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 CHARLES JERDAN. 
 
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 http://www.archive.org/details/applicationofchrOOchalrich 
 
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THE 
 
 APPLICATION 
 
 Uc . - . > , > , > , 
 
 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 TO THE 
 
 COMMERCIAL AND ORDINARY 
 
 AFFAIRS OF LIFE, 
 
 IN A SERIES OF DISCOURSES. 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS, D.D. 
 
 MINISTER OF SX. JOHN'S CHURCH, GLASGOW. 
 
 GLASGOW: 
 
 Printed by James Starke, Trongate, 
 FOR CHALMERS & COLLINS, GLASGOW; 
 
 A. CONSTABLE & Co.; W. BLACKWOOD; W. WHYTE & Co.; OLIVER & BOYD; 
 
 WAUGH & INNES; W. OLIPHANT; FAIRBURN & ANDERSON; MANNERS & MILLER; 
 
 AND JAMES ROBERTSON, EDINBURGH; 
 
 BALDWIN, CRADOCK & JOY ; LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME & BROWN ; 
 
 G. & W. B. WHITTAKER ; HURST, ROBINSON & Co. ; 
 
 T. HAMILTON; OGLE, DUNCAN & CO.; W. BAYNES & SON; 
 
 B. J. HOLDSWORTH ; AND J. NISBET, LONDON. 
 
 1820. 
 
C4S 
 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 This volume can be regarded in no other light, 
 than as the fragment of a subject far too exten- 
 sive to be overtaken within a compass so narrow. 
 There has only a partial survey been taken of 
 the morality of the actions that are current 
 among people engaged in merchandise; and 
 with regard to the morality of the affections 
 which stir in their hearts, and give a feverish 
 and diseased activity to the pursuits of worldly 
 ambition, this has scarcely been touched upon, 
 save in a very general way in the concluding 
 Discourse. 
 
 And yet, in the estimation of every cultivated 
 Christian, this second branch of the subject 
 
 709276 
 
IV. 
 
 should be by far the most interesting, — as it re- 
 lates to that spiritual discipline by which the 
 love of the world is overcome; and by which all 
 that oppressive anxiety is kept in check, which 
 the reverses and uncertainties of business are so 
 apt to inject into the bosom ; and by which the 
 appetite that urges him who hasteth to be rich 
 is effectually restrained — so as to make it possi- 
 ble for a man to give his hand to the duties of 
 his secular occupation, and, at the same time, 
 to maintain that sacredness of heart which be- 
 comes every fleeting traveller through a scene, 
 all whose pleasures and whose prospects are so 
 soon to pass away. 
 
 Should this part of the subject be resumed at 
 some future opportunity, there are two questions 
 of casuistry connected with it, which will de- 
 mand no small degree of consideration. The 
 first relates to the degree in which an affection 
 for present things, and present interests ought 
 to be indulged. And the second is, whether, 
 on the supposition that a desire after the good 
 things of the present life were reduced down to 
 the standard of the gospel, there would remain 
 
a sufficient impulse in the world for upholding 
 its commerce, at the rate which would secure 
 the greatest amount of comfort and subsistence 
 to its families. 
 
 Without offering any demonstration, at pres- 
 ent, upon this matter, we simply state it as our 
 opinion, that, though the whole business of the 
 world were in the hands of men thoroughly 
 Christianised, and who, rating wealth according 
 to its real dimensions on the high scale of eternity, 
 were chastened out of all their idolatrous regards 
 to it — yet would trade, in these circumstances, be 
 carried to the extreme limit of its being really 
 productive or desirable. An affection for riches, 
 beyond what Christianity prescribes, is not essen- 
 tial to any extension of commerce that is at all 
 valuable or legitimate ; and, in opposition to the 
 maxim, that the spirit of enterprise is the soul of 
 commercial prosperity, do we hold, that it is the 
 excess of this spirit beyond the moderation of 
 the New Testament, which, pressing on the 
 natural boundaries of trade, is sure, at length, 
 to visit every country, where it operates with 
 the recoil of all those calamities, which, in the 
 
VI. 
 
 shape of beggared capitalists, and unemployed 
 operatives, and dreary intervals of bankruptcy 
 and alarm, are observed to follow a season of 
 overdone speculation. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 DISCOURSE I. 
 
 ON THE MERCANTILE VIRTUES WHICH MAY EXIST 
 WITHOUT THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 " Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, what- 
 soever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, 
 whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are 
 lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there 
 be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on 
 these things." — Phill. iv. 8 9 
 
 DISCOURSE II. 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY IN AIDING AND 
 AUGMENTING THE MERCANTILE VIRTUES. 
 
 " For he that in these things serveth Christ is accepta- 
 ble to God, and approved of men." — Rom. xiv. 18 37 
 
 DISCOURSE III. 
 
 THE POWER OF SELFISHNESS IN PROMOTING THE 
 HONESTIES OF MERCANTILE INTERCOURSE. 
 
 " And if you do good to them which do good to you, 
 what thank have ye? for sinners also do even the 
 same."— Xuke vi. 33 67 
 
 DISCOURSE IV. 
 
 THE GUILT OF DISHONESTY NOT TO BE ESTIMATED 
 BY THE GAIN OF IT. 
 
 " He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful 
 also in much; and he that is unjust in the least, is 
 unjust also in much." — Luke xvi. 10 102 
 
Vlll. 
 
 DISCOURSE V. 
 
 ON THE GREAT CHRISTIAN LAW OF RECIPROCITY 
 BETWEEN MAN AND MAN. 
 
 " Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men 
 should do to you, do ye even so to them ; for this is 
 the law and the prophets." — Matt. vii. 12 143 
 
 DISCOURSE VI. 
 
 ON THE DISSIPATION OF LARGE CITIES. 
 
 " Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because 
 of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the 
 children of disobedience." — Ephes. v. vi 175 
 
 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 ON THE VITIATING INFLUENCE OF THE HIGHER 
 UPON THE LOWER ORDERS OF SOCIETY. 
 
 " Then said he unto the disciples, It is impossible but 
 that offences will come: but wo unto him through 
 whom they come ! It were better for him that a mill- 
 stone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into 
 the sea, than that he should offend one of these little 
 ones." — Luke xvii. 1, 2 211 
 
 DISCOURSE VIII. 
 
 ON THE LOVE OF MONEY. 
 
 " If I have made gold my hope, or have said to the 
 fine gold, Thou art my confidence; if I rejoiced be- 
 cause my wealth was great, and because mine hand 
 had gotten much ; if I beheld the sun when it shined, 
 or the moon walking in brightness ; and my heart hath 
 been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my 
 hand: this also were an iniquity to be punished by 
 the judge: for I should have denied the God that is 
 above."-- Job. xxxi. 24—28 248 
 
DISCOURSE I. 
 
 ON THE MERCANTILE VIRTUES WHICH MAY EXIST 
 WITHOUT THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 " Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever 
 things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever 
 things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever 
 things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there 
 be any praise, think on these things." — Phill. iv. 8. 
 
 The Apostle, in these verses, makes use of certain 
 terms, without ever once proposing to advance 
 any definition of their meaning. He presumes 
 on a common understanding of this, between 
 himself and the people whom he is addressing. 
 He presumes that they know what is signified 
 by Truth, and Justice, and Loveliness, and the 
 other moral qualities which are included in the 
 enumeration of our text. They, in fact, had 
 words to express them, for many ages antecedent 
 to the coming of Christianity into the world. 
 
10 
 
 Now, the very existence of the words proves, 
 that, before the gospel was taught, the realities 
 which they express must have existed also. These 
 good and respectable attributes of character 
 must have been occasionally exemplified by men, 
 prior to the religion of the New Testament. The 
 virtuous, and, the praiseworthy must, ere the 
 commencement, of the new dispensation, have 
 been* met' with in "society — for the Apostle does 
 not take them up in this passage, as if they were 
 unknown and unheard of novelties — but such 
 objects of general recognition, as could be un- 
 derstood on the bare mention of them, without 
 warning and without explanation. 
 
 But more than this. These virtues must not 
 only have been exemplified by men, previous to 
 the entrance of the gospel amongst them — seeing 
 that the terms, expressive of the virtues, were 
 perfectly understood — but men must have known 
 how to love and to admire them. How is it that 
 we apply the epithet lovely to any moral qualifi- 
 cation, but only in as far as that qualification 
 does in fact draw towards it a sentiment of love ? 
 How is it that another qualification is said to be 
 
11 
 
 of good report, but in as far as it has received 
 from men an applauding or an honourable testi- 
 mony? The Apostle does not bid his readers 
 have respect to such things as are lovely, and 
 then, for the purpose of saving them from error, 
 enumerate what the things are which he con- 
 ceives to possess this qualification. He commits 
 the matter, with perfect confidence, to their own 
 sense and their own apprehension. He bids them 
 bear a respect to whatsoever things are lovely — 
 nor does he seem at all suspicious, that, by so 
 doing, he leaves them in any darkness or uncer- 
 tainty about the precise import of the advice 
 which he is delivering. He therefore recognizes 
 the competency of men to estimate the lovely 
 and the honourable of character. He appeals to 
 a tribunal in their own breasts, and evidently sup- 
 poses, that, antecedently to the light of the Chris- 
 tian revelation, there lay scattered among the 
 species certain principles of feeling and of action, 
 in virtue of which, they both occasionally exhi- 
 bited what was just, and true, and of good report, 
 and also could render to such an exhibition the 
 homage of their regard and of their reverence. 
 At present we shall postpone the direct enforce- 
 
12 
 
 ment of these virtues upon the observation of 
 Christians, and shall confine our thoughts of them 
 to the object of estimating their precise impor- 
 tance and character, when they are realized by 
 those who are not Christians. 
 
 While we assert with zeal every doctrine of 
 Christianity, let us not forget that there is a zeal 
 without discrimination ; and that, to bring such 
 a spirit to the defence of our faith, or of any one 
 of its peculiarities, is not to vindicate the cause, 
 but to discredit it. Now, there is a way of main- 
 taining the utter depravity of our nature, and 
 of doing it in such a style of sweeping and of 
 vehement asseveration, as to render it not merely 
 obnoxious to the taste, but obnoxious to the un- 
 derstanding. On this subject there is often a 
 roundness and a temerity of announcement, 
 which any intelligent man, looking at the phe- 
 nomena of human character with his own eyes, 
 cannot go along with ; and thus it is, that there 
 are injudicious defenders of orthodoxy, who have 
 mustered against it not merely a positive dislike, 
 but a positive strength of observation and argu- 
 ment. Let the nature of man be a ruin, as it 
 
13 
 
 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 certain exhibitions of this 
 nature, which are more lovely than others — cer- 
 tain 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 complexion, far more fair and more 
 engaging than certain other varieties ; and to 
 prove that the gospel 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 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 
 elevated 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 
 
14 
 
 I 
 
 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 exemplified 
 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. 
 
 What do we mean then, it may be asked, by 
 the universal depravity of man ? How shall we 
 reconcile the admission now made, with the un- 
 qualified and authoritative language of the Bible, 
 when it tells us of the totality and the magnitude 
 of human corruption? Wherein lies that desper- 
 ate wickedness, which is every where ascribed to 
 all the men of all the families that be on the face 
 of the earth ? And how can such a tribute of 
 acknowledgment be awarded to the sages and the 
 patriots of antiquity, who yet, as the partakers 
 of our fallen nature, must be outcasts from the 
 favour of God, and have the character of evil 
 stamped upon the imaginations of the thoughts 
 of their hearts continually. 
 
is 
 
 In reply to these questions, let us speak to 
 your own experimental recollections on a subject 
 in which you are aided both by the consciousness 
 of what passes within you, and by your observa- 
 tion of the character of others. Might not a 
 sense of honour elevate that heart which is totally 
 unfurnished with a sense of God ? Might not an 
 impulse of compassionate feeling be sent into that 
 bosom which is never once visited by a movement 
 of duteous loyalty towards the Lawgiver in hea- 
 ven ? Might not occasions of intercourse with 
 the beings around us, develope whatever there is 
 in our nature of generosity, and friendship, and 
 integrity, and patriotism ; and yet the unseen 
 Being, who placed us in this theatre, be neither 
 loved nor obeyed, nor listened to ? Amid the 
 manifold varieties of human character, and the 
 number of constitutional principles which enter 
 into its composition, might there not be an indi- 
 vidual in whom the constitutional virtues so blaze 
 forth and have the ascendency, as to give a gen- 
 eral effect of gracefulness to the whole of this 
 moral exhibition ; and yet, may not that indi- 
 vidual be as unmindful of his God, as if the 
 principles of his constitution had been mixed up 
 
16 
 
 in such a different proportion, as to make him 
 an odious and a revolting spectacle ? In a word, 
 might not Sensibility shed forth its tears, and 
 Friendship perform its services, and Liberality 
 impart of its treasure, and Patriotism earn the 
 gratitude of its country, and Honour maintain 
 itself entire and untainted, and all the softenings 
 of what is amiable, and all the glories of what is 
 chivalrous and manly, gather into one bright 
 effulgency of moral accomplishment on the per- 
 son of him who never, for a single day of his 
 life, subordinates one habit, or one affection, to 
 the will of the Almighty ; who is just as careless 
 and as unconcerned about God, as if the native 
 tendencies of his constitution had compounded 
 him into a monster of deformity; and who just 
 as effectually realizes this attribute of rebellion 
 against his maker, as the most loathsome and 
 profligate of the species, that he walks in the 
 counsel of his own heart, and after the sight of 
 his own eyes ? 
 
 The same constitutional variety may be seen 
 on the lower fields of creation. You there witness 
 the gentleness of one animal, the affectionate 
 
17 
 
 fidelity of another, the cruel and unrelenting 
 ferocity of a third ; and you never question the 
 propriety of the language, when some of these 
 instinctive tendencies are better reported of than 
 others; or when it is said of the former of them, 
 that they are the more fine, and amiable, and 
 endearing. But it does not once occur to you, 
 that, even in the very best of these exhibitions, 
 there is any sense of God, or that the great master- 
 principle of his authority is at all concerned in it. 
 Transfer this contemplation back again to our 
 species ; and under the same complexional differ- 
 ence of the more and the less lovely, or the more 
 and the less hateful, you will perceive the same 
 utter insensibility to the consideration of a God, 
 or the same utter inefficiency on the part of his 
 law to subdue human habits and human inclin- 
 ations. It is true, that there is one distinction 
 between the two cases; but it all goes to aggra- 
 vate the guilt and the ingratitude of man. He 
 has an understanding which the inferior animals 
 have not — and yet, with this understanding does 
 he refuse practically to acknowledge God. He 
 has a conscience, which they have not — and yet, 
 though it whisper in the ear of his inner man the 
 
 c 
 
18 
 
 claims of an unseen legislator, does he lull away 
 his time in the slumbers of indifference, and live 
 without him in the world. 
 
 Or go to the people of another planet, over 
 whom the hold of allegiance to their maker is 
 unbroken — in whose hearts the Supreme sits 
 enthroned, and throughout the whole of whose 
 history there runs the perpetual and the unfailing 
 habit of subordination to his law. It is conceiva- 
 ble, that with them too, there may be varieties of 
 temper and of natural inclination, and yet all of 
 them be under the effective control of one great 
 and imperious principle ; that in subjection to 
 the will of God, every kind and every honourable 
 disposition is cherished to the uttermost ; and that 
 in subjection to the same will, every tendency to 
 anger, and malignity, and revenge, is repressed 
 at the first moment of its threatened operation ; 
 and that, in this way, there will be the fostering 
 of a constant encouragement given to the one 
 set of instincts, and the struggling of a constant 
 opposition made against the other. Now, only 
 conceive this great bond of allegiance to be dis- 
 solved; the mighty and subordinating principle, 
 
19 
 
 which wont to wield an ascendency over every 
 movement and every affection, to be loosened 
 and done away; and then would this loyal, obe- 
 dient world, become what our's is — independ- 
 ent of Christianity. Every constitutional desire 
 would run out, in the unchecked spontaneity of 
 its own movements. The law of heaven would 
 furnish no counteraction to the impulses and the 
 tendencies of nature. And tell us, in these cir- 
 cumstances, when the restraint of religion was 
 thus lifted off, and all the passions let out to take 
 their own tumultuous and independent career — 
 tell us, if, though amid the uproar of the licen- 
 tious and vindictive propensities, there did gleam 
 forth at times some of the finer and the lovelier 
 sympathies of nature — tell us, if this would at all 
 affect the state of that world as a state of enmity 
 against God ; where his will was reduced to an 
 element of utter insignificancy; where the voice 
 of their rightful master fell powerless on the 
 consciences of a listless and alienated family ; 
 where humour, and interest, and propensity — 
 at one time selfish, and at another social — took 
 their alternate sway over those hearts from which 
 there was excluded all effectual sense of an over- 
 
20 
 
 ruling God ? If he be unheeded and disowned 
 by the creatures whom he has formed, can it be 
 said to alleviate the deformity of their rebellion, 
 that they, at times, experience the impulse of 
 some amiable feeling which he hath implanted, or 
 at times hold out some beauteousness of aspect 
 which he hath shed over them ? Shall the value 
 or the multitude of the gifts release them from 
 their loyalty to the giver; and when nature puts 
 herself into the attitude of indifference or hosti- 
 lity against him, how is it that the graces and 
 the accomplishments of nature can be pled in 
 mitigation of her antipathy to him, who invested 
 nature with all her graces, and upholds her in 
 the display of all her accomplishments ? 
 
 The way, then, to assert the depravity of man, 
 is to fasten on the radical element of depravity, 
 and to show how deeply it lies incorporated with 
 his moral constitution. It is not by an utterance 
 of rash and sweeping totality to refuse him the 
 possession of what is kind in sympathy, or 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 
 
21 
 
 convict him of treason against the majesty of 
 heaven. It is to press home upon him the impi- 
 ety of not caring about God. It is to tell him, 
 that the hourly and habitual language of his heart 
 is, I will not have the Being who made me to 
 rule over me. It is to go to the man of honour, 
 and, while we frankly award it to him that his 
 pulse beats high in the pride of integrity — it is 
 to tell him, that he who keeps it in living play, 
 and who sustains the loftiness of its movements, 
 and who, in one moment of time, could arrest it 
 for ever, is not in all his thoughts. It is to go to 
 the man of soft and gentle emotions, and, while 
 we gaze in tenderness upon him — it is to read to 
 him, out of his own character, how the exquisite 
 mechanism of feeling may be in full operation, 
 while he who framed it is forgotten ; while he 
 who poured into his constitution the milk of 
 human kindness,, may never be adverted to with 
 one single sentiment of veneration, or one single 
 purpose of obedience ; while he who gave him 
 his gentler nature, who clothed him in all its 
 adornments, and in virtue of whose appointment 
 it is, that, instead of an odious and a revolting 
 monster, he is the much loved child of sensibility, 
 
22 
 
 may be utterly disowned by him. In a word, it 
 is to go round among all that Humanity has to 
 offer in the shape of fair, and amiable, and en- 
 gaging, and to prove how deeply Humanity has 
 revolted against that Being who has done so 
 much to beautify and to exalt her. It is to prove 
 that the carnal mind, under all its varied com- 
 plexions of harshness or of delicacy, is enmity 
 against God. It is to prove that, let nature be 
 as rich as she may in moral accomplishments, 
 and let the most favoured of her sons realize 
 upon his own person the finest and the fullest 
 assemblage of them — should he, at the moment of 
 leaving this theatre of display, and bursting loose 
 from the framework of mortality, stand in the 
 presence of his judge, and have the question put 
 to him, What hast thou done unto me ? this man 
 of constitutional virtue, with all the salutations 
 he got upon earth, and all the reverence that he 
 has left behind him, may, naked and defenceless, 
 before him who sitteth on the throne, be left 
 without a plea and without an argument. 
 
 God's controyersy with our species, is not, that 
 the glow of honour or of humanity is never felt 
 
23 
 
 among them. It is, that none of them under- 
 standeth, and none of them seeketh after God. 
 It is, that he is deposed from his rightful ascen- 
 dency. It is, that he, who in fact inserted in 
 the human bosom every one principle that can 
 embellish the individual possessor, or maintain 
 the order of society, is banished altogether from 
 the circle of his habitual contemplations. It is, 
 that man taketh his way in life as much at ran- 
 dom, as if there was no presiding Divinity at all ; 
 and that, whether he at one time grovel in the 
 depths of sensuality, or at another kindle with 
 some generous movement of sympathy or of pa- 
 triotism, he is at both times alike unmindful of 
 him to whom he owes his continuance and his 
 birth. It is, that he moves his every footstep 
 at his own will; and has utterly discarded, from 
 its supremacy over him, the will of that invisible 
 Master who compasses all his goings, and never 
 ceases to pursue him by the claims of a resistless 
 and legitimate authority. It is this which is the 
 essential or the constituting principle of rebellion 
 against God. This it is which has exiled the 
 planet we live in beyond the limits of his favoured 
 creation — and whether it be shrouded in the tur- 
 
24 
 
 pitude of licentiousness or cruelty, or occasionally 
 brightened with the gleam of the kindly and the 
 honourable virtues, it is thus that it is seen as 
 afar off, by Him who sitteth on the throne, and 
 looketh on our strayed world, as athwart a wide 
 and a dreary gulf of separation. 
 
 And when prompted by love towards his alien- 
 ated children, he devised a way of recalling them 
 — when willing to pass over all the ingratitude 
 he had gotten from their hands, he reared a 
 pathway of return, and proclaimed a pardon and 
 a welcome to all who should walk upon it — when 
 through the offered Mediator, who magnified his 
 broken law, and upheld, by his mysterious sacri- 
 fice, the dignity of that government which the 
 children of Adam had disowned, he invited all to 
 come to him and be saved — should this message 
 be brought to the door of the most honourable 
 man upon earth, and he turn in contempt and 
 hostility away from it, has not that man posted 
 himself more firmly than ever on the ground of 
 rebellion? Though an unsullied integrity should 
 rest upon all his transactions, and the homage 
 of confidence and respect be awarded to him 
 
25 
 
 from every quarter of society, has not this man, 
 by slighting the overtures of reconciliation, just 
 plunged himself the deeper in the guilt of a 
 wilful and determined ungodliness? Has not 
 the creature exalted itself above the Creator ; 
 and in the pride of those accomplishments, which 
 never would have invested his person had not 
 they come to him from above, has he not, in the 
 act of resisting the gospel, aggravated the pro- 
 vocation of his whole previous defiance to the 
 author of it? 
 
 Thus much for all that is amiable, and for all 
 that is manly, in the accomplishments of nature, 
 when disjoined from the faith of Christianity. 
 They take up a separate residence in the human 
 character from the principle of godliness". An- 
 terior to this religion, they go not to alleviate the 
 guilt of our departure from the living God; and 
 subsequently to this religion, they may blazon 
 the character of him who stands out against it : 
 but on the principles of a most clear and intelli- 
 gent equity, they never can shield him from the 
 condemnation and the curse of those who have 
 neglected the great salvation. 
 
 D 
 
26 
 
 The doctrine of the New Testament will bear 
 to be confronted with all that can be met or no- 
 ticed on the face of human society. And we 
 speak most confidently, to the experience of 
 many who now hear us, when we say, that often, 
 in the course of their manifold transactions, have 
 they met the man, whom the bribery of no ad- 
 vantage whatever could seduce into the slightest 
 deviation from the path of integrity — the man, 
 who felt his nature within him put into a state 
 of the most painful indignancy, at every thing 
 that bore upon it the character of a sneaking or 
 dishonourable artifice — the man, who positively 
 could not be at rest under the consciousness that 
 he had ever betrayed, even to his own heart, the 
 remotest symptom of such an inclination — and 
 whom, therefore, the unaided law of justice and 
 of truth has placed on a high and deserved emi- 
 nence in the walks of honourable merchandise. 
 
 Let us not withhold from this character the 
 tribute of its most rightful admiration ; but let us 
 further ask, if, with all that he thus possessed of 
 native feeling and constitutional integrity, you 
 have never observed in any such individual an 
 
27 
 
 utter emptiness of religion -, and that God is not 
 in all his thoughts ; and that, when he does what 
 happens to be at one with the will of the Law- 
 giver, it is not because he is impelled to it by a 
 sense of its being the will of the Lawgiver, but 
 because he is impelled to it by the working of his 
 own instinctive sensibilities ; and that, however 
 , fortunate, or however estimable these sensibilities 
 are, they still consist with the habit of a mind 
 that is in a state of total indifference about God ? 
 Have you never read in your own character, or 
 in the observed character of others, that the 
 claims of the Divinity may be entirely forgotten 
 by the very man to whom society around him 
 yield, and rightly yield, the homage of an unsul- 
 lied and honourable reputation ; that this man 
 may have all his foundations in the world \ that 
 every security on which he rests, and every en- 
 joyment upon which his heart is set, lieth on this 
 side of death ; that a sense of the coming day on 
 which God is to enter into judgment with him, 
 is, to every purpose of practical ascendency, as 
 good as expunged altogether from his bosom ; 
 that he is far in desire, and far in enjoyment, and 
 far in habitual contemplation, away from that 
 
28 
 
 God who is not far from any one of us ; that his 
 extending credit, and his brightening prosperity, 
 and his magnificent retreat from business, with 
 all the splendour of its accommodations — that 
 these are the futurities at which he terminates ; 
 and that he goes not in thought beyond them to 
 that eternity, which, in the flight of a few little 
 years, will absorb all, and annihilate all ? In a 
 word, have you never observed the man, who, 
 with all that was right in mercantile principle, 
 and all that was open and unimpeachable in the 
 habit of his mercantile transactions, lived in a 
 state of utter estrangement from the concerns of 
 immortality ? who, in reference to God, persist- 
 ed, from one year to another, in the spirit of a 
 deep slumber ? who, in reference to the man that 
 tries to awaken him out of his lethargy, recoils, 
 with the most sensitive dislike, from the faithful- 
 ness of his ministrations ? who, in reference to the 
 Book which tells him of his nakedness and his 
 guilt, never consults it with one practical aim, 
 and never tries to penetrate beyond that aspect 
 of mysteriousness which it holds out to an un- 
 discerning world? who attends not church, or 
 attends it with all the lifelessness of a form ? who 
 
29 
 
 reads not his Bible, or reads it in the discharge 
 of a self-prescribed and unfruitful task? who 
 prays not, or prays with the mockery of an un- 
 meaning observation? and, in one word, who, 
 while surrounded by all those testimonies which 
 give to man a place of moral distinction among 
 his fellows, is living in utter carelessness about 
 God, and about all the avenues which lead to 
 him? 
 
 # 
 
 Now, attend for a moment to what that is 
 which the man has, and to what that is which he 
 has not* He has an attribute of character which 
 is in itself pure, and lovely, and honourable, and 
 of good report. He has a natural principle of in- 
 tegrity; and under its impulse he may be carried 
 forward to such fine exhibitions of himself, as 
 are worthy of all admiration. It is very noble, 
 when the simple utterance of his word carries as 
 much security along with it, as if he had accom- 
 panied that utterance by the signatures, and the 
 securities, and the legal obligations, which are 
 required of other men. It might tempt one to 
 be proud of his species when he looks at the 
 faith that is put in him by a distant correspond- 
 
30 
 
 ent, who, without one other hold of him than his 
 honour, consigns to him the wealth of a whole 
 flotilla, and sleeps in the confidence that it is 
 safe. It is indeed an animating thought, amid 
 the gloom of this world's depravity, when we 
 behold the credit which one man puts in another, 
 though separated by oceans and by continents ; 
 when he fixes the anchor of a sure and steady 
 dependence on the reported honesty of one whom 
 he never saw ; when, with all his fears for the 
 treachery of the varied elements, through which 
 his property has to pass, he knows, that should 
 it only arrive at the door of its destined agent, 
 all his fears and all his suspicions may be at an 
 end. We know nothing finer than such an act of 
 homage from one human being to another, when 
 perhaps the diameter of the globe is between 
 them ; nor do we think that either the renown 
 of her victories, or the wisdom of her counsels, 
 so signalizes the country in which we live, as does 
 the honourable dealing of her merchants ; that 
 all the glories of British policy, and British va- 
 lour, are far eclipsed by the moral splendour 
 which British faith has thrown over the name 
 and the character of our nation ; nor has she 
 
31 
 
 gathered so proud a distinction from all the tri- 
 butaries of her power, as she has done from the 
 awarded confidence of those men of all tribes, 
 and colours, and languages, who look to our 
 agency for the most faithful of all management, 
 and to our keeping for the most unviolable of all 
 custody. 
 
 There is no denying, then, the very extended 
 prevalence of a principle of integrity in the com- 
 mercial world ; and he who has such a principle 
 within him, has that to which all the epithets of 
 our text may rightly be appropriated. But it is 
 just as impossible to deny, that, with this thing 
 which he has, there may be another thing which 
 he has not. He may not have one duteous feel- 
 ing of reverence which points upward to God. 
 He may not have one wish, or one anticipation, 
 which points forward to eternity. He may not 
 have any sense of dependence on the Being who 
 sustains him ; and who gave him his very princi- 
 ple of honour, as part of that interior furniture 
 which he has put into his bosom ; and who sur- 
 rounded him with the theatre on which he has 
 come forward with the finest and most illustrious 
 
32 
 
 displays of it; and who set the whole machinery 
 of his sentiment and action a-going; and can, by 
 a single word of his power, bid it cease from the 
 variety, and cease from the gracefulness, of its 
 movements. In other words, he is a man of in- 
 tegrity, and yet he is a man of ungodliness. He 
 is a man born for the confidence and the admi- 
 ration of his fellows, and yet a man whom his 
 maker can charge with utter defection from all 
 the principles of a spiritual obedience. He is a 
 man whose virtues have blazoned his own char- 
 acter in time, and have upheld the interests of 
 society, and yet a man who has not, by one 
 movement of principle, brought himself nearer 
 to the kingdom of heaven, than the most profli- 
 gate of the species. The condemnation, that he 
 is an alien from God, rests upon him in all the 
 weight of its unmitigated severity. The threat, 
 that they who forget God shall be turned into 
 hell, will, on the great day of its fell and sweep- 
 ing operation, involve him among the wretched 
 outcasts of eternity. That God from whom, 
 while in the world, he withheld every due offer- 
 ing of gratitude, and remembrance, and universal 
 subordination of habit and of desire, will show 
 
33 
 
 him to his face, how, under the delusive garb of 
 such sympathies as drew upon him the love of 
 his acquaintances, and of such integrities as drew 
 upon him their respect and their confidence, he 
 was in fact a determined rebel against the au- 
 thority of heaven ; that not one commandment 
 of the law, in the true extent of its interpretation, 
 was ever fulfilled by him ; that the pervading 
 principle of obedience to this law, which is love 
 to God, never had its ascendency over him ; that 
 the beseeching voice of the Lawgiver, so offended 
 and so insulted — but who, nevertheless, devised 
 in love a way of reconciliation for the guilty, 
 never had the effect of recalling him ; that, in 
 fact, he neither had a wish for the friendship of 
 God, nor cherished the hope of enjoying him — 
 and that, therefore, as he lived without hope, so 
 he lived without God in the world ; finding all 
 his desire, and all his sufficiency, to be some- 
 where else, than in that favour which is better 
 than life ; and so, in addition to the curse of 
 having continued not in all the words of the book 
 of God's law to do them, entailing upon himself 
 the mighty aggravation of having neglected all 
 the offers of his gospel. 
 
 £ 
 
34 
 
 We say, then, of this natural virtue, what our 
 Saviour said of the virtue of the Pharisees, many 
 of whom were not extortioners, as other men — 
 that, verily, it hath it's reward. When disjoined 
 from a sense of God, it is of no religious estima- 
 tion whatever ; nor will it lead to any religious 
 blessing, either in time or in eternity. It has, 
 however, its enjoyments annexed to it, just as a 
 fine taste has its enjoyments annexed to it ; and 
 in these is it abundantly rewarded. It is ex- 
 empted from that painfulness of inward feeling 
 which nature has annexed to every act of depar- 
 ture from honesty. It is sustained by a conscious 
 sense of rectitude and elevation. It is gratified 
 by the homage of society ; the members of which 
 are ever ready to award the tribute of acknow- 
 ledgment to those virtues that support the inter- 
 ests of society. And, finally, it may be said, 
 that prosperity, with some occasional variations, 
 is the general accompaniment of that credit, 
 which every man of undeviating justice is sure 
 to draw around him. But what reward, will you 
 tell us, is due to him on the great day of the 
 manifestation of God's righteousness, when, in 
 fact, he has done nothing unto God? What 
 
35 
 
 recompense can be awarded to him out of those 
 books which are then to be opened, and in which 
 he stands recorded as a man overcharged with 
 the guilt of spiritual idolatry ? How shall God 
 grant unto him the reward of a servant, when 
 the service of God was not the principle of his 
 doings in the world; and when neither the justice 
 he rendered to others, nor the sensibility that he 
 felt for them, bore the slightest character of an 
 offering to his maker ? 
 
 But wherever the religious principle has taken 
 possession of the mind, it animates these virtues 
 with a new spirit; and when so animated, all 
 such things as are pure, and lovely, and just, 
 and true, and honest, and of good report, have 
 a religious importance and character belonging 
 to them. The text forms part of an epistle ad- 
 dressed to all the saints in Christ Jesus, which 
 were at Philippi ; and the lesson of the text is 
 matter of direct and authoritative enforcement, 
 on all who are saints in Christ Jesus at the pre- 
 sent day. Christianity, with the weight of its 
 positive sanctions on the side of what is amiable 
 and honourable in human virtue, causes such an 
 
36 
 
 influence to rest on the character of its genuine 
 disciples, that, on the ground both of inflexible 
 justice and ever-breathing charity, they are ever 
 sure to leave the vast majority of the world be- 
 hind them. Simplicity and godly sincerity form 
 essential ingredients of that peculiarity by which 
 they stand signalized in the midst of an ungodly 
 generation. The true friends of the gospel, 
 tremblingly alive to the honour of their mas- 
 ter's cause, blush for the disgrace that has been 
 brought on it by men who keep its sabbaths, 
 and yield an ostentatious homage to its doctrines 
 and its sacraments. They utterly disclaim all 
 fellowship with that vile association of cant and 
 of duplicity, which has sometimes been exem- 
 plified, to the triumph of the enemies of religion; 
 and they both feel the solemn truth, and act on 
 the authority of the saying, that neither thieves, 
 nor liars, nor extortioners, nor unrighteous per- 
 sons, have any part in the kingdom of Christ and 
 of God. 
 
DISCOURSE II. 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY IN AIDING AND 
 AUGMENTING THE MERCANTILE VIRTUES. 
 
 " For he that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to 
 God, and approved of men." — Rom. xiv. 18. 
 
 We have already asserted the natural existence 
 of such principles in the heart of man, as lead 
 him to many graceful and to many honourable 
 exhibitions of character. We have further as- 
 serted, that this formed no deduction whatever 
 from that article of orthodoxy which affirms the 
 utter depravity of our nature ; that the essence 
 of this depravity lies in man having broken loose 
 from the authority of God, and delivered himself 
 wholly up to the guidance of his own inclinations ; 
 that though some of these inclinations are in 
 themselves amiable features of human charac- 
 
38 
 
 ter, and point in their effects to what is most 
 useful to human society, yet devoid as they 
 all are of any reference to the will and to the 
 rightful sovereignty of the Supreme Being, they 
 could not avert, or even so much as alleviate, 
 that charge of ungodliness, which may be fully 
 carried round amongst all the sons and daughters 
 of the species; that they furnish not the mate- 
 rials of any valid or satisfactory answer to the 
 question, "What hast thou done unto God?" 
 and that whether they are the desires of a na- 
 tive rectitude, or the desires of an instinctive 
 benevolence, they go not to purge away the 
 guilt of having no love, and no care, for the 
 Being who formed and who sustains us. 
 
