"Rnnlr Stnrp.l 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 OF THK 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 OF" 
 
 Mrs. SARAH P. WALSWORTH. 
 
 Received October, 1894. 
 Accessions No.Jff. Class No. 
 
NATURAL GOODNESS: 
 
 OE, 
 
 HONOUR TO WHOM HONOUR IS DUE, 
 
 SUGGESTIONS TOWARD AN 
 
 APPRECIATIVE VIEW OF.-.MORAI? &EN, THE PHILOSOPHY 
 
 OF THE PRESENT SYSTEM OF -MORALITY, AND THE 
 
 RELATION OF NATURAL VIRTUE TO RELIGION. 
 
 BY REV. T. F. RANDOLPH MERCEIN. 
 
 H 
 
 " His life was gentle, and the elements 
 
 So mix'd in him, that nature might stand up, 
 
 And say to all the world Behold a man!" 
 
 PUBLISHED BY CARLTON & PHILLIPS, 
 
 200 MULBERRY-STREET. 
 
 1855. 
 
 ^^<T 
 
 OF TH1 
 
3747 
 M4- 
 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, 
 
 BY CARLTON & PHILLIPS, 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District 
 of New-York. 
 
A BOOK, like an implement, must be judged 
 by its adaptation to its special design, how- 
 ever unfit for any other end. This volume 
 is designed to meet the peculiar difficulties 
 cf one class of thinkers, in regard to one 
 aspect of religious truth. Its unfitness to 
 meet other wants of other classes, is admitted 
 in advance. 
 
 It may be a vain hope that the circle of 
 moral men who attend our churches regu- 
 larly, who are penetrated with a Christian 
 sentiment, and who without a scholastic 
 training are disciplined and practical thinkers, 
 may find in these pages a view of their posi- 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 tion and relation to religious experience more 
 satisfactory than is given by the ordinary 
 sermon, or the discussions of Systematic 
 Theology. 
 
 Different classes of men have different 
 methods of thinking., as well as different 
 points of view from which they see things. 
 Standing upon separate terraces of the as- 
 cending slope of talent and culture, each 
 class looks out and sees Truth encircled by 
 a new combination of difficulties. A teacher, 
 then, must take their position, and from 
 thence relieve their perplexities. And so 
 each class has its own peculiar method of 
 associating thoughts and framing arguments 
 has its own peculiar idiom of thinking 
 and in order to be easily and fully con- 
 vinced, must be addressed in its own dialect 
 of thought. 
 
 None will expect, then, an exhaustive dis- 
 cussion of our topics, but only a considera- 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 tion of such prominent points and occasional 
 aspects as are of interest to the men for 
 whom we write. Much may be said or left 
 unsaid which, in view of any other class, 
 would be of different propriety. 
 
 Yet, although these essays are distinct, 
 there is a logical connexion between them, 
 and they suggest a general theory. So far 
 as it varies from the common methods of 
 explaining the natural virtues, the author 
 can only ask that he may not be judged 
 harshly, as he has only suggested, and with 
 diffidence. Certainly no other view has yet 
 satisfied the Church. Every sincere, al- 
 though unsuccessful, attempt to open the 
 lock of Truth is a benefit to mankind. As 
 each new key of theory is found to fit one 
 ward, and yet another, we gain a clearer 
 idea of the key which will pass them all, 
 and spring the bolt. 
 
 The technical phrases employed to denote 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 certain experiences or doctrines have their 
 value : they have for the Church a definite 
 meaning, and are essential to accurate and 
 brief expression : but to one without, even 
 if they do not seem like canty they are apt 
 to convey a false meaning, or no meaning at 
 all. A similar remark may be made in 
 regard to the usual routine of argumenta- 
 tion. Therefore we feel free to employ new 
 terms and new forms of argument, not be- 
 cause they are better in themselves, but be- 
 cause they come free from the old prejudices. 
 That there is increasing need of such 
 books is certain : and if no more is accom- 
 plished, this volume may incite abler pens 
 to write a better. 
 
I. INJUSTICE DONE TO MORAL MEN. 
 
 II. THE GENERAL UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF DEEP GUILT. 
 
 III. THE TEMPORAL REWARDS OF MORALITY. 
 
 IV. THE COMPARATIVE RECTITUDE OF HUMAN CONDUCT. 
 V. THE NATURAL VIRTUES. 
 
 VI. THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION. 
 
 VII. THE RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN HUMAN NATURE, 
 
 VIII. RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE CONVICTION. 
 
 IX. RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE REPENTANCE. 
 
 X. RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE FAITH. 
 
 XL LOVE TO GOD, THE CRITERION OF VIRTUE. 
 
 XII. INJURY DONE TO RELIGION BY MORAL MEN. 
 
INJUSTICE DONE TO MORAL MEN. 
 
 APPARENT contradiction between the life and feelings of moral men 
 and the denunciations of Scripture The effect of the discrep- 
 ancy upon the Church and the world Chalmef s's views Protest 
 of moral men in our congregations Theology built upon the doc- 
 trine of depravity of human nature Summary of presumptions 
 against the doctrine, afforded by common observation Faith even 
 in revealed truth made difficult by the spirit of philosophical in- 
 vestigation The fewer the unsolved problems the better Natural 
 resentment against wanton imputations of moral debasement 
 Progress of theories in regard to natural virtue Candour and 
 manly consideration due from the moral man to one who submits 
 a respectful discussion of the facts Page 13 
 
 II. 
 
 THAT THE GENERAL UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF DEEP GUILT AF- 
 FORDS NO PRESUMPTION AGAINST THE DOCTRINE OF UTTER 
 DEPRAVITY. 
 
 Severe language of Scripture is not attested by the common con- 
 science Sin brings insensibility to itself Analogy of moral sensi- 
 bility to intellectual taste Progress of crime and moral sensibility 
 Reverse experience of a heart renewed and growing purer. So, 
 according to present constitution, depravity is as consistent with 
 unconsciousness of sin as innocence itself Reason for this suspen- 
 sion of the connexion of remorse with sin Full remorse would 
 unfit the soul for a probation Fallacy of heresies in regard to 
 eternal punishment Fatal effect of full anticipation of due pun- 
 ishment The gradual revelation of guilt in successive dispen- 
 sations Faith the only knowledge 81 
 
10 CONTENTS. 
 
 III. 
 
 PRESUMPTION AGAINST IDEA OF DEEP GUILT AFFORDED BY 
 GOD'S TEMPORAL BLESSINGS UPON NATURAL VIRTUE. 
 
 Intuitive expectation of the connexion of virtue with happiness, and 
 sin with misery Personal feelings of the sovereign Disposer of 
 events evidenced by distribution of his favours National dispen- 
 sations Scripture promises Different moralities, each inde- 
 pendent of the others, and not implied by them Their rewards 
 equally separate and not implied by each other A new morality 
 and its reward would follow same law Spiritual and eternal 
 morality not implied by temporal moralities, nor its reward by 
 theirs Temporal blessings evince no estimate of our motives, 
 yet they serve other essential ends They show the moral char- 
 acter of God's government, and the principles of his final award- 
 Afford a guide to an awakening conscience They are further 
 essential in carrying out the plan of redemption Page 55 
 
 IV. 
 
 PRESUMPTION AGAINST IDEA OF DEEP GUILT AFFORDED BY 
 THE COMPARATIVE RECTITUDE OF HUMAN CONDUCT. 
 
 The point conceded that in all the relations of private and of public 
 life, there is a preponderance of right over wrong actions 
 Secondary motives to morality Prudential considerations 
 Pride of character Case in point Such considerations regulate 
 immense proportion of cases The fact of a conscious repugnance 
 to gross sins considered Association of crime with its conse- 
 quences Less familiar forms Social instinct against destructive 
 vices Social instinct not a moral sensibility 81 
 
 Y. 
 
 THE NATURAL VIRTUES. 
 
 Spontaneous and disinterested impulses of human nature Neither 
 angelic nor ftendlike Benevolent institutions Literature Com- 
 mon life Virtues not due to culture or civilization Chalmers's 
 view, and its defect The test found in the uniformity with which 
 
CONTENTS. 11 
 
 a love of virtue would act Magnetic bar Natural virtues un- 
 symmetrical No pervading purity of principle If not religious, 
 what are they? Page 111 
 
 YI. 
 
 RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION. 
 
 Principle of perfect holiness insures love to God and all right affec- 
 tions toward man A wrong principle would destroy hoth love to 
 God and all virtuous relative affections Chalmers's view defect- 
 ive Portraiture of a world wholly depraved Preliminaries 
 essential to make a probation possible Affectional instincts 
 Morality the " false-work " of redemption 139 
 
 VII. 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 Spiritual capabilities. 1. Indestructible Conscience as legislator 
 and executive Comprehension of pure sentiment and affec- 
 tions Perception of beauty of holiness. 2. Destructible and re- 
 quiring renovation Affections Will Measure of freedom given 
 to qualify for a consent to receive the whole. True position of 
 moral men , 165 
 
 Vlfi. 
 
 PHASES OP CONVICTION. 
 
 Consciousaess of sin as varied by heathenism and by Christian 
 privileges As affected by familiarity Constitutional tempera- 
 ment Sympathetic emotion Personal circumstances Gross- 
 crimes doanexion with fear, &c. Knowledge of our sin and 
 want the only prerequisite to action 189 
 
 IX. 
 
 PHASES OF REPENTANCE. 
 
 .First resistance to evil Widening circle of spiritual foes Sense of 
 intrinsic evil Of utter depravity Self-culture, its power and its 
 inadequacy Gradual reception of divine aid Mental prayer 
 Singular cases Absence of terror Hatred to sin Tropical and 
 polar growth 211 
 
12 . CONTENTS. 
 
 X. 
 
 FAITE 
 
 The penitent must take his true attitude of self-despair, and of 
 positive reliance on God's promises The philosophy of atone- 
 ment need not be comprehended Faith of reliance Of appre 
 hension Negative power of unbelief Effect of faith not a natu- 
 ral result Aid rendered by the temporary moral system of the 
 world to the true work of faith Page 231 
 
 XL 
 
 LOVE TO GOD THE TEST OF VIRTUE. 
 
 Love to God, although but one part of religion, still an essential 
 part Love of qualities or attributes implies love to their pos- 
 sessor Tests of personal affection Peculiar value of this crite- 
 rion, arising from the presence of instinctive impulses, parallel 
 to the relative virtues Love to God has no substitute Relation 
 of the love of God to practical philanthropy 253 
 
 XII. 
 
 INJURY DONE TO RELIGION BY MORAL MEN. 
 
 Moral men directly, in virtue of their morality, do injure religion 
 Power of example Confusion of morality with religion Idea of 
 sufficiency of morality to an inferior salvation Responsibility 
 for this influence Objection anticipated Conclusion of the 
 work... 273 
 
I. 
 
 Injustice tome to Utoral |$Leiu 
 
"Then gently scan your brother man; 
 
 Still gentler, sister woman! 
 Tho' they may gang a kennin wrang, 
 
 To step aside is human. 
 One point must still be greatly dark, 
 
 The moving, why they do it ; 
 And just as lamely can ye mark, 
 
 How far, perhaps, they rue it." 
 
 BUKXS. 
 
 " Yet Michael, the archangel, when contending with tbc 
 devil, . . . durst not "bring against him a railing accusation. ' 
 
 ST, 
 
NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 L 
 
 INJUSTICE DONE TO MORAL MEN. 
 
 THE memory of one of the noblest spirits that 
 ever breathed whose threescore years of public 
 integrity and benevolence were Sealed by the 
 loveliness of every domestic and social virtue, 
 although unrestrained by the force of a strictly 
 religious experience has bound my heart to the 
 whole class of men of whom he was the type ; 
 men whose career of uniform and steadfast vir- 
 tue shames the inconsistency of many in the 
 Church itself, and whose life and experience 
 seem at once to give a dignified rebuke to the 
 charge of deep depravity, and to deny the need 
 of regeneration, as it is commonly understood; 
 men upon whom, as Jesus looks, he loves them. 
 Yet the added recollection that such a one, in 
 the full maturity of all the mental and moral 
 
16 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 excellencies which had adorned life's meridian, 
 was made, as its evening drew on, to feel the 
 insufficiency of all such virtues, and sought and 
 found pardon and renewal, as one who had utter 
 need of both, has ever been to me the strongest 
 confirmation of the necessity of such moral trans- 
 formation for every heart, and has awakened the 
 intensest desire that those who are honoured 
 with his earlier experience may not die with- 
 out his better hope. 
 
 There appears to be a strange contradiction 
 between some of the sterner, exclusive, and de- 
 nunciatory doctrines of Scripture, and the facts 
 of human life and consciousness, especially in 
 the moral history of such men; and like the 
 difficulties presented by science in its progress, 
 such facts may not be either ignored or de- 
 nounced. The cavils, indeed, which are ut- 
 tered from among the stars, or echoed from the 
 uncovered chambers, where, like the graven tiles 
 of Nineveh, nature has piled strata upon strata, 
 the archives of forgotten epochs, may only 
 reach the learned and the speculative ear; but 
 questionings that speak out from our own con- 
 sciousness and experience, seem like a protest 
 of our very being against these repulsive dog- 
 mas, and are heard alike by all. Divines may 
 
INJUSTICE DONE TO MORAL MEN. IT 
 
 warn us that revelation must claim our faith, 
 however it may perplex our natural reason. It 
 may even be true that a heart, properly affected 
 by the great truths of Scripture, might easily 
 dissipate such gathering doubts by the beaming 
 assurance that shines from its inmost soul. 
 But the gospel is urging its claims upon those 
 who, as yet, have not felt its "demonstration 
 of the Spirit;" and their perplexities demand 
 relief. The Christian may see such objections 
 as very small obstacles between him and the 
 spiritual intuition, which, although they remain, 
 yet like a sun pours around and over them its 
 radiance. But to the doubting heart, that sun, 
 far removed and lessened to a mere star, may 
 be obscured by a petty obstacle near the eye. 
 If such doubts sometimes harass even a Chris- 
 tian's faith ; if some candid minds, from a too 
 vivid apprehension of apparent contradictions 
 presented by experience to Bible truths, reason 
 backward to a false interpretation of the word 
 itself; if, above all, in thousands who hold the 
 truth, its power is neutralized by this under- 
 thought of error, it must be an object worthy 
 of deepest solicitude, to reconcile the apparent 
 discrepancies, and avert the danger as we may. 
 
 "There is a way of maintaining the utter de- 
 2 
 
18 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 pravity of our nature, and of doing it in such a 
 style of sweeping and vehement asseveration, as 
 to render it not merely obnoxious to the taste, 
 but obnoxious to the understanding. On this 
 subject there is often a roundness and a temerity 
 of announcement which any intelligent man, 
 looking at the phenomena of human character 
 with his own eyes, cannot go along with. And 
 thus it is that there are injudicious defenders of 
 orthodoxy, who have summoned against it not 
 merely a positive dislike, but a positive strength 
 of observation and argument. Let the nature 
 of man be a ruin, as it certainly is ; it is obvious 
 to the most common discernment, that it does 
 not offer one unvaried and unalleviated mass of 
 deformity. There are certain phases and cer- 
 tain exhibitions of this nature which are more 
 lovely than others certain traits of character 
 not due to the operation of Christianity at all, 
 and yet calling forth our admiration and our 
 tenderness certain varieties of moral complex- 
 ion, far more fair and more engaging than cer- 
 tain other varieties ; and to prove that the gos- 
 pel may have had no share in the formation 
 of them, they in fact stood out to the notice 
 and respect of the world before the gospel was 
 ever heard of. The classic page of antiquity 
 
INJUSTICE DONE TO MORAL MEN. 19 
 
 sparkles with repeated exemplifications of what 
 is bright and beautiful in the character of man ; 
 nor do all its descriptions of external nature 
 waken up such an enthusiasm of pleasure, as 
 when it bears testimony to some graceful or ele- 
 vated doing, out of the history of the species. 
 And whether it be the kindliness of maternal 
 affection, or the unweariedness of filial piety, or 
 the constancy of tried and unalterable friend- 
 ship, or the earnestness of devoted patriotism, 
 or the rigour of unbending fidelity, or any other 
 of the recorded virtues which shed a glory over 
 the remembrance of Greece and of Rome, we 
 fully concede it to the admiring scholar, that 
 they, one and all of them, were sometimes ex- 
 emplified in those days of heathenism ; and that 
 out of the materials of a period crowded, as it 
 was, with moral abominations, there may also be 
 gathered things which are pure and lovely, and 
 true and just, and honest, and of good report."* 
 How startling and indignant the protest which 
 at times comes from the ranks of estimable 
 men, who gather around, although not within 
 the Church, against those associated dogmas of 
 total depravity, regeneration, and, by conse- 
 quence, a vicarious atonement. They are asso- 
 
 Chalmers's Commercial Discourses, Sermon 
 
20 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 elated doctrines, and stand or fall together. The 
 remedies employed by a skilful physician must 
 correspond to the disease ; and if the disorder 
 be slight, or easily remedied by diet and exer- 
 cise, the idea of extreme medical treatment is 
 absurd, because it has no correspondence with 
 the malady to be relieved. They that never 
 have died, need no power to call them from the 
 sepulchre. The idea of a new birth, a new cre- 
 ation, for a soul that needs only a slight retouch- 
 ing from the almighty Sculptor's hand to restore 
 its finished beauty, is at once rejected. If hu- 
 man nature, therefore, be not thus deeply de- 
 praved, the remedial provision of the gospel in- 
 volves no regeneration and no atonement. It 
 is to human nature as exhibited in common life, 
 and felt in common experience, that men turn 
 instinctively to see if there is really a need of 
 the remedy which is urged upon them. It is 
 here that many a wavering mind relinquishes its 
 faith in the doctrine of the Bible as to his utter 
 depravity by nature. From the general uncon- 
 sciousness of sin, acquitting men of such enor- 
 mous guilt from the natural virtues, as they 
 seem, which in every age and clime have had 
 noble illustrations from the minute care with 
 which Heaven seems to seal each step of moral 
 
INJUSTICE DONE TO MORAL MEN. 21 
 
 rectitude with its providential reward, and its 
 inward approval from the deep repugnance to 
 gross forms of sin, felt amid all human imperfec- 
 tions from the spontaneous admiration of the 
 truthful and the pure from the power of self- 
 culture, apart from prayer and reliance upon 
 divine aid, to strengthen and elevate these origi- 
 nal gifts from the frequent absence of any 
 sudden transition, or a clear line of demarca- 
 tion between the prior experience and an expe- 
 rience admitted by all to be truly religious 
 there comes a voice of questioning which will 
 make itself heard, and which must be an- 
 swered. 
 
 Nor is the spirit of such questionings altogether 
 wrong. It is the spirit of the age, seeking to 
 prove all things, and hold fast that which is true. 
 The Baconian philosophy has taught us that in 
 science a theory which fails to account for, and 
 correspond to, a large proportion of evident facts, 
 is thereby proven false and untenable. The days 
 are gone by, when from a few general notions a 
 philosophy could be woven which should bind 
 the world's faith, in spite of clearer observation 
 of realities around it. One of God's facts shat- 
 ters all the crystalline spheres of human fancy. 
 
 In the olden time, speculation, standing upon 
 
22 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 the shore 01 a broad stream of doubt, planned a 
 bridge to cross the gulf, and insisted that each 
 arch of reasoning would find a secure abutment 
 of facts, although no facts could be seen to lend 
 a foundation, and many were evidently waiting 
 to lend support to some other effort of logical 
 architecture. Modern criticism trusts no bridge 
 of theory where it cannot see that each pier 
 rests upon, and does not fall between, the facts. 
 To this mode of criticism, a theory -given by 
 revelation is, of course, not liable. Human igno- 
 rance is bound to believe that its dim vision, or 
 the mystery that gathers around those facts on 
 which the arch of truth rests, deceives the eye as 
 to the true place and support of each. It must 
 trust the all- wise Architect, despite its ignorance. 
 What it knows not now it may know hereafter. 
 Yet certainly, the scientific scepticism thus in- 
 duced, and proper, too, in investigating the merits 
 of all other theories, renders less easy a faith in 
 a revealed doctrine which is apparently at war 
 with facts, even when the revelation is suffi- 
 ciently attested from without. If, therefore, all 
 mists cannot be cleared away, it is well if some 
 may vanish : and if some things still seem unac- 
 countable, their fewness will make it easier for a 
 wavering faith to decide the scale against them. 
 
INJUSTICE DONE TO MOKAL MEN. 23 
 
 There is in any argument a satisfaction in de- 
 fining exactly the limits of the difficulties which 
 we cannot remove : for an indefinite amount of 
 objection has the force almost of an infinite diffi- 
 culty. When the moralist is assured that we do 
 really appreciate the facts and the perplexities 
 in regard to his case, he will feel that there must 
 indeed be some unseen force in those other argu- 
 ments, which may, notwithstanding all, leave our 
 candid judgment against him. 
 
 Above all, no man can be expected to admit 
 imputations against his moral worth calmly, and 
 as mere questions of curiosity, as he would re- 
 ceive intimations of the unsoundness of a fruit- 
 tree. It is a law of our mental constitution that 
 we must resent injustice and slander. 'There is 
 no emotion so quickly excited ; and with all the 
 energy of self-preservation it combines a sense 
 of noble and sacred resistance to wrong. One 
 false charge will generally destroy the force of 
 the evidence of many true ones. The tide of 
 indignation against the insult, quickly felt and 
 clearly perceived, bears away with it not only 
 the slander, but the associated charges and their 
 evidence. A slight consideration of this familiar 
 principle would save the waste of many a public 
 lecture, and many a private rebuke. And thus 
 
22 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 the shore 01 a broad stream of doubt, planned a 
 bridge to cross the gulf, and insisted that each 
 arch of reasoning would find a secure abutment 
 of facts, although no facts could be seen to lend 
 a foundation, and many were evidently waiting 
 to lend support to some other effort of logical 
 architecture. Modern criticism trusts no bridge 
 of theory where it cannot see that each pier 
 rests upon, and does not fall between, the facts. 
 To this mode of criticism, a theory -given by 
 revelation is, of course, not liable. Human igno- 
 rance is bound to believe that its dim vision, or 
 the mystery that gathers around those facts on 
 which the arch of truth rests, deceives the eye as 
 to the true place and support of each. It must 
 trust the all-wise Architect, despite its ignorance. 
 What it knows not now it may know hereafter. 
 Yet certainly, the scientific scepticism thus in- 
 duced, and proper, too, in investigating the merits 
 of all other theories, renders less easy a faith in 
 a revealed doctrine which is apparently at war 
 with facts, even when the revelation is suffi- 
 ciently attested from without. If, therefore, all 
 mists cannot be cleared away, it is well if some 
 may vanish : and if some things still seem unac- 
 countable, their fewness will make it easier for a 
 wavering faith to decide the scale against them. 
 
INJUSTICE DONE TO MORAL MEN. 23 
 
 There is in any argument a satisfaction in de- 
 fining exactly the limits of the difficulties which 
 we cannot remove : for an indefinite amount of 
 objection has the force almost of an infinite diffi- 
 culty. When the moralist is assured that we do 
 really appreciate the facts and the perplexities 
 in regard to his case, he will feel that there must 
 indeed be some unseen force in those other argu- 
 ments, which may, notwithstanding all, leave our 
 candid judgment against him. 
 
 Above all, no man can be expected to admit 
 imputations against his moral worth calmly, and 
 as mere questions of curiosity, as he would re- 
 ceive intimations of the unsoundness of a fruit- 
 tree. It is a law of our mental constitution that 
 we must resent injustice and slander. There is 
 no emotion so quickly excited ; and with all the 
 energy of self-preservation it combines a sense 
 of noble and sacred resistance to wrong. One 
 false charge will generally destroy the force of 
 the evidence of many true ones. The tide of 
 indignation against the insult, quickly felt and 
 clearly perceived, bears away with it not only 
 the slander, but the associated charges and their 
 evidence. A slight consideration of this familiar 
 principle would save the waste of many a public 
 lecture, and many a private rebuke. And thus 
 
24: NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 it has come to pass, that the class of men, which 
 of all for whom Christ died are most endeared 
 to our hearts, and for whom the transition into 
 all that constitutes religion would seem the most 
 natural, are left half-bewildered, half-indignant, 
 at the undiscriminating invective that is poured 
 upon them. 
 
 Centuries ago, a theology that would not allow 
 God's Spirit even to touch a heart that was not 
 to be finally saved by the atonement, wrote its 
 severe proscriptions against all worth or loveli- 
 ness in morality, before conversion. It adopted 
 the theory in reference to the many, which infi- 
 delity applied to all : that there was in them no 
 disinterested virtue; but that a desire for self- 
 gratification was the one element into which all 
 impulses, how noble soever they seemed, were 
 at last to be resolved. "Selfishness" was the 
 comprehensive label placed on all that seemed 
 " true and lovely, and of good report." Bishop 
 Butler demonstrated for all time, that both good 
 and evil impulses and affections were not mere 
 motives of self-interest ; but that there is in every 
 heart a natural kindliness, and compassion, and 
 gratitude, developed in different degrees, which, 
 whatever might be their moral value before God, 
 are as spontaneous and disinterested as an angeFs 
 
INJUSTICE DONE TO MORAL MEN. 25 
 
 love or as the love of God to man. In later 
 years, the candid and generous mind of Chal- 
 mers has acknowledged and honoured the " his- 
 torical virtues," as the yet unfallen columns of 
 our shattered nature. And M'Cosh has given 
 the same idea a yet more systematic exposition. 
 The violent reaction from the old extreme into 
 an avowedPelagianism openly denying the fall, 
 asserting the identity of natural goodness with 
 religion, and setting forth human nature and 
 history in its brightest aspects has 'tended to 
 modify the sentiment even of the Church. And 
 finally the rapid enlargement of the truly evan- 
 gelical Church, spreading from the centre like a 
 circle of light, and surrounded by a still increas- 
 ing belt, like a penumbra, of hearts not of it, yet 
 unconsciously pervaded and tinged with its spirit, 
 is forcing these characters more and more upon 
 our attention. The common broad and blunt de- 
 nunciations fall harmlessly at their feet. They 
 need a missile pointed more accurately, and with a 
 more discriminating edge, to pierce the joints of 
 their armour. Of many of them the pulpit and 
 the Church are sorely puzzled what to think, and 
 how to speak. Some of them, in all candour, are 
 in doubt what to think of themselves. 
 
 It will be seen that we use the word morality 
 
26 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 not in its philosophical signification, but in what 
 is now its popular sense, to indicate those feel- 
 ings and duties, which the voice, both of revela- 
 tion and of nature, declares us to owe to ourselves 
 and to others, independently of our duties to God : 
 and at times, we shall include all sentiments and 
 affections, all purposes or actions, possible to a 
 soul which can be considered as yet unregenerate, 
 in the common acceptation of that word. 
 
 Honour, then, to whom honour is due. We 
 call upon the Church to recognise all the noble 
 deeds and lovely traits that humanity displays. 
 We call upon her to concede their existence, not 
 grudgingly, and with suspicion, but cordially and 
 thankfully, as the providence of God, and the 
 benefit of man. We summon nature's noble- 
 man to look upon his own virtues, and take their 
 fullest gauge. We will exult in his princely 
 honours. He shall feel that we at least are will- 
 ing to take his virtues for what they are. 
 
 If then, with a filial reverence and sorrow, we 
 should express to the amiable and honoured 
 moralist, a fear in his behalf, we have a claim 
 upoii him for a manly candour and a generous 
 forbearance, as he has a claim on us for careful 
 consideration of his dearest honours. We shall 
 not blame him in that he shrinks from the sense 
 
INJUSTICE DONE TO MORAL MEN. 27 
 
 of shame ; nor will we attribute this to the de- 
 pravity which we lament. Self-respect is not 
 pride ; and humility, even in its Scriptural spirit- 
 uality, implies no insensibility to the degrada- 
 tion of moral pollution, nor a tame and apathetic 
 submission to the charge of vileness. Humility, 
 indeed, is willing to abide wherever the will of 
 God may place us: but, conscious that moral 
 depravity is not of his appointment, but a dese- 
 cration of his purposes, humility can but feel 
 the brand of guilt an insult if it be false, and a 
 bitter humiliation if it be true. God, who made 
 us in his image, has his own felicity in conscious 
 holiness, and seeks a "hallowed name:" and that 
 deep sense of the worth and glory of moral ex- 
 cellence, is the essential mould in which every 
 virtue is to be cast the base and socket, from 
 which every column of moral beauty rears its 
 majestic form. It is not all of pride, therefore, 
 that a generous spirit should shrink from the 
 consciousness of sin, or struggle against the con- 
 viction of his guilt : it is the voice of his inde- 
 structible nature, against the sin itself. And he 
 who has no sympathy with that unwilling and 
 astonished soul; he who can lightly avow his 
 own depravity, or affix the stigma on a fellow- 
 man he has never yet been made to realize 
 
28 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 the " shamefulness of sin," nor felt how godlike 
 is God's image. 
 
 Yet, humiliating as is the consciousness of de- 
 based affections, there is still that which amid the 
 wreck has somewhat of dignity, and whose loss 
 were a deeper degradation still. Whatsoever we 
 are, and whatever may await us, we need not 
 be deceived as to our character or our fate, and 
 add to the guilt of a transgressor the imbecility 
 of a dupe. A manly spirit, even where igno- 
 rance is bliss, will choose the woe of knowledge. 
 That is indeed a pitiable weakness, which fears 
 to face reality, and yields itself to be cajoled by 
 a lie. Cowardice, as the strained vessel plunges 
 like a dying monster, may break into the spirit- 
 room, and drown all sense of danger in blank 
 stupor, or in maniac exhilaration ; but Manliness 
 and Eeason stand upon the bow, and watch the 
 nearing breakers on the reef of doom. It was a 
 splendid dignity which graced the Koman sen- 
 ate, when, as the barbaric hordes entered the 
 very gates of the eternal city, the conscript fa- 
 thers, smitten by no panic of useless flight, and 
 roused to no frenzy of vain resistance, listened 
 in calm silence in their curule chairs to the roar 
 of approaching vengeance, and struck Destruc- 
 tion as it burst into the Capitol, with momentary 
 
INJUSTICE DONE TO MORAL MEN. 29 
 
 awe. If the weak and the ignorant brand us, 
 we may let it pass unheeded in our conscious 
 worth. But if an oracle that cannot err de- 
 nounce our doom, let us not stop our ears, nor 
 resent the threatening. Let us hear it all, and 
 weigh each separate charge, and make our 
 strongest plea, and yield our hopes of refuge 
 calmly, if we must, and realize each coming woe, 
 and meet it at least unsurprised. We need not 
 lose all manliness, though godliness be gone. 
 Let us be honest with ourselves; let us know 
 the truth, even though the searching light reveal 
 every virtue and affection of the soul prostrate 
 in the dust, and Jerusalem "become a heap," 
 and the abomination of desolation stand in the 
 holy place forever ! Much more : let us know 
 the worst, and feel it, when amid the lingering 
 echoes of the prophecy that blasted, a voice of 
 promise whispers of returning grace, and a re- 
 builded glory. 
 
II. 
 
 General litcmtstiirasiiess of Dej) 
 
"No," answers the just man; "I will not deny my sins, 
 nor that I might be rightfully judged by my Superior I 
 might have committed greater faults than have actually 
 occurred but that I never could have become base, I 
 know, as I know my own existence, for it is a part of 
 my own existence, which is no mere transcendental, col- 
 ourless 'I AM." 
 
 NIEBUHR'S LIFE AND LETTEUS, Let. cxxxiv. 
 
 "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately 
 
 wicked." 
 
 JBR. xvii, 9. 
 
* 
 
 IL 
 GENERAL UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF DEEP GUILT. 
 
 THE purpose of these pages is not to prove, from 
 the letter of the Bible, that human nature is in 
 part or altogether depraved; but to show that 
 such a doctrine, if it is found in Scripture, is not 
 really at variance and irreconcilable with the 
 facts of common life and consciousness. Li this 
 essay we meet the objection which is the most 
 universal and plausible. Men, it is true, cannot 
 help but feel that however criticism may explain 
 away its language, yet the word of God does, 
 with most appalling energy and precision, por- 
 tray the utter evil of the human heart, exhaust- 
 ing all the forms of rhetoric in its stern invective. 
 It declares, negatively, that in the natural mind 
 there dwelleth no good thing ; and positively, that 
 the heart of man is deceitful above all things, 
 and desperately wicked. It asserts specifically 
 that there is none that doeth good no, not one. 
 It arraigns every sense as an inlet to corruption, 
 and brands every member of the body as the 
 3 
 
3 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 instrument of sin ; and with fearful analysis, seiz- 
 ing each separate faculty of thought, and each 
 affection and moral capability, it exhibits e^ery 
 ingredient of human character as vile and hope- 
 less. Yet, however we may be stunned and 
 overwhelmed by the storm of denunciations thus 
 hurled upon us, few have failed to realize that 
 these fearful charges have not a corresponding 
 witness within our own hearts. When' men 
 brand us, they generally appeal to our own con- 
 sciousness of guilt, and to the common sentiment 
 of mankind. God himself, in charging home 
 particular transgressions upon men, has appealed 
 to their own sense of duty, arid guilt, and shame. 
 But clearly as the Bible seems to speak, the 
 human race, although conscious of much infirm- 
 ity and of many faults, is certainly not smitten 
 with the remorseful sense of such enormous 
 guilt. That conscience which men have called 
 the voice of God within us, seems to rebuke the 
 so-called doctrines of the written word. The 
 ancient prophet seemed to feel the inconsistency, 
 when, before he declared the desperate wicked- 
 ness of the heart, he observed that it was deceit- 
 ful above all things; implying, perhaps, what 
 we shall attempt to prove, that according to the 
 present constitution of things, insensibility to sin- 
 
UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF DEEP GUILT. 35 
 
 fulness is a natural accompaniment of sinfulness 
 itself, and grows with its growth. The uncon- 
 sciousness of sin and guilt, therefore, cannot 
 argue its absence ; and the admitted fact in 
 general experience does not invalidate the 
 charge of revelation. 
 
 As we wander amid the sublime scenes of 
 nature, or gather around the beautiful creations 
 of art, the spell of our enjoyment is too often 
 broken by the presence of one who has no eye 
 nor ear for their varied loveliness. In eveiy com- 
 munity many are conspicuous, whose dress and 
 furniture, or architecture, or equipage, show an 
 entire absence of that perception of the graceful 
 and the beautiful, of propriety and fitness in 
 things, which we familiarly call good taste. 
 The incongruity would be less annoying, could 
 they be made to feel their deficiency and correct 
 their absurdities ; but we feel the hopelessness 
 of the attempt. They may have a generous 
 yearning for the esteem of others, or a timid 
 sensitiveness to inconsiderate ridicule ; and these 
 may lead them to sacrifice personal inclination, 
 and to a servile imitation of prevailing modes 
 and fashions. But however they may treasure 
 up rules by which to adapt forms, and colours, 
 and expressions, to the true standard of beauty 
 
36 
 
 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 and propriety, you can only teach them that 
 they have not a sensibility which others seem to 
 enjoy. You cannot create the personal con- 
 sciousness of absurdity : that instinctive sense 
 of the ludicrous and unfitting which others feel, 
 and which would enable them to decide rightly 
 in new cases, and which might bring the glow 
 of shame when they transgressed its dictates, 
 cannot be imparted. They may admit, but they 
 cannot realize their absurdities. Just in propor- 
 tion to the depravity of taste, are they insensible 
 to the fact. They know it only by faith in the 
 testimony of others. 
 
 But if some malicious spirit could lay upon 
 an entire 'continent the spell of such gesthetic 
 stupor and blindness, the poor victims of ab- 
 surdity would not only be increased in number, 
 but their self-complacency would be hopelessly 
 secure. Society would feel the folly of the 
 transgressors as little as they feel their own. 
 The only hope of imparting a knowledge of 
 their deficiency would be, that some visitant 
 from a more genial clime, which had somehow a 
 prestige of infallibility in matters of taste, might 
 come to instruct and counsel. But even if the 
 very centre of taste should send its delegate to 
 become their guide, how evident is it that they 
 
UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF DEEP GUILT. 37 
 
 could not understand the justice of his plain 
 censures. They would unite, perhaps, in be- 
 lieving that, somehow, they were ridiculously at 
 fault, but they would also unite in saying that 
 they could not feel it. Only by restoring the 
 taste, itself, which might render rebukes unneces- 
 sary, could you make them realize their force. 
 Imagine, for a moment, that the round earth 
 were thus bound by a Circean spell, and ob- 
 viously no thought of the universal folly and 
 degradation would disturb them. Were a mes- 
 senger from heaven to announce their depravity 
 in taste, he would be met by the same wonder, 
 the same theoretical admission, the same inward 
 unconsciousness of fault. In short, the deficien- 
 cy might be held as a matter of faith, but never 
 as a fact of experience or consciousness. 
 
