idea of human nature.

And as in civil government

the constitution is broken in upon, and violated by power and strength prevailing over authority; so the constitution of man is broken in upon and violated by the lower faculties or principles within prevailing over that, which is in its nature supreme over them all. Thus when it is said by ancient writers, that tortures and death are not so contrary to human nature as injustice; by this, to be sure, is not meant, that the aversion to the former in mankind is less strong and prevalent than their aversion to the latter: But that the former is only contrary to our nature considered in a partial view, and which takes in only the lowest part of it, that which we have in common with the brutes; whereas the latter is contrary to our nature, considered in a higher sense, as a system and constitution, contrary to the whole economy of man." The conclusion on the whole is that 66 man cannot be considered as a creature left by his Maker to act at random, and live at large up to the extent of his natural power, as passion, human wilfulness, happen to carry him; which is the condition brute creatures are in; But that from his make, constitution, or nature, he is, in the strictest and most proper sense, a law to himself. He hath the rule of right within: What is wanting is only that he honestly attend to it."

11. Now it is in these phenomena of Conscience that Nature offers to us, far her strongest argument, for the moral character of God. Had He been an unrighteous Being himself, would He have given to this the obviously superior faculty in man, so

distinct and authoritative a voice on the side of righteousness? Would He have so constructed the creatures of our species, as to have planted in every breast a reclaiming witness against himself? Would He have thus inscribed on the tablet of every heart the sentence of his own condemnation; and is not this just as unlikely, as that He should have inscribed it in written characters on the forehead of each individual? Would He so have fashioned the workmanship of His own hands; or, if a God of cruelty, injustice, and falsehood, would He have placed in the station of master and judge that faculty which, felt to be the highest in our nature, would prompt a generous and high-minded revolt of all our sentiments against the Being who formed us? From a God possessed of such characteristics, we should surely have expected a differently-moulded humanity; or, in other words, from the actual constitution of man, from the testimonies on the side of all righteousness, given by the vicegerent within the heart, do we infer the righteousness of the Sovereign who placed it there. He would never have established a conscience in man, and invested it with the authority of a monitor, and given to it those legislative and judicial functions which it obviously possesses; and then so framed it, that all its decisions should be on the side of that virtue which He himself disowned, and condemnatory of that vice which He himself exemplified. This is an evidence for the righteousness of God, which keeps its ground, amid all the disorders and aberrations to which humanity is liable; and can no more, indeed, be

deafened or overborne by these, than is the rightful authority of public opinion, by the occasional outbreakings of iniquity and violence which take place in society. This public opinion may, in those seasons of misrule when might prevails over right, be deforced from the practical ascendancy which it ought to have; but the very sentiment that it so ought, is our reason for believing the world to have been originally formed, in order that virtue might have the rule over it. In like manner, when, in the bosom of every individual man, we can discern a conscience, placed there with the obvious design of being a guide and a commander, it were difficult not to believe, that, whatever the partial outrages may be which the cause of virtue has to sustain, it has the public mind of the universe in its favour; and that therefore He, who is the Maker and the Ruler of such a universe, is a God of righteousness. Amid all the subsequent deteriorations and errors, the original design, both of a deranged watch and of a deranged human nature, is alike manifest; first, of the maker of the watch, that its motions should harmonize with time; second, of the maker of man, that his movements should harmonize with truth and righteousness. We can, in most cases, discern between an aberration and an original law; between a direct or primitive tendency and the effect of a disturbing force, by which that tendency is thwarted and overborne. And so of the constitution of man. It may be now a loosened and disproportioned thing, yet we can trace the original structure-even as from the fragments of a ruin,

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we can obtain the perfect model of a building from its capital to its base. It is thus that, however prostrate conscience may have fallen, we can still discern its place of native and original pre-eminence, as being at once the legislator and the judge in the moral system, though the executive forces of the system have made insurrection against it, and thrown the whole into anarchy. By studying the constitution, or what Butler calls the make of any thing, we may divine the purpose of the Maker. No one can mistake the design of the artificer in putting a regulator into a watch. It was to make it move regularly. And as little should we mistake the design of the Creator in putting a Conscience into man's bosom. It was to make him walk conscientiously. Even although from some derangement in the machinery, the regulator had lost its power of control-yet from its plan of control the original purpose of it may still be abundantly manifest. And in like manner, though from the unhingement of man's moral economy, Conscience may have fallen from the actual sway, it still bespeaks itself to be a fallen sovereign, and that the place of sovereignty is that which natively and rightfully belongs to it. When what is obviously the regulating power has quitted its hold, whether of the material or the spiritual mechanism, we distinctly recognise of each that it is not in its natural state but in a state of disorder, arising in the one case from the wear of the materials or from some shake that the machinery has received, arising in the other case either from some incidental disturbance, or from some inherent frailty and defect

that attaches to the creature.

There is a depth

of mystery in every thing connected with the existence and origin of evil in creation; yet, even in the fiercest uproar of our stormy passions, Conscience, though in her softest whispers, gives to the supremacy of rectitude the voice of an undying testimony; and her light still shining in a dark place, her unquelled accents still heard in the loudest outcry of Nature's rebellious appetites, form the strongest argument within reach of the human faculties, that, in spite of all partial or temporary derangements, Supreme Power and Supreme Goodness are at one. It is true that rebellious man hath, with daring footstep, trampled on the lessons of Conscience; but why, in spite of man's perversity, is conscience, on the other hand, able to lift a voice so piercing and so powerful, by which to remonstrate against the wrong, and to reclaim the honours that are due to her? How comes it that, in the mutiny and uproar of the inferior faculties, that faculty in man, which wears the stamp and impress of the highest, should remain on the side of truth and holiness? Would humanity have thus been moulded by a false and evil spirit; or would he have committed such impolicy against himself, as to insert in each member of our species a principle which would make him feel the greatest complacency in his own rectitude, when he feels the most high-minded revolt of indignation and dislike against the Being who gave him birth? It is not so much that Conscience takes a part among the other faculties of our nature; but that Conscience takes among them the part of a governor, and that man, if he do not obey her