DISCOURSE I.

On the mercantile Virtues which may exist without the Influence of Christianity.

"Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things."-Philippians iv. 8.

men to estimate the lovely and the honourable of character. He appeals to a tribunal in their own breasts, and evidently supposes, that, antecedently to the light of the Christian revelation, there lay scattered among the species certain principles of feeling and of action, in virtue of which, they both occasionally exhibited what was just and true, and of good report, and also could render to such an exhibition, the homage of their regard and of their reverence. At present we shall postpone the direct enforcement of these virtues upon the observation of Christians, and shall confine our thoughts of them to the object of estimating their precise importance and character, when they are realised by those who are not Christians.

THE Apostle, in these verses, makes use of certain terms, without ever once proposing to advance any definition of their meaning. He presumes on a common understanding of this, between himself and the people whom he is addressing. He presumes that they know what is signified by Truth, and Justice, and Loveliness, and the other moral qualities which are included in the enumeration of our text. They, in fact, had words to express them, for many ages antecedent to the coming of Christianity into the world. Now, the very existence of the words proves, that, before the gospel was taught, the realities which they express must have existed also. These good and respectable attributes of character must have been occasionally exemplified by men, prior to the religion of the New Tes While we assert with zeal every doctrine tament. The virtuous and the praisewor- of Christianity, let us not forget that there thy must, ere the commencement of the new is a zeal without discrimination; and that, dispensation, have been met with in society to bring such a spirit to the defence of our -for the Apostle does not take them up in faith, or of any one of its peculiarities, is this passage, as if they were unknown and not to vindicate the cause, but to discredit unheard of novelties-but such objects of it. Now, there is a way of maintaining the general recognition, as could be under-utter depravity of our nature, and of doing stood on the bare mention of them, without warning and without explanation.

it in such a style of sweeping and of vehement asseveration, as to render it not But more than this. These virtues must merely obnoxious to the taste, but obnoxious not only have been exemplified by men, to the understanding. On this subject there previous to the entrance of the gospel is often a roundness and a temerity of anamongst them-seeing that the terms, ex-nouncement, which any intelligent man, pressive of the virtues, were perfectly un- looking at the phenomena of human chaderstood-but men must have known how racter with his own eyes, cannot go along to love and to admire them. How is it that with; and thus it is, that there are injudiwe apply the epithet lovely to any moral cious defenders of orthodoxy, who have qualification, but only in as far as that mustered against it not merely a positive qualification does in fact draw towards it a dislike, but a positive strength of observasentiment of love? How is it that another tion and argument. Let the nature of man qualification is said to be of good report, be a ruin, as it certainly is, it is obvious to but in as far as it has received from men the most common discernment, that it does an applauding or an honourable testimony? not offer one unvaried and unalleviated The Apostle does not bid his readers have mass of deformity. There are certain respect to such things as are lovely, and phases, and certain exhibitions of this nathen, for the purpose of saving them from ture, which are more lovely than otherserror, enumerate what the things are which certain traits of character, not due to the he conceives to possess this qualification. operation of Christianity at all, and yet He commits the matter, with perfect con- calling forth our admiration and our tenfidence, to their own sense and their own derness-certain varieties of moral comapprehension. He bids them bear a re- plexion, far more fair and more engaging spect to whatsoever things are lovely-than certain other varieties; and to prove nor does he seem at all suspicious that, by that the gospel may have had no share in so doing, he leaves them in any darkness the formation of them, they in fact stood or uncertainty about the precise import of out to the notice and respect of the world the advice which he is delivering. He before the gospel was ever heard of. The therefore recognizes the competency of classic page of antiquity sparkles with re