 2Tow we aver that, analogous to the operation 
 of, this faculty, which wakes the soul to the full 
 power of all that is beautiful and harmonious in 
 the material creation, and all- that is inspiring in 
 thought and in sentiment, is our experience of 
 that moral taste, and sensibility to the beauty of 
 holiness and the pollution of sin, which alone can 
 guide us in the way of moral excellence. The 
 laws which govern the one are analogous to the 
 laws which regulate the other. The defective 
 
38 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 or depraved moral taste, at each successive stage 
 of deterioration, is attended by a corresponding 
 insensibility to the change ; and a total deprav- 
 ity of moral taste would bring as complete un- 
 consciousness of fault. The heart, beneath such 
 a benumbing spell, may, through fear or favour, 
 obey the law of right. It may theoretically ad- 
 mit its deficiencies and practical errors ; but the 
 deep sense of its own true vileness it cannot have. 
 And, by the same analogy, if a community, or a 
 nation, or a world, were thus morally defective, 
 there would be no fair appeal against the charge 
 of personal guilt to the moral sentiment of that 
 world at large. It would, of course, sustain itself 
 in its own unconsciousness of its true position. 
 Should a voice from amid the thunders of Sinai, 
 or from the inmost heaven, declare the corrup- 
 tion of the race, reason might demand submis- 
 sion to the verdict, but the truth could not be 
 realized by the depraved mind. It must be a 
 conviction of faith, and not of feeling. 
 
 We are not saying how it may be in another 
 sphere of existence, or in the life beyond the 
 grave ; but reasoning upon man as he is, under 
 the present dispensation of things, certainly ob- 
 servation justifies our conclusion. Sin brings its 
 own insensibility. The most hardened criminal 
 
UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF DEEP GUILT. 39 
 
 who awaits the fatal hour, once shrunk from 
 slight transgressions ; but as step by step he ven- 
 tured into crime, his sensibility grew dull, until, 
 while there was much which he still felt to be 
 crime indeed, yet he could perpetrate, with 
 scarcely a thought of shame or fear, villanies 
 that would once have palsied his arm. And 
 now he knows indeed, theoretically, his sinful- 
 ness; and can discriminate abstractly, slight 
 shades of wrong, according to principles of 
 moral judgment learned in other days: but he 
 has long since ceased to feel them. He can now 
 carouse, and sin, and blaspheme, until all around 
 him shiver with dread, and yet be calm, and 
 think their scruples weakness or hypocrisy. His 
 principles and his sensibility have declined to- 
 gether. 
 
 The illustration drawn thus from aesthetics 
 may furnish further instruction, if we observe in 
 those who have but little taste, the distinct ele- 
 ments of a power to see the beautiful, and a de- 
 sire for the beautiful ; and that the perception 
 of what is correct and fitting is far in advance, 
 generally, of the real sensibility to its presence 
 or absence. We meet many whose judgment is 
 tolerably accurate, but their conformity is sel- 
 dom so exact, even where no special hinderance 
 
iU NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 prevents it. We can easily imagine, that if to a 
 spell-bound world some slight endowment of re- 
 turning taste were given, then in a low degree 
 its citizens might judge correctly of proprieties, 
 and could understand the nature of a deficiency 
 in taste, although they could not realize the full 
 extent of their own defect. If by neglect or abuse 
 they gradually lost the slight sensibility thus be- 
 stowed, would it not be famto argue that, just as 
 their arrangements are nyhv absurd, and would 
 be felt so had they not lost the measure of taste 
 they had ; so, while they yet had this measure 
 of true perception, at their best day, they may 
 have been guilty of a thousand follies, which 
 even then they had not taste enough to realize ? 
 May we not say, then, that even if the Creator 
 should give to such a world, utterly sunk in sin, 
 some slight moral restoration, the analogy would 
 still hold good ? Might w r e not expect the same 
 limited discrimination in certain cases, or in cer- 
 tain grades of moral obligations the same dis- 
 proportion between the abstract perception of 
 moral beauty and the sensibility which is drawn 
 toward it ? And might we not argue, as from the 
 instance of a hardened criminal, that just as he 
 cannot now feel the enormity of his crimes, yet 
 he, as well as those around him, did once feel 
 
UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF DEEP GUILT. 41 
 
 their guilt ; so he and all of us, in our best days, 
 may have been insensible to wrongs committed, 
 and evil passions cherished, not because their 
 guilt was not real and appalling, but because 
 even then we were still so depraved that we 
 could not feel it ? 
 
 The argument which we have thus far drawn 
 from the deadening influence of transgression on 
 the moral sense, step by step, is yet more beau- 
 tifully and forcibly illustrated by the reverse ex- 
 perience of those who are renewed in the love 
 of God. We appeal to the experience and to 
 the testimony of the holiest, in every age. As 
 they became more and more partakers of the 
 divine nature, freed from the depravity which 
 was once their felt nature, they realized with 
 increasing vividness of apprehension how far 
 they had' fallen, how basely they transgressed, 
 how fearfully they treasured up j ust wrath . Then 
 they saw the exceeding sinfulness of sin; and 
 when most conscious of salvation through grace, 
 " quite on the verge of heaven," they felt most 
 fully how lost they were by nature, how near 
 the verge of hell. JSTor are such experiences 
 exceptions in the Church ; but they are the com- 
 mon heritage of her saints century after century, 
 finding a response in myriads of retired and un- 
 
42 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 published Christian lives. The brilliant intellect, 
 the sober judgment, the habitual self-denial, the 
 practical energy, which have marked so many 
 of the moral heroes of the Church, who thus 
 breathe out their feeling, forbid the cavil that 
 their heightened sense of guilt was the result of 
 a blundering logic, or a morbid nervousness, or 
 the pretence of hypocrisy. They leave us to 
 reflect that if we had attained their piety, our 
 purified vision might see things in the same 
 strong light. And, O ! when perfect purity of 
 heart combines with perfect clearness of intellect 
 in the world to come, who shall say that we may 
 not fully coincide with the severe judgments 
 passed by Him whose wisdom and purity is infi- 
 nite? Then may we see the truthfulness of those 
 strong charges of sin and guilt, and the justice 
 of those penalties, which now to the best of us 
 seem oftentimes so obscure. 
 
 Let the esteemed reader remember, that the 
 object of this chapter is not to prove the total 
 depravity of the human -heart, nor even to assert 
 any degree of guilt, but only to show that under 
 the constitution of things as we see them, the 
 fact of unconsciousness of deep sin has no bear- 
 ing at all upon the question of guilt or innocence. 
 We may be innocent, and therefore unconscious 
 
UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF DEEP GUILT, 43 
 
 of guilt. But we should be as unconscious, con- 
 stituted as we now are, if we were not innocent. 
 Our moral character or position must be defined 
 upon other authority than that of consciousness, 
 either individual or general. If the sentence of 
 Him whose judgment is according to truth, de- 
 clare our innocence, "it is God that justifieth; 
 and who is he that condemneth ?" But if his 
 plain and solemn verdict be of guilt, then it 
 matters not how severe its denunciations, nor 
 how humiliating its portraitures ; we are not free 
 to slight the solemn charge, because the moral 
 palsy that has struck the soul benumbs it, as it 
 dies. 
 
 But this subject demands farther attention. 
 While we boldly assert that in this life, and in 
 our present constitution, sin brings insensibility 
 to its presence and its guilt, yet we frankly ad- 
 mit that this is not what we should expect. 
 Apart from any observation of facts, the in- 
 stinctive moral judgment would be, that remorse 
 must inseparably follow sin, and each deeper 
 grade of evil bring its own sting, and each new 
 crime an added self-contempt. Such, moreover, 
 by general admission, is the law of retribution in 
 the world to come the fate of the wicked soul 
 and the doom of the apostate angel. However 
 
46 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 be taught and sustained by others. But what 
 if upon earth's whole population were shed at 
 once that terrific glare, lighting up the loath- 
 someness of the heart's deepest caverns? The 
 sincerest offer of salvation to the remorseful hosts 
 of hell would seem a mockery and a gibe ; and 
 even the forgiveness of man must be a fathomless 
 mystery to Gehenna : a fact the inability to real- 
 ize which, may alone sustain the hopes and energy 
 of those who oppose the redemption of each suc- 
 cessive penitent. It may be that the soul, once 
 let to see its fullest guilt, would find it morally 
 impossible to believe in offered pardon. And 
 even if some' did trust the promise, what would 
 earth be with the presence of those who rejected 
 all ? So long as men do not realize their moral 
 degradation, many a motive of merit, or pride, 
 or generosity, may avail t<? check the outward 
 crime ; but the full exposure of a man's worth 
 lessness, if it lead him not to the cross, will goad 
 him to a sevenfold frenzy. It is obvious, then, 
 that the apparent exception to the law of remorse 
 and sin is an actual fact ; and that to preserve 
 the order and the very being of society, to make 
 salvation credible and probation a reality, there 
 must be such a suspension of the association be- 
 tween sin and the consciousness of guilt. So far, 
 
UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF DEEP GUILT. 47 
 
 then, is the general feeling of innocence, or slight 
 sense of danger, from affording any presumption 
 of human innocence, that it were to be antici- 
 pated, no matter how depraved we are. 
 
 These considerations are heightened by the 
 connexion between the sense of guilt and the 
 fear of punishment. Involved in remorse, yet dis- 
 tinct from it, is the " fearful looking for of fiery 
 indignation," which fills the future with terrible 
 inflictions, as remorse shrouds the present and 
 the past in anguish. Under the felt justice of 
 God's moral government, the conscience always 
 demands and anticipates an exact proportion be- 
 tween the degree of sin and the severity of the 
 penalty; and so instinctively and of necessity 
 does it abide by this rule, that any apparent dis- 
 proportion in the threatened judgment compels 
 a tacit, if not a definite rejection of its truth. If 
 the threatened penalty be too light, the slight- 
 ness of its sentence brings no quiet, for more is 
 felt to lie behind ; if the penalty be too great, 
 and especially if far beyond the guilt, the threat- 
 ening is disbelieved, its practical influence is 
 neutralized, and perhaps an indignant sense is 
 roused, as of an oppression which cannot last for- 
 ever. 
 
 We dwell upon this point because, without 
 
4:8 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 doubt, it affords the explanation of many of the 
 avowed heresies, and much of the silent scep- 
 ticism of the present day, on the subject of future 
 punishment. The diffused spirit of the gospel 
 itself has deepened our aversion to the thought 
 of pain, and our sympathy with others; and 
 men, less accustomed than of old to think ar- 
 bitrary power, or the revengeful caprice of old 
 authority, a sufficient ground for human oppres- 
 sion, reject also that idea of God which answers 
 all questioning of his ways by a deference to 
 his almighty will. Men who demand nothing 
 more, demand at \QSL8tjustice from God. They 
 feel that any excess of punishment over desert 
 were a wrong toward the sufferer a wanton out- 
 rage of an eternal law, which the Deity cannot 
 break. They demand, therefore, a punishment 
 proportioned to the guilt ; and here they are at 
 fault. Where shall they find a standard of guilt 
 and desert? Men cannot calculate moral evil and 
 its due by mathematics ; and any demonstration 
 into which the finite mind attempts to bring the 
 "infinite," soon leads to confusion. Men judge 
 by the instinctive feeling- of their own hearts. 
 If their sense of human guilt demands not all 
 that Scripture threatens, they will reject it: they 
 may admit the plainness of its language, and the 
 
UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF DEEP GUILT. 49 
 
 clearness of its argument ; but if the standard in 
 their conscience is a sure measure of desert, then 
 Scripture must be rejected or explained away. 
 The question falls back, then, upon the previous 
 point now under consideration in this chapter ; 
 and all their indignant eloquence, and all their 
 fancied security is dashed by the fact, that our 
 consciousness affords no measure of our true 
 desert. Observation of human experience shows 
 that remorse is not graduated according to our 
 sin, but is dulled by deepening transgression; 
 and we find that a depraved race under proba- 
 tion, must l)e kept from realizing its full depravity. 
 For, to resume our last argument, by the same 
 necessity by which we reject all above the de- 
 served threatening, the remorseful spirit needs 
 no revelation to inform it of future woe, but, 
 with an eye it cannot close, glares wildly out on 
 its coming doom. Within the awakened soul, 
 that, like a bark, is swept down the foul stream 
 of corruption, conscience stands with her up- 
 lifted torch ; and as the sickened spirit turns from 
 the fetid billows of the past and present, the 
 lurid glare lights up the dread abyss to which 
 the tide is rushing on, and each brightening 
 gleam flashes into view more frightful and ap- 
 palling retributions. The sense of wrath to come 
 
50 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 may well combine with a sense of sin, to form a 
 powerful motive to repentance ; but if its con- 
 ceptions of judgment be too vivid, they blast all 
 hopes and crush all energy. There have been 
 instances where a vivid realization of these stern 
 verities, unrelieved and unsupported by corre- 
 sponding views of an atoning Saviour ; or, it may 
 be, pressing on a mind whose mortal frame was 
 much enfeebled, has shattered with one stroke 
 the intellect and the body, and laid the poor 
 wreck in a maniac's grave. 
 
 Therefore is it that a race of beings so de- 
 praved cannot be permitted to realize its guilt, 
 nor its future ; but must listen to the revelation 
 which can inform, without overwhelming them. 
 This strange insensibility of ours is like a shel- 
 tering cloud, between us and the burning Eye 
 above us ; and in its tempered ray we may pur- 
 sue the toils, and take the slumbers, and perform 
 the kindly offices, which secure a long probation 
 for ourselves, and for coming generations : and 
 yet we may argue from the keenness of the 
 muffled beam, the power of its naked stroke. 
 But if the full fearfulness of the living God 
 should burst forth with intensest blaze, all hu- 
 man strength, and intellect, and energy, and 
 hope, would sink and wither in that blight. 
 
UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF DEEP GUILT. 51 
 
 Is it not clear, then, that to meet the very first 
 condition of a probationary dispensation, the 
 human race, if so deeply depraved, must be kept 
 from a due sense of sin and a just expectation 
 of punishment, realized and perpetually over- 
 whelming? If a state of innocence would be 
 attended by the absence of remorse, so also must 
 the state of evil, while yet pardon and salvation 
 are to be offered. The actual state of the human 
 conscience, in regard to its moral position, is as 
 accordant with the supposition of our guilt as 
 with that of our innocence. And therefore the 
 fact with which we started, and whose truth we 
 still admit, the fact that the strong language of 
 Scripture is not corroborated by the voice of our 
 own consciousness, affords us no refuge; but 
 we must believe, and act upon, the terrible 
 charges which we cannot feel. 
 
 Faith in our own deep guilt, is the neces- 
 sary precursor of faith in the atoning power 
 of that Sacrifice which none can fully com- 
 prehend. It is not needful that the sufferer 
 on the verge of the grave shall be able to feel 
 the death-chill creeping over every nerve, and 
 comprehend just how the mortification, which 
 is death-begun, is preying upon his vitals. It is 
 not needful that he should comprehend the whole 
 
52 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 philosophy of the remedy proposed. So that the 
 physician comprehends it, and can give to him 
 the sure results the fact of mortal illness, and 
 the fact of saving virtue in the remedy the 
 sinking man is bound to believe both his " dan- 
 ger and his remedy " to be as he who must know 
 assures him they are. To realize the very pro- 
 cess of mortality might overpower him ; but to 
 believe the fact may only fit him for energetic 
 action. So the unerring Physician reveals to us 
 the fact of our depravity, and the fact of the 
 power of the atonement ; and the highest reason 
 receives and acts upon both by faith. 
 
 This same principle, of revealing the true na- 
 ture and results of sin only as mankind are able 
 to bear it, will be found to have marked the 
 whole course of God's progressive revelation. 
 The glimmering light of patriarchal days, with 
 its obscure hints of the coming Sacrifice, threw 
 its feeble ray only, or mainly, over the temporal 
 and material rewards of transgression, and seems 
 to have left a slight sense of sin. The clear and 
 systematic thunderings of Sinai, graving the in- 
 flexible moral law in rigid stone, and with terrific 
 energy denouncing every temporal curse and 
 heavier shadows of a future doom, were compen- 
 sated and sustained by the pattern of all things 
 
UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF DEEP GUILT. 53 
 
 shown to Moses on the Mount, the shadow of 
 good things to come, the all-atoning sacrifices, and 
 the prevailing intercession. And as the brighten- 
 ing orb of revelation rose, until it culminated 
 above the Mountain of Beatitudes, disclosing all 
 the malignity and loathsomeness of sin, and all the 
 vastitude of its spiritual and eternal retribution, 
 its light shone with an equal ray upon the dying 
 form on Calvary, whose " blood cleanseth from 
 all unrighteousness." The sinner's real nature 
 <*vas not fully disclosed, until his shuddering and 
 averted glance could rest on Jesus. It is the 
 presentation of the sin and the law, in its full 
 revelation, without the corresponding refuge, by 
 which an apostate Church, in every age, has un- 
 fitted her most sensitive and earnest souls for 
 life's common duties, and driven them to the 
 cloister and self-torture. And it is by that 
 mercy which spares a useless agony, that it is 
 not until the Christian soul has had much expe- 
 rience of the depth of a Father's love, and clear 
 vision of a Saviour's everlasting priesthood, that 
 God imparts that deepest sense of the sinfulness 
 of sin, which breathes from the mournful but 
 trusting hearts of his holiest children. 
 
 But under each successive dispensation, and 
 with all the varying sensibility of each indi- 
 
 01 
 
 trr We 
 
54 NATUEAL GOODNESS. 
 
 vidual soul, the fact of man's depravity and 
 danger has been left to the authority of Jeho- 
 vah's word alone. We may act upon that au- 
 thority or perish. The criminal at the bar is 
 judged, not by the voice of his own seared con- 
 science, but by the unimpaired and disinterested 
 sentiment of his jury and his judge. And he 
 who, while yet a " prisoner of hope," derides 
 his Maker's verdict, will not be able to infect the 
 Judge of all with the blindness of his own vision. 
 If we yield to the testimony of God, and strive 
 to act upon its verity, it will impress the soul 
 with a motive which will urge it, without over- 
 whelming it, to the cross. But know thou, O 
 man! that thy unconsciousness of guilt is not 
 thy birthright : it is but the momentary pause, 
 before the final paroxysm of remorse, that in 
 this instant thou mayest take the cup of salva- 
 tion, and avert it forever ! 
 
III. 
 
 Cmjwral ^toarte of 'Hlffral% 
 
'Moral government consists not barely in rewarding ami 
 punishing men for their actions, which the most tyrannical 
 person may do: but in rewarding the righteous and punish- 
 ing the wicked in rendering to men according to their 
 actions, considered as good or evil. And the perfection of 
 moral government consists in doing this, with regard to all 
 intelligent creatures, in an exact proportion to their personal 
 
 merits or demerits." 
 
 BXTCLER'S ANALOGY. 
 
 " Verily, I say unto you, They have their reward." 
 
 MATT, vi, 2. 
 
III. 
 
 THE TEMPORAL REWARDS OF MORALITY NO GUAR- 
 ANTEE OF FUTURE BLESSEDNESS. 
 
 THE argument of the last chapter was purely 
 negative not designed to prove the depravity of 
 human nature, but only to silence one presump- 
 tion against the idea of deep guilt. The testi- 
 mony of consciousness was set aside. But there 
 may be other presumptions which cannot be so 
 easily disposed of. For instance, does not the 
 Supreme Euler of the world mark his approba- 
 tion of the right, and his hatred of the wrong, 
 by visible signs of favour or abhorrence ? If his 
 threatened visitations of calamity give token of 
 his wrath, must not his crowns of honour and 
 blessing be taken as seals of his esteem and love ? 
 Does not God carefully, and with discrimination, 
 reward each successive grade of virtuous action ; 
 and would he do it were all grades alike worthless 
 and despised ? In brief, is not this constant and 
 minute acknowledgment of the natural virtues 
 and moralities an evidence that there is that in 
 
58 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 them which awakes the love of God a love 
 which certainly is not affected by disrobement 
 of the mortal vesture, and which therefore must 
 continue, and shed its blessings on the life beyond 
 the tomb? 
 
 Certainly this presumption has root in the 
 deepest and most intuitive perceptions of our 
 moral nature. The idea of holiness and that of 
 happiness are not more instinctive and abiding 
 than the recognition of their natural association. 
 It is not merely a sense of poetic propriety of 
 a connexion which, however pleasing, may be 
 lightly broken ; but it has been the testimony 
 of the human heart always and everywhere, that 
 by an essential and eternal fitness of things, holi- 
 ness and happiness ought to be inseparable, and 
 the pure should be the blessed. Passion and self- 
 ishness may have swayed men to oppression, even 
 of the good ; but the soul has borne fearful wit- 
 ness against itself. When no conflict of self- 
 interest prevails, men delight to honour virtue ; 
 they rejoice to guard it against suffering, and to 
 multiply its sources of happiness ; they exult in its 
 providential accession to high honours and influ- 
 ence ; and illustrious examples of goodness have 
 disarmed the rapacity of the robber, and the 
 recklessness of the assassin, and have been spared, 
 
TEMPORAL REWARDS OF MORALITY. 59 
 
 as exempt by right from the common lot and 
 desert of men. ,And, on the other hand, how- 
 ever averse the heart may be to the infliction of 
 suffering, it finds a strange satisfaction in the 
 retribution which befalls the wicked. The very 
 constitution of human nature leads us to expect 
 this correspondence between the moral character 
 of our actions and their results. 
 
 Again, if there is a Being who controls all the 
 events of life, and who is at all interested in our 
 actions and feelings, we may naturally suppose 
 that, whatever may be the moral character of his 
 purposes, he will dispense his blessing or his 
 curse according to his personal favour or dislike 
 toward each of his creatures. And if the prin- 
 ciples of his administration be those same prin- 
 ciples of reverence for moral purity which under- 
 lie our own moral nature, we should expect the 
 correspondence between reward and merit to be 
 so constant that either might be inferred from 
 the other: so that the visible tokens of God's 
 blessing would intimate at once his own good- 
 will, and the virtue of the human recipient of his 
 benefits. Exceptions might appear; but where 
 regular laws of administration distributed re- 
 wards to whole classes of actions, we should 
 seem assured that those actions, as a class, can- 
 
60 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 not be the expression of a heart which the moral 
 Governor abhors. Would He, who cannot be 
 deceived by the mere semblance of virtue, be- 
 stow upon that mere semblance the tokens of his 
 favour ? 
 
 So far as national and collective. blessings and 
 calamities are concerned, every age of the world, 
 heathen or Christian, has recognised this princi- 
 ple. Famine, "War, and Pestilence ; the storms 
 that wreck our argosies, and the conflagrations 
 that annihilate the wealth of cities, are all re- 
 ceived as messengers of wrath from an avenging 
 Deity, even when there is no natural connexion 
 traceable between the national sin and its retri- 
 bution : and of course, when the plague is stayed, 
 and prosperity returns, it argues the returning 
 favour of the Sovereign Disposer of events. In 
 all God's dealings with his early Church, these 
 temporal blessings and curses were held out as 
 the sure insignia of his favour or his wrath. 
 "And all these blessings shall come upon thee, 
 if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord 
 thy God. Blessed shalt thou be in basket and 
 in store ; in all that thou settest thy hand unto. 
 But if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of 
 the Lord thy God, the Lord shall send upon thee 
 cursing, and vexation and rebuke, in all that 
 
TEMPORAL ttEWAKDS OF MORALITY. 61 
 
 thou settest thy hand for to do." Dent, xxviii. 
 Every woe that can befall the body or estate is 
 threatened as the sure index of wrath. So in the 
 decalogue there is the commandment with prom- 
 ise " that thy days may be long in the land which 
 the Lord thy God giveth thee." Rewards and 
 punishments are constantly held up in the Scrip- 
 tures, as the visible tokens of a present discrimi- 
 nation between the pure and the vile. And, in 
 fine, the idea of personal approval or condemna- 
 tion has been so invariably associated with the 
 consequences of individual actions or habits of 
 action, that the ablest writers on Natural Theol- 
 ogy appeal to the ordinary visitations of Provi- 
 dence as the strongest proof, with all its anoma- 
 lous cases, that the Governor of the universe 
 hates sin and loves virtue. 
 
 Surely, then, if we should observe the measure 
 in which the just Ruler dispenses his rewards 
 and his punishments to nations and to indi- 
 viduals, we might appear to have a rule by 
 which to measure his estimate of their actual 
 virtue or vice ; and his estimate must be correct. 
 We certainly should find that, as a general rule, 
 those who observe the moralities of life are at- 
 tended with his blessing ; that while the hours 
 of acutest suffering may outnumber the hours 
 
62 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 of ecstatic joy, yet the most of life is passed in 
 a tempered state, where a sense of moderate 
 peace and satisfaction predominates over care 
 and pain of spirit. The man of high morality 
 is seldom a really unhappy man. He does not 
 loathe life. Days when social converse or hon- 
 ourable pursuit cannot make him forget his 
 trials, are very rare. Such men smile easily. 
 The trials which they have may be tokens of 
 imperfection ; but the preponderance of blessing 
 which they enjoy would seem to be a token of 
 ascendant and progressive virtue, and accepta- 
 bility before God. Those who charge upon all 
 natural virtues and moralities an utter worth- 
 lessness before God, should certainly be called 
 upon to show why the seal of God's favour is 
 not designed to attest his approval, or to say 
 why he ordains such deceptive consequences as 
 lull to sleep the conscience of the insincere and 
 the unsafe. If the temporal rewards of morafity 
 are not the Inspector's brand, marking its sound- 
 ness, what are they? 
 
 These questions we propose to answer. "We 
 shall show, 
 
 That temporal consequences do not evince the 
 moral character of the actor. 
 
TEMPORAL REWARDS OF MORALITY. 63 
 
 That they are designed to evince, nevertheless, 
 the moral character of Jehovah. 
 
 That they subserve further purposes in the 
 plan of redemption, and are essential to it. 
 
 And, as a preliminary argument, we shall show 
 
 That, conceding for a moment that temporal 
 rewards do witness the divine favour, they do 
 not witness such favour as will avert eternal 
 punishment. 
 
 We may say with accuracy sufficient, that 
 morality consists in the observance of those 
 duties which a man owes to others and to him- 
 self; and which are announced to him either by 
 the voice of revelation, or by the moral sense 
 within him, in view of the relations in which 
 he is placed. But it will give more definiteness 
 to our present argument to analyze morality 
 into its several departments, and to observe the 
 nature and peculiar rewards of several of the 
 separate moralities. 
 
 There is, for instance, a physical morality. 
 The word of God, in specific language, or in 
 implied direction, commands a life of temper- 
 ance in food and beverage, a strict restraint 
 upon the licentious appetites, regular industry 
 and labour, cleanliness of person and apparel, 
 
64: NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 and observance of frequent days of rest. The 
 general moral sense of mankind has given to 
 most of these rnles an independent sanction. 
 Now, although the result of such physical mo- 
 rality is not the sole object of its injunction in 
 Scripture, nor are all the consequences clearly 
 foreseen, where the unaided moral sense enjoins 
 it ; yet the sure tendency of such observances is 
 to bring the entire body to that state where all 
 its parts of blood and bone and muscle, of sensi- 
 tive nerve and organic functions, are fitted in 
 their separate and mutual action to give the 
 frame its highest power of strength and en- 
 durance, and fitness for all the peculiar purposes 
 of its existence : and in the mere physical con- 
 sciousness of this healthful existence, there is a 
 physical happiness. It is not merely the absence 
 of pain and uneasiness, but a positive feeling of 
 buoyancy and exhilaration. And just in pro- 
 portion as those laws are not observed, there is 
 a corresponding loss of their physical rewards, 
 and a gradual sinking into positive suffering and 
 disease. "Even as we walk the streets we meet 
 with illustrations of each extreme. Here behold 
 a patriarch, whose stock of vigour threescore 
 years and ten seem hardly to have impaired. 
 His erect form, his firm step, his elastic limbs, 
 
TEMPORAL REWARDS OF MORALITY. 65 
 
 and undimmed senses, are so many certificates 
 of good conduct ; or, rather, so many jewels and 
 orders of nobility with which nature has hon- 
 oured him for his fidelity to her laws. His fair 
 complexion shows that his blood has never been 
 corrupted ; his pure breath, that he has never 
 yielded his digestive apparatus for a vintner's 
 cess-pool ; his exact language and keen appre- 
 hension, that his brain has never been drugged 
 or stupified by the poisons of distiller or tobac- 
 conist. Enjoying his powers to the highest, he 
 has preserved the power of enjoying them. 
 Despite the moral of the school-boy's story, he 
 has eaten his cake and still kept it. As he drains 
 the cup of life, there are no lees at the bottom. 
 His organs will reach the goal of existence to- 
 gether. Painlessly as a candle burns down in 
 its socket, so will he expire ; and a little imagin- 
 ation would convert him into another Enoch, 
 translated from earth to a better world without 
 the sting of death. 
 
 " But look at an opposite extreme, where an 
 opposite history is recorded. "What wreck so 
 shocking to behold as the wreck of a dissolute 
 man : the vigour of life exhausted, and yet the 
 first steps in an honourable career not taken ; in 
 himself a lazar-house of diseases ; dead, but by 
 
66 ISATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 a heathenish custom of society not buried! 
 Rogues have had the initial letter of the title 
 burnt into the palms of their hands. Even for 
 murder, Cain was only branded on the forehead ; 
 but over the whole person of the debauchee, or 
 the inebriate, the signatures of infamy are writ- 
 ten. How nature brands him with stigma and 
 opprobrium ! How she hangs labels all over 
 him, to testify her disgust at his existence, and 
 to admonish others of his example ! How she 
 loosens all his joints, sends tremors along his 
 muscles, and bends forward his frame, as if to 
 bring him upon all-fours with kindred brutes, 
 or to degrade him to the reptile's crawling ! 
 How she disfigures his countenance, as if intent 
 upon obliterating all traces of her own image, so 
 that she may swear she never made him ! How 
 she pours rheum over his eyes, sends foul spirits 
 to inhabit his breath, and shrieks, as with a 
 trumpet, from every pore of his body, i .BE- 
 HOLD A BEAST!''"* 
 
 Such, then, are the rewards and the retribu- 
 tions which sanction a physical morality. 
 
 There is an intellectual morality a morality 
 not yet comprehended as such by society, and 
 not specifically commanded in the word of God, 
 
 Horace Mann's "Thoughts for a Young Man." 
 
TEMPORAL REWARDS OF MORALITY. 67 
 
 because its full exercise or rejection is only pos- 
 sible in those advanced stages of civilization and 
 freedom upon which the race has scarcely en- 
 tered; but a morality destined yet to take its 
 place beside the recognised duties of man, and 
 urge its claims as forcibly, and with as palpable 
 sanctions as even physical virtue. Careful ob- 
 servation, sober thought, close application in 
 study, truthfulness in argument, indulgence of 
 the fancy only as it may sweep through space 
 as the satellite of reason these will be some 
 of the injunctions in the decalogue of that new 
 morality. And it will have its reward : the 
 quick, clear perception, accurate and ready 
 memory, sound judgment, clearness and reach 
 of logic, and the chastened imagination that, like 
 heaven's light, tints with ethereal colouring the 
 blade, and the ear, and the full corn of thought, 
 and crowns fertility with beauty. 
 
 But there is a social morality, recognised from 
 the beginning. The commandments of the sec- 
 ond table of the decalogue, explained by the 
 sermon on the mount ; the dictates of that social 
 justice which reverences the rfghts of others in 
 person, or estate, or character, and the minuter 
 and less definable duties, revealed by the diviner 
 radiance that beams forth when Justice is trans- 
 
68 NATUBAL GOODNESS. 
 
 figured into Love ; the palpable and direct ap- 
 plications of these great principles, and the ob- 
 servance of those legislative enactments, and 
 conventional rules, which tend to secure the gen- 
 eral peace and prosperity: such are the obliga- 
 tions which social morality lays upon the citi- 
 zen, the man of business, the philanthropist, and 
 the friend. Its rewards are as generous as its 
 retribution is terrible. Respectability, commer- 
 cial credit, honour, the courtesies of life, sympa- 
 thy in misfortune, kindness from those we love. 
 Each moralist reaps a larger share of happiness 
 than he individually gives. Each heart and life 
 in a community, being like a burnished reflector, 
 which, having its proper position and polish, 
 gives its light to the common stock, but gathers 
 a larger radiance from every other ; and which, 
 being displaced and tarnished, gives but little, 
 and gathers less. The transgressor lives in a 
 dark atmosphere of legal penalty and commer- 
 cial distrust, of friendlessness and shame. 
 
 There is also a domestic morality of which 
 we speak separately, because we find it, more 
 than any other, exercised without reference to 
 other duties. Conjugal fidelity, parental ten- 
 derness, filial reverence and affection, and fra- 
 ternal love how human nature has felt their 
 
TEMPOKAL BEWARD8 OF MORALITY. 69 
 
 beauty and their sanctity, even where religion 
 has not yet thrown over them her holier loveli- 
 ness ! And they have their reward. Amid the 
 sheltering care of the domestic circle, a sacred 
 joy springs up, like a pure spring beneath the 
 clustering palm-trees, an oasis green and cheer- 
 ful, a retreat and compensation, amid all the heat 
 and conflict of surrounding deserts. The music 
 of happy voices encircling our firesides and our 
 tables the smile of greeting the sympathy in 
 sorrow the nameless little kindnesses that spar- 
 kle off from the altar of family affection the un- 
 wearied watching of the sick chamber and the 
 soft arm of latest devotion, which soothes and sus- 
 tains us, and aids us to lean securely upon the rod 
 and the staff which now alone can comfort us 
 through the shadow : all these are but the respon- 
 sive blessings to that love, and care, and gentle- 
 ness, which we have sjiown our households the 
 natural reward of a true domestic morality. 
 
 Once more : we may speak of a morality of 
 the passions, apart from actual intercourse and 
 observation by others. It is a Scriptural duty to 
 rule our own spirits, to cultivate the generous 
 sentiments, to repress the malevolent impulses, 
 and to check even the necessary instincts of re- 
 sentment and justice within due moderation. 
 
70 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 Now, apart from the fact that in a well-regu- 
 lated social state, the gratification of the vindic- 
 tive passions is most commonly debarred, and 
 the evil affection suffers the pang of disappoint- 
 ment, it has been clearly shown that as each 
 generous and noble impulse, whether it shall 
 succeed or not in its aims, has in itself a sweet- 
 ness like the glow of a healthful frame, so the 
 malignant passions, however they may be grati- 
 fied, have a constitutional misery, as a frenzied 
 drunkard grasps the cup amid the tortures of his 
 delirium. "Anger, wrath, malice, envy," like 
 vipers nestling in the bosom, sting the breast 
 that cherishes them, however shut in from out- 
 ward victims. And, on the other hand, there is 
 no loftier consciousness vouchsafed to the moral- 
 ist, than to feel his mastery of himself that his 
 soul is not like a dismantled bark, borne away 
 by every wind and current, but has in itself a 
 controlling power, and, by an internal force, 
 breasts them at its will. 
 
 Now we have glanced thus hastily at these 
 several moralities, not to see what they were in 
 themselves, but to call attention to the fact of 
 their independence of each other ; and that, exist- 
 ing thus separately, no one can be inferred from 
 the existence of the other. You cannot judge 
 
TEMPORAL REWARDS OF MORALITY. 71 
 
 the social character from business habits, nor the 
 intellectual culture from the comparative physical 
 health, nor domestic virtue from public amenity. 
 The banker who never yet failed to discharge 
 his 1 obligations, even when financial ruin threat- 
 ened, and all around were faithless, may go home 
 to a wife, whose heart his coldness has broken, 
 and to children, who, lost to all reverence, regard 
 his life only as the obstacle to their enjoyment 
 of his fortune. The most amiable and loving of 
 parents, may have no integrity nor credit. In 
 some cases, and to some extent, the moralities 
 may be necessary to each other, and so be in- 
 volved ; as when some physical laws may be ob- 
 served, to secure mental vigour, or when public 
 moralities are observed through love and con- 
 sideration for those at home. But we shall be 
 safe in laying down the general principle, that 
 these moralities are independent, and therefore 
 the existence of one cannot be argued from the 
 presence of another; that, at all events, the 
 higher cannot be inferred from the presence of 
 the lower moralities ; and that, as they may and 
 do occur separately, their existence all together 
 cannot argue any connexion of principle. 
 
 And, as these moralities are distinct, so are 
 their reward* separate, Each bears its own fruit, 
 
72 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 and each -fruit crowns its own tree. The reward 
 of domestic morality is no evidence of public 
 esteem and confidence. So far is physical tem- 
 perance, and its results, from betokening social 
 morality, that the robust frame thus produced 
 may only call for heavier manacles, and a 
 stronger gibbet. The rewards of all the lower 
 excellences, therefore, cannot argue the exist- 
 ence, nor the reward, of the highest. It is as 
 though each virtue stood upon a separate pedes- 
 tal, and was crowned with a separate wreath. 
 All but one may stand erect, and their crown 
 witness their approval by the Judge : yet neither 
 these perfect statues, nor their crowns, prove 
 that the noblest of them all may not lie beside 
 them, prostrate and crownless in the dust, 
 
 Now, in view of these facts, may we not say, 
 that if there should be added a new department 
 of our being, or a new circle of relationship 
 should gather around us, higher than any yet 
 mentioned, so that there would be a new moral- 
 ity, the same rules would hold ? Whether it in 
 any way involved the lower moralities or not, 
 they would not prove its existence, nor would 
 their reward prove its reward. Just as all but 
 one of the common moralities cannot imply that 
 highest virtue which remains, so all earthly mo- 
 
TEMPORAL REWARDS OF MORALITY. 73 
 
 ralities would not prove the existence of the 
 added excellence and duties, nor all earthly 
 blessings guarantee the new reward. 
 