 But what is more. If the virtues and accom- 
 plishments of nature are at all to be admitted 
 into the controversy between God and man, 
 instead of forming any abatement upon the 
 enormity of our guilt, they stamp upon it the 
 reproach of a still deeper and more determined 
 ingratitude. Let us conceive it possible, for a 
 moment, that the beautiful personifications of 
 scripture were all realized; that the trees of the 
 
39 
 
 forest clapped their hands unto God, and that 
 the isles were glad at his presence ; that the little 
 hills shouted on every side, and the valleys co- 
 vered over with corn sent forth their notes of 
 rejoicing ; that the sun and the moon praised 
 him, and the stars of light joined in the solemn 
 adoration ; that the voice of glory to God was 
 heard from every mountain and from every water- 
 fall ; and that all nature, animated throughout by 
 the consciousness of a pervading and a presiding 
 Deity, burst into one loud and universal song of 
 gratulation. Would not a strain of greater lofti- 
 ness be heard to ascend from those regions where 
 the all-working God had left the traces of his own 
 immensity, than from the tamer and the humbler 
 scenery of an ordinary landscape ? Would not 
 you look for a gladder acclamation from the 
 fertile field, than from the arid waste, where 
 no character of grandeur made up for the bar- 
 renness that was around you? Would not the 
 goodly tree, compassed about with the glories of 
 its summer foliage, lift up an anthem of louder 
 gratitude, than the lowly shrub that grew beneath 
 it? Would not the flower, from whose leaves 
 every hue of loveliness was reflected, send forth 
 
40 
 
 a sweeter rapture than the russet weed, which 
 never drew the eye of any admiring passenger ? 
 And in a word, wherever you saw the towering 
 eminences of nature, or the garniture of her more 
 rich and beauteous adornments, would it not be 
 there that you looked for the deepest tones of 
 devotion, or there for the tenderest and most 
 exquisite of its melodies ? 
 
 There is both the sublime of character, and 
 the beauteous of character, exemplified upon 
 man. We have the one in that high sense of 
 honour, which no interest and no terror can 
 seduce from any of its obligations. We have 
 the other in that kindliness of feeling, which 
 one look, or one sigh, of imploring distress, can 
 touch into liveliest sympathy. Only grant, that 
 we have nothing either in the constitution of 
 our spirits, or in the structure of our bodies, 
 which we did not receive ; and that mind, with 
 all its varieties, is as much the product of a 
 creating hand, as matter in all its modifications , 
 and then, on the face of human society, do we 
 witness all the gradations of a moral scenery, 
 which may be directly referred to the operation 
 
41 
 
 of him who worketh all in all. It is our belief, 
 that, as to any effectual sense of God, there is as 
 deep a slumber throughout the whole of this 
 world's living and rational generations, as there 
 is throughout all the diversities of its mute and 
 unconscious materialism ; and that to make our 
 alienated spirits again alive unto the Father of 
 them, calls for as distinct and as miraculous an 
 exertion of the Divinity, as would need to be 
 put forth in the act of turning stones into the 
 children of Abraham. Conceive this to be done 
 then — and that a quickening and a realizing 
 sense of the Deity pervaded all the men of our 
 species — and that each knew how to refer his 
 own endowments, with an adequate expression 
 of gratitude to the unseen author of them — from 
 whom, we ask, of all these various individuals, 
 would you look for the halleluiahs of devoutest 
 ecstasy ? Would it not be from him whom God 
 had arrayed in the splendour of nature's brightest 
 accomplishments ? Would it not be from him, 
 with whose constitutional feelings the move- 
 ments of honour and benevolence were in fullest 
 harmony ? Would it not be from him whom his 
 maker had cast into the happiest mould, and 
 
42 
 
 attempered into sweetest unison with all that 
 was kind, and generous, and lovely, and enno- 
 bled by the loftiest emotions, and raised above 
 his fellows into the finest spectacle of all that 
 was graceful, and all that was manly ? Surely, if 
 the possession of these moralities be just another 
 theme of acknowledgment to the Lord of the 
 spirits of all flesh, then, if the acknowledgment 
 be withheld, and these moralities have taken up 
 their residence in the bosom of him who is utterly 
 devoid of piety, they go to aggravate the reproach 
 of his ingratitude ; and to prove, that, of all the 
 men upon earth who are far from God, he stands 
 at the widest distance, he remains proof against 
 the weightiest claims, and he, of the dead in tres- 
 passes and sins, is the most profoundly asleep to 
 the call of religion, and to the supremacy of its 
 righteous obligations. 
 
 It is by argument such as this, that we would 
 attempt to convince of sin those who have a 
 righteousness that is without godliness ; and to 
 prove, that, with the possession of such things as 
 are pure, and lovely, and honest, and of good 
 report, they in fact can only be admitted to re- 
 
43 
 
 conciliation with God, on the same footing with 
 the most worthless and profligate of the species ; 
 and to demonstrate, that they are in the very 
 same state of need and of nakedness, and are 
 therefore children of wrath, even as others ; that 
 it is only through faith in the preaching of the 
 gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ that they can be 
 saved ; and that, unless brought down from the 
 delusive eminency of their own conscious attain- 
 ments, they take their forgiveness through the 
 blood of the Redeemer, and their sanctification 
 through the spirit which is at his giving, they 
 shall obtain no part in that inheritance which is 
 incorruptible and undefiled, and which fadeth 
 not away. 
 
 But the gospel of Jesus Christ does something 
 more than hold out a refuge to the guilty. It 
 takes all those who accept of its overtures under 
 its supreme and exclusive direction. It keeps by 
 them in the way of counsel, and exhortation, and 
 constant superintendence. The grace which it 
 reveals, is a grace which not merely saves all 
 men, but which teaches all men. He who is the 
 proposed Saviour, also claims to be the alone 
 
44 
 
 master of those who put their trust in him. His 
 cognizance extends itself over the whole line of 
 their history; and there is not an affection of 
 their heart, or a deed of their visible conduct, 
 over which he does not assert the right of an 
 authority that is above all control, and that re- 
 fuses all rivalship. 
 
 Now, we want to point your attention to a 
 distinction which obtains between one set and 
 another set of his requirements. By the former, 
 we are enjoined to practise certain virtues, which, 
 separately from his injunction altogether, are in 
 great demand, and in great reverence, amongst 
 the members of society — such as compassion, 
 and generosity, and justice, and truth; which, 
 independently of the religious sanction they ob- 
 tain from the law of the Saviour, are in them- 
 selves so lovely, and so honourable, and of such 
 good report, that they are ever sure to carry 
 general applause along with them, and thus 
 to combine both the characteristics of our text 
 — that he who in these things serveth Christ, is 
 both acceptable to God, and approved of men. 
 
45 
 
 But there is another set of requirements, where 
 the will of God, instead of being seconded by the 
 applause of men, is utterly at variance with it. 
 There are some who can admire the generous 
 sacrifices that are made to truth or to friendship, 
 but who, without one opposing scruple, abandon 
 themselves to all the excesses of riot and festivity, 
 and are therefore the last to admire the puritanic 
 sobriety of him whom they cannot tempt to put 
 his chastity or his temperance away from him ; 
 though the same God, who bids us lie not one to 
 another, also bids us keep the body under subjec- 
 tion, and to abstain from fleshly lusts, which war 
 against the soul. Again, there are some in whose 
 eyes an unvitiated delicacy looks a beauteous and 
 an interesting spectacle, and an undeviating self- 
 control looks a manly and respectable accom- 
 plishment ; but who have no taste in themselves, 
 and no admiration in others, for the more direct 
 -exercises of religion; and who positively hate the 
 strict and unbending preciseness of those who 
 join in eveiy ordinance, and on every returning 
 night celebrate the praises of God in their family; 
 and that, though the heavenly Lawgiver, who 
 tells us to live righteously and soberly, tells us 
 
46 
 
 also to live godly in the present evil world. And 
 lastly, there are some who have not merely a 
 toleration, but a liking for all the decencies of 
 an established observation; but who, with the 
 homage they pay to sabbaths and to sacraments, 
 nauseate the Christian principle in the supreme 
 and regenerating vitality of its influences ; who, 
 under a general religiousness of aspect, are still 
 in fact the children of the world — and therefore 
 hate the children of light in all that is peculiar 
 and essentially characteristic of that high desig- 
 nation ; who understand not what is meant by 
 having our conversation in heaven; and utter 
 strangers to the separated walk, and the spiritual 
 exercises, and the humble devotedness, and the 
 consecrated affections, of the new creature in Je- 
 sus Christ, shrink from them altogether as from 
 the extravagancies of a fanaticism in which they 
 have no share, and with which they can have no 
 sympathy — and all this, though the same scrip- 
 ture which prescribes the exercises of household 
 and of public religion, lays claim to an undivided 
 authority over all the desires and affections of the 
 soul; and will admit of no compromise between 
 God and the world; and insists upon an utter 
 
47 
 
 deadness to the one, and a most vehement sensi- 
 bility to the other ; and elevates the standard of 
 loyalty to the Father of our Spirits, to the lofty 
 pitch of loving him with all our strength, and of 
 doing all tilings to his glory. 
 
 Let these examples serve to impress a real and 
 experimental distinction which obtains between 
 two sets of virtues; between those which possess 
 the single ingredient of being approved by God, 
 while they want the ingredient of being also ac- 
 ceptable unto men — and those which possess both 
 these ingredients, and to the observance of which, 
 therefore, we may be carried by a regard to the 
 will of God, without any reference to the opinion 
 of men— or by a regard to the opinion of men, 
 without any reference to the will of God. Among 
 the first class of virtues we would assign a foremost 
 place to all those inward and spiritual graces which 
 enter into the obedience of the affections — highly 
 approved of God, but not at all acceptable to the 
 general taste, or carrying along with them the 
 general congeniality of the world. And then, 
 though they do not possess the ingredient of God's 
 approbation in a way so separate and unmixed, 
 
48 
 
 we would say, that abstinence from profane lan- 
 guage, and attendance upon church, and a strict 
 keeping of the sabbath, and the exercises of family 
 worship, and the more rigid degrees of sobriety, 
 and a fearful avoidance of every encroachment on 
 temperance or chastity, rank more appropriately 
 with the first than with the second class of virtues ; 
 for though there be many in society who have no 
 religion, and yet to whom several of these virtues 
 are acceptable, yet you will allow, that they do 
 not convey such a universal popularity along 
 with them, as certain other virtues which belong 
 indisputably to the second class. These are the 
 virtues which have a more obvious and immediate 
 bearing on the interest of society — such as the 
 truth which is punctual to all its engagements, 
 and the honour which never disappoints the con- 
 fidence it has inspired, and the compassion which 
 cannot look unmoved at any of the symptoms of 
 human wretchedness, and the generosity which 
 scatters unsparingly around it. These are vir- 
 tues which God has enjoined, and in behalf of 
 which man lifts the testimony of a loud and ready 
 admiration — virtues in which there is a meeting 
 and a combining of both the properties of our 
 
49 
 
 text; so that he who in these things serveth 
 Christ, is both approved of God, and acceptable 
 unto men. 
 
 Let a steady hold be kept of this distinction, 
 and it will be found capable of being turned to 
 a very useful application, both to the object of 
 illustrating principle, and to the important object 
 of detecting character. For this purpose, let us 
 carry the distinction along with us, and make it 
 subservient to the establishment of two or three 
 successive observations. 
 
 First. A man may possess, to a considerable 
 extent, the second class of virtues, and not pos- 
 sess so much as one iota of the religious principle; 
 and that, among other reasons, because a man 
 may feel a value for one of the attributes which 
 belongs to this class of virtues, and have no value 
 whatever for the other attribute. If justice be 
 both approved by God, and a6ceptable to men, 
 he may, on the latter property alone, be induced 
 to the strictest maintenance of this virtue — and 
 that without suffering its former property to have 
 any practical influence whatever on any of his 
 
50 
 
 habits, or any of his determinations : and the 
 same with every other virtue belonging to this 
 second class. As residing in his character, there 
 may not be the ingredient of godliness in any one 
 of them. He may be well reported on account 
 of them by men; but with God he may lie under 
 as fearful a severity of reckoning, as if he wanted 
 them altogether. Surely, it does not go to allevi- 
 ate the withdrawment of your homage from God, 
 that you have such an homage to the opinion of 
 men, as influences you to do things, to the doing 
 of which the law of God is not able to influence 
 you. It cannot be said to palliate the revolting 
 of your inclinations from the Creator, that you 
 have transferred them all to the creature ; and 
 given an ascendency to the voice of human repu- 
 tation, which you have refused to the voice and 
 authority of your Lawgiver in heaven. Your 
 want of subordination to him, is surely not made 
 up by the respectful subordination that you ren- 
 der to the taste or the judgment of society. And 
 in addition to this, we would have you to remem- 
 ber, that though other constitutional principles, 
 besides a regard to the opinion of others, helped 
 to form the virtues of the second class upon your 
 
51 
 
 character; though compassion, and generosity, 
 and truth, would have broken out into full and 
 flourishing display upon you, and that, just be- 
 cause you had a native sensibility, or a native 
 love of rectitude ; yet, if the first ingredient be 
 wanting, if a regard to the approbation of God 
 have no share in the production of the moral 
 accomplishment — then all the morality you can 
 pretend to, is of as little religious estimation, and 
 is as utterly disconnected with the rewards of 
 religion, as all the elegance of taste you can 
 pretend to, or all the raptured love of music you 
 can pretend to, or all the vigour and dexterity 
 of bodily exercise you can pretend to. All these, 
 in reference to the great question of immortality, 
 profit but little ; and it is godliness alone that is 
 profitable unto all things. It is upon this con- 
 sideration that we would have you to open your 
 eyes to the nakedness of your condition in the 
 sight of God ; to look to the full weight of the 
 charge that he may prefer against you ; to esti- 
 mate the fearful extent of the deficiency under 
 which you labour ; to resist the delusive whis- 
 pering of peace, when there is no peace ; and to 
 understand, that the wrath of God abideth on 
 
52 
 
 every child of nature, however rich he may be 
 in the virtues and accomplishments of nature. 
 
 But again. This view of the distinction be- 
 tween the two sets of virtues, will serve to ex- 
 plain how it is, that, in the act of turning unto 
 God, the one class of them appears to gather 
 more copiously, and more conspicuously, upon 
 the front of a renewed character, than the other 
 class ; how it is, that the former wear a more 
 unequivocal aspect of religiousness than the lat- 
 ter 5 how it is, that an air of gravity, and decency, 
 and seriousness, looks to be more in alliance with 
 sanctity, than the air either of open integrity, or 
 of smiling benevolence ; how it is, that the most 
 ostensible change in the habit of a converted 
 profligate, is that change in virtue of which he 
 withdraws himself from the companions of his 
 licentiousness ; and that to renounce the dissi- 
 pations of his former life, stands far more fre- 
 quently, or, at least, far more visibly, associated 
 with the act of putting on Christianity, than to 
 renounce the dishonesties of his former life. It 
 is true, that, by the law of the gospel, he is laid 
 as strictly under the authority of the command- 
 
53 
 
 mentto live righteously, as of the commandment 
 to live soberly. But there is a compound char- 
 acter in those virtues which are merely social ; 
 and the presence of the one ingredient serves to 
 throw into the shade, or to disguise altogether, 
 the presence of the other ingredient. There is 
 a greater number of irreligious men, who are at 
 the same time just in their dealings, than there 
 is of irreligious men, who are at the same time 
 pure and temperate in their habits ; and therefore 
 it is, that justice, even the most scrupulous, is 
 not so specifical, and, of course, not so satisfying 
 a mark of religion, as is a sobriety that is rigid 
 and unviolable. And all this helps to explain how 
 it is, that when a man comes under the power of 
 religion, to abandon the levities of his past con- 
 duct is an event which stands far more noticeably 
 out upon him, at this stage of his history, than to 
 abandon the iniquities of his past conduct ; that 
 the most characteristic transformation which 
 takes place at such a time, is a transformation 
 from thoughtlessness, and from licentious gaiety, 
 and from the festive indulgencies of those with 
 whom he wont to run to all those excesses of 
 riot, of which the Apostle says, that they which 
 
54 
 
 do these things shall not inherit the kingdom of 
 God: for even then, and in the very midst of all 
 his impiety, he may have been kind-hearted, and 
 there might be no room upon his person for a 
 visible transformation from inhumanity of char- 
 acter ; even then, he may have been honourable, 
 and there might be as little room for a visible 
 transformation from fraudulency of character. 
 
 Thirdly. Nothing is more obvious than the 
 antipathy that is felt by a certain class of reli- 
 gionists against the preaching of good works ; 
 and the antipathy is assuredly well and warrant- 
 ably grounded, when it is such a preaching as 
 goes to reduce the importance, or to infringe 
 upon the simplicity, of the great doctrine of 
 justification by faith. But along with this, may 
 there not be remarked the toleration with which 
 they will listen to a discourse upon one set of 
 good works, and the evident coldness and dislike 
 with which they listen to a discourse on another 
 set of them ; how a pointed remonstrance against 
 sabbath breaking sounds in their ears, as if more 
 in character from the pulpit, than a pointed re- 
 monstrance against the commission of theft, or 
 
55 
 
 the speaking of evil ; how an eulogium on the 
 observance of family worship feels, in their taste, 
 to be more impregnated with the spirit of sacred- 
 ness, than an eulogium on the virtues of the 
 shop, or of the market-place; and that, while the 
 one is approven of as having about it the solemn 
 and the suitable characteristics of godliness, the 
 other is stigmatized as a piece of barren, heartless, 
 heathenish, and philosophic morality ? Now, this 
 antipathy to the preaching of the latter species 
 of good works, has something peculiar in it. It 
 is not enough to say, that it arises from a sensi- 
 tive alarm about the stability of the doctrine of 
 justification ; for let it be observed, that this 
 doctrine stands opposed to the merit not of one 
 particular class of performances, but to the merit 
 of all performances whatsoever. It is just as 
 unscriptural a detraction from the great truth of 
 salvation by faith, to rest our acceptance with 
 God on the duties of prayer, or of rigid sabbath 
 keeping, or of strict and untainted sobriety, as 
 to rest it on the punctual fulfilment of all your 
 bargains, and on the extent of your manifold 
 liberalities. It is not, then, a mere zeal about 
 the great article of justification which lies at 
 
56 
 
 the bottom of that peculiar aversion that is felt 
 towards a sermon on some social or humane 
 accomplishment ; and that is not felt towards a 
 sermon on sober-mindedness, or a sermon on the 
 observation of the sacrament, or a sermon on any 
 of those performances which bear a more direct 
 and exclusive reference to God. We shall find 
 the explanation of this phenomenon, which often 
 presents itself in the religious world, in that dis- 
 tinction of which we have just required that it 
 should be kept in steady hold, and followed into 
 its various applications. The aversion in ques- 
 tion is often, in fact, a well founded aversion, to 
 a topic, which, though religious in the matter of 
 it, may, from the way in which it is proposed, 
 be altogether secular in the principle of it. It is 
 resistance to what is deemed, and justly deemed, 
 an act of usurpation on the part of certain vir- 
 tues, which, when unanimated by a sentiment 
 of godliness, are entitled to no place whatever in 
 the ministrations of the gospel of Christ. It pro- 
 ceeds from a most enlightened fear, lest that 
 should be held to make up the whole of religion, 
 which is in fact utterly devoid of the spirit of 
 religion ; and from a true and tender apprehen- 
 
57 
 
 sion, lest, on the possession of certain accomplish- 
 ments, which secure a fleeting credit throughout 
 the little hour of this world's history, deluded 
 man should look forward to his eternity with 
 hope, and upward to his God with complacency 
 —while he carries not on his forehead one vestige 
 of the character of heaven, one lineament of the 
 aspect of godliness. 
 
 And lastly. The first class of virtues bear the 
 character of religiousness more strongly, just 
 because they bear that character more singly* 
 The people who are without, might, no doubt, 
 see in every real Christian the virtues of the 
 second class also ; but these virtues do not belong 
 to them peculiarly and exclusively. For though 
 it be true, that every religious man must be 
 honest, the converse does not follow, that every 
 honest man must be religious. And it is because 
 the social accomplishments do not form the 
 specific, that neither do they form the most 
 prominent and distinguishing marks of Christi- 
 anity. They may also be recognized as features 
 in the character of men, who utterly repudiate 
 the whole style and doctrine of the New Testa- 
 
 H 
 
58 
 
 meht; and hence a very prevalent impression in 
 society, that the faith of the gospel does not bear 
 so powerfully and so directly on the relative 
 virtues of human conduct. A few instances of 
 hypocrisy amongst the more serious professors 
 of our faith, serve to rivet the impression, and 
 to give it perpetuity in the world. One single 
 example, indeed, of sanctimonious duplicity, will 
 suffice, in the judgment of many, to cover the 
 whole of vital and orthodox Christianity with dis- 
 grace. The report of it will be borne in triumph 
 amongst the companies of the irreligious. The 
 man who pays no homage to sabbaths or to sacra- 
 ments, will be contrasted in the open, liberal, 
 and manly style, of all his transactions, with 
 the low cunning of this drivelling methodistical 
 pretender ; and the loud laugh of a multitude 
 of scorners, will give a force and a swell to this 
 public outcry against the whole character of the 
 sainthood. 
 
 Now, this delusion on the part of the unbe- 
 lieving world is very natural, and ought not to 
 excite our astonishment. We are not surprised, 
 from the reasons already adverted to, that the 
 
59 , 
 
 truth, and the justice, and the humanity, and 
 the moral loveliness, which do in fact belong to 
 every new creature in Jesus Christ our Lord, 
 should miss their observation ; or, at least, fail 
 to be recognized among the other more obvious 
 characteristics into which believers have been 
 translated by the faith of the gospel. But, on 
 this very subject, there is a tendency to delusion 
 on the part of the disciples of the faith. They 
 need to be reminded of the solemn and indispen- 
 sable religiousness of the second class of virtues. 
 They need to be told, that though these virtues 
 do possess the one ingredient of being approved 
 by men, and may, on this single account, be 
 found to reside in the characters of those who 
 live without God — yet, that they also possess 
 the other ingredient of being acceptable unto 
 God; and, on this latter account, should be made 
 the subjects of their most strenuous cultivation. 
 They must not lose sight of the one ingredient 
 in the other ; or stigmatize, as so many fruitless 
 and insignificant moralities, those virtues which 
 enter as component parts into the service of 
 Christ ; so that he who in these things serveth 
 Christ, is both acceptable to God, and approved 
 
60 
 
 by men. They must not expend all their warmth 
 on the high and peculiar doctrine of the New 
 Testament, while they offer a cold and reluctant 
 admission to the practical duties of the New 
 Testament. The Apostle has bound the one 
 to the other by a tie of immediate connexion. 
 Wherefore, lie not one to another, as ye have put 
 off the old man and his deeds, and put on the 
 new man, which is formed after the image of 
 God, in righteousness and true holiness. Here 
 the very obvious and popular accomplishment of 
 truth is grafted on the very peculiar doctrine of 
 regeneration : and you altogether mistake the 
 kind of transforming influence which the faith 
 of the gospel brings along with it, if you think 
 that uprightness of character does not emerge at 
 the same time with godliness of character ; or 
 that the virtues of society do not form upon the 
 believer into as rich and varied an assemblage, 
 as do the virtues of the sanctuary; or that, while 
 he puts on those graces which are singly accepta- 
 ble to God, he falls behind in any of those graces 
 which are both acceptable to God, and approved 
 of men. 
 
61 
 
 Let, therefore, every pretender to Christianity 
 vindicate this assertion by his own personal his- 
 tory in the world. Let him not lay his godliness 
 aside, when he is done with the morning devotion 
 of his family; but carry it abroad with him, and 
 make it his companion and his guide through the 
 whole business of the day; always bearing in his 
 heart the sentiment, that thou God seest me; 
 and remembering, that there is not one hour 
 that can flow, or one occasion that can cast up, 
 where his law is not present with some imperious 
 exaction or other. It is false, that the principle 
 of Christian sanctification possesses no influence 
 over the familiarities of civil and ordinary life. 
 It is altogether false, that godliness is a virtue of 
 such a lofty and monastic order, as to hold its 
 dominion only over the solemnities of worship, 
 or over the solitudes of prayer and spiritual con- 
 templation. If it be substantially a grace within 
 us at all, it will give a direction and a colour to 
 the whole of our path in society. There is not 
 one conceivable transaction, amongst all the 
 manifold varieties of human employment, which 
 it is not fitted to animate by its spirit. There is 
 nothing that meets us too homely, to be beyond 
 
62 
 
 the reach of obtaining, from its influence, the 
 stamp of something celestial. It offers to take 
 the whole man under its ascendency, and to 
 subordinate all his movements : nor does it hold 
 the place which rightfully belongs to it, till it be 
 vested with a presiding authority over the entire 
 system of human affairs. And therefore it is, that 
 the preacher is not bringing down Christianity — 
 he is only sending it abroad over the field of its 
 legitimate operation, when he goes with it to 
 your counting-houses, and there rebukes every 
 selfish inclination that would carry you ever so 
 little within the limits of fraudulency; when 
 he enters into your chambers of agency, and 
 there detects the character of falsehood, which 
 lurks under all the plausibility of your multiplied 
 and excessive charges ; when he repairs to the 
 crowded market-place, and pronounces of every 
 bargain, over which truth, in all the strictness of 
 quakerism, has not presided, that it is tainted 
 with moral evil; when he looks into your shops, 
 and, in listening to the contest of argument be- 
 tween him who magnifies his article, and him 
 who pretends to undervalue it, he calls it the 
 contest of avarice, broken loose from the re- 
 
63 
 
 straints of integrity. He is not, by all this, vul- 
 garizing religion, or giving it the hue and the 
 character of earthliness. He is only asserting 
 the might and the universality of its sole pre- 
 eminence over man. And therefore it is, that if 
 possible to solemnize his hearers to the practice 
 of simplicity and godly sincerity in their dealings, 
 he would try to make the odiousness of sin stand 
 visibly out on every shade and modification of 
 dishonesty; and to assure them, that if there be 
 a place in our world, where the subtle evasion, 
 and the dexterous imposition, and the sly but 
 gainful concealment, and the report which mis- 
 leads an inquirer, and the gloss which tempts 
 the unwary purchaser — are not only currently 
 practised in the walks of merchandise, but, when 
 not carried forward to the glare and the literality 
 of falsehood, are beheld with general connivance; 
 if there be a place where the sense of morality 
 has thus fallen, and all the nicer delicacies of con- 
 science are overborne in the keen and ambitious 
 rivalry of men hasting to be rich, and wholly 
 given over to the idolatrous service of the God 
 of this world — then that is the place, the smoke 
 of whose iniquity rises before Him who sitteth 
 
64 
 
 on the throne, in a tide of deepest and most re- 
 volting abomination. 
 
 And here we have to complain of the public 
 injustice that is done to Christianity, when one 
 of its ostentatious professors has acted the hypo- 
 crite, and stands in disgraceful exposure before 
 the eyes of the world. We advert to the readi- 
 ness with which this is turned into a matter of 
 general impeachment, against every appearance 
 of seriousness ; and how loud the exclamation is 
 against the religion of all who signalize them- 
 selves; and that, if the aspect of godliness be so 
 very decided as to become an aspect of pecu- 
 liarity, then is this peculiarity converted into a 
 ground of distrust and suspicion against the 
 bearer of it. Now, it so happens, that, in the 
 midst of this world lying in wickedness, a man, 
 to be a Christian at all, must signalize himself. 
 Neither is he in a way of salvation, unless he 
 be one of a very peculiar people ; nor would 
 we precipitately consign him to discredit, even 
 though the peculiarity be so very glaring as to 
 provoke the charge of methodism. But, instead 
 of making one man's hypocrisy act as a drawback 
 
65 
 
 upon the reputation of a thousand, we submit, 
 if it would not be a fairer and more philosophi- 
 cal procedure, just to betake one's-self to the 
 method of induction — to make a walking survey 
 over the town, and record an inventory of all 
 the men in it who are so very far gone as to have 
 the voice of psalms in their family; or as to 
 attend the meetings of fellowship for prayer; 
 or as scrupulously to abstain from all that is 
 questionable in the amusements of the world ; 
 or as, by any other marked and visible symptom 
 whatever, to stand out to general observation as 
 the members of a saintly and separated society. 
 We know, that even of such there are a few, 
 who, if Paul were alive, would move him to weep 
 for the reproach they bring upon his master. 
 But we also know, that the blind and impetuous 
 world exaggerates the few into the many; inverts 
 the process of atonement altogether, by laying 
 the sins of one man upon the multitude ; looks 
 at their general aspect of sanctity, and is so en- 
 grossed with this single expression of character, 
 as to be insensible to the noble uprightness, and 
 the tender humanity, with which this sanctity is 
 associated. And therefore it is, that we offer the 
 
 i 
 
66 
 
 assertion, and challenge all to its most thorough 
 and searching investigation, that the Christianity 
 of these people, which many think does nothing 
 but cant, and profess, and run after ordinances, 
 has augmented their honesties and their liberali- 
 ties, and that, tenfold beyond the average charac- 
 ter of society; that these are the men we oftenest 
 meet with in the mansions of poverty — and who 
 look with the most wakeful eye over all the suffer- 
 ings and necessities of our species — and who open 
 their hand most widely in behalf of the imploring 
 and the friendless — and to whom, in spite of all 
 their mockery, the men of the world are sure, in 
 the negociations of business, to award the readiest 
 confidence — and who sustain the most splendid 
 part in all those great movements of philanthro- 
 phy which bear on the general interests of man- 
 kind — and who, with their eye full upon eternity, 
 scatter the most abundant blessings over the 
 fleeting pilgrimage of time — and who, while they 
 hold their conversation in heaven, do most enrich 
 the earth we tread upon, with all those virtues 
 which secure enjoyment to families, and uphold 
 the order and prosperity of the commonwealth. 
 
DISCOURSE III. 
 
 THE POWEE OF SELFISHNESS IN PROxYIOTING THE 
 HONESTIES OF MERCANTILE INTERCOURSE. 
 
 u And if you do good to them which do good to you, what 
 thank have ye? for sinners also do even the same." — 
 Luke vi. 33. 
 
 It is to be remarked of many of those duties, 
 the performance of which confers the least dis- 
 tinction upon an individual, that they are at the 
 same time the very duties, the violation of which 
 would confer upon him the largest measure of 
 obloquy and disgrace. Truth and justice do not 
 serve to elevate a man so highly above the average 
 morality of his species, as would generosity, or 
 ardent friendship, or devoted and disinterested 
 patriotism. The former are greatly more com- 
 mon than the latter ; and, on that account, the 
 presence of them is not so calculated to signalize 
 the individual to whom they belong. But that 
 
68 
 
 is one account, also, why the absence of them 
 would make him a more monstrous exception to 
 the general run of character in society. And, 
 accordingly, while it is true, that there are more 
 men of integrity in the world, than there are 
 men of very wide and liberal beneficence — it is 
 also true, that one act of falsehood, or one act 
 of dishonesty, would stamp a far more burning 
 infamy on the name of a transgressor, than any 
 defect in those more heroic charities, and extra- 
 ordinary virtues, of which humanity is capable. 
 
 So it is far more disgraceful not to be just to 
 another, than not to be kind to him ; and, at the 
 same time, an act of kindness may be held in 
 higher positive estimation than an act of justice. 
 The one is my right — nor is there any call for 
 the homage of a particular testimony when it is 
 rendered. The other is additional to my right 
 — the offering of a spontaneous good will, which 
 I had no title to exact; and which, therefore, 
 when rendered to me, excites in my bosom the 
 cordiality of a warmer acknowledgment. And 
 yet, our Saviour, who knew what was in man, 
 saw, that much of the apparent kindness of na- 
 
69 
 
 ture, was resolvable into the real selfishness of 
 nature; that much of the good done unto others, 
 was done in the hope that these others would do 
 something again. And, we believe, it would be 
 found by an able analyst of the human character, 
 that this was the secret but substantial princi- 
 ple of many of the civilities and hospitalities of 
 ordinary intercourse — that if there were no ex- 
 pectation either of a return in kind, or of a return 
 in gratitude, or of a return in popularity, many 
 of the sweetening and cementing virtues of a 
 neighbourhood would be practically done away — 
 all serving to prove, that a multitude of virtues, 
 which, in effect, promoted the comfort and the 
 interest of others, were tainted in principle by a 
 latent regard to one's own interest; and that 
 thus being the fellowship of those who did good, 
 either as a return for the good done unto them, 
 or who did good in hope of such a return, it 
 might be, in fact, what our Saviour characterizes 
 it in the text — the fellowship of sinners. 
 
 But if to do that which is unjust, is still more 
 disgraceful than not to do that which is kind, it 
 would prove more strikingly than before, how 
 
70 
 
 deeply sin had tainted the moral constitution of 
 our species— could it be shown, that the great 
 practical restraint on the prevalence of this more 
 disgraceful thing in society, is the tie of that 
 common selfishness which actuates and charac- 
 terizes all its members. It were a curious but 
 important question, were it capable of being 
 resolved — if men did not feel it their interest to 
 be honest, how much of the actual doings of 
 honesty would still be kept up in the world? 
 It is our own opinion of the nature of man, that 
 it has its honourable feelings, and its instinctive 
 principles of rectitude, and its constitutional love 
 of truth and of integrity ; and that, on the basis 
 of these, a certain portion of uprightness would 
 remain amongst us, without the aid of any pru- 
 dence, or any calculation whatever. All this we 
 have fully conceded; and have already attempted 
 to demonstrate, that, in spite of it, the character 
 of man is thoroughly pervaded by the very es- 
 sence of sinfulness ; because, with all the native 
 virtues which adorn it, there adheres to it that 
 foulest of all spiritual deformities — unconcern 
 about God, and even antipathy to God. It has 
 been argued against the orthodox doctrine of 
 

 71 
 
 the universality of human corruption, that even 
 without the sphere of the operation of the gospel, 
 there do occur so many engaging specimens of 
 worth and benevolence in society. The reply is, 
 that this may be no deduction from the doctrine 
 whatever, but be even an aggravation of it — 
 should the very men who exemplify so much of 
 what is amiable, carry in their hearts an indiffer- 
 ence to the will of that Being who thus hath 
 formed, and thus hath embellished them. But 
 it would be a heavy deduction indeed, not from 
 the doctrine, but from its hostile and opposing 
 argument, could it be shown, that the vast ma- 
 jority of all equitable dealing amongst men, is 
 performed, not on the principle of honour at all, 
 but on the principle of selfishness — that this is 
 the soil upon which the honesty of the world 
 mainly flourishes, and is sustained; that, were 
 the connexion dissolved between justice to others 
 and our own particular advantage, this would go 
 very far to banish the observation of justice from 
 the earth; that, generally speaking, men are 
 honest, not because they are lovers of God, and 
 not even because they are lovers of virtue, but 
 because they are lovers of their ownselves — in- 
 
72 
 
 somuch, that if it were possible to disjoin the 
 good of self altogether from the habit of doing 
 what was fair, as well as from the habit of doing 
 what was kind to the people around us, this 
 would not merely isolate the children of men 
 from each other, in respect of the obligations 
 of beneficence, but it would arm them into an 
 undisguised hostility against each other, in re- 
 spect of their rights. The mere disinterested 
 principle would set up a feeble barrier, indeed, 
 against a desolating tide of selfishness, now set 
 loose from the consideration of its own advan- 
 tage. The genuine depravity of the human 
 heart would burst forth and show itself in its 
 true characters; and the world in which we live 
 be transformed into a scene of unblushing fraud, 
 of open and lawless depredation. 
 
