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this higher relationship--to make the ethics which he already has as available in that Moral Philosophy whose field is the heaven above, as he has already made them in that Moral Philosophy whose field is the earth below.

out.

22. The celestial physics form a more transcendental theme than the terrestrial. But this character of the more transcendental lies only in the facts, and not at all in the mathematics. And so the celestial in Moral Philosophy is a more transcendental theme than the terrestrial-but this too lies only in the facts, and not at all in the ethics. To obtain the facts and data of the former science, a new and peculiar mode of discovery was struck The telescope was invented. Many of the objects were beyond the reach of our natural vision; and nature was provided with an assistance else there had been much of the celestial physics that would have remained for ever unknown. The same may, perhaps, hold of the celestial ethics also. Perhaps, there are many of its data that never could have been ascertained but by a peculiar mode of discovery. Perhaps the unaided faculties of man were incompetent to the task-and what the telescope hath done for us in respect of the material heavens, a living messenger may have done for us in respect of their moral and spiritual economy. It is a very wide transition when we pass from those distances in a terrestrial survey which can be measured by the chain, or at the farther extremities of which we can descry some floating signal that has been erected by human hands-when we pass from these through the mighty voids of im

mensity; and across that interval which separates the rolling worlds from each other, can now by the aid of the telescope look on moons and planets that eye had not seen, nor ear heard of, neither had it entered into the heart of man to conceive. And it is also a wide transition when we pass from the terrestrial to the celestial objects of Moral Philosophy-from the living society around us, to the Great Unseen who is above us; and of whom perhaps we could not have known save by the voice of a messenger from the pavilion of his special residence, who in reference to the celestial ethics, hath done what the telescope hath done in reference to the celestial mechanics, hath brought out from the obscurity in which for ages they had lain, objects of which the world was before unconscious; but to which when made known she is already furnished with a morality by which she can respond to them-even as when the new facts of astronomy were presented to her view, she already had the mathematics by which she could draw from them the just and important applications. The telescope gave her no geometry, though it gave her the data of many a geometrical exercise. And thus it is that a teacher from heaven, even though he should confine himself to the revelation of such facts and objects as had been before wrapt from human eye in the depths of their own mysteriousness-though he should simply lift the veil from that which was before unseen; or by the notices that he brought with him from the Upper Sanctuary, should bring forward into view a spiritual landscape, which by its remoteness, was

dim at least, if not altogether invisible-though he should not be the expounder of any new morality at all, might be the expounder of facts that would meet and call forth a doctrine, or a previous discernment of morality, which had been already in the world.

23. And thus as the movement from the terrestrial to the celestial, is in Natural, so is it also in Moral Philosophy. By this movement we look at other things, and perhaps do so by other instruments of vision. In the latter, more particularly, instead of our fellow men, with whom we can hold immediate converse by the organs of sense, the great object is a Being whom no man hath seen at any time; but whom we either see by reflection from the mirror of His own workmanship, or see by revelation brought down to our earthly dwellingplaces through a direct embassy from heaven.

24. And if on earth gratitude to a human benefactor is not unknown, and it be the universal sense of the species that there is virtue in the emotion— if truth, and goodness, and purity, when seen in a fellow mortal, draw an homage from the heart of every observer-if within the bounds of our world, the obligations of honour and humanity, and justice, are felt among those who live upon it; then let a new object be set forth to us from heaven, or perhaps an object seen bat darkly before and now set forth in brighter manifestation-let Him be made known as the God whose hands did frame and fashion us, and whose right hand upholds us continually let some new light be thrown upon His character and ways; some new and before unheard

demonstration given of a holiness that can descend to no compromise with sin, and yet of a love that by all the sin of His creatures is unquenchablelet Him now stand out in the lustre of His high attributes, with each shedding a glory upon the other, yet mercy rejoicing over them all let this Being, at once so lovely and so venerable, be expounded to our view, as the Father of the human family, and as sending abroad upon that world which He hath so plenteously adorned, a voice of general invitation, that his wandering children. might again return to his forgiveness, and He again be securely seated in the confidence and affection of them all-it needs not that there be superadded to our existing Ethics, some new principle, in order that we may be qualified to meet this new revelation which is addressed to us. From the nature of man as he is already constituted, there might go back a moral echo to Him who thus speaketh to them from heaven; and they might only need to look upon the now manifested Deity, that their hearts may feel the love, or their consciences may attest the obedience which are due to Him.

25. And there is nought to baffle our ethics in the infinity of God, or in the distance at which He stands from us. Only grant Him to be our benefactor and our owner; and on this relation alone do we confidently found our obligations, both of gratitude and of service. Just as there is nothing, either in the mighty distance or overbearing magnitude of the sun, that baffles our mathematics. The magnitude of quantity does not affect the relations of quantity. It only gives a larger result

to the calculation.

And the same is true of the

moral relations. Though the being who is the object of them, be exalted to the uttermost-though the beneficence which he has rendered outweigh indefinitely all that ever was conferred upon us by our fellow-men, there is nothing in this to disturb the conclusion that we owe him a return. It only enhances the conclusion. It only swells proportionally the amount of the return-and, instead of some partial offering, it points to the dedication of all our powers, and the consecration of all our habits, as the alone adequate expressions of our loyalty. In ascending from the terrestrial to the celestial ethics, we come in view of more elevated gifts, and a more elevated giver-but the relation between the two elements, of goodwill on the one hand, and of gratitude on the other, subsists as before and the only effect of this ascent upon the morality of the question, is, that we are led thereby to infer the obligation of a still more sacred regard, of a still more duteous and devoted obedience.

26. Observation may have been the original source of all our mathematics. My acquiescence in the axioms of Euclid may have been the fruit of that intercourse which I have had with the external world by means of my senses; and but for the exercise of the eye or of the feelings on visible or tangible objects, I might never have obtained the conception of lines, or of figures bounded by lines. This may be true; and yet it is not less true that every essential or elementary idea of the mathematics may be acquired in early life, and with a very limited range of observation; and that we do not

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