[DISC. peated exemplifications of what is bright | his God, as if the principles of his constiand beautiful in the character of man; nor tution had been mixed up in such a differdo all its descriptions of external nature ent proportion, as to make him an odious waken up such an enthusiasm of pleasure, and a revolting spectacle? In a word, as when it bears testimony to some grace-might not Sensibility shed forth its tears, ful or elevated doing out of the history of and Friendship perform its services, and the species. And whether it be the kindli-Liberality impart of its treasure, and Paness of maternal affection, or the unwearied-triotism earn the gratitude of its country, ness of filial piety, or the constancy of tried and Honour maintain itself entire and unand unalterable friendship, or the earnest- tainted, and all the softenings of what is ness of devoted patriotism, or the rigour of amiable, and all the glories of what is unbending fidelity, or any other of the re- chivalrous and manly gather into one corded virtues which shed a glory over the bright effulgency of moral accomplishment remembrance of Greece and of Rome-we on the person of him who never, for a sinfully concede it to the admiring scholar, gle day of his life, subordinates one habit, that they one and all of them were some- or one affection, to the will of the Al times exemplified in those days of Heathen- mighty; who is just as careless and as unism; and that, out of the materials of a pe- concerned about God, as if the native tenriod, crowded as it was with moral abomi-dencies of his constitution had compounded nations, there may also be gathered things him into a monster of deformity; and who which are pure, and lovely, and true, and just as effectually realizes this attribute of just, and honest, and of good report. rebellion against his Maker, as the most What do we mean, then, it may be ask-loathsome and profligate of the species, ed, by the universal depravity of man? How shall we reconcile the admission now made, with the unqualified and authoritative language of the Bible, when it tells us of the totality and the magnitude of human corruption? Wherein lies that desperate wickedness, which is every where ascribed to all the men of all the families that be on the face of the earth? And how can such a tribute of acknowledgment be awarded to the sages and the patriots of antiquity, who yet, as the partakers of our fallen nature, must be outcasts from the favour of God, and have the character of evil stamped upon the imaginations of the thoughts of their hearts continually?

that he walks in the counsel of his own heart, and after the sight of his own eyes?

The same constitutional variety may be seen on the lower fields of creation. You there witness the gentleness of one animal, the affectionate fidelity of another, the cruel and unrelenting ferocity of a third; and you never question the propriety of the language, when some of these instinctive tendencies are better reported of than others; or when it is said of the former of them, that they are the more fine, and amiable, and endearing. But it does not once occur to you, that, even in the very best of these exhibitions, there is any sense of God, or that the great master-principle of his auIn reply to these questions, let us speak thority is at all concerned in it. Transfer to your own experimental recollections on a this contemplation back again to our spesubject in which you are aided, both by cies; and under the same complexional difthe consciousness of what passes within ference of the more and the less lovely, or you, and by your observation of the cha- the more and the less hateful, you will perracters of others. Might not a sense of ceive the same utter insensibility to the honour elevate that heart which is totally consideration of a God, or the same utter unfurnished with a sense of God? Might inefficiency on the part of his law to subnot an impulse of compassionate feeling be due human habits and human inclinations. sent into that bosom which is never once It is true, that there is one distinction bevisited by a movement of duteous loyalty tween the two cases; but it all goes to agtowards the Lawgiver in heaven? Might gravate the guilt and the ingratitude of not occasions of intercourse with the be- man. He has an understanding which the ings around us, develope whatever there is inferior animals have not-and yet, with in our nature of generosity, and friendship, this understanding, does he refuse practiand integrity, and patriotism; and yet the cally to acknowledge God. He has a conunseen Being, who placed us in this thea-science, which they have not-and yet, tre, be neither loved, nor obeyed, nor listened to? Amid the manifold varieties of human character, and the number of constitutional principles which enter into its composition, might there not be an individual in whom the constitutional virtues so blaze forth and have the ascendency, as to give a general effect of gracefulness to the whole of this moral exhibition; and yet, may not that individual be as unmindful of

though it whisper in the ear of his inner man the claims of an unseen legislator, does he lull away his time in the slumbers of indifference, and live without him in the world.