 Kow, we aver that there is such a distinct and 
 loftier morality, with its distinct reward. The 
 soul has relations to a God, as personal in being, 
 as definite in his attributes, as any finite soul ; 
 and the duties due to him are as palpable as 
 those of any earthly relationship. It needs no 
 argument to prove the profusion and exuberance 
 of his bestowments, the ceaselessness and mi- 
 nuteness of his services, and the benevolence, the 
 compassion, the forbearance, and the tenderness, 
 of the great heart of God ; nor need we dwell 
 upon the responsive affection and services which 
 we owe to him. If filial affection be a duty ; if 
 ingratitude is detestable; if reverence for the 
 good be incumbent upon all ; and if implicit 
 obedience to law, which, with far-seeing wis- 
 dom, provides for the common welfare, be indis- 
 pensable to true morality ; then do our relations 
 to the great Father of all spirits, to the Bene- 
 factor who makes both nature and human gener- 
 osity to be but the almoners of his large bounty, 
 to the Holy One and Just, to the Lawgiver 
 whose unerring wisdom guides his perfect love 
 then do our relations to Him call for as ceaseless 
 
NATURAL GOODNESS, 
 
 reverence, and love, and gratitude, and for as 
 ceaseless embodiment of those feelings in active 
 service, as any earthly morality. The acknowl- 
 edgment of our felt dependence and indebted- 
 ness, in prayer and praise ; the careful study of 
 revelation, and of providential openings, as inti- 
 mations of His command or wish ; the glad con- 
 secration of time, and thought, to the filial com- 
 munion of spirit with Spirit; and the minute 
 watchfulness over all that may meet his favour 
 or rebuke these constitute a distinct morality. 
 Those classes of obligations which we have be- 
 fore discussed, regard the soul in its relations to 
 the world, or to itself alone : this regards its rela- 
 tions to God. Those human duties may seem to 
 be demanded by conscience, even if there were 
 no God : this higher morality, in all its essen- 
 tial elements of feeling and expression, would 
 abide, in imperious obligation, although all asso- 
 ciated existence were blotted out, and but one 
 heart was left alone with God in his universe. 
 Lower duties regard man in his relations to ma- 
 terial, visible, and changing circumstances, and 
 may be- called the temporal morality: this re- 
 gards the soul in its relations to God the Spirit, 
 and to the spiritual world, and may be termed 
 the spiritual morality, Xow, its observance may 
 
TEMPORAL REWARDS OF MORALITY. 75 
 
 require the observance of the temporal, even as 
 we saw physical morality to be practised for the 
 sake of mental vigour ; but as the physical does 
 not prove the intellectual, nor the social the do- 
 mestic virtues, nor all but the highest combined 
 demonstrate the highest of the temporal morali- 
 ties to exist ; so they all, and much less a few of 
 them, cannot demonstrate the presence of the 
 distinct .and superior spiritual morality. 
 
 And as the moralities are distinct, so are their 
 rewards. The earthly bring earthly blessings; 
 the spiritual, a spiritual recompense. So far, of 
 course, as the great morality implies the ob- 
 servance of the lower, it secures their natural 
 results; but its own peculiar benefits are dis- 
 tinct, and not implied by them. The approving- 
 love of God, the sweet manifestation of his 
 presence, his strength and consolations, the con- 
 scious assimilation to his character the fulness 
 of exceeding great and precious promises, bring- 
 ing a peace that passeth understanding, and a 
 love that passeth knowledge these are some of 
 those spiritual benefits which yield the highest 
 happiness of which human nature is capable. 
 ]S"ow, therefore, as all other moralities in no way 
 imply this loftier excellence, neither do their 
 rewards imply the guarantee of this loftier 
 
76 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 recompense. When these earthly rewards, and 
 their virtuous acts, and the relationships which 
 called them forth, have passed away, the ques- 
 tion of eternal morality and eternal rewards will 
 stand, as it does to-day, alone to be determined 
 by its own evidences. 
 
 Thus do we find ourselves led by this hasty 
 glance at the common morality and its rewards, 
 as seen everywhere around us, to the conclusion, 
 
 that WHATEVER THE TEMPORAL BLESSING AND 
 CURSE, WHICH ATTEND HUMAN ACTION MAY INDI- 
 CATE, rr CERTAINLY DOES NOT INDICATE ANY SUCH 
 REGARD FOR THE MORALIST AS SHALL SECURE 
 HIM FROM ETERNAL PUNISHMENT IN THE FUTURE 
 WORLD. 
 
 The reader may doubt whether such a system 
 of recompense can at all indicate God's feeling 
 toward the heart, which is assuredly the same in 
 itself, however daily changes of time and place 
 may call for different duties. Before a man, 
 whom orphanage or other circumstances has 
 left without a home for many years, shall find 
 himself in domestic relations, is not his heart 
 the same as when the gathering circle elicits its 
 expression? When a man, long honoured for 
 
TEMPORAL REWARDS OF MORALITY. 77 
 
 business integrity, and long enjoying the reward 
 of social morality, is by accident or disease shut 
 in from the exercise of these virtues, and from 
 their rewards, to a home that his transgression 
 of domestic morality has made a torment, has 
 that one accident to his body destroyed all God's 
 favour which before rewarded him, and left only 
 the displeasure which afflicts him? Do we not 
 feel, that too often the laws of health and mental 
 vigour, and social morality to a great extent, are 
 obeyed merely to accomplish some vile purpose ; 
 and while society and God alike execrate the 
 villain, yet the due recompense still has attended 
 each obedience to law ? Must we not deny that 
 the temporal blessing is a sure token of any 
 divine benediction on the heart ? 
 
 The mist that enshrouds the subject may dis- 
 perse, if we fairly consider that, in order to indi- 
 cate his approval of virtue, and his hatred of 
 vice, it is not needful that God should in this 
 life let his rewards and penalities correspond 
 to the actual inward virtue of men. The con- 
 viction must certainly be impressed on every 
 subject of God's moral government, that nothing 
 but virtue itself, "in spirit and in truth," will 
 satisfy his law ; and that, in the end, his retribu- 
 tions will have regard to the motive and inten- 
 
78 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 ; 
 tions alone. But it may not be needful that, at 
 
 present^ virtue should be rewarded as virtue, 
 and vice as vice in the heart, It is sufficient 
 if God attach blessings to those acts which vir- 
 tue would produce, and suffering to the conduct 
 which would be the natural expression of a 
 vicious heart. Man will soon see what conduct 
 brings his chastisements, and what his honours : 
 conscience, the moral intuition of our nature, 
 will suggest and insist, that the feelings ought 
 to correspond to the actions ; that the heart 
 should, in its pure activity, be the source whence 
 the life flows purely. And thus it was, that 
 while the evident irregularity and inadequacy 
 of the present system of retributions, to meet 
 individual cases, was clearly felt by the ancient 
 sages, and it was only by a future world that 
 they could equalize the desert and the reward, 
 yet conscience declared the necessity of virtue 
 in the intention and affections of the heart ; and 
 these providential laws of retributions showed 
 for what affections in their action, the blessing 
 was originally prepared. Men felt that so-called 
 virtuous action was rewarded, because the vir- 
 tuous heart was presupposed in the original 
 plan. Men felt that it might yet be, that a re- 
 generated world would find in those same re- 
 
TEMPORAL REWARDS OF MORALITY. 79 
 
 wards the proper recompense of its real.feelings. 
 In the mean while, even if individual justice was 
 postponed, and rewards were strangely adminis- 
 tered to classes of actions instead of virtues, the 
 moral character of God's administration was re- 
 vealed, and the moral consciousness of mankind 
 was aroused and directed. 
 
 Let us pause, and raise a stone to mark the 
 progress of our proposed investigation, and take 
 a new point of departure for the remaining stage 
 of the argument. We have shown that, accord- 
 ing to the plan of administering rewards, which 
 is observed during this life, no temporal bless- 
 ings afford presumption that their possessor shall 
 receive any reward in the life to come. "We 
 have shown that' these temporal rewards are 
 given to correct conduct, for the most part, with 
 no reference to the inner motive of action. We 
 see that, even where the feeling itself produces 
 a reward, the feeling and its reward may stand 
 alone, and are no indication of that pervading 
 principle of virtue which alone can meet divine 
 favour. We have pointed out the fact that this 
 imperfect system of rewarding action instead of 
 motive does, nevertheless, answer the purpose 
 of revealing the moral character of God and his 
 
80 NATUKAL GOODNESS. 
 
 government, and the moral duties and prospects 
 of mankind. 
 
 The reader will feel, then, that all presump- 
 tion, which the preponderance of temporal bless- 
 ings over temporal curses might suggest against 
 the depravity of human 'nature, and against the 
 absence of any true virtue in general conduct, 
 falls to the ground, when it is considered that 
 the question of the existence of a spiritual prin- 
 ciple and of its peculiar reward, is entirely inde- 
 pendent of the existence of the common morali- 
 ties and their earthly consequences; and that a 
 sufficient reason for thus bestowing blessings on 
 human conduct is at hand, without supposing 
 them to imply any approbation of our real 
 character. 
 
 We now proceed to show that this temporary 
 system of rewarding conduct instead of virtue 
 itself, however incredible it may seem, as a per- 
 manent principle of government, is, nevertheless, 
 an essential part of the only method conceivable, 
 of carrying out the PLAN OF REDEMPTION. 
 
IV. 
 
 Compratito |UrtMe d 
 Contort. 
 
"Our elegant and amusing moralists no doubt copiously 
 describe and censure the follies and vices of mankind ; but 
 many of these, they maintain, are accidental to tlie human 
 character, rather than a disclosure of its intrinsic qualities. 
 Others do indeed spring radically from the nature ; but they 
 are only the wild weeds of a virtuous soil. . . . The measure 
 of virtue in the world vastly exceeds that of depravity ; we 
 .should not indulge a fanatical rigour in our judgments of 
 mankind; nor be always reverting to an ideal perfection." 
 
 FOSTER'S ESSAYS. 
 
 " For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend 
 
 in one point, he is guilty of all." 
 
 ST. JAMES. 
 
 "Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing?" 
 
IV. 
 
 COMPARATIVE RECTITUDE OF HUMAN CONDUCT. 
 
 THAT perfect human life upon the soil of Pales- 
 tine, two thousand years ago! How it trans- 
 mitted and demonstrated the pure lustre of the 
 perfect human soul! It was not merely that 
 u never man spake like this man." It was not 
 that "no man ever did the miracles which this 
 man did." Those who have neglected his pre- 
 cepts, and disbelieved his miracles Moslem and 
 Jew, infidel and heresiarch all have paid hom- 
 age to the unearthly beauty and dignity of /the 
 Scripture portrait, and confessed, "Never man 
 lived like this man." 
 
 Action is the natural embodiment of feeling, 
 and the life is the natural exponent of the heart. 
 It is only as our principles and affections are 
 called into action, that we can be conscious of 
 them ourselves ; and it is only as their free ex- 
 pression is found in word and deed, that men 
 can examine them. God, at the last, shall judge 
 us, according to the deeds done in the body. Hi- 
 
84 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 righteous judgment, assigning to every act and 
 word its significaiicy of the inward motive, shall 
 mete out our doom. And even as the deeds are 
 being wrought, human judgment, in its imper- 
 fection, is not. generally at loss. Like an angelic 
 messenger who, unseen, has come, and watches 
 above us, but at our invocation is revealed to 
 our unsealed vision, so the heart, that, from the 
 seclusion of inactivity, comes into the world of 
 language and action, is concealed no longer. The 
 life is the visible soul. 
 
 Look, then, upon human life, and say what is it* 
 expression ! Plas it the visage of a spirit utterly 
 abandoned to evil ? Take the portrait as history 
 has daguerreotyped it at each successive period, 
 from the infancy of the race until now; and. 
 making all allowance for deficiencies of knowl- 
 edge and slow mechanical civilization, has the 
 course of national and of private life been all 
 deformity? If the rewards of morality have 
 been unevenly distributed, and form no test of 
 character, let us look at once to the actions them- 
 selves. Human life, covering all ages, is like a 
 great dial, upon which is marked the working 
 of the machinery of human nature beneath it ; 
 and each separate life is like the second-hand, 
 which, partaking of the general movement. 
 
COMPARATIVE RECTITUDE. 85 
 
 sweeps around a smaller circle. If, then, with 
 many intermissions, it is true, some backward 
 impulses, and much friction at times, yet still 
 steadily, and with increasing regularity, the 
 hands of action describe that circle of duty, will 
 it not show that the machinery within is more 
 right than wrong, and will move better as time 
 rolls on ? If and we concede the fact if na- 
 tional legislation and diplomacy, with all its fre- 
 quent recklessness of right, has many instances 
 of dignified respect to truth and virtue ; and if 
 in private life there has even been as the fact 
 that society still endures bears witness a preva- 
 lence of honest action, and accordance with the 
 moral law, does it not prove that the machinery 
 beneath the surface the human nature and the 
 single heart cannot be all wrong, and indeed 
 that it must be mainly right, and progressing? 
 If crime is the exception, must not the spirit that 
 produces crime be the exception also? 
 
 In ordinary clocks, when the presence of the 
 weight, or of the spring, is removed, the entire 
 movement is arrested, or retarded ; but the great 
 clock of our largest city has an arrangement for 
 securing uninterrupted motion ; and thus, when 
 in winding it up the regular force is removed, 
 this "retaining power" as it is called, supplies 
 
86 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 the requisite force. A spectator, looking at the 
 dial at any one moment, and seeing the move- 
 ment of the hands, could not say whether the 
 moving power was the regular spring, or the 
 temporary force. Now, if the human heart has 
 no such accessary forces, then the active life is a 
 sure test of the constancy of the original power, 
 of the main-spring of holy devotion to the good. 
 But if there are such forces, then it is only by 
 estimating how strongly and how often they avail 
 without the main-spring, that we may be sure 
 of the unimpaired power of that pure motive. 
 
 Now, we think that observation of our own 
 hearts, and of the hearts of others, will make it 
 clear, that there are such secondary motives 
 brought to bear upon the human soul ; and that 
 when these influences are taken into the account, 
 the revelations which a close observation of hu- 
 man life affords, are far less favourable to our esti- 
 mate of human virtue, than at first we thought. 
 These secondary impulses are of two classes: 
 first, those which result from prudential consid- 
 erations, or, as they are sometimes termed, selfish 
 motives ; and, secondly, those impulses which 
 are disinterested, and are commonly called the 
 natural virtues, but which are not religious senti- 
 ments. In this essay we shall consider, princi- 
 
COMPARATIVE RECTITUDE. 87 
 
 pally, the prudential motives, which produce 
 rectitude of conduct. 
 
 Let it be remembered that we are not ques- 
 tioning the existence of a purer motive, nor do 
 we now investigate its nature, but we only seek 
 to know its strength. From the scale whose 
 controlling weight sways the human will, we 
 would take out, one by one, the other motives, 
 and leave the love of rectitude to exert its soli- 
 tary force. It may be that alone it has power 
 sufficient to regulate society and home : it may 
 be that its imperfection needs some slight assist- 
 ance : it may be that the accessaries are every- 
 thing, and its unaided power is nothing. We 
 shall direct the reader's attention to these lower 
 motives : of their force, upon his own will, or 
 upon society, let him judge. 
 
 Nor would we be understood to brand the 
 prudential or self-interested motives, appealing, 
 as they generally do, to our fear of penalties, 
 with any stigma on their intrinsic character. To 
 shrink from suffering is the first, the last, the 
 constitutional impulse of every conscious being, 
 from the lowest up to God. The power of fore- 
 sight and of the avoidance of calamity, is one of 
 the most godlike faculties of man. The creative 
 love which spoke into being- the tribes of the 
 
88 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 brute creation, with consistent benevolence ren- 
 ders them liable to but few ills, and by a blind 
 instinct urges the conduct which secures the pres- 
 ent or the future good. But for man, richly en- 
 dowed with sensibilities to pain or bliss, and liable 
 to injury from a thousand evils, God has made 
 no such provision*. To him the Creator, in be- 
 stowing his image, gave a portion of his own 
 omniscience, enabling him at once to dwell by 
 memory in the past, and to project his being 
 through the future. With the power to . foresee 
 and avert evil, to anticipate and secure the good, 
 Jehovah has thrown upon man the responsibility 
 of his fate for time and for eternity. It is, then, 
 a godlike thing to forecast the future, and secure 
 our welfare in advance. In cases where no other 
 moral principle may be involved, it is felt to be 
 a duty of itself, that we should secure the great- 
 est comfort and happiness both for ourselves and 
 for others. Prudence is thus a religious duty, if 
 it were not a natural instinct. And whether ca- 
 lamity results from the natural course of things, 
 or whether God shall arbitrarily affix suffering 
 to certain transgressions, it is not inconsistent 
 with manliness to estimate it, and to shrink back. 
 It is indeed a puerile weakness, to sacrifice great 
 future blessings through regard to a lesser pres- 
 
COMPARATIVE KEC1TTUDK. 89 
 
 enjoyment. It is shameful to give way to 
 obstacles and pains that we may summon our 
 nobler energies to overcome ; bnt it is never felt 
 degrading for men to strike the balance of evils, 
 and number their forces, and at once surrender 
 to a power which cannot be questioned. It is 
 indeed degrading to surrender to any power 
 which commands us to sacrifice rectitude ; for, 
 in truth, it is felt that no such power can last, 
 and the right will yet triumph and be rewarded. 
 But when no moral principle is at stake, pru- 
 dence has an honourable sway. If, in God's 
 economy, religion and interest attract us to the 
 same conduct, it is no shame for a man to feel 
 both the religious impulse and the prudential 
 motive : if he have no religious motive, he may 
 yet as honourably as ever feel the prudential. If 
 he have principle, he may also have wisdom. If 
 he is not a saint, it is honourable not to be a fool. 
 Therefore, as we present the prudential motives 
 which impel to rectitude of conduct, whether 
 they be drawn from this world or from that to 
 come, let no one feel ashamed, or hesitate to ad- 
 mit their full influence on his conduct. Let him 
 feel that it is not beneath him to consult his best 
 interests, whether he has other motives to recti- 
 tude or not. 
 
90 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 To render our discussion more simple and defi- 
 nite, we may leave the consideration of human 
 life and character in the general, and dwell upon 
 the conduct of separate individuals. The moral- 
 ist may admit that his sense of innocence may 
 be pure insensibility of soul, and that the con- 
 stant rewards of morality cannot be taken as 
 indicating the divine approval ; but he may ap- 
 peal to his actions themselves, his daily life. 
 Here, he may say, is conformity to that law of 
 God which is the very expression and embodi- 
 ment of moral excellence. Here is conformity, 
 not universal, indeed, in every slight particular, 
 but strict enough in all important specifications. 
 Here is a devotion to the law of right, which 
 amply compensates its forgetfulness of some 
 minutiae, by the deepest abhorrence of more im- 
 portant violations. 
 
 The primary fallacy of this appeal lies in its 
 mistaken idea of the standard by which obedi- 
 ence is to be tested, or a confusion of the two 
 significations of the term, "The Law." If we 
 consider the law of God as a collection of distinct 
 and independent commandments, of equal or 
 varied obligation, each standing on a separate 
 foundation, and involving its own obedience 
 alone, then it will follow that obedience to the 
 
COMPAKATIVE BECTTTUDE. 91 
 
 taw may be partial, although not complete. 
 Then it will follow that compliance with a ma- 
 jority of its injunctions argues a proportionate 
 devotion, and moral character may be reckoned 
 arithmetically, according to the number of invio- 
 late or broken laws. Such is the view of many 
 correct moralists. Seeming to themselves to 
 keep all but a few commandments, they con- 
 clude that their acceptability with God must be 
 proportionate ; and while claiming no perfection, 
 they feel that the preponderance of good in the 
 heart and life is so great, that he can but forgive 
 the deficiencies, and reward the obedience. 
 
 But, in truth, there is but one law, "Thou 
 shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart ;" 
 and as God is the very embodiment and personi- 
 fication of holiness, this command is, "Thou 
 shalt love the Holy One and Holiness with all 
 thy heart." This is the one commandment, and 
 all others are only distinct applications of this 
 one rufe to the varied circumstances of outward 
 life. This law is like a general direction as to 
 the path of life ; and the commandments are 
 like attendants, stationed along the path, at the 
 cross-roads of temptation, saying, " If you step 
 aside here into theft, or there into lying, you 
 will break the law." But step off where you 
 
92 NATUKAL 
 
 will, the law is broken. The law is the compre- 
 hensive warning, "Thou shalt not strike thy 
 ship upon the coast of sin ;" and the command- 
 ments are like beacons lit up on the more 
 prominent headlands ; and strike beneath any 
 one of them, and you break the law completely. 
 You have struck the beach and are wrecked, as 
 surely as though you had dashed in elsewhere. 
 Your own convenience, or the natural repulsive- 
 ness of some sections of the beach, may have 
 led you to shrink more from some points than 
 from others but you have invaded the coast, 
 and broken the one law. It is evident that the 
 authority of your master had not force to keep 
 you back; and had no other motives entered, 
 you would as soon have dashed on any othei 
 rock, so far as God's will was concerned. Had 
 the shore been equally inviting, and the roar of 
 the breakers equally subdued, and the reef as 
 well concealed, the shore would have witnessed 
 your recklessness of law at any or every point. 
 What is demanded is, a right action from a right 
 motive. That same right motive which rejects 
 one sin would reject all other known transgres 
 sions of the divine command. 
 
 Consider, for instance, that prudential con- 
 sideration produced by the restraints of human 
 
COMPARATIVE liECTITUDE. 93 
 
 legislation. The idea of human law is not to 
 give to crime its just desert. The actual desert 
 and fitness of punishment may lie at the basis 
 of its inflictions, and make them just ; but the 
 object of human legislation is, to affix to trans- 
 gression just so much of the penalty deserved 
 as may make crime inexpedient. Thus the thief 
 must lose more than his booty, and the murderer 
 more than the gratification of his revenge or 
 passion. "Arough all the long and intricate cal- 
 culations of covetousness, and malice, and lust, 
 wherever there is a term of seeming advantage, 
 law affixes a negative quantity of larger value, 
 an evil increasing with the tempting advan- 
 tage, so that the result of all combinations shall 
 be worse than zero. The criminal code, incom- 
 petent to judge the heart, but compelled con- 
 tinually to devise new snares to catch the Pro- 
 tean forms of vice, is an ever fresh witness of 
 the inadequacy of better motives to virtue. We 
 concede freely that such criminal laws do not 
 presuppose that all the community need their 
 restraint, but only that some do need it. How 
 many do require the check of human law and 
 penalty, is a question for close observation. For 
 the present, we only ask the thoughtful reader 
 how far he would dare to trust society at large 
 
94 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 with his life, his fortune, and his sacred honour, 
 if all penal laws were abolished at a stroke? 
 We go further, and ask the calm and serious 
 thinker, how far and how long he dare to trust 
 himself ? 
 
 But within the range of human actions lie 
 many over which the law has no jurisdiction, 
 and which cannot be specified in statutes. Yet 
 are these actions influenced by a motive more 
 powerful than physical suffering or imprison- 
 ment. This motive it is which lends even to the 
 common law and its penalities their most fearful 
 sanction. That sanction is found in the unwrit- 
 ten law, and the informal sentence, of public- 
 opinion. That tribunal, bound by no form of 
 the letter, beguiled by no legal fictions, intrudes 
 into haunts which fear no statutes, and condemns 
 vices, and improprieties, and new forms of ag- 
 gression, with scorn, with exclusion from social 
 privileges, and depression from business facili- 
 ties. Much of the penalty of social reprobation 
 is not the rebuke of abstract evil, but merely a 
 combination against conduct injurious to the 
 general interests of society, and adjudged on 
 that ground. Kow then, take away the restraint 
 of law and the value of reputation, together ; 
 place a poor human soul where crime has no 
 
COMPARATIVE RECTITUDE. 95 
 
 punishment, and where all are compelled to ap- 
 plaud or extenuate his vices, and how long will 
 you trust his integrity, chastity, or benevolence, 
 amid temptation? Why is history a catalogue 
 of great crimes, except that it records the actions 
 of courts and camps, above the reach of censure 
 or correction? Why is Wealth proverbially a 
 reveller and Power a tyrant, but that the one 
 can buy and the other seize impunity? Why 
 is a foreign tour, as a pilgrimage to the Holy 
 Land was said to be in other days, the severest 
 test of virtue to the unrestrained wanderer ? How 
 many fall abroad, who stand intact at home ! 
 
 But we admit, further, that in every experience 
 there are instances of virtuous action not to be 
 explained by any such inferences. Secret, or 
 known only to those whose interest will secure 
 silence and collusion, many an offence might be 
 committed, and many an evil purpose cherished, 
 which is rejected even at much sacrifice of nat- 
 ural feeling. There is even a serious culture of 
 correct life and sentiment which owns no fear 
 of man. Is there never a slavish fear of God, 
 and of future retribution ? Is there, indeed, not 
 a reverence for the law of purity, but a dread of 
 its penalty? This principle of action is simply 
 an extension of common prudence into the future 
 
96 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 world. Apart from the influence of Christianity, 
 it brings a motive to almost every heart. But 
 Christianity, while it seeks to introduce the one 
 pure motive, has lent an added power to all the 
 other motives. It has given to law its impartiality 
 and steadfastness. It has created a public senti- 
 ment around the Church, which rebukes vice with 
 an energy and a discrimination before unknown. 
 And it quickens the natural apprehension of con- 
 ' science into a fearful looking-for of fiery indigna- 
 tion. In a truly Christian community, this con- 
 sciousness that the whole future destiny is in abey- 
 ance, and all is to be lost or won by this life, pene- 
 trates every heart, and, sometimes more vivid, 
 sometimes less, whispers in privacy and earthly 
 security, of the coming doom. But this desire to 
 avert future calamity, wise and blameless as we 
 saw it to be in itself, is, after all, but the dread of 
 retribution. It is only the fear of God, as he 
 happens to be the avenger. Were God inactive, 
 and Satan in the ascendant, and the threatener 
 of the blow, it would be as effective. The mo- 
 tive would be the same ; only, as the hand that 
 held it forth was changed, it would be, not the 
 fear of God, but the fear of the devil. Yet is 
 this thought a most salutary restraint to every 
 heart. In times of sickness, or of danger, it be- 
 
COMPARATIVE RECTITUDE. 97 
 
 comes almost overpowering, withering in its 
 deadly blight the fairest temptations that sur- 
 round its ; and when health and safety reassure 
 the heart, it falls back to a repressed, but con- 
 stant influence. 
 
 Now, these three grand appliances, for the 
 repression, severally, of flagrant crimes, and 
 minor transgressions, and private sins, operate 
 upon the one principle, before explained, of 
 making vice unprofitable or impossible. If 
 they cannot remove the fruit that tempts us, 
 they try to turn its juices into bitterness, or 
 hedge it safe in thorns. And here a most sin- 
 gular phenomenon of consciousness occurs. As 
 it is a law of volition that we cannot will to per- 
 form what we know to be impossible, so the heart 
 seldom yearns with much eagerness for new in- 
 dulgences, beyond its possible reach ; and how- 
 ever it may crave a pleasure, it identifies the 
 thing with the aloes in which it is steeped, and 
 loathes its very sight. These considerations 
 have made many vices seem to us, amid laws 
 and a Christianized social opinion, utterly out 
 of the question ; and as we neither taste of the 
 evil ourselves, nor see others do it, we grow up 
 in thoughtlessness and indifference, or with aver- 
 sion to these bitter sins. We seem to feel no 
 7 
 
98 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 need of legislation to restrain us ; we glory in 
 our spontaneous superiority to a gross abomina- 
 tion. The beastly passions of the soul, hemmed 
 in from infancy with bars of stern penalties, 
 brush meekly along their cage, and take their 
 temperate allowance with quiet satisfaction. 
 There is no consciousness of the prey beyond its 
 bounds, no yearning for the victim ; and even 
 should the bars be removed, the sense of im- 
 punity might not at once be realized. But once 
 let the tigers arouse to feel their liberty, once let 
 them taste of human blood, and woe to the weak- 
 ness or the innocence which invites the spring 
 of those infuriated passions ! 
 
 There are several motives of another charac- 
 ter, which are not without influence, especially 
 upon those who are least sensitive to the power 
 of fear. There is a pride of character, which 
 must feed its arrogant complacency from some 
 source. It may not dwell on equipage, or per- 
 sonal beauty, or intellectual power; but con- 
 scious of the involuntary or factitious character of 
 such honours, it exalts the value of moral excel- 
 lence, and glories in its rectitude. It would de- 
 spise a moral wrong, and a foolish thing, on one 
 and the same principle they are beneath it. 
 There is a pride which does not even care to 
 
COMPARATIVE RECTITUDE. 99 
 
 have its superiority acknowledged by others, so 
 long as it feels it to be unquestionable ; which 
 exults in haughty secrecy over its elevation in 
 the scale of beauty, or mind, or morals. Some- 
 times, amid all its contempt for others less en- 
 dowed with any of these accomplishments, this 
 self-complacency imagines itself grateful to God 
 for its morality, as it does for its high birth, or 
 its features. It thanks God that it is not as other 
 men are : and the man maintains his outward rec- 
 titude, not from a lowly and affectionate rever- 
 ence for the divine will, but as he keeps up the 
 rest of his equipage. 
 
 Or perhaps men dream that they can claim, of 
 right, the approval and blessing of their Maker, 
 and feel his respect for their virtues a most grate- 
 ful tribute, as they do the homage of their fel- 
 low-men. God's general benefits toward them 
 being all a thing of course and merit, his further 
 consideration is certainly a flattering compliment. 
 Their failures in action are passed lightly over ; 
 they reject any troublesome insinuations of spir- 
 itual defects ; and they find a satisfaction in the 
 thought, not only that they have a mansion prom- 
 ised above, but that heaven is theirs in fee-sim- 
 ple they can affwd it ; in short, they are on 
 independent terms with God and man. They 
 
100 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 mean, and trust, to be under as few obligations 
 as possible to either. 
 
 Perhaps no one case can exhibit the powerful 
 and conscious operation of all these motives, and 
 the unconsciousness of guilt of which we spoke. 
 Imagine, however, that such a pirate as history 
 tells us ravaged the equatorial seas within two 
 centuries, should become so noted and detested, 
 so closely pursued by the multiplying police of 
 the ocean, that he should resolve to gather up 
 his blood-bought treasures, and spend his re- 
 maining life amid the unsuspected retreat of a 
 civilized and Christian nation. Presence of 
 mind, a strong self-control, and some natural 
 social qualifications, facilitate the enterprise. 
 Eespected as a stranger of business talent and 
 resources, he passes on quietly, until his path is 
 crossed. Upon his own ship he would have 
 felled the intruder to the deck, however just the 
 contradiction ; but he is in a land of courts, and 
 prisons, and gibbets, and the murderous purpose 
 is restrained he merely hates. Time was when 
 every lust had unbridled indulgence ; but now 
 the restraints of a moral community are about 
 him, and, beneath the eye of public scrutiny, his 
 habits are conformed to the general standard. 
 He yields to custom and attends the sanctuary, 
 
COMPARATIVE RECTITUDE. 101 
 
 until, although his secret thoughts once knew no 
 restraint, and while he feels secure from human 
 justice, he trembles beneath the messages of 
 God, and checks the private whispers and risings 
 of his heart. As restraint and temperance be- 
 come habitual and easier, his longings for for- 
 bidden revelry or revenge grow less impatient, 
 and subside lie like the hungry lion, half-slum- 
 bering, half-unconscious, waiting for its prey. 
 He is surprised to find how virtuous he has be- 
 come; he enjoys the sense of present rectitude, 
 and deems himself too strong ever to stoop again 
 to low appetite and crime. Soon his complacent 
 soul thinks its compliance with the divine law so 
 exact that God can claim no more ; and as the 
 past is past, the present must be accepted by 
 Heaven. But now, tell me, viewed in a relig- 
 ious light, has his character changed at all? Let 
 him be recognised, escape, stand again in secu- 
 rity upon his own deck, find his temptations all 
 around him without their penalties, and although 
 some thoughts of future retribution might still 
 haunt him, he would hurl them aside, and prove 
 that circumstances, not himself, had altered. As 
 for the love of God, the reverence for a holy 
 law where are they now? where were they 
 then? 
 
102 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 Such, then, are some of the inferior motives 
 which combine to produce the outward life, and 
 the inward restraint of morality. Sum them up, 
 and they are Fear and Pride. These are suffi- 
 cient to account for virtuous conduct in the great 
 majority of cases, if not in all; and therefore 
 this conduct cannot demonstrate the presence of 
 any motive besides them, if they are known to 
 operate. Of course there may be a better mo- 
 tive. A man may foresee a rich reward, who 
 would have done duty as promptly if unre- 
 warded. But the existence of this better im- 
 pulse cannot be proved by the mere fact of a 
 good action. It must, in the first place, be a 
 matter of consciousness to the individual alone. 
 Others, if they see duty rigidly done, in those 
 emergencies when all these motives fail, or are 
 turned to favour the opposing sin, will honour 
 the integrity of pure principle. But if we find 
 human virtue graduated very much by the as- 
 pect of secondary consequences ; if we learn by 
 observation to expect that principle can hardly 
 stand alone, or against inferior motives, then we 
 may conclude that the good deeds are not at all 
 products of good principle. Let the fearful ex- 
 periment be tried, of the successive withdrawal 
 of all restraint, legal or social, or future, and all 
 
COMPARATIVE KECTITTIDE. 103 
 
 the force of pride, and who is there who would 
 dare to dwell in that community, or trust his 
 own soul? Take away the conscious, and also 
 the unconscious influence of those motives, and 
 how far would the solitary love of rectitude avail 
 without them ? Must we not tremble to feel that 
 the great secret of our comparative innocence 
 lies only in our comparative temptation and re- 
 straint ? Let the latter be removed, and what 
 precept of the whole law would be safe ? 
 
 Perhaps, however, the moralist who is thus 
 driven in upon that inward sense of his own 
 feelings which is the very citadel of his confi- 
 dence, may honestly say that, all prudential con- 
 siderations aside, he believes that in his heart, 
 and in almost every heart, there is a deeper re- 
 pugnance to some forms of sin than to others. 
 His very soul shudders at the thought of some 
 iniquities, and in that revulsion from those 
 deeper crimes is shown a comparative strength 
 of virtue. 
 
 Consider, in the first place, how prone we are 
 to estimate the evil of disobedience by its con- 
 sequences ; and to hold it light or gross, as the 
 results are good or evil. The child who, against 
 rebukes, throws a ball the fiftieth time and 
 
104: NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 breaks a window, is punished, although not 
 really so guilty in the act, after evidence of pa- 
 rental falsehood, as when he threw it the twen- 
 tieth time. The press generally denounced the 
 aggressions of England upon China some years 
 since, until the barriers against commerce and 
 Christianity were thrown down, and then the 
 deed seemed sanctified. Undoubtedly the ten- 
 dency of sin is, to destroy and curse ; and the 
 deeper the sin, the deadlier and wider, in the 
 full result, will the curse be found. But the 
 immediate and visible results of any one act of 
 sin do not indicate the final sum of evil, and 
 therefore cannot measure the sin. A sin, there- 
 fore, with no visible consequences at all, may 
 stand before God in its own intrinsic malignity. 
 God does not judge human judgment : and if 
 my lie, of no immediate injury to any one, is 
 left in all its guilt, even though God calls out 
 from it in the future great glory to his name, 
 how can the slightly varying results which regu- 
 larly follow here, alleviate or excuse transgres- 
 sion ? Such was the estimate of the great Teacher. 
 Hate is murder ; lust is adultery ; and " he that 
 is unjust in that which is least, is unjust also in 
 that which is much." Here are the three great 
 invasions of social morality, regarding life, chas- 
 
COMPARATIVE RECTITUDE. 105 
 
 tity, and property, resolved into principles which 
 are declared the same, although the visible con- 
 sequences are arrested. Yet how many deem 
 the distinction very clear, and seem to shrink 
 from the grosser forms of sin, and, therefore, 
 claim comparative purity. But where God sees 
 no essential difference, there can be none. It 
 follows, therefore, that whatever discrimination 
 of consequences, seen and felt, our aversion to 
 any sin may indicate, that aversion does not indi- 
 cate any difference in the intrinsic evil of trans- 
 gressions, and, of course, cannot show any com- 
 parative abhorrence of sin. . 
 And, that our natural Vepugnance to many 
 sins lies not in any sense of their actually deeper 
 guilt, may appear from the fact that this repug- 
 nance varies according to the customs of differ- 
 ent lands, and the prevalent temptations and 
 consequent familiarity with vices in various com- 
 munities and circles. There are countries where 
 assassination and licentiousness scarcely awaken 
 more repulsion in the accustomed soul than 
 simple theft or falsehood. The history of duel- 
 ling is a singular illustration of the power of 
 custom and familiarity to pervert or to create 
 repugnance to one sin, and remove it all from 
 another. 
 
