rious knowledge of what religion is. Let you stand, alone, upon a desolate island, with the Gospel in your hands; and then and there, do thou read that sacred page, and pray over it, and strive patiently to bring your heart into accordance with it; to bring what is already in you, your love and trust, up to conformity with it; and you are in the way of salvation.

Oh! sad and lamentable perversion; that the greatest good in the universe, the very end of our being, the very point of all sublime human attainment, the very object for which rational and spiritual faculties were given us, should be a mystery; that the very light by which we must walk, must be utter darkness, and that all we can do is, to put out our hand and grope about in that darkness; that the very salvation, in which all the welfare of our souls is bound up, should be a dark enigma, and that all we can do is to hope that we shall some time or other know what it is. No, says the Apostle, "the world is nigh thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart that thou shouldst do it; that is the salvation which we preach."

XXIII.

ON THE IDENTITY OF RELIGION WITH GOODNESS, AND 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. 20.

FROM these words I propose to take up again the subject of my last discourse. I have shown, that saving virtue, or whatever it be that is to save men, is commonly regarded, not as the increase or strengthening of any principle that is already in them, but as the implantation in them of a principle entirely new and before unknown. I have endeavoured to make this apparent, by a statement in several forms of the actual views that prevail of religion and of obtaining religion. I have shown, that with regard to religion or grace in the heart, the common feeling undoubtedly is, that it is a mystery, a thing which the people do not comprehend, and which they never expect to comprehend but by the experience of regeneration.

I may now observe, in addition, that all this clearly follows from the doctrine of total depravity. This doctrine asserts that in our natural humanity there is not one particle of true religion or of saving virtue. Of course, human nature knows nothing about it. The only way in which we can come at the knowledge of moral qualities, is by feeling them in ourselves. This is an unquestioned truth in philosophy.

If we have no feeling of rectitude or of religion, we can have no knowledge of it. It follows, therefore, from the doctrine of universal and total depravity, that to the mass of men, religion, as an inward principle, must be a mystery, an enigma, a thing altogether incomprehensible.

This position-held by many Christians, but rejected by not a few, and presenting, in my opinion, the most momentous point of controversy in the Christian world—I have proposed to discuss with a freedom and seriousness proportioned to its immense importance.

With this view, I proposed to consider its bearings on the estimate and treatment of religion, the culture of religion, and its essential vitality and power.

The first of these subjects I have already examined, and I now proceed to the second.

The next topic then, of which I was to speak, is religious culture, or what is commonly called growth in grace. I cannot dwell much upon this subject; but I must not pass it by entirely.

A mystery, a mystic secret in the heart, cannot be cultivated. A peculiar emotion, unlike all well-known and clearly defined emotions of goodness or veneration, cannot be cultivated. It may be revived from time to time; it may be kept alive in the heart by certain processes, and they are likely to be very mechanical processes; the heart, like an electric jar, may ever and anon be charged anew with the secret power; but to such an idea of religion, cultivation is a word that does, in no sense, properly apply. To grow daily in kindness and gentleness, to be more and more true, honest, pure and conscientious, to cultivate a feeling of resignation to the Divine will and a sense of the Divine presence; all this is intelligible. But in proportion as the other idea of religion prevails, culture is

out of the question. And on this principle, I am persuaded, you will find many to say, that the hour of their conversion, the hour when they received that secret and mysterious grace into their hearts, was the brightest hour of their religious experience. Look then at the religious progress of such an one. I do not say that all converts are such; but suppose any one to be possessed with this idea of religion as altogether an imparted grace; and how naturally will his chief effort be, to keep that grace alive within him! And where then is culture? And what will be his progress? Will he be found to have been growing more generous and gentle, more candid and modest, more disinterested and self-denying, more devoted to good works, and more filled with the good spirit of God? Will those who know him best, thus take knowledge of him that he has been with Jesus, and say of him, "he was very irascible and self-willed, twenty years ago, but now he is very gentle and patient; he was very selfish, but now he is very generous and self-forgetting; very close and penurious, but now he is very liberal and charitable; very restless and impatient, but now he is calm and seems to have a deep and immovable foundation of happiness and peace; very proud and self-sufficient, but now it seems as if God and Heaven were in all his thoughts, and were all his support and resource." I hope that this change of character does take place in some converts; I would that it did in many; but I must say, that in so far as a certain idea of conversion prevails, the idea of a new and mysterious grace infused into the soul, it is altogether unfavourable to such a progress.

And yet so far has this idea infected all the religion of our times, that Christianity seems nowhere to be that school of vigorous improvement which it was de

signed to be. Religion, if it is anything befitting our nature, is the very sphere of progress. All its means, ordinances and institutions have this in view, as their very end. But surely it is very obvious and very lamentable to observe, how much religious observance and effort there is, which goes entirely to waste, which does not advance the character at all. Think of our churches, our preaching, our Sabbaths; how little do they avail to make us better? How little do they seem to be thought of as seasons, means, schools of improvement! Must we not suspect that there is some error at the bottom of all this? And now suppose that men have got the notion that that something which is to prepare them for heaven, is something entirely dif ferent from charity, honesty, disinterestedness, truth, self-government, and the kindly love of one another; and would not this be the very notion to work that fatal mischief, the very notion to disarm conscience and rational conversion of all their power?

You will recollect that, some time since, a national ship belonging to the Imaum of Muscat, visited our shores. Its officers, who I believe were intelligent men, freely mingled with our citizens, and saw something of society among us. And what do you think was their testimony concerning us? On the point now before us, it was this: They said that there is no religion among us. And what now, you will ask, was their own idea of religion? I answer, it was analagous to the very idea which I am controverting in this discourse. Religion with them was not the general improvement of the character-nothing of the kind; but a certain strictness, a certain devoutness, a particular way of attending to religion. Wherever these persons were found, at whatever feast or entertainment provided for them, when the hour of prayer prescribed