Or go to the people of another planet, over whom the hold of allegiance to their maker is unbroken-in whose hearts the Supreme sits enthroned, and throughout the whole of whose history there runs the

him the impiety of not caring about God. It is to tell him, that the hourly and habitual language of his heart is, I will not have the Being who made me to rule over me. It is to go to the man of honour, and. while we frankly award it to him that his pulse beats high in the pride of integrity-it is to tell him, that he who keeps it in living play, and who sustains the loftiness of its movements, and who, in one moment of time, could arrest it for ever, is not in all his thoughts. It is to go to the man of soft and gentle emotions, and while we gaze in tenderness upon him—it is to read to him, out of his own character, how the exquisite mechanism of feeling may be in full ope

perpetual and the unfailing habit of subor- man, is to fasten on the radical element of dination to his law. It is conceivable, that depravity, and to show how deeply it lies with them too, there may be varieties of incorporated with his moral constitution. temper and of natural inclination, and yet It is not by an utterance of rash and sweepall of them be under the effective control ing totality to refuse him the possession of of one great and imperious principle; that what is kind in sympathy, or of what is in subjection to the will of God, every kind dignified in principle-for this were in the and every honourable disposition is che- face of all observation. It is to charge him rished to the uttermost; and that in sub-direct with his utter disloyalty to God. It jection to the same will, every tendency to is to convict him of treason against the maanger, and malignity, and revenge, is re-jesty of heaven. It is to press home upon pressed at the first moment of its threatened operation; and that in this way, there will be the fostering of a constant encouragement given to the one set of instincts, and the struggling of a constant opposition made against the other. Now, only conceive this great bond of allegiance to be dissolved; the mighty and subordinating principle, which wont to wield an ascendency over every movement and every affection, to be loosened and done away; and then would this loyal, obedient world, become what ours is, independent of Christianity. Every constitutional desire would run out, in the unchecked spontaneity of its own movements. The law of heaven would furnish no counteraction to the im-ration, while he who framed it is forgotten; pulses and tendencies of nature. And tell us, in these circumstances, when the restraint of religion was thus lifted off, and all the passions let out to take their own tumultuous and independent career-tell us, if, though amid the uproar of the licentious and vindictive propensities, there did gleam forth at times some of the finer and the lovelier sympathies of nature-tell us, if this would at all affect the state of that world as a state of enmity against God; where his will was reduced to an element of utter insignificancy; where the voice of their rightful master fell powerless on the consciences of a listless and alienated family; where humour, and interest, and propensity-at one time selfish, and at another social-took their alternate sway over those hearts from which there was excluded all effectual sense of an overruling God. If he be unheeded and disowned by the creatures whom he has formed, can it be said to alleviate the deformity of their rebellion, that they, at times, experience the impulse of some amiable feeling which he hath implanted, or at times hold out some beauteousness of aspect which he hath shed over them? Shall the value of the multitude of the gifts release them from their loyalty to the giver; and when nature puts herself into the attitude of indifference or hostility against him, now is it that the graces and the accomplishments of nature can be plead in mitigation of her antipathy to him, who invested nature with all her graces, and upholds her in the display of all her accomplishments?

The way, then, to assert the depravity of

while he who poured into his constitution the milk of human kindness, may never be adverted to with one single sentiment of veneration, or on one single purpose of obedience; while he who gave him his gentler nature, who clothed him in all its adornments, and in virtue of whose appointment it is, that, instead of an odious and a revolting monster, he is the much loved child of sensibility, may be utterly disowned by him.. In a word, it is to go around among all that Humanity has to offer in the shape of fair and amiable, and engaging, and to prove how deeply Humanity has revolted against that Being who has done so much to beautify and to exalt her. It is to prove that the carnal mind, under all its varied complexions of harshness, or of delicacy, is enmity against God. It is to prove that let nature be as rich as she may in moral accomplishments, and let the most favoured of her sons realize upon his own person the finest and the fullest assemblage of themshould he, at the moment of leaving this theatre of display, and bursting loose from the framework of mortality, stand in the presence of his judge, and have the question put to him, What hast thou done unto me? This man of constitutional virtue, with all the salutations he got upon earth, and all the reverence that he has left behind him, may, naked and defenceless, before him who sitteth on the throne, be left without a plea and without an argument.

