might expect what all experience shows has happened - that any attempt to separate this morality from this religion, and yet give it power, would be like the attempt to separate the branch from the parent stock, and yet cause it to live. We might expect, if we were ever to see a perfect morality coming up from the wilderness of this world, that she would come, not walking alone, but "leaning upon her Beloved."

LECTURE V.

ADAPTATION OF CHRISTIANITY TO THE CONSCIENCE, CONSIDERED AS A POWER CAPABLE OF IMPROVEMENT -ITS ADAPTATION TO THE INTELLECT, THE AFFECTIONS, THE IMAGINATION, AND THE WILL.

CHRISTIANITY is analogous to nature; it coincides with natural religion, and it is adapted to the moral nature of man. This adaptation may be said to exist if it satisfy the conscience as a discriminating power, and if it has a tendency to quicken and exalt its action, considered as a power needing improvement. This last point I regard as of great importance. If it can be shown that the moral powers are quickened and perfected in proportion as the mind comes under the legitimate action of any system, that system must be from God. That a false system should tend to perfect the conscience in its discriminating, and impulsive, and rewarding, and punishing power, would be not only impossible, but suicidal. It would purge the eye to a quicker perception of its own deformities, and nerve the arm for its own overthrow. Accordingly, there is no tendency in any system, except the Christian, to create a pure and an efficient individual or public conscience. Other systems act upon men through prescription, through awe and reverence, and hope and

fear, and not by commending themselves as righteous to every man's conscience in the sight of God. But Christianity, by the perfect standard which it sets up in the character of God and of his law, by its doctrines of the universal and constant inspection of a righteous God, and of a future judgment, by its amazing sanctions, and especially by the light in which it places all sin as ingratitude to an infinite Benefactor, does all that we can conceive any system to do to quicken and to perfect the powers of moral perception and of action. The adjustments of the system are made; they are perfect; it only needs to be applied. Accordingly, we find that an efficient and an enlightened conscience exists just in proportion to the prevalence of pure Christianity; and we must see that its full influence would banish moral evil as the sun disperses the darkness. It is by the light and strength drawn from Christianity itself that we are able to apply many of those tests which we now apply in judging of it; and the more fully we are under its influence, the more competent shall we be to apply such tests, and the more convincing will be the evidence derived from their application.

Having made these few additional remarks respecting the adaptation of Christianity to the conscience, I now proceed to speak of its adaptation to the intellect, to the affections, to the imagination, and to the will.

By the adaptation of Christianity to the intellect, I mean its tendency to give it clearness and strength. I mean by it just what is meant when it is said that nature is adapted to the intellect. The intellect is

enlarged and strengthened by the exercise of its powers on suitable subjects. This exercise can be induced in only two ways—by furnishing it with information, or by leading it to study and reflection; and whichever of these we regard, we need not fear to compare Christianity with nature as adapted to enlarge and strengthen the intellectual powers.

And, first, of information. If we consider the Christian revelation, as we fairly may in this connection, as it recognizes, includes, and presupposes the Old Testament, there is no book that can compare with it for the variety and importance of the information it gives; nor can it be exceeded by nature itself. From this, and from this alone, do we know any thing of the origin of the world and of the human race; of the introduction of natural and moral evil; of the history of men before the deluge; of the deluge itself, as connected with the race of man; of the early settlement and dispersions of the race; of the history of the Jews; and of the history of the early rise and progress of Christianity. Without the Bible, an impenetrable curtain would be dropped between us and the whole history of the race farther back than the Greeks; and who does not feel that the letting down of such a curtain would act upon the mind, not simply by the amount of information it would withdraw, but with the effect of a chill and a paralysis, from the necessity of that information to give completeness to knowledge as an organized whole? It would be like taking the hook out of the beam on which the whole chain hangs. And, again, what information gained from nature can be more interesting than that which the Bible gives concerning God as a Father, concerning his universal providence,

our accountability, a resurrection from the dead, the second coming of Christ, and an eternal life? Who would substitute the mists of conjecture for this mighty background, piled up by revelation along the horizon of the future?

But, to say nothing of information, as it is not from that that the mind gains its chief efficiency; I infer that Christianity is adapted to the intellect, 1st, From the fact of the identity of its spirit with that of true philosophy. Of this I have already spoken.

2. Christianity is indirectly favorable to the intellect by bringing men out from under the dominion of sensuality and of those low vices by which it is checked and dwarfed in its growth. The temperance and sobriety of life which it enjoins are essential, as conditions, to the full expansion and power of the intellect.

3. That Christianity is favorable to the intellect, is obvious from the place which it assigns to truth. Truth, in this system, lies at the foundation of every thing. It is contradistinguished from every other system, pretending to come from God, by this. Christ Isaid that he came into the world to bear witness of the truth. He prayed that God would sanctify men, but it was through the truth. It seems to have been the object of Christ to place his disciples in a position in which they could intelligently, as well as affectionately, yield themselves to him, and to the government of God. How remarkable are his words! "Henceforth," says he, "I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father, I have made known unto you." Christ