outset of a minster's dealings with the most rustic congregations; and, all ignorant as they may be of the proofs by which religion is substantiated, there is still even in their untutored minds such an impression of probability, as if not sufficient to decide the question, should at least summon all their faculties to the respectful entertainment of it.

25. We may thus perceive what that is, on which a teacher of religion finds an introduction for his topic, even into the minds of people in the lowest state both of moral and intellectual debasement. They may have not that in them, at the outset of his ministrations, which can enable them to decide the question of a God; but they have at least that in them, which should summon their attention to it. They have at least such a sense of the divinity, as their own consciences will tell, should put them on the regards and the inquiries of moral earnestness. This is a clear principle which operates at the very commencement of a religious course; and causes the first transition, from the darkness and insensibility of alienated nature, to the feelings and attentions of seriousness. The truth is, that there is a certain rudimental theology every where, on which the lessons of a higher theology may be grafted as much as to condemn, if not to awaken the apathy of nature. What we have already said of the relation in which the father of a starving household stands to the giver of an anonymous donation, holds true of the relation in which all men stand to the unseen or anonymous God. Though in a state of absolute darkness, and without one token or clue to a

discovery, there is room for the exhibition of moral differences among men-for even then, all the elements of morality might be at work, and all the tests of moral propriety might be abundantly verified; and still more, after that certain likelihoods had arisen, or some hopeful opening had occurred for investigating the secret of a God. There is the utmost moral difference that can be imagined between the man who would gaze with intense scrutiny upon these likelihoods, and the man who either in heedlessness or aversion would turn his eyes from them; between the man who would seize upon such an opening and prosecute such an investigation to the uttermost, and the man who either retires or shrinks from the opportunity of a disclosure, that might burden him both with the sense and with the services of some mighty obligation.

26. And the same moral force which begins this inquiry, also continues and sustains it. If there be power in the very conception of a God to create and constitute the duty of seeking after Him, this power grows and gathers with every footstep of advancement in the high investigation. If the thought of a merely possible deity have rightfully awakened a sense of obligation within us to entertain the question; the view of a probable deity must enhance this feeling, and make the claim upon our attention still more urgent and imperative than at the first. Every new likelihood makes the call louder, and the challenge more incumbently binding than before. In proportion to the light we had attained, would be the criminality of resisting

any further notices or manifestations of that mighty Being with whom we had so nearly and so emphatically to do. Under the impulse of a right principle, we should follow on to know God-till, after having done full justice both to our opportunities and our powers, we had made the most of all the available evidence that was within our reach, and possessed ourselves of all the knowledge that was accessible.

27. But we shall expatiate no longer on the popular and practical applications of this principle --all important though they be; and will only now advert to the distinction between the ethics and the objects of Theology, for the purpose of elucidating by a very obvious analogy the relation in which the Natural and the Christian Theology stand to each other.

28. And first, it is obvious that in virtue of our moral nature, such as it is, there might be a feeling of certain moral proprieties as appendant to certain relations between man and man without any recognition by the mind of God. Though the world were to be transported beyond the limits of the divine economy-though the Supreme were now to stamp a perpetuity upon its present laws both of physical and mental nature, and then to abandon it for ever though He were to consign it to some distant and solitary place in a reign of atheism, only leaving untouched the outward accommodations by which man is now surrounded, and the internal mechanism which he carries in his bosom-let there be no difference but one, namely, that all sense of a ruling Divinity were expunged, but that with this

exception all the processes of thought and imagina tion and feeling went on upon their old principlesstill would there be a morality among men, a recognition of the difference between right and wrong, just as distinct and decided as a recognition of the difference between beauty and deformity. There would be nought in such a translation of the human family to this new state that could break up the alliance between a view of loveliness in scenery, and the tasteful admiration of it; or between a view of integrity in character and the approval of its worth or its rectitude. By the supposition that we now make, the taste is left entire and it has only to be presented with the same objects that it may be similarly affected as before. And by the same supposition the moral nature is left entire-and it has only to be presented with the appropriate objects, that it may respond to them as it did before, and come forth with its wonted evolutions. The single difference is, that one object is withdrawn, that God henceforth is unheeded and unknown, that he is never present to the eye of the mind so as to call forth from the heart a sense of corre sponding duteousness. But still in the utter absence of all thought and of all knowledge about God, there are other objects whereon with the human constitution unchanged the moral feeling and the moral faculty would find their appropriate exercise. There would still be the reciprocations of morality among men the same relationship as before between injury and a sense of displeasure-between beneficence and a sense of gratitude-between a consciousness of guilt, towards a neighbour, if not

towards God, between this consciousness and the pain of self-dissatisfaction-between the exposure of human villany or baseness upon the one hand and the outcries of public execration on the other. The voice of the inward monitor would still be heard. The voice of society whether in applause or condemnation would still be heard. Men would still continue to accuse or else to excuse each other. The whole system of our jurisprudence might remain as at present and superadded to it, there would be a court of conscience and a court of public opinion, by which, even after the world had been desolated of all sense of God, a natural regimen of morality might still be upholden.

29. Let a mathematician retain his geometrical powers and perceptions entire; and though he should become an atheist, he will still apprehend a question of equality between one line and another. And let any one retain his moral powers and perceptions entire; and though he should become an atheist, he will still apprehend a question of equity between one man and another. Atheism does not hinder the resentment which he feels upon a provocation; neither does it hinder the instinctive sensibility which he feels at the sight of distress; neither does it hinder the quick and lively approval wherewith he regards an exhibition of virtue; nor yet the recoil of his adverse moral judgment with all its emotions of antipathy from some scene of perfidy or of violence. Though utterly broken loose from heaven, there would still be the same play of action and reaction upon earth. Both the obligation of a legal right, and the approbation of a moral rightness