 And, perhaps, after all, the best way of arriving 
 practically at the solution of this question would 
 be, not by a formal induction of particular cases, 
 but by committing the matter to the gross and 
 general experience of those who are most conver- 
 sant in the affairs of business. There is a sort of 
 undefineable impression you all have upon this 
 
73 
 
 subject, on the justness of which, however, we are 
 disposed to lay a very considerable stress — an 
 impression gathered out of the mass of the recol- 
 lections of a whole life — an impression founded 
 on what you may have observed in the history of 
 your own doings — a kind of tact that you have 
 acquired as the fruit of your repeated intercourse 
 with men, and of the manifold transactions that 
 you have had with them, and of the number of 
 times in which you have been personally implica- 
 ted with the play of human passions, and human 
 interests. It is our own conviction, that a well 
 exercised merchant could cast a more intelligent 
 glance at this question, than a well exercised 
 metaphysician; and therefore do we submit its 
 decision to those of you who have hazarded 
 most largely, and most frequently, on the faith 
 of agents, and customers, and distant corres- 
 pondents. We know the fact of a very secure 
 and well warranted confidence in the honesty 
 of others, being widely prevalent amongst you ; 
 and that, were it not for this, all the interchanges 
 of trade would be suspended ; and that confi- 
 dence is the very soul and life of commercial 
 activity ; and it is delightful to think, how thus 
 
 K 
 
74 
 
 a man can suffer all the wealth which belongs to 
 him to depart from under his eye, and to traverse 
 the mightiest oceans and continents of our world, 
 and to pass into the custody of men whom he 
 never saw. And it is a sublime homage, one 
 should think, to the honourable and high-minded 
 principles of our nature, that, under their guar- 
 dianship, the adverse hemispheres of the globe 
 should be bound together in safe and profitable 
 merchandise; and that thus one should sleep 
 with a bosom undisturbed by jealousy, in Britain, 
 who has all, and more than all his property 
 treasured in the warehouses of India — and that, 
 just because there he knows there is vigilance to 
 defend it, and activity to dispose of it, and truth 
 to account for it, and all those trusty virtues 
 which ennoble the character of man to shield it 
 from injury, and send it back again in an in- 
 creasing tide of opulence to his door. 
 
 There is no question, then, as to the fact of a 
 very extended practical honesty, between man 
 and man, in their intercourse with each other. 
 The only question is, as to the reason of the fact. 
 Why is it, that he whom you have trusted acquits 
 
75 
 
 himself of his trust with such correctness and 
 fidelity ? Whether is his mind, in so doing, most 
 set upon your interest or upon his own ? Whether 
 is it because he seeks your advantage in it, or be- 
 cause he finds in it his own advantage ? Tell us 
 to which of the two concerns he is most tremb- 
 lingly alive — to your property, or to his own 
 character ? and whether, upon the last of these 
 feelings, he may not be more forcibly impelled 
 to equitable dealing than upon the first of them ? 
 We well know, that there is room enough in his 
 bosom for both ; but to determine how power- 
 fully selfishness is blended with the punctualities 
 and the integrities of business, let us ask those 
 who can speak most soundly and experimentally 
 on the subject, what would be the result, if the 
 element of selfishness were so detached from the 
 operations of trade, that there was no such thing 
 as a man suffering in his prosperity, because he 
 suffered in his good name; that there was no 
 such thing as a desertion of custom and employ- 
 ment coming upon the back of a blasted credit, 
 and a tainted reputation ; in a word, if the only 
 security we had of man was his principles, and 
 that his interest flourished and augmented just a« 
 
76 
 
 surely without his principles as with them ? Tell 
 us, if the hold we have of a man's own personal 
 advantage were thus broken down, in how far 
 the virtues of the mercantile world would survive 
 it? Would not the world of trade sustain as 
 violent a derangement on this mighty hold being 
 cut asunder, as the world of nature would on the 
 suspending of the law of gravitation ? Would not 
 the whole system, in fact, fall to pieces, and be 
 dissolved ? Would not men, when thus released 
 from the magical chain of their own interest, 
 which bound them together into a fair and seem- 
 ing compact of principle, like dogs of rapine, 
 let loose upon their prey, overleap the barrier 
 which formerly restrained them ? Does not this 
 prove, that selfishness, after all, is the grand prin- 
 ciple on which the brotherhood of the human 
 race is made to hang together ; and that he who 
 can make the wrath of man to praise him, has 
 also, upon the selfishness of man, caused a most 
 beauteous order of wide and useful intercourse 
 to be suspended ? 
 
 But let us here stop to observe, that, while 
 there is much in this contemplation to magnify 
 
77 
 
 the wisdom of the Supreme Contriver, there is 
 also much in it to humble man, and to convict 
 him of the deceitfulness of that moral compla- 
 cency with which he looks to his own character, 
 and his own attainments. There is much in it 
 to demonstrate, that his righteousnesses are as 
 filthy rags ; and that the idolatry of self, how- 
 ever hidden in its operation, may be detected in 
 almost every one of them. God may combine 
 the separate interests of every individual of the 
 human race, and the strenuous prosecution of 
 these interests by each of them, into a harmoni- 
 ous system of operation, for the good of one 
 great and extended family. But if, on estimating 
 the character of each individual member of that 
 family, we shall find, that the main-spring of his 
 actions is the urgency of a selfish inclination; and 
 that to this his very virtues are subordinate; and 
 that even the honesties which mark his conduct 
 are chiefly, though, perhaps, insensibly due to 
 the selfishness which actuates and occupies his 
 whole heart; — then, let the semblance be what it 
 may, still the reality of the case accords with 
 the most mortifying representations of the New 
 Testament. The moralities of nature are but 
 
78 
 
 the moralities of a day, and will cease to be 
 applauded when this world, the only theatre of 
 their applause, is burnt up. They are but the 
 blossoms of that rank efflorescence which is 
 nourished on the soil of human corruption, and 
 can never bring forth fruit unto immortality. 
 The discerner of all secrets sees that they eman- 
 ate from a principle which is at utter war with 
 the charity that prepares for the enjoyments, 
 and that glows in the bosoms of the celestial ; 
 and, therefore, though highly esteemed among 
 men, they may be in his sight an abomination. 
 
 Let us, if possible, make this still clearer to 
 your apprehension, by descending more minutely 
 into particulars. There is not one member of 
 the great mercantile family, with whom there 
 does not obtain a reciprocal interest between 
 himself and all those who compose the circle 
 of his various correspondents. He does them 
 good ; but his eye is all the while open to the 
 expectation of their doing him something again. 
 They minister to him all the profits of his em- 
 ployment ; but not unless he minister to them 
 of his service, and attention, and fidelity. Inso- 
 
79 
 
 much, that if his credit abandon him, his pros- 
 perity will also abandon him. If he forfeit the 
 confidence of others, he will also forfeit their 
 custom along with it. So that, in perfect con- 
 sistency with interest being the reigning idol of 
 his soul, he may still be, in every way, as sensi- 
 tive of encroachment upon his reputation, as he 
 would be of encroachment upon his property ; 
 and be as vigilaut, to the full, in guarding his 
 name against the breath of calumny, or suspicion, 
 as in guarding his estate against the inroads of a 
 depredator. Now, this tie of reciprocity, which 
 binds him into fellowship and good faith with 
 society at large, will sometimes, in the mere 
 course of business, and its unlooked-for fluctua- 
 tions, draw one or two individuals into a still 
 more special intimacy with himself. There may 
 be a lucrative partnership, in which it is the 
 pressing necessity of each individual, that all 
 of them, for a time at least, stick closely and 
 steadily together. Or there may be a thriving 
 interchange of commodities struck out, where it 
 is the mutual interest of all who are concerned, 
 that each take his assigned part and adhere to 
 it. Or there may be a promising arrangement 
 
80 
 
 devised, which it needs concert and under- 
 standing to effectuate ; and, for which purpose, 
 several may enter into a skilful and well ordered 
 combination. We are neither saying that this is 
 very general in the mercantile world, or that it is 
 in the slightest degree unfair. But you must be 
 sensible, that, amid the reelings and movements 
 of the great trading society, the phenomenon 
 sometimes offers itself of a groupe of individuals 
 who have entered into some compact of mutual 
 accommodation, and who, therefore, look as if 
 they were isolated from the rest by the bond of 
 some more strict and separate alliance. All we 
 aim at, is to gather illustration to our principle, 
 out of the way in which the members of this 
 associated cluster conduct themselves to each 
 other ; how such a cordiality may pass between 
 them, as, one could suppose, to be the cordiality 
 of genuine friendship ; how such an intercourse 
 might be maintained among their families, as 
 might look like the intercourse of unmingled af- 
 fection ; how such an exuberance of mutual hos- 
 pitality might be poured forth, as to recal those 
 poetic days when avarice was unknown, and men 
 lived in harmony together on the fruits of one 
 
81 
 
 common inheritance ; and how nobly disdain- 
 ful each member of the combination appeared 
 to be of such little savings, as could be easily 
 surrendered to the general good and adjustment 
 of the whole concern. And all this, you will 
 observe, so long as the concern prospered, and 
 it was for the interest of each to abide by it ; 
 and the respective accounts current gladdened 
 the heart of every individual, by the exhibition 
 of an abundant share of the common benefit to 
 himself. But then, every such system of opera- 
 tions comes to an end. And what we ask is, if it 
 be at all an unlikely evolution of our nature, 
 that the selfishness which lay in wrapt conceal- 
 ment, during the progress of these transactions, 
 should now come forward and put out to view its 
 cloven foot, when they draw to their termination? 
 And as the tie of reciprocity gets looser, is it not 
 a very possible thing, that the murmurs of some- 
 thing like unfair or unhandsome conduct should 
 get louder? And that a fellowship, hitherto 
 carried forward in smiles, should break up in 
 reproaches ? And that the whole character of 
 this fellowship should show itself more unequi- 
 vocally as it comes nearer to its close ? And that 
 
82 
 
 some of its members, as they are becoming dis- 
 engaged from tha bond of mutual interest, 
 should also become disengaged from the bond 
 of those mutual delicacies and proprieties, and 
 even honesties, which had heretofore marked 
 the whole of their intercourse ? — Insomuch, that 
 a matter in which all the parties looked so fair, 
 and magnanimous, and liberal, might at length 
 degenerate into a contest of keen appropriation, 
 a scramble of downright and undisguised selfish- 
 ness? 
 
 But though this may happen sometimes, we are 
 far from saying that it will happen generally. 
 It could not, in fact, without such an exposure 
 of character, as might not merely bring a man 
 down in the estimation of those from whom he 
 is now withdrawing himself, but also in the esti- 
 mation of that general public with whom he is 
 still linked ; and on whose opinion of him there 
 still rests the dependance of a strong personal 
 interest. To estimate precisely the whole influ- 
 ence of this consideration, or the degree in which 
 honesty of character is resolvable into selfishness 
 of character, it would be necessary to suppose, 
 
83 • 
 
 that the tie of reciprocity was dissolved, not 
 merely between the individual and those with 
 whom he had been more particularly and more 
 intimately associated — but that the tie of reci- 
 procity was dissolved between the individual 
 and the whole of his former acquaintanceship 
 in business. Now, the situation which comes 
 nearest to this, is that of a man on the eve of 
 bankruptcy, and with no sure hope of so retriev- 
 ing his circumstances as again to emerge into 
 credit, and be restored to some employment of 
 gain or of confidence. If he have either hon- 
 ourable or religious feelings, then character, as 
 connected with principle, may still, in his eyes, 
 be something; but character, as connected with 
 prudence, or the calculations of interest, may 
 now be nothing. In the dark hour of the des- 
 peration of his soul, he may feel, in fact, that he 
 has nothing to lose : and let us now see how he 
 will conduct himself, when thus released from 
 that check of reputation which formerly held 
 him. In these circumstances, if you have ever 
 seen the man abandon himself to utter regard- 
 lessness of all the honesties which at one time 
 adorned him, and doing such disgraceful things 
 
84 
 
 as he would have spurned at the very sugges- 
 tion of, in the days of his prosperity ; and, 
 forgetful of his former name, practising all 
 possible shifts of duplicity to prolong the credit 
 of a tottering establishment ; and to keep him- 
 self afloat for a few months of torture and 
 restlessness, weaving such a web of entangle- 
 ment around his many friends and companions, 
 as shall most surely implicate some of them in 
 his fall ; and, as the crisis approaches, plying 
 his petty wiles how to survive the coming ruin, 
 and to gather up of its fragments to his family. 
 O! how much is there here to deplore; and 
 who can be so ungenerous as to stalk in unre- 
 lenting triumph over the helplessness of so sad 
 an overthrow ! But if ever such an exhibition 
 meet your eye, while we ask you not to withhold 
 your pity from the unfortunate, we ask you also 
 to read in it a lesson of worthless and sunken 
 humanity ; how even its very virtues are tinctured 
 with corruption ; and that the honour, and the 
 truth, and the equity, with which man proudly 
 thinks his nature to be embellished, are often 
 reared on the basis of selfishness, and lie prostrate 
 in the dust when that basis is cut away. 
 
85 
 
 But other instances may be quoted, which go 
 still more satisfactorily to prove the very extended 
 influence of selfishness on the moral judgments 
 of our species ; and how readily the estimate, 
 which a man forms on the question of right and 
 wrong, accommodates itself to his own interest. 
 There is a strong general reciprocity of advan- 
 tage between the government of a country and 
 all its inhabitants. The one party, in this relation, 
 renders a revenue for the expenses of the state. 
 The other party renders back again protection 
 from injustice and violence. Were the means 
 furnished by the former withheld, the benefit 
 conferred by the latter would cease to be admin- 
 istered. So that, with the government, and the 
 public at large, nothing can be more strict, and 
 more indispensable, than the tie of reciprocity 
 that is between them. But this is not felt, 
 and therefore not acted upon, by the separate 
 individuals who compose that public. The re- 
 ciprocity does not come home with a sufficiently 
 pointed and personal application to each of them. 
 Every man may calculate, that though he, on 
 the strength of some dexterous evasions, were 
 to keep back of the tribute that is due by him, 
 
86 
 
 the mischief that would recoil upon himself is 
 divided with the rest of his countrymen ; and 
 the portion of it which comes to his door would 
 be so very small, as to be altogether insensible. 
 To all feeling he will just be as effectually shel- 
 tered, by the power and the justice of his country, 
 whether he pay his taxes in full, or, under the 
 guise of some skilful concealment, pay them but 
 partially; and, therefore, to every practical effect, 
 the tie of reciprocity, between him and his sove- 
 reign, is in a great measure dissolved. Now, 
 what is the actual adjustment of the moral sense, 
 and moral conduct, of the population, to this 
 state of matters ? It is quite palpable. Subter- 
 fuges which, in private business, would be held 
 to be disgraceful, are not held to be so disgraceful 
 in this department of a man's personal transac- 
 tions. The cry of indignation, which would be 
 lifted up against the falsehood or dishonesty of 
 a man's dealings in his own neighbourhood, is 
 mitigated or unheard, though, in his dealings 
 with the state, there should be the very same 
 relaxation of principle. On this subject, there 
 is a connivance of popular feeling, which, if 
 extended to the whole of human traffic, would 
 
87 
 
 banish all its securities from the world. Giving 
 reason to believe, that much of the good done 
 among men, is done on the expectation of a good 
 that will be rendered back again ; and that many 
 of the virtues, by which the fellowship of human 
 beings is regulated and sustained, still leave the 
 imputation unredeemed, of its being a fellowship 
 of sinners ; and that both the practice of mo- 
 rality, and the demand for it, are measured by 
 the operation of a self-love, which, so far from 
 signalizing any man, or preparing him for eter- 
 nity, he holds in common with the fiercest and 
 most degenerate of his species ; and that, apart 
 from the consideration of his own interest, sim- 
 plicity and godly sincerity are, to a great de- 
 gree, unknown ; insomuch, that though God has 
 interposed with a law, of giving unto all their 
 dues, and tribute to whom tribute is due — we 
 may venture an affirmation of the vast majority 
 of this tribute, that it is rendered for wrath's 
 sake, and not for conscience' sake. Of so little 
 effect is unsupported and solitary conscience to 
 stem the tide of selfishness. And it is chiefly 
 when honesty and truth go overbearingly along 
 with this tide, that the voice of man is lifted up 
 
88 
 
 to acknowledge them, and his heart becomes 
 feelingly alive to a sense of their obligations. 
 
 And let us here just ask, in what relation of 
 criminality does he who uses a contraband 
 article stand to him who deals in it ? In pre- 
 cisely the same relation that a receiver of stolen 
 goods stands to a thief or a depredator. There 
 may be some who revolt at the idea of being 
 so classified. But, if the habit we have just de- 
 nounced can be fastened on men of rank and 
 seemly reputation, let us just humble ourselves 
 into the admission of how little the righteous 
 practice of the world has the foundation of 
 righteous principle to sustain it ; how feeble 
 are the securities of rectitude, had it nothing 
 to uphold it but its own native charms, and na- 
 tive obligations; how society is held together, 
 only because the grace of God can turn to 
 account the worthless propensities of the indi- 
 viduals who compose it ; and how, if the virtues 
 of fidelity, and truth, and justice, had not the 
 prop of selfishness to rest upon, they would, 
 with the exception of a few scattered remnants, 
 take their departure from the world, and leave 
 
89 
 
 it a prey to the anarchy of human passions — to 
 the wild misrule of all those depravities which 
 agitate and deform our ruined nature. 
 
 The very same exhibition of our nature may 
 be witnessed in almost every parish of our sister 
 kingdom, where the people render a revenue to 
 the minister of religion, and the minister renders 
 back again a return, it is true — but not such a 
 return, as, in the estimation of gross and ordinary 
 selfishness, is at all deemed an equivalent for the 
 sacrifice which has been made. In this instance, 
 too, that law of reciprocity which reigns through- 
 out the common transactions of merchandise, is 
 altogether suspended ; and the consequence is, 
 that the law of right is trampled into ashes. A 
 tide of public odium runs against the men who 
 are outraged of their property, and a smile of 
 general connivance rewards the successful dex- 
 terity of the men who invade it. That portion 
 of the annual produce of our soil, which, on a 
 foundation of legitimacy as firm as the property 
 of the soil itself, is allotted to a set of national 
 functionaries — and which, but for them, would 
 all have gone, in the shape of increased revenue, 
 
 M 
 
90 
 
 to the indolent proprietor, is altogether thrown 
 loose from the guardianship of that great principle 
 of reciprocity, on which we strongly suspect that 
 the honesties of this world are mainly supported. 
 The national clergy of England maybe considered 
 as standing out of the pale of this guardianship; 
 and the consequence is, that what is most right- 
 fully and most sacredly theirs, is abandoned to 
 the gambol of many thousand depredators ; and, 
 in addition to a load of most unmerited obloquy, 
 have they had to sustain all the heartburnings of 
 known and felt injustice ; and that intercourse 
 between the teachers and the taught, which 
 ought surely to be an intercourse of peace, and 
 friendship, and righteousness, is turned into a 
 contest between the natural avarice of the one 
 party, and the natural resentments of the other. 
 It is not that we wish our sister church were swept 
 away, for we honestly think, that the overthrow of 
 that establishment would be a severe blow to the 
 Christianity of our land. It is not that we envy 
 that great hierarchy the splendour of her en- 
 dowments — for better a dinner of herbs, when 
 surrounded by the love of parishioners, than a 
 preferment of stalled dignity, and strife therewith. 
 
91 
 
 It is not either that we look upon her ministers 
 as having at all disgraced themselves by their 
 rapacity; for look to the amount of the en- 
 croachments that are made upon them, and you 
 will see that they have carried their privileges 
 with the most exemplary forbearance and moder- 
 ation. But, from these very encroachments do 
 we infer how lawless a human being will become, 
 when emancipated from the bond of his own 
 interest ; how much such a state of things must 
 multiply the temptations to injustice over the 
 face of the country ; and how desirable, there- 
 fore, that it were put an end to — not by the 
 abolition of that venerable church, but by a fair 
 and liberal commutation of the revenues which 
 support her — not by bringing any blight on the 
 property of her ecclesiastics, but by the removal 
 of a most devouring blight from the worth of her 
 population — that every provocative to injustice 
 may be done away, and the frailty of human 
 principle be no longer left to such a ruinous and 
 such a withering exposure. 
 
 This instance we would not have mentioned, 
 but for the sake of adding another experimental 
 
92 
 
 proof to the lesson of our text ; and we now 
 hasten onward to the lesson itself, with a few of 
 its applications. 
 
 We trust you are convinced, from what has been 
 said, that much of the actual honesty of the world 
 is due to the selfishness of the world. And then 
 you will surely admit, that, in as far as this is 
 the actuating principle, honesty descends from 
 its place as a rewardable, or even as an amiable 
 virtue, and sinks down into the character of a 
 mere prudential virtue — which, so far from con- 
 ferring any moral exaltation on him by whom it 
 is exemplified, emanates out of a propensity that 
 seems inseparable from the constitution of every 
 sentient being — and by which man is, in one 
 point, assimilated either to the most worthless 
 of his own species, or to those inferior animals 
 among whom worth is unattainable. 
 
 And let it not deafen the humbling impression 
 of this argument, that you are not distinctly 
 conscious of the operation of selfishness, as pre- 
 siding at every step over the honesty of your 
 daily and familiar transactions ; and that the only 
 
93 
 
 inward checks against injustice, of which you are 
 sensible, are the aversion of a generous indig- 
 nancy towards it, and the positive discomfort 
 you would incur by the reproaches of your 
 own conscience. Selfishness, in fact, may have 
 originated and alimented the whole of this virtue 
 that belongs to you, and yet the mind incur the 
 same discomfort by the violation of it, that it 
 would do by the violation of any other of its 
 established habits. And as to the generous 
 indignancy of your feelings against all that is 
 fraudulently and disgracefully wrong, let us 
 never forget, that this may be the nurtured fruit 
 of that common selfishness which links human 
 beings with each other into a relationship of 
 mutual dependance. This may be seen, in all 
 its perfection, among the leagued and sworn 
 banditti of the highway ; who, while execrated 
 by society at large for the compact of iniquity 
 into which they have entered, can maintain the 
 most heroic fidelity to the virtues of their own 
 brotherhood — and be, in every way, as lofty and 
 as chivalric with their points of honour, as we 
 are with ours ; and elevate as indignant a voice 
 against the worthlessness of him who could be- 
 
94 
 
 tray the secret of their association, or break 
 up any of the securities by which it was held 
 together. And, in like manner, may we be the 
 members of a wider combination, yet brought 
 together by the tie of reciprocal interest ; and 
 all the virtues essential to the existence, or 
 to the good of such a combination, may come 
 to be idolized amongst us ; and the breath of 
 human applause may fan them into a lustre of 
 splendid estimation ; and yet the good man of 
 society on earth be, in common with all his 
 fellows, an utter outcast from the society of 
 heaven — with his heart altogether bereft of that 
 allegiance to God which forms the reigning prin- 
 ciple of his unfallen creation — and in a state of 
 entire destitution either as to that love of the 
 Supreme Being, or as to that disinterested love 
 of those around us, which form the graces and 
 the virtues of eternity. 
 
 We have not affirmed that there is no such thing 
 as a native and disinterested principle of honour 
 among men. But we have affirmed, on a former 
 occasion, that a sense of honour may be in the 
 heart, and the sense of God be utterly away from 
 
95 
 
 it. And we affirm now, that much of the honest 
 practice of the world is not due to honesty of 
 principle at all, but takes its origin from a baser 
 ingredient of our constitution altogether. How 
 wide is the operation of selfishness on the one 
 hand, and how limited is the operation of abstract 
 principle on the other, it were difficult to deter- 
 mine ; and such a labyrinth to man is his own 
 heart, that he may be utterly unable, from his 
 own consciousness, to answer this question. But 
 amid all the difficulties of such an analysis to 
 himself, we ask him to think of another who is 
 unseen by us, but who is represented to us as 
 seeing all things. We know not in what characters 
 this heavenly witness can be more impressively 
 set forth, than as pondering the heart, as weighing 
 the secrets of the heart, as fastening an attentive 
 and a judging eye on all the movements of it, as 
 treasuring up the whole of man's outward and 
 inward history in a book of remembrance ; and 
 as keeping it in reserve for that day when, it is 
 said, that the secrets of all hearts shall be laid 
 open ; and God shall bring out every secret thing, 
 whether it be good, or whether it be evil. Your 
 consciousness may not distinctly inform you, in 
 
96 
 
 how far the integrity of your habits is due to the 
 latent operation of selfishness, or to the more 
 direct and obvious operation of honour. But 
 your consciousness may, perhaps, inform you, 
 distinctly enough, how little a share the will of 
 God has in the way of influence on any of your 
 doings. Your own sense and memory of what 
 passes within you may charge you with the 
 truth of this monstrous indictment — that you 
 live without God in the world; that however 
 you may be signalized among your fellows, by 
 that worth of character which is held in highest 
 value and demand amongst the individuals of a 
 mercantile society, it is at least without the influ- 
 ence of a godly principle that you have reached 
 the maturity of an established reputation ; that 
 either the proud emotions of rectitude which 
 glow within your bosom are totally untinctured 
 by a feeling of homage to the Deity — or that, 
 without any such emotions, Self is the divinity 
 you have all along worshipped, and your very 
 virtues are so many offerings of reverence at her 
 shrine. If such be, in fact, the nakedness of 
 your spiritual condition, is it not high time, we 
 ask, that you awaken out of this delusion, and 
 
97 
 
 shake the lying spirit of deep and heavy slumber 
 away from you ? Is it not high time, when eter- 
 nity is so fast coming on, that you examine your 
 accounts with God, and seek for a settlement 
 with that Being who will so soon meet your 
 disembodied spirits with the question of — what 
 have you done unto me ? And if all the virtues 
 which adorn you are but the subserviencies of 
 time, and of its accommodations — if either done 
 altogether unto yourselves, or done without the 
 recognition of God on the spontaneous instiga- 
 tion of your own feelings — is it not high time 
 that you lean no longer to the securities on which 
 you have rested, and that you seek for acceptance 
 with your Maker on a more firm and unalterable 
 foundation ? 
 
 This, then, is the terminating object of all the 
 experience that we have tried to set before you. 
 We want it to be a schoolmaster to bring you 
 unto Christ. We want you to open your eyes 
 to the accordancy which obtains between the 
 theology of the New Testament, and the actual 
 state and history of man. Above all, we want 
 you to turn your eyes inwardly upon yourselves, 
 
 N 
 
98 
 
 and there to behold a character without one trace 
 or lineament of godliness — there to behold a 
 heart, set upon totally other things than those 
 which constitute the portion and the reward of 
 eternity — there to behold every principle of ac- 
 tion resolvable into the idolatry of self, or, at 
 least, into something independent of the author- 
 ity of God — there to behold how worthless in 
 their substance are those virtues which look so 
 imposing in their semblance and their display, 
 and draw around them here a popularity and an 
 applause which will all be dissipated into nothing, 
 when hereafter they are brought up for examin- 
 ation to the judgment-seat. We want you, when 
 the revelation of the gospel charges you with the 
 totality and magnitude of your corruption, that 
 you acquiesce in that charge ; and that you may 
 perceive the trueness of it, under the disguise of 
 all those hollow and unsubstantial accomplish- 
 ments with which nature may deck her own fallen 
 and degenerate children. It is easy to be amused, 
 and interested, and intellectually regaled, by an 
 analysis of the human character, and a survey of 
 human society. But it is not so easy to reach the 
 individual conscience with the lesson — we are un- 
 
99 
 
 done. It is not so easy to strike the alarm into 
 your hearts of the present guilt, and the future 
 damnation. It is not so easy to send the pointed 
 arrow of conviction into your bosoms, where it 
 may keep by you, and pursue you like an arrow 
 sticking fast ; or so to humble you into the 
 conclusion, that, in the sight of God, you are an 
 accursed thing, as that you may seek unto him 
 who became a curse for you, and as that the 
 preaching of his Cross might cease to be foolish- 
 ness. 
 
 Be assured, then, if you keep by the ground 
 of being justified by your present works, you 
 will perish ; and though we may not have suc- 
 ceeded in convincing you of their worthless- 
 ness, be assured, that a day is coming, when 
 such a flaw of deceitfulness, in the principle of 
 them all, shall be laid open, as will demonstrate 
 the equity of your entire and everlasting con- 
 demnation. To avert the fearfulness of that day 
 is the message of the great atonement sounded in 
 your ears — and the blood of Christ, cleansing 
 from all sin, is offered to your acceptance ; and 
 if you turn away from it, you add to the guilt of 
 
100 
 
 a broken law the insult of a neglected gospel. 
 But if you take the pardon of the gospel on the 
 footing of the gospel, then, such is the efficacy of 
 this great expedient, that it will reach an appli- 
 cation of mercy farther than the eye of your own 
 conscience ever reached; that it will redeem 
 you from the guilt even of your most secret and 
 unsuspected iniquities ; and thoroughly wash you 
 from a taint of sinfulness, more inveterate than, 
 in the blindness of nature, you ever thought of, 
 or ever conceived to belong to you. 
 
 But when a man becomes a believer, there are 
 two great events which take place at this great 
 turning point in his history. One of them takes 
 place in heaven — even the expunging of his name 
 from the book of condemnation. Another of 
 them takes place on earth — even the application 
 of such a sanctifying influence to his person, that 
 all old things are done away with him, and all 
 things become new with him. He is made the 
 workmanship of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. 
 He is not merely forgiven the sin of every one 
 evil work of which he had aforetime been guilty, 
 but he is created anew unto the corresponding 
 
101 
 
 good work. And, therefore, if a Christian, will 
 his honesty be purified from that taint of selfish- 
 ness by which the general bonesty of this world 
 is so deeply and extensively pervaded, rie will 
 not do this good thing, that any good thing may 
 be done unto him again. He will do it on a 
 simple regard to its own native and independent 
 rectitude. He will do it because it is honour- 
 able, and because God wills him so to adorn the 
 doctrine of his Saviour. All his fair dealing, 
 and all his friendship, will be fair dealing and 
 friendship without interest. The principle that 
 is in him will stand in no need of aid from any 
 such auxiliary — but, strong in its own unbor- 
 rowed resources, will it impress a legible stamp 
 of dignity and uprightness on the whole variety 
 of his transactions in the world. All men find it 
 their advantage, by the integrity of their dealings, 
 to prolong the existence of some gainful fellow- 
 ship into which they may have entered. But 
 with him, the same unsullied integrity which 
 kept this fellowship together, and sustained the 
 progress of it, will abide with him through its 
 last transactions, and dignify its full and final 
 termination. Most men find, that, without the 
 
102 
 
 reverberation of any mischief on their own heads, 
 the j could •neduce > beneath the point of absolute 
 justice, the charges of taxation. But he has a 
 conscience both towards God, and towards man, 
 which will not let him; and there is a rigid truth 
 in all his returns, a pointed and precise accuracy 
 in all his payments. When hemmed in with 
 circumstances of difficulty, and evidently totter- 
 ing to his fall, the demand of nature is, that he 
 should ply his every artifice to secrete a provision 
 for his family. But a Christian mind is incapable 
 of artifice ; and the voice of conscience within 
 him will ever be louder than the voice of neces- 
 sity ; and he will be open as day with his credi- 
 tors, nor put forth his hand to that which is 
 rightfully theirs, any more than he would put 
 forth his hand to the perpetration of a sacrilege ; 
 and though released altogether from that tie of 
 interest which binds a man to equity with his 
 fellows, yet the tie of principle will remain with 
 him in all its strength. Nor will it ever be found 
 that he, for the sake of subsistence, will enter 
 into fraud, seeing that, as one of the children of 
 light, he would not, to gain the whole world, lose 
 his own soul. 
 
DISCOURSE IV. 
 
 THE GUILT OF DISHONESTY NOT TO BE ESTIMATED 
 BY THE GAIN OF IT. 
 
 91 He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in 
 much ; and he that is unjust in the least, is unjust also in 
 much." — Luke xvi. 10. 
 
 It is the fine poetical conception of a late poeti- 
 cal countryman, whose fancy too often grovelled 
 among the despicable of human character— but 
 who, at the same time, was capable of exhibiting, 
 either in pleasing or in proud array, both the 
 tender and the noble of human character — when 
 he says of the man who carried a native unbor- 
 rowed self-sustained rectitude in his bosom, that 
 " his eye, even turned on empty space, beamed 
 keen with honour." It was affirmed, in the last 
 discourse, that much of the honourable practice 
 of the world rested on the substratum of sel- 
 fishness ; that society was held together in the 
 
104 
 
 exercise of its relative virtues, mainly, by the 
 tie of reciprocal advantage ; that a man's own 
 interest bound him to all those average equities 
 which obtained in the neighbourhood around 
 him ; and in which, if he proved himself to be 
 glaringly deficient, he would be abandoned by 
 the respect, and the confidence, and the good 
 will, of the people with whom he had to do. It 
 is a melancholy thought, how little the sem- 
 blance of virtue upon earth betokens the real 
 and substantial presence of virtuous principle 
 among men. But, on the other hand, though it 
 be a rare, there cannot be a more dignified atti- 
 tude of the soul, than when of itself it kindles 
 with a sense of justice, and the holy flame is fed, 
 as it were, by its own energies ; than when man 
 moves onwards in an unchanging course of moral 
 magnanimity, and disdains the aid of those infe- 
 rior principles by which gross and sordid human- 
 ity is kept from all the grosser violations ; than 
 when he rejoices in truth as his kindred and 
 congenial element ; — so, that though unpeopled 
 of all its terrestrial accompaniments ; though he 
 saw no interest whatever to be associated with 
 its fulfilment; though without one prospect either 
 
105 
 
 of fame or of emolument before him, would his 
 eye, even when turned on emptiness itself, still 
 retain the living lustre that had been lighted up 
 in it, by a feeling of inward and independent 
 reverence. 
 
 It has already been observed, and that fully 
 and frequently enough, that a great part of the 
 homage which is rendered to integrity in the 
 world, is due to the operation of selfishness. 
 And this substantially is the reason, why the 
 principle of the text has so very slender a hold 
 upon the human conscience. Man is ever prone 
 to estimate the enormity of injustice, by the 
 degree in which he suffers from it. He brings 
 this moral question to the standard of his own 
 interest. A master will bear with all the lesser 
 liberties of his servants, so long as he feels them 
 to be harmless ; and it is not till he is awakened 
 to the apprehension of personal injury from the 
 amount or frequency of the embezzlements, that 
 his moral indignation is at all sensibly awa- 
 kened. And thus it is, that the maxim of our 
 great teacher of righteousness seems to be very 
 much unfelt, or forgotten, in society. Unfaith- 
 
106 
 
 fulness in that which is little, and unfaithfulness 
 in that which is much, are very far from being 
 regarded, as they were by him under the same 
 aspect of criminality. If there be no great hurt, 
 it is felt that there is no great harm. The inno- 
 cence of a dishonest freedom in respect of mo- 
 rality, is rated by its insignificance in respect of 
 matter. The margin which separates the right 
 from the wrong is remorselessly trodden under 
 foot, so long as each makes only a minute and 
 gentle encroachment beyond the landmark of 
 his neighbour's territory. On this subject there 
 is a loose and popular estimate, which is not at 
 one with the deliverance of the New Testament; 
 a habit of petty invasion on the side of aggressors, 
 which is scarcely felt by them to be at all iniqui- 
 tous — and even on the part of those who are thus 
 made free with there is a habit of loose and care- 
 less toleration. There is, in fact, a negligence or a 
 dormancy of principle among men, which causes 
 this sort of injustice to be easily practised on the 
 one side, and as easily put up with on the other; 
 and, in a general slackness of observation, is this 
 virtue, in its strictness and in its delicacy, com- 
 pletely overborne. 
 
