ness of superiority to the rest of their species as needful to sustain them in their elevation, as it is indicative of their imperfection. Thus it is possible so to yield the heart to the claims of justice and humanity, and so to occupy the mind with ennobling objects and investigations, as to preserve, in a commendable degree, the freshness of the moral feelings. But this is all a night-growth, liable to perish in the morning; a painted edifice, outwardly new and beautiful, while its timber is struck with decay, and will bend and break with the storm. A discarding of God and his counsel, self-reliance, self-aggrandizement, atheism, is the life of the structure: it is the heart which conveys vigour to all its living extremes. It was never reared, and it can never subsist, without the service of pride, vanity, a love of promotion, and the praise of men; and these do not more corrupt than enfeeble every thing they fashion and control. They have no part in the workmanship' of God:1 they do not so much as seek his aid, or acknowledge him in any of their doings.

These remarks may serve to characterize great numbers who would start at the charge of infidelity; who value themselves for virtues, which, on a close inspection, appear to infer a want of faith; who, to say the least, live in the habitual neglect of religion, Eph. ii. 10, good men are called his workmanship.'

without knowing or considering the ground of their indifference to it. These points will, in course, be the subject of investigation.

We can presume on no ability to do justice to our conceptions of the subject upon which we are entering; much less, that we entertain conceptions worthy of its importance. But if we be able in any measure to clear the way of the reader, and start such trains of thought as, when pursued out and applied with the faithfulness of an honest inquirer, shall reconcile him to a just view of his condition, we shall have no fear that he will consider his time ill spent, though the chief advantage he gains should in justice be accredited to himself. More than this; if he shall allow to us the credit of an interest in his welfare, and deem that the amiable, and a sense of duty the graver, reason of our inquiries, we will not be so injurious to the courtesy of such judgment, as to suspect that slight disappointments may deter him from pursuing them, while there is a possibility of attaining the good they propose.

If he has duly considered what others are, though he has not so duly considered what he is, he will not forget that he is of the same nature with them; nor will it appear a thing incredible that he should be convicted of faults and errors in his estimate of himself, which, if they be more refined and less

palpable, are not less destructive than those he sees in others. Indeed, should he prove to be gravely criminal, he will not think any previous suspicion of it an impertinence, or consider himself as wronged by conviction, but only favoured with a discovery which candour and interest oblige him to welcome as the dawning of a better mind, a coming to himself which not more necessarily precedes all right reasoning than all spiritual excellence;-from which last he may have gone so far, that the loss itself is not mourned, while the miseries of it are vainly felt and deplored. It would be an unjustifiable aspersion, if he be known to be even well affected towards himself, to suppose he would quarrel with a truth, or shut his eyes to the evidence of it, when it could be improved to his own exaltation, and to the furtherance of his Creator's will. We would be too jealous of the honour of our nature, claiming nothing for its goodness, to presume him thus destitute of all decency of regard for himself, and for the divine authority and wisdom. But if we grant him to be of a considering humour, not ready to break with his Maker for eternity, not doubting his justice, his goodness, his absolute perfection, and still, not seeing them as realities, not affected by what he believes, or rather, is apprehensive of,-it is not too much to expect, it is the least that can with civility be looked

for, that he will see he cannot with any show of reason vindicate his continuance in a state wherein he blushes to own himself either the friend or the foe of God, but wishes to be ranked as standing on anomalous and neutral ground; for this would be but a nonsuit of his claims to any other than a brute importance, since it is only when we are without reason that we can be without character. We may think we feel indifferent to an object, but if that object be one of incomparable perfection and interest, it must have claims upon our highest regard, and, when these claims are enforced to the exclusion of all inferior objects which we have chosen in its place, it will be found, that not to have loved this the noblest and best of all, is not a mere worthless indifference, but the cherishing of the elements of an unappeasable enmity to it. It is not more clearly a part of the great design of the universe that all bodies should tend to a common centre, than it is the chief design of rational creatures that they should tend with strongest affection to the greatest and most worthy object of such regard; nor is this law of the material system more needful and proper to its destined action, than that of spirits to their safe and rational action, while both alike are allowed to attract smaller objects, and to feel their attraction, yet only as parts of a whole, and in pursuance of this

their chiefest end. Why, therefore, one is not in love with this object, but goes counter to the ordinance of his nature, as well as to the claims and commands of Him whose claims could not be greater nor his commands more reasonable, and whose wills concerning us, expressing both his perfection and intending ours, may be summed up in one, 'be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect,' enjoining on us his likeness in order to our participating in his felicity,—is a question that may reasonably claim his first attention; and which, now that he deems it an unjustifiable reflection upon his faith, to infer that he denies its importance, he should be presumed to approach with candour and self-distrust, and as caring less to obtain that which he cannot keep, than to possess himself of that good which he knows he cannot lose.