would continue to be felt-and as in the chamber of a man's own heart there would be a remorse upon the back of iniquity as before, and from the tribunal of society there would descend upon it a voice of rebuke as before-the obligations of morality would still have a meaning; and apart from the thought of God, there would be a sense as well as an understanding of moral obligation. 30. With the access which the geometrician has at present to the orbs and the movements which be on high-his mathematics do avail him for the com putations of a sublime astronomy. Let this access be barred; and still his mathematics would avail him as before for all terrestrial positions and distances. And so with the access which either peasant or philosopher has to the knowledge of God, his morals do avail for pointing out the incumbent gratitude and the incumbent obedience. Let this access be somehow intercepted, let the face of the Divinity be mantled in thickest darkness, insomuch that the very conception of Him were banished from our world; and still would there remain a sublunary morals that would take cognizance of the sublunary relationships as before. The astronomer in the one case might sink down into a landed surveyor. The aspiring candidate for heaven, in the other case, might sink down into a mere citizen of earth-yet there would be a surviving mathematics and also a surviving morals. The distinction between the right and the wrong would no more be obliterated by such an interception of our view towards the upper sanctuary, than the distinction between the east and the west would be cancelled pearance by the destruction of the telescope, and the disapof all its wondrous revelations from the memory of our species. The earth that we tread upon would still continue to be a platform for the display and exercise of the moral proprieties-and as it was in the age of Greece and Rome, the period of a distorted theology, so would it be now in the period of an utterly extinct theology—virtue would be felt in its rightness, and also be felt in the obligation of it. 31. When Sir Isaac Newton was first made to know of the Satellites of Jupiter, he had not an essentially new mathematics to learn that he might evolve the law of their movements. The only novelty lay in the facts, and not in the principles that he brought to bear upon them. The geometry which guided him along these celestial orbs was the very same by which he traced the path of a projectile on the surface of our own planet; and to obtain a just estimate of those mazy heavens that now were opened to his view, he had only to transfer the mathematics which he before had to another set of data. And it is the very same with the revelations of a higher moral, as with those of a higher physical economy. It is a revelation not of new principles, but of new objects addressed to our old principles. The very ethics that had been long in frequent and familiar exercise about the things within our knowledge, are available for such things as are now offered for the first time to our contemplation-even though our eye had not before seen, nor our ear heard, nor yet it had ever entered into our hearts to conceive of them. The very ethics that dictate our gratitude to an earthly benefactor, dictate also the transcending gratitude, the sublimer devotion that we owe to the benefactor who sitteth on high-just as the arithmetic which assigns the units of an earthly, is the same with that which assigns the millions of a distance that is heavenly. It is thus that the revelations of heaven meet with a law already written in the hearts of men upon earth-and so in the whole morality of that relationship which subsists between men and their Maker, do we meet with analogies to the morality of men who live without God in the world. 32. Thus there is a natural philosophy which, when conversant with earthly objects alone, may be denominated the Science of Terrestrial Physics. And in like manner there is a moral philosophy which, when conversant with earthly objects alone, as with the various beings who occupy this globe, may be denominated the Science of Terrestrial Ethics. 33. But even within the cognizance of man's natural eye, there are heavenly objects whose paths and movements can be traced by him; and so be made the subject of mathematical description and mathematical reasoning. When he lifts himself to the contemplation of them, he enters on the confines of a science distinct from the former, though comprehended with it under the general title of Natural Philosophy-even what may be called the science of the Celestial Physics. In as far as he prosecutes this science without the aid of instruments for the enlargement of his vision, he may be said to study the lessons of natural astronomy. There was such an astronomy prior to the invention of the telescope; and even still, the limits could be assigned between those truths or doctrines of the whole science of astronomy which lie within the ken of the natural eye, and those that lie without the ken of the natural eye, but within the ken of the telescope. Within 34. And so truly of moral philosophy. the natural eyesight of the mind, there may be clearly perceived-not alone those objects of the science which are placed immediately around us upon earth; but there may also be perceived, though dimly and hazily we allow, one heavenly object of the science. The light of nature reaches more or less a certain way into the region of celestial ethics; and so there is a natural theology which, however dull or imperfect the medium through which it is viewed, presents us with something different from a total obscuration. There is a book of observation open to all men, in whose characters, indistinct though they be, we may read if not the signals at least the symptoms of a Divinity—and which, if not enough for the purpose of our seeing, are at least enough to make us responsible for the direction in which we are looking. The doctrines of this natural theology may not bear the decided impress of verities upon themso that as the conclusions of a full and settled belief they may not be valuable. But they at least stand forth in the aspect of verisimilitudes so that as calls to attention and further inquiry they are highly valuable. There was such a theology prior to the Christian revelation— and even still there is a real, though not perhaps very definable limit between those truths of the whole science of theology which lie within the ken of nature, and those which lie without the ken of nature, but within the ken of revelation. 35. And lastly, the telescope hath immeasurably extended the dominion of astronomical science. Objects, though before within the limits of vision yet descried but faintly, have had vivid illumination shed upon them; and an immensity teeming with secrets before undiscoverable hath been evolved on the contemplation of men. A world hath been expanded into a universe; and natural astronomy shrinks into a very little thing, when compared with that mighty system which the great instrument of modern revelation hath unfolded. What an injustice to this noble science, on the part of one of its expounders did he limit himself to the information of the eye; and forbear every allusion to the powers or informations of the telescope. What a creeping and inadequate representation could he bring forth of it, if with no other materials than the phenomena of vision, he was barred either by ignorance of the telescope, or by a wilful contempt for its performances, from the glories of the higher astronomy. 36. This consummates the analogy. By what may be termed an instrument of discovery too, a spiritual telescope, the science of Theology has been extended beyond its natural dimensions. the word of God, the things of Heaven have been brought nigh to us; and the mysteries of au By |