107 
 
 It is the taint of selfishness, then, which has so 
 marred and corrupted the moral sensibility of 
 our world ; and the man, if such a man can be, 
 whose " eye, even turned on empty space, beams 
 keen with honour ;" and whose homage, there- 
 fore, to the virtue of justice, is altogether freed 
 from the mixture of unworthy and interested 
 feelings, will long to render to her, in every 
 instance, a faultless and a completed offering. 
 Whatever his forbearance to others, he could 
 not suffer the slightest blot of corruption upon 
 any doings of his own. He cannot be satisfied 
 with any thing short of the very last jot and tittle 
 of the requirements of equity being fulfilled. He 
 not merely shares in the revolt of the general 
 world against such outrageous departures from 
 the rule of right, as would carry in their train the 
 ruin of acquaintances or the distress of families. 
 Such is the delicacy of the principle within him, 
 that he could not have peace under the con- 
 sciousness even of the minutest and least disco- 
 verable violation. He looks fully and fearlessly 
 at the whole account which justice has against 
 him ; and he cannot rest, so long as there is a 
 single article unmet, or a single demand unsatis- 
 
 
108 
 
 fied. If, in any transaction of his, there was so 
 much as a farthing of secret and injurious reser- 
 vation on his side, this would be to him like an 
 accursed thing, which marred the character of 
 the whole proceeding, and spread over it such 
 an aspect of evil, as to offend and to disturb him. 
 He could not bear the whisperings of his own 
 heart, if it told him, that, in so much as by one 
 iota of defect, he had balanced the matter un- 
 fairly between himself and the unconscious indi- 
 vidual with whom he deals. It would lie a 
 burden upon his mind to hurt and to make him 
 unhappy, till the opportunity of explanation had 
 come round, and he had obtained ease to his 
 conscience, by acquitting himself to the full of all 
 his obligations. It is justice in the uprightness 
 of her attitude; it is justice in the onwardness of 
 her path; it is justice disdaining every advantage 
 that would tempt her, by ever so little, to the right 
 or to the left; it is justice spurning the littleness 
 of each paltry enticement away from her, and 
 maintaining herself, without deviation, in a track 
 so purely rectilineal, that even the most jealous 
 and microscopic eye could not find in it the 
 slightest aberration : this is the justice set forth 
 
109 
 
 by our great moral Teacher in the passage now 
 submitted to you; and by which we are told, 
 that this virtue refuses fellowship with every 
 degree of iniquity that is perceptible ; and that, 
 were the very least act of unfaithfulness admit- 
 ted, she would feel as if in her sanctity she had 
 been violated, as if in her character she had 
 sustained an overthrow. 
 
 In the further prosecution of this discourse, 
 let us first attempt to elucidate the principle of 
 our text, and then urge it onward to its practical 
 consequences — both as it respects our general 
 relation to God, and as it respects the particular 
 lesson of faithfulness that may be educed from it. 
 
 I. The great principle of the text is, that he 
 who has sinned, though to a small amount in 
 respect of the fruit of his transgression — provided 
 he has done so, by passing over a forbidden limit 
 which was distinctly known to him, has, in the 
 act of doing so, incurred a full condemnation in 
 respect of the principle of his transgression. In 
 one word, that the gain of it may be small, while 
 the guilt of it may be great; that the latter 
 
110 
 
 ought not to be measured by the former ; but 
 that he who is unfaithful in the least, shall be 
 dealt with, in respect of the offence he has given 
 to God, in the same way as if he had been 
 unfaithful in much. 
 
 The first reason which we would assign in 
 vindication of this is, that, by a small act of 
 injustice, the line which separates the right from 
 the wrong, is just as effectually broken over 
 as by a great act of injustice. There is a ten- 
 dency in gross and corporeal man to rate the 
 criminality of injustice by the amount of its 
 appropriations — to reduce it to a computation 
 of weight and of measure — to count the man 
 who has gained a double sum by his dishonesty, 
 to be doubly more dishonest than his neighbour 
 — to make it an affair of product rather than of 
 principle ; and thus to weigh the morality of a 
 character in the same arithmetical balance with 
 number or with magnitude. Now, this is not 
 the rule of calculation on which our Saviour has 
 proceeded in the text. He speaks to the man 
 who is only half an inch within the limit of for- 
 bidden ground, in the very same terms by which 
 
Ill 
 
 he addresses the man who has made the furthest 
 and the largest incursions upon it. It is true, 
 that he is only a little way upon the wrong side 
 of the line of demarcation. But why is he upon 
 it at all ? It was in the act of crossing that line, 
 and not in the act of going onwards after he had 
 crossed it — it was then that the contest between 
 right and wrong was entered upon, and then it 
 was decided. That was the instant of time at 
 which principle struck her surrender. The great 
 pull which the man had to make, was in the act 
 of overleaping the fence of separation ; and after 
 that was done, justice had no other barrier by 
 which to obstruct his progress over the whole 
 extent of the field which she had interdicted. 
 There might be barriers of a different description. 
 There might be still a revolting of humanity 
 against the sufferings that would be inflicted by 
 an act of larger fraud or depredation. There 
 might be a dread of exposure, if the dishonesty 
 should so swell, in point of amount, as to become 
 more noticeable. There might, after the abso- 
 lute limit between justice and injustice is broken, 
 be another limit against the extending of a man's 
 encroachments, in a terror of discovery, or m a 
 
112 
 
 sense of interest, or even in the relentings of a 
 kindly or a compunctious feeling towards him 
 who is the victim of injustice. But this is not 
 the limit with which the question of a man's 
 truth, or a man's honesty, has to do. These 
 have already been given up. He may only be 
 a little way within the margin of the unlawful 
 territory, but still he is upon it ; and the God 
 who finds him there will reckon with him, and 
 deal with him accordingly. Other principles, 
 and other considerations, may restrain his pro- 
 gress to the very heart of the territory, but jus- 
 tice is not one of them. This he deliberately 
 flung away from him, at that moment when he 
 passed the line of circumvallation , and, though 
 in the neighbourhood of that line, he may hover 
 all his days at the petty work of picking and 
 purloining such fragments as he meets with, 
 though he may never venture himself to a place 
 of more daring or distinguished atrocity, God 
 sees of him, that, in respect of the principle of 
 justice, at least, there is an utter unhingement. 
 And thus it is, that the Saviour, who knew what 
 was in man, and who, therefore, knew all the 
 springs of that moral machinery by which he is 
 
113 
 
 actuated, pronounces of him who was unfaithful 
 in the least, that he was unfaithful also in much. 
 
 After the transition is accomplished, the pro- 
 gress will follow of course, just as opportunity 
 invites, and just as circumstances make it safe 
 and practicable. For it is not with justice as it 
 is with generosity, and some of the other virtues. 
 There is not the same graduation in the former 
 as there is in the latter. The man who, other 
 circumstances being equal, gives away a double 
 sum in charity, may, with more propriety, be 
 reckoned doubly more generous than his neigh- 
 bour; than the man w r ho, with the same equality 
 of circumstances, only ventures on half the extent 
 of fraudulency, can be reckoned only one half 
 as unjust as his neighbour. Each has broken a 
 clear line of demarcation. Each has transgressed 
 a distinct and visible limit which he knew to be 
 forbidden. Each has knowingly forced a passage 
 beyond his neighbour's landmark — and that is 
 the place where justice hasdaid the main force 
 of her interdict. As it respects the materiel of 
 injustice, the question resolves itself into a mere 
 computation of quantity. As it respects the 
 
114 
 
 morale of injustice, the computation is upon 
 other principles. It is upon the latter that our 
 Saviour pronounces himself. And he gives us 
 to understand, that a very humble degree of the 
 former may indicate the latter in all its atrocity. 
 He stands on the breach between the lawful and 
 the unlawful; and he tells us, that the man who 
 enters by a single footstep on the forbidden 
 ground, immediately gathers upon his person 
 the full hue and character of guiltiness. He 
 admits no extenuation of the lesser acts of dis- 
 honesty. He does not make right pass into 
 wrong, by a gradual melting of the one into the 
 other. He does not thus obliterate the distinc- 
 tions of morality. There is no shading off at 
 the margin of guilt, but a clear and vigorous 
 delineation. It is not by a gentle transition that 
 a man steps over from honesty to dishonesty. 
 There is between them a wall rising up unto 
 heaven ; and the high authority of heaven must 
 be stormed, ere one inch of entrance can be 
 made into the region of iniquity. The morality 
 of the Saviour never leads him to gloss over the 
 beginnings of crime. His object ever is, as in 
 the text before us, to fortify the limit, to cast a 
 
115 
 
 rampart of exclusion around the whole territory 
 of guilt, and to rear it before the eye of man in 
 such characters of strength and sacredness, as 
 should make them feel that it is impregnable. 
 
 The second reason, why he who is unfaithful 
 in the least has incurred the condemnation of 
 him who is unfaithful in much, is, that the little- 
 ness Of the gain, so far from giving a littleness to 
 the guilt, is in fact a circumstance of aggravation. 
 There is just this difference. He who has com- 
 mitted injustice for the sake of a less advantage, 
 has done it on the impulse of a less temptation. 
 He has parted with his honesty at an inferior 
 price; and this circumstance may go so to equal- 
 ise the estimate, as to bring it very much to one 
 with the deliverance, in the text, of our great 
 Teacher of righteousness. The limitation be- 
 tween good and evil stood as distinctly before 
 the notice of the small as of the great depredator; 
 and he has just made as direct a contravention 
 to the first reason, when he passed over upon the 
 wrong side of it. And he may have made little of 
 gain by the enterprise, but this does not allay 
 the guilt of it. Nay, by the second reason, this 
 
116 
 
 may serve to aggravate the wrath of the Divinity 
 against him. It proves how small the price is 
 which he sets upon his eternity, and how cheaply 
 he can bargain the favour of God away from him, 
 and how low he rates the good of an inheritance 
 with him, and for what a trifle he can dispose of 
 all interest in his kingdom and in his promises. 
 The very circumstance which gives to his char- 
 acter a milder transgression in the eyes of the 
 world, makes it more odious in the judgment of 
 the sanctuary. The more paltry it is in respect 
 of profit, the more profane it may be in respect 
 of principle. It likens him the more to profane 
 Esau, who sold his birthright for a mess of pot- 
 tage. And thus it is, indeed, most woful to think 
 of such a senseless and alienated world; and how 
 heedlessly the men of it are posting their infatu- 
 ated way to destruction ; and how, for as little 
 gain as might serve them a day, they are con- 
 tracting as much guilt as will ruin them for ever; 
 and are profoundly asleep in the midst of such 
 designs and such doings, as will form the valid 
 materials of their entire and everlasting condem- 
 nation. 
 
117 
 
 It is with argument such as this that we would 
 try to strike conviction among a very numerous 
 class of offenders in society — those who, in the 
 various departments of trust, or service, or 
 agency, are ever practising, in littles, at the 
 work of secret appropriation — those whose hands 
 are in a state of constant defilement, by the put- 
 ting of them forth to that which they ought to 
 touch not, and taste not, and handle not — those 
 who silently number such pilferments as can pass 
 unnoticed among the perquisites of their office ; 
 and who, by an excess in their charges, just so 
 slight as to escape detection — or by a habit of 
 purloining, just so restrained as to elude disco- 
 very, have both a conscience very much at ease 
 in their own bosoms, and a credit very fair, and 
 very entire, among their acquaintances around 
 them. They grossly count upon the smallness 
 of their transgression. But they are just going 
 in a small way to hell. They would recoil with 
 violent dislike from the act of a midnight depre- 
 dator. It is just because terrors, and trials, and 
 executions, have thrown around it the pomp and 
 the circumstance of guilt. But at another bar, 
 and on a day of more dreadful solemnitv, their 
 
118 
 
 guilt will be made to stand out in its essen- 
 tial characters, and their condemnation will be 
 pronounced from the lips of Him who judgeth 
 righteously. They feel that they have incurred 
 no outrageous forfeiture of character among 
 men, and this instils a treacherous complacency 
 into their own hearts. But the piercing eye of 
 Him who looketh down from heaven is upon the 
 reality of the question; and He who ponders the 
 secrets of every bosom, can perceive, that the 
 man who recoils only from such a degree of 
 injustice as is notorious, may have no justice' 
 whatever in his character. He may have a sense 
 of reputation. He may have the fear of detec- 
 tion and disgrace. He may feel a revolt in his 
 constitution against the magnitude of a gross 
 and glaring violation. He may even share in 
 all the feelings and principles of that conven- 
 tional kind of morality which obtains in his 
 neighbourhood. But, of that principle which 
 is surrendered by the least act of unfaithful- 
 ness, he has no share whatever. He perceives 
 no overawing sacredness in that boundary which 
 separates the right from the wrong. If he only 
 keep decently near, it is a matter of indifference 
 
119 
 
 to him whether he be on this or on that side of 
 it He can be unfaithful in that which is least. 
 There may be other principles, and other con- 
 siderations, to restrain him ; but certain it is, 
 that it is not now the principle of justice which 
 restrains him from being unfaithful in much. 
 This is given up ; and, through a blindness to 
 the great and important principle of our text, 
 this virtue may, in its essential character, be as 
 good as banished from the world. All its pro- 
 tections may be utterly overthrown. The line 
 of defence is effaced by which it ought to have 
 been firmly and scrupulously guarded. The 
 sign-posts of intimation, which ought to warn 
 and to scare away, are planted along the barrier; 
 and when, in defiance to them, the barrier is 
 broken, man will not be checked by any sense 
 of honesty, at least, from expatiating over the 
 whole of the forbidden territory. And thus 
 may we gather from the countless peccadilloes 
 which are so current in the various departments 
 of trade, and service, and agency — from the 
 secret freedoms in which many do indulge, 
 without one remonstrance from their own hearts 
 — from the petty inroads that are daily practised 
 
120 
 
 on the confines of justice, by which its line of 
 demarcation is trodden under foot, and it has 
 lost the moral distinctness, and the moral charm, 
 that should have kept it un violate — from the 
 exceeding multitude of such offences as are fri- 
 volous in respect of the matter of them, but 
 most fearfully important in respect of the prin- 
 ciple in which they originate — from the woful 
 amount of that unseen and unrecorded guilt 
 which escapes the cognizance of human law, 
 but, on the application of the touchstone in our 
 text, may be made to stand out in characters 
 of severest condemnation — from instances, too 
 numerous to repeat, but certainly too obvious 
 to be missed, even by the observation of charity, 
 may we gather the frailty of human principle, 
 and the virulence of that moral poison, which 
 is now in such full circulation to taint and to 
 adulterate the character of our species. 
 
 Before finishing this branch of our subject, 
 we may observe, that it is with this, as with 
 many other phenomena of the human character, 
 that we are not long in contemplation upon it, 
 without coming in sight of that great character- 
 
121 
 
 istic of fallen man, which meets and forces itself 
 upon us in every view that we take of him — -even 
 the great moral disease of ungodliness. It is at 
 the precise limit between the right and the wrong 
 that the flaming sword of God's law is placed. 
 It is there that " Thus saith the Lord" presents 
 itself, in legible characters, to our view. It is 
 there where the operation of his commandment 
 begins ; and not at any of those higher grada- 
 tions, where a man's dishonesty first appals 
 himself by the chance of its detection, or appals 
 others by the mischief and insecurity which it 
 brings upon social life. An extensive fraud 
 upon the revenue, for example, unpopular as 
 this branch of justice is, would bring a man 
 down from his place of eminence and credit in 
 mercantile society. That petty fraud which is 
 associated with so many of those smaller pay- 
 ments, where a lie in the wTitten acknowledg- 
 ment is both given and accepted, as a way of 
 escape from the legal imposition, circulates at 
 large among the members of the great trading 
 community. In the former, and in all the 
 greater cases of injustice, there is a human re- 
 straint, and a human terror, in operation. There 
 
 Q 
 
122 
 
 is disgrace and civil punishment to scare away. 
 There are all the sanctions of that conventional 
 morality which is suspended on the fear of man, 
 and the opinion of man ; and which, without 
 so much as the recognition of a God, would 
 naturally point its armour against every outrage 
 that could sensibly disturb the securities and 
 the rights of human society. But so long as 
 the disturbance is not sensible — so long as the 
 injustice keeps within the limits of smallness and 
 secrecy — so long as it is safe for the individual 
 to practise it, and, borne along on the tide of 
 general example and connivance, he has nothing 
 to restrain him but that distinct and inflexible 
 word of God, which proscribes all unfaithfulness, 
 and admits of it in no degrees, and no modifi- 
 cations — then, let the almost universal sleep of 
 conscience attest, how little of God there is in 
 the virtue of this world y and how much the 
 peace and the protection of society are owing 
 to such moralities, as the mere selfishness of man 
 would lead him to ordain, even in a community 
 of atheists. 
 
 II* Let us now attempt to unfold a few of 
 
123 
 
 the practical consequences that may be drawn 
 from the principle of the text, both in respect to 
 our general relation with God, and in respect to 
 the particular lesson of faithfulness which may 
 be educed from it. 
 
 1. There cannot be a stronger possible illus- 
 tration of our argument, than the very first act 
 of retribution that occurred in the history of our 
 species. " And God said unto Adam, Of the 
 tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou 
 shalt not eat of it. For in the day thou eatest 
 thereof, thou shalt surely die. But the woman 
 took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave 
 also unto her husband with her, and he did eat." 
 What is it that invests the eating of a solitary 
 apple with a grandeur ^ so momentous? How 
 came an action, in itself so minute, to be the 
 germe of such mighty consequences ? How are 
 we to understand that our first parents, by the 
 doing of a single instant, not only brought death 
 upon themselves, but shed this big and baleful 
 disaster over all their posterity ? We may not 
 be able to answer all these questions, but we 
 niay at least learn, what a thing of danger it is, 
 
124 
 
 under the government of a holy and inflexible 
 God, to tamper with the limits of obedience. 
 By the eating of that apple a clear requirement 
 was broken, and a distinct transition was made 
 from loyalty to rebellion, and an entrance was 
 effected into the region of sin — and thus did this 
 one act serve like the opening of a gate for a 
 torrent of mighty mischief ; and, if the act itself 
 was a trifle, it just went to aggravate its guilt — 
 that, for such a trifle, the authority of God could 
 be despised and trampled on. At all events, his 
 attribute of Truth stood committed to the fulfil- 
 ment of the threatening ; and the very insignifi- 
 cancy of the deed, which provoked the execution 
 of it, gives a sublimer character to the certainty 
 of the fulfilment. We know how much this trait, 
 in the dealings of God with man, has been the 
 jeer of infidelity. But in all this ridicule, there 
 is truly nothing else than the grossness of mate- 
 rialism. Had Adam, instead of plucking one 
 single apple from the forbidden tree, been armed 
 with the power of a malignant spirit, and spread 
 a wanton havock over the face of paradise, and 
 spoiled the garden of its loveliness, and been 
 able to mar and to deform the whole of that 
 
125 
 
 terrestrial creation over which God had so re- 
 cently rejoiced — the punishment he sustained 
 would have looked, to these arithmetical moral- 
 ists, a more adequate return for the offence of 
 which he had been guilty. They cannot see 
 how the moral lesson rises in greatness, just in 
 proportion to the humility of the material accom- 
 paniments — and how it wraps a sublimer glory 
 around the holiness of the Godhead — and how 
 from the transaction, such as it is, the conclusion 
 cometh forth more nakedly, and, therefore, more 
 impressively, that it is an evil and a bitter thing 
 to sin against the Lawgiver. God said, " Let 
 there be light, and it was light;" and it has ever 
 been regarded as a sublime token of the Deity, 
 that, from an utterance so simple, an accomplish- 
 ment so quick and so magnificent should have 
 followed. God said, " That he who eateth of the 
 tree in the midst of the garden should die." It 
 appears, indeed, but a little thing, that one should 
 put forth his hand to an apple and taste of it. 
 But a saying of God was involved in the matter 
 — and heaven and earth must pass away, ere a 
 saying of his can pass away ; and so the apple 
 became decisive of the fate of a world 5 and, out 
 
126 
 
 of the very scantiness of the occasion, did there 
 emerge a sublimer display of truth and of holi- 
 ness. The beginning of the world was, indeed, 
 the period of great manifestations of the God- 
 head ; and they all seem to accord, in style and 
 character, with each other ; and in that very 
 history, which has called forth the profane and 
 unthinking levity of many a scorner, may we 
 behold as much of the majesty of principle, as, in 
 the creation of light, we behold of the majesty of 
 power. 
 
 But this history furnishes the materials of a 
 contemplation still more practical. If, for this 
 one offence, Adam and his posterity have been 
 so visited — if so rigorously and so inflexibly pre- 
 cise be the spirit of God's administration — if, 
 under the economy of heaven, sin, even in the 
 very humblest of its exhibitions, be the object of 
 an intolerance so jealous and so unrelenting — if 
 the Deity be such as this transaction manifests 
 him to be, disdainful of fellowship even with the 
 very least iniquity, and dreadful in the certainty 
 of all his accomplishments against it — if, for a 
 single transgression, all the promise and all the 
 
127 
 
 felicity of paradise had to be broken up, and 
 the wretched offenders had to be turned abroad 
 upon a world, now changed by the curse into a 
 wilderness, and their secure and lovely home of 
 innocence behoved to be abandoned, and to keep 
 them out a flaming sword had to turn every way, 
 and guard their reaccess to the bowers of immor- 
 tality — if sin be so very hateful in the eye of 
 unspotted holiness, that, on its very first act, and 
 first appearance, the wonted communion between 
 heaven and earth was interdicted — if that was 
 the time at which God looked on our species 
 with an altered countenance, and one deed of 
 disobedience proved so terribly decisive of the 
 fate and history of a world — what should each 
 individual amongst us think of his own danger, 
 whose life has been one continued habit of diso- 
 bedience ? If we be still in the hands of that 
 God who laid so fell a condemnation on this one 
 transgression, let us just think of our many trans- 
 gressions, and that every hour we live multiplies 
 the account of them; and that, however they 
 may vanish from our own remembrance, they 
 are still alive in the records of a judge whose 
 eye and whose memory never fail him. Let us 
 
128 
 
 transfer the lesson we have gotten of heaven's 
 jurisprudence from the case of our first parents 
 to our own case. Let us compare our lives witli" 
 the law of God, and we shall find that our sins 
 are past reckoning. Let us take account of the 
 habitual posture of our souls, as a posture of 
 dislike for the things that are above, and we 
 shall find that our thoughts and our desires 
 are ever running in one current of sinfulness. 
 Let us just make the computation how often we 
 fail in the bidden charity, and the bidden godli- 
 ness, and the bidden long suffering — all as clearly 
 bidden as the duty that was laid on our first pa- 
 rents — and we shall find, that we are borne down 
 under a mountain of iniquity ; that, in the lan- 
 guage of the Psalmist, our transgressions have 
 gone over our heads, and, as a heavy burden, 
 are too heavy for us ; and if we be indeed under 
 the government of Him who followed up the 
 offence of the stolen apple by so dreadful a 
 chastisement, then is wrath gone out unto the 
 uttermost against every one of us. There is 
 something in the history of that apple which 
 might be brought specially to bear on the case 
 of those small sinners who practise in secret at 
 
129 
 
 the work of their petty depredations. But it 
 also carries in it a great and a universal moral. 
 It tells us that no sin is small. It serves a 
 general purpose of conviction. It holds out a 
 most alarming disclosure of the charge that is 
 against us ; and makes it manifest to the con- 
 science of him who is awakened thereby, that, 
 unless God himself point out a way of escape, 
 we are indeed most hopelessly sunk in condem- 
 nation. And, seeing that such wrath went out 
 from the sanctuary of this unchangeable God, on 
 the one offence of our first parents, it irresistibly 
 follows, that if we, manifold in guilt, take not 
 ourselves to his appointed way of reconciliation 
 — if we refuse the overtures of Him, who then 
 so visited the one offence through which all are 
 dead, but is now laying before us all that free 
 gift, which is of many offences unto justification 
 — in other words, if we will not enter into peace 
 through the offered Mediator, how much greater 
 must be the wrath that abideth on us ? 
 
 Now, let the sinner have his conscience 
 schooled by such a contemplation, and there 
 will be no rest whatever for his soul till he find 
 
130 
 
 it in the Saviour. Let him only learn, from the 
 dealings of God with the first Adam, what a 
 God of holiness he himself has to deal with; and 
 let him further learn, from the history of the 
 second Adam, that, to manifest himself as a God 
 of love, another righteousness had to be brought 
 in, in place of that from which man had fallen so 
 utterly away. There was a faultless obedience 
 rendered by Him, of whom it is said, that he 
 fulfilled all righteousness. There was a magni- 
 fying of the law by one in human form, who, up 
 to the last jot and tittle of it, acquitted himself 
 of all its obligations. There was a pure, and 
 lofty, and undefiled path, trodden by a holy and 
 harmless Being, who gave not up his work upon 
 earth, till, ere he left it, he could cry out, that 
 It was finished ; and so had wrought out for us 
 a perfect righteousness. Now, it forms the 
 most prominent annunciation of the New Tes- 
 tament, that the reward of this righteousness is 
 offered unto all — so that there is not one of us 
 who is not put by the gospel upon the alternative 
 of being either tried by our own merits, or treated 
 according to the merits of Him who became sin 
 for us, though he knew no sin, that we might be 
 
131 
 
 made the righteousness of God in him. Let the 
 sinner just look unto himself, and look unto the 
 Saviour. Let him advert not to his one, but to 
 his many offences ; and that, too, in the sight of 
 a God, who, but for one so slight and so insigni- 
 ficant in respect of the outward description, as 
 the eating of a forbidden apple, threw off a world 
 into banishment, and entailed a sentence of deatli 
 upon all its generations. Let him learn from 
 this, that for sin, even in its humblest degrees, 
 there exists in the bosom of the Godhead no 
 toleration ; and how shall he dare, with the de- 
 gree and the frequency of his own sin, to stand 
 any longer on a ground, where, if he remain, 
 the fierceness of a consuming fire is so sure to 
 overtake him ? The righteousness of Christ is 
 without a flaw, and there he is invited to take 
 shelter. Under the actual regimen, which God 
 has established in our world, it is indeed his only 
 security — his refuge from the tempest, and hiding 
 place from the storm. The only beloved son 
 offers to spread his own unspotted garment as a 
 protection over him; and, if he be rightly alive 
 to the utter nakedness of his moral and spiritual 
 condition, he will indeed make no tarrying till 
 
132 
 
 he be found in Christ, and find that in him there 
 is jio condemnation. 
 
 Now, it is worthy of remark, that those prin- 
 ciples, which shut a man up unto the faith, do 
 not take flight and abandon him, after they have 
 served this temporary purpose. They abide with 
 him, and work their appropriate influence on his 
 character, and serve as the germe of a new moral 
 creation; and we can afterwards detect their 
 operation in his heart and life ; so, that if they 
 were present at the formation of a saving belief, 
 they are not less unfailingly present with every 
 true Christian, throughout the whole of his future 
 history, as the elements of a renovated conduct. 
 If it was sensibility to the evil of sin which helped 
 to wean the man from himself, and led him to 
 his Saviour, this sensibility does not fall asleep 
 in the bosom of an awakened sinner, after Christ 
 has given him light — but it grows with the 
 growth, and strengthens with the strength, of 
 his Christianity. If, at the interesting period 
 of his transition from nature to grace, he saw, 
 even in the very least of his offences, a deadly 
 provocation of the Lawgiver, he does not lose 
 
133 
 
 sight of this consideration in his future progress 
 — nor does it barely remain with him, like one 
 of the unproductive notions of an inert and un- 
 productive theory. It gives rise to a fearful 
 jealousy in his heart of the least appearance of 
 evil ; and, with every man who has undergone a 
 genuine process of conversion, do we behold the 
 scrupulous avoidance of sin, in its most slender, 
 as well as in its more aggravated forms. If it 
 was the perfection of the character of Christ, 
 who felt that it became him to fulfil all righteous- 
 ness, that offered him the first solid foundation on 
 which he could lean — then, the same character, 
 which first drew his eye for the purpose of con- 
 fidence, still continues to draw his eye for the 
 purpose of imitation. At the outset of faith, all 
 the essential moralities of thought, and feeling, 
 and conviction, are in play; nor is there any 
 thing in the progress of a real faith which is 
 calculated to throw them back again into the 
 dormancy out of which they had arisen. They 
 break out, in fact, into more full and flourishing 
 display on every new creature, with every new 
 step, and new evolution, in his mental history. 
 All the principles of the gospel serve, as it were, 
 
134 
 
 to fan and to perpetuate his hostility against sin; 
 and all the powers of the gospel enable him, 
 more and more, to fulfil the desires of his heart, 
 and to carry his purposes of hostility into execu- 
 tion. In the case of every genuine believer, who 
 walks not after the flesh, but after the spirit, do 
 we behold a fulfilling of the righteousness of the 
 law — a strenuous avoidance of sin, in its slightest 
 possible taint or modification — a strenuous per- 
 formance of duty, up to the last jot and tittle of 
 its exactions — so, that let the untrue professors 
 of the faith do what they will in the way of 
 antinomianism, and let the enemies of the faith 
 say what they will about our antinomianism, 
 the real spirit of the dispensation under which 
 we live is such, that whosoever shall break one 
 of the least of these commandments, and teach 
 men so, is accounted the least — whosoever shall 
 do and teach them is accounted the greatest. 
 
 2. Let us, therefore, urge the spirit and the 
 practice of this lesson upon your observation. 
 The place for the practice of it is the familiar 
 and week-day scene. The principle for the spirit 
 of it descends upon the heart, from the sublimes! 
 
135 
 
 heights of the sanctuary of God. It is not vul- 
 garizing Christianity to bring it down to the very 
 humblest occupations of human life. It is, in 
 fact, dignifying human life, by bringing it up to 
 the level of Christianity. It may look to some 
 a degradation of the pulpit, when the household 
 servant is told to make her firm stand against the 
 temptation of open doors, and secret opportuni- 
 ties ; or when the confidential agent is told to 
 resist the slightest inclination to any unseen free- 
 dom with the property of his employers, or to 
 any undiscoverable excess in the charges of his 
 management ; or when the receiver of a humble 
 payment is told, that the tribute which is due 
 on every written acknowledgment ought faith- 
 fully to be met, and not fictitiously to be evaded. 
 This is not robbing religion of its sacredness, 
 but spreading its sacredness over the face of 
 society. It is evangelizing human life, by im- 
 pregnating its minutest transactions with the 
 spirit of the gospel. It is strengthening the wall 
 of partition between sin and obedience. It is the 
 Teacher of righteousness taking his stand at the 
 outpost of that territory which he is appointed 
 to defend, and warning his hearers of the danger 
 
136 
 
 that lies in a single footstep of encroachment. It 
 is letting them know, that it is in the act of step- 
 ping over the limit, that the sinner throws the 
 gauntlet of his defiance against the authority of 
 God. And though he may deceive himself with 
 the imagination that his soul is safe, because the 
 gain of his injustice is small, such is the God 
 with whom he has to do, that, if it be gain to the 
 value of a single apple, then, within the compass 
 of so small an outward dimension, may as much 
 guilt be enclosed as that which hath brought 
 death into our world, and carried it down in a 
 descending ruin upon all its generations. 
 
 It may appear a very little thing, when you 
 are told to be honest in little matters ; when the 
 servant is told to keep her hand from every one 
 article about which there is not an express or 
 understood allowance on the part of her supe- 
 riors ; when the dealer is told to lop off the 
 excesses of that minuter fraudulency, which is 
 so currently practised in the humble walks of 
 merchandise ; when the workman is told to ab- 
 stain from those petty reservations of the material 
 of his work, for which he is said to have such 
 
137 
 
 snug and ample opportunity ; and when, without 
 pronouncing on the actual extent of these trans- 
 gressions, all are told to be faithful in that which 
 is least, else, if there be truth in our text, they 
 incur the guilt of being unfaithful in much. It 
 may be thought, that because such dishonesties 
 as these are scarcely noticeable, they are there- 
 fore not worthy of notice. But it is just in the 
 proportion of their being unnoticeable by the 
 human eye, that it is religious to refrain from 
 them. These are the cases in which it will be 
 seen, whether the control of the omniscience of 
 God makes up for the control of human obser- 
 vation — in which the sentiment, that thou God 
 seest me, should carry a preponderance through 
 all the secret places of a man's history — in which, 
 when every earthly check of an earthly morality 
 is withdrawn, it should be felt, that the eye of 
 God is upon him, and that the judgment of God 
 is in reserve for him. To him who is gifted with 
 a true discernment of these matters, will it ap- 
 pear, that often, in proportion to the smallness 
 of the doings, is the sacredness of that principle 
 which causes them to be done with integrity; 
 that honesty, in little transactions, bears upon 
 
138 
 
 it more of the aspect of holiness, than honesty 
 in great ones; that the man of deepest sensibility 
 to the obligations of the law, is he who feels the 
 quickening of moral alarm at its slightest viola- 
 tions ; that, in the morality of grains and of 
 scruples, there may be a greater tenderness of 
 conscience, and a more heaven-born sanctity, 
 than in that larger morality which flashes broadly 
 and observably upon the world ; — and that thus, 
 in the faithfulness of the household maid, or of 
 the apprentice boy, there may be the presence 
 of a truer principle, than there is in the more 
 conspicuous transactions of human business — 
 what they do, being done, not with eye-service 
 — what they do, being done unto the Lord. 
 
 And here we may remark, that nobleness of 
 condition is not essential as a school for noble- 
 ness of character ; nor does man require to be 
 high in office, ere he can gather around his 
 person the worth and the lustre of a high-minded 
 integrity. It is delightful to think, that humble 
 life may be just as rich in moral grace, and moral 
 grandeur, as the loftier places of society; that as 
 true a dignity of principle may be earned by him 
 
139 
 
 who, in homeliest drudgery, plies his conscien- 
 tious task, as by him who stands entrusted with the 
 fortunes of an empire ; that the poorest menial 
 in the land, who can lift a hand unsoiled by the 
 pilferments that are within his reach, may have 
 achieved a victory over temptation, to the full as 
 honourable as the proudest patriot can boast, 
 who has spurned the bribery of courts away 
 from him. It is cheering to know, from the 
 heavenly judge himself, that he who is faithful 
 in the least, is faithful also in much ; and that 
 thus, among the labours of the field and of the 
 work-shop, it is possible for the peasant to be as 
 bright in honour as the peer, and have the chi- 
 valry of as much truth and virtue to adorn him. 
 
 And, a3 this lesson is not little in respect of 
 principle, so neither is it little in respect of in- 
 fluence on the order and well-being of human 
 society. He who is unjust in the least, is, in 
 respect of guilt, unjust also in much. And to 
 reverse this proposition, as it is done in the first 
 clause of our text — he who is faithful in that 
 which is least, is, in respect both of righteous 
 principle and of actual observation, faithful also 
 
140 
 
 in much. Who is the man to whom I would 
 most readily confide the whole of my property ? 
 He who would most disdain to put forth an in- 
 jurious hand on a single farthing of it. Who is 
 the man from whom I would have the least dread 
 of any unrighteous encroachment ? He, all the 
 delicacies of whose principle are awakened, when 
 he comes within sight of the limit which separates 
 the region of justice from the region of injustice. 
 Who is the man whom we shall never find among 
 the greater degrees of iniquity ? He who shrinks 
 with sacred abhorrence from the lesser degrees 
 of it. It is a true, though a homely maxim of 
 economy, that if we take care of our small sums, 
 our great sums will take care of themselves. 
 And, to pass from our own things to the things 
 of others, it is no less true, that if principle 
 should lead us all to maintain the care of strictest 
 honesty over our neighbour's pennies, then will 
 his pounds lie secure from the grasp of injustice, 
 behind the barrier of a moral impossibility. This 
 lesson, if carried into effect among you, would 
 so strengthen all the ramparts of security between 
 man and man, as to make them utterly impassa- 
 ble; and therefore, while, in the matter of it, it 
 
141 
 
 may look, in one view, as one of the least of the 
 commandments, it, in regard both of principle 
 and of effect, is, in another view of it, one of the 
 greatest of the commandments. And we there- 
 fore conclude with assuring you, that nothing will 
 spread the principle of this commandment to 
 any great extent throughout the mass of society, 
 but the principle of godliness. Nothing will 
 secure the general observation of justice amongst 
 us, in its punctuality and in its preciseness, but 
 such a precise Christianity as many affirm to 
 be puritanical. In other words, the virtues of 
 society, to be kept in a healthful and prosperous 
 condition, must be upheld by the virtues of the 
 sanctuary. Human law may restrain many of 
 the grosser violations. But without religion 
 among the people, justice will never be in ex- 
 tensive operation as a moral principle. A vast 
 proportion of the species will be as unjust as the 
 vigilance and the severities of law allow them to 
 be. A thousand petty dishonesties, which never 
 will, and never can be brought within the cog- 
 nizance of any of our courts of administration, 
 will still continue to derange the business of 
 human life, and to stir up all the heartburnings 
 
142 
 
 of suspicion and resentment among the members 
 of human society. And it is, indeed, a trium- 
 phant reversion awaiting the Christianity of the 
 New Testament, when it shall become manifest 
 as day, that it is her doctrine alone, which, by its 
 searching and sanctifying influence, can so mo- 
 ralise our world — as that each may sleep secure 
 in the lap of his neighbour's integrity, and the 
 charm of confidence, between man and man, 
 will at length be felt in the business of every 
 town, and in the bosom of every family. 
 

