tion to argue morals out on these principles has been proved, by the experience of all ages, to be impossible.

THE WILL OF GOD is the brief, undeviating authority of moral obedience. And what majesty doth this throw around the precepts of the Bible! Thus saith the Lord, is the introduction, the reason, the obligation of every command. God appears as the legislator, the moral governor, the Lord of his accountable creatures. He speaks-and all the earth keeps silence before him!1

And why should I contrast the partial guesses of Paganism or Infidelity on a future state of rewards and punishment, with the full and decisive declarations of that gospel by which life and immortality are brought to light? Nature is ignorant. Nature knows nothing distinctly of the rules of the last judgment. Nature can give no account of heaven and hell. Revelation alone pronounces with its awful voice the immortality of the soul. Revelation unveils the eternal world. Revelation makes all its doctrines and all its precepts bear upon the last dread assize, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed-when the books shall be opened, when the sea shall give up the dead that are in it, and every man shall be judged out of the things written

These are The purity of

in the books, according to his works. the proper sanctions of morals. the code answers to the obligation of the enactments; the means or machinery it employs, corresponds with the importance of the consequences. The doctrines by which it is sustained are the suitable aids and encouragements for duties of such momentous import. An infinite God, an infinite rewarder, an infinite avenger—a judge of omniscient and omnipotent authority, a sentence of unmixed justice, a reward of unparalleled grace, a final and impartial settlement of the disordered state of the world by the Creator and Preserver of allthese are considerations which give a sublimity to the Christian morals, and attach an importance and weight to them which render them the only influential rule of human practice. To talk of morality without religion, is to talk of a legislation without a legislator. To talk of a religion without a distinct and solemn sanction derived from the proper evidences of a divine Revelation, is to talk the language of general, unmeaning declamation, which can neither animate nor control the heart. But to point out the Christian morals expounded in their purity and extent, furnished with ample means of becoming practicable, interwoven with the most powerful motives, and con

1 Rev. xx. 11-13 .

firmed ultimately by the most solemn and precise sanctions, is to propose the true guide of life, the authoritative arbiter of human duty, the solemn and efficacious motive for the conduct of a reasonable and accountable being.

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

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Nor is it a slight matter, that in the description given by our Saviour of the proceedings of that last day, happiness and misery are adjudged, not on the footing of faith or love, which are hidden principles known only to Almighty God, but on the footing of works, good or evil, manifested before men, and shown to flow from faith in the 1 Gal. vi. 7. 2 Cor. v. 10.

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merits of the Redeemer in the one case, and contempt of him in the other.'

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

1. The morality of the gospel makes it IMPOSSIBLE, IN THE NATURE OF THINGS, THAT CHRISTIANITY SHOULD BE AN IMPOSTURE. This is my first remark, in concluding this lecture. I do not merely affirm, that the Christian morals strengthen the impression of truth derived from the external evidences (which is all my argument demands), but I assert that no wicked men could have invented, or could have wished to propose, or could have succeeded in establishing, such a religion, with such a code of precepts so inseparably united with it and springing from it. 'Lect. xiv. and xv.

' Matt. xxv.

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

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

In fact, the fishermen of Galilee, even if they had been ever so pure in heart, (which the supposition of imposture makes impossible) could never have composed a system of duty so new, so peculiar, so holy, so perfect. See how slowly and laboriously the science of morals, as a philosophical effort, is wrought out, even at