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ON THE NATURE OF RELIGION.

XXI.

THE IDENTITY OF RELIGION WITH GOODNESS, AND WITH A GOOD LIFE.

IF A MAN SAY, I LOVE GOD, AND HATETH HIS BROTHER, HE IS A LIAR; FOR HE THAT LOVETH NOT HIS BROTHER WHOM HE HATH SEEN, HOW CAN HE LOVE GOD WHOM HE HATH NOT SEEN?-1 John iv. 24.

If there is any mission for the true teacher to accomplish in this age, it is to identify religion with goodness; to show that they are the same thing, manifestations, that is to say, of the same principle; to show, in other words and according to the Apostle, that no man is to be accounted a lover of God, who is not a lover of his brother. It is, I say again, to identify religion with morals, religion with virtue; with justice, truth, integrity, honesty, generosity, disinterestedness; religion with the highest beauty and loveliness of character. This, I repeat, is the great mission, and message of the true teacher to-day. What it may be some other day, what transcendental thing may be waiting to be taught, I do not know; but this, I conceive, is the practical business of religious instruction Let me not be misunderstood, as if I were supposed to say that this or any other mere doctrine, were the ultimate end of preaching. That is, to make men holy. But how shall any preaching avail to make

now.

men holy, unless it do rightly and clearly teach them what it is to be holy? If they mistake here, all their labour to be religious, all their hearing of the word, Sabbath keeping, praying, and striving, will be in vain. And therefore, I hold that to teach this, and especially to show that religion is not something else than a good heart, but is that very thing; this, I say, is the burden of the present time.

I use now an old prophetic phrase, and I may remark here, that every time has its burden. In the times of the Old Testament, the burden of teaching was, to assert the supremacy and spirituality of God, in opposition to Idolatry. In the Christian time, it was to set forth that universal and impartial, and that most real and true love which God has for his earthly creatures, in opposition to Jewish peculiarity and Pagan indifference and all human distrust; a love, declared by one who came from the bosom of the Father, sealed in his blood, and thus bringing nigh to God, a guilty, estranged, and unbelieving world. The burden of the Reformation time, was to assert the freedom of religion; to bring it out from the bondage of human authority into the sanctuary of private judgment and sacred conscience. But now, religion having escaped from Pagan idolatry and Jewish exclusion and papal bondage, and survived many a controversy since, has encountered a deeper question concerning its own nature. What especially is religion itself? This, I say, is the great question of the present day. It underlies all our controversies. It is that which gives the main interest to every controversy. For whether the controversy be about forms or creeds, the vital question is, whether this or that ritual or doctrine ministers essentially to true religion; so that if a man embraces some other system, he is fatally deficient of the vital

means of salvation. And this brings us to the ques tion, what is true religion itself?

This question, as I have intimated, presses mainly upon a single point, which I will now state and argue as a contested point: viz. whether religion, in its essence, consists in a principle of rectitude, of goodness, in a simple and true love of the true and divine, or whether it consists in something else; or in other words-whether it consists in certain intelligible affections, or in something, to the mass of men, unknown and unintelligible.

This question craves some explanation, both that you may understand what it is, and may perceive that it is a question; and I must bespeak your pa

tience.

In entering upon these points, let us consider, in the first place, what is the ground on which the general assertion in our text proceeds.

There is, then, but one true principle in the mind, and that is the love of the true, the right, the holy. There is but one character of the soul, to which God has given his approbation, and with which he has connected the certainty of happiness here and hereafter. There is something in the soul which is made the condition of its salvation; and that something is one thing, though it has many forms. It is sometimes called grace in the heart; sometimes, holiness, righteousness, conformity to the character of God; but the term for it most familiar in popular use, is religion. The constant question is, when a man's spiritual safety or well-being is the point for consideration, when he is going to die, and men would know whether he is to be happy hereafter; has he got religion? or has he been a religious man? I must confess that I do not like this use of the term. I am accustomed to consider religion

as reverence and love towards God; and to consider it therefore, as only one part of rectitude or excellence. But you know that it commonly stands for the whole of that character which God requires of us. Now what I am saying is, that this character is, in principle, one thing. It is, being right; and being right is but one thing. It has many forms; but only one essence. It may be the love of God, and then it is piety. It may be the love of men, and then it is philanthropy. But the love of God, and the love of man as bearing his image, are in essence the same thing. Or to discriminate with regard to this second table of the law: it may be a love of men's happiness, and then it is the very image of God's benevolence; or it may be the love of holiness in men, of their goodness, justice, truth, virtue, and then it is a love of the same things that form, when infinitely exalted, the character of God. All these forms of excellence, if they cannot be resolved into one principle, are certainly parts of one great consciousness, the consciousness of right; they at any rate have the strictest alliance; they are inseparably bound together as parts of one whole; the very nature of true excellence in one form, is a pledge for its existence in every other form. He who has the right principle in him, is a lover of God, and a lover of good men, and a lover of all goodness and purity, and a labourer for the happiness of all around him. The tree is one, though the branches and the leaves and the blossoms, be many and various; all spring from one vital germ; so that the Apostle, in our text, will not allow it to be said, that a man is a lover of God, who does not love his brethren of the human family.

Now it may surprise you at first, to hear it asserted that this apparently reasonable account of the matter, does not accord with the popular judgment. To this

point of explanation, therefore, I must invite your attention, lest I seem to fight as one that beateth the air.

creature.

It is true then, that it is admitted in general, that the Christian, the object of God's favour here and hereafter, must be a good man; a just, honest, pure, benevolent man. These admissions are general and vague. We must penetrate into this matter, with some more discriminating inquiry. What is it, specifically, that makes a man spiritually a Christian, and entitles him to hope for future happiness? The common answer is; it is religion, it is piety, it is grace in the heart, it is being converted, it is being in Christ, and being a new These phrases I might comment upon, if I had time, and I might show that they have a very true and just meaning. But what is the meaning that they actually convey to most hearers? What is this inmost and saving principle of religion, this grace or godliness, this spirit of the regenerated man? Is it not something peculiar to the regenerate-not something more of goodness in them than in other men, but something different in them from goodness in others? Is it not something possessed by them alone, unshared with the rest of the world, unknown, completely unknown, and in fact inconceivable to the great body of mankind? Are not the saints, God's people as they are called, supposed to have some secret of experience wrapped up in them, with which the stranger intermeddleth not; of which the world knoweth nothing? I do not wish to have this so understood if it is not true. But if it is true, it is too serious a point to be tampered with or treated with any fastidious delicacy. I say then plainly and earnestly, is it not true? If you ask most men around you what is that gracious state of the heart, which is produced by

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