God's controversy with our species, is not, that the glow of honour or of humanity is never felt among them. It is, that none of them understandeth, and none of

ments of nature, disjoined from the faith of Christianity. They take up a separate residence in the human character from the principle of godliness. Anterior to this religion, they go not to alleviate the guilt of our departure from the living God; and subsequently to this religion, they may blazon the character of him who stands out against it; but on the principles of a most clear and intelligent equity, they never can shield him from the condemnation and the curse of those who have neglected the great salvation.

them seeketh after God. It is, that he is for all that is manly in the accomplishdeposed from his rightful ascendency. It is that he, who in fact inserted in the human bosom every one principle that can embellish the individual possessor, or maintain the order of society, is banished altogether from the circle of his habitual contemplations. It is, that man taketh his way in life as much at random, as if there was no presiding Divinity at all; and that, whether he at one time grovel in the depths of sensuality, or at another kindle with some generous movement of sympathy or of patriotism, he is at both times alike unmindful of him to whom he owes his con- The doctrine of the New Testament will tinuance and his birth. It is, that he moves bear to be confronted with all that can be his every footstep at his own will; and has met or noticed on the face of human society. utterly discarded, from its supremacy over And we speak most confidently to the exhim, the will of that invisible Master who perience of many who now hear us, when compasses all his goings, and never ceases we say, that often, in the course of their to pursue him by the claims of a resistless manifold transactions, have they met the and legitimate authority. It is this which man, whom the bribery of no advantage is the essential or the constituting principle whatever could seduce into the slightest of rebellion against God. This it is which deviation from the path of integrity-the has exiled the planet we live in beyond the man, who felt his nature within him put limits of his favoured creation-and whether into a state of the most painful indignancy, it be shrouded in the turpitude of licentious- at every thing that bore upon it the characness or cruelty, or occasionally brightened with the gleam of the kindly and the honourable virtues, it is thus that it is seen as afar off, by Him who sitteth on the throne, and looketh on our strayed world, as athwart a wide and dreary gulf of separation.

ter of a sneaking or dishonourable artificethe man, who positively could not be at rest under the consciousness that he had ever betrayed, even to his own heart, the remotest symptom of such an inclinationand whom, therefore, the unaided law of justice and of truth has placed on a high and deserved eminence in the walks of honourable merchandize.

And when, prompted by love towards his alienated children, he devised a way of recalling them-when, willing to pass over all the ingratitude he had gotten from their Let us not withhold from this character hands, he reared a pathway of return, and the tribute of its most rightful admiration; proclaimed a pardon and a welcome to all but let us further ask, if, with all that he who should walk upon it-when through thus possessed of native feeling and constithe offered Mediator, who magnified his tutional integrity, you have never observed broken law, and upheld, by his mysterious in any such individual an utter emptiness sacrifice, the dignity of that government, of religion; and that God is not in all his which the children of Adam had disowned, thoughts; and that, when he does what he invited all to come and be saved- happens to be at one with the will of the should this message be brought to the door Lawgiver, it is not because he is impelled of the most honourable man upon earth, to it by a sense of its being the will of the and he turn in contempt and hostility away Lawgiver, but because he is impelled to it from it, has not that man posted himself by the working of his own instinctive senmore firmly than ever on the ground of re-sibilities; and that, however fortunate, or bellion? Though an unsullied integrity however estimable these sensibilities are, should rest upon all his transactions, and the homage of confidence and respect be awarded to him from every quarter of society, has not this man, by slighting the overtures of reconciliation, just plunged himself the deeper in the guilt of a wilful and determined ungodliness? Has not the creature exalted itself above the Creator; and in the pride of those accomplishments, which never would have invested his person had not they come to him from above, has he not, in the act of resisting the gospel, aggravated the provocation of his whole previous defiance to the author of it?

