 
 from my being earned away by a transient fit of enthusiasm, 
 but from a deliberate, calm, and deep-rooted conviction, that 
 nothing whatever hitherto known can operate so powerfully to 
 the improvement and happiness of mankind, as the knowledge 
 and practical adoption of the principles disclosed by Phrenology, 
 
NOTES. 193 
 
 and particularly of those which are developed in the Essay on 
 the Constitution of Man, ahove mentioned.'" 
 
 Here, then, is a work, which, from all the circumstances con- 
 nected with it, may fairly be selected as representing, or at 
 least as seeking to represent, the popular mind. It professes to 
 " avoid religious controversy " — and therefore when the writer 
 touches upon that subject it is not from necessity, but inclination 
 and design. Let, then, the reader pay particular attention to 
 the following extract, which will shew that the author is fully 
 justified in applying Dr. Powell's language to the circumstances 
 of the present day. 
 
 " The theologians who condemned the natural world, lived in 
 an age when there was no sound philosophy, and almost no 
 knowledge of physical science ; they were unavoidably ignorant 
 of the elementary qualities of human nature, and of the influence 
 of organisation on the mental powers — the great link which 
 connects the moral and physical worlds. They were unac- 
 quainted with the relations subsisting between the mind and 
 external nature ; and could not by possibility divine to what 
 extent individuals and society were capable of being improved by 
 natural means. In the history of man, they had read chiefly of 
 misery and crime, and had in their own age beheld much of 
 both. They were, therefore, naturally led to fonn a low estimate 
 of human nature, and to expect little good from the develope- 
 ment of its inherent capabilities. These views appear to me to 
 have influenced the interpretations of Scripture which they 
 adopted : and these, having once been entwined with religious 
 sentiments, have descended from generation to generation : in 
 consequence, persons of sincere piety have for several centuries 
 been induced to look down on this world as a wilderness, 
 abounding with briars, weeds, and noxious things — and to direct 
 their chief attention, not to the study of its elements and their 
 relations, in the hope of reducing them to order, but to en- 
 
 N 
 
194 NOTES, 
 
 •luring the disorder with patience and resignation, and to 
 securing, hy faith and penitence, salvation in a future life. It 
 has never heen with them a practical principle, that human 
 nature itself may he vastly improved in its moral and intellectual 
 capacities, by those means which Physiology and Phrenology 
 have recently opened to us; or that human nature and the 
 external world are adjusted on the principle of favouring the 
 developement of the higher powers of our minds; or that the 
 study of the constitution of nature is indispensable to human 
 improvement; or that this world and its professions and pursuits 
 might be rendered favourable to virtue, by searching out the 
 natural qualities of its elements, their relationship, and the moi-al 
 plan on which God has constituted and governs it. Some 
 philosophers and divines having failed to discover a consistent 
 order or plan in the moral world, have rashly concluded that 
 none such exists, or that it is inscrutable. It appears never to 
 have occurred to them that it is impossible to comprehend a 
 whole system without becoming acquainted with its parts: — 
 though ignorant of the physiology of man, of mental philosophy, 
 of the philosophy of external nature, and of their relations, 
 these authors have not perceived that this extensive ignorance of 
 the details rendered it impossible for them to comprehend the 
 plan of the whole. Hence they have involved themselves in 
 contradictions ; for while it has been a leading principle with 
 them, that enjoyment in a future state is to be the consequence 
 of the believer attaining to a holy and pious frame of mind in 
 this life, they have represented the constitution of the world to 
 be so unfavourable to piety and virtue, that men in general, who 
 continue attached to it, cannot attain to this right frame of spirit, 
 or act habitually in consistency with it. They have not had 
 philosophy sufficient to enable them to perceive that man must 
 live in society to be either virtuous, useful, or happy ; that the 
 social atmosphere is to the mind what air is to the lungs ; and 
 
NOTES. 195 
 
 that, while an individual cannot exist to virtuous ends out of 
 society, he cannot exist in a right frame of mind in it, if the 
 moral atmosphere with which he is surrounded he deeply con- 
 taminated with vice and error. Individual merchants, for 
 example, cannot act habitually on Christian principles, if the 
 maxims of their trade be not Christian ; and if the world be so 
 unfavourably constituted that it does not admit of the rules of 
 trade becoming Christian, then active life and practical religion 
 are naturally opposed to each other. Divines have laboriously 
 recommended spiritual exercises as means of improvement in 
 this life, and of salvation in the next ; but have rarely dealt with 
 the philosophy of this world, or attempted its rectification, so as 
 to render these exercises truly efficacious. Their minds have 
 been infected with the first great error, that this world is irre- 
 mediably defective in its constitution, and that human hope 
 must be concentrated chiefly on the next. This may be attri- 
 buted to the premature formation of a system of theology in the 
 dawn of civilisation, before the qualities of the physical world, 
 and the elements of the moral world, and their relationship, were 
 known ; and to erroneous interpretations of Scripture, in conse- 
 quence, partly, of that ignorance. 
 
 " Now, if the discovery of the philosophy of mind, founded on 
 the physiology of the brain, is to operate at all in favour of 
 human improvement, one of the most striking effects which it 
 will produce will be the lifting up of the veil which has so long 
 concealed the natural world, and its capabilities and importance, 
 from the eyes of divines. To all practical ends connected with 
 theology, the philosophy of nature might as well not exist : with 
 few exceptions, the sermons preached a century ago are equal, if 
 not superior, in sense and suitableness to human nature, to those 
 delivered yesterday ; and yet, in the interval, the human mind 
 has made vast advances in knowledge of the works of creation. 
 Divines have frequently applied scientific discoveries in proving 
 
196 NOTES. 
 
 the existence and developing the character of the Deity ; but 
 they have failed in applying either the discoveries themselves, or 
 the knowledge of the Divine character obtained by means of 
 them, to the construction of any system of mental philosophy, 
 capable of combining harmoniously with religion, and promoting 
 the improvement of the human race. This, however, Phrenology 
 will enable them one day to do." — Combe, pp. 4, 5. 
 
 The above passage is here quoted simply for the purpose of 
 justifying the author's assertion in the text, that Dr. Powell's 
 language " might seem rather a composition of yesterday than 
 of an age gone by." But the concluding paragraph is so com- 
 pletely answered by Dr. P.'s anticipatory reply in this part of 
 the same Charge, that I cannot refrain from presenting the 
 passage to the reader. 
 