 DISCOURSE V. 
 
 ON THE GREAT CHRISTIAN LAW OF RECIPROCITY 
 BETWEEN MAN AND MAN. 
 
 " Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should 
 do to you, do ye even so to them : for this is the law and 
 the prophets." — Matt. vii. 12. 
 
 There are two great classes in human society, 
 between whom there lie certain mutual claims 
 and obligations, which are felt by some to be of 
 very difficult adjustment. There are those who 
 have requests of some kind or other to make ; 
 and there are those to whom the requests are 
 made, and with whom there is lodged the power 
 either to grant or to refuse them. Now, at first 
 sight, it would appear, that the firm exercise of 
 this power of refusal is the only barrier by which 
 the latter class can be secured against the inde- 
 finite encroachments of the former ; and that, if 
 this were removed, all the safeguards of right 
 
144 
 
 and property would be removed along with it. 
 The power of refusal, on the part of those who 
 have the right of refusal, may be abolished by 
 an act of violence, on the part of those who have 
 it not; and then, when this happens in individual 
 cases, we have the crimes of assault and robbery; 
 and when it happens on a more extended scale, 
 we have anarchy and insurrection in the land. 
 Or the power of refusal may be taken away by 
 an authoritative precept of religion ; and then 
 might it still be matter of apprehension, lest our 
 only defence against the inroads of selfishness 
 and injustice were as good as given up, and lest 
 the peace and interest of families should be laid 
 open to a most fearful exposure, by the enact- 
 ments of a romantic and impracticable system. 
 Whenever this is apprehended, the temptation is 
 strongly felt, either to rid ourselves of the enact- 
 ments altogether, or at least to bring them down 
 in nearer accommodation to the feelings and the 
 
 conveniencies of men. 
 
 • 
 
 And Christianity, on the very first blush of it, 
 appears to be precisely such a religion. It seems 
 to take away all lawfulness of resistance from 
 
145 
 
 the possessor, and to invest the demander with 
 such an extent of privilege, as would make the 
 two classes of society, to which we have just now 
 adverted, speedily change places. And this is the 
 true secret of the many laborious deviations that 
 have been attempted, in this branch of morality, 
 on the obvious meaning of the New Testament. 
 This is the secret of those many qualifying 
 clauses, by which its most luminous announce- 
 ments have been beset, to the utter darkening 
 of them. This it is which explains the many 
 sad invasions that have been made on the most 
 manifest and undeniable literalities of the law 
 and of the testimony. And our present text, 
 among others, has received its full share of mu- 
 tilation, and of what may be called " dressing 
 up," from the hands of commentators — it having 
 wakened the very alarms of which we have just 
 spoken, and called forth the very attempts to 
 quiet and to subdue them. Surely, it has been 
 said, we can never be required to do unto others 
 what they have no right, and no reason, to expect 
 from us. The demand must not be an extrava- 
 gant one. It must lie within the limits of mo- 
 deration. It must be such as, in the estimation 
 
146 
 
 of every justly thinking person, is counted fair 
 in the circumstances of the case. The principle 
 on which our Saviour, in the text, rests the 
 obligation of doing any particular thing to others, 
 is, that we wish others to do that thing unto us. 
 But this is too much for an affrighted selfishness; 
 and, for her own protection, she would put forth 
 a defensive sophistry upon the subject ; and in 
 place of that distinctly announced principle, on 
 which the Bible both directs and specifies what 
 the things are which we should do unto others, 
 does she substitute another principle entirely — 
 which is, merely to do unto others such things as 
 are fair, and right, and reasonable. 
 
 Now, there is one clause of this verse which 
 would appear to lay a positive interdict on all 
 these qualifications. How shall we dispose of a 
 phrase, so sweeping and universal in its import, 
 as that of " all things whatsoever ?" We cannot 
 think that such an expression as this was inserted 
 for nothing, by him who has told us, that " cursed 
 is every one who taketh away from the words of 
 this book." There is no distinction laid down 
 between things fair, and things unfair — between 
 
147 
 
 things reasonable, and things unreasonable. Both 
 are comprehended in the " all things whatso- 
 ever." The signification is plain and absolute, 
 that, let the thing be what it may, if you wish 
 others to do that thing for you, it lies impera- 
 tively upon you to do the very same thing for 
 them also. 
 
 But, at this rate, you may think that the whole 
 system of human intercourse would go into 
 unhingement. You may wish your next-door 
 neighbour to present you with half his fortune. 
 In this case, we know not how you are to escape 
 from the conclusion, that you are bound to 
 present him with the half of yours. Or you 
 may wish a relative to burden himself with the 
 expenses of all your family. It is then impossi- 
 ble to save you from the positive obligation, if 
 you are equally able for it, of doing the same 
 service to the family of another. Or you may 
 wish to engross the whole time of an acquain- 
 tance in personal attendance upon yourself. 
 Then, it is just your part to do the same extent 
 of civility to another who may desire it. These 
 are only a few specifications, out of the manifold 
 
148 
 
 varieties, whether of service or of donation, 
 which are conceivable between one man and 
 another ; nor are we aware of any artifice of 
 explanation by which they can possibly be de- 
 tached from the " all things whatsoever" of the 
 verse before us. These are the lateralities which 
 we are not at liberty to compromise — but are 
 bound to urge, and that simply, according to 
 the terms in which they have been conveyed to 
 us by the great Teacher of righteousness. This 
 may raise a sensitive dread in many a bosom. 
 It may look like the opening of a floodgate, 
 through which a torrent of human rapacity 
 would be made to set in on the fair and mea- 
 sured domains of property, and by which all the 
 fences of legality would be overthrown. It is 
 some such fearful anticipation as this which 
 causes casuistry to ply its wily expedients, and 
 busily to devise its many limits, and its many 
 exceptions, to the morality of the New Testa- 
 ment. And yet, we think it possible to demon- 
 strate of our text, that no such modifying is 
 requisite; and that, though admitted strictly and 
 rigorously as the rule of our daily conduct, it 
 
149 
 
 would lead to no practical conclusions which 
 are at all formidable. 
 
 For, what is the precise circumstance which 
 lays the obligation of this precept upon you? 
 There may be other places in the Bible where 
 you are required to do things for the benefit of 
 your neighbour, whether you would wish your 
 neighbour to do these things for your benefit 
 or not. But this is not the requirement here. 
 There is none other thing laid upon you in tins 
 place, than that you should do that good action 
 in behalf of another, which you would like that 
 other to do in behalf of yourself. If you would 
 not like him to do it for you, then there is nothing 
 in the compass of this sentence now before you, 
 that at all obligates you to do it for him. If you 
 would not like your neighbour to make so ro- 
 mantic a surrender to your interest, as to offer 
 you to the extent of half his fortune, then there 
 is nothing in that part of the gospel code which 
 now engages us, that renders it imperative upon 
 you to make the same offer to your neighbour. 
 If you would positively recoil, in all the reluc- 
 tance of ingenuous delicacy, from the selfishness 
 
150 
 
 of laying on a relation the burden of the expenses 
 of all your family, then this is not the good office 
 that you would have him to do unto you ; and 
 this, therefore, is not the good office which the 
 text prescribes you to do unto him. If you have 
 such consideration for another's ease, and ano- 
 ther's convenience, that you could not take the 
 ungenerous advantage of so much of his time for 
 your accommodation, there may be other verses 
 in the Bible which point to a greater sacrifice, on 
 your part, for the good of others, than you would 
 like these others to make for yours ; but, most 
 assuredly, this is not the verse which imposes 
 that sacrifice. If you would not that others 
 should do these things on your account, then 
 these things form no part of the " all things 
 whatsoever" you would that men should do unto 
 you ; and, therefore, they form no part of the 
 " all things whatsoever" that you are required, 
 by this verse, to do unto them. The bare cir- 
 cumstance of your positively not wishing that 
 any such services should be rendered unto you, 
 exempts you, as far as the single authority of 
 this precept is concerned, from the obligation 
 of rendering these services to others. This is 
 
151 
 
 the limitation to the extent of those services 
 which are called for in the text; and it is surely 
 better, that every limitation to a commandment 
 of God's, should be defined by God himself, than 
 that it should be drawn from the assumptions of 
 human fancy, or from the fears and the feelings 
 of human convenience. 
 
 Let a man, in fact, give himself up to a strict 
 and literal observation of the precept in this 
 verse, and it will impress a two-fold direction 
 upon him. It will not only guide him to certain 
 performances of good in behalf of others, but 
 it will guide him to the regulation of his own 
 desires of good from them. For his desires of 
 good from others are here set up as the measure 
 of his performances of good to others. The 
 more selfish and unbounded his desires are, the 
 larger are those performances with the obligation 
 of which he is burdened. Whatsoever he would 
 that others should do unto him, he is bound to 
 do unto them; and, therefore, the more he gives 
 way to ungenerous and extravagant wishes of 
 service from those who are around him, the 
 heavier and more insupportable is the load of 
 
152 
 
 duty which he brings upon himself. The com- 
 mandment is quite imperative, and there is no 
 escaping from it; and if he, by the excess of his 
 selfishness, should render it impracticable, then 
 the whole punishment, due to the guilt of casting 
 aside the authority of this commandment, follows 
 in that train of punishment which is annexed to 
 selfishness. There is one way of being relieved 
 from such a burden. There is one way of re- 
 ducing this verse to a moderate and practicable 
 requirement; and that is, just to give up selfish- 
 ness — -just to stifle all ungenerous desires — -just 
 to moderate every wish of service or liberality 
 from others, down to the standard of what is 
 right and equitable ; and then there may be other 
 verses in the Bible, by which we are called to 
 be kind even to the evil and the unthankful. 
 But, most assuredly, this verse lays upon us none 
 other thing, than that we should do such services 
 for others as are right and equitable. 
 
 The more extravagant, then, a man's wishes 
 of accommodation from others are, the wider is 
 the distance between him and the bidden per- 
 formances of our text. The separation of him 
 
153 
 
 from his duty increases at the rate of two bodies 
 receding from each other by equal and contrary 
 movements. The more selfish his desires of 
 service are from others, the more feeble, on that 
 very account, will be his desires of making any 
 surrender of himself to them, and yet the greater 
 is the amount of that surrender which is due. 
 The poor man, in fact, is moving himself away 
 from the rule ; and the rule is just moving as 
 fast away from the man. As he sinks, in the 
 scale of selfishness, beneath the point of a fair 
 and moderate expectation from others, does the 
 rule rise, in the scale of duty, with its demands 
 upon him ; and thus there is rendered to him 
 double for every unfair and ungenerous imposi- 
 tion that he would make on the kindness of those 
 who are around him. 
 
 Now, there is one way, and a very effectual 
 one, of getting these two ends to meet. Mode- 
 rate your own desires of service from others, 
 and you will moderate, in the same degree, all 
 those duties of service to others which are mea- 
 sured by these desires. Have the delicacy to 
 abstain from any wish of encroachment on the 
 
 u 
 
154 
 
 convenience or property of another. Have the 
 high-mindedness to be indebted for your own 
 support to the exertions of your own honourable 
 industry, rather than to the dastardly habit of 
 preying on the simplicity of those around you. 
 Have such a keen sense of equity, and such a 
 fine tone of independent feeling, that you could 
 not bear to be the cause of hardship or distress 
 to a single human creature, if you could help it. 
 Let the same spirit be in you, which the Apostle 
 wanted to exemplify before the eye of his disci- 
 ples, when he coveted no man's gold, or silver, 
 or apparel ; when he laboured not to be charge- 
 able to any of them ; but wrought with his own 
 hands, rather than be burdensome. Let this 
 mind be in you, which was also in the Apostle 
 of the Gentiles > and then, the text before us 
 will not come near you with a single oppressive 
 or impracticable requirement. There may be 
 other passages, where you are called to go beyond 
 the strict line of justice, or common humanity, 
 in behalf of your suffering brethren. But this 
 passage does not touch you with any such pre- 
 ceptive imposition: and you, by moderating your 
 wishes from others down to what is fair and 
 
155 
 
 equitable, do, in fact, reduce the rule which binds 
 you to act according to the measure of these 
 wishes, down to a rule of precise and undeviating 
 equity. 
 
 The operation is somewhat like that of a go- 
 vernor, or fly, in mechanism. This is a very 
 happy contrivance, by which all that is defective 
 or excessive in the motion, is confined within 
 the limits of equability; and every tendency, in 
 particular, to any mischievous acceleration, is 
 restrained. The impulse given by this verse to 
 the conduct of man among his fellows, would 
 seem, to a superficial observer, to carry him to 
 all the excesses of a most ruinous and quixotic 
 benevolence. But let him only look to the skilful 
 adaptation of the fly. Just suppose the control 
 of moderation and equity to be laid upon his own 
 wishes, and there is not a single impulse given 
 to his conduct beyond the rate of moderation 
 and equity. You are not required here to do all 
 things whatsoever in behalf of others, but to do 
 all things whatsoever for them, that you would 
 should be done unto yourself. This is the check 
 by which the whole of the bidden movement is 
 
156 
 
 governed, and kept from running out into any 
 hurtful excess. And such is the beautiful ope- 
 ration of that piece of moral mechanism that we 
 are now employed in contemplating, that while 
 it keeps down all the aspirations of selfishness, 
 it does, in fact, restrain every extravagancy, 
 and impresses on its obedient subjects no other 
 movement, than that of an even and inflexible 
 justice. 
 
 This rule of our Saviour's, then, prescribes 
 moderation to our desires of good from others, 
 as well as generosity to our doings in behalf of 
 others ; and makes the first the measure of obli- 
 gation to the second. It may thus be seen how 
 easily, in a Christian society,' the whole work of 
 benevolence could be adjusted, so as to render 
 it possible for the givers not only to meet, but 
 also to overpass, the wishes and expectations of 
 the receivers. The rich man may have a heavier 
 obligation laid upon him by other precepts of 
 the New Testament ; but, by this precept, he is 
 not bound to do more for the poor man, than 
 what he himself would wish, in like circum- 
 stances, to be done for him. And let the poor 
 
157 f 
 
 man, on the other hand, wish for no more than 
 what a Christian ought to wish for; let him work 
 and endure to the extent of nature's sufferance, 
 rather than beg — and only beg, rather than that 
 he should starve; and in such a state of principle 
 among men, a tide of beneficence would so go 
 forth upon all the vacant places in society, as 
 that there should be no room to receive it. The 
 duty of the rich, as connected with this admin- 
 istration, is of so direct and positive a character, 
 as to obtrude itself at once on the notice of the 
 Christian moralist. But the poor also have a 
 duty in it — to which we feel ourselves directed 
 by the train of argument which we have now 
 been prosecuting — and a duty, too, w T e think, of 
 far greater importance even than the other, to 
 the best interests of mankind. 
 
 For, let us first contrast the rich man who is 
 ungenerous in his doings, with the poor man 
 who is ungenerous in his desires ; and see from 
 which of the two it is, that the cause of charity 
 receives the deadlier infliction. There is, it must 
 be admitted, an individual to be met with occa- 
 sionally, who represents the former of these two 
 
158 
 
 characters; with every affection gravitating to 
 self, and to its sordid gratifications and interests; 
 bent on his own pleasure, or his own avarice — 
 and so engrossed with these, as to have no spare 
 feeling at all for the brethren of his common 
 nature; with a heart obstinately shut against 
 that most powerful of applications, the look of 
 genuine and imploring distress — and whose very 
 countenance speaks a surly and determined ex- 
 clusion on every call that proceeds- from it; who, 
 in a tumult of perpetual alarm about new cases, 
 and new tales of suffering, and new plans of 
 philanthropy, has at length learned to resist 
 and to resent every one of them ; and, spurning 
 the whole of this disturbance impatientiy away, 
 to maintain a firm defensive over the close system 
 of his own selfish luxuries, and his own snug 
 accommodations. Such a man keeps back, it 
 must be allowed, from the cause of charity, 
 what he ought to have rendered to it in his own 
 person. There is a diminution of the philanthro- 
 pic fund, up to the extent of what benevolence 
 would have awarded out of his individual means, 
 and individual opportunities. The good cause 
 is a sufferer, not by any positive blow it has sus- 
 
159 
 
 tained, but by the simple negation of one friendly 
 and fostering hand, that else might have been 
 stretched forth to aid and patronise it. There 
 is only so much less of direct countenance and 
 support, than would otherwise have been ; for, 
 in this our age, we have no conception whatever 
 of such an example being at all infectious. For 
 a man to wallow in prosperity himself, and be un- 
 mindful of the wretchedness that is around him, 
 is an exhibition of altogether so ungainly a char- 
 acter, that it will far oftener provoke an observer 
 to affront it by the contrast of his own generosity, 
 than to render it the approving testimony of his 
 imitation. So that all we have lost by the man 
 who is ungenerous in his doings, is his own 
 contribution to the cause of philanthropy. And 
 it is a loss that can be borne. The cause of this 
 world's beneficence can do abundantly without 
 him. There is a ground that is yet unbroken, and 
 there are resources which are still unexplored, 
 that will yield a far more substantial produce to 
 the good of humanity, than he, and thousands as 
 wealthy as he, could render to it, out of all their 
 capabilities. 
 
160 
 
 But there is a far wider mischief inflicted on 
 the cause of charity, by the poor man who is 
 ungenerous in his desires ; by him, whom every 
 act of kindness is sure to call out to the reaction 
 of some new demand, or new expectation ; by 
 him, on whom the hand of a giver has the effect, 
 not of appeasing his wants, but of inflaming his 
 rapacity ; by him who, trading among the sym- 
 pathies of the credulous, can dexterously appro- 
 priate for himself a portion tenfold greater than 
 what would have blest and brightened the aspect 
 of many a deserving family. Him we denounce 
 as the worst enemy of the poor. It is he whose 
 ravenous gripe wrests from them a far more 
 abundant benefaction, than is done by the most 
 lordly and unfeeling proprietor in the land. He 
 is the arch-oppressor of his brethren ; and the 
 amount of the robbery which he has practised 
 upon them, is not to be estimated by the alms 
 which he has monopolised, by the food, or the 
 raiment, or the money, which he has diverted to 
 himself, from the more modest sufferers around 
 him. He has done what is infinitely worse than 
 turning aside the stream of charity. He has 
 closed its floodgates. He has chilled and alien- 
 
161 
 
 ated the hearts of the wealthy, by the gall of 
 bitterness which he has infused into this whole 
 ministration. A few such harpies would suffice 
 to exile a whole neighbourhood from the atten- 
 tions of the benevolent, by the distrust and the 
 jealousy wherewith they have poisoned their 
 bosoms, and laid an arrest on all the sensibilities 
 that else would have flowed from them. It is he 
 who, ever on the watch and on the wing about 
 some enterprise of imposture, makes it his busi- 
 ness to work and to prey on the compassionate 
 principles of our nature ; it is he who, in effect, 
 grinds the faces of the poor, and that, with 
 deadlier severity than even is done by the great 
 baronial tyrant, the battlements of whose castle 
 seem to frown, in all the pride of aristocracy, on 
 the territory that is before it. There is, at all 
 times, a kindliness of feeling ready to stream 
 forth, with a tenfold greater liberality than ever, 
 on the humble orders of life ; and it is he, and 
 such as he, who have congealed it. He has 
 raised a jaundiced medium between the rich and 
 the poor, in virtue of which, the former eye the 
 latter with suspicion; and there is not a man 
 who wears the garb, and prefers the applications 
 
162 
 
 of poverty, that has not suffered from the worth- 
 less impostor who has gone before him. They 
 are, in fact, the deceit, and the indolence, and 
 the low sordidness of a few, who have made 
 outcasts of the many, and locked against them 
 the feelings of the wealthy in a kind of iron 
 imprisonment. The rich man who is ungenerous 
 in his doings, keeps back one labourer from the 
 field of charity. But a poor man who is un- 
 generous in his desires, can expel a thousand 
 labourers in disgust away from it. He sheds a 
 cruel and extended blight over the fair region 
 of philanthropy ; and many have abandoned it, 
 who, but for him, would fondly have lingered 
 thereupon ; very many, who, but for the way in 
 which their simplicity has been tried and tram- 
 pled upon, would still have tasted the luxury of 
 doing good unto the poor, and made it their 
 delight, as well as their duty, to expend and 
 expatiate among their habitations. 
 
 We say not this to exculpate the rich ; for it is 
 their part not to be weary in well-doing, but to 
 prosecute the work and the labour of love under 
 every discouragement. Neither do we say this 
 
163 
 
 to the disparagement of the poor ; for the picture 
 we have given is of the few out of the many, and 
 the closer the acquaintance with humble life 
 becomes, will it be the more seen of what a high 
 pitch of generosity even the very poorest are 
 capable. They, in truth, though perhaps they 
 are not aware of it, can contribute more to the 
 cause of charity, by the moderation of their de- 
 sires, than the rich can by the generosity of their 
 doings. They, without, it may be, one penny to 
 bestow, might obtain a place in the record of 
 heaven, as the most liberal benefactors of their 
 species. There is nothing in the humble condi- 
 tion of life they occupy, which precludes them 
 from all that is great or graceful in human cha- 
 rity. There is a way in which they may equal, 
 and even outpeer, the wealthiest of the land, in 
 that very virtue of which wealth alone has been 
 conceived to have the exclusive inheritance. 
 There is a pervading character in humanity 
 which the varieties of rank do not obliterate; and 
 as, in virtue of the common corruption, the poor 
 man may be as effectually the rapacious despoiler 
 of his brethren, as the man of opulence above 
 him — so, there is a common excellence attainable 
 
164 
 
 by both; and through which, the poor man may, 
 to the full, be as splendid in generosity as the 
 rich, and yield a far more important contribution 
 to the peace and comfort of society. 
 
 To make this plain — it is in virtue of a gene- 
 rous doing on the part of a rich man, when a 
 sum of money is offered for the relief of want ; 
 and it is in virtue of a generous desire on the 
 part of a poor man, when this money is refused; 
 when, with the feeling, that his necessities do 
 not just warrant him to be yet a burden upon 
 others, he declines to touch the offered liberality; 
 when, with a delicate recoil from the unlooked- 
 for proposal, he still resolves to put it for the 
 present away, and to find, if possible, for him- 
 self a little longer; when, standing on the very 
 margin of dependance, he would yet like to 
 struggle with the difficulties of his situation, and 
 to maintain this severe but honourable conflict, 
 till hard necessity should force him to surrender. 
 Let the money which he has thus so nobly shifted 
 from himself take some new direction to another; 
 and who, we ask, is the giver of it ? The first 
 and most obvious reply is, that it is he who owned 
 
165 
 
 it : but, it is still more emphatically true, that it 
 is he who has declined it. It came originally 
 out of the rich man's abundance; but it was the 
 noble-hearted generosity of the poor man that 
 handed it onwards to its final destination. He 
 did not emanate the gift; but it is just as much 
 that he has not absorbed it, but left it to find its 
 full conveyance to some neighbour poorer than 
 himself, to some family still more friendless and 
 destitute than his own. It was given the first 
 time out of an overflowing fulness. It is given 
 the second time out of stinted and self-denying 
 penury. In the world's eye, it is the proprietor 
 who bestowed the charity. But, in heaven's 
 eye, the poor man who waived it away from 
 himself to another is the more illustrious phi- 
 lanthropist of the two. The one gave it out of 
 his affluence. The other gave it out of the sweat 
 of his brow. He rose up early, and sat up late, 
 that he might have it to bestow on a poorer than 
 himself; and without once stretching forth a 
 giver's hand to the necessities of his brethren, 
 still is it possible, that by him, and such as him, 
 may the main burden of this world's benevolence 
 be borne. 
 
166 
 
 It need scarcely be remarked, that, without 
 supposing the offer of any sum made to a poor 
 man who is generous in his desires, he, by simply 
 keeping himself back from the distributions of 
 charity, fulfils all the high functions which we 
 have now ascribed to him. He leaves the cha- 
 ritable fund untouched for all that distress which 
 is more clamorous than his own ; and we, there- 
 fore, look, not to the original givers of the money, 
 but to those who line, as it were a the margin of 
 pauperism, and yet firmly refuse to enter it — we 
 look upon them as the pre-eminent benefactors 
 of society, who narrow, as it were, by a wall of 
 defence, the ground of human dependance, and 
 are, in fact, the guides and the guardians of all 
 that opulence can bestow. 
 
 Thus it is, that when Christianity becomes 
 universal, the doings of the one party, and the 
 desires of the other, will meet and overpass. The 
 poor will wish for no more than the rich will be 
 delighted to bestow ; and the rule of our text, 
 which every real Christian at present finds so 
 practicable, will, when carried over the face of 
 society, bind all the members of it into one con- 
 
167 
 
 sen ting brotherhood. The duty of doing good 
 to others will then coalesce with that counterpart 
 duty which regulates our desires of good from 
 them ; and the work of benevolence will, at 
 length, be prosecuted without that alloy of rapa- 
 city on the one hand, and distrust on the other, 
 which serves so much to fester and disturb the 
 whole of this ministration. To complete this 
 adjustment, it is in every way as necessary to 
 lay all the incumbent moralities on those who 
 ask, as on those who confer ; and never till the 
 whole text, which comprehends the wishes of 
 man as well as his actions, wield its entire au- 
 thority over the species, will the disgusts and 
 the prejudices, which form such a barrier between 
 the ranks of human life, be effectually done away. 
 It is not by the abolition of rank, but by assign- 
 ing to each rank its duties, that peace, and 
 friendship, and order, will at length be firmly 
 established in our world. It is by the force of 
 principle, and not by the force of some great 
 political overthrow, that a consummation so 
 delightful is to be attained. We have no con- 
 ception whatever, that, even in millennial days, 
 the diversities of wealth and station will at length 
 
168 
 
 be equalised. On looking forward to the time 
 when kings shall be the nursing fathers, and 
 queens the nursing mothers of our church, we 
 think that we can behold the perspective of as 
 varied a distribution of place and property as 
 before. In the pilgrimage of life, there will still 
 be the moving procession of the few charioted in 
 splendour on the highway, and the many pacing 
 by their side along the line of the same journey. 
 There will, perhaps, be a somewhat more elevated 
 footpath for the crowd; and there will be an air 
 of greater comfort and sufficiency amongst them; 
 and the respectability of evident worth and good- 
 ness will sit upon the countenance of this general 
 population. But, bating these, we look for no 
 great change in the external aspect of society. 
 It will only be a moral and a spiritual change. 
 Kings will retain their sceptres, and nobles their 
 coronets ; but, as they float in magnificence along, 
 will they look with benignant feeling on the 
 humble wayfarers ; and the honest salutations 
 of regard and reverence will arise to them back 
 again ; and, should any weary passenger be 
 ready to sink unfriended on his career, will he, 
 at one time, be borne onwards by his fellows on 
 
169 
 
 the pathway, and, at another, will a shower of 
 beneficence be made to descend from the crested 
 equipage that overtakes him. It is Utopianism 
 to think, that, in the ages of our world which 
 are yet to come, the outward distinctions of life 
 will not all be upholden. But it is not Utopian- 
 ism, it is Prophecy to aver, that the breath of a 
 new spirit will go abroad over the great family 
 of mankind — so, that while, to the end of time, 
 there shall be the high and the low in every passing 
 generation, will the charity of kindred feelings, 
 and of a common understanding, create a fellow- 
 ship between them on their way, till they reach 
 that heaven where human love shall 1 be perfected, 
 and all human greatness is unknown. 
 
 In various places of the New Testament, do 
 we see "the checks of spirit and delicacy laid 
 upon all extravagant desires. Our text, while 
 it enjoins the performance of good to others, up 
 to the full measure of your desires of good from 
 them, equally enjoins the keeping down of these 
 desires to the measure of your performances. 
 If Christian dispensers had only to do with 
 Christian recipients, the whole work of benevo- 
 
 Y 
 
170 
 
 lence would be with ease and harmony carried 
 on. All that was unavoidable — all that came 
 from the hand of Providence — all that was laid 
 upon our suffering brethren by the unlooked-for 
 visitations of accident or disease — all that pain 
 and misfortune which necessarily attaches to the 
 constitution of the species — all this the text most 
 amply provides for ; and all this a Christian so- 
 ciety would be delighted to stretch forth their 
 means for the purpose of alleviating or doing 
 away. 
 
 We should not have dwelt so long upon this 
 lesson, were it not for the essential Christian 
 principle that is involved in it. The morality 
 of the gospel is not more strenuous on the side 
 of the duty of giving of this world's goods when 
 it is needed, than it is against the desire of re- 
 ceiving when it is not needed. It is more blessed 
 to give than to receive, and therefore less blessed 
 to receive than to give. For the enforcement of 
 this principle among the poorer brethren, did 
 Paul give up a vast portion of his apostolical 
 time and labour ; and that he might be an en- 
 sample to the flock of working with his own 
 
171 
 
 hands, rather than be burdensome, did he set 
 himself down to the occupation of a tent-maker. 
 That lesson is surely worthy of engrossing one 
 sermon of an uninspired teacher, for the sake 
 of which an inspired Apostle of the Gentiles 
 engrossed as much time as would have admitted 
 the preparation and the delivery of many ser- 
 mons. But there is no more striking indication 
 of the whole spirit and character of the gospel 
 in this matter, than the example of him who is 
 the author of it — and of whom we read these 
 affecting words, that he came into the world not 
 to be ministered unto, but to minister. It is a 
 righteous thing in him who has of this world's 
 goods, to minister to the necessities of others : 
 but it is a still higher attainment of righteousness 
 in him who has nothing but the daily earnings 
 of his daily work to depend upon, so to manage 
 and to strive that he shall not need to be minis- 
 tered unto. Christianity overlooks no part of 
 human conduct; and by providing for this in 
 particular, does it, in fact, overtake, and that 
 with a precept of utmost importance, the habit 
 and condition of a very extended class in human 
 society. And never does the gospel so exhibit 
 
172 
 
 its adaptation to our species— and neyer does 
 virtue stand in such characters of strength and 
 sacredness before us — as when impregnated with 
 the evangelical spirit, and urged by evangelical 
 motives, it takes its most direct sanction from 
 the life and doings of the Saviour. 
 
 And he who feels as he ought, will bear with 
 cheerfulness all that the Saviour prescribes, when 
 he thinks how much it is for him that the Saviour 
 has borne. We speak not of his poverty all the 
 time that he lived upon earth. We speak not of 
 those years when, a houseless wanderer in an 
 unthankful world, he had not where to lay his 
 head. We speak not of the meek and uncom- 
 plaining sufferance with which he met the many 
 ills that oppressed the tenor of his mortal exis- 
 tence. But we speak of that awful burden which 
 crushed and overwhelmed its termination. We 
 speak of that season of the hour and the power 
 of darkness, when it pleased the Lord to bruise 
 him, and to make his soul an offering for sin. 
 To estimate aright the endurance of him who 
 himself bore our infirmities, would we ask of any 
 individual to recollect some deep and awful pe- 
 
173 
 
 riod of abandonment in his own history- — when 
 that countenance which at one time beamed and 
 brightened upon him from above, was mantled 
 in thickest darkness — when the iron of remorse 
 entered into his soul — and, laid oil a bed of tor- 
 ture, he was made to behold the evil of sin, and 
 to taste of its bitterness. Let him look back, if 
 he can, on this conflict of many agitations, and 
 then figure the whole of this mental wretchedness 
 to be borne off by the ministers of vengeance into 
 hell, and stretched out unto eternity. And if, on 
 the great day of expiation, a full atonement was 
 rendered, and all that should have fallen upon us 
 was placed upon the head of the sacrifice — let 
 him hence compute the weight and the awful- 
 ness of those sorrows which were carried by him 
 on whom the chastisement of our peace was laid, 
 and who poured out his soul unto the death for 
 us. If ever a sinner, under such a visitation, 
 shall again emerge into peace and joy in believing 
 — if he ever shall again find his way to that 
 fountain which is opened in the house of Judah 
 — if he shall recover once more that sunshine of 
 the soul, which, on the days that are past, dis- 
 closed to him the beauties of holiness here, and 
 
174 
 
 the glories of heaven hereafter — if ever he shall 
 hear with effect, in this world, that voice from 
 the mercy-seat, which still proclaims a welcome 
 to the chief of sinners, and beckons him afresh to 
 reconciliation — O! how gladly then should he 
 bear, throughout the remainder of his days, the 
 whole authority of the Lord who bought him; and 
 bind for ever to his own person that yoke of the 
 Saviour which is easy, and that burden which is 
 light. 
 
DISCOURSE VI. 
 
 ON THE DISSIPATION OF LARGE CITIES. 
 
 " Let no man deceive you with vain words : for because of 
 these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children 
 of disobedience." — Ephes. v. 6. 
 
 There is one obvious respect in which the stan- 
 dard of morality amongst men, differs from that 
 pure and universal standard which God hath set 
 up for the obedience of his subjects. Men will 
 not demand very urgently of each other, that, 
 which does not very nearly, or very immediately, 
 affect their own personal and particular interest. 
 To the violations of justice, or truth, or human- 
 ity, they will be abundantly sensitive, because 
 these offer a most visible and quickly felt en- 
 croachment on this interest. And thus it is, 
 that the social virtues, even without any direct 
 sanction from God at all, will ever draw a certain 
 
176 
 
 portion of respect and reverence around them ; 
 and that a loud testimony of abhorrence may 
 often be heard from the mouths of ungodly men, 
 against all sucA vices as may be classed under 
 the general designation of vices of dishonesty. 
 
 Now, the same thing does not hold true of 
 another class of vices, which may be termed the 
 vices of dissipation. These do not touch, in so 
 visible or direct a manner, on the security of what 
 man possesses, and of what man has the greatest 
 value for. But man is a selfish being, and there- 
 fore it is, that the ingredient of selfishness gives 
 a keenness to his estimation of the evil and of the 
 enormity of the former vices, which is scarcely 
 felt at all in any estimation he may form of the 
 latter vices. It is very true, at the same time, 
 that if one were to compute the whole amount 
 of the mischief they bring upon society, it would 
 be found, that the profligacies of mere dissipation 
 go very far to break up the peace, and enjoy- 
 ment, and even the relative virtues of the world; 
 and that, if these profligacies were reformed, it 
 would work a mighty augmentation on the tem- 
 poral good both of individuals and families. But 
 
177 
 
 the connexion between sobriety of character, 
 and the happiness of the community, is not so 
 apparent, because it is more remote than the 
 connexion which obtains between integrity of 
 character, and the happiness of the community; 
 and man being not only a selfish but a short- 
 sighted being, it follows, that while the voice of 
 execration may be distinctly heard against every 
 instance of fraud or of injustice, instances of 
 licentiousness may occur on every side of us, 
 and be reported on the one hand with the utmost 
 levity, and be listened to, on the other, with the 
 most entire and complacent toleration. 
 
 Here, then, is a point, in which the general 
 morality of the world is at utter and irreconcile- 
 able variance with the law of God. Here is a 
 case, in which the voice that come'th forth from 
 the tribunal of public opinion proncunces one 
 thing, and the voice that cometh forth from the 
 sanctuary of God pronounces another. When 
 there is an agreement between these two voices, 
 the principle on which obedience is rendered 
 to their joint and concurring authority, may be 
 altogether equivocal ; and, with religious and 
 
178 
 
 irreligious men, you may observe an equal exhi- 
 bition of all the equities, and all the civilities of 
 life. But when there is a discrepancy between 
 these two voices — or when the one attaches a 
 criminality to certain habits of conduct, and is 
 not at all seconded by the testimony of the other 
 — then do we escape the confusion of mingled 
 motives, and mingled authorities. The character 
 of the two parties emerges out of the ambiguity 
 which involved it. The law of God points, it 
 must be allowed, as forcible an anathema against 
 the man of dishonesty, as against the man of 
 dissipation. But the chief burden of the world's 
 anathema is laid on the head of the former; and 
 therefore it is, that, on the latter ground, we 
 meet with more discriminative tests of principle, 
 and gather more satisfying materials for the ques- 
 tion of — who is on the side of the Lord of hosts, 
 and who is against him ? 
 
