fection which Abraham could know was that which reason, conscience, and experience had revealed to him. "Even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?" said the Saviour. On another occasion God says of him, "I know him that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord to do justice and judgment." What is implied in this? Certainly that Abraham and his offspring would know the way of the Lord, and what justice and judgment were, by the natural powers of their own minds. If special revelation were necessary to teach men this, then all mankind not living under the light of revelation would not have been in a state of probation.

We have the Christian revelation, not in the Hebrew, the ancient language of the people of God, but in the Greek, a language which was formed by a nation of barbarians while wandering in the forests of southeastern Europe. The Old Testament itself, two centuries before, had been translated into the same language. There is no want in the Greek of words to express every Hebrew idea relating to religion and morality. The very words of our text, which express Christ's judgment of the natural powers of man, originated centuries, perhaps a thousand years, before, among the forests or the islands of Greece. The word rendered "right" literally means just. How could that word have come into existence in the Greek tongue, were there not in human nature the natural perception of justice? The existence of that word in all languages is just as necessary and inevitable as the words night and day, white and black, because it expresses a quality of actions of which the mind has an intuitive perception.

But one more branch of the subject remains undis

cussed. It may be said that the Fall, although it did not destroy the moral perceptions of human nature, destroyed its balance, and gave the tendencies to evil a fatal preponderance. Man, before the Fall, was placed in an equal balance, with an equal inclination to good and evil, so that by a mere exercise of free will he might choose one or the other. By the Fall, a change took place in his nature, so that there is since a constitutional repugnance to every thing that is good, and a love for every thing that is bad. This proposition we have already refuted by an analysis of the structure of universal language, in which we showed that all the vices had, in the very names which men have given them, the stamp of their reprobation, and the virtues names signifying their approval. There is another demonstration. All languages have words in them which signify, not only virtues and vices, but good men and bad men. And good men and bad men derive their characters, not from their natures, but their actions. If all men were bad by nature and constitution, then, without a miracle, there could be no good men in the absence of a revelation. Yet mankind in all ages and nations testify to the existence of good men. Nay, it is expected by society of every man to be good, and the demand is not thought unreasonable; every man is thought very culpable if he is not good. Who are his judges? Those who possess the same nature themselves. If they felt that their own natures were so evil that good was impossible, or exceedingly difficult, they would readily excuse him. Their condemnation of him shows, that, in their estimation, human nature has no such strong and irresistible tendency to evil; there is so much good in it, and so much capacity for good, that every man is justly expected to be good; not to be es

pecially admired and rewarded for it, as if it were a great or a difficult thing, but rather as a natural and easy thing. Whereas, when he does wrong, he is thought to merit the strongest censure, because he has acted, not in accordance with his whole nature, but in violation of one of its highest and most essential laws.

Men of all nations and languages make laws. Let us consider what facts as to man's moral constitution are taken for granted in this proceeding. Is it not taken for granted that there is a proper balance in man's moral constitution? Laws are not arbitrary. They are usually conformed to men's sense of natural justice. If they were not, as a whole, they could not be sustained for a single day. Their ostensible object is to promote justice between man and man. If men had no natural sense of justice, they could never know what laws to enact, and if they had no preference for justice over injustice, then no laws could be executed. He who breaks a law which he knows to be right is thought to be justly punished. And upon what is founded the opinion of the justice of his punishment? Upon the just balance of his moral constitution, that, though he had passions, and appetites, and an immediate, though mistaken, interest to tempt him to disobey, still he had reason to teach him the propriety of the law, conscience to feel its obligation, and a freedom and power of will to enable him to comply with it, against all the solicitations of the passions and appetites.

There are exceptions to this, and, as in many other instances, the exceptions prove the rule, and show the reason upon which it is founded, and the justice of its application. There are two, and perhaps three, classes of persons to whom human laws do not apply, — who, when they break human laws, are arraigned, and tried,

and acquitted of guilt, - idiots, lunatics, and sometimes. those who have destroyed their moral nature by deepseated, habitual vice. Law does not apply to idiots, because they never had those powers of reason and conscience which create a just balance of the human faculties. The animal appetites and the passions having their full strength, and reason and conscience not having their proportionate development, the idiot has no fair trial, and the penalties of law, if applied to him, would be in the highest degree unjust. The lunatic once had this just balance, but through disease he has lost it. His reason is so enfeebled or disordered, that he has the most imperfect or erroneous notions of things; his appetites are so morbid, that what seems to a person in health but a slight temptation is to him perfectly irresistible; his passions are so inflamed and excitable, that the slightest provocation rouses him to frenzy. Human justice sees the impropriety of applying the requisitions of law to a being thus disqualified by the condition of his nature to comply with its requirements, and the juror on his oath acquits him of guilt.

There is another case in which man's fitness for moral probation seems to be overturned, in the case of long and habitual indulgence of the animal appetites, by which they have disordered the animal economy, and by that means impaired the intellectual and moral functions, and themselves, by constant excess, grown to gigantic and disproportionate strength. When such a change as this has really taken place, men do not attach the same censure to each individual immoral act, as at the commencement of a vicious career, except in as far as the man is to blame for having brought himself into such a condition.

Now the atrocity of the doctrine of the Fall of man consists in this, that it represents just such a change to have taken place in the human constitution by the fall of Adam as really takes place in the idiot, the lunatic, and the habitual sinner, without any fault of the offspring of Adam; and yet God, less just than man, treats them as if they were legitimate subjects of law, and punishes them as severely as if they possessed unimpaired all the powers and capacities which are necessary to free, unbiased moral action, and which man possessed at his original creation. Such a system of theology ascribes a conduct to the Deity more unjust than the taskmasters of Egypt, who withheld the straw and still required the full tale of bricks from their downtrodden slaves.

I have accomplished, I hope, the purpose with which I commenced this discourse, that of convincing you that the structure of universal language demonstrates the universality of a moral sense and of moral perception; that some actions are thought by the spectator and felt by the doer to be right, and to deserve reward, others wrong, and to merit punishment; that men are everywhere thought good or bad, not according to their nature, but their conduct in the use or abuse of their nature. They form their own characters, either good or bad, by their own voluntary acts. The fact, that there are both good and bad men under the light of nature, is sufficient proof that there is no such fatal bias to evil as is represented; and, finally, if there were, it would, to the same extent, destroy just moral responsibility.

Mankind, according to the declaration of the Saviour, "of themselves judge what is right," and they feel their own moral constitution so justly balanced by the Creator, that they can choose the right when they please,