these immediately; or, at most, there is but one inferential step which leads from the consciousness of what we feel to be in ourselves, to the impression of what we apprehend to be in Him from whom we derived our constitution and our being. There may here be one transition from the premises to the conclusion-but done with such rapidity by the mind that it is not conscious of an argument. And this it is, we believe, which has given a certain innate or a prior character to some of the notions and feelings of Natural Theism. They may be soundly bottomed notwithstanding-so that though mingled with the fears or the fancies of superstition, we can discern the substantial workings of Truth and Reason on the subject of a God, even in countries of grossest Heathenism. For the felt supremacy of Conscience established even there, a certain natural regimen of Morality-and gave the impression of a Jurisprudence wherewith the idea of an avenger and judge stood irresistibly associated. The Law written on the Heart suggested a Lawgiver however indistinct their personification of him may have been. Even the barbarous Theology of Greece and Rome, impure and licentious as it was, did not wholly obliterate what may be called the Theology of Natural Conscience.

15. And we mistake, if we think it was ever otherwise, even in the ages of darkest and most licentious Paganism. This Theology of Conscience has often been greatly obscured, but never, in any country or at any period in the history of the world, has it been wholly obliterated. We behold the vestiges of it

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in the simple Theology of the desert; and, perhaps, more distinctly there, than in the complex superstitions of an artificial and civilized heathenism. In confirmation of this, we might quote the invocations to the Great Spirit from the wilds of North America. But, indeed, in every quarter of the globe, where missionaries have held converse with savages, even with the rudest of Nature's children -when speaking on the topics of sin and judgment, they did not speak to them in vocables unknown. And as this sense of a universal Law and a Supreme Lawgiver never waned into total extinction among the tribes of ferocious and untamed wanderers—so neither was it altogether stifled by the refined and intricate polytheism of more enlightened nations. The whole of classic authorship teems with allusions to a Supreme Governor and Judge: And when the guilty Emperors of Rome were tempest-driven by remorse and fear, it was not that they trembled before a spectre of their own imagination. When terror mixed, which it often did, with the rage and cruelty of Nero, it was the theology of conscience which haunted him. It was not the suggestion of a capricious fancy which gave him the disturbance -but a voice issuing from the deep recesses of a moral nature, as stable and uniform throughout the species as is the material structure of humanity; and in the lineaments of which we may read that there is a moral regimen among men, and therefore a moral Governor who hath instituted, and who presides over it. Therefore, it was that these imperial despots, the worst and haughtiest of recorded monarchs, stood aghast at the spectacle

of their own worthlessness. It is true, there is a wretchedness which naturally and essentially belongs to a state of great moral unhingement; and this may account for their discomforts, but it will not account for their fears. They may, because of this, have felt the torments of a present misery. But whence their fears of a coming vengeance ? They would not have trembled at Nature's law, apart from the thought of Nature's Lawgiver. The imagination of an unsanctioned law would no more have given disquietude, than the imagination of a vacant throne. But the law, to their guilty apprehensions, bespoke a judge. The throne of heaven, to their troubled eye, was filled by a living monarch. Righteousness, it was felt, would not have been so enthroned in the moral system of man, had it not been previously enthroned in the system of the universe; nor would it have held such place and pre-eminence in the judgment of all spirits, had not the Father of Spirits been its friend and ultimate avenger. This is not a local or geographical notion. It is a universal feeling-to be found wherever men are found, because interwoven with the constitution of humanity. not, therefore, the peculiarity of one creed, or of one country. It circulates at large throughout the family of man. We can trace it in the Theology of savage life; nor is it wholly overborne by the artificial Theology of a more complex and idolatrous Paganism. Neither crime nor civilization can extinguish it; and whether in the "conscientia scelerum" of the fierce and frenzied Catiline, or in the tranquil contemplative musings of Socrates and

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Cicero, we find the impression of at once a righteous and a reigning Sovereign.

16. With this felt Supremacy of Conscience, we cannot rid ourselves of the impression that whatever the actual power or prevalence of vice may be in the world, it is but the tumult and insurrection of lower against higher elements and that moral rectitude still undislodged from its empire in the pure region of Sentiment and Thought, sits aloft as it were in empyreal dignity; and from an eminence whence no Power in Earth or Heaven can dethrone her, commands the homage of all that is best and worthiest in Nature. When there is war betwixt Opinion and Force, the latter may have the physical ascendancy, yet the former is ever counted the nobler antagonist—and thus it is, that although vice should have enlisted under its standard of rebellion all the families of mankind, there remains the moral greatness of Virtue, as erect in the consciousness of its strength as if it had the public mind of the Universe upon its side. It is difficult to resist the feeling, that amid all the mystery of present appearances, the highest power is at one with the highest principle. And it confirms still more our idea of a government-that conscience not only gives forth her mandates with the tone and authority of a Superior; but, as if on purpose to enforce their observance, thus follows them up with an obvious discipline of rewards and punishments. It is enough but to mention, on the one hand, that felt complacency which is distilled, like some precious elixir, upon the heart by the recollection of virtuous deeds and virtuous sacrifices;

and, on the other hand, those inflictions of remorse, which are attendant upon wickedness, and wherewith, as if by the whip of a secret tormentor, the heart of every conscious sinner is agonized. We discern in these the natural sanctions of morality, and the moral character of Him who hath ordained them. We cannot otherwise explain the peace and triumphant satisfaction which spring from the consciousness of well doing-nor can we otherwise explain the degradation as well as bitter distress, which a sense of demerit brings along with it. Our only adequate interpretation of these phenomena is, that they are the present remunerations or the present chastisements of a God who loveth righteousness, and who hateth iniquity. Nor do we view them as the conclusive results of virtue and vice, but rather as the tokens and the precursors either of a brighter reward or of a heavier vengeance, that are coming. It is thus that the delight of self-approbation, instead of standing alone, brings hope in its train; and remorse, instead of standing alone, brings terror in its train. The expectations of the future are blended with these joys and sufferings of the present; and all serve still more to stamp an impression, of which traces are to be found in every quarter of the earth that we live under a retributive economy, and that the God who reigns over it takes a moral and judicial cognizance of the creatures whom He hath formed.

17. What then are the specific injunctions of conscience? for on this question essentially depends every argument that we can derive from this power or property of our nature, for the moral character