 " The English Divines cannot be justly reproached with the 
 extravagant zeal of those, who, disclaiming the use of reason in 
 religious inquiries, would substitute in its room faith uninformed. 
 They own indeed the sovereignty of Religion ; but are sensible 
 that her throne can no where be fixed securely, except in the 
 understanding. They have never spared any pains to establish 
 it on this firm basis. And, when new discoveries in philosophy 
 have offered it any new supports, they have not failed to apply 
 them. This could hardly be otherwise : since the same men, 
 who have gained our admiration by a fertile invention or clear 
 judgment, in the various kinds of human learning, have been 
 many of them, equally eminent for their proficiency in sacred 
 science. But, when in the study of Religion they used the 
 assistance of philosophy, they used it with great caution : well 
 knowing, that though its guidance may be safely trusted while 
 it has full light, and keeps within its own territories ; yet when 
 it ventures to conduct us in the dark, or wanders beyond its 
 proper limits, it will often mislead us more fatally than ignor- 
 ance itself. For there is a chain, which connects the various 
 
NOTES. 197 
 
 branches of error as well as of truth. Yet this just and neces- 
 sary caution seems to have given occasion to the complaint before 
 mentioned. No other grounds for it have ever been pretended. 
 It has never been objected to us, that the evidences for religion are 
 not fully stated, or that any kind of fair reasoning is neglected 
 which might serve to enforce them. On the contrary, it is 
 universally acknowledged, that more rational, more truly phi- 
 losophical defences of Christianity have appeared, within a 
 century, in our language, than were ever in any other age or 
 country. In these defences, whatever aids could be borrowed 
 from morals, or physic, or natural theology, have been em- 
 ployed, and sometimes even with profusion. Philosophy has 
 furnished us with abundance of incontestable evidence ; and 
 has rendered that evidence the more convincing, by rejecting all 
 such proofs as were either false or frivolous. Thus far it has 
 acted within its own province ; and has been a good witness in 
 behalf of Christianity. But here its office ends. If a witness 
 should be allowed to take the seat of the judge, we could 
 expect nothing but a hasty and partial decision ; aud such has 
 been the event, when philosophy has presumed to interpret 
 revealed doctrines, or to examine the reasonableness of revealed 
 dispensations. These are the uses which we have forborne to 
 make of it ; and which we shall still forbear, if we form our 
 judgment either from the nature of the attempt, or from the bad 
 success of those who have engaged in it." 
 
 The simple and cautious language in which these sentiments 
 are expressed, will not, the author sincerely hopes, prevent the 
 judicious reader from appreciating the depth and solidity of 
 thought with which the above passage (as indeed are all Dr. 
 Powell's writings) is pregnant. Every word, as well as every 
 thought, is in its right place ; and both are of the utmost value. 
 
 With regard to the "science" of Phrenology, and the alleged 
 necessity for the study of it, ay bearing upon theological questions, 
 
1 98 NOTES. 
 
 Dr. Powell's answer is equally applicable ; and we may pledge 
 ourselves that any really useful and practical discoveries that 
 may arise out of it will soon be applied to their proper and legi- 
 timate purposes. As to the supposed tendency of the " science" 
 itself — except so far as ignorant or designing pretenders to a 
 knowledge of it may produce some temporary delusion by draw- 
 ing false deductions from assumed premises — we entertain no 
 fears whatsoever. We firmly believe, that the more nearly it 
 approaches to the truth, the more closely will it ultimately be found 
 to coincide with Scripture. But we see not how, even according 
 to its own account of what it proposes to effect, it can readily be 
 brought in aid of the teacher of theology or morals. It professes 
 to point out a physical developement in each part of the brain, 
 which is the depositary and measure of a corresponding mental 
 power ; now if it undertakes by mechanical or physical means to 
 expand or contract such developement, and thereby the coinci- 
 dent mental power, it will, should it succeed, indeed cause a 
 revolution in the mode of treating the moral condition of man, 
 which will take it altogether out of the province of the present 
 practical system of theology. But if such changes are still 
 primarily to be effected in the mental and not in the bodily 
 department ; if we must still appeal to motives ; and, by first 
 regulating the moral and intellectual faculties, expand or contract 
 the physical department in which a valuable or an injurious 
 modification of them may be supposed to reside, — we seem to 
 be admitted to the knowledge of no secret, of any practical value, 
 which has not been familiar to theologians from the earliest 
 times. Even the change of names as to moral and mental 
 powers, which it would doubtless introduce, seems, as far as 
 simplicity and intelligibility are concerned, scarcely to be for 
 the better. To " keep one's hands from picking and stealing," 
 is quite as plain a precept, as to restrain the organ of " acquisi- 
 tiveness ;" and so on, through the ancient and modern decalogues. 
 
NOTES. ] ,0,0 
 
 The system may be said, indeed, to come in aid of the preceptor 
 of youth, by enabling him, from the external organization, to 
 detect the as yet undeveloped tendencies of his pupil's mind, 
 which may form a guide to him as to the proper course to be 
 pursued in training it : but I fear the practical preceptor soon 
 discovers, that the mental signs of character are all but contem- 
 poraneous with the physical, and that little is wanted, on his 
 part, beyond a close observation, and a j udicious treatment, of 
 the moral and intellectual condition of his pupil, as it shews 
 itself in his earliest years. We grant, indeed, (and this is the 
 simple fact which gives plausibility at least to the elements of 
 the " science,") that the brain, being, like every other bodily 
 organ, an instrument of the mind, must necessarily be in a 
 healthy and full-formed state in order adequately to discharge its 
 functions ; and that its physical structure may so far indicate its 
 general efficiency; just as the muscles of the arm betoken the 
 vigour of the limb ; but we require more, and less suspicious evi- 
 dence, than has yet been produced, before we can give our assent to 
 the doctrine that, corresponding with those symmetrical lines 
 delineated by phrenologists on the outward scull, there is an 
 exactly similar compartment of brain within ; and, what is still 
 more open to scepticism, an exactly similar compartment of an 
 abstract intellectual principle in the soul. It certainly is a new 
 experiment in philosophy, to undertake to assign visible and 
 tangible localities to an arbitrary series of metaphysical abstrac- 
 tions ! But, be the result as it may, it would be desirable in 
 the professors of this " science," in its present elementary state, 
 to confine their attention to facts rather than deductions : for 
 nothing is more likely to bring suspicion both on their wisdom and 
 their motives, than rushing to startling conclusions before they 
 have unanswerably established their premises. If they will 
 thus act, theologians will stand by with calmness ; ready to turn 
 
200 NOTES. 
 
 their sound results, (as they do not fear to be able to do,) to 
 the benefit of religious truth. 
 
 NOTE B. PAGE 12. 
 