106 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 But the true or fundamental ground of the 
 discrimination which in every age men have 
 made between various crimes, and of their shrink- 
 ing from some vices more than from others, lies 
 in the fact that the Creator, having anticipated 
 our residence here amid this present constitu- 
 tion of things, has implanted an instinct of self- 
 preservation which warns us from many social 
 errors, which are rapidly destructive, by an im- 
 pulse as strong and as blind as that which guides 
 the mere animal creation, without any reference 
 at all to the moral character of the actions. 
 This is the groundwork of the universal feeling. 
 Acting upon this basis, and observing the differ- 
 ent practical consequences of various crimes, 
 society has made a mutual compact for self- 
 preservation, and sealed the voice of nature by 
 the graduated sentences of the law. Thus the 
 crimes which are naturally the most abhorred, 
 are those which society visits most severely. 
 God himself, when legislating as a temporal and 
 national sovereign, availing himself of all tem- 
 poral sanctions to secure temporal morality, 
 made the same distinctions, only affixing un- 
 usual penalties to some few vices which were 
 peculiarly hurtful to his people at the time. Of 
 necessity, all these things induce a very strong 
 
COMPARATIVE RECTITUDE. 107 
 
 aversion, and at the root, a constitutional aver- 
 sion to many destructive sins. But a social in- 
 stinct is not a moral perception / and social penal- 
 ties have regard, not to the individual guilt, but 
 to the general expediency. We find by observa- 
 tion, that the identical principle which we loathe 
 under one form, under another form is cherished. 
 If, therefore, sin is to be measured by the heart's 
 relation to the will of God, as such, and to simple 
 rectitude, then this constitutional, or educational, 
 or prudential aversion to a comparatively large 
 number of crimes argues no comparative aver- 
 sion to sin, nor any comparative purity of heart. 
 This remarkable provision for the existence of 
 society is further illustrated in the fact, that there 
 are some vices which are naturally destructive, 
 the temptation and the inclination to which are, 
 providentially, excluded, until restraining social 
 influences are called to hold the vices in check. 
 It is remarkable that chastity and temperance 
 are, ordinarily, found in savage life; and while 
 there are no social restraints upon the indul- 
 gence of licentiousness and drunkenness, the dis- 
 position to them seems to be held in abeyance. 
 It is only as civilization gradually progresses, and 
 legislation guards against the consequences of 
 excess, and a correct public opinion forms a 
 
108 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 check, that the individual can invent his means 
 of indulgence, or awakes to his long-unfelt temp- 
 tations to lewdness or intemperance. The wis- 
 dom of this provision by the Ruler of all is seen 
 in those instances where nations, nominally Chris- 
 tian for only to those nations which claim 
 to be restrained by the spirit of the gospel has 
 God trusted the communication of high civiliza- 
 tion to the savage have introduced the obvious 
 and easy vices of their civilization, without being 
 able at the same time to introduce its restraints. 
 The savage tribes melt away like snow beneath 
 that glare of newly-roused passion. As the Cre- 
 ator thus holds, some temptations in abeyance, 
 so he brings in a deep repugnance to check the 
 force of others. As the unreasoning horse, with 
 no moral perceptions, and although he never yet 
 has witnessed death or bloodshed, snuffs the scent 
 of blood or slaughtered flesh, and shrinks back 
 in terror ; so at all times, or varying according 
 to circumstances, the Governor of our race im- 
 parts a repugnance to those forms of vice which 
 would destroy at once the existence and proba- 
 tion of this world of sinners. 
 
 Thus, let the reader observe that while we take 
 human conduct in its most favourable aspect, yet 
 
COMPARATIVE RECTITUDE. 109 
 
 we see that other motives besides moral principle 
 tend to make it what it is. We feel how terribly 
 the common life of man would change, if the 
 temporal reward of his actions, and their future 
 penalties, did not. restrain him, and keep him 
 even from being aware of slumbering passions. 
 We see how even the general repugnance to 
 gross forms of sin proves, not a comparative 
 repugnance to sin itself, but only an educational 
 or instinctive aversion to those forms, implanted 
 for a temporary purpose. We shall endeavour 
 in our next essay to do full justice to those amia- 
 ble and dignified impulses of the heart, which 
 adorn the race, and which certainly are not at- 
 tributable to any phase of self-love. We pass 
 from the prudential motives to consider the nat- 
 ural virtues of humanity. 
 
V. 
 
" And here the first thing to be considered, and which will 
 at once remove a world of error, is, that this the doctrine 
 of the corrupt and sinful nature of the human will is no 
 tenet first introduced or proposed by Christianity, and which, 
 should a man see reason to disclaim the authority of the gos- 
 pel, would no longer have any claim on his attention. It is 
 no perplexity that a man may get rid of by ceasing to be a 
 Christian, and which has no existence for a philosophic deist. 
 It is a fact, affirmed, indeed, in the Christian Scriptures alone 
 with the force and frequency proportioned to its consummate 
 importance ; but a fact acknowledged in every religion that 
 retains the least glimmering of the patriarchal faith in a 
 
 God infinite, yet personal." 
 
 COLERIDGE. Spiritual Aphorisms. 
 
V. 
 
 THE NATURAL VIRTUES. 
 
 THERE are times of depression and weariness of the 
 frame, or of the heart, when the brightest scenes 
 of nature grow dim to our vision, and assume 
 the sombre shadow of the spirit within us. And 
 then again hours will come, when the unbur- 
 dened soul looks out with a happier glance, and, 
 like an evening sun, throws its own radiance 
 over mountain, and sea, and desert, until the 
 very barrenness of nature grows gorgeous be- 
 neath its gaze. So, under peculiar personal cir- 
 cumstances, we look out upon the moral world 
 upon the character, and principles, and senti- 
 ments of mankind. Sometimes, with sorrow 
 and indignation, we turn away and say, "All 
 men are liars." Sometimes, with a full heart, 
 we muse upon the brighter scenes of life, and 
 view it all adorned with noble thoughts, and 
 holy aspirations, and godlike deeds ; and we 
 look up and say, " Thou hast made him a little 
 
 lower than the angels, thou hast crowned him 
 
 8 
 
114: NATUKAL GOODNESS. 
 
 with glory and honour." But when the passing 
 emotion is over, a candid observation will con- 
 vince us that either view is extreme and unfair : 
 not that the moral character of the human heart 
 and life might not be radiant with perfect purity, 
 or black with unalleviated putrefaction ; but that 
 neither of these possible extremes is realized in 
 the actual state of things around us. Look upon 
 human hearts, not poetically, not theologically, 
 but as they strike you in every-day life, in busi- 
 ness, in society, or at their homes, and you feel 
 that they are not altogether angelic ; nor yet are 
 they utterly fiendish. We do not mean that hu- 
 man nature presents one level mediocrity of vir- 
 tue or vice ; but that, scattered through commu- 
 nities, and through families, nay, often in the 
 same heart, virtues most noble and graceful are 
 found. side by side with gross vices and deficien- 
 cies, like flowers which spring up together with 
 rank weeds, that poison the very air around 
 them. 
 
 And these generous impulses, and right affec- 
 tions, are truly disinterested. They are not the 
 subtle and disguised promptings of self-love. 
 After all the influences which spring from re- 
 gard to law, or reputation, or the retributions of 
 time and eternity, and from the more delicate 
 
NATURAL VIRTUES. 115 
 
 and latent forces of pride, are taken into account, 
 human action, and personal consciousness, attest 
 our possession of spontaneous and independent 
 yearnings to what is pure, and lovely, and of 
 good report. And this, too, independently of 
 religion, if religion implies any prayer and an- 
 swering assistance from a higher power. Jus- 
 tice, benevolence, gratitude, sympathy, are not 
 poor wanderers from heart to heart, seeking en- 
 trance and finding none. They do not wait even 
 for religion to unbar the soul and let them in. 
 Never yet was there a human heart whose earli- 
 est and growing consciousness did not recognise 
 the presence of one or all. 
 
 Let us dwell for a moment upon the numerous 
 institutions for the relief of physical or mental 
 suffering which adorn our cities, and with hum- 
 ble architecture grace this broad country ; and 
 admitting that not until Christianity plead the 
 cause was it fully appreciated, yet remember 
 who have built and sustained them, generation 
 after generation. Whose unpaid supervision 
 holds their interests in trust? Whose hearts 
 have melted beneath the appeal of the advo- 
 cate that pressed their claims ? Whose generous 
 hands have, year by year, replenished the ex- 
 hausted treasuries? Not the Church-members 
 
116 
 
 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 alone ; but those who, seated by their side, have 
 wept with their tears and given with their bene- 
 factions. Nor are they reached through the 
 Church, and by argumentation different from 
 that which is brought to bear upon it. The ap- 
 peal is made, and it is answered, directly, in vir- 
 tue of the common sentiments of humanity. 
 
 So literature bears testimony to the strength 
 and delicacy of these principles, independently 
 of religion. Comparatively few of the poets, or 
 historians, or even moralists whose works form 
 our permanent literature, have exhibited an ex- 
 perience which would bear evangelical criticism; 
 and yet their noble sentiment, and generous affec- 
 tion, and high appreciation of the pure and the 
 divine, are treasured even by the Church as a 
 glorious heritage ; and often has the pulpit 
 pointed its invective or its appeal with their sen- 
 tences, and the congregation breathed its thanks- 
 giving through their verse. And even the fearful 
 insidiousness with which the depraved novelist 
 seduces the heart by pictures of gross vice half- 
 veiled in the drapery of generous qualities, only 
 proves his own ability to appreciate the good 
 while he loves the evil; proves his sense of the 
 necessity of propitiating the public sentiment 
 which cannot bear unalleviated vice ; and proves 
 
NATURAL VIRTUES. 117 
 
 that such union of qualities most dissimilar, how- 
 ever unusual in the precise combination of the 
 author, is not infrequent and unnatural. 
 
 But we need not look abroad, when at our 
 very firesides these virtues dwell, and make for 
 us a home. Here we can mark the blending 
 of those contrasted qualities in their first exhi- 
 bition, and their earliest growth. Here, where 
 as jet the temptations and fearful examples of 
 the great world have never come ; and where, 
 on the other hand, no thought of policy or shame 
 conceals the spontaneous thought, 
 
 " Heaven lies about us in our infancy," 
 
 and its tones and its pure light seem echoed in 
 the tones of affection and reflected in the unsul- 
 lied countenance. How quick and clear the ap- 
 prehension of truth, and right, and love ! Amid 
 the diversities of age, and temperament, and 
 constitution, that mark the group which gathers 
 at the parental board, the common affection that 
 binds them to each other beams forth in a thou- 
 sand acts of childish virtue, recorded only in a 
 parent's heart, or remembered when one link of 
 the golden chain is broken by death. Truth 
 that endures the penalty rather than deny the 
 wayward disobedience, and generous self-denial 
 
118 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 that yields whole fortunes of infantile wealth to 
 soothe a weeping playmate, and frank amend- 
 ment made for passionate vehemence and free 
 forgiveness reconciling the unkind invader of 
 young prerogatives. How much has each to 
 call out our admiration and our love, amid his 
 own peculiar failings; some better trait, some 
 lovelier impulse, some generous emotion, that 
 more than grace of form or beauty of feature 
 wins and seals the affection of our hearts. 
 
 And in the growth of years, how these early 
 traits mature and strengthen ; and with all the 
 passion, and recklessness, and irritability, and 
 wantonness of youth, there glows a noble en- 
 thusiasm, a generous self-denial, a delicate sen- 
 sibility, and a constant affection. And there are 
 characters in whom the few failings of childhood 
 seem to vanish before the clearer recognition of 
 the duties of life and the beauty of virtue, and 
 the pure spirit, clothed with a form and expres- 
 sion that is a fitting shrine for such a soul, 
 dazzles with angelic loveliness, or in a lowlier 
 vesture shows how 
 
 " Nature crescent does not grow in bulk 
 Of thews and sinews only ; but as this temple waxes, 
 The inward service of the mind and soul 
 Grows wide withal." 
 
NATURAL VIRTUES. 119 
 
 Even although each may have deficiencies, yet 
 has each his own excellences ; and in later years, 
 amid all the confirmed evil, and habitual and 
 conventional wrong, the false sentiment, and the 
 blunted sensibility, the gloom is relieved by 
 many an instance of stern integrity in business, 
 of firm fidelity in friendship, of unexhausted lib- 
 erality, and of the amiability and devotion which 
 give the sweetness and the sanctity of home. 
 
 Nor let it be supposed, that to any peculiar 
 development of civilization or religion, these 
 virtues exclusively belong. Heathenism, in its 
 classic pages, has recorded illustrations of all 
 that is noble and tender in human thought and 
 feeling, and now points us to the millions that 
 people her vast continents for examples of the 
 same universal traits. It is not civilization that 
 has gradually grafted them into the soul ; for 
 while barbarism has vices peculiarly its own, 
 and repulsive in their nakedness, there are other 
 virtues which stand with austere dignity amid 
 the simplicity of savage life. Unawed by the 
 prevailing corruption, stemming the tide of 
 social degradation, history displays a chastity 
 amid voluptuousness, a clemency in the midst 
 of cruelty, a justice that silently rebuked the 
 wantonness of impunity, and friendship stronger 
 
120 NATUEAL GOODNESS. 
 
 than death. Ignorance could not blind them; 
 slavery could not fetter them ; poverty could 
 not starve them. In the deepest recesses of the 
 vilest hearts that men have execrated as they 
 crushed them from off the earth like vipers, 
 there has yet lingered some one relic of early 
 virtue that would not die ; as if to prove that in 
 human nature, in its utmost desolation, the very 
 rocks and sand are not without some bubbling 
 spring, some struggling blades of verdure, though 
 as yet the desert may not blossom as the rose. 
 
 Now, we dwell thus upon the universality 
 and beauty of these natural virtues, because in 
 speaking of that which was created in God's 
 image, however it may have fallen, we dare not 
 slander it by reckless invective and railing accu- 
 sation ; because we share the honour and the 
 shame of the common nature, and every stigma 
 upon the one great family recoils upon the 
 shameless heart that taunts it ; and because, by 
 plain truth, we would disarm the indignant re- 
 buke that has charged, too justly and too often, 
 an orthodox theology with ignoring all that was 
 good in humanity. " So," said the purest and 
 most eloquent champion and eulogist of natural 
 virtue, speaking of such a theology, " it exag- 
 gerates the sins of men, that the need of an in- 
 
NATUltAL VIRTUES. 121 
 
 finite atonement may be maintained. Some of 
 the most affecting tokens of God's love, within 
 and around us, are obscured by this gloomy 
 theology. The glorious faculties of the soul ; its 
 high aspirations ; its sensibility to the great and 
 good in character ; its sympathy with disinter- 
 ested and suffering virtue ; its benevolent and 
 religious instincts ; its thirst for a happiness not 
 found on earth : these are overlooked and thrown 
 into the shade, that they may not disturb the 
 persuasion of man's natural corruption. Inge- 
 nuity is employed to disparage what is interest- 
 ing in the human character. While the bursts 
 of passion in the new-born child are gravely 
 urged as indications of a native rooted cor- 
 ruption, its bursts of affection, its sweet smile, 
 its innocent and irrepressible joy, its loveliness 
 and beauty, are not listened to, though they 
 plead more eloquently its alliance with higher 
 natures. The sacred and tender affections of 
 home; the unwearied watchings and cheerful 
 sacrifices of parents; the reverential, grateful 
 assiduity of children, smoothing an aged father's 
 or mother's descent to the grave ; woman's love, 
 stronger than death ; the friendship of brothers 
 and sisters; the anxious affection which tends 
 around the bed of sickness ; the subdued voice 
 
122 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 which breathes comfort into the mourner's heart ; 
 all the endearing offices which shed a serene 
 light through our dwellings : these are explained 
 away, by the thorough advocates of this system, 
 so as to include no real virtue so as to consist 
 with a natural aversion to goodness. Even the 
 higher efforts of disinterested benevolence, and 
 the most unaffected expressions of piety, if not 
 connected with the true faith, are, by the most 
 rigid disciples of the doctrine which I oppose, 
 resolved into the passion for distinction, or some 
 other working of ' unsanctified nature/ "* 
 
 How far we are from throwing a veil over any 
 human excellence, and how freely we admit the 
 disinterestedness of these natural virtues, every 
 page has witnessed. We are now discussing, 
 not those moral actions which, however in ac- 
 cordance with the law, are the compulsory ser- 
 vices of a fearful spirit, but the moral virtues 
 themselves, recognised and prized by universal 
 consent. And certainly their existence is a fact 
 to be accounted for. If to do justly, and to love 
 mercy, and discharge the duties of our relations 
 in life from the impulse of spontaneous feeling, 
 be not religion, what is religion? If affections 
 whose presence is commended as obligatory, and 
 
 Channing. 
 
NATURAL VIETUES. 123 
 
 whose absence is rebuked as evidence of deepest 
 sin, be not religious, what are they? What rela- 
 tion do they bear to religious principles ; and 
 why, in God's economy, are they so universal and 
 so inwoven, that crime and despair can scarcely 
 tear them from our hearts ? 
 
 The ordinary and most obvious method of 
 meeting this question, and that which Chalmers, 
 in his Commercial Discourses, has made most 
 prominent, even while he elsewhere goes into a 
 more philosophical criticism, is, to bring the 
 claims of Jehovah before the complacent moral- 
 ist, and bid him feel that, however his debt to 
 man has been discharged, he is bankrupt toward 
 God. "The way, then, to assert the depravity 
 of man, is to fasten on the radical element of de- 
 pravity, and to show how deeply it lies incorpo- 
 rated with his moral constitution. It is not by 
 an utterance of rash and sweeping totality to 
 refuse to him the possession of what is kind in 
 sympathy, <3r of what is dignified in principle 
 for this were in the face of all observation. It 
 is to charge him direct with his utter disloyalty 
 to God. It is to convict him of treason against 
 the Majesty of heaven. It is to press home upon 
 him the impiety of not caring about God. It is 
 to tell him that the hourly and habitual language 
 
124: NATUKAL GOODNESS. 
 
 of his heart is, c 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 to 
 him that his pulse beats high in the pride of in- 
 tegrity 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 forever, is not in all his thoughts. 
 It is to go to the man of soft and gentle emo- 
 tions, and while we gaze in tenderness upon 
 him it is to read to him out of his own charac- 
 ter, how the exquisite mechanism of feeling may 
 be in full operation, while He who framed it is 
 forgotten ; while He who poured into his consti- 
 tution the milk of human kindness, may never 
 be adverted to with one single sentiment of ven- 
 eration, or one single purpose of obedience ; while 
 He who gave him his gentler nature, who clothed 
 him with all its adornments, and in virtue of 
 whose appointment it is that, instead of an odious 
 and revolting monster, he is the much-loved child 
 of sensibility, may be utterly disowned by him. 
 In a word, it is to go round among all that hu- 
 manity 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 exalt her. It 
 
NATURAL VIRTUES. 125 
 
 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 accom- 
 plishments, and let the most favoured of her sons 
 realize upon his own person the finest and fullest 
 assemblage of them should he, at the moment 
 of leaving this theatre of display, and bursting 
 loose from the frame-work 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 rever- 
 ence 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 argu- 
 ment."* 
 
 Now there is a weakness and incompleteness 
 in this argument, thus brought out so promi- 
 nently and alone, which will be felt where it is 
 not understood. It appears to make religion to 
 be merely a personal obligation to God, and the 
 guilt of irreligion to consist only in the personal 
 insult to Jehovah, and its penalties to be merely 
 the vindictive resentments of a wounded personal 
 Q Commercial Discourses, Sermon I. 
 
126 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 feeling. It seems to overlook the claims of that 
 eternal and immutable principle of rectitude, 
 which the heart may acknowledge to pervade 
 the divine nature and its decrees, but which is 
 felt to have existence, not by virtue of his decree 
 alone, but in its own absolute authority to con- 
 stitute the very sanction of the Creator's claims, 
 and to leave its separate obligation upon all duties 
 which that Creator has enjoined. Our duties 
 of holy feeling toward God, and our duties of 
 holy feeling toward man, may seem therefore to 
 be only different expressions of the same great 
 principle of purity and rectitude. Either the 
 pure feelings toward man, or the pure feelings 
 toward God, would seem to prove the presence 
 of that one holy principle which is the root of 
 both. It may be questioned how a heart whose 
 genuine earthly virtues prove its devotion to the 
 one great principle of duty and purity, can be 
 destitute of all right devotion toward God. 
 
 The unreserved praise which Chalmers at 
 times accords to the earthly virtues of morality, 
 while he only charges that one deficiency, of 
 omitting the worship due to Heaven, may seem 
 to admit a converse argument a plea, that the 
 principle of rectitude which must certainly dwell 
 in the heart from which such virtues flow, can- 
 
NATURAL VlKTLKb. 127 
 
 not help but affect us rightly toward God. If, 
 therefore, there shall be found a sentiment of 
 reverence, or of gratitude, or of admiration, to- 
 ward Jehovah, in a heart so crowned with natu- 
 ral virtues, albeit with no direct prayer for grace, 
 then that sentiment must be taken as the satis- 
 factory manifestation of the same religious prin- 
 ciple which inspires the human moralities ; and 
 anything beyond this is the requirement of super- 
 stition or fanaticism. Every man is naturally 
 and truly religious. 
 
 " There is, then," says a well-known defender 
 of the claims of natural goodness, " but one true 
 principle in the mind, and that is the love of the 
 true, the right, the holy. There is but one char- 
 acter of the soul to which God has given his 
 approbation, and with which he has connected 
 the certainty of happiness here and hereafter. 
 There is something in the soul which is made 
 the condition of its salvation, and that something 
 is one thing, though it has many forms. It is 
 sometimes called grace in the heart ; sometimes 
 holiness, righteousness, conformity to the charac- 
 ter of God ; but the term most familiar in popu- 
 lar use is religion. The constant question is, 
 when a man's spiritual safety or well-being is the 
 point for consideration, when he is going to die, 
 
128 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 and men would know whether he is to be happy 
 hereafter, ' Has he got religion ? or, has he been 
 a religious man?' I confess I do not like this 
 use of the term. I am accustomed to consider 
 religion as reverence and love toward God; alid 
 to consider it, therefore, as only one part of rec- 
 titude or excellence. But you know that it com- 
 monly stands for the whole character which God 
 requires of us. Now, what I am saying is, that 
 this character is, in principle, one thing. It is, 
 being right ; and being right is but one thing, 
 It has m<my forms, but only one essence. It may 
 be the love of God, and then it is piety. It may 
 be the love of men, and then it is philanthropy. 
 But the love of God, and the love of man, as 
 bearing his image, are in essence the same thing. 
 Or, to discriminate with regard to this second 
 table of the law, it may be a love of men's hap- 
 piness, and then it is the very image of God's 
 benevolence ; or it may be the love of holiness in 
 men of their goodness, justice, truth, virtue 
 and then it is a love of the same things that form, 
 when infinitely exalted, the character of God. 
 All these forms of excellence, if they cannot be 
 resolved into one principle, are certainly parts 
 of one great consciousness, the consciousness of 
 right : they at any rate have the strictest alliance ; 
 
NATURAL VIRTUES. 129 
 
 they are inseparably bound together as parts of 
 one whole ; the very natiwe of true excellence in 
 one form, is a pledge for its existence in every 
 other form"* 
 
 Now we shall, for the time being, avoid the 
 difficulty of an appeal to those personal claims 
 of the Creator, which may either be but slightly 
 apprehended by the reader, or which his natural 
 sentiment of reverence and gratitude may seem 
 to him to satisfy ; and we shall fall back upon 
 the consideration of that underlying principle of 
 love to holiness and rectitude which is the foun- 
 dation of all moral affections, both to God and 
 to man. Keligion, then, using the word in its 
 widest and popular sense, religion is the love of 
 virtue, for its own sake its intrinsic worth. We 
 need not pause to define the nature of virtue : 
 the intuitive sense of every conscience appre- 
 hends it. But we remark the familiar fact, that 
 the love of a truth or a principle is something 
 more than a mere sense of its worth and loveli- 
 ness. It is a yearning to see it ever realized 
 and embodied in action, and a painful struggle 
 against its absence or its neglect. And so, of 
 course, the love of virtue delights only in its 
 
 Dewey's Discourses. Identity of Religion with Goodness. 
 Italics our own. 
 
130 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 presence and its embodiment, and revolts at all 
 which contradicts and excludes it. 
 
 But the important point upon which we con- 
 centrate attention is, that such a love for holi- 
 ness, such a taste for moral rectitude, will be 
 symmetrical and universal in its attraction to 
 the good. The musical ear, endowed with keen- 
 est sensibility to harmony of sound, is not satis- 
 fied with the accordances of one bar or tune 
 alone, but demands it in every air, and is tor- 
 tured by the least discordance. The artist's eye, 
 quickened to the perception of an ideal beauty 
 in form and colouring, is patient before no de- 
 formity of outline, and no false shade escapes 
 him. The taste for beauty of sound or of form 
 is uniform, and demands perfection everywhere. 
 So the moral sensibility to the beauty of holiness 
 and the discordancy of evil, will be uniform in 
 its application to every duty and every affection. 
 Its aim is, "being right and being right is one 
 thing. It has many forms, but only one essence." 
 "The very nature of true excellence in one form 
 is a pledge for its existence in every other form :" 
 and of course its absence, unregretted, unresisted, 
 in any form, argues its absence in every other 
 form, whatever there may be of its seinbla/nce. 
 
 Now this argument is too clear and palpable 
 
NATURAL VIRTUES. 131 
 
 to need much, illustration. If one should present 
 a bar of iron, which he averred to be a magnet, 
 and whose claims to that title were doubted, the 
 most natural way of deciding the question would 
 be by a reference to the action of that property 
 which constitutes the magnet, by virtue of which 
 it is invariably attracted to all pieces of pure 
 iron, in any direction, and without regard to their 
 shape. So that the metallic blocks were pure, 
 and presented fairly and directly to the magnetic 
 bar, it could not fail to cling alike to all. If it 
 was drawn only to a few, and that with very 
 variable and irregular attraction, it is plain that 
 the attractive power, whatever it might be, could 
 not be that true magnetic influence which draws 
 to all alike / and therefore, whatever other prop- 
 erties the vaunted bar might claim, and how well 
 soever its peculiar power might serve some use- 
 ful purposes, it surely is no magnet. 
 
 So let the advocate of the religious character 
 of the natural virtues, and of the demonstration 
 which they would offer of the existence of the 
 pure love of holiness in every form, abide by 
 that principle, that if the heart be a true spirit- 
 ual magnet, drawn by its attraction to moral rec- 
 titude, to embrace it and cleave to it, wherever 
 and however it may manifest itself, then it will 
 
132 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 cleave to every clearly recognised virtue that 
 adorns our earthly intercourse, and yearn toward 
 every duty and every pure affection. It will 
 have no irregular and capricious attraction, se- 
 lecting some virtues, rejecting others cleaving 
 with blind adhesion to one duty, and letting an- 
 other go, unresistingly, under any outward force. 
 If, amid virtues equally recognised, and of equal 
 claims, it does reject one or more, cleaving in- 
 stead to the very vices which are their opposites, 
 then it acts not from a pure principle: all its 
 constant and intense attraction toward a few 
 cannot demonstrate its spiritual magnetism. By 
 its want of accordance with that law of wrdfovm 
 attraction, the heart is proven utterly to lack 
 that magnetic love of rectitude. What it may 
 &<?, which thus attracts it in some directions, may 
 be as yet unknown or unrevealed ; but it is not 
 the love of holiness. How many useful purposes 
 it may serve, and how much beauty and reliev- 
 ing light it may throw over the gloom of human 
 life, is matter of deep thankfulness to God ; but 
 it concerns not the argument. It is not the love 
 of rectitude ; it is not religion ; it will not serve 
 spiritual ends, nor secure spiritual rewards. 
 
 ISTor will it avail anything in such a case to 
 say that the magnetic force is but w$ak, or as 
 
NATURAL VIRTUES. 133 
 
 yet imperfectly developed, for its attraction 
 would still be uniform, in its weakness, and 
 while it drew to none strongly, would draw to 
 all alike. And so it is nothing to the purpose to 
 say that the religious element is as yet but weak, 
 uncultured, undeveloped, when, instead of a 
 faint attraction toward every clearly recognised 
 virtue, the heart is drawn impulsively to some, 
 and is all indifference or repulsion to the rest. 
 
 Now, we shall not urge upon any heart its want 
 of attraction to that form of excellence and holi- 
 ness which is highest of all, and charge its want 
 of interest in its duties toward God personally ; 
 nor shall we deny that there are many cases of 
 conscience where the moral bearings of action 
 cannot at once be calculated, and that there are 
 modes of exercising every virtue which are only 
 learned by long observation or instruction from 
 others, and therefore the apparent neglect of 
 these duties may result not from the want of re- 
 ligion, but from imperfect knowledge. But leav- 
 ing unnoticed the lesser actions, and the tribu- 
 tary feelings, let us took down upon the great 
 mountain ranges of duty, and the broad streams 
 of moral affections, that stand out upon the sur- 
 face of human life. Take the extreme cases, the 
 boldest illustrations of character. Here are hearts 
 
134: NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 that never swerved from their business integrity, 
 and could not sleep beneath the thought of com- 
 mercial dishonour, who are yet deaf to all the 
 appeals of benevolence or the suggestions of 
 compassion. Here are men of tender sensibility, 
 of wide philanthropy, and open to every private 
 solicitation of poverty or affliction, upon whose 
 word, nevertheless, you would not risk anything 
 of value. Here are men full of gentleness and 
 consideration, and noble self-denial for their do.- 
 mestic circle, who, beyond the encfianted ring, 
 are, as we phrase it, not the same men. Listen 
 to the utterance of a stranger's name, and there 
 is not one of the obvious and generally recog- 
 nised of the so-called moral virtues, which you 
 dare warrant him to have, and yet you are firmly 
 convinced that in his character some one of 
 them will be conspicuous. Take the names of 
 six of the leading moral virtues which adorn the 
 natural heart, and the names of the six corre- 
 sponding vices of character, mix them together, 
 and at random draw out six, virtues or vices, as 
 they shall chance to come, and you have the 
 elements of some character around you some- 
 times perhaps a solitary virtue among recognised 
 moral deformities. And how are these moral 
 vices borne by the heart thus conspicuous for 
 
NATURAL VIRTUES. 135 
 
 justice, or benevolence? Are they lamented, 
 and repressed with heroic self-discipline, and 
 ingenuous shame ? Not at all ! They are toler- 
 ated, frankly admitted, laughed at, indulged, 
 with the same composure or indifference as the 
 virtues are exercised. In any den where the 
 vicious have herded for crime, in any prison 
 where the law gathers them for punishment, 
 you shall see bright exemplifications of the sep- 
 arate virtues, living and more glorious from the 
 moral death that is around them. From the 
 same eyes the angel and the fiend gleam out 
 alternately. 
 
 Now, if it is clear that it is not the love of 
 holiness, or rectitude, which has thus sustained 
 the redeeming quality of historical characters, 
 who have 
 
 " Left a name to all succeeding times, 
 Link'd with one virtue and a thousand crimes," 
 
 the case is made out. For although the contrast 
 may be less striking in other characters, yet the 
 spuriousness of the most conspicuous and plausi- 
 ble of these natural virtues has been shown, and 
 all the less conspicuous and less contrasted vir- 
 tues have no claim on our confidence. The best 
 samples of ore, and seemingly pure nuggets of 
 
136 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 gold, having been assayed and found to be dross, 
 the smaller fragments and less valuable ore is 
 included in the investigation. 
 
 If, then, integrity goes hand in hand with cru- 
 elty, and compassion embraces lust, and affection 
 can take sweet counsel with theft, it is clear that 
 they are not that integrity, and that compassion, 
 and that affection, which came out from God's 
 presence with his benediction, and may lead 
 back the heart to him. They may wear the 
 mask, but they have not the Spirit of heaven. 
 If they should be discovered with only one of 
 hell's vices as a boon companion, that willing 
 association detects and condemns them. If the 
 case should occur that the accustomed vice is 
 absent, or concealed, they cannot draw from the 
 accidental circumstance a proof of their real 
 sanctity. That it is not from any innate want 
 of congeniality on their part that the vice is 
 absent, their easy fellowship on other occasions 
 has exhibited. In short, an examination of the 
 natural virtues demonstrates that they have no 
 root in the true principle of virtue. They may 
 be useful, they may be beautiful ; but they are 
 not the affections and sentiments which a spirit- 
 ual nature would present to view. They differ 
 not in degree alone, but in kind. 
 
NATURAL VIKTUE3. 137 
 
 Rare characters there are, of splendid combi- 
 nation of all that is noble in such principles, and 
 amiable in such sensibilities ; men who seem to 
 have inherited the virtues only of long ancestries, 
 and to stand forth, from very childhood to the 
 grave, as beings moulded expressly to display 
 how grand a soul the common elements of hu- 
 manity can form, of their unaided energy. Poor 
 human nature ! these are thy nobility, and thy 
 kingly ones ! And there is not a gem of all the 
 brilliant qualities that flash from their coronet 
 and proclaim their dignity, but it has been sepa- 
 rately tested and found spurious ! 
 
 Thus, without appealing to a consciousness of 
 neglect or enmity toward God leaving that 
 question for the moment in abeyance we have 
 examined the natural virtues by themselves, and 
 find in them a want of that symmetry, regularity, 
 and uniformity, which is an invariable attendant 
 on true love of rectitude true holy principle. 
 The natural virtues are not religious impulses. 
 
 "We have not yet asked what they really are, 
 nor what purpose they serve. What they are, 
 and why they are, we may not be able to say ; 
 yet we may say what they are not. The com- 
 position of the spurious coin matters little, so the 
 
138 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 assay proves it is not gold. Let us go where we 
 may receive that which will not deceive us. 
 And yet in a few pages we may be able to sug- 
 gest the real nature of these natural virtues, and 
 to show what part they are meant to work in the 
 redemption of the soul. 
 
VI. 
 
 of 
 
 to 
 
44 It seems that the Highest Good of the world pursues its 
 course of increase and prosperity quite independently of all 
 human virtues or vices, according to its own laws, through 
 an invisible and unknown power -just as the heavenly bodies 
 run their appointed course independently of all human effort ; 
 and that this power carries forward, in its own great plan, 
 all human intentions, good and bad, and, with superior power, 
 employs for its own purpose that which was undertaken for 
 other ends." 
 
 FlCHTE, 
 
YI. 
 
 THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION. 
 
 THERE is no wide-spread and popular error but 
 there is in it an element of truth, in virtue of 
 which it has its hold on the mind ; and so there 
 is a truth lodged within the popular notion of the 
 identity of natural goodness with religion. Be- 
 cause the mind cannot reject this truth that lies 
 within it, the proof of its error, however logically 
 made out, will not be appreciated until the truth 
 and the error are separated, and the error is left 
 alone in its falsity. 
 
 Let us say, then, that it is a truth admitting 
 of no demonstration, but an intuitively recog- 
 nised fact, that when the love of rectitude is the 
 sole principle of the heart, that heart will be 
 filled with all holy sentiments and affections. 
 True, pure love alone fills the soul that yields 
 itself to the service of holiness ; and this love is 
 of the same deep-springing fountain, whether its 
 stream flow toward the throne of God, or descend 
 in rivulets of earthly moralities toward man. 
 
142 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 Benevolence, compassion, justice every virtue 
 that can adorn this life are only separate names 
 for the same principle or affection, guided into 
 a peculiar channel of circumstances, and varying ' 
 only with the character of the objects among 
 which it flows. That pure love which fills the 
 heart is like the ocean, and as God's attributes 
 of solemn or softer character are more clearly 
 presented to the consciousness, like a varying 
 sky, that sea of love is tinged with solemn adora- 
 tion, or the tenderness of filial trust ; but all is love. 
 And human relationships are like the broken 
 shore about that ocean lying in varied forms of 
 deep sound or sheltered bay, or inland sea, con- 
 nected with the one great sea ; and from their 
 forms and depths, taking different names, while 
 yet the tide that fills them all is one. It flows 
 among dark cliffs of sorrow, and becomes shad- 
 owed into compassion : it flows amid insults 
 and oppression, and their reflected and inverted 
 forms mark its patience, long-suffering, and for- 
 giveness: it glides into the regular and exact 
 enclosures of obligation, and it becomes justice. 
 "If there be any other commandment, it is briefly 
 contained in this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour 
 as thyself." And this second command is not 
 only like the first, but requires the same iden- 
 
RELATION OF MORALITY TO liELIGION. 143 
 
 tical affection; he that loveth God, loveth man 
 and he only. The ocean of holy love fills 
 the adjoining gulfs of human affections. So a 
 pure soul, new-created, and placed amid the re- 
 lations of a finite existence, would at once feel 
 the appropriate emotions awake within the heart 
 as each new occasion was recognised. 
 
 But what is more to the purpose of this argu- 
 ment, the popular, and we might say, the intui- 
 tive sense, is everywhere not only that a Tight 
 principle secures both pure love to God, and 
 pure affections in earthly relationship, but that 
 a wrong principle will reverse the whole, and de- 
 stroy at once not only love to God, but also 
 every separate pure earthly affection. Every 
 one feels that an unholy heart will not be filled 
 with that pure spirit which constitutes the va- 
 rious affections and qualities of human virtue; 
 that a heart destitute of the principles of moral 
 rectitude will not love God, and will not love 
 man; that the same fatal enchantment which 
 changes the great ocean of the heart into enmity 
 against God, would of necessity change the na- 
 ture of the tide that fills every bay and gulf of 
 human affection. If charity, pure and unde- 
 filed, fill the soul with meekness, gentleness, pa- 
 tience, kindness, and compassion, justice and all 
 
144 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 that is of good report, then will the heart whose 
 charity is turned to gall be filled with envy, 
 jealousy, hatred, wrath, blasphemies, and every 
 evil affection and impulse. If being right is 
 one thing, being wrong also is one thing ; if be- 
 ing right includes all religion, and philanthropy, 
 and human virtues, being wrong includes all 
 irreligion, and unloveliness, and vicious affections. 
 If a perfectly pure heart would fill every rela- 
 tion of life with a perfect virtue and loveliness, 
 then a totally depraved heart would fill every 
 relation of life with vice, and discord, and terror. 
 
