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 principles-still 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

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