 While nothing is more common, nothing can be more unphi- 
 losophical, than to make the truth of men's opinions depend 
 upon their personal character. That which is right cannot be 
 thus contingent ; Christianity would be equally true even 
 though no one fully believed, as no one fully obeys it. It has 
 been well remarked by Bishop Sanderson, that "it is not 
 honesty, nor sincerity, that can privilege men from either erring 
 or sinning. Neither ought the unreproved conversation of men 
 countenance out their opinions, or their practices, against light 
 of divine Scripture, and right reason : as we read Cyprian's 
 error in old time ; and we see in our days, not only the suspected 
 tenets of Arminius, but even the bold heresies of Faustus 
 Socinus have spread much the more for the reverend opinion 
 men had of their personal endowments and sanctity." 
 
 NOTE C. PAGE 31. 
 
 The limits prescribed to the author, and the plan of his 
 Lectures, which leads him to deal with general results, rather 
 than minute details, would not permit him to dwell at length on 
 Ancient Ethics, important as they are from the powers of mind 
 possessed by those who have cultivated and recorded them, and 
 from the influence which they still continue to exercise on the 
 philosophy of our own time. He would otherwise have at- 
 
NOTES. 201 
 
 tempted to effect what he has since discovered to be much better 
 executed by the Rev. Frederic Oakley, in a pamphlet published 
 since this Lecture was delivered. The author, in that excellent 
 tract, has performed a task, with regard to Ancient Ethics, 
 which it is the object of these Lectures at least to aim at, with 
 regard to the leading branches of human knowledge ; and has 
 detailed the conclusions at which he proposes to arrive in 
 language which might well serve as a text to the whole of the 
 present volume: "The main object here proposed is to shew, 
 that Divine Revelation has fallen in with every soundest view, 
 solved every real difficulty, and met every noblest aspiration, of 
 the wisest heathens ; and thus, while it throws lustre upon their 
 speculations, approves, as natural, their perplexities ; sanctions, 
 as just, the results of their experience; it attests, at once, and 
 remedies, the deficiency of their systems ; furnishing Aids, and 
 suggesting Motives, which are eminently and alone adequate to 
 the regulation of conduct. Human Nature, its phenomena and 
 tendencies and capabilities ; Human Nature the work, notwith- 
 standing all its accidental deformities, all its superinduced irre- 
 gularities, of God himself, was the object present to the mind, 
 whether of the Inspired or the uninspired Moralist. It was not 
 that they saw it with eyes of different structure, so that its 
 images, erect in the view of one, were, in that of the other, 
 inverted ; but only that the view of Inspiration was infinite, 
 and its powers of vision perfect."* 
 
 * Remarks upon Aristotelian and Platonic Ethics, Ike ., by the Rev. Frederic 
 Oakley, M.A., Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. 
 
202 NOTES. 
 
 NOTE D. PAGE 35. 
 
 " And neither do we urge the proposition that conscience has, 
 in every instance, the actual direction of human affairs, for this 
 were in the face of all experience. It is not that every man 
 oheys her dictates, hut that every man feels he ought to ohey 
 them. These dictates are often in life and practice disregarded : 
 so that conscience is not the sovereign tie facto. Still there is 
 a voice within the hearts of all which asserts that conscience is 
 the sovereign de jure ; that to her helongs the command right- 
 fully, even though she do not possess it actually. In a season 
 of national anarchy, the actual power and the legitimate au- 
 thority are often disjointed from each other. The lawful 
 monarch may be dethroned, and so lose the might ; while he 
 continues to possess — nay, while he may be acknowledged 
 throughout his kingdom to possess the right of sovereignty. 
 The distinction still is made, even under this reign of violence, 
 between the usurper and the lawful sovereign ; and there is a 
 similar distinction among the powers and principles of the 
 human constitution, when an insurrection takes place of the 
 inferior against the superior; and conscience, after being de- 
 throned from her place of mastery and control, is still felt 
 to be the superior, or rather supreme faculty, of our nature 
 notwithstanding. She may have fallen from her dominion, 
 yet still wear the badges of a fallen sovereign, having the 
 acknowledged right of authority, though the power of enforce- 
 ment has been wrested away from her. She may be outraged 
 in all her prerogatives by the lawless appetites of our nature, — 
 but not without the accompanying sense within of an outrage 
 and a wrong having been inflicted, and a reclaiming voice from 
 thence which causes itself to be heard and which remonstrates 
 against it. The insurgent and inferior principles of our consti- 
 
NOTES. 203 
 
 tution may, in the uproar of their wild mutiny, lift a louder and 
 more effective voice than the small still voice of conscience. 
 They have the might but not the right. Conscience, on the 
 other hand, is felt to have the right though not the might — the 
 legislative office being that which properly belongs to her, 
 though the executive power should be wanting to enforce her 
 enactments. It is not the reigning but the rightful authority of 
 conscience that we, under the name of her supremacy, contend 
 for ; or, rather the fact that, by the consent of all our higher 
 principles and feelings, this rightful authority is reputed to be 
 hers ; and, by the general concurrence of mankind awarded to 
 her." — Chalmers : Bridgewater Treatise, Vol. I. pp. 62, 63, 64. 
 
 The following remarks of Sir James Mackintosh, upon 
 Bishop Butler's principles of Ethics, though deficient in per- 
 spicuity from his using the term " moral sentiments, " as 
 synonymous with that of " conscience," afford a fair specimen of 
 the views now very generally entertained of the bearing and 
 tendency of the Bishop's theory : — 
 
 " This result of the peculiar relation of conscience to the will, 
 justifies those metaphorical expressions which ascribe to it 
 authority and the right of universal command. It is immutable ; 
 for, by the law which regulates all feelings, it must rest on 
 action, which is its object, and beyond which it cannot look ; 
 and as it employs no means, it never can be transferred to nearer 
 objects, in the way in which he who first desires an object as a 
 means of gratification, may come to seek it as his end. Another 
 remarkable peculiarity is bestowed on the moral feelings by the 
 nature of their object. As the objects of all other desires are 
 outward, the satisfaction of them may be frustrated by outward 
 causes. The moral sentiments may always be gratified, because 
 voluntary actions and moral dispositions spring from within. No 
 external circumstance affects them. Hence their independence. 
 As the moral sentiment needs no means, and the desire is 
 