 Such being the law of spiritual affection, be 
 it good or evil, men feel instinctively that either 
 a perfect purity or a perfect pollution of heart 
 would produce a very different world of feeling 
 and of action, from that which we see about us. 
 And so it would. 
 
 It is this one principle that destroys the force 
 of the entire Chalmerian view of depravity. 
 That system represents all the natural virtues 
 and affections as being the unfallen columns of 
 the ruined temple of our nature it supposes 
 them to have continued the same in nature as 
 they were before the fall and that the relative 
 
RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION. 14:5 
 
 virtues have in themselves no moral character at 
 all, but as a religious principle is associated with 
 them or not, they are considered religious or 
 irreligious. Generosity, benevolence, sensibili- 
 ty, &c., are not the out-growth of a virtuous 
 principle dependent upon it for very exist- 
 ence dying when it dies but are self-subsist- 
 ing qualities and impulses, which, by mere con- 
 tact with a virtuous principle, acquire a legal 
 value. So that, as his own illustration imagines, 
 a world of perfect beings in whom at one stroke 
 the religious principle was swept away, might 
 still continue in exercise of all the moral vir- 
 tues " all that is dignified in principle, and all 
 that is tender in sensibility ;" the sole change 
 being, that those moral affections were not 
 associated with a religious principle, and that 
 the one moral affection toward God is wholly 
 wanting. 
 
 This last exception to the stability of these 
 affections is singular, and ominous of a fatal in- 
 consistency. If want of pure devotion to recti- 
 tude may not destroy my disinterested affection 
 toward an earthly parent, why must it destroy 
 my love and sensibility to the character of the 
 heavenly Parent? If we can obey, and rever- 
 ence, and love a father^ without doing it from 
 
 10 
 
146 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 moral principle, why may we not serve and 
 obey God, not from moral principle, but from 
 the old, unaltered affection, although it is of no 
 legal value? Chalmers attempts to show that 
 the consciousness of transgression and of God's 
 character, as moral governor and avenger of 
 the contradiction of his commands to many of 
 the voices of the heart's desires* creates disaf- 
 fection toward God. But does observation sus- 
 tain the theory? Is it by any such reasoning 
 that the mind is thus gradually alienated from 
 God thus made insensible to his claims alone 
 of all the universe thus roused into a desperate 
 opposition to the rectoral authority ? Many men 
 never realize this personal relation at all they 
 never feel the bitterness of danger, and attempt 
 to suppress it ; they simply have no sensibility 
 in regard to the claims of God, as they have in 
 regard to others. The absence of this affection 
 is as original as spontaneous as natural as 
 the presence of any of the others. There are 
 hearts which no hard usage, and no parental 
 discipline, however severe, can alienate ; whose 
 love gives acknowledgment of the justice of 
 every blow, and cleaves to the loved mother 
 or father through all punishment and through 
 every change : but where is found this devotion 
 
RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION. 147 
 
 to God inspiring obedience, even in hearts that 
 have no love to holiness, as such ? 
 
 And so it is felt everywhere, that if " being 
 wrong" would not only destroy the legal value 
 of love to God, but destroy the very being of love^ 
 and call its opposite vice into existence then 
 would it also destroy all the other moral affec- 
 tions. In fact, as we said before, moral principle 
 being taken from the heart, the entire ocean of its 
 affection becomes polluted, and every indenture 
 along the coast would feel the immediate stagna- 
 tion. The purely animal appetites might be un- 
 changed; and even these, being unrestrained 
 by the voice of conscience, would run to excess 
 and ruin but the moral affections, benevolence, 
 justice, &c., are at once destroyed. 
 
 What, then, are these natural virtues, and 
 how are they to be accounted for ? 
 
 Let us, in contrast to the, Chalmerian idea, 
 conceive of a world in which, at one stroke, all 
 true religious principle were struck away. Im- 
 agine that this world in which we live, with all 
 its advancement in civilization, all its mental 
 culture, all its arrangements to secure the ob- 
 vious welfare of society, were suddenly to sink 
 into a state such as would result, according to 
 the popular idea, if all moral principle were 
 
14:8 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 extinct, and the race became totally depraved ! 
 Commerce, and trade, and art, and all that sys- 
 tem of connected labour which demands mutual 
 confidence and integrity, would give way to the 
 unchecked rapacity and faithlessness which no 
 penalty of mere law could restrain. The social 
 ties that bind men together would wither in the 
 scorching breath of angry passion : home itself, 
 as being the spot where all interests are brought 
 most into contact, if not of cooperation, of harsh 
 collision, would be the deepest sink of evil, as 
 the purest flowers are fabled to putrefy the foul- 
 est. The attraction that bound man to man, to 
 kindred, to home, to wife and child, becomes the 
 attraction of repulsion, that leaves each soul 
 isolated, and selfish, and hating each intruding 
 and unsubservient soul. Stung with a sense of 
 guilt and self-contempt that makes the soul des- 
 perate in its evil ; crushed by the dread of wrath 
 that soon must pour its lightning down in rain 
 of fire ; hopeless and reckless of relief or recov- 
 ery; frenzied by passions that burst the frail 
 vessel of mortality, or whirl the mind in torna- 
 does of emotion j filled with vindictive hate that 
 knows no satiety but in the annihilation of its 
 victim ; the multitudes of earth, unless secured 
 by a new gift of immortality, would fall in the 
 
RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION. 149 
 
 suicide of a frame too frail to hold the violence 
 within it, or in mutual and rapid extermination 
 the race would die out, ere the generation that 
 is in its prime grew old. The gift of immortal- 
 ity, indeed, might keep the present population 
 on its surface ; but the conjugal relation, the 
 maternal care, the provision for youth, would all 
 be forgotten : and if new habitants were ushered 
 into life, how terrible the fate ! Then would we 
 feel it a feeble portrait of each soul that the 
 apostle draws : " Being filled with all unright- 
 eousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, 
 maliciousness ; full of envy, murder, debate, de- 
 ceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters 
 of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of 
 evil things, disobedient to parents, without un- 
 derstanding, covenant-breakers, without natural 
 affection, implacable, unmerciful." How would 
 this very world of ours, with all its. wonted love- 
 liness of earth, and sky, and sea, and with the 
 very beings who dwell peacefully upon it now, 
 be turned at once, not figuratively, but literally, 
 into a hell of fiends. 
 
 Now pause and think! How could a pur- 
 pose of mercy and a plan of redemption through 
 an atoning Saviour, be brought to bear upon 
 such a race, and be in any sense a valid and 
 
150 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 available offer? How, amid the remorse, and 
 fearfulness, and desperation, and tumultuous pas- 
 sion, could any thought be gained to a proposal 
 of renewed allegiance, any faith be secured in 
 its sincerity, any commencement given to the 
 struggle against sin, and any practicable proba- 
 tion afforded during a specified reprieve ? Yain 
 were it, when revengeful armies, amid the heat 
 of battle, desperate with mutual hatred and de- 
 struction, pause for a charge and onset yet more 
 furious, for a meek messenger to come between, 
 and speak of concessions and forgiveness and 
 love. Yain, even, when a crew of revellers are 
 heated with poisoned draughts, and fired to 
 sensuality and brutal passions, to speak of tem- 
 perance, and sober joys, and self-controlling 
 mastery. But vainer still, upon this hell-struck 
 world, for one of earth or heaven to speak of 
 pardon and renewed submission, of a clean heart, 
 and a right spirit, and a new probation. 
 
 Is it not clear, that some preliminary steps are 
 requisite before this practicable offer can be pre- 
 sented ? 
 
 In the first place, must not God, as we showed 
 more fully in the chapter on the unconsciousness 
 
RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION. 151 
 
 of guilt, suspend in some way that law by which 
 remorse is ever haunting sin, and pointing to a 
 more fearful wrath ? Did we not see that if the 
 consciousness of vileness comes too vividly to the 
 mind, it crushes into hopeless self-despair and un- 
 belief in mercy, or rouses into recklessness? Did 
 we not see how that fearful looking-for of fiery 
 indignation which sometimes glares upon the 
 guilty soul, unfits it for every duty, and for all 
 the offices that perpetuate and civilize the race : 
 like poor Bunyan sitting on the horse-block list- 
 lessly, day after day, the very sun that cheered 
 all others seeming to him the burning eye of 
 vengeance? And may we not now say at once, 
 that an essential preliminary to probation would 
 be to deaden this sensibility so far, that while 
 remorse and fear might attest their presence, and 
 teach their lessons, they should not overawe and 
 paralyze the soul? 
 
 And then the violence, the sweep, the frenzy, 
 of passion and emotion, must they not be checked ? 
 Must not the heart be subdued to some kind of 
 calmness, so that reflection, and a clear percep- 
 tion of things, and a wise decision, could be pos- 
 sible ? Not that the soul is to be repressed into 
 a dead calm; but that a restraining influence 
 should go forth over the heart, like oil upon the 
 
152 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 tumultuous billows of passion, beneath which 
 the measured swell still betokens the repressed 
 fury of the element, and yet it may not wreck 
 with its impulsive rage every sober thought or 
 better purpose, or human amelioration. So that 
 we say, comparatively, the passions are to be 
 repressed, equally with the sense of guilt and 
 danger. 
 
 But even then, while men stood calmly, and 
 without violent repulsion of selfish passion, there 
 would be no social attraction, no sentiment and 
 aifection, which, like the pure impulses lost by 
 sin, might reconstitute society, and the family, 
 and all the essential machinery of human im- 
 provement, cooperation, and development. And 
 where are those affections to come from ? The 
 soul has but two classes of affections possible the 
 evil and the good : the good are yet unproduced ; 
 they are the end to be attained by this plan of 
 redemption, and of course cannot be produced in 
 advance ; the evil impulses have just been re- 
 pressed. What substitute for the soul's true and 
 pure affections yet remains ? 
 
 Why, if the spiritual nature is thus depraved, 
 and the best that can be done with it is to let its 
 outpouring affections be repressed, so that no 
 really pure and generous emotions can proceed 
 
RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION. 153 
 
 outward from the essential and immortal element 
 of the soul itself, there can be no resource, un- 
 less God has power to impress upon the soul, for 
 the time ~being, impulses which, having no neces- 
 sary connexion with moral principle, being not 
 the production of the soul itself, are yet capable 
 of leading the will, blindly it may be, to the same 
 outward conduct which would be secured by the 
 intelligent action of pure affections. In short, the 
 soul which cannot in strict truth have virtuous af- 
 fections, must be impressed with parallel instincts. 
 Now, without saying that there is identity of 
 character between these human impulses and 
 those which constitute the instincts of the brute 
 creation, we may remark that natural history 
 furnishes us with a singular correspondence be- 
 tween the acknowledged instinct of the brute, 
 and the true and high affection which we con- 
 ceive to be the natural production of a pure 
 heart. There is hardly a quality which adorns 
 the natural character, which has not a parallel 
 in some mere animal characteristic. Poetry, 
 seeking its analogies everywhere, has found 
 them most obvious here; and even in sober 
 prose, the epithets which are in common use to 
 designate human character, lovely as well as 
 repulsive, are taken most frequently from the 
 
NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 animal creation. Without comprehension of the 
 virtue of truth and honesty, animals exhibit 
 fidelity and candour, or faithlessness and craft ; 
 without realizing the moral beauty of benevo- 
 lence, they are generous, or selfish ; unconscious 
 of the spiritual bearings of the sensibilities, they 
 are yet amiable, patient, sympathizing, and for- 
 giving, or the reverse. Utterly ignorant of those 
 considerations of various interests and relation- 
 ships which may be affected, and which from 
 our point of consciousness throw such a poetic 
 propriety and beauty around their instinctive ser- 
 vices or resentments, they blindly yield to those 
 amiable and truthful impulses which sustain 
 the lower animate creation in existence and in 
 enjoyment. Indeed, it is not sarcasm to say, that 
 you might gather an instinctive quality from each 
 of a variety of species, and combine them into a 
 character of dignity and grace. And, provided 
 that the intellectual being may see the beauty 
 and the importance of the relations thus met, 
 and duties thus discharged, this being, without a 
 particle of a spiritual nature, with no real moral 
 character at all a mere intellectual brute 
 might go through life and maintain much of its 
 principle and much of its amiability. 
 
 ISTow, the difference between an affectional 
 
RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION. 155 
 
 instinct and a true affection, good or evil, is the 
 same as that between the mechanical or migra- 
 tory instincts and an intellectual and understand- 
 ing faculty. The intellect perceives the facts 
 and principles, and reasoning from these it 
 reaches its conclusions ; the instinct blindly and 
 mechanically urges the ant to store, and the bee 
 to build its hectagons and 'the bird its nest. 
 God does the brute's intellectual work, and gives 
 it the result ; and the bare fact that it needs and 
 has the instinct shows that it lacks the intel- 
 lect. So the spiritual being, seeing the relations 
 of things, and moved by that one spirit of 
 love which is ready to express itself in all the 
 various relations around it, has its moral affec- 
 tions springing from the one great moral affec- 
 tion as their conscious root, and having regard 
 to the moral consequences of things ; but the 
 affectional instincts of the brute, its sympathy 
 or its fidelity, are mere blind impulses, each in- 
 dependent of the other. The bare fact that God 
 gives the brute these affections or moral in 
 stincts, only shows its destitution of that effective 
 spiritual nature which would understandingly 
 lead it to the same conduct. The moral in- 
 stincts, like the mental instincts, are mere 
 substitutes for the comprehending and intel- 
 
156 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 ligent affections and reasoning powers of the 
 soul. 
 
 But is it doubted whether such affectional in- 
 stincts could be impressed, independently of 
 spiritual production? Do they seem so consti- 
 tutional where they exist, and so born with us, 
 that they must cleave to us forever, as a part of 
 our original being ? Can God add or withdraw 
 them, and leave our spiritual affections, good or 
 evil, alone, to act out their nature ? 
 
 Consider, for a moment, that form of human 
 affection which has ever been the least va- 
 riable of all the better impulses that adorn our 
 nature a mother's love. How, in every new 
 aspect in which it is seen, it gathers new 
 fitness and tender beauty! How every pecu- 
 liarity of the maternal relation, and the infantile 
 weakness, seems adapted to call out from a heart 
 of holy love that very constancy and tenderness 
 of affection which grace a mother's love. That 
 life to which she has given existence ; that form 
 which shall yet bear the likeness of her own 
 features, and inherit the sufferings or the health- 
 fulness of her own frame, and whose living 
 soul a spark smitten from her own shall burn 
 
RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION. 157 
 
 with, the true or false lustre of her own peculiar 
 passions; that helpless innocence which seeks 
 its life's nutriment still from her alone, and 
 claims her for its guardian ; that ignorance and 
 undeveloped moral being which is yet to be 
 moulded by example and by care to virtue or to 
 vice : how do all these appeal to the pure sym- 
 pathies and active energies of a holy heart! 
 Yet the bird that cherishes her nestlings has no 
 thought of these relationships; her warm and 
 self-denying affection, toiling and defending 
 day by day, is a blind affectional instinct 
 serving good purposes, and yielding much hap- 
 piness but a mere instinct still. When the 
 young nestlings have grown to strength ade- 
 quate for self-defence and support, the end is 
 accomplished, and the maternal instinct dies 
 away. So, while the same reasons of expe- 
 diency which required its strength to watch over 
 infancy, requires its continuance as a social 
 bond, yet is this human affection generally recog- 
 nised as an instinct still. It is not based upon 
 any perception of the relations that give it fitness 
 and beauty. It is not removed when the most 
 obvious inducements to parental care appear to 
 be removed by the offer of another's care, better 
 advantages, and a safer future. In ignorance. 
 
158 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 and poverty, and ignominy, and abandoned vice, 
 yea, in imbecility and idiocy, that instinct 
 lives on. 
 
 Now we do not say that this or other affec- 
 tional instincts cannot be associated with a true 
 and pure affection, if the soul itself be purified 
 and free : we do not say that there is not such 
 spiritual affection associated with many a moth- 
 er's love. But we dwell upon it to show how, 
 without any intelligent and spontaneous activity 
 from within, the heart may be so drawn; to 
 show how undistinguishable by consciousness 
 that instinct may be, from the true spiritual love ; 
 and how easily, if it stand not alone, this in- 
 stinctive yearning blends with and strengthens 
 the more ethereal affection, and so becomes in 
 whole or in part its substitute. We do not 
 specify, but we only suggest Jiow far such 
 affectional instincts of benevolence, or compas- 
 sion, or fidelity, impressed upon the heart like a 
 maternal tenderness, might, in the absence of 
 true spiritual affections, accomplish the same 
 social results. 
 
 It may throw a fresh light over all we have 
 said, and sum it all, to say, that if this earth be 
 a sphere for the development and culture of a 
 
RELATION Oi< MORALITY TO RELIGION. 159 
 
 spiritual character, and God designs that the 
 race should be perpetuated, and that each suc- 
 cessive generation should have an offer and a 
 probation ; it will be necessary that everything 
 requisite for the safety, the life, and the general 
 progress of man, shall be secured independently 
 of the moral character of each individual; so 
 that the whole shall move on, no matter how the 
 spiritual life may vary in any soul who comes on 
 or goes off the stage of action. 
 
 What further influence upon the soul may be 
 required to fit it for probation, we do not now 
 inquire ; but we are sure that a fair platform for 
 further operations may be obtained by these 
 three measures a deadened consciousness of 
 guilt, repressed passion, and the affectional 
 instincts. These instincts, supported by the 
 systems of rewards and punishments adminis- 
 tered in this life, would preserve a true proba- 
 tionary condition. 
 
 Suppose that a small minority only of those 
 who come upon the stage should embrace the 
 proffered salvation, and be renewed with spirit- 
 ual affections ; yet the continued system of re- 
 pression would be needed by them, so long as 
 the spiritual life were not perfected, and would 
 
160 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 be demanded in the majority who were rejected, 
 to secure for the few who were chosen a possible 
 field of exercise and discipline, that they may 
 not at once be crushed by the vindictive passions 
 of the incorrigible and rejecting. 
 
 And so, if every soul that lives the entire 
 generation be doomed, from its perverse rejec- 
 tion of offered mercy, to perish ; yet must a pro- 
 longed life, and all the amenities and kind offices 
 of life, be secured, in order that another genera- 
 tion may arise, nurtured in infancy, instructed 
 and trained to a fitness for their own succeeding 
 probation and invitation to salvation. 
 
 It is not necessary that every soul should be 
 subjected to a complete repression of every evil 
 passion, and be impressed with every moral in- 
 stinct. Indeed, such universal concealment of 
 the evil would lead men into error. So com- 
 pletely do they confound their affectional in- 
 stincts with true moral affections, that it is only 
 as the virtuous instinct fails, and no moral affec- 
 tion fills the void, that men feel the deficiency. 
 If every tendency to rectitude of action were 
 secured by an impulse from without, the inward 
 energy of the awakening spiritual affection would 
 have no struggle and no discipline. So that in 
 every character we are to expect some absence 
 
RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION. 161 
 
 even of virtuous instincts points on which the 
 soul is left alone, to show its weakness and its 
 evil ; and by which others, who are not biased 
 by the consciousness of personal dereliction in 
 that especial vice, may see its naked deformity. 
 If, for instance, one-fifth of the community lacked 
 the instinct of justice or honesty, and so the true 
 spiritual deficiency is made apparent, yet the 
 other four-fifths, secured from that vice by their 
 more favoured impulse, will hold that minority 
 in check by law, and shame, and social penal- 
 ties against dishonesty. If another fifth be reck- 
 less of all truth, yet the very moiety of thieves 
 would join in keeping the liars in abeyance. 
 And thus each vice might have its glaring ex- 
 amples, and every character might reveal a de- 
 formity, and the world might realize the enor- 
 mity and danger of each form of evil, and the 
 blackness of the moral depravity that can com- 
 bine them all in complete malignity, and yet 
 society would holditselfin check, and the world's 
 machinery go on the same ; all by the mere dis- 
 tribution of these natural instincts among men, 
 according to a law not more difficult to God, nor 
 any more mysterious than that which balances 
 the proportion of the sexes in the multitude of 
 
 births. 
 
 11 
 
162 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 Recall, now, the steps of this argument. In 
 the last essay it was demonstrated that valua- 
 ble and beautiful as these so-called natural vir- 
 tues are these forms of natural goodness yet 
 they are not religious affections, and do not spring 
 from a love of rectitude. Yet it is felt that if a, 
 holy heart would produce all holy affections, an 
 impure heart could produce only impure affec- 
 tions. These natural virtues, then, demonstrated 
 not to be affections of a pure nature, and yet not 
 corresponding to the affections of a vicious soul, 
 cannot have root in the spiritual nature at all, 
 although they serve many of the same purposes 
 in human life. But now the existence of such 
 natural impulses is explained by the fact that 
 they are necessary to the preservation of a state 
 of things in which the spiritual nature may have 
 a probation and development. And the possi- 
 bility of such temporary impulses from without 
 is shown by an observation of the instinctive 
 affections of the brute creation, with some of the 
 instincts which are admitted to exist temporarily 
 in the human soul. And the conclusion to which 
 we are driven is, that all these forms of natural 
 goodness, with their attendant rewards and sup- 
 ports, are only substituted and temporary in- 
 stincts, into which the pure affections may grow 
 
RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION. 163 
 
 and strengthen, as the bud within the calyx, un- 
 til life closes, and the instincts are withdrawn, 
 and the pure heart, with its pure affections, needs 
 no more support ; or else the doomed reprobate, 
 no longer repressed and stupified, wakes up to 
 the full consciousness of remorse, and the full 
 rage of vile affections. 
 
 We have witnessed, along the course of a new 
 railroad or aqueduct, the construction of an arch 
 over a wide chasm. We have seen a frame- work 
 of timber and iron, laboriously constructed, and 
 forming a perfect arch, and then above the heavy 
 beams stone after stone was laid, until the key- 
 stone was inserted, and the arch was done. Then 
 the false-work, as it is termed, was taken down, 
 and the stone arch stood in strength to bear the 
 burden of its heavy train or volumed waters. 
 Now, that false-work alone could not bear the 
 burden that would test it ; and yet that arch of 
 strength could never have been laid but over 
 that same false-work ; and if the true arch is not 
 laid in season, or if it is, that false-work is re- 
 moved as useless. So this temporary system of 
 repression and instinctive impulses, and temporal 
 rewards this system, of human morality is 
 the false-work of the practical plan of redemp- 
 tion ; the temporary arch, not strong enough to 
 
164: NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 bear spiritual tests, yet absolutely requisite to 
 the formation of that true holiness of principle 
 and affections, which may endure forever. This 
 false-work stands till death; then it is taken 
 down, and leaves, either the spiritual arch com- 
 plete, or the blank emptiness of all good. 
 
 The natural morality dies away the spiritual 
 nature is left in irrevocable and complete purity 
 or vileness. 
 
VII. 
 
 ^Muioiis Clemrat in ainan 
 
44 1 have all along gone on the principle, that a man has 
 within him capacities of growth, which deserve and will 
 reward intense, unrelaxing toil. I do not look on a human 
 being as a machine, made to be kept in action by a foreign 
 force, to accomplish an unvarying succession of motions, to 
 do a fixed amount of work, and then to fall to pieces at 
 death ; but as a being of free spiritual powers. 
 
 CHAINING. Self-Cultore. 
 
YIL 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 AETISTS keep their pictures from every eye but 
 their own, until the finished portrait can give 
 the complete impression. The writer cannot so 
 guard himself against a momentary prejudice ; 
 for the reader's eye is on him, as chapter by 
 chapter he furnishes the details of separate fea- 
 tures, and seems- to neglect others, or to use too 
 strong a colouring. We have not, thus far, pre- 
 sented a portraiture of human nature. We have 
 only given the background and some shading of 
 its lineaments. A further, and, to some extent, 
 a more grateful task remains. The object of the 
 preceding chapters has been to set forth clearly 
 the startling fact, that the moralities and virtues 
 which adorn humanity at large can be accounted 
 for without reference to any religious motives ; 
 and that they must be so accounted for, as they 
 lack the invariable signs of religious principle. 
 But we do not therefore deny that there is a re- 
 ligious element in man, which may be nurtured 
 
168 NATUEAL GOODNESS. 
 
 and corrected, beneath the shelter of those infe- 
 rior qualities and motives. "We have shown that 
 men may, in the exercise of an intelligent pru- 
 dence and of merely instinctive feelings, do much 
 to preserve and adorn society ; but man is not, 
 therefore, merely a compound of intellect and 
 instinct a mere intellectual brute. He was 
 created in the image of his Maker, and his 
 spiritual ca/pabilities, however perverted, still 
 dignify his character. If it has been a painful 
 duty to brand as counterfeit nearly every sem- 
 blance of virtue which is common among men, 
 it is now our privilege to point out the true re- 
 ligious element ; to show how far those of its 
 capabilities, which are immortal as the soul 
 itself, need only a right direction and culture, 
 and how those powers, which may have been 
 destroyed, can be replaced by divine energy. 
 We wish to survey the whole progress of mo- 
 rality, from the point where it is purely pruden- 
 tial and instinctive, to the point where these 
 lower impulses are lost in the growing strength 
 of a pure religious principle. 
 
 I. There are several elements in the religious 
 constitution of man, which are commonly spoken 
 of as indicating a degree of spiritual health and 
 
RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN HUMAN NATURE. 169 
 
 rectitude of character. Spiritual death, it is sup- 
 posed, would involve their absence. Their ex- 
 istence is, therefore, held to show that mankind 
 are not yet wholly lost ; and the degree of their 
 activity is held to indicate the comparative res- 
 toration, or yet unforfeited and original virtue, 
 of the race. But reflection will show us that 
 these peculiar faculties of the soul are a part of 
 its indestructible constitution, not affected In/ sin, 
 ' but remaining the same in purity or in guilt, in 
 heaven or in hell. 
 
 1. Consider, for instance, the power of con- 
 science. The perception of the distinction be- 
 tween right and wrong, involving the approval 
 of the good and the reprobation of the evil, is not 
 only the basis of an angel's moral nature, but is 
 as fully the inheritance of the fiend himself. 
 Conscience, as the faculty which not only per- 
 ceives moral distinctions and the fitness and 
 beauty of virtue, but also its absolute obligation, 
 is not confined to heaven or earth, but lives un- 
 silenced in the depths of hell. Conscience, es- 
 pecially, as the executive authority, giving due 
 reward to moral action, wields the scourge over 
 the doomed spirit, as it crowns the blessed above. 
 For, if there be. not a clear perception of the 
 moral quality of actions, there can be no clear 
 
 
170 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 sense of obligation in regard to past or present 
 duties. If there be no sense of obligation, there 
 can be no sense of guilt. If there be no sense 
 of guilt, no punishment can be felt to be deserved 
 and just, and suffering can only be borne as ar- 
 bitrary persecution by God. Remorse can have 
 no existence except as it realizes sin. But to 
 suppose that the lost angel or the ruined man, 
 has thus lost not only his moral character, but his 
 moral nature ; to suppose that if there is a retri- 
 bution for the wicked, none of it can come 
 through a sense of guilt and shame, but that the 
 doomed soul is as unconscious of guilt as inno- 
 cence itself could be, contradicts our first ideas 
 of a moral being, and of retribution. It would 
 entirely destroy the appropriateness of a penalty, 
 either as strictly punitive, because then the 
 wretch cannot comprehend its connexion with 
 his sin; or as disciplinary, because it cannot 
 awaken repentance for unconscious error. Con- 
 science, then, is an indestructible element in our 
 nature, destined to live on through every change 
 of moral character. The sense of right and 
 wrong; the prompt approval of the good, and 
 the stern rebuke of the evil ; the feeling of posi- 
 tive obligation; the satisfaction in virtue, and 
 the pain in sin : these are the main arteries of a 
 
RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN HUMAN NATURE. 171 
 
 spiritual being, whose involuntary activity will 
 share its immortality. Whether the action of 
 these faculties shall send through that being a 
 thrill of healthful joy, or of fevered anguish, 
 depends upon circumstances apart from them- 
 selves. 
 
 Now, in this plain statement of the indestruc- 
 tibility of conscience, in all its offices, lies the 
 explanation of much which has been thought to 
 bear against the doctrine of human depravity. 
 Men see that, under the present constitution of 
 things this faculty is most quick and powerful in 
 the holiest souls, and that, as a general rule, each 
 act of resistance to its dictates deadens its sensi- 
 bility and its authoritative power. Under such 
 a system, the utterly lost soul would feel no pang 
 and lose all discrimination. The existence of any 
 conscience seems to them, therefore, a proof that 
 man is not utterly fallen ; and the high activity 
 and force of this faculty in many, proves that 
 they are far, very far, from total depravity. But 
 we have shown above that this voice within us 
 is really independent of our moral character; 
 and that the most depraved, so far as our essen- 
 tial nature is concerned, may feel as keenly as 
 the holiest. We showed, in our second essay, 
 that the fact that there is anv variation of the 
 
172 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 power of conscience, was only a temporary ar- 
 rangement, and that otherwise all would realize 
 their sin alike. We admit, then, that a veil is 
 placed before the eye of conscience while we are 
 yet on earth ; and this veil grows thicker as men 
 persevere in evil. But this variation of feeling 
 only shows that the man has done a certain 
 amount of sin since he began ; but it does not 
 declare how depraved he was at first, nor how 
 depraved he is now. It only shows that the 
 longer he remains in sin, during probation, the 
 weaker are his restraints and his incentives to 
 good. He may have been as constitutionally 
 depraved all the while as now, and God may 
 have still chosen to offer salvation, till at length 
 he is left to insensibility. The sinner may be no 
 worse in nature ; only he may have persisted in 
 choosing to perpetuate his state, and lost his 
 sensibility to sin. The original perception of 
 sinfulness which conscience has, to see sin as sin, 
 and right as right, is an inalienable power, inde- 
 pendent of character ; and if the full vision in a 
 future state is compatible with the worst deprav- 
 ity, these lower grades of perception, now exer- 
 cised, cannot be inconsistent with it. Therefore, 
 the existence and the power of conscience in 
 men in general affords no measure at all of their 
 
 O 
 
RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN HUMAN NATURE. 173 
 
 true moral character. No matter how clear their 
 view of duty, how strong the sense of obliga- 
 tion, how painful the self-reproach of transgres- 
 sion, it cannot argue any religious position. We 
 may be misled by thinking of the quickening of 
 conscience as a result of God's spiritual and 
 remedial operation. But however other moral 
 phenomena may show a creative and divine 
 power ; and however as men grow up into God's 
 image, the power of this faculty is increasingly 
 manifested, yet it is not by any new creation or 
 awakening of a sense which the soul has lost, 
 that God operates. The Spirit that convinces 
 the world of sin has only need to lift the mys- 
 terious veil that He himself has, for the time 
 being, thrown over the eye of conscience that 
 eye which in its very nature cannot help but see. 
 For conscience, solemn thought! through all 
 eternity, has a lidless eye. 
 
 2. In connexion with this fact, it is important 
 also to notice another. The point may for a 
 moment seem obscure, and demand attention; 
 but it will easily be understood, and will save 
 from much error. It is this that in order to 
 form an idea of any principle, or sentiment, or 
 affection, it is not necessary that we should have 
 
174: NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 experienced that sentiment or affection. It is 
 enough if we have a capacity for those senti- 
 ments and affections, and if we have experienced 
 the opposite vices or virtues of feeling. Each 
 right feeling or sentiment is the opposite of a 
 wrong one, and can be understood and judged 
 of by its opposite. Love implies hatred as an 
 opposite sentiment ; cruelty, compassion ; and for- 
 giveness, resentment. As the stamp or impres- 
 sion is the exact reverse of the seal, being hol- 
 low where it is elevated, and concave where it is 
 convex, so each duty and each virtuous feeling 
 gives the idea of the vice which is the reverse. 
 Men who never felt the sway of any given 
 affection or principle may clearly understand it 
 in its moral claims, by their experience of a cor- 
 responding affection or principle. And so soon 
 as we have an idea of the passion or sentiment, 
 although we have never yet felt it, so soon its 
 moral character and claims are seen, and it is 
 approved or rebuked by the conscience. Thus 
 a soul, pure and unfallen, may have a clear con- 
 ception of sin, and of each particular evil passion 
 or principle. So it may rightly estimate the 
 character of others, and so it may intelligently 
 be tempted itself. So the divine Man, Jesus, 
 could comprehend sinfulness, and each separate 
 
RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN HUMAN NATURE. 175 
 
 siii of evil feeling or principle, although he him- 
 self had not the slightest personal experience of 
 those sins. But, upon the same principle, a soul 
 impure and disobedient may have similar ideas 
 of the virtues which it does not feel nor exercise, 
 which correspond to its own emptiness and sin. 
 Blot out Satan's memory of the past, and yet he 
 may understand and appreciate duty and virtue, 
 and every shade of obligation, even as Jesus 
 comprehended each sin and its guilt. Kow this 
 point is of great importance to a true estimate 
 of human nature. 
 
 " All men," says a distinguished Unitarian, 
 " know what God requires of them, what affec- 
 tions, what virtues, what graces, what emotions 
 of penitence and piety. All men have a ca- 
 pacity for these affections, and some exercise of 
 them, however slight and transient; and what 
 God requires is, the culture, strengthening, and 
 enlargement of these very affections. 
 
 "For the defence of this view, I submit its 
 reasonableness, for, if men do not know what 
 religion is, they do not know what is required 
 of them. Again : we could not know what are 
 tJw affections that are required of us, unless it 
 were by some experience of them. It is philo- 
 sophically impossible; it is in the nature of 
 
176 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 things impossible that we should. No words, 
 no symbols, could teach us what moral and 
 spiritual emotion is, unless we had, in ourselves, 
 some feeling of what it is, any more than they 
 could teach a deaf man what it is to hear, or a 
 blind man what it is to see. Excellence, holi- 
 ness, justice, disinterestedness, love, are words 
 which never could have any meaning to us, if 
 the originals, the germs of those qualities, were 
 not within us."* 
 
 If this were so, it would logically follow, that 
 these germs are the religious character the true 
 religious principle already formed within every 
 heart. Human nature, therefore, could not be 
 utterly depraved, indeed not depraved at all. 
 only weak and to be developed. It needs no 
 new creation of principle and affection, but only 
 a culture of what is there already. But, now, 
 if all these right principles and affections can 
 be understood without any exercise of them if, 
 just as .Jesus could comprehend the malignity 
 of which he never had the slightest exercise, so 
 an evil spirit may comprehend holy affections 
 which it has never exercised then the sinner 
 may comprehend the duties and the affections 
 
 Dewey's Discourses on " Human Life," &c. Italics our 
 own. 
 
RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN HUMAN NATURE. 177 
 
 required of him, although he has not even the 
 feeble exercise, " the originals, the germs of those 
 qualities," within him. It is a clear perception 
 possessed, not only by a holy soul, but by any soul. 
 
 Thus, then, the clearest conceptions of various 
 spiritual affections imply no experience of them, 
 and the highest sense of their moral obligation 
 shows only that the lidless eye of conscience sees 
 the truth. 
 
 3. The constitutional activity of conscience, 
 and the power to recognise and conceive clearly 
 principles and affections, however diverse they 
 may be from our own moral character, involves 
 another capability of human nature. Distinct 
 from the obligation and authoritative power of 
 virtue, is its moral beauty, its intrinsic loveli- 
 ness. There is an excellence, a fitness, a corre- 
 spondence to the highest demands of the soul, 
 which commends itself at once to the heart. 
 Even if duty were not duty, it would still be 
 privilege. If all penalty were gone, and all 
 moral constraint removed, still would the heart 
 feel that purity alone is high and honourable, 
 and worthy the enthusiasm of a noble soul; 
 and accordance with its dictates not only leaves 
 
 12 
 
178 NATUKAL GOODNESS. 
 
 a sense of satisfied and appeased law, but a glow 
 of elevated delight. This moral beauty bears a 
 relation to moral obligation similar to that which 
 the grace and finish of an exquisite machine bear 
 to its mathematical adaptation for utility. If it 
 were not serviceable, it would yet be beautiful. 
 And with a high reverence we may say that 
 the perception and expression of this quality 
 constitutes the poetry of virtue the sentiment 
 of religion. 
 
 Now, what we mean to say is, that this sense 
 of the beauty of holiness does not require any 
 moral purity, any love of holiness for its exer- 
 cise. It is an involuntary, constitutional, and 
 indestructible capacity, like the sense of the 
 mere obligation of duty. It is the heritage alike 
 of heaven and of hell. The pure angelic eye 
 sees this moral loveliness resting like a glory on 
 the sublime summits of heroic duties, and on 
 every flower of feeling it hangs trembling like 
 the dew. The irrecoverable soul feels not alone 
 the stern condemnation of his sin ; but is sickened 
 by a sense of unworthiness, and deformity, 
 
 " And self-contempt, bitterer to drink than blood." 
 
