yield such evidence of deep moral feeling, what are they not capable of, when armed with lofty purposes and engaged in high duties? If the instrument yields such noble strains, though incoherent and intermitted, to the slightest touch; what might not be done, if the hand of skill were laid upon it, to bring out all its sublime harmonies? Oh! that some powerful voice might speak to this inward nature-powerful as the story of heroic deeds, moving as the voice of song, arousing as the trumpet-call to honour and victory! My friends, if we are among those who are pursuing the sinful way, let us be assured that we know not ourselves yet; we have not searched the depths of our nature; we have not communed with its deepest wants; we have not listened to its strongest and highest affections; if we had done all this, we could not abuse it as we do; nor could we neglect it as we do. But it is time to pass from these instances of spontaneous and universal feeling, to those cases in which such feeling, instead of being occasional and evanescent, is formed into a prevailing habit and a consistent and fixed character; to pass from good affections, transient, uncertain, and unworthily neglected, to good men, who are permanently such, and worthy to be called such. Our argument from this source is more confined, but it gains strength by its compression within a narrower compass. I shall not be expected here to occupy the time, with asserting or proving, that there are good men in the world. It will be more important to reply to a single objection under this head, which would be fatal if it were just, and to point to some characteristics of human virtue which prove its great and real worth. Let me however for a moment indulge myself in the simple assertion, of what every mind, not entirely misan thropic, must feel to be true. I say then that there are good men in the world: there are good men every where. There are men who are good for goodness' sake. In obscurity, in retirement, beneath the shadow of ten thousand dwellings, scarcely known to the world and never asking to be known, there are good men. In adversity, in poverty, amidst temptations, amidst all the severity of earthly trials, there are good men, whose lives shed brightness upon the dark clouds that surround them. Be it true, if we must admit the sad truth, that many are wrong, and persist in being wrong; that many are false to every holy trust, and faithless towards every holy affection; that many are estranged from infinite goodness; that many are coldly selfish and meanly sensual; yes, cold and dead to every thing that is not wrapped up in their own little earthly interest, or more darkly wrapped up in the veil of fleshly appetites. Be it so; but I thank God, that is not all that we are obliged to believe. No, there are true hearts, amidst the throng of the false and the · faithless. There are warm and generous hearts, which the cold atmosphere of surrounding selfishness never chills; and eyes, unused to weep for personal sorrow, which often overflow with sympathy for the sorrows of others. Yes, there are good men, and true men; I thank them; I bless them for what they are: I thank them for what they are to me. What do I say why do I utter my weak benediction? on high, doth bless them, and he giveth his angels charge to keep them; and no where in the holy Record are there words more precious or strong, than those in which it is written that God loveth these righteous ones. Such men are there. Let not their precious virtues be distrusted. As surely and as evidently as some men have obeyed the calls of ambition and God from pleasure, so surely, and so evidently, have other men obeyed the voice of conscience, and "chosen rather to suffer with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season." Why, every meek man suffers in a conflict keener far, than the contest for honour and applause. And there are such men, who amidst injury, and insult, and misconstruction, and the pointed finger, and the scornful lip of pride, stand firm in their integrity and allegiance to a loftier principle, and still their throbbing hearts in prayer, and hush them to the gentle motions of kindness and pity. Such witnesses there are, even in this bad world; signs that a redeeming work is going forward amidst its mournful derelictions; proofs that it is not a world forsaken of heaven; pledges that it will not be forsaken; tokens that cheer and touch every good and thoughtful mind, beyond all other power of earth to penetrate and enkindle it. I believe that what I have now said, is a most legitimate argument for the worth of human nature. As a matter of fact, it will not be denied that such beings as I have represented, there are. And I now further maintain, and this is the most material point in the argument, that such men- -that good men, in other words are to be regarded as the rightful and legitimate representatives of human nature. Surely, not man's vices but his virtues, not his failure but his success, should teach us what to think of his nature. Just as we should look, for their real character, to the productions nourished by a favourable soil and climate, and not to the same plants or trees, as they stand withered and stunted in a barren desert. But here we are met with the objection before referred to. It is said that man's virtues come from God; and his sins only from his own nature. And thus-for this is the result of the objection-from the estimate of what is human, all human excellence is at once cut off, by this fine discrimination of theological subtilty. Unreasonable as this seems to me, if the objector will forget his theology for one moment, I will answer it. I say, then, that the influence of the good spirit of God, does not destroy our natural powers, but guides them into a right direction; that it does not create any thing unnatural surely, nor supernatural in man, but what is suitable to his nature: that, in fine, his virtues are as truly the voluntary putting forth of his native powers, as his vices are. Else would his virtues have no worth. Human nature, in short, is the noble stock on which these virtues grow. With heaven's rain, and sunshine, and genial influence, do you say? Be it so; still they are no less human, and show the stock from which they spring. When you look over a grain-field, and see some parts more luxuriant than others, do you say, that they are of a different nature from the rest? And when you look abroad upon the world, do you think it right to take Tartars and Hottentots as specimens of the race? And why then shall you regard the worst of men, rather than the best, as samples of human nature and capability? The way, then, is open for us to claim for human nature, however that nature is breathed upon by heavenly influences, all the excellent fruits that have sprung from it. And they are not few; they are not small; they are not contemptible. They have cost too much-if there were no other consideration to give them value; they have cost too much, to be thus estimated. The true idea of human nature, is not, that it passively and spontaneously produces its destined results; |