204 NOTES. 
 
 instantaneously followed by the volition, it seems to be either 
 that which first suggests the relation between command and 
 obedience, or at least that which affords the simplest instance of 
 it. It is therefore with the most rigorous precision that au- 
 thority and universality are ascribed to them. Their only 
 unfortunate property is their too frequent weakness; but it is 
 apparent that it is from that circumstance alone that their failure 
 arises. Thus considered, the language of Butler concerning 
 conscience, that, ' had it strength as it has right it would govern 
 the world,' which may seem to be only an effusion of generous 
 feeling, proves to be a just statement of the nature and action of 
 the highest of human faculties. The union of universality, 
 immutability, and independence, with direct action on the will, 
 which distinguishes the moral sense from every other part of 
 our practical nature, renders it scarcely metaphorical language 
 to ascribe to it unbounded sovereignty and lawful authority over 
 the whole of the world within ; — shews that attributes, well de- 
 noted by terms significant of command and controul, are, in 
 fact, inseparable from it, or rather constitute its very essence ; 
 — justifies those ancient moralists who represent it as alone 
 securing, if not forming, the moral liberty of man ; and finally, 
 when religion rises from its roots in virtuous feeling, it clothes 
 conscience with the sublime character of representing the divine 
 purity and majesty in the human soul. Its title is not impaired 
 by any number of defeats ; for every defeat necessarily disposes 
 the disinterested and dispassionate by-stander to wish that it 
 were strengthened : and though it may be doubted whether, con- 
 sistently with the present constitution of human nature, it could 
 be so invigorated as to be the only motive to action, yet every such 
 by-stander rejoices at all accessions to its force ; and would own, 
 that man becomes happier, more excellent, more estimable, 
 more venerable, in proportion as conscience acquires a power of 
 banishing malevolent passions, of strongly curbing all the 
 
NOTES. 205 
 
 private appetites, of influencing and guiding the benevolent 
 affections themselves." — Ethical Philosophy, WheivelVs Edition, 
 pp. 199,200,201. 
 
 NOTE E. PAGE 38. 
 
 MACKINTOSH, ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY, PAGE 260. 
 
 Much confusion on the subject of Conscience, and the extent 
 of its powers, has necessarily arisen from each writer on the 
 subject not clearly defining the sense in which the word is 
 employed by himself. Bishop Sanderson, in his Prcdectiones 
 de obligatione Conscientice, gives four definitions of the sense 
 in which the word Conscience is sometimes used ; and states 
 his own opinion of what is the proper meaning of it as follows : 
 " Conscientia est facidtas vel habitus intellectus practici ; 
 quo mens hominis per discursum rationis applicat lumen quod 
 sibi inest ad particulares suos actus morales." Neither Sir 
 James Mackintosh nor Dr. Chalmers seem to have used the 
 word in this precise signification. Sir James, in the passage 
 quoted in the text and elsewhere, does not limit it to the facultas 
 vel habitus intellectus practici, but views it as an accumulation 
 of moral powers, the result of training and experience ; while 
 Chalmers, more clearly at least, if not more properly, confines 
 it to the lumen quod sibi inest, without taking into much 
 account the mode of its operation, the per discursum rationis 
 of Bishop Sanderson's definition. The following is his account 
 of the sense in which the word is employed by him : 
 
 " The proposition, however, which we are now urging, is not 
 that the obligations of virtue are binding, but that man has a 
 conscience which tells him that they are so — -not that justice and 
 truth and humanity are the dogmata of the abstract moral 
 system, but that they are the dictates of man's moral nature — 
 
206 NOTES. 
 
 not that in themselves they are the constituent parts of moral 
 rectitude, hut that there is a voice within every heart which 
 thus pronounces on them. It is not with the constitution of 
 morality, viewed objectively, as a system or theoiy of doctrine, 
 that we have properly to do ; but with the constitution of man's 
 spirit, viewed as the subject of certain phenomena and laws — 
 and, more particularly, with a great psychological fact in hu- 
 man nature, namely, the homage rendered by it to the supre- 
 macy of conscience. In a word, it is not of a category, but of 
 a certain creation that we are speaking. The one can tell us 
 nothing of the divine character, while the other might afford 
 most distinct and decisive indications of it. We could found 
 no demonstration whatever of the divine purposes, on a mere 
 ethical, any more than we could, on a logical or mathematical 
 category. But it is very different with an actual creation, whe- 
 ther in mind or in matter — a mechanism of obvious contrivance, 
 and whose workings and tendencies, therefore, must be referred 
 to the design, and so to the disposition and character of that 
 Being, whose spirit hath devised and whose fingers have framed 
 it." — Bridgewater Treatise, Vol. I. pp. 61, 62. 
 
 NOTE F. PAGE 54. 
 
 Few terms have been more abused than this. It would have 
 been well for the world if the following language by Bishop 
 Sanderson, as to the proper meaning of the word Expediency, 
 had never been forgotten : — 
 
 " And first, expediency in St. Paul's method supposes law- 
 fulness. He takes that for granted that the thing is lawful, 
 before he enters into any enquiry whether it be expedient, yea 
 or no ; for expediency is here brought in, as a thing that must 
 restrain and limit us in the exercise of that liberty, which God 
 
NOTES. 207 
 
 has otherwise allowed us ; but God has not allowed us any 
 liberty unto unlawful things. And this observation is of right 
 good use ; for thence it will follow, that when the unlawfulness 
 of any thing is once made sufficiently to appear, all further 
 inquiry into the expediency or inexpediency thereof must 
 thenceforth utterly cease and determine. No conjuncture of 
 circumstances whatsoever, can make that expedient to be done 
 at any time, that is of itself and in the kind unlawful. For a 
 man to blaspheme the holy name of God, to sacrifice to idols, 
 to give wrong sentence in judgment, by his power to oppress 
 those that are not able to withstand him, by subtilty to over- 
 reach others in bargaining, to take up arms (offensive or defen- 
 sive) against a lawful sovereign; none of all these, and sundry 
 other things of like nature, being all of them simply and de toto 
 genere unlawful, may be done by any man, at any time, in any 
 case, upon any colour or pretension whatsoever; the express 
 command of God Himself only excepted, as in the case of 
 Abraham for sacrificing his son. Not for the avoiding of 
 scandal ; not at the instance of any friend, or command of any 
 power upon earth ; not for the maintenance of the lives or liber- 
 ties either of ourselves or others ; not for the defence of religion ; 
 not for the preservation of a Church or state ; no, nor yet, if 
 that could be imagined possible, for the salvation of a soul ; no, 
 not for the redemption of the whole world. 
 