 We are not speculating rashly. Every-day 
 life presents illustrations that ask no flight of 
 
RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 fancy, cases so clear and indisputable, that they 
 cover all the more obscure instances beside them. 
 They show that to perceive the worth and excel- 
 lence of purity is not to love it, for to love it 
 would be to seek its possession and to promote 
 its growth. They prove that this poetic sensi- 
 bility to moral beauty is an endowment given 
 naturally, and in very different degrees to va- 
 rious hearts ; and that so far from indicating any 
 love of purity, the sense of moral obligation is 
 often strongest where there is least of this sense 
 of loveliness, and the poetic rapture is often 
 most exquisite where the moral sense of obliga- 
 tion is least oppressive. The writings of genius 
 are, indeed, filled with noble tributes to vir- 
 tue. It has delighted to blazon her glories 
 and to depict her struggles ; to portray the 
 splendid energy with which she repels the base 
 insinuation the meek endurance with which 
 she bears oppression and 'destitution the fear- 
 ful crisis, when, forsaken, urged to evil, almost 
 overcome, she yet rises, and triumphs, and wears 
 a fadeless crown. Fiction and poetry have given 
 splendid panegyrics, and then writers, and poets 
 too, have shown how abstract their real admira- 
 tion was, how reckless their actual tone of feel- 
 ing. They have seemed to feel as though they 
 
180 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 could gain their faithfulness of colouring only by 
 witnessing the reality of her trials, and, like the 
 old painter whose magic pencil sought to depict 
 the writhings of Prometheus upon the rock, they 
 bind living virtue to the rack ; they watch her 
 agonies, and dip their pencil in the blood, and 
 tears, and death-dews that they picture. Think 
 of Bulwer, and Shelley, and Byron, and the many 
 of polluted genius, who have sent forth the 
 praises of virtue, and many a holy strain, from 
 dens of debauchery and blasphemy, and say, 
 Had they a love for purity ? Yet they saw and 
 spoke the beauty of holiness. They gazed in 
 the pause of passion, and admired and sung her 
 chaste loveliness, and then turned to wanton 
 with the deformed vices, that but now were so 
 despised. 
 
 It is not for such men that we are writing ; 
 but we allude to them to show conclusively that 
 the highest poetic sensibility to the charms of 
 rectitude may be purely constitutional ; and that 
 it indicates no earnest sensibility to the obliga- 
 tion of virtue, and no love of rectitude at all. 
 Yet the moral man, especially if highly cul- 
 tured, and of a poetic sensibility to all beauty 
 of nature, or sentiment, or morals, is apt to feel 
 a peculiar satisfaction and sense of security in 
 
RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN HUMAN NATURE. 181 
 
 this aesthetic feeling. He is apt to argue from 
 it his advancement in virtuous character. He 
 is prone to conclude that this feeling, clothing 
 his acts of rectitude, proves them to be no com- 
 pulsory or interested duties. Alas, holiness is 
 lovely! but its loveliness is not more clearly 
 seen by the eye of that pure moralist, than by 
 many an eye from which gleam out the passions 
 that would make a hell on earth ! He needs a 
 higher criterion to test his spiritual worth, and 
 his acceptability to God. 
 
 II. We proceed to notice the religious elements 
 in human nature, which are not thus indestruc- 
 tible ; which need the restoring energy of God 
 to bring back their wonted action ; and whose 
 vigour and perfection, therefore, do show the 
 presence of true and efficient religion. 
 
 1. We notice briefly the moral sensibilities 
 all those affections and impulses which are felt 
 to possess a virtuous or unholy attribute. And, 
 according to the teaching of Scripture, there can 
 be no doubt that all the unholy and impure sen- 
 timents are attributed to the heart as it is by na- 
 ture, and all pure and lovely principles and 
 qualities are claimed as the exclusive products 
 
182 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 of the Holy Ghost in its restoring power. We 
 have shown, in the first part of the last essay, 
 that this association of pure earthly affections 
 and sentiments with the one supreme love of 
 holiness and of God, and this idea of the inva- 
 riable connexion of the loss of that holy love 
 with the loss of every pure relative affection, are 
 sanctioned by the general sentiment of mankind, 
 and by the philosophical relation of these senti- 
 ments. We argued that the unholy soul could 
 have no such virtues, as the holy soul must have 
 them. We argued that the one underlying prin- 
 ciple being rectified, all would be restored as 
 the purified and filtered stream that presses 
 through the rock, far below the surface, will well 
 up sweetly through a hundred various springs. 
 And we say explicitly, that the various amiable 
 and noble qualities which should adorn human 
 nature never can adorn it, except by the power 
 of renovating grace. For we proved that the 
 natural qualities commonly called virtues, were 
 mere spurious, substituted, temporary things, 
 mere bracings to uphold this life, until the true 
 pillars of the soul should rise. And the growth 
 of the true virtues, the holy branches of a holy 
 love, is a consequence and a token of the regen- 
 erating influence o^ grace upon the heart. 
 
RELIGIOUS KLKMENT IN HUMAN NATURE. 183 
 
 It may be worth while here to observe how 
 the sentiments of the Church, or at least of prom- 
 inent writers on this subject, have in modern 
 times arisen and varied. Bishop Butler lived at 
 a time when there was not only little religion, 
 but hardly any morality. Even outward recti- 
 tude was a plain separation from the world. 
 Few experiences were there of that spiritual 
 power, which infused new principles and affec- 
 tions, and extirpated the evil. It seemed enough 
 if a man could regulate his sentiments and de- 
 sires, and repress the action of the passions. 
 Every natural feeling was supposed to be part 
 of the originally designed constitution of man. 
 Regulation, that is, culture, became religion; 
 and Butler's theory has been very easily turned 
 to Unitarian purposes. He held all natural sen- 
 timents to have a religious value, if they were 
 only in proper degree and cooperation. 
 
 Dr. Chalmers lived under an outpouring of 
 spiritual influences. He felt that the religious 
 principle differed in kind from anything in the 
 natural man ; that it involved a love to God and 
 to holiness which had no germ in the unregen- 
 erate soul, but must be infused. However, there- 
 fore, the natural sentiments might stand in due 
 proportion, by nature or by culture, he felt that 
 
184 NATUJRAL GOODNESS. 
 
 since they could exist without that infused prin- 
 ciple, they had no religious nature. Chalmers 
 rested on the idea that the historical virtues, 
 although not religious, were nevertheless the orig- 
 inal sentiments and principles of human nature. 
 But at the present time, especially through 
 the writings of those who would prove the true 
 religious character of natural virtue, attention is 
 directed to the fact that true piety to God, and 
 true virtue toward man, can only proceed from 
 the same principle, and are always found to- 
 gether. If the tree be good, the fruit also will be 
 good. If, therefore, these natural virtues are 
 religious, there must be a religious principle at 
 work. If there is no religious principle, but 
 total depravity of principle, where is the natu- 
 rally expected fruit of every vile sentiment and 
 passion ? The question is serious, and demands 
 an answer. We can only say, the evil is re- 
 pressed, and show why; and then show also 
 how these better traits are not our original and 
 immortal qualities, but temporary instincts im- 
 pressed on the soul. The true spiritual affec- 
 tions and principles true integrity, and benev- 
 olence, and love are to be a new creation, 
 developed beneath the shelter of these instinc- 
 tive virtues. 
 
RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN HUMAN NATURE. 185 
 
 2. But the crowning element in the perfect 
 moral nature is the moral freedom of the will, 
 in its ability to choose the good and to reject the 
 evil. We would avoid controversial expressions ; 
 but we may say that in a depraved nature, the 
 will is so diseased, that it does not follow the 
 clearest convictions of duty or of interest. It 
 chooses evil, even when it perceives both its sin- 
 fulness and its folly : and in a totally depraved 
 heart it is safe to say, that there would not be 
 the first impulse toward good, as good, which 
 could be cultivated by the law of habit into a 
 moral power. A will so strangely perverted, 
 can be reached only by the mysterious and crea- 
 tive energy of God. 
 
 Now it is this imbecility, and bias of the will 
 to evil, which, with the corruption of the affec- 
 tions, constitute the depravity, actual and total, 
 of the human heart. It is the consciousness of 
 this depravity of the will and the affections, in 
 connexion with a consciousness of the obliga- 
 tion and beauty of holiness, which renders the 
 doomed soul wretched, and might " make a hell 
 of heaven." There is perhaps no earthly suffer- 
 ing more intense than that of the lunatic whose 
 spells of criminal and debasing passion come on 
 so violently as to override all sense of rectitude 
 
186 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 or decency, and yet leave the wretched victim 
 with an under-consciousness of the purity and 
 goodness which he violates. Yet he may feel 
 that it is but a temporary delirium a physical 
 derangement. But to wake up to the dread 
 reality of intrinsic pollution and vileness to 
 realize the loveliness of virtue and the shame of 
 vice, and yet feel the heart pressing onward to 
 new defilement to feel evermore the circling 
 eddy carry us deeper and deeper into the mael- 
 strom of moral shame, and yet look up to the 
 clear heavens that smile on all above the dread 
 vortex this, this is the completed curse ! 
 
 Therefore all the machinery of our probation- 
 ary state would be useless, if the will were left 
 to itself. There would be no spot on which to 
 plant the lever of moral reformation. And 
 therefore it is with the will, especially, of any 
 human heart that the grace of God must deal, 
 before it can avail itself of the provisions of the 
 scheme of redemption. It is not that divine 
 power should sway the will to holiness ; but that 
 once more it has the power to choose bondage, 
 or to choose a perfect freedom. It is not need- 
 ful to probation that the grace of God should 
 give the will a power to overcome the greater 
 evils and strongest temptations. If the rigour 
 
RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN HUMAN NATURE. 187 
 
 of its bondage be so relaxed that it can even 
 struggle in its chains, it is sufficient if it can 
 but seek help from God, it is enough. And thus 
 far the grace of God appears, from reason and 
 from Scripture, to be given to every man, so that 
 he can resist the sin that overcomes him, and 
 look up to a divine helper. In answer to his 
 prayer help will come. To offer salvation to a 
 soul without such preparatory grace, would be 
 like holding out the cup of life to a corpse en- 
 dowed with a consciousness of its death ; it would 
 be mockery to the stiffened form that could not 
 take it : but Jesus touches the lips of each soul 
 for whom he died with that cup of salvation, 
 and the slight quickening enables the sinner to 
 take the fulness of his offer, or, rejecting it, to 
 sink back to irrecoverable death. 
 
 We have thus reached a point from which we 
 may form a full estimate of the position of moral 
 men, as distinguished from religious men. They 
 are beings entering upon existence with a de- 
 praved moral nature, but entering upon a pro- 
 bationary state, in which that nature may be 
 purified for eternity. Their evil impulses are 
 repressed and partially concealed. They have, 
 for the present, instinctive sentiments and affec- 
 
188 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 tions, which, in the absence of true and pure 
 principles, may secure continued life, and oppor- 
 tunities for thought and consideration of their 
 great spiritual interests. The temporal blessings 
 and trials of life are, for the present, distributed 
 so as to lend added force to these good natural 
 dispositions. While the sense of sin and danger 
 is not permitted to overwhelm them, yet the 
 indestructible conscience, with subdued tone, 
 speaks of duty and of sin, of heaven and of hell, 
 of the purity they may yet attain, and the moral 
 beauty which may adorn them. Kevelation 
 comes in to let them know of the truths which 
 it would destroy them to realize. God gives by 
 his spiritual energy a power to seek his help 
 that the will may be free from its bondage, and 
 the debased affections be made holy and blessed. 
 
 Thus much God does for the moral man 
 without his own agency or his own consent. 
 Whether he will become a religious man or not, 
 depends upon himself. God will do nothing 
 more for him unless he seeks for more in God's 
 appointed way. If he avail himself of his privi- 
 leges, it is well ; if not, the temporary restraints 
 shall be removed, and he shall be left to unre- 
 pressed, unveiled depravity forever. 
 
VIII. 
 
 of 
 
" I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear ; but now 
 mine eye seeth thee: wherefore I abhor myself, and repent 
 
 in dust and ashes." 
 
 JOB xlii, 5, 6. 
 
VIII. 
 
 PECULIAR PHASES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE- 
 CONYICTION. 
 
 THE grandest spectacle which the universe affords 
 is that of a ruined spirit reassuming its pristine 
 purity and power. It is the resurrection of the 
 .soul the moment when its corruptible puts on 
 incorruption. Such a transition not only enlists 
 the sympathies of a seraphic devotion, but may 
 well rivet the attention of any thoughtful mind. 
 The purely scientific gaze which wanders through 
 creation, watching with reverential enthusiasm 
 the gradual development of material forces, from 
 the faint glimmering of the floating star-dust, 
 to the full beauty of an organized and furnished 
 world, finding at each step the reward of some 
 clearer reflection of Him in whom they live, and 
 move, and have their being, cannot be insensi- 
 ble to the breathless interest of that hour, when 
 the denizen of one of the least of all these rolling 
 orbs, outcast and reckless in his treason, is brought 
 face to face with the Almighty, is forgiven and 
 
192 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 transformed, and made a partaker of the divine 
 nature. How thrilling to watch the momentary 
 changes by which that spirit, under the benig- 
 nant smile of reconciliation, loses the image of 
 the earthly, and wears the image of the heav- 
 enly ! But when we know that upon the promp- 
 titude and completeness of that transformation 
 in this brief life depends the destiny of all the 
 undying future ; when this fleeting hour concen- 
 trates within itself all the eternal possibilities of 
 blessing or of anguish ; the history of the soul for 
 that one hour is its history forever, and we can- 
 not leave its slightest event unstudied and unap- 
 preciated. We would watch the processes of the 
 new creation the gradual glow and quivering of 
 life upon the countenance of the corpse-like soul. 
 And here again it is that the true character 
 and relations of moral men in the higher stages 
 of their experience acquire an absorbing interest. 
 The well-defined extremes of character, in those 
 who people the acknowledged realm of Satan, or 
 dwell in the kingdom of God, awake less inter- 
 est, as their fate is recognised at once ; but these 
 dwellers upon neutral ground these wander- 
 ers on the border-land of heaven swaying be- 
 tween safety and perdition, awake the interest of 
 suspense, and of many a baffled effort to alarm 
 
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE CONVICTION. 193 
 
 them. Is there a point within the line which we 
 have deemed the boundary of sin, where in truth 
 they are secure of heaven who would needlessly 
 awaken their fears ? Are they unsafe who would 
 let them be deceived ? The phases, therefore, of 
 an incipient and incomplete religious experience 
 the processes through which the new life is 
 attained the intermingling light and shade, 
 which flicker along the horizon ere yet the day- 
 spring from on high bursts on the benighted 
 spirit this is our theme. 
 
 The earliest spiritual exercises which mark the 
 entrance upon a definite religious experience, are 
 the feelings which are awakened in view of the 
 fact which lies at the basis of all religious effort 
 the fact of our own depravity. It can only be 
 from a sense of its vileness, its guilt, and its 
 weakness, that the startled spirit will ever seek 
 for purity, and pardon, and divine assistance. 
 However the prodigal may, all unconsciously to 
 himself, have been strengthened for his home- 
 ward journey, no returning step will bear him 
 onward, until he "come to himself," and feel 
 sadly and wistfully the contrast between his 
 dreary lot and the fulness of his father's house. 
 
 Even among the nations upon whom the trum- 
 is 
 
194 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 pet tones of revelation have not thundered the 
 perfect law and its deepest curse, the smothered 
 voice of conscience bears witness to the common 
 doom. Yet, as we briefly illustrated in the 
 earlier pages of this volume, it is only as the 
 consciousness of sin can be relieved by the reve- 
 lation of a satisfying atonement and a purifying- 
 spirit, that the full sense of evil and of its desert 
 is imparted. The heathen world, therefore, has 
 but an imperfect and vague perception of the 
 moral debasement which crushes it. Its relig- 
 ious observances spring rather from an undefined 
 apprehension of vengeance wreaked by an arbi- 
 trary power, than from any recognition of the 
 intrinsic " sinfulness of sin." Its millions suffer 
 much from fear, but little from remorse. The 
 soul naturally recoils from the revelation of its 
 own pollution, and fixes its resolute attention 
 upon the less harrowing toils or follies of this 
 life. So that where the institutions of revealed 
 religion are not perpetually compelling reflec- 
 tion, the habitually averted eye of conscience 
 sees but dimly, if at all, the evils of the heart. 
 The superstitions which have been created by 
 this very wilfulness of self-deluding yet unsatis- 
 fied consciousness serve but to confirm the error, 
 and destroy a true sense of moral guilt, by direct- 
 
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE CONVICTION. 195 
 
 ing attention only to the outward act, or by 
 proposing, as a propitiation, some easy offering 
 which of itself atones. Yet still the literature 
 of antiquity, and the missionary observations of 
 the present, alike assure us that a sullen, brood- 
 ing under-consciousness of sin, and guilt, and 
 danger, gleaming out at times into clearer flashes 
 of conviction, is the common inheritance of all 
 men. 
 
 But just in proportion as the light of revealed 
 truth shines through a community, and a pure 
 Christian example exhibits a lofty and spiritual 
 virtue, and thus demonstrates its existence and 
 attainability beyond cavil, the natural conscious- 
 ness of evil, and of an obligation to perfect holi- 
 ness, forces itself upon every heart. The clear in- 
 tellectual conviction, at least, cannot be put away. 
 An evil heart, turning from unwelcome truths, 
 and burying its thoughts in business or dissipa- 
 ting them in pleasure, may not seem to believe 
 the stern language of Scripture ; but the smoth- 
 ered cries of conscience, the superstitious dread 
 and self-condemnation which cowers beneath 
 calamity as a just retribution, and that abject 
 fear which dares not think on death, all bear wit- 
 neSs that the soul does know its guilt and dan- 
 ger, and that it persists in sin and shuts out 
 
196 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 clear conviction, only because it chooses to be 
 denied. 
 
 Especially in the hearts of those who habitu- 
 ally listen to the faithful declarations of the pul- 
 pit, this sense of wickedness and exposure to a 
 future curse becomes vivid and irrepressible. 
 Sabbath after Sabbath it is deepened impercep- 
 tibly ; and ever and anon some peculiar utter- 
 ance of truth seizes the soul, and shoots through 
 it a fearful, sinking, sickening consciousness of 
 sin and peril. The Holy Spirit has left the heart 
 thus partially sensitive, and at all times suscepti- 
 ble to the varying influence of various truths and 
 of changing circumstances. Sometimes it sud- 
 denly removes yet more of the lethargy which 
 benumbs the soul ; and multitudes who listened 
 with but a subdued shame and purpose of amend- 
 ment, at once awake to a new vividness of ap- 
 prehension, and a new energy of resolution. 
 
 The Holy Spirit is certainly not limited to any 
 regular instrumentalities, nor to any peculiar 
 manifestations, in his work of convincing men of 
 sin, and of righteousness, and of a judgment to 
 come. The wind bloweth where it listeth. And 
 yet, amid all the endless varieties observable in 
 early religious experience, it may be that* the 
 self-same Spirit, which worketh all in all, ob- 
 
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE CONVICTION. 197 
 
 serves some principle of uniformity in his opera- 
 tion; and a reverential attention to this per- 
 vading unity cannot be improper. We may 
 distinguish that which is essential in a true ex- 
 perience from that which is purely adventitious. 
 For, however the peculiarity of many divine 
 manifestations to those whom the Spirit is lead- 
 ing to redemption is felt to have no explanation, 
 except in his own wise choice of action, apart 
 from any influence of the means employed ; yet 
 the individual characteristics of temperament 
 and habit, and the natural influence of varied 
 circumstances are usually apparent. A consid- 
 eration of these may explain many seeming 
 anomalies in Christian experience, and may pre- 
 sent us from forming a false standard of " sensi- 
 ble experiences," either for ourselves or others. 
 
 Consider, for instance, that law of our mental 
 constitution which regulates the tide of emotion in 
 its resistless flow, and in its subsiding gentleness, 
 when any truth or fact appeals to the sensibili- 
 ties. Observe the heart just startled by the 
 shadow of some approaching calamity, bereave- 
 ment, or disgrace, or utter destitution ; or watch 
 the. fluctuating feelings when another's sorrow 
 appeals to sympathy, or another's excellence 
 awakes our admiration. In every case we recog- 
 
198 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 nise this rule, that emotion is strongest when the 
 truth is first seen in its full vividness, and that 
 it dies away into a subdued sensibility when the 
 first shock is over. Amid the horrors of a siege, 
 or the protracted dangers of the plague, men 
 speak calmly and stoically of fearful things 
 whose first approach convulsed them with terror. 
 Then, if the subdued emotion is to be again 
 aroused, it must be by some more vivid presen- 
 tation of the coming cruelties, or the heart must 
 be riveted on some new feature of the great sor- 
 row ; or, after having sunk beneath the strain 
 of feeling until the weary heart had almost for- 
 got its fate, it must wake up anew to see all it 
 saw before. Thus it is only as a fresh appeal is 
 made, and while yet it has the force of novelty, 
 that deep emotion is to be exp.ected. So also it 
 may be that an emotion, entirely distinct from 
 the one great feeling which has been aroused 
 and subdued, may be stirred by casual circum- 
 stances; and the heart, thus approached from 
 another side, and charmed into a tender mood, 
 has a fresh sensibility to even the old appeal, 
 which had seemed to lose its power. 
 
 There is an analogy in the exercises of our 
 hearts, in view of the great truths of sin and retri- 
 bution. When, for the first time, the soul clearly 
 
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE CONVICTION. 199 
 
 apprehends these tremendous truths, the natural 
 probabilities are that the sudden shock of guilty 
 shame and fear will be overwhelming; but 
 when the solemn vision grows familiar, or when 
 it has been gradually and by slow glimmerings 
 disclosed to the instructed mind, the natural 
 result will be a subdued, almost unnoticed feel- 
 ing, while the clear conviction, remains per- 
 manently. In those notable instances in the 
 history of wide-spread reformations where the 
 general feeling has been most pungent, and the 
 physical effects of emotion most remarkable, is 
 it not usually observable that a previous defi- 
 ciency in religious instruction, or an imperfectly- 
 exhibited orthodoxy, had left the general mind 
 without familiarity with these great truths, and 
 thus the earnest utterance of them flashed a 
 new idea, like sheet-lightning, over men's hearts ? 
 But where the Church has trained up her con- 
 gregations from childhood, and line upon line and 
 precept upon precept have gradually dawned 
 upon the mind, then, in the absence of any ad- 
 ventitious, exciting influences, such overwhelm- 
 ing emotions are not the rule. The same prin- 
 ciple may be observed in the case of separate 
 congregations, or even of individuals. The Sab- 
 bath-breaker, who straggles into a church, may 
 
200 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 be confounded at the utterance of truths to which, 
 in all their freshness and force, his conscience 
 bears witness ; while those who habitually listen 
 to those same utterances are not at all excited, 
 however thoroughly convinced. 2s r or let it be 
 imagined that thus the vicious have an advan- 
 tage over those more observant of the means of 
 grace ; for the open neglecter is generally so sur- 
 rounded by evil associations difficult to break, 
 that he needs a pungent and startling view to 
 give him an equal vantage-ground with those to 
 whom the form and opportunity of godliness are 
 already familiar, and who need only to ask its 
 acknowledged power. 
 
 We said also that the constitutional tempera- 
 ment might vary the form of religious expe- 
 rience. We habitually see how, under the same 
 circumstances, and beneath the pressure of the 
 same motives, and even with the same ultimate 
 action, men of different temperaments differ in 
 the intensity of their emotions, in the vividness 
 of their conception of the same truth, and in the 
 method of their action. While some are con- 
 founded, frenzied, or convulsive, in their excited 
 language or gesture, others are made sternly' 
 calm, and only speak in a more measured tone, 
 and act with more deliberation. All may see 
 
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE CONVICTION. 201 
 
 alike, may feel the same kind of appropriate 
 sentiment, and take the same steps ; but the 
 intensity of feeling, the hurry and throng of 
 rushing thoughts, and the vehemence of action, 
 may be peculiar to a few. It is not fanaticism, 
 nor a weak excitability, to be overwhelmed with 
 appropriate emotion ; nor is it a sign of a less 
 true and availing sensibility, that a heart as 
 quick to see, and as prompt to act, is not as 
 oppressed with feeling. 
 
 So is it, also, with the influence of the circum- 
 stances under which, other things being equal, 
 the same truths come home to us. There is an in- 
 stinctive response of the heart to any expression 
 of emotion in one who addresses us. Even in 
 the quietude of ordinary intercourse, the heart 
 reflects the varying hue of feeling in those around 
 us ; and it requires a mental effort to preserve, if 
 we would, our independence of their presence. 
 But when expression is given to the master pas- 
 sions of the soul, and its gathered emotions burst 
 the restraints of conventionality and natural 
 reserve, the rushing tide, as it sweeps across our 
 sluggish hearts, quickens them with its own im- 
 petuosity, and turns, and directs, and bears on- 
 ward every wave of feeling, until the collective 
 emotions of a vast audience roll in one resistless 
 
202 NATURAL GOOPNESP. 
 
 toiTent. As by a mesmeric charm, the orator 
 makes the multitude a part of his own individual 
 being, and they see in his light, and thrill with 
 his passions, and resolve with his will. And 
 when the earnest words are the breathings of a 
 burning piety, the natural power of eloquence is 
 not lost. The emotions may appear to subside 
 when the hour is over ; the ripples of gentler 
 emotion may soon vanish, or the great deep of 
 the soul may longer heave in tumultuous energy, 
 and then grow still when the storm is past; but for 
 that brief season the hopes, the fears, the remorse, 
 the resolution of the hearer, are aroused and in- 
 flamed by mere contact with a fervid eloquence. 
 The association with others who are filled with 
 deep emotion has a similar sympathetic influence 
 upon the tone of our own feelings. There is a 
 subtle consciousness of the prevailing sentiment 
 throughout a large audience, or in private gath- 
 erings, which none can wholly overcome ; a 
 contagion of sensibility which imparts a feeling 
 scarcely to be called our own. Yet the subdued 
 influence of such external sympathies may per- 
 vade and modify our entire tone of sentiment. 
 Truths which come home to us amid such asso- 
 ciations, come with all the peculiar cast of feel- 
 ing appropriate to the circumstances. 
 
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE CONVICTION. 203 
 
 Briefly, too, we must notice the modifying 
 power of personal circumstances upon our feel- 
 ings, in view of religious truth. The hour of 
 trial is proverbially an hour of religious sensi- 
 bility. It is not only that the shadow of afflic- 
 tion breaks the false glare of worldly enjoyment, 
 and shows things in all their naked insufficiency ; 
 but the heart, thus subdued and chastened, is 
 made more susceptible to any appeal to its 
 nobler sentiments ; and when its feelings are 
 vibrating more quickly and sweetly to any touch, 
 there is a peculiar sensibility to the touch of 
 eternal truth. And whatever circumstances sug- 
 gest, of themselves, the great truths of our mor- 
 tality, our helplessness, or our need of divine 
 communion, combine and blend their peculiar 
 emotions with the power of the religious truth 
 that may be presented with them. 
 
 Now, these natural feelings are not to be con- 
 sidered as entirely religious emotions, yet relig- 
 ious feeling is almost invariably associated w r ith 
 them. The excitement may afterward be proven 
 to have been merely adventitious; or, as it dies 
 away, the religious sensibility may be found but 
 feeble in its independent strength : yet it is the 
 Spirit of God which gives the heart, whose emo- 
 tion is communicated to us, these same spiritual 
 
204 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 emotions, and which has given to us some 
 religious susceptibility; and that Spirit, acting 
 through these natural instrumentalities, lends 
 them a supernatural power. These emotional 
 influences, even if they do die away, are not to 
 be discredited or neglected, if they lead the 
 heart to abiding spiritual impressions. "Well, 
 indeed, is it for us if, amid our heedlessness, a 
 human sympathy and an earthly sorrow, as we 
 open our hearts to receive them, may let the 
 countenance of Him who long has stood at the 
 door and knocked, meet our gaze, and his voice 
 of rebuke and promise come, for the moment at 
 least, with more persuasive power. 
 
 It may be well also to notice the fact, that 
 there is a great difference between a sense of the 
 sinfulness of our nature and a sense of the guilt 
 of actual crimes which we have done. We may 
 all acknowledge the guilt of evil desires, of ma- 
 licious passions, and of low motives; we may 
 even be conscious that outward influences alone 
 prevent indulgence in transgression; and yet, 
 when outward freedom does give opportunity 
 for action, and the deed is done, the startled soul 
 is abashed and revolted by the very sin which it 
 has long cherished. We allude to the fact only 
 to illustrate the way in which the convictions of 
 
* 
 
 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE CONVICTION. 205 
 
 those whose lives have been marked by open 
 and definite crimes, are likely to be more sharp 
 and vivid, when once aroused, than the convic- 
 tions of men who, under the restraints of moral- 
 ity, have sinned only in spirit and in negative 
 transgression. The moralist cannot so fix his 
 gaze on specific acts in which the whole sin of 
 his life seems concentrated, and so he may be 
 less agitated by remorse ; but the clearer teach- 
 ing, which is generally around him in his less 
 disturbed life, may bring to him a more just con- 
 viction of the pervading evil of his heart. 
 
 The same influences which vary the intensity 
 of emotion, may also affect the nature of the 
 sentiment thus awakened by the convincing 
 Spirit. Sometimes the sense of sin is the 
 only or the chief thought which oppresses the 
 soul; sometimes God brings a strange fearful- 
 ness of vengeance, and from the trembling ap- 
 prehension of the gathering storm, leads men to 
 think upon the sin which soon will bid it burst 
 upon them. Sometimes, through direct spirit- 
 ual agency, or through the vivid portraitures 
 of one who sees the "terrors of the Lord," 
 and the helplessness of the guilty spirit, that 
 spirit may be all absorbed by the one thought 
 of escaping the wrath to come ; and even when 
 
206 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 its gaze is turned inward on the real evil of sin 
 itself, and while it seeks purity for its own sake, 
 still the vivid impression of the damnation that 
 slumbereth not may so haunt it that, to the end, 
 fear is an overwhelming emotion. In other ex- 
 periences, the soul, directed first to the " sinful- 
 ness of sin," may indeed feel the associated sense 
 of danger, but the habitual expectation of final 
 forgiveness, and the soothing influence of the 
 Holy Spirit, who would use fear only as a step 
 toward penitence, may keep the emotion of ter- 
 ror subdued and almost unnoticed. It matters 
 not, so that the calmer penitent forbear to charge 
 it on his trembling brother, who shudders be- 
 neath the uplifted stroke, that his prayer is the 
 cry of fear alone ; so that one who has passed 
 through terror into peace, impugn not the silent 
 but bitter consciousness of one so filled with a 
 sense of his crime, as he stands upon the scaffold 
 of time, that he scarcely heeds the executioner, 
 and pleads not so much to be unpunished as to 
 be forgiven. 
 
 We have thus seen through what varied phases 
 of experience God may bring the soul to see 
 more clearly its need of salvation ; either by 
 an immediate impression of guilt, or by a con- 
 viction in connexion with a dread of the judg- 
 
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE CONVICTION. 207 
 
 meut to come. There is an experience less 
 strongly marked, by which God leads thousands 
 to the same point. Those stern convictions do, 
 indeed, often break in harshly upon the business 
 and amusements of a life which seems bright 
 and satisfying, if only it were undisturbed by 
 their intrusion. But sometimes they do not 
 break in roughly. The heart, left to its idols, 
 finds the pursuits of life grow unsatisfying and 
 its pleasures pall upon the weary spirit, until in 
 loneliness, and emptiness, and almost despair, it 
 seeks a surer resting-place, and feels its need of 
 a Father and a God, and sees its own unfitness 
 to commune and be a child. There comes no 
 thunder-cloud to scathe our paradise ; but, be- 
 neath a serene sky the Eden fades, and wilts 
 away, and we, looking wistfully upward to an 
 inheritance that fadeth not, feel that w^e are of 
 the earth, earthy, and cannot soar away. Friends 
 die, or scatter, or grow cold ; disease w r astes the 
 natural energy, and shuts us in from the common 
 circle ; poverty comes round us ; early ambitions 
 1 fail ; the tinsel and the trickery of life are shown ; 
 we see ourselves ! We ask, How long is this to last? 
 We look deathward and feel we need a change 
 ere thea. Sermon, and Bible, and inward moni- 
 tions tell us of One " who satisfieth the longing 
 
208 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 soul." We feel that we are separate from God. 
 We feel more and more, that in his presence 
 we dare not speak of any virtue. We are pene- 
 trated with a sense of utter unworthiness. We 
 are convinced of sin. 
 
 The reader will now, we trust, understand that 
 all these phases of experience are but accidents, 
 and that the only thing essential is, the knowl- 
 edge of our sin and danger. To every heart that 
 knowledge is given, and acting on that knowl- 
 edge it may seek and lind redemption. Let the 
 reader remember that, while the Spirit may work 
 upon his heart, even beyond ordinary rules, in 
 the suddenness or energy of its power, yet he 
 cannot rely upon any such special operation to 
 rouse his sense of sin, for no promise of it is 
 given. Let him not wait for the coming of 
 those more vivid apprehensions and severe les- 
 sons of which we have spoken : they may never 
 come to him. He is convinced of his condition, 
 however little he feels it. If ever he feel more 
 deeply, it is well ; but whether he shall feel or 
 not, he may act upon his conviction. Action on 
 that conviction will save him ; and, if inactive, 
 that conviction will damn him. 
 
 We dwell upon this point, because, owing to 
 causes similar to those alluded to above, a large 
 
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE CONVICTION. 209 
 
 number of those cases of bright religious expe- 
 rience which have attracted attention, especially 
 in some denominations, have been preceded by 
 a sudden and new apprehension of sin and 
 wrath, by intense emotions of fear and shame, 
 by sudden conflict, bitter and brief. These 
 boldly-outlined instances have been made a 
 standard by their subjects and by others. Such 
 emotions and vivid apprehension have been 
 deemed an invariable accompaniment of any 
 spiritual impressions, and an absolute prerequi- 
 site to prayer for pardon. Meairwhile thousands 
 have sought and found relief without any such 
 marked emotional experience. Yet thousands 
 are held back from prayer and duty, to await 
 some convulsion of feeling. Let them know 
 that there is not one single degree or peculiarity 
 of experience attending conviction, from the 
 merest intellectual conviction to the most over- 
 whelming emotion, which has not been made 
 the starting-point of a successful religious course, 
 and may not be so again. 
 
 The moral man especially, familiar from child- 
 hood with eternal things, shielded by early nur- 
 ture from outward vice, favoured with a genial 
 temperament, listening, it may be, to pulpit 
 addresses, earnest but not impassioned, contin- 
 
 14 
 
210 NATUJiAL (jKX)DNESS. 
 
 ually associating the idea of expected pardon 
 with every thought of guilt the moral man is 
 of all men least likely to be surprised with sud- 
 den and violent convictions. Let him not be 
 disheartened by their absence. Let him not 
 excuse himself from diligent prayer and watch- 
 ful effort against sin, as though these were use- 
 less or less acceptable to God than if he had 
 more of emotion. God has shown him life and 
 death : God will hear him if he will but pray. 
 If he will not seek the grace which he knows he 
 may secure, God may justly let him perish. 
 
 NOTE. We must again remind the critical reader that we 
 do not profess in these pages to present a systematic view of 
 religious experience; we are speaking to men who are fa- 
 miliar with the general subject; we only present such points 
 as may relieve the usual perplexities, and facilitate the per- 
 sonal experience, of the class of moral men for whom we 
 write. 
 
IX. 
 
 of 
 
"An evangelical repentance is a godly sorrow wrought in 
 the heart of a sinful person by the word and Spirit of God, 
 whereby, from a sense of his sin, as offensive to God, and 
 defiling and endangering to his own soul, and from an appre- 
 hension of the mercy of God in Christ, he with grief and 
 hatred of all his known sins, turns from them to God, as his 
 
 Saviour and Lord." 
 
 RICHARD WATSON. 
 
IX. 
 
 PECULIAR PHASES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE- 
 REPENTANCE. 
 
 " I WILL ARISE, AND GO UNTO MY FATHER." Bit- 
 terly enough had he felt the successive degrada- 
 tions, and realized the fate that closed around 
 him; yet he sat motionless in his humiliation, 
 and strove to banish thoughts that would not 
 be dismissed. But that moment of resolution 
 came " I will arise and go ! " His face turned 
 homeward : he took the first trembling step 
 away from the land of exile : his father saw 
 him afar off. 
 
 To every human soul which God has given to 
 know its sin, God has given strength to forsake 
 it. Whether amid the thunder and the whirl- 
 wind, the still small voice has come ; or, like a 
 strange presentiment of danger, the conviction 
 has grown upon it, the heart may look toward 
 the cross of Christ, and say, " I will arise and go." 
 Not that by one effort of the will it can throw 
 off its evil nature. But every one has power to 
 
214r NATUBAL GOODNESS. 
 
 struggle against the act of sin, and, as he strug- 
 gles, to pray. He may entirely fail at first. 
 But his prayer will bring a larger power of 
 resistance to evil, a deeper earnestness of prayer, 
 and greater readiness for successive measures 
 of spiritual aid ; until he becomes conscious of 
 a power not only to resist but to overcome the 
 sinful impulse, and sensible also that in his evil 
 nature itself a change from sinfulness to purity 
 has begun, and thus there is less to overcome. 
 