 The passage we have now submitted to you, 
 looks hard on the votaries of dissipation. It is 
 like eternal truth, lifting up its own proclama- 
 tion, and causing it to be heard amid the errors 
 and the delusions of a thoughtless world. It is 
 
179 
 
 like the Deity himself, looking forth, as he did, 
 from a cloud, on the Egyptians of old, and 
 troubling the souls of those who are loverfc of 
 pleasures, more than lovers of God. It is like 
 the voice of heaven, crying down the voice of 
 human society, and sending forth a note of alarm 
 amongst its giddy generations. It is like the 
 unrolling of a portion of that book of higher juris- 
 prudence, out of which we shall be judged on the 
 day of our coming account, and setting before 
 our eyes an enactment, which, if we disregard it, 
 will turn that day into the day of our coming 
 condemnation. The words of man are adverted 
 to in this solemn proclamation of God, against 
 all unlawful and all unhallowed enjoyments, and 
 they are called words of vanity. He sets aside 
 the authority of human opinion altogether -, and, 
 on an irrevocable record, has he stamped such 
 an assertion of the authority that belongeth to 
 himself only, as serves to the end of time for an 
 enduring memorial of his will ; and as commits 
 the truth of the Lawgiver to the execution of a 
 sentence of wrath against all whose souls are 
 hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. There is, 
 in fact, a peculiar deceitfulness in the matter 
 
180 
 
 before us j and, in this verse, are we warned 
 against it — " Let no man deceive you with vain 
 words ; for, because of these things, the wrath of 
 God cometh on the children of disobedience." 
 
 In the preceding verse, there is such an enu- 
 meration as serves to explain what the things are 
 which are alluded to in the text ; and it is such 
 an enumeration, you should remark, as goes to 
 fasten the whole terror, and the whole threat, of 
 the coming vengeance — not on the man who 
 combines in his own person all the characters of 
 iniquity which are specified, but on the man who 
 realizes any one of these characters. It is not, 
 you will observe, the conjunction and, but the 
 conjunction or, which is interposed, between 
 them. It is not as if we said, that the man who 
 is dishonest, and licentious, and covetous, and 
 unfeeling, shall not inherit the kingdom of God 
 — but the man who is either dishonest, or licen- 
 tious, or covetous, or unfeeling. On the single 
 and exclusive possession of any one of these 
 attributes, will God deal with you as with an 
 enemy. The plea, that we are a little thought- 
 less, but we have a good heart, is conclusively cut 
 
181 
 
 asunder by this portion of the law and of the 
 testimony. And in a corresponding passage, in 
 the ninth verse of the sixth chapter of Paul's 
 first epistle to the Corinthians, the same peculi- 
 arity is observed in the enumeration of those 
 who shall be excluded from God's favour, and 
 have the burden of God's wrath laid on them 
 through eternity. It is not the man who com- 
 bines all the deformities of character which are 
 there specified, but the man who realizes any 
 one of the separate deformities. Some of them 
 are the vices of dishonesty, others of them are 
 the vices of dissipation ; and, as if aware of a 
 deceitfulness from this cause, he, after telling 
 us that the unrighteous shall not inherit the 
 kingdom of God, bids us not be deceived — for 
 that neither the licentious, nor the abominable, 
 nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor 
 revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the king- 
 dom of God. 
 
 & 
 
 He who keepeth the whole law, but offendeth 
 in one point, says the Apostle James, is guilty 
 of all. The truth is, that his disobedience on 
 this one point may be more decisive of the state 
 
182 
 
 of his loyalty to God, than his keeping of all the 
 rest. It may be the only point on which the 
 character of his loyalty is really brought to the 
 trial. All his conformities to the law of God 
 might have been rendered, because they thwarted 
 not his own inclination ; and, therefore, would 
 have been rendered, though there had been no 
 law at all. The single infraction may have taken 
 place in the only case where there was a real 
 competition between the will of the creature, 
 and the will of the Creator ; and the event 
 proves to which of the two the right of superi- 
 ority is awarded. Allegiance to God in truth is 
 but one principle, and may be described by one 
 short and summary expression j and one act of 
 disobedience may involve in it such a total sur- 
 render of the principle, as goes to dethrone 
 God altogether from the supremacy which be- 
 longs to him. So that the account between a 
 creature and the Creator is not like an account 
 made up of many items, where the expunging 
 of one item would only make one small and frac- 
 tional deduction from the whole sum of obedi- 
 ence. If you reserve but a single item from 
 this account, and another makes a principle of 
 
183 
 
 completing and rendering up the whole of it, 
 then your character varies from his not by a 
 slight shade of difference, but stands contrasted 
 with it in direct and diametric opposition. We 
 perceive, that, while with him the will of God 
 has the mastery over all his inclinations, with 
 you there is, at least, one inclination which has 
 the mastery over God ; that, while in his bosom 
 there exists a single and subordinating principle 
 of allegiance to the law, in yours there exists 
 another principle, which, on the coming round of 
 a fit opportunity, developes itself in an act of trans- 
 gression; that, while with him God may be said 
 to walk and to dwell in him, with you there is an 
 evil visitant, who has taken up his abode in your 
 heart, and lodges there either in a state of dor- 
 mancy or of action, according to circumstances; 
 that, while with him the purpose is honestly 
 proceeded on, of doing nothing which God 
 disapproves, with you there is a purpose not 
 only different, but opposite, of doing something 
 which he disapproves. On this single difference 
 is suspended not a question of degree, but a 
 question of kind. There are presented to us 
 not two hues of the same colour, but two colours, 
 
184 
 
 just as broadly contrasted with each other as 
 light and darkness. And such is the state of the 
 alternative between a partial and an unreserved 
 obedience, that while God imperatively claims 
 the one as his due, he looks on the other as an 
 expression of defiance against him, and against 
 his sovereignty. 
 
 It is the very same in civil government. A 
 man renders himself an outcast by one act of 
 disobedience. He does not need to accumulate 
 upon himself the guilt of all the higher atrocities 
 in crime, ere he forfeits his life to the injured 
 laws of his country. By the perpetration of any 
 one of them is the whole vengeance of the state 
 brought to bear upon his person, and sentence 
 of death is pronounced on a single murder, or 
 forgery, or act of violent depredation. 
 
 And let us ask you just to reflect on the tone 
 and spirit of that man towards his God, who 
 would palliate, for example, the vices of dissipa- 
 tion to which he is addicted, by alleging his 
 utter exemption from the vices of dishonesty, to 
 which he is not addicted. Just think of the real 
 
185 
 
 disposition and character of his soul, who can 
 say, " I will please God, but only when, in so 
 doing, I also please myself; or I will do homage 
 to his law, but just in those instances by which 
 I honour the rights, and fulfil the expectations, 
 of society ; or I will be decided by his opinion 
 of the right and the wrong, but just when the 
 opinion of my neighbourhood lends its powerful 
 and effective confirmation. But in other cases, 
 when the matter is reduced to a bare question 
 between man and God, when he is the single 
 party I have to do with, when his will and his 
 wrath are the only elements which enter into the 
 deliberation, when judgment, and eternity, and 
 the voice of him who speaketh from heaven are 
 the only considerations at issue — then do I feel 
 myself at greater liberty, and I shall take my 
 own way, and walk in the counsel of mine own 
 heart, and after the sight of my own eyes." O ! 
 be assured, that when all this is laid bare on the 
 day of reckoning, and the discern er of the heart 
 pronounces upon it, and such a sentence is to be 
 given, as will make it manifest to the consciences 
 of all assembled, that true and righteous are the 
 judgments of God — there is many a creditable 
 
 2 a 
 
186 
 
 man who has passed through the world with the 
 plaudits and the testimonies of all his fellows, 
 and without one other flaw upon his reputation 
 but the very slender one of certain harmless 
 foibles, and certain good-humoured peculiarities, 
 who, when brought to the bar of account, will 
 stand convicted there of having made a divinity 
 of his own will, and spent his days in practical 
 and habitual atheism. 
 
 And this argument is not at all affected by the 
 actual state of sinfulness and infirmity into w^hich 
 we have fallen. It is true, even of saints on earth, 
 that they commit sin. But to be overtaken in a 
 fault is one thing; to commit that fault with the 
 deliberate consent of the mind is another. There 
 is in the bosom of every true Christian a strenu- 
 ous principle of resistance to sin, and it belongs 
 to the very essence of the principle that it is 
 resistance to all sin. It admits of no voluntary 
 indulgence to one sin more than to another. 
 Such an indulgence would not only change the 
 character of what may be called the elementary 
 principle of regeneration, but would destroy 
 it altogether. The man who has entered on a 
 
187 
 
 course of Christian discipleship, carries on an 
 unsparing and universal war with all iniquity. 
 He has chosen Christ for his alone master, and 
 he struggles against the ascendency of every 
 other. It is his sustained and habitual exertion 
 in following after him to forsake all j so that if 
 his performance were as complete as his endea- 
 vour, you would not merely see a conformity to 
 some of the precepts, but a conformity to the 
 whole law of God. At all events, the endeavour 
 is an honest one, and so far successful, that sin 
 has not the dominion ; and sure we are, that, in 
 such a state of things, the vices of dissipation 
 can have no existence. These vices can be more 
 effectually shunned, and more effectually sur- 
 mounted, for example, than the infirmities of an 
 unhappy temper. So that, if dissipation still 
 attaches to the character, and appears in the 
 conduct of any individual, we know not a more 
 decisive evidence of the state of that individual as 
 being one of the many who crowd the broad way 
 that leadeth to destruction. We look no further 
 to make out our estimate of his present condition 
 as being that of a rebel, and of his future prospect 
 as being that of spending an eternity in hell. 
 
188 
 
 There is no halting between two opinions in this 
 matter. The man who enters a career of dissi- 
 pation throws down the gauntlet of defiance to 
 his God. The man who persists in this career 
 keeps on the ground of hostility against him. 
 
 Let us now endeavour to trace the origin, the 
 progress, and the effects, of a life of dissipation. 
 
 First. Then it may be said of a very great 
 number of young, on their entrance into the 
 business of the world, that they have not been 
 enough fortified against its seducing influences 
 by their previous education at home. Generally 
 speaking, they come out from the habitation of 
 their parents unarmed and unprepared for the 
 contest which awaits them. If the spirit of this 
 world's morality reign in their own family, then 
 it cannot be, that their introduction into a more 
 public scene of life will be very strictly guarded 
 against those vices on which the world placidly 
 smiles, or at least regards with silent toleration. 
 They may have been told, in early boyhood, of 
 the infamy of a lie. They may have had the 
 virtues of punctuality, and of economy, and of 
 
189 
 
 regular attention to business, pressed upon their 
 observation. They may have heard a uniform 
 testimony on the side of good behaviour, up to 
 the standard of such current moralities as obtain 
 in their neigbourhood ; and this, we are ready to 
 admit, may include in it a testimony against all 
 such excesses of dissipation as would unfit them 
 for the prosecution of this world's interests. But 
 let us ask, whether there are not parents, who, 
 after they have carried the work of discipline 
 thus far, forbear to carry it any farther; who, 
 while they would mourn over it as a family trial 
 should any son of theirs fall a victim to excessive 
 dissipation, yet are willing to tolerate the lesser 
 degrees of it; who, instead of deciding the ques- 
 tion on the alternative of his heaven or his hell, 
 are satisfied with such a measure of sobriety as 
 will save him from ruin and disgrace in this life ; 
 who, if they can only secure this, have no great 
 objection to the moderate share he may take in 
 this world's conformities ; who feel, that in this 
 matter there is a necessity and a power of exam- 
 ple against which it is vain to struggle, and which 
 must be acquiesced in ; who deceive themselves 
 with the fancied impossibility of stopping the evil 
 
190 
 
 in question — and say, that business must be gone 
 through; and that, in the prosecution of it, expo- 
 sures must be made; and that, for the success of 
 it, a certain degree of accommodation to others 
 must be observed; and seeing that it is so mighty 
 an object for one to widen the extent of his con- 
 nexions, he must neither be very retired nor very 
 peculiar — nor must his hours of companionship 
 be too jealously watched or inquired into — nor 
 must we take him too strictly to task about en- 
 gagements, and acquaintances, and expenditure 
 — nor must we forget, that while sobriety has its 
 time and its season in one period of life, indul- 
 gence has its season in another ; and we may 
 fetch from the recollected follies of our own 
 youth, a lesson of connivance for the present 
 occasion; and altogether there is no help for it; 
 and it appears to us, that absolutely and totally 
 to secure him from ever entering upon scenes of 
 dissipation, you must absolutely and totally with- 
 draw him from the world, and surrender all his 
 prospects of advancement, and give up the object 
 of such a provision for our families as we feel to 
 be a first and most important concern with us. 
 
191 
 
 " Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his 
 righteousness," says the Bible, " and all other 
 things shall be added unto you." This is the 
 promise which the faith of a Christian parent 
 will rest upon ; and in the face of every hazard 
 to the worldly interests of his offspring, will he 
 bring them up in the strict nurture and admonition 
 of the Lord ; and he will loudly protest against 
 iniquity, in all its degrees, and in all its modifica- 
 tions; and while the power of discipline remains 
 with him, will it ever be exerted on the side of 
 pure, faultless, undeviating obedience ; and he 
 will tolerate no exception whatever ; and he will 
 brave all that looks formidable in singularity, 
 and all that looks menacing in separation from 
 the custom and countenance of the world ; and 
 feeling that his main concern is to secure for 
 himself and for his family a place in the city 
 which hath foundations, will he spurn all the 
 maxims, and all the plausibilities, of a contagious 
 neighbourhood away from him. He knows the 
 price of his Christianity, and it is that he must 
 break off conformity with the world — nor for any 
 paltry advantage which it has to offer, will he 
 compromise the eternity of his children. And 
 
192 
 
 let us tell the parents of another spirit, and an- 
 other principle, that they are as good as incurring 
 the guilt of a human sacrifice ; that they are 
 offering up their children at the shrine of an idol; 
 that they are parties in provoking the wrath of 
 God against them here ; and on the day when 
 that wrath is to be revealed, shall they hear not 
 only the moanings of their despair, but the out- 
 cries of their bitterest execration. On that day, 
 the glance of reproach from their own neglected 
 offspring will throw a deeper shade of wretched- 
 ness over the dark and boundless futurity that 
 lies before them. And if, at the time when 
 prophets rung the tidings of God's displeasure 
 against the people of Israel, it was denounced as 
 the foulest of all their abominations that they 
 caused their children to pass through the fire 
 unto Moloch — know ye parents, who, in placing 
 your children on some road to gainful employ- 
 ment, have placed them without a sigh in the 
 midst of depravity, so near and so surrounding, 
 that, without a miracle, they must perish, you 
 have done an act of idolatry to the God of this 
 world ; you have commanded your household, 
 after you, to worship him as the great divinity 
 
193 
 
 of their lives ; and you have caused your chil- 
 dren to make their approaches unto his presence 
 — and, in so doing, to pass through the fire of 
 such temptations as have destroyed them. 
 
 We do not wish to offer you an overcharged 
 picture on this melancholy subject. What we 
 now say is not applicable to all. Even in the 
 most corrupt and crowded of our cities, parents 
 are to be found, who nobly dare the surrender 
 of every vain and flattering illusion, rather than 
 surrender the Christianity of their children. 
 And what is still more affecting, over the face 
 of the country do we meet with such parents, 
 who look on this world as a passage to another, 
 and on all the members of their household as 
 fellow-travellers to eternity along with them; 
 and who, in this true spirit of believers, feel 
 the salvation of their children to be, indeed, the 
 burden of their best and their dearest interest ; 
 and who, by prayer, and precept, and example, 
 have strenuously laboured with their souls, from 
 the earliest light of their understanding -, and 
 have taught them to tremble at the way of evil 
 doers, and to have no fellowship with those who 
 
 2 B 
 
194 
 
 keep not the commandments of God — nor is 
 there a day more sorrowful in the annals of this 
 pious family, than when the course of time has 
 brought them onwards to the departure of their 
 eldest boy — and he must bid adieu to his native 
 home, with all the peace, and all the simplicity, 
 which abound in it — and as he eyes in fancy 
 the distant town whither he is going, does he 
 shrink as from the thought of an unknown wil- 
 derness — and it is his firm purpose to keep aloof 
 from the dangers and the profligacies which 
 deform it — and, should sinners offer to entice 
 him, not to consent, and never, never, to forget 
 the lessons of a father's vigilance, the tenderness 
 of a mother's prayers. 
 
 Let us now, in the next place, pass from that 
 state of things which obtains among the young 
 at their outset into the world, and take a look of 
 that state of things which obtains after they have 
 got fairly introduced into it — when the children 
 of the ungodly, and the children of the religious, 
 meet on one common arena — when business as- 
 sociates them together in one chamber, and the 
 omnipotence of custom lays it upon them all to 
 
195 
 
 meet together at periodic intervals, and join in 
 the same parties, and the same entertainments — 
 when the yearly importation of youths from the 
 country falls in with that assimilating mass of 
 corruption which has got so firm and so rooted 
 an establishment in the town — when the frail 
 and unsheltered delicacies of the timid boy have 
 to stand a rude and a boisterous contest with 
 the hardier depravity of those who have gone 
 before him — when ridicule, and example, and 
 the vain words of a delusive sophistry, which 
 palliates in his hearing the enormity of vice, are 
 all brought to bear upon his scruples, and to 
 stifle the remorse he might feel when he casts 
 his principle and his purity away from him — 
 when, placed as he is in a land of strangers, he 
 finds, that the tenure of acquaintanceship, with 
 nearly all around him, is, that he render himself 
 up in a conformity to their doings — when a 
 voice, like the voice of protecting friendship, 
 bids him to the feast ; and a welcome, like the 
 welcome of honest kindness, hails his accession 
 to the society ; and a spirit, like the spirit of 
 exhilarating joy, animates the whole scene of 
 hospitality before him ; and hours of rapture roll 
 
196 
 
 successively away on the wings of merriment, 
 and jocularity, and song ; and after the homage 
 of many libations has been rendered to honour, 
 and fellowship, and patriotism, impurity is at 
 length proclaimed in full and open cry, as one 
 presiding divinity, at the board of their social 
 entertainment. 
 
 And now it remains to compute the general 
 result of a process, which we assert of the vast 
 majority of our young, on their way to manhood, 
 that they have to undergo. The result is, that 
 the vast majority are initiated into all the prac- 
 tices, and describe the full career of dissipation. 
 Those who have imbibed from their fathers the 
 spirit of this world's morality, are not sensibly 
 arrested in this career, either by the opposition 
 of their own friends, or by the voice of their own 
 conscience. Those who have imbibed an oppo- 
 site spirit, and have brought it into competition 
 with an evil world, and have at length yielded, 
 have done so, we may well suppose, with many 
 a sigh, and many a struggle, and many a look of 
 remembrance on those former years when they 
 were taught to lisp the prayer of infancy, and 
 
197 
 
 were trained in a mansion of piety to a reverence 
 for God, and for all his ways 5 and, even still, 
 will a parent's parting advice haunt his memory, 
 and a letter from the good old man revive the 
 sensibilities which at one time guarded and 
 adorned him; and, at times, will the transient 
 gleam of remorse lighten up its agony within 
 him; and when he contrasts the profaneness and 
 depravity of his present companions, with the 
 sacredness of all he ever heard or saw in his 
 father's dwelling, it will almost feel as if con- 
 science were again to resume her power, and the 
 revisiting spirit of God to call him back again 
 from the paths of wickedness ; and on his restless 
 bed will the images of guilt conspire to disturb 
 him, and the terrors of punishment ofFer to scare 
 him away; and many will be the dreary and 
 dissatisfied intervals when he shall be forced to 
 acknowledge, that, in bartering his soul for the 
 pleasures of sin, he has bartered the peace and 
 enjoyment of the world along with it. But, 
 alas ! the entanglements of companionship have 
 got hold of him ; and the inveteracy of habit 
 tyrannizes over all his purposes ; and the stated 
 opportunity again comes round; and the loud 
 
198 
 
 laugh of his partners in guilt chases, for another 
 season, all his despondency away from him; and 
 the infatuation gathers upon him every month; 
 and a hardening process goes on within his heart; 
 and the deceitfulness of sin grows apace ; and he 
 at length becomes one of the sturdiest and most 
 unrelenting of her votaries ; and he, in his turn, 
 strengthens the conspiracy that is formed against 
 the morals of a new generation; and all the inge- 
 nuous delicacies of other days are obliterated ; 
 and he contracts a temperament of knowing, 
 hackneyed, unfeeling depravity: and thus the 
 mischief is transmitted from one year to another, 
 and keeps up the guilty history of every place 
 of crowded population. 
 
 And let us here speak one word to those 
 seniors in depravity — those men who give to the 
 corruption of acquaintances, who are younger 
 than themselves, their countenance and their 
 agency; who can initiate them without a sigh 
 in the mysteries of guilt, and care not though a 
 parent's hope should wither and expire under 
 the contagion of their ruffian example. It is 
 only upon their own conversion that we can 
 
199 
 
 speak to them the pardon of the gospel. It is 
 only if they themselves are washed, and sancti- 
 fied, and justified, that we can warrant their 
 personal deliverance from the wrath that is to 
 come. But under all the concealment which 
 rests on the futurities of God's administration, 
 we know, that there are degrees of suffering 
 in hell — and that, while some are beaten with 
 few stripes, others are beaten with many. And 
 surely, if they who turn many to righteousness 
 shall shine as the stars for ever and ever, we may 
 be well assured, that they who patronize the 
 cause of iniquity — they who can beckon others 
 to that way which leadeth on to the chambers of 
 death — they who can aid and witness, without a 
 sigh, the extinction of youthful modesty — surely, 
 it may well be said of such, that on them a darker 
 frown will fall from the judgment-seat, and 
 through eternity will they have to bear the pains 
 of a fiercer indignation. 
 
 Having thus looked to the commencement of 
 a course of dissipation, and to its progress, let us 
 now, in the third place, look to its usual termin- 
 ation. We speak not at present of the coming 
 
200 
 
 death, and of the coming judgment, but of the 
 change which takes place on many a votary of 
 licentiousness, when he becomes what the world 
 calls a reformed man; and puts on the decencies 
 of a sober and domestic establishment; and bids 
 adieu to the pursuits and the profligacies of 
 youth, not because he has repented of them, but 
 because he has outlived them. You all perceive 
 how this may be done without one movement of 
 the heart, or of the understanding, towards God 
 — that it is done by many, though duty to him 
 be not in all their thoughts — that the change, in 
 this case, is not from the idol of pleasure unto 
 God, but only from one idol to another — and 
 that, after the whole of this boasted transforma- 
 tion, we may still behold the same body of sin 
 and of death, and only a new complexion thrown 
 over it. There may be the putting on of sobri- 
 ety, but there is no putting on of godliness. 
 It is a common and an easy transition to pass 
 from one kind of disobedience to another, but it 
 is not so easy to give up that rebelliousness of 
 the heart which lies at the root of all disobedi- 
 ence. It may be easy, after the wonted course 
 of dissipation is ended, to hold out another aspect 
 
201 
 
 altogether in the eye of acquaintances; but it is 
 not so easy to recover that shock, and that over- 
 throw, which the religious principle sustains, 
 when a man first enters the world, and surrenders 
 himself to the power of its enticements. Such 
 were some of you, says the Apostle, but ye 
 are washed, and sanctified, and justified. Our 
 reformed man knows not the meaning of such a 
 process ; and, most assuredly, has not at all 
 realised it in the history of his own person. 
 We will not say what new object he is running 
 after. It may be wealth, or ambition, or philo- 
 sophy; but it is nothing connected with the 
 interest of his soul. It bears no reference what- 
 ever to the concerns of that great relationship 
 which obtains between the creature and the 
 Creator. The man has withdrawn, and perhaps 
 for ever, from the scenes of dissipation, and has 
 betaken himself to another way — but still it is 
 his own way. It is not the will or the way of 
 God that he is yet caring for. Such a man may 
 bid adieu to profligacy in his own person, But 
 he lifts up the light of his countenance on the 
 profligacy of others. He gives it the whole 
 weight and authority of his connivance. He 
 
 2 c 
 
202 
 
 wields, we will say it, such an instrumentality 
 of seduction over the young, as, though not so 
 alarming, is far more dangerous than the undis- 
 guised attempts of those who are the immediate 
 agents of corruption. The formal and deliberate 
 conspiracy of those who club together, at stated 
 terms of companionship, may be all seen, and 
 watched, and guarded against. But how shall 
 we pursue this conspiracy into its other ramifi- 
 cations? How shall we be able to neutralise 
 that insinuating poison which distils from the 
 lips of grave and respectable citizens? How 
 shall we be able to dissipate that gloss which is 
 thrown by the smile of elders and superiors over 
 the sins of forbidden indulgence ? How can we 
 disarm the bewitching sophistry which lies in all 
 these evident tokens of complacency, on the 
 part of advanced and reputable men ? How is 
 it possible to tract the progress of this sore evil, 
 throughout all the business and intercourse of 
 society? How can we stem the influence of 
 evil communications, when the friend, and the 
 patron, and the man who has cheered and sig- 
 nalised us by his polite invitations, turns his own 
 family-table into a nursery of licentiousness ? 
 
203 
 
 How can we but despair of ever witnessing on 
 earth a pure and a holy generation, when even 
 parents will utter their polluting levities in the 
 hearing of their own children ; and vice, and 
 humour, and gaiety, are all indiscriminately 
 blended into one conversation ; and a loud 
 laugh, from the initiated and the uninitiated in 
 profligacy, is ever ready to flatter and to regale 
 the man who can thus prostitute his powers of 
 entertainment ? O ! for an arm of strength to 
 demolish this firm and far spread compact of ini- 
 quity ; and for the power of some such piercing 
 and prophetic voice, as might convince our re- 
 formed men of the baleful influence they cast 
 behind them on the morals of the succeeding 
 generation, 
 
 We, at the same time, have our eye perfectly 
 open to that great external improvement which 
 has taken place, of late years, in the manners 
 of society. There is not the same grossness of 
 conversation. There is not the same impatience 
 for the withdrawment of him, who, asked to 
 grace the outset of an assembled party, is com- 
 pelled, at a certain step in the process of convivi- 
 
204 
 
 ality, by the obligations of professional decency, 
 to retire from it. There is not so frequent an 
 exaction of this as one of the established propri- 
 eties of social or of fashionable life. And if such 
 an exaction was ever laid by the omnipotence of 
 custom on a minister of Christianity, it is such 
 an exaction as ought never, never, to be complied 
 with. It is not for him to lend the sanction of 
 his presence to a meeting with which he could 
 not sit to its final termination. It is not for him 
 to stand associated, for a single hour, with an 
 assemblage of men who begin with hypocrisy, 
 and end with downright blackguardism. It is 
 not for him to watch the progress of the coming 
 ribaldry, and to hit the well selected moment 
 when talk, and turbulence, and boisterous mer- 
 riment, are on the eve of bursting forth upon 
 the company, and carrying them forward to the 
 full acme' and uproar of their enjoyment. It is 
 quite in vain to say, that he has only sanctified 
 one part of such an entertainment. He has as 
 good as given his connivance to the whole of it, 
 and left behind him a discharge in full of all its 
 abominations ; and, therefore, be they who they 
 may, whether they rank among the proudest aris- 
 
205 
 
 tocracy of our land, or are charioted in splendour 
 along, as the wealthiest of the citizens, it is his 
 part to keep as purely and indignantly aloof from 
 such society as this, as he would from the vilest 
 and most debasing associations of profligacy. 
 
 And now the important question comes to be 
 put : what is the likeliest way of setting up a 
 barrier against this desolating torrent of corrup- 
 tion, into which there enter so many elements of 
 power and strength, that, to the general eye, it 
 looks altogether irresistible ? It is easier to give 
 a negative, than an affirmative answer to this 
 question. And, therefore, it shall be our first 
 remark, that the mischief never will be effectu- 
 ally combated by any expedient separate from the 
 growth and the transmission of personal Christi- 
 anity throughout the land. If no addition be 
 made to the stock of religious principle in a 
 country, then the profligacy of a country will 
 make its obstinate stand against all the mechan- 
 ism of the most skilful, and plausible, and well 
 looking contrivances. It must not be disguised 
 from you, that it does not lie within the compass 
 either of prisons or penitentiaries to work any 
 
206 
 
 sensible abatement on the wickedness of our 
 existing generation. The operation must be of a 
 preventive, rather than of a corrective tendency. 
 It must be brought to bear upon boyhood ; and 
 be kept up through that whole period of random 
 exposures through which it has to run, on its 
 way to an established condition in society *, and 
 a high tone of moral purity must be infused into 
 the bosom of many individuals; and their agency 
 will effect, through the channels of family and 
 social connexion, what never can be effected by 
 any framework of artificial regulations, so long 
 as the spirit and character of society remain 
 what they are. In other words, the progress of 
 reformation will never be sensibly carried forward 
 beyond the progress of personal Christianity in 
 the world ; and, therefore, the question resolves 
 itself into the likeliest method of adding to the 
 number of Christian parents who may fortify 
 the principles of their children at their first outset 
 in life— of adding to the number of Christian 
 young men, who might nobly dare to be singular, 
 and to perform the angelic office of guardians 
 and advisers to those who are younger than 
 themselves — of adding to the number of Chris- 
 
207 
 
 tians in middle and advanced life, who might, 
 as far as in them lies, alter the general feeling 
 and countenance of society ; and blunt the 
 force of that tacit but most seductive testimony, 
 which has done so much to throw a palliative 
 veil over the guilt of a life of dissipation. 
 
 Such a question cannot be entered upon, at 
 present, in all its bearings, and in all its gener- 
 ality. And we must, therefore, simply satisfy 
 ourselves with the object, that as we have at- 
 tempted already to reproach the indifference of 
 parents, and to reproach the unfeeling depravity 
 of those young men who scatter their pestilen- 
 tial levities around the whole circle of their 
 companionship, we may now shortly attempt to 
 lay upon the men of middle and advanced life, 
 in general society, their share of responsibility 
 for the morals of the rising generation. For 
 the promotion of this great cause, it is not at 
 all necessary to school them into any nice or 
 exquisite contrivances. Could we only give 
 them a desire towards it, and a sense of obliga- 
 tion, they would soon find their own way to the 
 right exercise of their own influence in for- 
 
208 
 
 warding the interests of purity and virtue among 
 the young. Could we only affect their con- 
 sciences on this point, there would be almost no 
 necessity whatever to guide or enlighten their 
 understanding. Could we only get them to be 
 Christians, and to carry their Christianity into 
 their business, they would then feel themselves 
 invested with a guardianship ; and that time, and 
 pains, and attention, ought to be given to the 
 fulfilment of its concerns. It is quite in vain to 
 ask, as if there was any mystery, or any help- 
 lessness about it, " What can they do?" For, 
 is it not the fact most palpably obvious, that 
 much can be done even by the mere power of 
 example? Or might not the master of any trad- 
 ing establishment send the pervading influence 
 of his own principles among some, at least, of 
 the servants and auxiliaries who belong to it? 
 Or can he, in no degree whatever, so select 
 those who are admitted, as to ward off much 
 contamination from the branches of his employ? 
 Or might not he so deal out his encouragement 
 to the deserving,, as to confirm them in all their 
 purposes of sobriety? Or might not he inter- 
 pose the shield of his countenance and his testi- 
 
209 
 
 mony between a struggling youth and the ridicule 
 of his acquaintances? Or, by the friendly con- 
 versation of half an hour, might not he strengthen 
 within him every principle of virtuous resis- 
 tance ? By these, and by a thousand other ex- 
 pedients, which will readily suggest themselves 
 to him who has the good will, might not a heal- 
 ing water be sent forth through the most cor- 
 rupted of all our establishments; and it be made 
 safe for the unguarded young to officiate in its 
 chambers; and it be made possible to enter upon 
 the business of the world without entering on 
 such a scene of temptation, as to render almost 
 inevitable the vice of the world, and its impiety, 
 and its final and everlasting condemnation? 
 Would Christians only be open and intrepid, 
 and carry their religion into their merchandise; 
 and furnish us with a single hundred of such 
 houses in this city, where the care and character 
 of the master formed a guarantee for the sobriety 
 of all his dependents, it would be like the clear- 
 ing out of a piece of cultivated ground in the 
 midst of a frightful wilderness; and parents 
 would know whither they" could repair with 
 confidence for the settlement of their offspring; 
 
 2d 
 
210 
 
 and we should behold, what is mightily to be 
 desired, a line of broad and visible demarcation 
 between the church and the world ; and an interest 
 so precious as the immortality of children, would 
 no longer be left to the play of such fortuitous 
 elements, as operated at random throughout the 
 confused mass of a mingled and indiscriminate 
 society. And thus, the pieties of a father's house 
 might bear to be transplanted even into the scenes 
 of ordinary business ; and instead of withering, as 
 they do at present, under a contagion which 
 spreads in every direction, and fills up the whole 
 face of the community, they might flourish in 
 that moral region which was occupied by a pe- 
 culiar people, and which they had reclaimed 
 from a world that lieth in wickedness. 
 
 
DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 ON THE VITIATING INFLUENCE OF THE HIGHER 
 UPON THE LOWER ORDERS OF SOCIETY. 
 
 " Then said he unto the disciples, It is impossible but that 
 offences will come : but wo unto him through whom they 
 come ! It were better for him that a millstone were hanged 
 about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should 
 offend one of these little ones." — Luke xvii. 1, 2. 
 
 To offend another, according to the common 
 acceptation of the words, is to displease him. 
 Now, this is not its acceptation in the verse be- 
 fore us, nor in several other verses of the New 
 Testament. It were coming nearer to the scrip- 
 tural meaning of the term, had we, instead of 
 offence and offending, adopted the terms, scandal 
 and scandalising. But the full signification of 
 the phrase, to offend another, is to cause him to 
 fall from the faith and obedience of the gospel. 
 It may be such a falling away as that a man 
 recovers himself — like the disciples, who were all 
 offended in Christ, and forsook him; and, after a 
 
212 
 
 season of separation, were at length re-established 
 in their discipleship. Or it may be such a falling 
 away as that there is no recovery — like those in 
 the gospel of John, who, offended by the sayings 
 of our Saviour, went back, and walked no more 
 with him. If you put such a stumbling-block in 
 the way of a neighbour, who is walking on a 
 course of Christian discipleship, as to make him 
 fall, you offend him. It is in this sense that our 
 Saviour uses the word, when he speaks of your 
 own right hand, or your own right eye, offending 
 you. They may do so, by giving you an occa- 
 sion to fall. And what is here translated offend, 
 is, in the first epistie to the Corinthians, trans- 
 lated, to make to offend ; where Paul says, " If 
 meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no 
 more flesh while the world standeth, lest I make 
 my brother to offend." 
 
 The little ones to whom our Saviour alludes, 
 in this passage, he elsewhere more fully parti- 
 cularises, by telling us, that they are those who 
 believe in him. There is no call here for entering 
 into any controversy about the doctrine of per- 
 severance. It is not necessarv, either for the 
 
213 
 
 purpose of explaining, or of giving force to the 
 practical lesson of the text now submitted to you. 
 We happen to be as much satisfied with the 
 doctiioe, that he who hath a real faith in the 
 gospel of Christ will never fall away, as we are 
 satisfied with the truth of any identical proposi- 
 tion. If a professing disciple do, in fact, fall 
 away, this is a phenomenon wh'ch might be 
 traced to an essential defect of principle at the 
 first; which proves, in fact, that he made the 
 mistake of one principle for another ; and that, 
 while he thought he had the faith, it was not that 
 very faith of the New Testament which is unto 
 salvation. There might have been the semblance 
 of a work of grace, without its reality. Such a 
 work, if genuinely begun, will be carried onwards 
 even unto perfection. But this is a point on 
 which it is not at all necessary, at present, for 
 us to dogmatize. We are led, by the text, to 
 expatiate on the guilt of that one man who has 
 wrecked the interest of another man's eternity. 
 Now, it may be very true, that if the second has 
 actually entered within the strait gate, it is not 
 in the power of the first, with all his artifices, 
 and all his temptations, to draw him out again. 
 