 " I remember to have read long since a story of one of the 
 Popes, (but who the man was, and what the particular occasion, 
 I cannot now recall to mind,) that having, in a consultation with 
 some of his Cardinals, proposed unto them the course himself 
 had thought of, for the settling of some present affairs to his 
 most advantage ; when one of the Cardinals told him he might 
 not go that way, because it was not according to justice ; — he 
 made answer again, that, though it might not be done per viam 
 justitUc, yet it was to be done per viam expedientue. A dis- 
 
208 NOTES. 
 
 t friction which it seems the high-priest of Rome had learned of 
 his predecessor at Jerusalem — the high-priest Caiaphas in a 
 solemn consultation held there. There the chief priests and 
 Pharisees call a council, and the business was, what they should 
 do with Jesus. If they should let Him alone, so, the people 
 would all run after Him because of His miracles; and then would 
 the Romans (who did but wait for such an opportunity) make 
 that a pretence to invade their country, and to destroy both their 
 religion and nation. If they should take away His life, that 
 were, indeed, a sure . course ; but Nicodemus had stammered 
 them all for that, a good while before, in a former council at 
 Jerusalem, when he told them that they could not do it by law ; 
 being they had nothing to lay to His charge that could touch 
 His life. Up stands Caiaphas then, and tells them they were 
 but too scrupulous to stand so much upon the nice point of 
 legality at that time : they should let the matter of justice go 
 for once, and consider what was now expedient to be done for 
 the preserving of their nation, and to prevent the incursions of 
 the Romans : ' You know nothing at all,' says he, ' nor consider 
 that it is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, 
 and that the whole nation perish not.' 
 
 " Whatever infallibility either of those high-priests might 
 challenge to themselves, or their flatterers ascribe to them, it is 
 sure far safer for us to rest our judgments upon that never-failing 
 rule of St. Paul, 'we may not do evil that good may come 
 thereof,' than to follow them in their wild resolutions." — Sermon 
 12. Ad Aulam, preached at Hampton Court, July 26, 1640. 
 
NOTES. 209 
 
 NOTE G. PAGE 55. 
 
 The author cannot help thinking, that Paley has of late had 
 somewhat hard measure dealt out to him. The defects of his 
 system are obvious ; and were doubtless as well known to him- 
 self as they seem to be to those who possess not a tithe of his 
 admirable perspicacity. But they arose from the character of 
 the undertaking, and not from his mode of treating it. I feel 
 convinced that it will always be found to be impossible to 
 construct a complete system of Ethics on any basis which does 
 not include Revelation. All the attempts that have yet been 
 made to find another groundwork prove this ; — and it is indeed 
 a valuable result, though the process of arriving at it has been 
 somewhat circuitous and toilsome. Conscience, according to the 
 definition of it given by Chalmers and others, is simply a judge, 
 and can never be legitimately converted into a lawgiver ; while, 
 if we adopt Sanderson's wider view of its office, we need do 
 no more than take his Treatise on the subject likewise, as one 
 of the best outlines of the obligation and power of conscience. 
 But, in this case, conscience is not properly an elementary rule 
 — it is rather the result of all the rules that reason and revelation 
 have supplied to man. The Rev. W. Whewell, in four 
 eloquent sermons preached before the University of Cambridge, 
 since these Lectures were delivered, and which are entitled " On 
 the Foundations of Morals," while he does not spare the acknow- 
 ledged defects of Paley 's theory, suggests that some one should 
 construct another system of morals, having Conscience for its 
 basis. <* Butler,'' he observes, " has delivered no System of 
 Morals ; and, (in the part of his work here referred to,) is em- 
 ployed mainly in the discussion of the fundamental principle of 
 the subject." The reason, I suspect, will ultimately be found 
 to be, that the fundamental principle was all that conscience was 
 ever designed to become ; and that any complete theory of 
 
 o 
 
210 NOTES. 
 
 morals can only be deduced from the rules oi' Revelation, dis- 
 cussed by Reason, and tested by Conscience. 
 
 Professor Sedgwick, in his masterly " Discourse on the 
 Studies of the University," has entered fully into the deficien- 
 cies of Paley's system ; and has pointed them out with a fire and 
 energy, which, were the statement less accurate than it is, it 
 would not be easy for calm reason to withstand. The following 
 extract will put the views expressed by him on the subject, in 
 a distinct point of view. 
 
 " Had Paley,' says he, " rejecting the authority of the moral 
 sense on grounds like these," (viz. "on the avowed depravity of 
 our nature, and the impotency of moral rule, in putting down 
 the evil that is at war with our better feelings,") "proceeded to 
 build up a system of christian ethics, founded on the word of 
 God, enforced by its heavenly sanction, and recommended 
 through the affections to a practical acceptance as a rule of life, 
 he might have conferred a great benefit on the cause of morality 
 and religion. He might then have gone on to shew, that the 
 code of christian morals contains a set of rules co-ordinate with 
 other rules which the wise and the good of all ages have endea- 
 voured to establish and enforce (with a fainter light indeed, and 
 under a more feeble sanction) as in accordance with the law of 
 our nature, and therefore with the will of God : and afterwards 
 he might have proved, that the rules of action, derived from 
 these two sources, are not only in conformity with each other, 
 but call our highest faculties into activity and return into our 
 bosoms incomparably the greatest sum of earthly happiness. 
 Thus might he have arrived at a perception of an attribute of 
 God, in the only way in which it is permitted us, by the mere 
 force of natural reason, to reach high points of knowledge — by 
 ascending from particular to general truths, from phenomena to 
 laws; and thus might he have concluded, that as in the material 
 world we see in all things the proofs of intelligence and power ; 
 
- NOTES. 211 
 
 so also, that in the immaterial world we find proofs, not less 
 strong, that man is under the moral government of an all-pow- 
 erful, benevolent, and holy God. Following this train of 
 thought he might, lastly, have enunciated a proposition (resem- 
 bling in its words what stands in the front of his moral system, 
 but far different in its meaning and incomparably more true,) 
 that whatever is right is also expedient for man." 
 
 Here what is required in order to construct a combined system 
 of philosophical and Christian ethics, is fairly stated. And I 
 think we may add, that the portion of such a system which 
 Paley intended to execute, namely that which relates to " moral 
 and political philosophy," he has executed well. He has shewn 
 that philosophy, or right reason, or the light of nature, or by 
 whatever name the common sense of mankind is to be designat- 
 ed, bears testimony to the same moral truths as those which are 
 developed in the Gospel. He has shewn that the " two methods 
 which exist of coming at the will of God on any point : I. By 
 his express declarations in scripture, and II. By the light of 
 nature," lead ultimately to the same conclusions ; and that, in 
 the long run, " whatever is expedient is right." To have done 
 this, and to have done it so effectually, is surely to have con- 
 ferred an invaluable boon upon Ethical Philosophy — in useful 
 results he has left all his predecessors in the science far behind. 
 And if the public or private tutor, in directing the studies of 
 his pupil to this work, should not fail, as no Christian tutor 
 would fail, to point out the obvious and inherent defects in the 
 theory which Paley, in his capacity as a moral philosopher and 
 not Christian divine, was necessarily driven to adopt, his work 
 may still be read as a proof of how far moral ethics go along 
 with, though they natui'ally fall behind, the footsteps of Re- 
 velation ; and as a model of sound honest reasoning, applied, in 
 language of unexampled clearness and force, to subjects of the 
 deepest interest to the human mind. 
 