 In the spirit thus aroused, and gathering its 
 energies for the struggle, the first moral effort 
 is naturally directed to those particular sins 
 which education or an instinctive horror have 
 made most conspicuous, or into which the pecu- 
 liarity of our temperament and temptations may 
 have most frequently betrayed us. The rest of 
 our conduct seems comparatively blameless, and 
 the work of reformation is summed up in the 
 resolute conflict with a few evil habits. The 
 main positive duties also, which are seen to be 
 involved in Christian character, and which have 
 hitherto been neglected, are thenceforth observed 
 with scrupulous care. But the self-reformer, 
 with the pride of success mingling with his 
 serious energy of purpose, soon starts to find 
 that he has sadly miscalculated the foes whom 
 
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE REPENTANCE. 
 
 lie has challenged. He has laid prostrate the 
 circle of transgressions which closed in most 
 nearly and tauntingly around him ; but their 
 fall only leaves exposed to view other and larger 
 ranks of sins, which had been undetected or but 
 vaguely apprehended behind the more prominent 
 evils.- For the heart once resolutely deaf to the 
 strongest claims of religious obligation, but now 
 quickened, and practised to hear their solemn 
 voice, thrills to the cries of a thousand duties 
 trampled and crushed beneath the feet of victo- 
 rious sins, and springs to the rescue. Again and 
 again, yea, more and more as we struggle on, 
 the light grows clearer, and conscience more 
 sensitive, until not alone our more observable 
 words and actions seem amenable to the law of 
 rectitude, but all actions and all words, the imag- 
 inations of the mind, the most familiar exercises 
 of the heart, the light and fleeting impulses of 
 the soul are clothed with a moral character, and 
 are clearly right or wrong. The delicacy which 
 we once thought but- a morbid scrupulosity, a 
 weak attention to petty distinctions, now is felt 
 to be a sense of solemn truth. The smallest dia- 
 mond, the minutest crystal that shows one facet 
 from out a stone, or forms but half a grain of 
 sand, shines when the sun beams on it, while the 
 
216 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 atom of uncrystalline earth beside it reflects no 
 raj : and so, the approving smile, which, like a 
 sunlight, beams out from God's holiness on all 
 that is not sin, is reflected from the slightest 
 actions and words, from half-formed feelings 
 and unfinished thoughts. 
 
 There is a great point gained when the soul 
 thus realizes the religious character of all we 
 think, and feel, and say, and do. Conspicuous 
 duties could be done, and flagrant vices could 
 be laid aside by the resolute action of the will ; 
 and when once the form is not visible, the heart, 
 may imagine that it has annihilated its evils. 
 But when the entire previous life, even to mi- 
 nutest action and feeling, assumes a moral char- 
 acter, the self-will and the enmity which ap- 
 peared to be all summed up in a few gross sins 
 that, like great tumours, festered on the soul, 
 now are seen in a thousand points, and the heart 
 sickens to see itself covered with sins covered 
 with a general eruption of transgressions. A 
 great point has been gained ; but a more solemn 
 revelation is at hand. So long as only a few 
 conspicuous violations of law were noticed, they 
 seemed like isolated impulses, like mere local 
 weaknesses or diseases, which, if not actually 
 caused by the pressure of an outward tempta- 
 
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE REPENTANCE. 
 
 tion, were peculiarly sensitive to its presence, 
 while the rest of the moral being was in health. 
 But as these points of actual sin multiply and 
 overspread the soul, a sense of their countless- 
 ness, and the difficulty of reducing them to 
 purity and health, grows on us with deadly cer- 
 tainty. Then the great truth comes. It flashes 
 on us, that these sins are not scattered and 
 separate ailings, which can be removed by any 
 separate treatment, however severe and long 
 continued ; but that the disease is in the blood, 
 and the inmost nature of the soul is poisoned 
 with the virus that breaks out in separate trans- 
 gressions. Then self-despair begins. As long 
 as separate sins could be numbered, the soul 
 had courage to rally its healthful energies, and 
 overcome them but if the nature be infected, 
 whence shall the restoring energy go forth ? A 
 terrible conviction bursts upon the soul, as when 
 of old a Hebrew invalid hopefully and patiently 
 applied the most painful remedies as his malady 
 assumed its various . forms, till suddenly that 
 fatal sign met his eye, and he cried out in agony, 
 
 " I AM A LEPEB." 
 
 Yet, during this solemn instruction in the 
 completeness of his depravity, the repenting 
 sinner mav have really corrected his life with so 
 
218 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 much success that few or none suspect him to 
 be thus pained in secret. He may even find 
 that as he avoids occasions of sin, and as refusal 
 to indulge or to excite evil desires serves, after 
 the first struggles, to allay the craving for sin, 
 his heart itself is not so agitated by conflicting 
 passions. He may repress the emotion of passion 
 until even he himself cannot realize that the 
 repressed principle still remains; and then the 
 better impulses of his constitution, which have 
 heretofore been sacrificed to the indulgence of 
 baser passions, may now assert their influence 
 and adorn the character. 
 
 SELF-CULTUEE is the watchword of a philoso- 
 phy directly opposed to the doctrine of depravity 
 or of regeneration by the Holy Spirit ; and cer- 
 tainly the power of self-culture to elevate and 
 harmonize the character, by its own single force, 
 apart from any divine aid given in answer to 
 prayer, is a most interesting, as it is to many 
 a most perplexing fact. A faculty adequate to 
 such high achievements, demands a fair consid- 
 eration and a just estimate of its claim. 
 
 "There are two powers of the human soul 
 which make self-culture possible the self- 
 searching and the self-forming power. We have 
 
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE REPENTANCE. 219 
 
 first the faculty of turning the mind on itself; 
 of recalling its past and watching its present 
 operations ; of learning its various capacities 
 and susceptibilities ; what it can do and bear 
 what it can enjoy and suffer ; and of thus learn- 
 ing in general, what our nature is, and what it 
 was made for. It is worthy of observation, that 
 we are able to discern -not only what we already 
 are, but what we may become ; to see in our- 
 selves germs and promises of a growth to which 
 no bounds can be set ; to dart beyond what we 
 have actually gained, to the idea of perfection, 
 as the end of our being. It is by this self-com- 
 prehending power that we are distinguished from 
 the brutes, which give no signs of looking into 
 themselves. Without this there would be no 
 self-culture, for we should not know the work to 
 be done ; and one reason why self-culture is so 
 little proposed is, that so few penetrate their 
 own nature. 
 
 " But self-culture is possible, not only because 
 we can enter into and search ourselves. "We 
 have still a nobler power that of acting on, de- 
 termining, and forming ourselves. This is a fear- 
 ful as well as glorious endowment ; for it is the 
 ground of human responsibility. We have the 
 power not only of tracing our powers, but of 
 
NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 guiding and impelling them ; not only of watch- 
 ing our passions, but of controlling them ; not 
 only of seeing our faculties grow, but of apply- 
 ing to them means and influences to aid their 
 growth. We can stay or change the current of 
 thought. We can concentrate the intellect on 
 objects which we wish to comprehend. We can 
 fix our eyes on perfection, and make almost every- 
 thing speed us toward it. This is indeed a noble 
 prerogative of our nature."* 
 
 Noble prerogative indeed ! and one by which 
 humanity, as it came from the hand of the Creator, 
 held within itself the power of infinite progression 
 toward divine perfection, " changing from glory 
 unto glory." Endowed with the germ and early 
 blossoming of every virtue and every grace of 
 character, it needed culture only to develop the 
 perfect fruit. And even now the germ that is 
 not blighted can be cultured still, and throw its 
 beauty and its fragrance over human life ; and 
 grafted impulses, inserted for the time in the 
 barren nature, may be developed into moment- 
 ary luxuriance ; but the blighted germs of spirit- 
 ual affections and principles defy all power of 
 culture. Not until again created as at first, by 
 
 * Channing's Self-Culture. 
 
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE REPENTANCE. 221 
 
 the energy of the Holy Ghost, will the living 
 germ of a spiritual life be there to admit of cul- 
 ture. 
 
 However specious, therefore, the achievements 
 of a prayerless self-culture may appear a cul- 
 ture of those elements which are found in hu- 
 manity without a divine implantation^ of new 
 principles they will be found upon examination 
 to be exhausted in mere external reformation, in 
 the strengthening or repression of those tempo- 
 rary instincts which encase the soul, and in the 
 delicacy given by exercise to those apprehen- 
 sions of the obligation and beauty of perfect vir- 
 tue, which are indestructible elements even in a 
 depraved nature. That only can be cultivated 
 which already has root in our nature. Let then 
 those elements of moral and social character, 
 upon which we have so long dwelt in former 
 pages, have the highest culture; let the best 
 combination of natural dispositions be encour- 
 aged by all prudential restraints and a fostering 
 education ; let the oppressive sense of the moral 
 obligation of rectitude attend each action, and 
 keep the future destiny in view ; let a sense of 
 the artistic beauty of virtue prompt to a mere 
 sentimental desire for symmetry of character; 
 let the Spirit, which is ever warning or alluring 
 
222 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 the' soul by its secret whispers, breathe sugges- 
 tions of better things ; and you may produce a 
 character almost faultless to outward observa- 
 tion, and presenting a strange similitude to re- 
 ligious experience in men who never prayed 
 nor felt their need of prayer, or pardon, or re- 
 newalwho never yet felt that personal affec- 
 tion toward the Holiest and Best, for which no 
 general sentiment can be a compensation. 
 
 Self-culture, in another sense, is indeed the 
 life-work of the Christian ; but it is the culture of 
 a new element of character, implanted in an- 
 swer to prayer, and cherished in a strength and 
 wisdom sought and found out of himself. This 
 true religious culture may indeed demand the 
 same prudential avoidance of temptation, the 
 same repression of manifestations of evil, the 
 same culture of natural virtues, beneath the 
 shelter of which true spiritual virtue may more 
 easily grow up. But all this is felt to be but 
 subservient and temporary the careful strength- 
 ening of the false-work over which the arch of 
 spiritual purity reaches its completeness. 
 
 Thus far, then, we have been speaking of that 
 which the soul may learn and do, by the action 
 of its own conscience and its own will, quickened 
 
JiELIUlOUS EXPERIENCE REPENTANCE. 223 
 
 by that Holy Spirit which, unasked and unde- 
 sired yea, resisted and despised still will not 
 leave us, but yet waits to be gracious more and 
 more. There may have been no prayer ; there 
 may have been no distinct dependence upon 
 divine aid. Seeing its sins, an honest heart un- 
 dertakes to remove them ; and its first success in 
 relinquishing many forms of transgression leaves 
 it no sense of weakness. As the multitude of 
 the heart's imperfections comes out more clearly, 
 the work appears more arduous, but not imprac- 
 ticable to energetic effort. Then, as self-disci- 
 pline is turned to those expressions of desire or 
 passion which are more spontaneous, less under 
 the control of the will, and lying, if we may so 
 express it, nearer to the heart itself, failure upon 
 failure dispirits the first enthusiasm, and the 
 spirit, sorely pressed, would fain have aid from 
 heaven. Yet still the aid desired is only partial 
 a grant additional to previous endowments, and 
 merely supplementary to native powers. But 
 more and more seems needed as the conflict 
 thickens, until as he, day by day, realizes more 
 clearly that he is combating, not with the mere 
 forms of evil but with the secret energy that is 
 beneath them ; and as a^ last he sees that this 
 energy of sin is the pulsation of his very being, 
 
224: NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 the honest and humble spirit admits the fact that 
 he can of himself do just nothing to the purpose, 
 and God must work the whole salvation, if it be 
 wrought at all. 
 
 And here we feel bound, in justice to the pa- 
 tient kindness of the Holy Spirit, to speak of an- 
 other phase of repentance, which is not enough 
 observed by the world or by the Church. We 
 know that the natural expression of feeling is in 
 language, and that a sense of personal depend- 
 ence on another, and a desire for direct assist- 
 ance, naturally leads to a direct expression and y 
 formal application. Thus prayer is habitually 
 spoken of in Scripture as a verbal and spe- 
 cific expression of recognised wants, demand 
 ing for its full and concentrated power the 
 privilege of definite time, and place, and utter- 
 ance. Even the veteran Christian feels increas- 
 ingly the necessity of those seasons of concen- 
 trated and exclusive supplication, in order to 
 sustain that clear sense of divine things, and 
 those spontaneous aspirations, which pervade 
 his momentary life. Perhaps few instances are 
 known, in which, without that spoken prayer 
 in whispered tones it may be, or in broken utter- 
 ance, but still the articulate utterance of an 
 earnest heart anv one has reached the full ex 
 
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE REPENTANCE. 225 
 
 perience of a living Christianity. Few minds 
 are so formed and trained that they could with- 
 hold the utterance of deep feeling, and fewer still 
 would do it without self-discipline and a set pur- 
 pose. Yet it may ~be so, that, in the earlier stages 
 of religious experience at least, the spirit of 
 prayer may breathe out from the heart, although 
 unclothed in words, and unrecognised as prayer 
 by the soul itself. Deepening convictions of sin 
 may grow upon the conscience, and resolute 
 effort be put forth, and under the sense of weak- 
 ness gained by instruction or by experience, the 
 heart may feel its dependence upon God, and 
 lean humbly and trustingly upon his aid as it 
 struggles onward. Ask such a one, abruptly, 
 if he prays, and he may start, and answer, "No." 
 Yet he does pray; not in that full expression, 
 that minute specification, and that direct address 
 which by a law of our constitution would deepen 
 the uttered feelings as they are poured forth; 
 but yet he prays in the spirit of humble trust 
 for aid. 
 
 Now, in the light of this observation, we see 
 the true solution of a problem most difficult to 
 those who recognise no transition stage between 
 mere natural self-culture and that definite prayer- 
 fulness which takes the open attitude of a peni- 
 
 15 
 
NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 tent. Often does the pastor's eye rest upon 
 honoured and amiable men and women, whose 
 attentive gaze and serious spirit indicate their 
 religious sensibility. Not only is there correct- 
 ness in their life, and a careful culture of that 
 symmetry and justness of sentiment which a re- 
 fined and cultured mind may be expected to 
 exhibit; but there is a solemn recognition of 
 truth, a spiritual apprehension, a tone of depend- 
 ence and of trust, which, even while some evils 
 may yet visibly be indulged, do betoken a spirit 
 in some degree moulded and taught of God. 
 And it is, in very truth, an incipient Christian 
 experience. It is not prudential, nor instinctive, 
 nor aesthetic morality : it is not the energy of a 
 soul with only the original measure of grace 
 which started him on his probation. It is the 
 experience of one taught his danger and his sin, 
 who, in his effort to reform, feels the need of 
 pardon and of grace, and does lean on God for 
 help day by day. Such perhaps was that young 
 man whom Jesus loved, although for a moment, 
 as a new view of self-denial probed his nature to 
 the quick, he shrank and went away sorrowful. 
 Nature may 'not lime the credit of such charac- 
 ters. Eeligion has begun to transform them 
 with her light. The Spirit has breathed upon 
 
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE REPENTANCE. 227 
 
 those hearts. They are not to be confused by 
 mere denunciation, but to be welcomed as even 
 now crossing the threshold of religion, and only 
 to be led on to more decided and explicit action. 
 In the process of gathering resolution which 
 finally consents to yield all known transgression, 
 however cherished and habitual, the heart some- 
 times is perplexed to find its hardest struggle to 
 be with sins to which it had scarcely realized a 
 temptation before. Indulgences so trivial that 
 one would have smiled at the idea of bondage 
 to them, and which are even now despised, are 
 yet the hardest and last to be sacrificed. It 
 seems as though the evil spirit had not only re- 
 linquished all the fortress beside, to entrench 
 himself more strongly in one tower ; but as if in 
 mockery he made that. point impregnable which 
 we had thought of the least strength. Long 
 may the heart pause before that little sin, so 
 slight amid the larger sacrifices already made 
 to duty, as to be scarcely seen. The unwilling 
 spirit asks if He to whom all else is surrendered, 
 will let a little thing like that destroy his favour. 
 And we answer, N~o! God cares not for that 
 petty sin ; but around that trivial act the self- 
 will of the heart is gathered. To disobey and 
 to wound a friend, to break the law of right, 
 
228 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 when temptation is overwhelming, might admit 
 of palliation. But God counts those transgres- 
 sions great, the inducements to which are so con- 
 temptible. 
 
 The sense of sin involves the consciousness of 
 guilt and the desert of punishment. We said 
 above that sometimes the fearful apprehension 
 of wrath to come agitated the penitent, even 
 through long seasons of contrition. But some- 
 times the Holy Spirit, even in advance, gives to 
 the heart that is pressing on toward its full re- 
 demption, such a view of the atonement as 
 breaks the terror while it leaves the shame. 
 Hard is it for a high spirit to come humbly 
 down and take mercy as sheer mercy which 
 might have been withheld, and left him wretch- 
 ed in defilement and fearful punishment. The 
 heart must feel that it must be forgiven before 
 it can be renewed ; must come in disgrace and 
 humiliation, and ask to be restored. 
 
 And, finally, as the hour of deliverance draws 
 near, the Holy Spirit breathes more and more 
 into the heart a hatred to sin, as well as a fear 
 of its penalties ; and from its intrinsic vileness the 
 spirit turns with loathing. It yields no longer 
 to the seductive evil as to an enticement that 
 it loves, though fearing the retribution which 
 
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE REPENTANCE. 229 
 
 must follow ; it turns away no longer from a 
 cherished though forbidden vice : it loathes its 
 conquerors ; it despises its master sins ; it de- 
 lights in the law of God after the inward man, 
 and feels that it is carnal sold under sin. 
 Sickened, and oppressed by unwilling associa- 
 tion of every thought and feeling with trans- 
 gression, the weary soul cries out, " O ! wretched 
 man that I am ! who shall deliver me from the 
 body of this death?" 
 
 In thus presenting the successive phases of 
 experience through which an earnest penitent 
 may pass in his progress to peace and purity, 
 we do not mean to assert that the process must 
 be long, and the lessons learned so gradually, as 
 we have described them. In the rich, warm 
 moisture of a river's bank beneath a tropical sky, 
 a single day will suffice to raise with magic sud- 
 denness the huge luxuriance of a majestic plant 
 from the tiniest seed. In colder zones that 
 growth would be the slow and gradual work 
 of months. Yet the process of growth is identi- 
 cal. The same chemical changes, and the same 
 mechanical formation of cell and fibre, and blos- 
 som and full fruit, go on in each ; only in one the 
 stages are distinctly marked, while in the other 
 they cannot be discriminated. Thus, under vary- 
 
230 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 ing influences of the Holy Spirit, acting through 
 varying circumstances around the soul, and with 
 the varying cooperation of the soul itself, the 
 transition and processes of Christian experience 
 may be hastened or retarded, so that sometimes 
 any eye may mark the successive stages, and 
 sometimes they may be unperceived by the peni- 
 tent himself. The slower movement affords an 
 easier exhibition and analysis of the great pro- 
 cesses of moral growth : and, generally, the 
 moral man will pass through that more gradual 
 transition. But wheresoever the reader may feel 
 that he can recognise his heart's position along 
 the earlier stages which we have exemplified, 
 let him hasten, by immediate prayer and resolu- 
 tion, to reach a perfect experience. 
 
X. 
 
 ,J[ait|, 
 
" To him that in thy Name believes, 
 
 Eternal life with thee is given ; 
 Into himself he all receives, 
 
 Pardon, and holiness, and heaven. 
 
 "The things unknown to feeble sense, 
 Unseen by reason's glimm'ring ray, 
 
 With strong commanding evidence, 
 Their heavenly origin display. 
 
 11 Faith lends its realizing light ; 
 
 The clouds disperse, the shadows fly; 
 The' Invisible appears in sight, 
 
 And God is seen by mortal eye." 
 
 CHARLES WESLEY. 
 
PECULIAR PHASES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE - 
 FAITH. 
 
 CONVICTION bears her torch into the secret cham- 
 bers of the soul, and it writhes beneath a sense 
 of sin. 
 
 Repentance speaks, and that soul rouses to a 
 resistance to the evil, until in self-despair it can 
 only pray. 
 
 Faith utters, "I believe," and lo! a "new cre- 
 ation:" the sinner stands forgiven purified a 
 child of God! 
 
 What is this faith? 
 
 Freely God will bestow pardon and renewal 
 on any penitent seeker; but of course the gift 
 must be received with a full understanding and 
 acknowledgment of the circumstances under 
 which it is given. Man must take his proper 
 attitude before God and the universe, and he 
 must own the true character of the act which 
 saves him. Thoroughly depraved, the blessing 
 which he seeks must not be mere strengthening 
 
234 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 and aid, but a new nature a regeneration a 
 life from the dead. Guilty in his pollution, he 
 must seek favour not as mere benevolence, but 
 as mercy, from a God whom he has personally 
 wronged and insulted. Exposed to punishment, 
 he must feel that his soul has no compensation 
 which it can bring to atone for its past and pres- 
 ent sin. So long as- a soul shall refuse honestly 
 to look its sins in the face, and feel their vileness, 
 and meanness, and insult ; so long as it would fain 
 take God's help rather as the faithful soldier's 
 regular rations, than as the reprieve given to a 
 deserter ; so long it will seek in vain. But the 
 heart humbled and without a plea, may trust in 
 God's promise for present pardon and for present 
 power. Thus, by resting solely on God's mercy, 
 the soul distinctly abjures any merit or power 
 in itself, and so negatively recognises the true 
 circumstances under which salvation is to be 
 given. 
 
 But, furthermore, it is clear that the gift may 
 be free, and yet God may have chosen a special 
 method of bestowing it. There ma^ be some- 
 thing in that method repulsive, or humiliating, 
 or perplexing to the mind, and yet God has , a 
 right to demand that we take his gift, not only 
 as his gift, but as coming through these particu- 
 
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE FAITH. 235 
 
 lar circumstances and instrumentalities. If it has 
 pleased God to grant us salvation by the death 
 of Christ as an atonement, we cannot leave out 
 of sight this great fact, and say we will take the 
 mercy direct from God, without reference to the 
 views or the expedients which have weight upon 
 his mind. We must take it as it really is as 
 God's mercy shown to us in view of that sacri- 
 ficial death. We must trust in God's mercy, 
 through Christ. 
 
 It is not demanded that a penitent be able to 
 solve all the deep problems which hang around 
 the atonement. He may trust God's word that the 
 sufferings of Jesus are held as the substitute or 
 equivalent for the penalties he merited, and yet 
 he may not fathom the mystery, how God finds 
 in them a reason and a means, without which he 
 could not pardon. The unlettered orphan-boy, 
 ignorant and of slow comprehension, may take 
 the check handed him by a benefactor, and 
 hearing that in view of, and for the sake of that 
 check, his plea will be heard by a banker, may 
 never tiling or never know just how this banker 
 is persuaded to give the money, or how he is 
 compensated; but that poor boy may ask and 
 receive the amount, not in view of his own claim, 
 and not in view of any personal good-will alone 
 
236 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 of the banker toward his benefactor, but in view 
 of that same check. So may a poor penitent 
 soul feel, that it is enough if God and Christ 
 know, as perhaps they alone know fully, the 
 compensations and the bearings of that atone- 
 ment. It is enough that we never come to ask 
 God's blessings but through that medium, trust- 
 ing, see we more or less clearly, in the Lamb of 
 God, that taketh away the sins of the world. 
 We dare present no prayer to God which Christ 
 has not endorsed and endorsed in his own blood 
 of suffering. 
 
 Thus, as by the abjuration of any merit or 
 goodness in ourselves, faith admits, negatively, 
 the circumstances under which pardon and re- 
 newal are to be granted : so, by resting on the 
 atonement, faith recognises, positively, the true 
 medium of salvation. It need only to be added 
 that this trust is for a present fulfilment, in an- 
 swer to our present prayer. " Faith is a sure con- 
 fidence, which a man hath in God, that through 
 the merits of Christ his sins are forgiven, and he 
 reconciled to the favour of God." 
 
 But when an humble penitent, taking his true 
 position before God, and yielding all other hope, 
 does trust in God's promise through that atone- 
 ment, thereupon his sins are pardoned, and he is 
 
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE FAITH. 237 
 
 held as guiltless; his enslaved will has power 
 given unto it, not only to resist, but to overcome 
 his besetments; he feels that instead of that 
 strange opposition to God which lurked within, 
 a hearty and cordial love for holiness and God 
 has entered ; and with the pure love toward God 
 there come all pure affections toward man. 
 
 Now, this reliance, this resting on God's prom- 
 ise for Jesus's sake, is what is commonly called 
 the act of faith ; an act, we say, because it in- 
 volves a special effwt of the will. We all know 
 how, when years have trained us into habitual 
 impression of another's unkind feelings toward us, 
 even when some circumstances which misled us 
 are explained away, yet the habitual feeling so 
 occupies the mind, that only a sense of justice 
 leads us to say, "I know how false my prejudice 
 has been ; I know all is explained ; I ought to 
 confide in him, and I will." So the long unbe- 
 lief of a heart unfits the soul to believe that God 
 can, and will, and does forgive it ; and with all 
 the grace bestowed it requires an effort of the 
 soul to rety, and say, I will trust his mercy 
 through Christ. Thus the act of faith is simply 
 "putting our trust" in the atonement. 
 
 But there is also to be noticed a power of ap- 
 prehending spiritual things, a power to realize 
 
238 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 what has only been dimly conceived before, 
 which, because it does take cognizance of things 
 beyond the range of the natural sight, is termed 
 faith. This supernatural recognition of God's 
 presence and favour, and of our relations to him, 
 and indeed of all eternal things previously re- 
 vealed to the ear, but now brought home to the 
 heart, brings up before the Christian a new 
 world. More and more, as a part of his restored 
 prerogatives, this faith of apprehension grows 
 stronger and stronger from the moment of that 
 first act of faith. And so clear and easy is this 
 spiritual vision of spiritual facts and truths, that 
 the soul's reliance upon God, which at first re- 
 quired an effort, now becomes an easy and spon- 
 taneous state of assurance. 
 
 From the first prayer of the penitent, a low 
 degree of this faith of apprehension is given ; 
 and as he perseveres in self-distrust and self- 
 denial, it grows clearer still: he realizes the 
 existence of the solemn interests at stake ; he 
 sees, albeit dimly, the fitness of the plan of re- 
 demption ; and he has a foundation for that first 
 act of faith, that resolution of putting his trust in 
 Jesus. As he presses on in the Christian life, 
 there may be long seasons of that clear appre- 
 hension which makes trust an easy, almost a 
 
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE FAITH. 239 
 
 spontaneous reliance. But not only when sin 
 may have destroyed the Christian's communion 
 with the Father, and thrown him back to his 
 first position, but sometimes under temptations, 
 under peculiar circumstances, and in regard to 
 particular points, that open vision and easy trust 
 are withdrawn, and the soul has its reliance upon 
 divine truth tested^ and retains its title to the 
 promises, only by a sustained act of faith, a 
 dauntless resolution to believe and rest calmly, 
 come what may. 
 
 The distinction between the "faith of reliance" 
 and the "faith of spiritual apprehension," is es- 
 sential to any clear views of Scriptural expres- 
 sions. The trust is faith, because it rests upon 
 a promise, and upon an atonement unseen, and 
 revealed only by God. The spiritual vision is 
 f&tih, because it apprehends things which the 
 natural eye hath not seen, nor the natural ear 
 heard. But the difference is marked. God does 
 indeed, by his own power, first unasked, and then 
 prayed for, bring the heart to that point where 
 it may believe, and so strengthen it that it can 
 believe ; but in that strength the heart must of 
 its own free-will act, and put its trust in the 
 promise of God. Power to believe, is not ina- 
 bility to disbelieve. God does not work that 
 
240 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 faith of trust, irresistibly; lie gives power to 
 trust, and then calls upon the heart to do it. 
 
 But the degree of spiritual vision of "things 
 eternal and unseen," depends solely upon the 
 pleasure of the Mediator, who is guiding each 
 child of God to perfection. The heart may in- 
 deed trust more easily when heaven seems 
 opened, and its glories are revealed ; but its true 
 foundation of trust is the word of God, which 
 abideth the same although the glorious vision 
 passes away. The Christian is like one led to 
 the top of the citadel of an impregnable fortress 
 at midnight : he is required to enter and abide 
 quietly amid all alarms, upon the simple assur- 
 ance of his guide that he is safe. The glimmer- 
 ing moonbeams, breaking through a cloud, may 
 sometimes disclose the strengtli and outline of 
 the fortress even to his view ; yet his faith rests 
 upon his guide : for when the clouds may again 
 veil all from sight, his faith must be as firm. So 
 the Christian relies on God's promises of pardon, 
 and adoption, and renewal, however his light and 
 joyous apprehension of divine things may come 
 and go only looking to see that he does sincerely 
 yield his will to God. We are saved by faith 
 that is, by trusting. 
 
 If, then, God pleases, at the moment of an ap- 
 
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE FAITH. 241 
 
 propriating faith, to let the great change be 
 wrought, it is not for us to hesitate because we 
 cannot see any merit or any power in the mere 
 act of believing or trusting God. There is neither 
 merit nor power in faith ; the Holy Spirit chooses 
 that moment to act this is enough. 
 
 Yet little as we can see in faith to bring the 
 great change, we can see much in a want of 
 faith in unbelief to arrest, or keep back a 
 bestowment which otherwise would be given. 
 In heaven no one thinks it any special virtue to 
 believe and trust in God ; it is a mere matter of 
 course. It is evident that a created and finite 
 mind must ever meet, in the dispensations of an 
 infinite God, whose arrangements are on a scale 
 beyond his scope of vision, much to perplex, and 
 much perhaps which seems not only unwise but 
 even unjust. The only basis of hearty obedience 
 and cooperation for one thus perplexed, must 
 be in a firm faith in the holiness and wisdom 
 which assigns his duties, and promises his needed 
 strength, and overrules all things. Perfect con- 
 fidence in Jehovah, without any encouragement 
 but his character and word, is the preliminary 
 and fundamental principle of love and obedience, 
 wherever created beings dwell be it in heaven 
 or on earth. In all the arrangements of the un- 
 16 
 
242 NATURAL GOODNESS. ' 
 
 fallen universe, it is taken for granted that there 
 is this implicit confidence in the wisdom, holi- 
 ness, love, and truth of the Father of spirits. It 
 is presupposed in every promise which God 
 makes to angel or to seraph, that they rely upon 
 his truth. It is understood, we say, and need 
 not be expressed. But should they look up, in 
 a moment of need, for the new blessing promised 
 to their prayer, and say, or think it, "I doubt the 
 truth of God," that doubt would cancel every 
 promise, and hurl them aside as insulters of the 
 Most High. Could they ever again come back, 
 the very first condition must be a rejection of 
 that insulting doubt a readiness to trust them- 
 selves and every interest upon the simple word 
 of God. It is not that any merit or magical 
 power would be in their believing, but that the 
 hinderance of their unbelief is gone. 
 
 So, when a ruined race is to be restored, and 
 placed upon the same footing as the whole family 
 of God, they are admitted to sonship upon resum- 
 ing that simple state of " trust," which all must 
 keep ; and as God has promised pardon and re- 
 newal, through the atonement, to them that for- 
 sake sin, and any other hope of acceptance, the 
 first testing of a willing and resolute faith in God, 
 is that promise of a present salvation which calls 
 
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE FAITH. 243 
 
 for a trust, " that i, even I, arn a child of God." 
 Until the heart is prepared to trust God for this, 
 it cannot trust him for that which will require 
 faith afterward. This is only the first lesson and 
 exercise of a faith which is to have a ceaseless 
 exercise through eternity to say, "I rest upon 
 thy promise, and I am reconciled." 
 
 So deep is the conviction of guilt and depravity 
 in most who with " hearty repentance turn unto 
 God," that, with all the strength imparted by the 
 Holy Spirit, it requires a most intense effort to 
 put our immediate trust in the atonement for a 
 present salvation. The answering regeneration 
 may come with as sudden and overpowering joy, 
 and love, and vision of eternal things ; but not 
 always. The trust may seem gradually to settle, 
 and acquire full strength ; and gradually as the 
 breaking day, the light of reconciliation the 
 peace, the love of God may dawn upon the 
 confiding spirit. 
 
 Here let us warn the intellectual reader to be- 
 ware of an error by which a self-styled spiritual- 
 ism has striven to parody the facts of Chris- 
 tian experience with a mere sentimental reverie. 
 The idea is, that the various changes of principle, 
 of affection, and of emotion, which follow a true 
 
244 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 act of faith, are not to be regarded as in any wise 
 supernatural the result of any direct energy of 
 the Holy Spirit upon the heart but that the 
 regular laws of mental suggestion and succession, 
 by which one thought or feeling produces an- 
 other., will account for all the phenomena of 
 Christian experience. The act of faith, there- 
 fore, is not merely the occasion upon which God 
 works the great change, but is in itself the cause 
 of the succeeding change in the heart. Conver- 
 sion is like any other operation of the mind. 
 
 The foundation of the error lies in the fact, 
 that the truths of the gospel ought to awaken 
 within the heart all these feelings of love to God 
 and devotion to holiness, and ought to stimulate 
 to moral energy. In a heart properly sensitive, 
 these feelings must arise when the truths are 
 properly presented. When, therefore, standing 
 amid these motives and truths, the heart is filled 
 with appropriate emotion, the conjecture is that 
 the effect is produced by a natural power, with- 
 out a divine interposition. 
 
 But the fallacy is in supposing that the heart 
 is properly sensitive ; for the very change to be 
 produced is the restoration of the heart to a 
 proper sensibility to spiritual motives and influ- 
 ences. The mystery of the heart has been, that 
 
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE FAITH. 245 
 
 through long years it could have the great truths 
 of redemption pressed upon it, and yet remain 
 unaffected. It simply realizes that it ought to 
 feel, and yet does not. And even when pene- 
 trated with a sense of guilt, and earnest in 
 prayer for renewal, the bitter consciousness is, 
 that it rebels against a God whom it ought to 
 love, and is overcome by a temptation which it 
 ought to crush like a moth. When, after long 
 waiting in full view of all these truths and mo- 
 tives the heart sees no more clearly, and is no 
 less dead to them than before, the same defect 
 which renders all these truths powerless, would 
 vitiate any natural influence of a mere reliance 
 on the atonement. But when the penitent trusts, 
 then God gives the new nature, and its new sen- 
 sibility, and thus creates the love, and joy, and 
 peace. After that, the various motives, acting 
 on a soul now duly sensitive to their influence, 
 will indeed deepen and animate the feelings 
 which before they could not arouse. 
 
 Had God chosen, as the occasion of his new 
 creation, a condition of salvation in no way con- 
 nected with the result, every one would have 
 given to his interposing grace the honour of the 
 work. But we must feel that although there may 
 be in certain truths an adaptation to impress the 
 
24:6 . NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 heart, yet that adaptation does not obviate the 
 need of a direct interposition of the Holy Spirit. 
 Iron may be heated to a certain degree in com- 
 mon air, and with that given degree of heat may 
 remain unconsumed, only tending to combustion ; 
 but if oxygen be poured around it, with the same 
 heat applied, it burns with brilliant coruscations. 
 So there may be a natural tendency in all the 
 motives and views presented by the gospel, to 
 awaken love and inspire a pure devotion, if only 
 the heart were duly susceptible of their power ; 
 yet this tendency remains but a tendency, so long 
 as the sorrow-stricken heart delays that act of 
 faith ; then, upon the new heart, the tendency 
 becomes an actual power. This, then, is the act 
 of regeneration on the part of God, following that 
 act of reliance on the part of man, which is the 
 condition of salvation. 
 
 The separate particulars of that change 
 wrought in the soul, we have already alluded to. 
 The slavery of the will which had continued 
 even amid penitence and prayer is in a moment, 
 it may be, broken forever. It has a power given 
 it to overcome its besetments, as it was of old 
 overcome by them. Kot as a light labour may 
 it be that all duties are done and all sin forsaken, 
 but it is a mighty revolution which effects their 
 
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE FAITH. 247 
 
 performance at all. The young Christian is half 
 astonished at his own success. Yet if, by the 
 strange power of choice inherent in his will, he 
 shall turn back to any sin, that overcoming 
 power will fail, and only by a fresh and penitent 
 reliance on the atonement can it be regained. 
 
 And so there is inwrought a new love to God 
 a love which gives itself away, and asks only to 
 be loved a love spontaneous in a nature now 
 akin to the divine. The old principle of self- 
 will and pride, which swept away all nobler 
 thoughts, is supplanted by a pure and self-sacri- 
 ficing affection which subdues all opposition. 
 And yet self-will is not at once eradicated. 
 Subdued and crushed beneath a conquering love, 
 it yet may struggle as it dies ; but it writhes in 
 a perpetual defeat. For although conscious of 
 some influence from unworthy motives, yet we 
 feel that the nobler love prevails against them. 
 We take that inferior principle daily before God 
 in prayer ; and as we recount his promises, and 
 rest on his atonement as the meritorious ground 
 of their bestowment, we receive the grace which 
 yet more gives supremacy to love. 
 
 And as the fountain is purified, the streams 
 grow pure. Every pure affection and holy senti- 
 ment springs up in the heart, They, too, pre- 
 
248 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 vail, each over its own antagonistic vice, although 
 these impure feelings still linger as long as the 
 selfishness in which they all have root. ~No evil 
 thought or feeling is tolerated now. All virtue 
 is loved, all duties are sacred. Each low and 
 selfish sentiment that rises to view is loathed 
 and spurned as a foul intruder soon to be de- 
 stroyed. 
 
 Here is it that the Christian, rejoicing in 
 conscious pardon and adoption, and assured of 
 the glorious renovation already supreme within 
 him, may yet experience the benefit of that same 
 system of morality, with its prudential and in- 
 stinctive motives, which were once everything 
 to him. The common round of life affords a test 
 and a temptation to every separate evil impulse 
 of which the heart is capable. If a poor, imper- 
 fect heart were thus assailed on every side, how 
 perpetual would be the harassment of watching 
 against so many and incessant assaults. Hardly 
 could it be endured with our young and feeble 
 energy. But when, by these natural dispositions 
 to correct action, we are saved from the force of 
 temptation on many points, the attention is left 
 undistracted to guard those points where the 
 natural evil of our hearts is not thus repressed. 
 The Christian, whose temper has always been 
 
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE FAITH. 249 
 
 repressed and concealed beneath a constitutional 
 amiability, may be able to bear a severer con- 
 flict with a less repressed impulse to covetousness, 
 than if passion and avarice at once assailed him. 
 The evils of the soul are like wrestlers who 
 would hurl it to the dust : should all assail it, all 
 at once, it might be bewildered and overcome ; 
 but if one or two only are permitted to task its 
 energies, it may struggle hopefully, and yet 
 learn how weak it is, and how strong those evils 
 are. The heart may not realize its weakness in 
 regard to those passions or vices, the disposition 
 to which is repressed by God beneath an in- 
 stinctive virtue ; but from the strength of these 
 few evils in which the depravity of its nature is 
 clearly embodied, it can learn how intense that 
 depravity is. 
 