Thus much for all that is amiable, and

they still consist with the habit of a mind that is in a state of total indifference about God? Have you never read in your own character, or observed in the character of others, that the claims of the Divinity may be entirely forgotten by the very man to whom society around him yield, and rightly yield, the homage of an unsullied and honourable reputation; that this man may have all his foundations in the world; that every security on which he rests, and every enjoyment upon which his heart is set, lieth on this side of death; that a sense of the coming day on which God is to enter into judgment with him, is to every purpose of

practical ascendency, as good as expunged by oceans and by continents; when he fixes altogether from his bosom; that he is far the anchor of a sure and steady dependence in desire, and far in enjoyment, and far in on the reported honesty of one whom he habitual contemplation, away from that never saw; when, with all his fears for the God who is not far from any one of us; treachery of the varied elements, through that his extending credit and his brighten- which his property has to pass, he knows, ing prosperity, and his magnificent retreat that should it only arrive at the door of its from business, with all the splendour of its destined agent, all his fears and all his susaccommodations-that these are the futuri-picions may be at an end. We know nothing

finer than such an act of homage from one human being to another, when perhaps the diameter of the globe is between them; nor do we think that either the renown of her victories, or the wisdom of her councils, so signalizes the country in which we live, as does the honourable dealing of her merchants; that all the glories of British policy, and British valour, are far eclipsed by the moral splendour which British faith has thrown over the name and the character of our nation; nor has she gathered so proud a distinction from all the tributaries of her power, as she has done from the awarded confidence of those men of all tribes, and colours, and languages, who look to our agency for the most faithful of all management, and to our keeping for the most unviolable of all custody.

ties at which he terminates; and that he goes not in thought beyond them to that eternity, which in the flight of a few little years, will absorb all, and annihilate all? In a word, have you never observed the man, who, with all that was right in mercantile principle, and all that was open and unimpeachable in the habit of his mercantile transactions, lived in a state of utter estrangement from the concerns of immortality? who, in reference to God, persisted, from one year to another, in the spirit of a deep slumber? who, in reference to the man that tries to awaken him out of his lethargy, recoils, with the most sensitive dislike, from the faithfulness of his ministrations? who, in reference to the Book which tells him of his nakedness and his guilt, never consults it with one practical aim, and never tries to penetrate beyond There is no denying, then, the very exthat aspect of mysteriousness which it holds tended prevalence of a principle of integrity out to an undiscerning world? who attends in the commercial world; and he who has not church, or attends it with all the life-such a principle within him, has that to lessness of a form? who reads not his Bible, or reads it in the discharge of a self-prescribed and unfruitful task? who prays not, or prays with the mockery of an unmeaning observation? and, in one word, who while surrounded by all those testimonies which give to man a place of moral distinction among his fellows, is living in utter carelessness about God, and about all the avenues which lead to him?

Now, attend for a moment to what that is which the man has, and to what that is which he has not. He has an attribute of character which is in itself pure, and lovely, and honourable, and of good report. He has a natural principle of integrity; and under its impulse he may be carried forward to such fine exhibitions of himself, as are worthy of all admiration. It is very noble, when the simple utterance of his word carries as much security along with it as if he had accompanied that utterance by the signatures, and the securities, and the legal obligations which are required of other men. It might tempt one to be proud of his species when he looks at the faith that is put in him by a distant correspondent, who, without one other hold of him than his honour, consigns to him the wealth of a whole flotilla, and sleeps in the confidence that it is safe. It is indeed an animating thought, amid the gloom of this world's depravity, when we behold the credit which one man puts in another, though separated

which all the epithets of our text may rightly be appropriated. But it is just as impossible to deny, that, with this thing which he has, there may be another thing which he has not. He may not have one duteous feeling of reverence which points upward to God. He may not have one wish, or one anticipation, which points forward to eternity. He may not have any sense of dependence on the Being who sustains him; and who gave him his very principle of honour, as part of that interior furniture which he has put into his bosom; and who surrounded him with the theatre on which he has come forward with the finest and most illustrious displays of it; and who set the whole machinery of his sentiment and action agoing; and can, by a single word of his power, bid it cease from the variety, and cease from the gracefulness of its movements. In other words, he is a man of integrity, and yet he is a man of ungodliness.

He is a man born for the confidence and the admiration of his fellows, and yet a man whom his Maker can charge with utter defection from all the principles of a spiritual obedience. He is a man whose virtues have blazoned his own character in time, and have upheld the interests of society, and yet a man who has not, by one movement of principle, brought himself nearer to the kingdom of heaven, than the most proffigate of the species. The condemnation, that