212 NOTES. 
 
 It would indeed be surprising if any theory of morals, that 
 is worth a Christians thought, could he constructed independent 
 of the rules (themselves dependent on the doctrines) of Revela- 
 tion. Revelation came after Reason ; and all the efforts of 
 Reason since, have only tended to shew how much the Dispen- 
 sation was wanted. 
 
 With the names of Paley and Butler, let us unite that of 
 another hard thinker — Warhurton. The following is his out- 
 line of the principles upon which a complete theory of morals 
 should be made to rest : — 
 
 " Each animal hath its instinct implanted by nature to direct 
 it to its greatest good. Amongst these, man hath his; to which 
 modern philosophers have given the name of 
 
 " 1. The Moral Sense: an instinctive approbation of right 
 and abhorrence of wrong, prior to all reflexion on their nature, or 
 their consequences. This is the first inlet to the adequate idea 
 of morality ; and, plainly, the most extensive of all; the Atheist, 
 as well as Theist, having it. When instinct had gone thus far, 
 
 " 2. The Reasoning Faculty improved upon its dictates : for, 
 reflecting men, naturally led to examine the foundation of this 
 moral sense, soon discovered that there were real essential differ- 
 ences in the qualities of human actions, established by nature ; 
 and, consequently, that the love and hatred excited by the moral 
 sense were not capricious in their operations ; for, that the essen- 
 tial properties of their objects had a specific difference. Reason 
 having gone thus far, and thus far too it might conduct the 
 Stratonic Atheist, it stopped, and found something now was 
 wanting whereon to establish the morality, properly so called, of 
 actions, that is, an obligation or injunction on men, to perform 
 some and to avoid others ; and that, for this, there was need of 
 calling in other principles to its assistance: because nothing can 
 thus oblige but 
 
 " 3. A Superior Will : and such a will could not be found 
 
NOTES. 213 
 
 till the being and attributes of God were established, but was 
 discovered with them. 
 
 " Hence arose, and only from hence, a moral difference. 
 From this time human actions became the subject of obligation, 
 and not till now : for though Instinct discovered a difference in 
 actions ; and Reason perceived that difference to be founded in 
 the nature of things ; yet it was Will only that could make a 
 compliance with that difference a Duty. 
 
 "On these principles then, namely, the Moral Sense, — the 
 Essential Difference in Human Actions, — and the Will of God, 
 is built the whole edifice of Practical Morality : each of which 
 principles hath its distinct motive to enforce it ; compliance with 
 the moral sense being attended with a grateful sensation ; com- 
 pliance with the essential differences of things being the pro- 
 moting the order and harmony of the universe ; and compliance 
 with the will of God, the obtaining reward and avoiding 
 punishment. 
 
 " This, when attentively considered, cannot fail of affecting 
 every one with the most lively sense of God's goodness to man- 
 kind, who, graciously respecting the imperfections of man's 
 nature, the weakness of his reason, and the violence of his pas- 
 sions, hath been pleased to give three different excitements to 
 the practice of virtue, that men of all ranks, constitutions, and 
 educations, might find their acccount in one or other of them ; 
 something that would hit their palate, satisfy their reason, or 
 subdue their will. The first principle, which is the moral sense, 
 would strongly operate on those, who by the exact temperature 
 and balance of the passions, were disengaged enough to feel the 
 delicacy and excellence of the moral sense ; and had an elegance 
 of mind to be charmed with the nobleness of its dictates. The 
 second, which is the essential difference, will have its weight 
 with the speculative, the abstracted and profound reasoners, and 
 on all those who excel in the knowledge of mankind. And th° 
 
214 NOTES. 
 
 third, which resolves itself into the will of God, and takes in 
 all consequences of obedience and disobedience, is principally 
 adapted to the common run of men. 
 
 " It may perhaps be objected, to what is here delivered, that 
 the true principle of morality should have the worthiest motive 
 to enforce it : whereas the will of God is enforced by the view 
 of rewards and punishments ; on ivhich motive, virtue hath the 
 smallest merit. This character of the true principle of morality 
 is perfectly right ; and agrees, we say, with the principle which 
 we make to be so : for the legitimate motive to virtue, on that 
 principle, is compliance with the will of God; which hath the 
 highest degree of merit. But this not being found of sufficient 
 force to take in the generality, the consequences of compliance 
 or non-compliance to this will, as far as relates to rewards and 
 punishments, were first drawn out to the peojde's view. In 
 which they were dealt with as the teachers of mathematics treat 
 their pupils, when, to engage them in a sublime demonstration, 
 they explain to them the utility of the theorem. 
 
 To these great purposes do the three principles serve, while in 
 conjunction : but now, as in the moral world and the affairs of 
 men, our pleasure, in contemplating the wisdom and goodness 
 of providence, is often disturbed and checked by the view of 
 some human perversity or folly which runs cross that dis- 
 pensation ; so it is here, in the intellectual. This admirable 
 provision for the support of virtue hath been, in great measure, 
 defeated by its pretended advocates, who, in their eternal squab- 
 bles about the true foundation of morality, and the obligation to 
 its practice, have sacrilegiously untwisted this threefold cord; 
 and each running away with the part he esteemed the strongest, 
 hath affixed that to the throne of heaven, as the golden chain 
 that is to unite and draw all to it." — Divine Legation, Book I. 
 Sec. 4. 
 
NOTES. 21 5 
 
 NOTE H. PAGE 58. 
 
 It is well worthy of observation, that while the selfish system 
 of utility appeals to general results as motives of action, the 
 Scripture always places these motives on the basis of self. 
 " Honour thy father and thy mother," — not that they may be 
 happy, but " that thy days," &c. " Blessed are the peace- 
 makers," — not because the public shall be benefited, but because 
 " they shall be called the children of God." The contrast here 
 pointed out in the two systems, as to the knowledge displayed 
 of the secret springs of human nature, is very remarkable. It is 
 only men of the highest mental and moral cultivation that will 
 ever be guided by considerations of general utility ; while the 
 consequences to self, in the extended sense in which they are 
 held out in holy Scripture, are influential on all the world. 
 
 NOTE I. PAGE 67. 
 
