prospects of mankind, their progression in knowledge and the arts, their growing power and dominion over nature,-expatiating over the past and the future, we forget that tale which is told so soon, those days which are so quickly numbered, a boundless ocean of being fills and expands our thoughts, and who can realize that his own existence is but a bubble that sparkles for an instant on its surface! But it may be, as we have said, that this life is valuable and great only as a preparation for a life to come; that its most vivid and attractive forms of happiness are but types and images of things which "eye hath not seen nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive," but "which God" may have "prepared for those that love him." There is one only record that can assure us of so sublime and animating a reality,-one only which we allow to be worthy of any serious consideration and inquiry,—that which declares that Jesus Christ was "delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification;" exhibiting, in his own person, the pledge and "first fruits" of a general resurrection from the grave. But this record, in claiming our belief, is not offered to the indolent wishes, or the presumptuous hopes, of man. It addresses itself to our moral convictions and feelings. It looks to be understood, and appreciated, and firmly believed under the sense of our duty to God, and in a readiness to

obey his will. These we must preserve and actively cherish, if we would certainly do justice to the evidence of the Gospel, and determine rightly whether the prospect which it lays open. to us in futurity, the hopes which it enkindles, be from God or not.

LECTURE IV.

THE RELIGIOUS OBLIGATION TO MORAL
RECTITUDE.

Deut. xxxii. 4.

A GOD OF TRUTH AND WITHOUT INIQUITY, JUST AND RIGHT IS HE.

We have maintained the reality of a moral obligation to the Deity, as assumed and enforced in the Christian religion, which exhibits his goodness, or his claim upon our gratitude, as the basis of religious duties. Now, it seems very obvious that every human being, assenting to this principle of duty to the Creator, should either be seeking to know the will of God, or, if known, be concerned and occupied in obeying it. In this state of mind, he would be prepared to do justice to the credibility of the Scripture, under the description of a special appeal to the gratitude of mankind. But it is observable, as was remarked in the last discourse, that persons who reject or disesteem the Scriptures as an impro

bable account of our moral relations to the Deity, are frequently, if not commonly, betrayed into habitual inattention to the nature of religion as a practical principle, and appear, for whatever reasons, to hold themselves exonerated from any proper obligation to God in the regulation of their affections and conduct; omitting the culture of piety, as commonly distinguished from morality, and observing the received rules of the latter under the influence of motives arising out of their condition as members of society, but in comparative indifference to the question whether an uniform rectitude of conduct be not incumbent on them as a course of obedience to the Supreme Being;-as though the Creator had abdicated his moral sovereignty over them, or there were no obligation remaining to consult his will, and to consider the particulars of their duty towards him, because a document, professing to bear a communication from himself, attributes to him a method of dealing with mankind, or a scheme of government over them, incompatible, as they affirm, with the proofs of his benevolence in the constitution of the world. As this is a state of mind which must effectually indispose a person for a full and impartial inquiry into the truth of Christianity, we adverted to the general confession of a personal demerit before God; and we insisted, that if the creation bears testimony to the goodness of its Author, it bears equal testi

mony to our own ingratitude and disobedience towards him, and is, consequently, to say the least, most unreasonably urged in disparagement of a religion which opens its message to the world with a proclamation of forgiveness, and a call to repentance. Dismissing, then, a prejudication against Christianity, taken up, as must be owned, on superficial grounds, we proceed to the second of the two cardinal propositions which it was intended to maintain; namely, that the duty of gratitude to God dictates the practice of all moral rectitude, or the fulfilment of our duties to our fellow-creatures. This proposition is in a manner acceded to in the common acknowledgment of demerit before God, but that objection to the Scriptures which has just been considered sufficiently demonstrates that it is far from being duly weighed. In estimating the claims of Christianity under the aspect contemplated in these discourses, it is essential to appreciate it in a measure corresponding to the evidence on which it rests, as well as to the true extent of its import.

It should be observed then, in the first place, that, if we have assigned the true ground on which it is reasonable to conclude that the Creator demands our gratitude for the benefits which he has conferred upon us, we must hence infer that he demands, at the same time, the practice of every virtue in our relations