 And more than this : The Christian may be 
 made to see his sinfulness, even beneath those 
 natural virtues which have prompted and do 
 prompt his noblest conduct. Lurking even 
 within them he detects the opposite vices, whose 
 existence he had never suspected before. There 
 is nothing strange in the still lingering influence 
 of passions which once had undisputed sway; 
 but that Christians, as they grow in conscious 
 power, should find vices of feeling, and a sensi- 
 
250 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 bility to low motives, which they never felt le- 
 fore, is strange indeed. Moralists who do rever- 
 ence religious experience, must be sadly per- 
 plexed in reading the biographies of men for 
 whom nature had done wonders, and in whom 
 grace wrought gloriously, to hear them accusing 
 themselves of passions and motives which, even 
 when unconverted, they never betrayed, and 
 which were clearly substituted by noble senti- 
 ments. Were these holy men morbid and unjust 
 to their own natures ? No ! but the evils which 
 were repressed and concealed, for the general 
 benefit, so long as no divine power was invoked 
 to give a nobler principle, and which even in 
 earlier stages of experience were hidden beneath 
 the natural virtues, are revealed now that the 
 will can overcome them, and our trust in the 
 love of God can bear up our astonished hearts. 
 Strange that men of mildest temper should find 
 irritableness and anger springing up, even as 
 some spiritual blessing proves their communion 
 with God. Strange that what we have thought 
 a generous nature should feel a selfish purpose 
 rising through his generosity, like a deeper 
 stratum of the soul jutting up through the peace- 
 ful surface. The natural power of the instinctive 
 sentiment may still continue, and secure the 
 
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE FAITH. 251 
 
 outward action, and even the accustomed tone ; 
 and yet a hard struggle may go on against the 
 rising of the baser remnant of an evil nature. 
 Thus, when the Searcher and the Kefiner of 
 hearts has led us to realize the depth and litter- 
 ness of our depravity, by those few desires and 
 temptations which were never held back by an 
 instinctive virtue, he seems to lead the soul 
 through each separate department of its nature, 
 and show it the entireness of its depravity. The 
 pure feelings which came in where none had ever 
 been before, were evidently created by the Spirit's 
 working in answer to the prayer of faith. From 
 the first, the heart has felt that they are not its 
 own, but momently received from the Mediator's 
 hand as a fresh bestowment. The other impulses, 
 which we called our better nature, seemed like 
 our own, apart from restoring grace. But the 
 Christian is taught, as he can bear it, that God 
 will let him claim no virtue as his by nature, 
 and feel no exultation. He shall hold every 
 power and capability of good, immediately and 
 momently, as the gift of the inworking and sus- 
 taining Spirit. When the moral scaffolding of 
 religion falls away, the momently-received life 
 in the soul will stand the same. Through all 
 eternity we hold our life by faith. 
 
252 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 Thus, we are saved by faith. Not so much by 
 the faith of apprehension, which opens to us 
 more and more of the spiritual world ; but by 
 that simple resting upon Christ to do for us, and 
 in us, what we cannot do ourselves. Consciously 
 as a child, held and guided in the firm grasp of 
 a father's hand, the soul feels itself upheld by a 
 supernatural strength. Consciously, as when an 
 electric current thrills new energy through the 
 frame, the soul feels the presence of an energy 
 not its own. It comprehends the experience of 
 the great apostle: "I live; yet not I, but Christ 
 liveth in me : and the life which I live, I live by 
 faith in the Son of God." 
 
XI. 
 
 ITuire to <$tfl> t* Criterion af Virtue. 
 
" Talk they of morals ? thou bleeding Love 
 Thou giver of new morals to mankind 
 The grand morality is love of Thee.' 
 
 YOUNG. 
 
XI. 
 
 LOVE TO GOD, THE CRITERION OF VIRTUE. 
 
 WE solicit the attention of the ingenuous student 
 of his own heart, to a brief consideration of one 
 point more, before he finally concludes the inter- 
 pretation of its moral destiny. 
 
 Religion is, in its broadest principle, the love 
 of holiness ; and we have all along conceded that 
 the love of God is but one manifestation of it. 
 We avoided the embarrassment of considering 
 religion merely as a personal reverence exacted 
 by the Deity in virtue of his supremacy, without 
 regard to the assiduity with which we discharge 
 all other and more palpable duties. We have ap- 
 pealed directly to that intuitive sense of rectitude 
 which none dispute ; and we have only demanded 
 that disinterested devotion to the right which all 
 feel to be the very essence of piety. In address- 
 ing those who are tempted to bring forward their 
 undeniable rectitude of conduct, and their many 
 social virtues, as evidence of true piety, and as 
 an offset against any want of evidence of love to 
 
256 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 God, we have met them upon their own ground, 
 and, admitting their virtues, have proven that, 
 however beautiful they appeared, they were un- 
 reliable, and might be altogether spurious. 
 
 Yet certainly, however unreliable such a rare 
 combination of instinctive dispositions may be, 
 we have ourselves admitted that a truly harmo- 
 nious character will be produced by a true prin- 
 ciple ; and therefore such an exhibition may 1e 
 genuine. If, therefore, any one shall claim that 
 beneath a rare and well-balanced assemblage of 
 spontaneous virtues, he has also a conscious def- 
 erence for the principle of moral obligation, and 
 a sentiment of pleasure in the advancement of all 
 good, it will present to the analyst of human na- 
 ture a problem of the deepest interest ; especially 
 when, as may be the case, there is nevertheless a 
 positive aversion to what he may please to term 
 the cant of religion, its definite exercises of wor- 
 ship, and its vivid inward experiences. 
 
 A sufficient solution of the question is found 
 by an application of the same principle which 
 appears, so far as all the virtues elicited by 
 human relations are concerned, so perfectly tc 
 demonstrate the genuineness of his virtues : it 
 is to be demanded that the same " love of ex- 
 cellence" which appeal's to manifest itself in 
 
CRITERION OF VIRTUE. 257 
 
 every form of relative goodness, shall be as evi- 
 dent in that highest form which is due to Him 
 whose relations to us call for the highest mani- 
 festations of love of which the heart is capable. 
 If love to God be but one form of the love of 
 rectitude, it is one form a form which never 
 can be absent from the principle itself. 
 
 Is there any extravagance in demanding for 
 God, a regard as definite, as vivid in its personal 
 consciousness, as marked in all its natural indi- 
 cations, as any human claims can elicit? There 
 is no intrinsic loveliness in any human character, 
 but its beauty lies in a faint resemblance to the 
 divine mind ; there is no peculiar and touching 
 sentiment implied in earthly relationship, which 
 God has not employed to convey an inadequate 
 illustration of his care and sympathy ; and every 
 thrill of gratitude that direct kindness can awa- 
 ken, will find, as it breathes the praise of its ben- 
 efactor, that the earthly friend and his kindness 
 are both but a providence of the one great Friend. 
 So that every intrinsic claim upon our esteem 
 and love, and every motive to a personal grati- 
 tude which gleams out from human hearts, are 
 but scattered rays from his perfect character, 
 dimmed and broken by the imperfect media 
 through which they shine. Ought not He in 
 
258 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 whom all other claims are combined and blended 
 into one glorious character, to receive from us 
 an intensity of devotion equal at the least to the 
 united force of all subordinate regards ? 
 
 But without annoying the cultivated reader 
 with any analogies between divine and human 
 claims, let us dwell upon that one principle of 
 love to purity and excellence, which his own 
 consciousness attests him to possess. He has a 
 right to a deferential hearing when he avers that 
 he has not only a sense of the obligation of duty, 
 and not only a perception of the beauty of vir- 
 tue, but also a true and hearty love for virtue 
 itself. 
 
 Now no reflecting mind will hesitate to admit 
 that an absorbing love for any attribute of char- 
 acter will always be attracted to the character 
 which embodies and realizes it most fully. It is 
 not enough that the love of any principle impels 
 to appropriate action, and to endeavours to spread 
 the sway of that principle over other minds : it 
 also fills the heart with a spontaneous affection 
 toward a kindred spirit who manifests the same 
 sentiment. We love not only the principles of 
 perfectly congenial hearts we love those hearts 
 themselves. The devotion to those principles 
 may have been the slow growth of years; unper- 
 
CRITERION OF VIRTUE. 259 
 
 ceived, it may be, by the soul itself; but the full 
 heart claims immediate fellowship with one 
 whose word or deed reveals the same master- 
 sentiment. If God is purity itself, a combina- 
 tion of faultless moral attributes, how can it be 
 that a heart imbued with a love for all these 
 qualities, in the abstract, shall see his perfection 
 as it is revealed unto us, and fail to love, not his 
 attributes alone, but himself, and that supremely ? 
 Is it not even true, that a kindred spirit and 
 genius will be recognised by a congenial mind, 
 even under circumstances which conceal its full 
 character from all others ? A word, a look, a tone, 
 are enough to suggest the hidden character, and 
 the enthusiastic heart turns earnestly to search 
 for the deep veins of gold which thus glisten 
 through the surface rubbish. So, if revelation 
 were but dim, and there were no direct teaching 
 of the Spirit vouchsafed, a holy heart, a heart 
 filled with a supreme love of moral excellence, 
 would recognise with delight its great original 
 and love him with supreme affection. But with 
 so clear a revelation of the divine character, and 
 with such an express recognition of him as the 
 perfection of all moral attributes on the part of 
 the moralist, it is sheer absurdity to profess any 
 deep love of holiness, which is not drawn to 
 
260 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 him personally, and does not find in Mm its 
 ideal, its all in all. 
 
 1. The tests of personal affection are familiar to 
 us all. Love, in its most general definition, is 
 the desire of another's happiness ; and this hap- 
 piness is but the satisfaction of those various 
 wants and desires of which the heart is conscious. 
 Affection may anticipate many of the wishes of 
 another ; yet, as each heart has its peculiar and 
 varying wants, we take the expressed wishes of 
 a friend as the guide to his happiness ; and com- 
 pliance, or obedience, is the sure result. We 
 may indeed refuse a request, if our more expe- 
 rienced judgment declares that the wish is based 
 upon mistaken grounds, and would not prove 
 what is anticipated. And so we may be em- 
 barrassed by conflicting wishes, and requests at 
 variance with moral principle. But in a case 
 where no error of judgment can call for our cor- 
 rection, and where no conflicting interest can 
 enter, and where no variance from moral recti- 
 tude is involved, the pure heart that loves an- 
 other, cannot but spring to comply with the ex- 
 pression of its will. "We appeal to the common 
 experience in all the relations of love which we 
 sustain, if such is not the principle and its opera- 
 
CRITERION OF VIRTUE. 261 
 
 tion, and if such would not be its development 
 toward that perfect character who claims to be 
 loved with all the heart. For although human- 
 ity can make good no claim to such prompt and 
 unconflicting obedience to every wish, yet may 
 Jehovah claim even this. The slightest expres- 
 sion of his will must be paramount in influence, 
 the minutest command, a spur to action. 
 
 Love, in its earthly manifestations, not only 
 complies with the wishes of its objects when re- 
 fusal would bring them loss or pain; but even 
 where it knows that events may occur to make 
 them forget or overlook the disobedience, or may 
 compensate the effect of our negligence, there is 
 still a mysterious impulse to respect their desires. 
 Even when death has borne them from us, or 
 distance formed a barrier which prevents their 
 knowledge of our action, yet love is drawn to 
 respect their known principles; and we do as 
 they would wish to have us do, could they but 
 know our action. And thus, although the sum 
 of God's felicity may not be impaired by our 
 conduct, yet a heart that loves him finds in that 
 thought no relief from the sweet obligation of 
 obedience. Aside from all personal claim on 
 our affections, God might claim obedience from 
 the pure in heart in virtue of that perfect wisdom 
 
262 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 which alone can lay down the unerring path of 
 holiness through eternity. But it is not only as the 
 chief engineer of the way of holiness that God's 
 words are to bind the holy soul ; that way is not 
 only approved by his official wisdom, but loved 
 by his heart. The appeal is not official, but per- 
 sonal : " If ye love me, keep my commandments." 
 Obedience, therefore, obedience for (rod's 
 sake, as well as for the sake of the right, is an 
 essential evidence of love to God, and therefore 
 of a genuine regard to purity and rectitude. 
 
 2. Inseparable from true affection, is the in- 
 stinctive desire of approval, and of a responsive 
 love, from the object of affection. If for the 
 time it cannot secure such a recognition, true 
 affection will still persist in advancing the hap- 
 piness and anticipating the wants of another, in 
 patient labour ; but yet it longs for this return, 
 and feels its absence, and finds its highest joy at 
 last in the consciousness that the regard is mu- 
 tual. However we may admit the excellence 
 of another's character, yet if we love him not, 
 we may be indifferent to his regard. But if 
 pure affection for him once enters, it cannot be : 
 Love never rests unloved. 
 
 The soul, therefore, that never woke to a love 
 
CRITERION OF VIRTUE. 263 
 
 of its Creator, may rest in the quietude of indiffer- 
 ence, beneath a doubt of his favour, and the ab- 
 sence of the tokens of his love. All that it has 
 to do is to manage the question of expediency, 
 as to its probable future welfare. If it can be 
 calm apart from the question of God's personal 
 opinion and feelings, it can be very calm. But 
 the soul that loves God cannot bear suspense as 
 to his estimate of its affection. It may feel un- 
 worthy of his love, but it is pained to feel un- 
 worthy, and yearns for, and hopes for purifica- 
 tion and his blessing. ISTot only the heart that 
 has once felt the clear sense of divine favour, but 
 the soul that as yet has not enjoyed it, if it be- 
 gins to love him, "panteth after God's" love. 
 The diaries of the purest among the pious show 
 how their souls yearned for this assurance of his 
 favour, for its own sake. It was not enough for 
 them to do right ; it was not enough to have the 
 consciousness of doing right ; they demanded 
 something beyond the approval of their own 
 hearts : the sense of a personal, recognition was 
 their one great aspiration. 
 
 3. Love not only longs to do the will and to 
 secure the distant approval of its object, but it 
 must have communion and mutual expression of 
 
264? NATURAL GOODKESS. 
 
 thought and feeling. We love the society of 
 those whom we love. Even where a friend may, 
 in moral or social capacities, be inferior to our- 
 selves, and repulsive to our sentiments, yet still 
 the social power of love is shown by its tolera- 
 tion of defects which would exclude all others, 
 by its vain hopes of reform and magic changes, 
 as it clings to the society and watches the inter- 
 ests of its idol. Where no such obstacle inter- 
 venes, love will have a full communion. In 
 proportion as it feels itself understood, it will 
 share its sorrows and its joys, and breathe its 
 hopes and fears. The mere presence of the 
 loved is grateful. Mutual expression of interest 
 is dearer still. To be aided by the hand we love 
 is sweet, and to acknowledge its kindness Js a 
 luxury. And if there be not such a thing as 
 communion, personal and direct, with God, those 
 who love him will feel the deficiency ; and if 
 they believe it .possible, they will seek until they 
 can talk with God, as friend with friend. If the 
 Bible marks out a state of soul in which the com- 
 munion is so constant and so sensible that it ful- 
 fils the promise of the Saviour, " My Father will 
 love him, and we will come unto him, and make 
 our abode with him," how can one that loves 
 him feel satisfied without it ? 
 
CRITERION OF VIRTUE. 265 
 
 If, then, a true devotion to abstract excellence 
 must produce a love to the all-perfect One ; if 
 the invariable expressions of such a love are a 
 personal obedience, and a yearning for personal 
 tokens of approval, and a desire for the fullest 
 intercourse of soul with soul ; if hearty thanks- 
 giving for kindness shown, and spontaneous ex- 
 pression of our cares and our griefs, and delight 
 in the sense of dependence on one beloved, and 
 direct requests for an aid never refused, be the 
 natural embodiments of such a love ; upon what 
 principle of reasoning is it that a mere vague 
 reverence to attributes of character a reverence 
 which no human heart could receive as a sub- 
 stitute for the personal regard it demands is to 
 be palmed upon Jehovah as a satisfactory equiv- 
 alent for the personal devotion which is denied 
 him? 
 
 We admit that analogies sometimes fail, and 
 are not to be insisted upon too rigidly. If 
 among those who as a class have evinced the 
 highest spirit of piety and practical goodness, 
 there is found no sentiment of affection toward 
 the Father of spirits, and no expressions of per- 
 sonal regard beyond an abstract reverence, then 
 we must admit that there is nothing more to be 
 demanded of anv one. 
 
NATUBAL GOODNESS. 
 
 But if, in every age and in every grade of 
 intellect and culture, there has been a distinct 
 avowal of an actual experience corresponding 
 with what analogy would lead us to expect ; it' 
 men who have not culture or sensibility enough 
 to know much about abstract rectitude, do avow 
 a burning love to God himself; if men, whose 
 sensitive and cultured minds had long felt all the 
 general sentiment which is so much relied on, de- 
 clare that they have had a distinct experience 
 superadded to this, and give every expression of 
 a personal devotion which the analogies of com- 
 mon life could suggest; if the Bible-experience 
 breathes the glowing spirit, and the written testi- 
 mony of unimpeachable saints in former days 
 confirm its existence, and on every side, amid all 
 the formality and hypocrisy, earnest hearts of 
 every natural variety and educational bias, de- 
 clare that they have found " the love of God shed 
 abroad in the heart," how can the candid man 
 of mere integrity and virtuous impulses banish 
 the conviction, that his own soul has not the love 
 of God, and therefore not the genuine love of 
 rectitude itself?* 
 
 If the man of religious sentiment will look through a 
 volume of hymns, such as are used in our churches, he may 
 be surprised by observing that he can enter into most of the 
 
CRITERION OF VIRTUIO. 267 
 
 But another aspect of this subject deserves 
 attention. As yet we have only insisted upon 
 love to God, with all its peculiar expressions, as 
 a virtue equally indispensable with the relative 
 virtues, in establishing the genuineness of a re- 
 ligious experience. We desire now to show that, 
 while relative duties are presupposed, yet the 
 most important and reliable test of a true love 
 of rectitude is in the consciousness and the pe 
 culiar fruits of love to God. 
 
 The reason is clear from our previous pages. 
 In order to the practicability of a probation, it is 
 found needful that social order should be pre- 
 served, even where no moral purity exists; and 
 therefore God has imparted instinctive virtues, 
 parallel to the true qualities which result from 
 
 expressions of reverence for general principles, and most of 
 the references to practical duties : but that large class of 
 hymns which speak of the " presence, the smile, the fellow- 
 ship, and personal manifestations of God," appear to be very 
 poor poetry, and very extravagant language. Yet the writers 
 of these hymns, men and women of the highest taste and 
 judgment, felt them to be both just and dignified : so do 
 many who sing them now. It might suggest to the critic of 
 evangelical expressions, the possibility that the only reason 
 why so much appears to him the empty verbiage of cant, is 
 because he has not religious experience enough to under- 
 stand it. 
 
268 NATUKAL GOODNESS. 
 
 moral excellence. Many of the actions and many 
 of the emotions which would be produced by 
 genuine relative virtues, are necessarily brought 
 to pass by this scheme of preparatory motives. 
 It is this which renders an appeal to human vir- 
 tue so fallacious. But to the continuance of 
 society and probation, the conduct which pecul- 
 iarly marks the love of God is not requisite. 
 God may not be in all their thoughts, and yet 
 men may go through the usual labours and good 
 offices of life. Idolatry, superstition, practical 
 atheism all hold sway over successive genera- 
 tions in various countries ; and yet they live, and 
 love, and labour, and are capable of receiving or 
 rejecting a higher life. Men have no secondary 
 motive for a personal devotion to Deity for 
 delight in prayer, and praise, and communion, 
 which can usurp the place of love. Even amid 
 Christian influences, therefore, the many who are 
 moulded and prompted by high natural virtue 
 to virtuous relative action, are seldom found de- 
 lighting in those personal exercises of devotion 
 which are left at their option. The closet is, 
 therefore, absolutely requisite to confirm the ap- 
 probation of the market-place. The duties of 
 social morality may be produced either by a 
 true or a spurious virtue ; the duties of a glad 
 
CRITERION OF VIRTUE. 269 
 
 and constant devotion to God are the fruit of 
 true virtue only. However, therefore, the social 
 virtues and general sentiments are always pre- 
 supposed,' and no profession of religion can be 
 respected where these are wanting, yet no one 
 may rely on the genuineness of any experi- 
 ence which is not sealed by an evident love to 
 God. 
 
 We must not be understood to depreciate the 
 example of Him who went about doing good, 
 and healing all of whatsoever plagues they had. 
 "We know that the Church is often charged with 
 wasting in abstract devotion the energy which 
 might by timely action regenerate the world. 
 It is not true. The Church has ever striven 
 to meliorate the temporal evils which she has 
 seen to be within her reach ; and her individual 
 membership have, as their piety brightened, 
 done what they could in a private sphere. It 
 is only within a few brief years that men not 
 in official stations have dared to look at great 
 social evils, and feel that voluntary association 
 might relieve them. The Church has gained, 
 not a new spirit, but the consciousness of a new 
 power. The membership of the Church is ready 
 and waiting to work, when they see clearly what 
 
270 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 to do and they will do it in the love of both God 
 and man. 
 
 Yet all these temporal evils are palpable to 
 any observer; and they appeal to the common 
 and instinctive feelings of mankind. They ap- 
 peal to those feelings at each successive stage, 
 as a nearer approach to religion subdues the 
 heart and quickens the sensibility to the obliga- 
 tion and beauty of virtuous impulses and heroic 
 action. Perhaps the irreligious philanthropists 
 may see more clearly the outward and material 
 machinery to be used in regenerating society, 
 because their attention is not distracted to the 
 want of that spiritual life in the world's heart, 
 without which it cannot receive and perpetuate 
 the new forms which it is proposed to give it. 
 Earnest and enthusiastic spirits, men of noble 
 energy and daring, need a field of exercise and 
 display. A secular philanthropy is the chivalry 
 of the nineteenth century. Just in proportion 
 as a religious element enters, it grows more ele- 
 vated, more dependent on God, and more direct 
 in its worship of the Father. And when it be- 
 comes truly religious, the love of God is the su- 
 preme motive, absorbing or heightening every 
 other. 
 
 Men speak as though the love of God could 
 
CRITERION OF V111TUK. 271 
 
 be exclusive of love to man, and as though de- 
 votion could call off the mind from practical 
 duties. But love to God not only lays upon 
 every duty the separate sanction of his wish, but 
 it creates the social and benevolent affections 
 where they were not before, and purifies them 
 where it meets them. As we have seen two 
 lighted tapers touch each other, and marked 
 how the weaker flame is not extinguished by 
 the stronger, but seems to catch its brilliancy 
 and mount higher as it blends with it; so all 
 earthly affections and sympathies are only puri- 
 tiecl, and strengthened, and. elevated, as they are 
 absorbed in supreme love to Him who is all 
 in all. 
 
 Let the moralist, then, apply to the Church 
 his test of virtue, and if, according to her means 
 and knowledge, she will not labour for the social 
 and material welfare of the race, and in the re- 
 lations of private life seek the common happi- 
 ness let the Church, or the man who assumes 
 her mantle, be branded for a spurious Chris- 
 tianity. But let the Church apply to the phi- 
 lanthropic moralist another, and an equally in- 
 variable test, and if he cannot evidence the love 
 of God by its spontaneous results of personal de- 
 votion and communion, let him confess that he 
 
272 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 lacks the one the essential element of religion. 
 For the song which ushered in the reign of 
 Christianity is the type of all worship that is 
 true and acceptable to Jehovah : " Glory to God 
 m the highest" then "peace on earth, good- 
 will toward men.'- 
 
XII. 
 
 jtirj) Km 10 lUiigion h '| 
 
XII. 
 INJURY TO RELIGION BY MORAL MEN. 
 
 WE say it thoughtfully, and with respect, 
 
 Moral men, as a class, and in virtue of their 
 morality, inflict the severest injury on the cause 
 of religion. ISTot with specific design, nor even 
 consciously, but none the less fatally, the wound 
 is given. In some communities the influence 
 of the purest moralists is more detrimental to the 
 salvation of men, than the example of the vicious. 
 JvTot, we repeat it, that they disbelieve or resent 
 the loftier and more exacting doctrines of the 
 gospel. Men who will not deny our creed, 
 who contribute to its public advocacy, who are 
 sensitive to the claims of religion, and who trust 
 yet to experience its spiritual power such men, 
 so long as they are but moralists, exert an influ- 
 ence decidedly prejudicial to the religious wel- 
 fare of others. And this is not merely a result 
 of that law of mutual influence, by which all 
 human imperfection acts as surely, although not 
 as severely, as positive vice. The influence dif- 
 
276 
 
 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 fers from that of vice, in its nature as well as in 
 degree. It is peculiar to itself. 
 
 The mere presence of the moralist is, it is true, 
 hurtful to religion in consequence of the power 
 of example. That singular impulse to an imita- 
 tion of others, which in a pure world would only 
 serve as a blessed incentive to new attainments 
 in virtue, loses none of its power amid the cor- 
 ruptions of this sinful world. Every character, 
 whatever its peculiar moral or spiritual position, 
 tends to assimilate all other characters to its 
 own, and bring all besides to its own level. The 
 vicious draw down to open vice, the moralist to 
 mere morality : for the power of example is to 
 bring all others to the precise point occupied 
 by the exemplar himself. The same power 
 which avails to draw them as far onward in vir- 
 tue as he has advanced, avails to keep them 
 from going further. If, then, we take the lowest 
 experience of a distinct religious change, as the 
 zero-point, above which and at which heaven is 
 secure, but below which all is lost, then the 
 example which tends to keep a heart below zero, 
 tends to its positive destruction. The moralist 
 may apparently or really bring others up nearer 
 to the essential character ; but by as much power 
 as he has to elevate them to his degree, by so 
 
INJURY TO RELIGION BY MORAL MEN. 277 
 
 much his example tends to keep them just there. 
 Other influences may come in to urge them on to 
 a safer advancement, or they may not ; but so far 
 as the moralist is concerned, his example only 
 leads others nearer to the gate of the " city of ref- 
 uge," and seduces them to remain still outside the 
 threshold, where they are found by the avenger 
 as surely as though they were further away. 
 
 2. But the influence of which we speak is dis- 
 tinct from this power of sympathetic imitation. 
 Example is powerful, also, in virtue of its clearer 
 exhibition of character than is supplied by mere 
 description or abstract conception. Men can real- 
 ize the existence and the nature of vice or virtue 
 which is embodied in actual life. The higher 
 the manifestation of the good and evil qualities 
 composing human character, the more vividly 
 those qualities are apprehended, and their moral 
 desert as well as their moral quality is more clear- 
 ly seen. In this there is found a salutary check to 
 the attractive power of a base example for those 
 who are comparatively unstained by vice, in that 
 the clear and sharp sense of its evil, and its dan- 
 ger of retribution, startles and checks the soul. 
 
 But in the case of a correct moralist, although 
 his character is defective and his salvation is in 
 
278 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 peril, yet there is no sense of danger and of re- 
 pulsion in view of open vice, which may warn 
 the observer of his insecurity. Furthermore, as 
 we have shown in previous pages, these natural 
 virtues and graces seem easily invested with a 
 religious character, and serve to exclude the idea 
 of danger. The more perfect the moralist, the 
 more fatal the influence. Where one better 
 trait stands alone amid repulsive vices, it is con- 
 demned by its associations, and its worthlessness 
 is easily admitted by observers. But where the 
 false and transient lustre of such virtues is not 
 thus demonstrated, and where a rare constitu- 
 tion or an aesthetic culture has nearly perfected 
 the symmetry of the natural and instinctive 
 character, the actual depravity of soul concealed 
 beneath all this loveliness cannot be realized ; 
 and men attach a spiritual value to that charac- 
 ter. They may admit that there is a higher 
 spiritual experience which ought to be attained ; 
 but they cannot admit that such an amiable 
 character should be utterly condemned. Not- 
 withstanding they see it to be distinct from the 
 spiritual change which has passed upon some 
 others, they feel it to be a comparatively safe 
 state ; and, consequently, while a valid religious 
 experience is conceded to be attainable, and de- 
 
INJURY TO RELIGION BY MORAL MEN. 279 
 
 sirable, and something beyond a mere morality, 
 however high, yet that religion is held to be 
 needful, not to salvation, but only to the highest 
 salvation : and moral men, if they do not enter 
 the third heaven, are not expected to go to hell. 
 The moralist himself may not be deceived. But 
 let the principle once appear to others estab- 
 lished, that anything less than spiritual regener- 
 ation is to secure anything like salvation, and 
 men of far less natural virtue and culture than 
 the moralist, will feel that the absolute necessity 
 for a change of heart is a fable, and that they 
 are at least, comparatively safe. 
 
 3. The same fatal conclusion is reached by 
 another course of reasoning upon the virtues of 
 moral men. It is not felt that although a true 
 spiritual experience is a duty, yet mere morality 
 will insure a qualified acceptance; but the idea 
 is that this symmetrical morality is itself a valid 
 religious experience. The correct conduct, the 
 generous tone of feeling, the sensitiveness of con- 
 science, and the aesthetic pleasure in good, seem 
 undistinguishable from a valid love to holiness 
 and to God ; and therefore these higher moralists 
 are considered as having the substance of that 
 true experience which the Church urges them 
 
280 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 to seek. But it is known that this experience is 
 enjoyed without prayer, without reliance on the 
 help of God, or on the atonement : it is purely a 
 natural growth, and is professed to be such. 
 What concrusion, then, can be reached, but that 
 anything more than self-culture is needless in 
 order to religious experience, and that all the 
 faith and prayers of the Church are useless, or 
 valuable only for the effort toward self-culture 
 which they imply? Thus men who themselves 
 believe in, and feel the need of a higher expe- 
 rience, and who, although deferring action and 
 resisting the sense of duty, still expect to pray 
 and be converted, are the means of confounding 
 in other minds the very distinctions which they 
 themselves see, and of leading others to deny 
 and to neglect the very change which they them- 
 selves hope to seek and find. 
 
 4. Little as they think it, yet even through that 
 deeply interesting class who do pray, although 
 not with that regularity and that direct and 
 mil expression which secures to prayer its high- 
 est power; or who, shrinking from any public 
 profession, strive to do their duty, and pray regu- 
 larly in secret, this same principle works fatal 
 deception. Their prayers have been heard by 
 
INJURY TO RELIGION BY MORAL MEN. 281 
 
 God, in proportion to their earnestness and faith. 
 They have gained a quickened conscience, a 
 minuter watchfulness, a more prompt self-denial, 
 and a more spiritual tone of feeling. They have 
 not the full blessing of a child of God, but they 
 have many of those drawings and illuminations 
 of his Spirit by which God would lead them to 
 follow on to know him. Yet to others, their en- 
 tire character seems to stand forth as a natural 
 growth. The sensibility and the deep abasement, 
 the spirit of resignation and humble trust, which 
 will sometimes breathe in language, are all 
 credited to nature; and every added grace of 
 character that is bestowed in answer to prayer 
 and prayerful effort, is taken to evidence how, 
 without religion, and without earnest and formal 
 prayer, a man may possess all that the Bible 
 requires. 
 
 We may sum up the injuries inflicted by the 
 moralist upon religion in three points : the power 
 of example, leading others to stop short of actual 
 religion ; the exhibition of so favourable a phase 
 of natural virtue, that the undiscriminating con- 
 clude that, while it is not religion, it must be a 
 moral state secure from future punishment ; or 
 the temptation to identify high morality with 
 pure religion, and so make void the invitation to 
 
282 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 the means of conversion and a saving faith. 
 Such is the involuntary but inevitable influence 
 of the moral man, so long as he remains nothing 
 more. He can only escape from the position of 
 an adversary to the salvation of others, by be- 
 coming a true and an avowed Christian himself. 
 The suggestions of a true and generous benev- 
 olence, and the reasonings of a strict justice, in 
 regard to this point, are entirely distinct. Men 
 ought not to follow bad examples, and there is 
 no compulsion in mere example : yet while the 
 heedless transgressor is not excused by the evil 
 precedent before him, he who wilfully continues 
 the inducement which leads him astray, is guilty 
 of his destruction. The majority of immoral 
 men may either see dimly the distinctions be- 
 tween morality and religion, between a safe po- 
 sition and an unsafe position, which we have 
 illustrated ; or at least they may have a strong 
 though undefined impression of fallacy and wick- 
 edness in all the arguments afforded by defective 
 examples. Yet that example is fatal. The great 
 body of high moralists serve the less correct 
 masses of the community as a shield to break 
 the force of all the denunciations of Scripture, 
 and destroy all the apparent value of its offers 
 of salvation. The only way in which the moral- 
 
INJURY TO RELIGION BY MORAL MEN. 283 
 
 1st can be relieved from the guilt of neutralizing 
 the power of all the means of salvation that are 
 given to thousands, is to choose another position, 
 which is at his option. 
 
 Need we anticipate the retort, that our view 
 would counsel the moral man to be less moral, 
 and so to do less harm ? If the favoured child 
 of nature and circumstances had been born un- 
 der those other bestowments and influences which 
 form less lovely characters, he might perhaps 
 have done as little or less of injury than now, in 
 his present relations to the Church and to the 
 world. But the very circumstances which have 
 made him a moral man up to this hour, have so 
 modified his power of example that, should he 
 now degrade himself by vice, he would exert a 
 tenfold worse influence than if he never had 
 been correct and amiable. If the reader be 
 seriously interested in guarding his influence 
 upon others, he must feel that he has not the 
 alternative of remaining where he is, or of being 
 more open in transgression: the only relief to 
 the humiliating consciousness of fatal example, 
 is change to a genuine Christian experience. 
 
 Let it be felt, moreover, that this question is 
 not one of example merely; the moralist has 
 personal advantages for his own salvation, which 
 
284 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 a life of immorality would at once destroy. As 
 no man can renounce his own influence upon 
 others, so no man can be unaffected by the so- 
 ciety in which his moral habits place him. The 
 social influence which surrounds the vicious is 
 one of the strongest ties that bind them to sin. 
 Business, or personal indulgences, once estab- 
 lished upon a wrong principle, lend all the force 
 of habit and of immediate interest to check the 
 rising purpose of reform. Immorality bears its 
 victim upon its current further and further 
 away from all religious instruction and associa- 
 tions. It is not so with the moral man. His 
 society is now enjoyed by those who are truly 
 pious, and the counsels, the urgencies, and the 
 assistances of the Church are ever waiting about 
 him, for a moment of alarm, or sickness, or reso- 
 lution, to make his way to the cross easy and 
 secure. The longer he defers flight to the refuge, 
 the more free from obstructions should he keep 
 the way thither. His own destiny would be 
 sacrificed were he to throw aside the restraints 
 of his natural position '; the destiny of others is 
 involved in his continuing in his present defec- 
 tive state ; it only remains that, for his own sake 
 and for the sake of others, he assume his Chris- 
 tian duties at once. 
 
INJURY TO RELIGION BY MORAL MEN. 
 
 We shall detain the reader no longer. In 
 closing the last of the interviews which we have 
 sought with those upon whom we have urged 
 these solemn views, we shall not obtrude any 
 lengthened appeal. Such men, if they receive 
 our views, will feel their bearing on the wisdom 
 and the duty of immediate action. Clear as, to his 
 mind, the argument may have been, the writer's 
 heart has felt the burden heavy. In the solitude 
 of his study he has not been alone : forms of the 
 living and beloved, have seemed to gather round 
 him ; forms of the departed and lamented ones ; 
 spirits of grace, and tenderness, ,and majesty, 
 from the dim years of human history, have one 
 by one drawn near ; childhood and youth, with 
 generous impulse, manhood with calmer energy 
 of beneficence, and venerable age they gather 
 round me, and with a Mud reproach seem to 
 reply, to each utterance of the law, " All these 
 have I kept from my youth up." I cannot speak 
 in answer I cannot read the heart but from 
 afar the echo of a voice sternly sweet responds, 
 " One thing thou lackest ! " They go away 
 sorrowful. 
 
 Bear witness that we have struck no wanton 
 blow, nor stooped to the rhetoric of canting 
 Phariseeism. If those have seemed to exalt the 
 
286 NATURAL GOODNESS. 
 
 common nature, who have deemed our natural 
 virtues the mournful ruins, the trembling but 
 unfallen columns of a glorious temple, how much 
 more do we exalt its original capability and des- 
 tiny, who find in all the high impulses and com- 
 plex arrangements of natural virtue, the mere 
 temporary scaffolding of a nobler building, which 
 shall be eternal in the heavens ! God help thee ! 
 that when time, and all temporary gifts and re- 
 lationships, shall have passed away, thy soul may 
 be a glorious temple, perfect in every form of 
 virtue column, and arch, and dome, of ever- 
 lasting strength within which Love, in its royal 
 priesthood, offers perpetual worship. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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