 " It has often been asserted that the department of moral 
 truth admits not of discoveries properly so called. The asser- 
 tion is one which, after some explanation and under some 
 restriction, may be granted. In the department of religious 
 truth, the case is different : here it has been perceived and is 
 allowed that there exists not only a possibility, but a previous 
 likelihood, of what may be strictly considered and justly termed 
 
 discoveries And as from these discoveries once made, new 
 
 duties immediately result ; as, moreover, by means of the same 
 discoveries the foundations of moral science are more broadly 
 and more firmly laid, the force of moral motives greatly 
 strengthened, and a flood of light thrown over the whole field 
 of moral speculation; it is evident that the assertion, latelv 
 
2J6 NOTES. 
 
 noticed, requires to be restricted and qualified by a reference 
 to both these considerations ; for duties, previously recognized, 
 are thus seen to be invested with a character that may entitle 
 them to be called in some sort neio ; and although of duties 
 confessedly new, it may be contended that even they flow from 
 general moral principles, prior to the disclosures, which rather 
 make manifest and develop than create their obligation ; it 
 must, after all, be conceded, that these duties, in some sort, 
 partake of that character of discoveries, which belongs to the 
 religious truths, whereon they depend." — Ogilvie's Bampton 
 Lectures, pp. 88, 90. 
 
 NOTE J. PAGE 69-. 
 
 To shew how this idea of brethren, as between Christ and his 
 disciples, and of a filial relation of Christ and his disciples con- 
 jointly towards the Father, pervades the whole gospel, it is 
 only necessary to refer to our Lord's last fervent prayer to his 
 heavenly Father, at once on their behalf and his own. John 
 xvii., vv. 20 — 24. 
 
 NOTE K. PAGE S2. 
 
 " The Enquiry is disfigured by another speck of more 
 frivolous paradox. It consists in the attempt to give the name of 
 virtue to qualities of the understanding ; and it would not have 
 deserved the single remark about to be made on it, had it been 
 the paradox of an inferior man. He has altogether omitted the 
 circumstance on which depends the difference of our sentiments 
 regarding moral and intellectual qualities. We admire intel- 
 
NOTES. 2 1 7 
 
 lectual excellence, but we bestow no moral approbation on it. 
 Such approbation has no tendency directly to increase it, 
 because it is not voluntary. We cultivate our natural disposition 
 to esteem and love benevolence and j ustice, because these moral 
 sentiments, and the expression of them, directly and materially 
 dispose others, as well as ourselves, to cultivate these two virtues. 
 We cultivate a natural anger against oppression, which guards 
 ourselves against the practice of that vice, and because the 
 manifestation of it deters others from its exercise. The first 
 rude resentment of a child is against every instrument of hurt. 
 We confine it to intentional hurt, when we are taught by expe- 
 rience that it prevents only that species of hurt ; and at last it is 
 still further limited to wrong done to ourselves or others, and in 
 that case becomes a purely moral sentiment. We morally 
 approve industry, desire of knowledge, love of truth, and all the 
 habits by which the understanding is strengthened and rectified, 
 because their formation is subject to the will. But we do not 
 feel a moral anger against folly or ignorance, because they are 
 involuntary. No one but the religious persecutor, a mischievous 
 and overgrown child, wreaks his vengeance on involuntary, in- 
 evitable, compulsory acts or states of the understanding, which 
 are no more affected by blame than the stone which the foolish 
 child beats for hurting him. Reasonable men apply to every 
 thing which they wish to move, the agent which is capable of 
 moving it; — force to outward substances, arguments to the 
 understanding, and blame, together with all other motives, 
 whether moral or personal, to the will alone. It is as absurd to 
 entertain an abhorrence of intellectual inferiority or error, how- 
 ever extensive or mischievous, as it would be to cherish a warm 
 indignation against earthquakes or hurricanes. It is singular 
 that a philosopher who needed the most liberal toleration should, 
 by representing states of the understanding as moral or immoral 
 
218 NOTES. 
 
 have offered the most philosophical apology for persecution. "- 
 Mackintosh, Ethics, pp. 228, 229, 230. 
 
 NOTE L. PAGE 105. 
 
 " No more, indeed, is necessary than to read the complaints 
 of impatient grief which Quintilian has left behind him, to be 
 sensible how vainly such philosophy boasted of triumphing 
 over the terrours of the grave, when, in truth, they had done no 
 more than cover it with blacker darkness, and when even they 
 who themselves disbelieved in a life to come, could not refrain 
 from pronouncing those barbarians ' happy in their errour,' who 
 regarded death as the passage to another state of existence. 
 Let us see, then, how these more fortunate reasoners of pagan- 
 ism had succeeded in establishing the faith of a life after death, 
 and how far this faith, as held by them, was calculated to rob 
 death of its sting. 
 
 "They began by reasoning justly, that, as we are composed of 
 two distinct natures, we have no reason to suspect that the acci- 
 dents to which the one is liable have any necessary tendency to 
 affect the other. They observed that the soul can do many 
 things (such as reasoning, comparing, compounding, and re- 
 membering) without the body's help ; and concluded that the 
 soul might continue to do all this, though the body were returned 
 to its original element. They even went farther, and suggested 
 the possibility that she might, under such circumstances, exer- 
 cise these powers in still greater perfection than, from the pre- 
 sence and pressure of the body, she is now permitted to do. 
 And as reason told them that whatever now is, must continue 
 to be till destroyed, so till some agent were found competent to 
 destroy the soul, the soul (they were induced to apprehend) 
 
NOTES. 219 
 
 might exist for ever in a separate state of happiness or of misery, 
 or might be united, at the pleasure of their gods, to a successive 
 series of bodies. And this opinion they conceived to be re- 
 markably strengthened and supported both by the usual phe- 
 nomena of dreams, and by the supposed fact that the manes of 
 the dead had, on certain occasions, been seen and heard by the 
 living ; a notion which, whether true or false, has been common 
 in all ages and countries, and which the epicureans themselves 
 were so from regarding as unfounded, that they had recourse to 
 the wildest theories to reconcile it with their own opinions. But 
 when this possibility, or call it if you will, this probability, was 
 admitted by the minds of men, and it is plain that this is, pretty 
 nearly, the utmost length to which the unassisted powers of 
 human reason could proceed, the result obtained was, surely, far 
 from sufficient to support the trembling spirit in its passage 
 through the valley of the shadow of death, or to chase from the 
 gate of the grave the horrours which surround it. 
 
 " The first hypothesis of a separate and spiritual existence of 
 the soul, when deprived of those hopes and aspirations which 
 gild the Christian Paradise, resolves itself into little more than a 
 continued but useless consciousness of existence, a continued, 
 and, it may be, a murmuring recollection of the pains and 
 pleasures of a life which is to return no more, the obscure 
 residence, the stridulous cry, the shadowy limbs, and shivering 
 appetite for warm blood, which, in the estimate of Homer, made 
 up the comfortless elysium of departed heroes. The second, 
 which Lucan considered the more comfortable creed of those 
 warlike Gothic tribes who had derived this faith with many 
 other circumstances of belief and practice from their ancestors in 
 the north of India, held out to the dying man no more than a 
 return to the miseries of life and death in another body. And, 
 as the interruption of consciousness was almost a necessary 
 accompaniment of transmigration, it was, in fact, nothing else 
 
220 NOTES. 
 
 than to say, that while his present being was absolutely drawing 
 to a close, another being, of which he was to have no knowledge, 
 and in which he could feel no interest, was to arise from his 
 essence, like a plant from the seed of its predecessor. Or, 
 though the hope might be indulged that where all was unknown, 
 some better things were in store for the virtuous, such a chance 
 of possible gain would but little avail to comfort us under the 
 present and certain loss of life and friendship and enjoyment ! 
 