214 
 
 But instead of having entered the gate, he may 
 only be on the road that leads to it ; and it is 
 enough, amid the uncertainties which, in this 
 life, hang over the question of — who are really 
 believers, and who are not? that it is not known 
 in which of these two conditions the little one is ; 
 and that, therefore, to seduce him from obedience 
 to the will of Christ, may, in fact, be to arrest 
 his progress towards Christ, and to draw him 
 back unto the perdition of his soul. The whole 
 guilt of the text may be realised by him who 
 keeps back another from the church, where he 
 might have heard, and heard with acceptance, 
 that word of life which he has not yet accepted ; 
 or by him, whose influence or whose example 
 detains, in the entanglement of any one sin, the 
 acquaintance who is meditating an outset on the 
 path of decided Christianity — seeing, that every 
 such outset will land in disappointment those 
 who, in the act of following after Christ, do not 
 forsake all ; or by him who tampers with the 
 conscience of an apparently zealous and con- 
 firmed disciple, so as to seduce him into some 
 habitual sin, either of neglect or of performance 
 — seeing, that the individual who, but for this 
 
215 
 
 seduction, might have cleaved fully unto the 
 Lord, and turned out a prosperous and decided 
 Christian, has been led to put a good conscience 
 away from him — and so, by making shipwreck 
 of his faith, has proved to the world, that it was 
 not the faith which could obtain the victory. It 
 is true, that it is not possible to seduce the elect. 
 But even this suggestion, perverse and unjust as 
 it would be in its application, is not generally 
 present to the mind of him who is guilty of the 
 attempt to seduce, or of the act .which carries 
 a seducing influence along with it. The guilt 
 with which he is chargeable, is that of an indif- 
 ference to the spiritual and everlasting fate of 
 others. He is wilfully the occasion of causing 
 those who are the little ones, or, for any thing 
 he knows, might have been the little ones of 
 Christ, to fall ; and it is against him that our 
 Saviour, in the text, lifts not a cool but an 
 impassioned testimony. It is of him that he 
 utters one of the most severe and solemn denun- 
 ciations of the gospel. 
 
 If this text were thoroughly pursued into its 
 manifold applications, it would be found to lay 
 
216 
 
 a weight of fearful responsibility upon us all. 
 We are here called upon not to work out our 
 own salvation, but to compute the reflex influ- 
 ence of all our works, and of all our ways, on 
 the principles of others. And when one thinks 
 of the mischief which this influence might spread 
 around it, even from Christians of chiefest re- 
 putation ; when one thinks of the readiness of 
 man to take shelter in the example of an acknow- 
 ledged superior ; when one thinks that some 
 inconsistency of ours might seduce another into 
 such an imitation as overbears the reproaches 
 of his own conscience, and as, by vitiating the 
 singleness of his eye, makes the whole of his 
 body, instead of being full of light, to be full of 
 darkness ; when one takes the lesson along with 
 him into the various conditions of life he may be 
 called by Providence to occupy, and thinks, that 
 if, either as a parent surrounded by his family, 
 or as a master by the members of his establish- 
 ment, or as a citizen by the many observers of 
 his neighbourhood around him, he shall either 
 speak such words, or do such actions, or admin- 
 ister his affairs in such a way as is unworthy of 
 his high and immortal destination, that then a 
 
217 
 
 taint of corruption is sure to descend from such 
 an exhibition, upon the immortals who are on 
 every side of him ; when one thinks of himself 
 as the source and the centre of a contagion which 
 might bring a blight upon the graces and the 
 prospects of other souls besides his own — surely 
 this is enough to supply him with a reason why, 
 in working out his own personal salvation, he 
 should do it with fear, and with watchfulness, 
 and with much trembling. 
 
 But we are now upon the ground of a higher 
 and more delicate conscientiousness, than is 
 generally to be met with. Whereas, our object, 
 at present, is to expose certain of the grosser 
 offences which abound in society, and which 
 spread a most dangerous and ensnaring influence 
 among the individuals who compose it. To this 
 we have been insensibly led, by the topics of 
 that discourse which we addressed to you on a 
 former occasion ; and when it fell in our way to 
 animadvert on the magnitude of that man's guilt, 
 who, either by his example, or his connivance, 
 or his direct and formal tuition, can speed the 
 entrance of the yet unpractised young on a 
 
 2 E 
 
218 
 
 career of dissipation. And whether he be a 
 parent, who, trenched in this world's maxims, 
 can, without a struggle, and without a sigh, 
 leave his helpless offspring to take their random 
 and unprotected way through this world's con- 
 formities ; or whether he be one of those seniors 
 in depravity, who can cheer on his more youthful 
 companion to a surrender of all those scruples, 
 and all those delicacies, which have hitherto 
 adorned him; or whether he be a more aged 
 citizen, who, having run the wonted course of 
 intemperance, can cast an approving eye on the 
 corruption throughout all its stages, and give a 
 tenfold force to all its allurements, by setting up 
 the authority of grave and reformed manhood 
 upon its side ; in each of these characters do we 
 see an offence that is pregnant with deadliest 
 mischief to the principles of the rising genera- 
 tion : and while we are told by our text, that, 
 •for such offences, there exists some deep and 
 mysterious necessity — insomuch, that it is impos- 
 sible but that offences must come — yet, let us not 
 forget to urge on every one sharer in this work 
 of moral contamination, that never does the meek 
 and gentle Saviour speak in terms more threat- 
 
219 
 
 ening, or more reproachful, than when he speaks 
 of the enormity of such misconduct. There 
 cannot, in truth, be a grosser outrage committed 
 on the order of God's administration, than that 
 which he is in the habit of inflicting. There 
 cannot, surely, be a directer act of rebellion, 
 than that which multiplies the adherents of its 
 own cause, and which swells the hosts of the 
 rebellious. There cannot be made to rest a fel- 
 ler condemnation on the head of iniquity, than 
 that which is sealed by the blood of its own vic- 
 tims, and its own proselytes. Nor should we 
 wonder when that is said of such an agent for 
 iniquity which is said of the betrayer of our 
 Lord. It were better for him that he had not 
 be*en born. It were better for him, now that he 
 is born, could he be committed back again to 
 deep annihilation. Rather than that he should 
 offend one of these little ones, it were better for 
 him that a millstone were hanged about his 
 neck, and he were cast into the sea. 
 
 This is one case of such offences as are ad- 
 verted to in the text. Another and still more 
 specific is beginning, we understand ? to be exem- 
 
220 
 
 plified in our own city, though it has not attain- 
 ed to the height or to the frequency at which it 
 occurs in a neighbouring metropolis. We allude 
 to the doing of week-day business upon the Sab- 
 bath. We allude to that violence which is rudely 
 offered to the feelings and the associations of 
 sacredness, by those exactions that an ungodly 
 master lays at times on his youthful dependents 
 — when those hours which they wont to spend 
 in church, they are called upon to spend in the 
 counting-house — when that day, which ought to 
 be a day of piety, is turned into a day of posting 
 and of penmanship — when the rules of the de- 
 calogue are set aside, and utterly superseded by 
 the rules of the great trading establishment; 
 and every thing is made to give way to the hur- 
 rying emergency of orders, and clearances, and 
 the demands of instant correspondence. Such 
 is the magnitude of this stumbling-block, that 
 many is the young man who has here fallen to 
 rise no more — that, at this point of departure, 
 he has so widened his distance from God, as ne- 
 ver, in fact, to return to him — that, in this dis- 
 tressing contest between principle and necessity, 
 the final blow has been given to his religious 
 
221 
 
 principles — that the master whom he serves, and 
 under whom he earns his provision for time, has 
 here wrested the whole interest of his eternity 
 away from him — that, from this moment, there 
 gathers upon his soul the complexion of a har- 
 dier and more determined impiety — and con- 
 science once stifled now speaks to him with a 
 feebler voice — and the world obtains a firmer 
 lodgement in his heart — and, renouncing all his 
 original tenderness about Sabbath, and Sabbath 
 employments, he can now, with the thorough 
 unconcern of a fixed and familiarised proselyte, 
 keep equal pace by his fellows throughout every 
 scene of profanation — and he who wont to trem- 
 ble and recoil from the freedoms of irreligion 
 with the sensibility of a little one, may soon be- 
 come the most daringly rebellious of them all — 
 and that Sabbath which he has now learned, 
 at one time, to give to business, he, at another, 
 gives to unhallowed enjoyments — and it is turn- 
 ed into a day of visits and excursions, given up 
 to pleasure, and enlivened by all the mirth and 
 extravagance of holiday — and, when sacrament 
 is proclaimed from the city pulpits, he, the apt, 
 the well trained disciple of his corrupt and cor- 
 
222 
 
 rupting superior, is the readiest to plan the 
 amusements of the coming opportunity, and 
 among the very foremost in the ranks of emigra- 
 tion — and though he may look back, at times, to 
 the Sabbath of his father's pious house, yet thejre- 
 trospect is always becoming dimmer, and at length 
 it ceases to disturb him — and thus the alienation 
 widens every year, till, wholly given over to im- 
 piety, he lives without God in the world. 
 
 And were we asked to state the dimensions of 
 that iniquity which stalks regardlessly, and at 
 large, over the ruin of youthful principles — were 
 we asked to find a place in the catalogue of guilt 
 for a crime, the atrocity of which is only equal- 
 led, we understand, by its frequency — were we 
 called to characterise the man who, so far from 
 attempting one counteracting influence against 
 the profligacy of his dependents, issues, from 
 the chair of authority on which he sits, a com- 
 mandment, in the direct face of a commandment 
 from God — the man who has chartered im- 
 piety in articles of agreement, and has vested 
 himself with a property in that time which only 
 belongs to the Lord of the Sabbath — were we 
 
C 2 C 23 
 
 asked to look to the man who could thus over- 
 bear the last remnants of remorse in a struggling 
 and unpractised bosom, and glitter in all the en- 
 signs of a prosperity that is reared on the viola- 
 ted consciences of those who are beneath him — 
 O! were the question put, to whom shall we liken 
 such a man? or, what is the likeness to which we 
 can compare him ? we would say, that the guilt 
 of him who trafficked on the highway, or traf- 
 ficked on that outraged coast, from whose weep- 
 ing families children were inseparably torn, was 
 far outmeasured by the guilt which could thus 
 frustrate a father's fondest prayers, and trample 
 under foot the hopes and the preparations of 
 eternity. 
 
 There is another way whereby, in the employ 
 of a careless and unprincipled master, it is im- 
 possible but that offences must come. You 
 know just as well as we do, that there are chi- 
 caneries in business ; and, so long as we forbear 
 stating the precise extent of them, there is not 
 an individual among you, who has a title to con- 
 strue the assertion into an affronting charge of 
 criminality against himself. But you surely 
 
224 
 
 know, as well as we, that the mercantile pro- 
 fession, conducted, as it often is, with the purest 
 integrity, and laying no resistless necessity what- 
 ever for the surrender of principle on any of its 
 members ; and dignified by some of the noblest 
 exhibitions of untainted honour, and devoted 
 friendship, and magnificent generosity, that have 
 ever been recorded of our nature ; — you know 
 as well as we, that it was utterly extravagant, 
 and in the face of all observation, to affirm, that 
 each, and every one of its numerous competi- 
 tors, stood clearly and totally exempted from the 
 sins of an undue selfishness. And, accordingly, 
 there are certain commodious falsehoods occa- 
 sionally practised in this department of human 
 affairs. There are, for example, certain dex- 
 terous and gainful evasions, whereby the payers 
 of tribute are enabled, at times, to make their 
 escape from the eagle eye of the exactors of tri- 
 bute. There are even certain contests of in- 
 genuity between individual traders, where, in 
 the higgling of a very keen and anxious negoci- 
 ation, each of them is tempted, in talking of of- 
 fers and prices, and the reports of fluctuations 
 in home and foreign markets, to say the things 
 
225 
 
 which are not. You must assuredly know, that 
 these, and sucli as these, then, have introduced 
 a certain quantity of what may be called shuf- 
 fling, into the communications of the trading 
 world — insomuch, that the simplicity of yea, 
 yea, and nay, nay, is in some degree exploded ; 
 and there is a kind of understood toleration es- 
 tablished for certain modes of expression, which 
 could not, we are much afraid, stand the rigid 
 scrutiny of the great day; and there is an abate- 
 ment of confidence between man and man, im- 
 plying, we doubt, such a proportionate abate- 
 ment of truth, as goes to extend most fearfully 
 the condemnation that is due to all liars, who 
 shall have their part in the lake that burnetii 
 with fire and brimstone. And who can com- 
 pute the effect of all this on the young and yet 
 unpractised observer? Who does not see, that 
 it must go to reduce the tone of his princi- 
 ples; and to involve him in many a delicate 
 struggle between the morality he has learn- 
 ed from his catechism, and the morality he 
 sees in the counting-house.; and to obliterate, 
 in his mind, the distinctions between right 
 and wrong; and, at length, to reconcile his 
 
 2f 
 
226 
 
 conscience to a sin which, like every other, 
 deserves the wrath and the curse of God ; and 
 to make him tamper with a direct command- 
 ment, in such a way, as that falsehoods and 
 frauds might be nothing more in his estimation, 
 than the peccadilloes of an innocent compliance 
 with the current practices and moralities of the 
 world ? Here, then, is a point, at which the way 
 of those who conform to this world, diverges 
 from the way of those peculiar people who are 
 redeemed from all iniquity, and are thoroughly 
 furnished unto all good works. Here is a 
 grievous occasion to fall. Here is a competition 
 between the service of God and the service of 
 Mammon. Here is the exhibition of another 
 offence, and the bringing forward of another 
 temptation, to those who are entering on the 
 business of the world, little adverted to, we fear, 
 by those who live in utter carelessness of their 
 own souls, and never spend a thought or a sigh 
 about the immortality of others — but most dis- 
 tinctly singled out by the text as a crime of 
 foremost magnitude in the eye of Him who 
 judgeth righteously. 
 
227 
 
 And before we quit the subject of such offences 
 as take place in ordinary trade, let us just advert 
 to one example of it — not so much for the fre- 
 quency of its occurrence, as for the way that it 
 stands connected in principle with a very general, 
 and, we believe, a very mischievous offence, that 
 takes place in domestic society. It is neither, 
 you will observe, the avarice nor the selfishness 
 of our nature, which forms the only obstruction 
 in the way of one man dealing plainly with an- 
 other. There is another obstruction, founded on 
 a far more pleasing and amiable principle — even 
 on that delicacy of feeling, in virtue of which, 
 one man cannot bear to wound or to mortify 
 another. It would require, for instance, a very 
 rare, and, certainly, not a very enviable degree 
 of hardihood, to tell another, without pain, that 
 you did not think him worthy of being trusted. 
 And yet, in the doings of merchandise, this is the 
 very trial of delicacy which sometimes offers itself. 
 The man with whom you stand committed to as 
 great an extent as you count to be adviseable, 
 would like, perhaps, to try your confidence in 
 him, and his own credit with you, a little farther; 
 and he comes back upon you with a fresh order; 
 
228 
 
 and you secretly have no desire to link any more 
 pf your property with his speculation ; and the 
 difficulty is how to get the application in question 
 disposed of; and you feel that by far the plea- 
 santest way, to all the parties concerned, would 
 be, to make him believe that you refuse the 
 application not because you will not comply, but 
 because you cannot — for that you have no more 
 of the article he wants from you upon hand. And 
 it would only be putting your own soul to hazard, 
 did you personally and by yourself make this 
 communication : but you select, perhaps, as the 
 organ of it some agent or underling of your 
 establishment, who knows it to be false ; and to 
 avoid the soreness of a personal encounter with 
 the man whom you are to disappoint, you devolve 
 the whole business of this lying apology upon 
 others ; and thus do you continue to shift this 
 oppressive burden away from you — or, in other 
 words, to save your own delicacy, you count not, 
 and you care not, about another's damnation. 
 
 Now, what we call upon you to mark, is the 
 perfect identity of principle between this case of 
 making a brother to offend, and another case 
 
229 
 
 which obtains, we have heard, to a very great 
 extent among the most genteel and opulent of 
 our city families. In this case, you put a lie 
 into the mouth of a dependent, and that, for the 
 purpose of protecting your substance from such 
 an application as might expose it to hazard or 
 diminution. In the second case, you put a lie 
 into the mouth of a dependent, and that, for the 
 purpose of protecting your time from such an 
 encroachment as you would not feel to be con- 
 venient or agreeable. And, in both cases, you 
 are led to hold out this offence by a certain deli- 
 cacy of temperament, in virtue of which, you can 
 neither give a man plainly to understand that 
 you are not willing to trust him, nor can you 
 give him to understand that you count his com- 
 pany to be an interruption. But, in both the 
 one and the other example, look to the little 
 account that is made of a brother's or of a sister's 
 eternity; behold the guilty task that is thus un- 
 mercifully laid upon one who is shortly to appear 
 before the judgment-seat of Christ; think of the 
 entanglement which is thus made to beset the 
 path of a creature who is unperishable. That, at 
 the shrine of Mammon, such a bloody sacrifice 
 
230 
 
 should be rendered by some of his unrelenting 
 votaries, is not to be wondered at ; but that the 
 shrine of elegance and fashion should be bathed 
 in blood — that soft and sentimental ladyship 
 should put forth her hand to such an enormity 
 — that she who can sigh so gently, and shed her 
 graceful tear over the sufferings of others, should 
 thus be accessary to the second and more awful 
 death of her own domestics — that one who looks 
 the mildest and the loveliest of human beings, 
 should exact obedience to a mandate which car- 
 ries wrath, and tribulation, and anguish, in its 
 train — O ! how it should confirm every Christian 
 in his defiance to the authority of fashion, and 
 lead him to spurn at all its folly, and at all its 
 worthlessness. 
 
 And it is quite in vain to say, that the servant 
 whom you thus employ as the deputy of your 
 falsehood, can possibly execute the commission 
 without the conscience being at all tainted or 
 defiled by it ; that a simple cottage maid can so 
 sophisticate the matter, as, without any violence 
 to her original principles, to utter the language 
 of what she assuredly knows to be a downright 
 
231 
 
 lie; that she, humble and untutored soul, can 
 sustain no injury when thus made to tamper with 
 the plain English of these realms ; that she can 
 at all satisfy herself, how, by the prescribed ut- 
 terance of " not at home," she is not pronouncing 
 such words as are substantially untrue, but merely 
 using them in another and perfectly understood 
 meaning — and which, according to their modern 
 translation, denote, that the person of whom she 
 is thus speaking, instead of being away from 
 home, is secretly lurking in one of the most 
 secure and intimate of its receptacles. You may 
 try to darken and transform this piece of casuistry 
 as you will ; and work up your own minds into 
 the peaceable conviction that it is all right, and 
 as it should be. But be very certain, that where 
 the moral sense of your domestic is not already 
 overthrown, there is, at least, one bosom within 
 which you have raised a war of doubts and of 
 difficulties; and where, if the victory be on your 
 side, it will be on the side of him who is the 
 great enemy of righteousness. There is, at least, 
 one person along the line of this conveyance of 
 deceit, who condemneth herself in that which 
 she alloweth; who, in the language of Paul, 
 
232 
 
 esteeming the practice to be unclean, to her will 
 it be unclean ; who will perform her task with 
 the offence of her own conscience, and to whom, 
 therefore, it will indeed be evil; who cannot 
 render obedience in this matter to her earthly 
 superior, but by an act, in which she does not 
 stand clear and unconscious of guilt before God; 
 and with whom, therefore, the sad consequence 
 of what we can call nothing else than a barbarous 
 combination against the principles and the pros- 
 pects of the lower orders, is — that as she has not 
 cleaved fully unto the Lord, and has not kept 
 by the service of the one master, and has not 
 forsaken all at His bidding, she cannot be the 
 disciple of Christ. 
 
 The aphorism, that he who offendeth in one 
 point is guilty of all, tells us something more 
 than of the way in which God adjudges condem- 
 nation to the disobedient. It also tells us of the 
 way in which one individual act of sinfulness 
 operates upon our moral nature. It is altogether 
 an erroneous view of the commandments, to look 
 upon them as so many observances to which we 
 are bound by as many distinct and independent 
 
233 
 
 ties of obligation — insomuch, that the transgres- 
 sion of one of them may be brought about by 
 the dissolution of one separate tie, and may leave 
 all the others with as entire a constraining influ- 
 ence and authority as before. The truth is, that 
 the commandments ought rather to be looked 
 upon as branching out from one great and general 
 tie of obligation; and that there is no such thing 
 as' loosening the hold of one of them upon the 
 conscience, but by the unfastening of that tie 
 which binds them all upon the conscience. So 
 that if one member in the system of practical 
 righteousness be made to suffer, all the other 
 members suffer along with it; and if one decision 
 of the moral sense be thwarted, the organ of the 
 moral sense is permanently impaired, and a lea- 
 ven of iniquity infused into all its other decisions; 
 and if one suggestion of this inward monitor be 
 stifled, a general shock is given to his authority 
 over the whole man ; and if one of the least 
 commandments of the law is left unfulfilled, the 
 law itself is brought down from its rightful as- 
 cendency; and thus it is, that one act of disobe- 
 dience may be the commencement and the token 
 of a systematic universal rebelliousness of the 
 
 2 G 
 
234 
 
 heart against God. It is this which gives such 
 a wide- wasting malignity to each of the separate 
 offences on which we have now expatiated. It 
 is this which so multiplies the means and the 
 possibilities of corruption in the world. It is 
 thus that, at every one point in the intercourse 
 of human society, there may be struck out a 
 fountain of poisonous emanation on all who ap- 
 proach it ; and think not, therefore, that under 
 each of the examples we have given, we were 
 only contending for the preservation of one single 
 feature in the character of him who stands ex- 
 posed to this world's offences. We felt it, in 
 fact, to be a contest for his eternity; and that the 
 case involved in it his general condition with 
 God ; and that he who leads the young into a 
 course of dissipation— or that he who tampers 
 with their impressions of Sabbath sacredness — 
 or that he who, either in the walks of business, 
 or in the services of the family, makes them the 
 agents of deceitfulness — or that he, in short, who 
 tempts them to transgress in any one thing, has, 
 in fact, poured such a pervading taint into their 
 moral constitution, as to spoil or corrupt them 
 in all things: and that thus, upon one solitary 
 
235 
 
 occasion, or by the exhibition of one particular 
 offence, a mischief may be done equivalent to 
 the total destruction of a human soul, or to the 
 blotting out of its prospects for immortality. 
 
 And let us just ask a master or a mistress, who 
 can thus make free with the moral principle of 
 their servants in one instance, how they can look 
 for pure or correct principle from them in other 
 instances ? What right have they to complain 
 of unfaithfulness against themselves, who have 
 deliberately seduced another into a habit of un- 
 faithfulness against God ? Are they so utterly 
 unskilled in the mysteries of our nature, as not to 
 perceive, that if a man gather hardihood enough 
 to break the Sabbath in opposition to his own 
 conscience, this very hardihood will avail him 
 to the breaking of other obligations ? — that he 
 w T hom, for their advantage, they have so exer- 
 cised, as to fill his conscience with offence towards 
 his God, will not scruple, for his own advantage, 
 so to exercise himself, as to fill his conscience with 
 offence towards his master ? — that the servant 
 whom you have taught to lie, has gotten such 
 rudiments of education at your hand, as that, 
 
236 
 
 without any further help, he can now teach him- 
 self to purloin ? — and yet nothing more frequent 
 than loud and angry complainings against the 
 treachery of servants; as if, in the general wreck 
 of their other principles, a principle of consider- 
 ation for the good and interest of their employer 
 — and who, at the same time, has been their 
 seducer — was to survive in all its power, and 
 all its sensibility. It is just such a retribution 
 as was to be looked for. It is a recoil upon their 
 own heads of the mischief which they themselves 
 have originated. It is the temporal part of the 
 punishment which they have to bear for the sin 
 of our text, but not the whole of it ; for better 
 for them that both person and property were cast 
 into the sea, than that they should stand the 
 reckoning of that day, when called to give an 
 account of the souls that they have murdered, 
 and the blood of so mighty a destruction is re- 
 quired at their hands. 
 
 I The evil against which we have this day pro- 
 tested, is an outrage of far greater enormity than 
 tyrant or oppressor can inflict, in the prosecution 
 of his worst designs against the political rights and 
 
237 
 
 liberties of the commonwealth. The very sem- 
 blance of such designs will summon every patriot 
 to his post of observation ; and, from a thousand 
 watch-towers of alarm, will the outcry of freedom 
 in danger be heard throughout the land. But 
 there is a conspiracy of a far more malignant 
 influence upon the destinies of the species that 
 is now going on ; and which seems to call forth 
 no indignant spirit, and to bring no generous 
 exclamation along with it. Throughout all the 
 recesses of private and domestic history, there is 
 an ascendency of rank and station against which 
 no stern republican is ever heard to lift his voice 
 — though it be an ascendency, so exercised, as 
 to be of most noxious operation to the dearest 
 hopes and best interests of humanity. There is 
 a cruel combination of the great against the ma- 
 jesty of the people — we mean the majesty of the 
 people's worth. There is a haughty unconcern 
 about an inheritance, which, by an unalienable 
 right, should be theirs — we mean their future 
 and everlasting inheritance. There is a deadly 
 invasion made on their rights — we mean their 
 rights of conscience ; and, in this our land of 
 boasted privileges, are the low trampled upon by 
 
238 
 
 the high — we mean trampled into all the degra- 
 dation of guilt and of worthlessness. They are 
 utterly bereft of that homage which ought to be 
 rendered to the dignity of their immortal nature; 
 and to minister to the avarice of an imperious 
 master, or to spare the sickly delicacy of the 
 fashionables in our land, are the truth and the 
 piety of our population, and all the virtues of 
 their eternity, most unfeelingly plucked away 
 from them. It belongs to others to fight the 
 battle of their privileges in time. But who that 
 looks with a calculating eye on their duration 
 that never ends, can repress an alarm of a higher 
 order ? It belongs to others generously to strug- 
 gle for the place and the adjustment of the lower 
 orders in the great vessel of the state. But, 
 surely, the question of their place in eternity is 
 of mightier concern than how they are to sit 
 and be accommodated in that pathway vehicle 
 which takes them to their everlasting habitations. 
 
 Christianity is, in one sense, the greatest of all 
 levellers. It looks to the elements, and not to 
 the circumstantials of humanity ; and regarding 
 as altogether superficial and temporary the dis- 
 
239 
 
 tinctions of this fleeting pilgrimage, it fastens on 
 those points of assimilation which liken the king 
 upon the throne to the very humblest of his 
 subject population. They are alike in the na- 
 kedness of their birth. They are alike in the 
 sureness of their decay. They are alike in the 
 agonies of their dissolution. And after the one 
 is tombed in sepulchral magnificence, and the 
 other is laid in his sod-wrapt grave, are they 
 most fearfully alike in the corruption to which 
 they moulder. But it is with the immortal na- 
 ture of each that Christianity has to do ; and, in 
 both the one and the other, does it behold a 
 nature alike forfeited by guilt, and alike capable 
 of being restored by the grace of an offered salva- 
 tion. And never do the pomp and the circum- 
 stance of externals appear more humiliating, than 
 when, looking onwards to the day of resurrec- 
 tion, we behold the sovereign standing without 
 his crown, and trembling, with the subject by his 
 side, at the bar of heaven's majesty. There the 
 master and the servant will be brought to their 
 reckoning together ; and when the one is tried 
 upon the guilt and the malignant influence of 
 his Sabbath companies — and is charged with the 
 
240 
 
 profane and careless habit of his household es- 
 tablishment — and is reminded how he kept both 
 himself and his domestics from the solemn ordi- 
 nance—and is made to perceive the fearful extent 
 of the moral and spiritual mischief which he has 
 wrought as the irreligious head of an irreligious 
 family — and how, among other things, he, under 
 a system of fashionable hypocrisy, so tampered 
 with another's principles as to defile his con- 
 science, and to destroy him — O ! how tremend- 
 ously will the little brief authority in which he 
 now plays his fantastic tricks, turn to his own 
 condemnation ; for, than thus abuse his authority, 
 it were better for him that a millstone were 
 hanged about his neck, and he were cast into 
 the sea. 
 
 And how comes it, we ask, that any master 
 is armed with a power so destructive over the 
 immortals who are around him ? God has given 
 him no such power. The state has not given it 
 to him. There is no law, either human or divine, 
 by w T hich he can enforce any order upon his 
 servants to an act of falsehood, or to an act of 
 impiety. Should any such act of authority be 
 
241 
 
 attempted on the part of the master, it should 
 be followed up on the part of the servant by an 
 act of disobedience. Should your master or 
 mistress bid you say not at home, when you 
 know that they are at home, it is your duty to 
 refuse compliance with such an order : and if it 
 be asked, how can this matter be adjusted after 
 such a violent and alarming innovation on the 
 laws of fashionable intercourse, we answer, just 
 by the simple substitution of truth for false- 
 hood — just by prescribing the utterance of, 
 engaged, which is a fact, instead of the utter- 
 ance of, not at home, which is a lie — just by 
 holding the principles of your servant to be of 
 higher account than the false delicacies of your 
 acquaintance — just by a bold and vigorous re- 
 currence to the simplicity of nature — just by de- 
 terminedly doing what is right, though the ex- 
 ample of a whole host were against you; and by 
 giving impulse to the current of example, when 
 it happens to be moving in a proper direction. 
 And here we are happy to say that fashion has of 
 late been making a capricious and accidental 
 movement on the side of principle — and to be 
 blunt, and open, and manly, is now on the fair 
 
 2 H 
 
242 
 
 way to be fashionable — and a temper of home- 
 lier quality is beginning to infuse itself into 
 the luxuriousness, and the effeminacy, and the 
 palling and excessive complaisance of genteel 
 society — and the staple of cultivated man- 
 ners is improving in firmness, and frankness, 
 and honesty, and may, at length, by the aid 
 of a principle of Christian rectitude, be so in- 
 terwoven with the cardinal virtues, as to pre- 
 sent a different texture altogether from the soft 
 and the silken degeneracy of modern days. 
 
 And that we may not appear the champions of 
 an insurrection against the authority of masters, 
 let us further say, that while it is the duty of 
 clerk or apprentice to refuse the doing of week- 
 day work on the Sabbath, and while it is the 
 duty of servants to refuse the utterance of a 
 prescribed falsehood, and while it is the duty of 
 every dependent, in the service of his master, 
 to serve him only in the Lord — yet this ve- 
 ry principle, tending as it may to a rare and 
 occasional act of disobedience, is also the prin- 
 ciple which renders every servant who adheres 
 to it a perfect treasure of fidelity, and attach- 
 
243 
 
 ment, and general obedience. This is the way 
 in which to obtain a credit for his refusal, and 
 to stamp upon it a noble consistency. In this 
 way he will, even to the mind of an ungodly 
 master, make up for all his particularities: and 
 should he be what, if a Christian, he will be ; 
 should he be, at all times, the most alert in ser- 
 vice, and the most patient of provocation, and 
 the most cordial in affection, and the most scru- 
 pulously honest in the charge and custody of all 
 that is committed to him — then let the post of 
 drudgery at which he toils be humble as it may, 
 the contrast between the meanness of his office 
 and the dignity of his character will only heigh- 
 ten the reverence that is due to principle, and 
 make it more illustrious. His scruples may, at 
 first, be the topics of displeasure, and afterwards 
 the topics of occasional levity; but, in spite of 
 himself, will his employer be at length con- 
 strained to look upon them with respectful tol- 
 eration. The servant will be to the master a 
 living epistle of Christ, and he may read there 
 what he has not yet perceived in the letter of 
 the New Testament. He may read, in the per- 
 son of his own domestic, the power and the 
 
244 
 
 truth of Christianity. He may positively stand 
 in awe of his own hired servant — and, regarding 
 his bosom as a sanctuary of worth which it were 
 monstrous to violate, will he feel, when tempted 
 to offer one command of impiety, that he can- 
 not, that he dare not. 
 
 And, before we conclude, let us, if possible, 
 try to rebuke the wealthy out of their unfeeling 
 indifference to the souls of the poor, by the ex- 
 ample of the Saviour. Let those who look on 
 the immortality of the poor as beneath their 
 concern, only look unto Christ — to him who, 
 for the sake of the poorest of us all, became poor 
 himself, that we, through his poverty, might be 
 made rich. Let them think how the principle 
 of all these offences which we have been attempt- 
 ing to expose, is in the direct face of that prin- 
 ciple which prompted, at first, and which still 
 presides over, the whole of the gospel dispensa- 
 tion. Let them learn a higher reverence for 
 the eternity of those beneath them, by thinking 
 of him, who, to purchase an inheritance for the 
 poor, and to provide them with the blessings of 
 a preached gospel, unrobed him of all his great- 
 
245 
 
 ness; and descended himself to the lot and the 
 labours of poverty; and toiled, to the beginning 
 of his public ministry, at the work of a carpen- 
 ter; and submitted to all the horrors of a death 
 which was aggravated by the burden of a world's 
 atonement, and made inconceivably severe, by 
 there being infused into it all the bitterness of 
 the cup of expiation. Think, O think, when 
 some petty design of avarice or vanity would 
 lead you to forget the imperishable souls of 
 those who are beneath you, that you are setting 
 yourselves in diametric opposition to that which 
 lieth nearest to the heart of the Saviour; that 
 you are countervailing the whole tendency of 
 his redemption; that you are thwarting the very 
 object of that enterprise for which all heaven 
 is represented as in motion — and angels are with 
 wonder looking on — and God the Father laid an 
 appointment on the Son of his love — and he, the 
 august personage in whom the magnificent train 
 of prophecy, from the beginning of the world, 
 has its theme and its fulfilment, at length came 
 amongst us, in shrouded majesty, and was led to 
 the cross, like a lamb for the slaughter, and 
 bowed his head in agony, and gave up the 
 ghost. 
 
246 
 
 And here let us address one word more to 
 the masters and mistresses of families. By 
 adopting the reformations to which we have been 
 urging you, you may do good to the cause of 
 Christianity, and yet not advance, by a single 
 hair-breadth, the Christianity of your own souls. 
 It is not by this one reformation, or, indeed, by 
 any given number of reformations, that you are 
 saved. It is by believing in Christ that men 
 are saved. You may escape, it is sure, a higher 
 degree of punishment, but you will not escape 
 damnation. You may do good to the souls of 
 your servants, by a rigid observance of the les- 
 son of this day. But we seek the good of 
 your own souls, also, and we pronounce upon 
 them that they are in a state of death, till one 
 great act be performed, and one act, too, which 
 does not consist of any number of particular 
 acts, or particular reformations. What shall I 
 do to be saved? Believe in the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, and thou shalt be saved. And he who 
 believeth not, the wrath of God abideth on him. 
 Do this, if you want to make the great and im- 
 portant transition for yourselves. Do this, if you 
 want your own name to be blotted out of the book 
 
247 
 
 of condemnation. If you seek to have your own 
 persons justified before God, submit to the 
 righteousness of God — even that righteousness 
 which is through the faith of Christ, and is un- 
 to all and upon all who believe. This is the 
 turning point of your acceptance with the Law- 
 giver. And at this step, also, in the history of 
 your souls, will there be applied to you a power 
 of motive, and will you be endowed with an 
 obedient sensibility to the influence of motive, 
 which will make it the turning point of a new 
 heart and a new character. The particular re- 
 formation that we have now been urging will be 
 one of a crowd of other reformations; and, in 
 the spirit of him who pleased not himself, but 
 gave up his life for others, will you forego all 
 the desires of selfishness and vanity, .and look 
 not merely to your own things, but also to the 
 things of others. 
 