 " It is true, nevertheless, that the majority of the heathen 
 world, and more especially, perhaps, among those who were 
 least entangled in the meshes of philosophy, both had and have 
 some better expectations than these, derived from those traditions 
 which had descended from the earliest men, from the times when 
 our species conversed with angels and with God, and learned 
 from the highest authority the secrets of that unseen world, to 
 which the visible world is but a passage and a vestibule. And 
 how much more satisfactory these traditions wei - e to the mind 
 than the hardiest and most plausible conjectures of natural 
 reason, may be inferred from the eagerness with which Socrates 
 is said to have recurred to them in that hour when the soul of 
 man is most anxious in her search for comfort. How gladly 
 does that wise and good man take refuge from the difficulties of 
 abstract reasoning in those ancient legends of Egyptian and 
 Chaldean mystics, which speak of the soul as expiating her 
 crimes in the waves of Phlegethon, or enjoying the reward of 
 her virtues in the society of departed sages. And surely it may 
 be said that whoever reads the Phaxlo with attention, will not 
 hesitate to admit that faith is an instinct natural to man, or 
 refuse to bless that wisdom and goodness which have supplied 
 this appetite, since the truths of Christianity were made known P 
 with a food so pure, so inexhaustible, so satisfactory ! 
 
 But though much of truth and much more of striking poetry 
 may be found, beyond a doubt, in the heathen traditions of a 
 
NOTES. 221 
 
 life beyond the grave, the misfortune was that these traditions 
 came down to the civilized nations of antiquity in a state so en- 
 cumbered with fable, where truth and falsehood were so intimately 
 blended, and where the falsehood was of a kind so repugnant to 
 reason and probability, that it was difficult, if not absolutely 
 impossible, to determine what circumstances, if any circum- 
 stances at all, might be selected and adhered to from the mass 
 of general errour. The Grecian judges of the dead, the river, 
 the dog, and the ferryman of hell, are notions which the prin- 
 cipal heathen writers hardly ever mention without scorn. And, 
 unhappily, though their scorn was in these instances justly 
 excited, yet, when these were taken away very little remained 
 on which the faith of a dying man might fasten, except the 
 general probability that the soul did riot perish with the body, 
 and that the separation of the two would be the commencement 
 of a new and distinct existence to the former. But, when thus 
 much was believed, and this, as we have seen, was nearly all of 
 which the best instructed heathen was persuaded, the idea of 
 death must still have been extremely formidable, nor to be con- 
 templated without an anxiety which the wisest and boldest of 
 their number were little able to overcome or dissemble. 
 
 " The man who felt the approach of death was departing for 
 a strange and distant country, where his reception might depend 
 on causes over which he had no controul, where all was dark, 
 where all was eternal, and where all was, therefore, terrible. 
 'Poor fluttering lively spirit,' said the philosopher Hadrian, 
 on his death, 'poor guest and comrade of the body ! to what 
 unknown regions wilt thou wing thy way, pale, naked, and 
 trembling?' — 'Whether to live or die be most profitable,' 
 were the words of a far better and wiser man than the Roman 
 Emperor ; ' whether my lot, oh men of Athens, be in this res- 
 pect better than yours, there is no one who knoweth, save God.' 
 But how different were the dismal anxiety of Hadrian, and the 
 
222 NOTES. 
 
 doubtful hope of Socrates, from the sure and certain faith of that 
 great apostle, to whom ' to die was gain,' and who exclaimed 
 in triumphant anticipation of his approaching martyrdom, ' I 
 have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have 
 kept the faith ; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of 
 righteousness which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give 
 me at that day.'" — Heber: Sermons preached in England, 
 Sermon XVI. 
 
 NOTE M. PAGE 152. 
 
 In the preceding paragraph, the author has attempted to 
 indicate the essential distinction between the Rationalist prin- 
 ciple and that of the Gospel. The full expansion of the notion 
 would require a volume ; but he believes that the root of the 
 evil lies in the fundamental error here alluded to. 
 
 NOTE N. PAGE 156. 
 
 " I would, if called upon, die a martyr for the Christian 
 religion, so completely is (in my poor opinion) its divine origin 
 proved by its beneficial effects on the state of society. Were 
 we but to name the abolition of slavery and polygamy, how 
 much has, in these two words, been granted to mankind in the 
 lessons of our Saviour." — Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 The ojjinion of a learned layman on a religious question is 
 always valuable ; and these words, from such a man, deserve, 
 both on his account and that of their subject, as wide a circula- 
 tion as theologians can give them. This great man had felt 
 the force of the testimony which philosophy bears to the truth of 
 the doctrines of Christianitv. 
 
NOTES. 223 
 
 NOTE O. PAGE 160. 
 
 The author need scarcely point out how strongly this argu- 
 ment bears upon the great, and now much agitated question, of 
 National Education. If a parent, on the ground of his indis- 
 soluble religious relationship to his child, is bound to afford that 
 child religious instruction, by a tie as strong as that which 
 compels him to provide for its bodily wants, the State, which 
 stands in loco parentis towards its people, is equally held by the 
 same eternal obligation. The hopeless diversity of human 
 opinion on religious matters, may, indeed, prevent the State 
 from carrying this obligation fully into effect ; but, as a Christian 
 community, it is at least bound to do nothing which shall 
 militate against this theory, or which shall in any degree afford 
 countenance to the notion, that religion and education ought, for 
 one moment, to be disunited. 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR : 
 
 1. SERMONS on POINTS of DOCTRINE and RULES of 
 DUTY, 2 vols. 12mo. cloth, boards. A new edition, 12s. 
 
 2. The DUTY of LITURGICAL PREACHING stated and 
 enforced. A Visitation Sermon, preached in the Collegiate Church, 
 Manchester, 8vo. Is. 
 
 3. The MODERATION of the CHURCH of ENGLAND. 
 A Sermon preached in the Collegiate Church, Manchester, 8vo. 6d. 
 Fourth Edition. 
 
 4. The CHURCH of ENGLAND a BULWARK between 
 SUPERSTITION and SCHISM : two Sermons preached on the 
 fourth day of October, 1835, 8vo. 6d. Second Edition.