DISCOURSE VIII 
 
 ON THE LOVE OF MONEY, 
 
 " If I have made gold my hope, or have said to the fine 
 gold, Thou art my confidence; if I rejoiced because my 
 wealth was great, and because mine hand had gotten much ; 
 if I beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walking in 
 brightness ; and my heart hath been secretly enticed, or my 
 mouth hath kissed my hand; this also were an iniquity to 
 be punished by the judge ; for I should have denied the 
 God that is above." — Job xxxi. 24 — 28. 
 
 What is worthy of remark in this passage is, 
 that a certain affection, only known among the 
 votaries of Paganism, should be classed under the 
 same character and have the same condemnation 
 with an affection, not only known, but allowed, 
 nay cherished into habitual supremacy, all over 
 Christendom. How universal is it among those 
 who are in pursuit of wealth, to make gold their 
 hope, and, among those who are in possession of 
 wealth, to make fine gold their confidence! Yet 
 
249 
 
 we are here told that this is virtually as com- 
 plete a renunciation of God as to practise some 
 of the worst charms of idolatry. And it might 
 perhaps serve to unsettle the vanity of those 
 who, unsuspicious of the disease that is in their 
 hearts, are wholly given over to this world, and 
 wholly without alarm in their anticipations of 
 another, — could we convince them that the most 
 reigning and resistless desire by which they are 
 actuated, stamps the same perversity on them, in 
 the sight of God, as he sees to be in those who 
 are worshippers of the sun in the firmament, or 
 are offering incense to the moon, as the queen of 
 heaven. 
 
 We recoil from an idolater, as from one who 
 labours under a great moral derangement, in 
 suffering his regards to be carried away from the 
 true God to an idol. But, is it not just the 
 same derangement, on the part of man, that he 
 should love any created good, and in the enjoy- 
 ment of it lose sight of the Creator — that he 
 should delight himself with the use and the pos- 
 session of a gift, and be unaffected by the cir- 
 cumstance of its having been put into his hands 
 
 >2 i 
 
250 
 
 by a giver — that, thoroughly absorbed with the 
 present and the sensible gratification, there 
 should be no room left for the movements of 
 duty or regard to the Being who furnished him 
 with the materials, and endowed him with the 
 organs, of every gratification, — that he should 
 thus lavish all his desires on the surrounding 
 materialism, and fetch from it all his delights, 
 while the thought of him who formed it is habi- 
 tually absent from his heart — that, in the play 
 of those attractions that subsist between him 
 and the various objects in the neighbourhood 
 of his person, there should be the same want of 
 reference to God, as there is in the play of those 
 attractions which subsist between a piece of un- 
 conscious matter and the other matter that is 
 around it — that all the influences which operate 
 upon the human will should emanate from so 
 many various points in the mechanism of what 
 is formed, but that no practical or ascendant 
 influence should come down upon it from the 
 presiding and the preserving Deity? Why, if 
 such be man, he could not be otherwise, though 
 there were no Deity. The part he sustains in 
 the world is the very same that it would have 
 
251 
 
 been, had the world sprung into being of itself, 
 or without an originating mind had maintained 
 its being from eternity. He just puts forth the 
 evolutions of his own nature, as one of the com- 
 ponent individuals in a vast independent system 
 of nature, made up of many parts and many in- 
 dividuals. In hungering for what is agreeable 
 to his senses, or recoiling from what is bitter or 
 unsuitable to them, he does so without thinking 
 of God, or borrowing any impulse to his own 
 will from any thing he knows or believes to be 
 the will of God. Religion has just as little to 
 do with those daily movements of his which are 
 voluntary, as it has to do with the growth of his 
 body, which is involuntary; or, as it has to do, 
 in other words, with the progress and the phe- 
 nomena of vegetation. With a mind that ought 
 to know God, and a conscience that ought to 
 award to him the supreme jurisdiction, he lives 
 as effectually without him, as if he had no mind 
 and no conscience; and, bating a few transient 
 visitations of thought, and a few regularities of 
 outward and mechanical observation, do we 
 behold man running, and willing, and preparing, 
 and enjoying, just as if there was no other por- 
 
252 
 
 tion than the creature— just as if the world, and 
 its visible elements, formed the all with which 
 he had to do. 
 
 I wish to impress upon you the distinction 
 that there is between the love of money, and 
 the love of what money purchases. Either of 
 these affections may equally displace God from 
 the heart. But there is a malignity and an in- 
 veteracy of atheism in the former which does 
 not belong to the latter, and in virtue of which 
 it may be seen that the love of money is, indeed, 
 the root of all evil. 
 
 When we indulge the love of that which 
 is purchased by money, the materials of gra- 
 tification, and the organs of gratification are 
 present with each other — just as in the enjoy- 
 ments of the inferior animals, and just as in 
 all the simple and immediate enjoyments of 
 man ; such as the tasting of food, or the smell- 
 ing of a flower. There is an adaptation of the 
 senses to certain external objects, and there is a 
 pleasure arising out of that adaptation, and it is 
 a pleasure which may be felt by man, along 
 
253 
 
 with a right and a full infusion of godliness. 
 The primitive Christians, for example, ate their 
 meat with gladness and singleness of heart, 
 praising God. But, in the case of every uncon- 
 verted man, the pleasure has no such accompa- 
 niment. He carries in his heart no recognition 
 of that hand, by the opening of which it is, that 
 the means and the materials of enjoyment are 
 placed within his reach. The matter of the en- 
 joyment is all with which he is conversant. The 
 Author of the enjoyment is unheeded. The 
 avidity with which he rushes onward to any of 
 the direct gratifications of nature bears a resem- 
 blance to the avidity with which one of the low- 
 er creation rushes to its food, or to its water, or 
 to the open field, where it gambols in all the 
 wantonness of freedom, and finds a high-breath- 
 ed joy in the very strength and velocity of its 
 movements. And the atheism of the former, 
 who has a mind for the sense and knowledge of 
 his Creator, is often as entire as the atheism of 
 the latter, who has it not. Man, who ought to 
 look to the primary cause of all his blessings, 
 because he is capable of seeing thus far, is often 
 as blind to God, in the midst of enjoyment, as 
 
254 
 
 the animal who is not capable of seeing him. 
 He can trace the stream to its fountain; but still 
 he drinks of the stream with as much greediness 
 of pleasure, and as little recognition of its 
 source, as the animal beneath him. In other 
 words, his atheism, while tasting the bounties 
 of Providence, is just as complete, as is the athe- 
 ism of the inferior animals. But theirs pro- 
 ceeds from their incapacity of knowing God. 
 His proceeds from his not liking to retain God 
 in his knowledge. He may come under the 
 power of godliness, if he would. But he chooses 
 rather that the power of sensuality should lord 
 it over him, and his whole man is engrossed with 
 the objects of sensuality. 
 
 But a man differs from an animal in being- 
 something more than a sensitive being. He is 
 also a reflective being. He has the power of 
 thought, and inference, and anticipation, to sig- 
 nalise him above the beasts of the field, or of 
 the forest; and yet will it be found, in the case 
 of every natural man, that the exercise of those 
 powers, so far from having carried him nearer, 
 has only widened his departure from God, and 
 
255 
 
 given a more deliberate and wilful character to 
 his atheism, than if he had been without them 
 altogether. 
 
 In virtue of the powers of mind which belong 
 to him, he can carry his thoughts beyond the 
 present desires and the present gratification. 
 He can calculate on the visitations of future de- 
 sire, and on the means of its gratification. He 
 cannot only follow out the impulse of hunger 
 that is now upon him ; he can look onwards to 
 the successive and recurring impulses of hunger 
 which await him, and he can devise expedients 
 for relieving it. Out of that great stream of 
 supply, which comes direct from Heaven to 
 earth, for the sustenance of all its living gener- 
 ations, he can draw off and appropriate a separ- 
 ate rill of conveyance, and direct it into a reser- 
 voir for himself. He can enlarge the capacity, 
 or he can strengthen the embankments of this 
 reservoir. By doing the one, he augments his 
 proportion of this common tide of wealth which 
 circulates through the world, and by doing the 
 other, he augments his security for holding it in 
 perpetual possession. The animal who drinks 
 
 
256 
 
 out of the stream thinks not whence it issues. 
 But man thinks of the reservoir which yields 
 to him his portion of it. And he looks no fur- 
 ther. He thinks not that to fill it, there must 
 be a great and original fountain, out of which 
 there issueth a migMy flood of abundance for 
 the purpose of distribution among all the tribes 
 and families of the world. He stops short at the 
 secondary and artificial fabric which he himself 
 hath formed, and out of which, as from a 
 spring, he draws his own peculiar enjoyments; 
 and never thinks either of his own peculiar sup- 
 ply fluctuating with the variations of the prima- 
 ry spring, or of connecting these variations with 
 the will of the great but unseen director of all 
 things. It is true, that if this main and origin- 
 ating fountain be, at any time, less copious in its 
 emission, he will have less to draw from it to 
 his own reservoir; and in that very proportion 
 will his share of the bounties of Providence be 
 reduced. But still it is to the well, or recep- 
 tacle, of his own striking out that he looks, as 
 his main security for the relief of nature's wants, 
 and the abundant supply of nature's enjoy- 
 ments. It is upon his own work that he depends 
 
 *> 
 
257 
 
 in this matter, and not on the work or the will 
 of him who is the Author of nature; who giveth 
 rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, and fill- 
 eth every heart with food and gladness. And 
 thus it is that the reason of man, and the retro- 
 spective power of man, still fail to carry him, 
 by an ascending process, to the First Cause. 
 He stops at the instrumental cause, which, 
 by his own wisdom and his own power, he has 
 put into operation. In a word, the man's un- 
 derstanding is over-run with atheism, as well as 
 his desires. The intellectual as well as the sen- 
 sitive part of his constitution seems to be infect- 
 ed with it. When, like the instinctive and un- 
 reflecting animal, he engages in the act of direct 
 enjoyment, he is like it, too, in its atheism. 
 When he rises above the animal, and, in the ex- 
 ercise of his higher and larger faculties, he en- 
 gages in the act of providing for enjoyment, he 
 still carries his atheism along with him. 
 
 A sum of money is, in all its functions, equi- 
 valent to such a reservoir. Take one year with 
 another, and the annual consumption of the 
 world cannot exceed the annual produce which 
 
 2k 
 
258 
 
 issues from the storehouse of him who is the 
 great and the bountiful Provider of all its fami- 
 lies. The money that is in any man's possession 
 represents the share which he can appropriate to 
 himself of this produce. If it be a large sum, 
 it is like a capacious reservoir on the bank of 
 the river of abundance. If it be laid out on firm 
 and stable securities, still it is like a firmly em- 
 banked reservoir. The man who toils to in- 
 crease his money is like a man who toils to en- 
 large the capacity of his reservoir. The man 
 who suspects a flaw in his securities, or who ap- 
 prehends, in the report of failures and fluctua- 
 tions, that his money is all to flow away from him, 
 is like a man who apprehends a flaw in the em- 
 bankments of his reservoir. Meanwhile, in all 
 the care that is thus expended, either on the mo- 
 ney or on the magazine, the originating source, 
 out of which there is imparted to the one all its 
 real worth, or there is imparted to the other all 
 its real fulness, is scarcely ever thought of. Let 
 God turn the earth into a barren desert, and 
 the money ceases to be convertible to any pur- 
 pose of enjoyment; or let him lock up that ma- 
 gazine of great and general supply, out of which 
 
259 
 
 he showers abundance among our habitations, 
 and all the subordinate magazines formed beside 
 the wonted stream of liberality, would remain 
 empty. But all this is forgotten by the vast 
 majority of our unthoughtful and unreflecting 
 species. The patience of God is still unex- 
 hausted; and the seasons still roll in kindly suc- 
 cession over the heads of an ungrateful genera- 
 tion; and that period, when the machinery of 
 our present system shall stop and be taken to 
 pieces has not yet arrived; and that Spirit, who 
 will not always strive with the children of men, 
 is still prolonging his experiment on the powers 
 and the perversities of our moral nature ; and 
 still suspending the edict of dissolution, by 
 which this earth and these heavens are at length 
 to pass away. So that the sun still shines upon 
 us; and the clouds still drop upon us; and the 
 earth still puts forth the bloom and the beauty of 
 its luxuriance ; and all the ministers of heaven's 
 liberality still walk their annual round, and scat- 
 ter plenty over the face of an alienated world ; 
 and the whole of nature continues as smiling in 
 promise, and as sure in fulfilment, as in the days 
 of our forefathers; and out of her large and 
 
260 
 
 universal granary is there, in every returning 
 year, as rich a conveyance of aliment as before, 
 to the populous family in whose behalf it is 
 opened. But it is the business of many among 
 that population, each to erect his own separate 
 granary, and to replenish it out of the general 
 store, and to feed himself and his dependents 
 out of it. And he is right in so doing. But he 
 is not right in looking to his own peculiar recep- 
 tacle, as if it were the first and the emanating 
 fountain of all his enjoyments. He is not right 
 in thus idolising the work of his own hands — 
 awarding no glory and no confidence to him in 
 whose hands is the key of that great storehouse, 
 out of which every lesser storehouse of man de- 
 rives its fulness. He is not right, in labouring 
 after the money which pur chase th all things, to 
 avert the earnestness of his regards from the 
 Being who provides all things. He is not right, 
 in thus building his security on that which is 
 subordinate, unheeding and unmindful of him 
 who is supreme. It is not right, that silver and 
 gold, though un shaped into statuary, should still 
 be doing, in this enlightened land, what the im- 
 ages of Paganism once did. It is not right, that 
 
261 
 
 they should thus supplant the deference which 
 is owing to the God and the governor of all 
 things — or that each man amongst us should, in 
 the secret homage of trust and satisfaction 
 which he renders to his bills, and his deposits, 
 and his deeds of property and possession, endow 
 these various articles with the same moral ascen- 
 dency over his heart, as the household gods of 
 antiquity had over the idolaters of antiquity — 
 making them as effectually usurp the place of 
 the divinity, and dethrone the one Monarch of 
 heaven and earth from that pre-eminence of 
 trust and of affection that belongs to him. 
 
 He who makes a god of his pleasure, renders 
 to this idol the homage of his senses. He who 
 makes a god of his wealth, renders to this idol 
 the homage of his mind; and he, therefore, of the 
 two, is the more hopeless and determined ido- 
 later. The former is goaded on to his idolatry, 
 by the power of appetite. The latter cultivates 
 his with wilful and deliberate perseverance - y con- 
 secrates his very highest powers to its service -> 
 embarks in it, not with the heat of passion, but, 
 with the coolness of steady and calculating prin- 
 
262 
 
 ciple ; fully gives up his reason and his time, and 
 all the faculties of his understanding, as well as 
 all the desires of his heart, to the great object 
 of a fortune in this world; makes the acquire- 
 ment of gain the settled aim, and the prosecu- 
 tion of that aim the settled habit of his exist- 
 ence ; sits the whole day long at the post of his 
 ardent and unremitting devotions; and, as he 
 labours at the desk of his counting-house, has 
 his soul just as effectually seduced from the liv- 
 ing God to an object distinct from him, and 
 contrary to him, as if the ledger over which he 
 was bending was a book of mystical characters, 
 written in honour of some golden idol placed 
 before him, and with a view to render this idol 
 propitious to himself and to his family. Baal 
 and Moloch were not more substantially the gods 
 of rebellious Israel, than Mammon is the god of 
 all his affections. To the fortune he has rear- 
 ed, or is rearing, for himself and his descendents, 
 he ascribes all the power and all the indepen- 
 dence of a divinity. With the wealth he has 
 gotten by his own hands, does he feel himself 
 as independent of God, as the Pagan does, who, 
 happy in the fancied protection of an image 
 
263 
 
 made with his own hand, suffers no disturbance 
 to his quiet, from any thought of the real but the 
 unknown Deity. His confidence is in his trea- 
 sure, and not in God. It is there that he places 
 all his safety and all his sufficiency. It is not on 
 the Supreme Being, conceived in the light of a 
 real and a personal agent, that he places his de- 
 pendence. It is on a mute and material statue 
 of his own erection. It is wealth which stands 
 to him in the place of God — to which he awards 
 the credit of all his enjoyments — which he looks 
 to as the emanating fountain of all his present 
 sufficiency — from which he gathers his fondest 
 expectations of all the bright and fancied bless- 
 edness that is yet before him — on which he rests 
 as the firmest and stablest foundation of all that 
 the heart can wish, or the eye can long after, 
 both for himself and for his children. It mat- 
 ters not to him, that all his enjoyment comes 
 from a primary fountain, and that his wealth is 
 only an intermediate reservoir. It matters not 
 to him, that, if God were to set a seal upon the 
 door of the upper storehouse in heaven, or to 
 blast and to burn up all the fruitful ness of earth, 
 he would reduce, to the worthlessness of dross, 
 
264 
 
 all the silver and the gold that abound in it. 
 Still the gold and the silver are his gods. His 
 own fountain is between him and the fountain of 
 original supply. His wealth is between him 
 and God. Its various lodging-places, whether 
 in the bank, or in the place of registration, or in 
 the depository of wills and title-deeds — these 
 are the sanctuaries of his secret worship — these 
 are the high-places of his adoration; and ne- 
 ver did devout Israelite look with more intent- 
 ness towards Mount Zion, and with his face to- 
 wards Jerusalem, than he does to his wealth, as 
 to the mountain and stronghold of his security. 
 Nor could the Supreme be more effectually de- 
 posed from the homage of trust and gratitude 
 than he actually is, though this wealth were 
 recalled from its various investments ; and turn- 
 ed into one mass of gold ; and cast into a piece 
 of molten statuary; and enshrined on a pedestal, 
 around which all his household might assemble, 
 and make it the object of their family devotions; 
 and plied every hour of every day with all 
 the fooleries of a senseless and degrading Pa- 
 ganism. It is thus, that God may keep up 
 the charge of idolatry against us, even after 
 
265 
 
 all its images have been overthrown. It is thus 
 that dissuasives from idolatry are still addressed, 
 in the New Testament, to the pupils of a new 
 and better dispensation; that little children are 
 warned against idols ; and all of us are warned 
 to flee from covetousness, which is idolatry. 
 
 To look no further than to fortune as the dis- 
 penser of all the enjoyments which money can 
 purchase, is to make that fortune stand in the 
 place of God. It is to make sense shut out 
 faith, and to rob the King eternal and invisible 
 of that supremacy, to which all the blessings of 
 human existence, and all the varieties of human 
 condition, ought, in every instance, and in 
 every particular, to be referred. But, as we 
 have already remarked, the love of money is 
 one affection, and the love of what is purchased 
 by money is another. It was, at first, we have 
 no doubt, loved for the sake of the good things 
 which it enabled its possessor to acquire. But 
 whether, as the result of associations in the 
 mind so rapid as to escape the notice of our 
 own consciousness — or as the fruit of an infec- 
 tion running by sympathy among all men busily 
 
 2 L 
 
266 
 
 engaged in the prosecution of wealth, as the su- 
 preme good of their being — certain it is, that 
 money, originally pursued for the sake of other 
 things, comes at length to be prized for its own 
 sake. And, perhaps, there is no one circum- 
 stance which serves more to liken the love of 
 money to the most irrational of the heathen idol- 
 atries, than that it at length passes into the love 
 of money for itself; and acquires a most endur- 
 ing power over the human affections, separately 
 altogether from the power of purchase and of 
 command which belongs to it, over the proper 
 and original objects of human desire. The first 
 thing which set man agoing in the pursuit of 
 wealth, was that, through it, as an intervening 
 medium, he found his way to other enjoyments; 
 and it proves him, as we have observed, capable 
 of a higher reach of anticipation than the beasts 
 of the field, or the fowls of the air, that he is 
 thus able to calculate, and to foresee, and to 
 build up a provision for the wants of futurity. 
 But, mark how soon this boasted distinction of 
 his faculties is overthrown, and how near to 
 each other lie the dignity and the debasement 
 of the human understanding. If it evinced a 
 
267 
 
 loftier mind in man than in the inferior animals, 
 that he invented money, and by the acquisition 
 of it can both secure abundance for himself, 
 and transmit this abundance to the future gen- 
 erations of his family — what have we to offer, in 
 vindication of this intellectual eminence, when we 
 witness how soon it is, that the pursuit of wealth 
 ceases to be rational? — How, instead of being pro- 
 secuted as an instrument, either for the pur- 
 chase of ease, or the purchase of enjoyment, 
 both the ease and enjoyment of a whole life are 
 rendered up as sacrifices at its shrine? — How, 
 from being sought after as a minister of gratifica- 
 tion to the appetites of nature, it at length brings 
 nature into bondage, and robs her of all her 
 simple delights, and pours the infusion of worm- 
 wood into the currency of her feelings? — making 
 that man sad who ought to be cheerful, and that 
 man who ought to rejoice in his present abun- 
 dance, filling him either with the cares of an 
 ambition which never will be satisfied, or with 
 the apprehensions of a distress which, in all its 
 pictured and exaggerated evils, will never be 
 realised. And it is wonderful, it is passing 
 wonderful, that wealth, which derives all that 
 
268 
 
 is true and sterling in its worth from its sub- 
 serviency to other advantages, should, apart 
 from all thought about this subserviency, be 
 made the object of such fervent and fatiguing 
 devotion. Insomuch, that never did Indian de- 
 votee inflict upon himself a severer agony at the 
 footstool of his Paganism, than those devotees 
 of wealth who, for its acquirement as their ulti- 
 mate object, will forego all the uses for which 
 alone it is valuable — will give up all that is gen- 
 uine or tranquil in the pleasures of life 5 and 
 will pierce themselves through with many sor- 
 rows , and will undergo all the fiercer tortures 
 of the mind; and, instead of employing what 
 they have, to smooth their passage through the 
 world, will, upon the hazardous sea of adven- 
 ture, turn the whole of this passage into a 
 storm— thus exalting wealth, from a servant un- 
 to a lord, who, in return for the homage that he 
 obtains from his worshippers, exercises them, 
 like Rehoboam his subjects of old, not with whips 
 but with scorpions — with consuming anxiety, 
 with never-sated desire, with brooding appre- 
 hension, and its frequent and ever-flitting spec- 
 tres, and the endless jealousies of competition 
 
269 
 
 with men as intently devoted, and as emulous 
 of a high place in the temple of their common 
 idolatry, as themselves. And, without going 
 to the higher exhibitions of this propensity, in 
 all its rage and in all its restlessness, we have 
 only to mark its workings on the walk of even 
 and every-day citizenship ; and there see, how, 
 in the hearts even of its most common-place vo- 
 taries, wealth is followed after, for its own sake ; 
 how, unassociated with all for which reason pro- 
 nounces it to be of estimation, but, in virtue of 
 some mysterious and undefinable charm, operat- 
 ing not on any principle of the judgement, but 
 on the utter perversity of judgement, money 
 has come to be of higher account than all that 
 is purchased by money, and has attained a rank 
 co-ordinate with that which our Saviour assigns 
 to the life and to the body of man, in being 
 reckoned more than meat and more than rai- 
 ment. Thus making that which is subordinate to 
 be primary, and that which is primary subordi- 
 nate; transferring, by a kind of fascination, the 
 affections away from wealth in use, to wealth in 
 idle and unemployed possession, — insomuch, that 
 the most welcome intelligence you could give 
 
270 
 
 to the proprietor of many a snug deposit, in some 
 place of secure and progressive accumulation, 
 would be, that he should never require any part 
 either of it or of its accumulation back again for 
 the purpose of expenditure — and that, to the end 
 of his life, every new year should witness another 
 unimpaired addition to the bulk or the aggrandise- 
 ment of his idol. And it would just heighten his 
 enjoyment, could he be told, with prophetic cer- 
 tainty, that this process of undisturbed augmen- 
 tation would go on with his children's children, 
 to the last age of the world; that the economy 
 of each succeeding race of descendants would 
 leave the sum with its interest untouched, and 
 the place of its sanctuary unviolated ; and, that 
 through a series of indefinite generations, would 
 the magnitude ever grow, and the lustre ever 
 brighten, of that household god, which he had 
 erected for his own senseless adoration, and be- 
 queathed as an object of as senseless adoration 
 to his family. 
 
 We have the authority of that word which has 
 been pronounced a discerner of the thoughts 
 and intents of the heart, that it cannot have two 
 
271 
 
 masters, or that there is not room in it for two 
 great and ascendant affections. The engrossing 
 power of one such affection is expressly affirmed 
 of the love for Mammon, or the love for money 
 thus named and characterised as an idol. Or, 
 in other words, if the love of money be in the 
 heart, the love of God is not there. If a man 
 be trusting in uncertain riches, he is not trusting 
 in the living God, who giveth us all things rich- 
 ly to enjoy. If his heart be set upon covetous- 
 ness, it is set upon an object of idolatry. The 
 true divinity is moved away from his place, 
 and, worse than atheism, which would only leave 
 it empty, has the love of wealth raised ano- 
 ther divinity upon his throne. So that cove- 
 tousness offers a more daring and positive ag- 
 gression on the right and territory of the God- 
 head, than even infidelity. The latter would 
 only desolate the sanctuary of heaven; the for- 
 mer would set up an abomination in the midst 
 of it. It not only strips God of love and of 
 confidence, which are his prerogatives, but it 
 transfers them to another. And little does the 
 man who is proud in honour, but, at the same 
 time, proud and peering in ambition — little does 
 
272 
 
 he think, that, though acquitted in the eye of 
 all his fellows, there still remains an atrocity of 
 a deeper character than even that of atheism, 
 with which he is chargeable. Let him just take 
 an account of his mind, amid the labours of his 
 merchandise, and he will find that the living God 
 has no ascendency there; but that wealth just as 
 much as if personified into life, and agency, and 
 power, wields over him all the ascendency of 
 God. Where his treasure is, his heart is also; 
 and, linking as he does his main hope with its in- 
 crease, and his main fear with its fluctuations 
 and its failures, he has as effectually dethroned 
 the Supreme from his heart, and deified an usur- 
 per in his room, as if fortune had been embodied 
 into a goddess, and he were in the habit of re- 
 pairing, with a crowd of other worshippers, to 
 her temple. She, in fact, is the dispenser of 
 that which he chiefly prizes in existence. A 
 smile from her is worth all the promises of the 
 Eternal, and her threatening frown more dread- 
 ful to the imagination than all his terrors. 
 
 And the disease is as near to universal as it is 
 virulent. Wealth is the goddess whom all the 
 
273 
 
 world worshippeth. There is many a city in 
 our empire, of which, with an eye of apostolical 
 discernment, it may be seen, that it is almost 
 wholly given over to idolatry. If a man look 
 no higher than to his money for his enjoyments, 
 then money is his god. It is the god of his de- 
 pendence, and the god upon whom his heart is 
 staid. Or if, apart from other enjoyments, it, 
 by some magical power of its own, has gotten 
 the ascendency, then still it is followed after as 
 the supreme good; and there is an actual sup- 
 planting of the living God. He is robbed of 
 the gratitude that we owe him for our daily sus- 
 tenance; for, instead of receiving it as if it 
 came direct out of his hand, we receive it as if 
 it came from the hand of a secondary agent, to 
 whom we ascribe all the stability and indepen- 
 dence of God. This wealth, in fact, obscures 
 to us the character of God, as the real though 
 unseen Author of our various blessings ; and as 
 if by a material intervention, does it hide from 
 the perception of nature, the hand which feeds, 
 and clothes, and maintains us in life, and in all 
 the comforts and necessaries of life. It just has 
 the effect of thickening still more that impal- 
 2m 
 
274 
 
 pable veil which lies between God and the eye 
 of the senses. We lose all discernment of him 
 as the giver of our comforts; and coming, as 
 they appear to do, from that wealth which our 
 fancies have raised into a living personification, 
 does this idol stand before us, not as a deputy 
 but as a substitute for that Being, with whom it 
 is that we really have to do. All this goes both 
 to widen and to fortify that disruption which 
 has taken place between God and the world. 
 It adds the power of one great master idol to 
 the seducing influence of all the lesser idola- 
 tries. When the liking and the confidence of 
 men are towards money, there is no direct in- 
 tercourse, either by the one or the other of these 
 affections towards God; and, in proportion as 
 he sends forth his desires, and rests his security 
 on the former, in that very proportion does he 
 renounce God as his hope, and God as his de- 
 pendence. 
 
 And to advert, for one moment, to the mise- 
 ry of this affection, as well as to its sinfulness. 
 He, over whom it reigns, feels a worthlessness 
 in his present wealth, after it is gotten; and 
 
275 
 
 when to this we add the restlessness of a yet un- 
 sated appetite, lording it over all his convictions, 
 and panting for more; when, to the dulness of 
 his actual satisfaction in all the riches that he 
 has, we add his still unquenched, and, indeed, 
 unquenchable desire for the riches that he has 
 not; when we reflect that as, in the pursuit of 
 wealth, he widens the circle of his operation, so 
 he lengthens out the line of his open and haz- 
 ardous exposure, and multiplies, along the ex- 
 tent of it, those vulnerable points from which an- 
 other and another dart of anxiety may enter 
 into his heart; when he feels himself as if float- 
 ing on an ocean of contingency, on which, per- 
 haps, he is only borne up by the breath of a cre- 
 dit that is fictitious, and which, liable to burst 
 every moment, may leave him to sink under 
 the weight of his overladen speculation; when, 
 suspended on the doubtful result of his bold 
 and uncertain adventure, he dreads the tidings 
 of disaster in every arrival, and lives in a con- 
 tinual agony of feeling, kept up by the crowd 
 and turmoil of his manifold distractions, and 
 so overspreading the whole compass of his 
 thoughts, as to leave not one narrow space for 
 
276 
 
 the thought of eternity; — will any beholder just 
 look to the mind of this unhappy man, thus tost 
 and bewildered, and thrown into a general un- 
 ceasing frenzy, made out of many fears and 
 many agitations, and not say, that the bird of the 
 air which sends forth its unreflecting song, and 
 lives on the fortuitous bounty of Providence, is 
 not higher in the scale of enjoyment than he? 
 And how much more, then, the quiet Christian 
 beside him, who, in possession of food and rai- 
 ment, has that godliness with contentment which 
 is great gain — who, with the peace of heaven 
 in his heart, and the glories of heaven in his 
 eye, has found out the true philosophy of exist- 
 ence ; has sought a portion where alone a por- 
 tion can be found, and, in bidding away from 
 his mind the love of money, has bidden away 
 all the cross and all the carefulness along with 
 it. 
 
 Death will soon break up every swelling en- 
 terprise of ambition, and put upon it a most 
 cruel and degrading mockery. And it is, in- 
 deed, an affecting sight, to behold the workings 
 of this world's infatuation among so many of our 
 
277 
 
 fellow mortals nearing and nearing every day to 
 eternity, and yet, instead of taking heed to that 
 which is before them, mistaking their temporary 
 vehicle for their abiding home — and spending 
 all their time and all their thought upon its ac- 
 commodations. It is all the doing of our great 
 adversary, thus to invest the trifles of a day 
 in such characters of greatness and durability; 
 and it is, indeed, one of the most formidable of 
 his wiles. And whatever may be the instrument 
 of reclaiming men from this delusion, it certainly 
 is not any argument either about the shortness 
 of life, or the certainty and awfulness of its ap- 
 proaching termination. On this point man is 
 capable of a stout-hearted resistance, even to 
 ocular demonstration; nor do we know a more 
 striking evidence of the bereavement which must 
 have passed upon the human faculties, than to 
 see how, in despite of arithmetic, — how, in de- 
 spite of manifold experience — how, in despite 
 of all his gathering wrinkles, and all his grow- 
 ing infirmities — how, in despite of the ever-less- 
 ening distance between him and his sepulchre, 
 and of all the tokens of preparation for the on- 
 set of the last messenger, with which, in the 
 
278 
 
 shape of weakness, and breathlessness, and dim- 
 ness of eyes, he is visited; will the feeble and 
 asthmatic man still shake his silver locks in all 
 the glee and transport of which he is capable, 
 when he hears of his gainful adventures, and 
 his new accumulations. Nor can we tell how 
 near he must get to his grave, or how far on he 
 must advance in the process of dying, ere gain 
 cease to delight, and the idol of wealth cease 
 to be dear to him. But when we see that the 
 topic is trade and its profits, which lights up his 
 faded eye with the glow of its chiefest ecstacy, 
 we are as much satisfied that he leaves the world 
 with all his treasure there, and all the desires 
 of his heart there, as if, acting what is told of 
 the miser's death-bed, he made his bills and his 
 parchments of security the companions of his bo- 
 som, and the last movements of his life were a 
 fearful, tenacious, determined grasp, of what 
 to him formed the all for which life was valu- 
 able. 
 
 THE END. 
 
List of Works by Dr. Chalmers, 
 
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 The Importance of Civil Goverment to Society, and the 
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DR. CHALMERS' CHRISTIAN AND CIVIC 
 ECONOMY OF LARGE TOWNS. 
 
 The Fifth Number of Dr. Chalmers' " Christian and Civic Economy of 
 Large Towns," should, in the regular course of publication, have appeared on 
 the 2d of October; but as the subject, which is " Church Patronage," will 
 occupy two Numbers, it has been thought better to postpone its publication till 
 the 1st of January, when the Fifth and Sixth Numbers will appear together. 
 
 The following Numbers of this Work have already been published: viz. 
 
 No. I. The Advantage and Possibility of Assimilating a Town to a Coun- 
 try Parish. 
 
 No. II. On the Influence of Locality in Towns. 
 
 No. III. Application of the Principle of Locality to the Work of a Chris- 
 tian Minister. 
 
 No. IV. The effect of Locality in adding to the useful Establishments of 
 a Town. 
 
 The following is a Prospectus of the Work, so far as it is at present contem- 
 plated by the Author: — 
 
 In the prosecution of his Work on the " Christian and Civic Economy of 
 Large Towns," the Author has two leading objects in view. The first is, to 
 point out the way in which the fearful deficiency, both of common and of Chris- 
 tian Education, among the people, may be repaired ; and also, the likeliest ar- 
 rangements both for recovering and perpetuating their habit of attendance upon 
 the Schools and Churches that may be instituted. It will require, at least, four 
 additional Numbers to those already published, on the remaining topics of 
 Church Patronage, Church Offices, and Sabbath Schools, ere this object can be 
 overtaken. But it is hoped, that within the compass of one moderate Volume, 
 it will be possible, in this way, to embrace the chief matters that stand con- 
 nected with the religious culture of our families. 
 
 There is another object distinct from the former, and certainly of subordinate 
 importance to it, yet more fitted, we believe, to attract general notice, than any 
 argument which can be delivered on the subject of a right ecclesiastical system 
 for our Large Towns. What we advert to, is the Economic condition of their 
 people, with the peculiar kind of influence to which it is exposed, from the fail- 
 ure and fluctuations of trade, and from that habit of careless expenditure, to 
 which there are so many temptations in every crowded society. This will lead 
 directly, to the consideration of those artificial expedients of relief, in the shape 
 of Poor's Rates, Assessments, and Public Subscriptions, all of which have aggra- 
 vated the evils which they were intended to remedy. Blended as this matter 
 is, with the question of Pauperism, and the way, in which, by Saving Banks, 
 and other Institutions, for fostering the providential habits of the people, their 
 whole subsistence may safely be devolved on their own capabilities, aided, when 
 occasion requires, by the charity of individuals, it is thought, that the whole of 
 the second Volume will be required for the purpose of doing full justice to so 
 wide and interesting an argument. 
 
 The progress which the Work may subsequently take, cannot yet be an- 
 nounced with precision. But the probability of a third Volume, on the policy 
 and influence of many of our distinct City Institutions, is contemplated. 
 Among these, Prisons, Penitentiaries, Infirmaries, and Asylums, for the various 
 kinds of impotency and disease, hold a foremost place. The Author regrets 
 the necessity which lies upon him, of coming forward with quarterly Numbers, 
 instead of being able to accomplish the whole by one act of publication. 
 
 PRINTED FOR CHALMERS AND COLLINS, 68, WILSON STREET. 
 
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