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shocking a thousand times, than they would be in the gloomiest penitentiary that ever was builded. Is this fair and bright world—is God's world-such a place? If it is, I am sure that it was not made for any rational and reflective happiness; but mountain to mountain, and continent to continent, and age to age, should echo nothing but sighs and groans.

But, if this world, instead of being a prison, is a school; if all its appointed tasks are teachings; if all its ordained employments are fit means for improvement, and all its proper amusements are the good recreations of virtuous toil and endeavour; if, however perverse and sinful men are, there is an element of good in all their lawful pursuits, and a diviner breathing in all their lawful affections; if the ground whereon they tread is holy ground; if there is a natural religion of life, answering, with however many a broken tone, to the religion of nature; if there is a beauty and glory of humanity, answering, with however many a mingled shade, to the loveliness of soft landscapes and embosoming hills, and the overhanging glory of the deep, blue heavens-then all is changed. And it is changed not more for happiness

than it is for virtue.

For then do men find that they may be virtuous, improving, religious, in their employments-that this is precisely what their employments were made for. Then will they find that all their social relationsfriendship, love, family ties were made to be holy. Then will they find that they may be religious, not by a kind of protest and resistance against their several vocations, but by conformity to their true spirit; that their vocations do not exclude religion, but demand it for their own perfection; that they may be religious labourers, whether in field or factory-religious physicians and lawyers-religious sculptors, painters, and musicians; that they may be religious in all the toils and amusements of life; that their life may be a religion; the broad earth its altar-its incense, the very breath of life-and its fires kindled, ever kindled, by the brightness of heaven.

ON THE IDENTITY OF RELIGION WITH GOODNESS,

AND WITH A GOOD LIFE.

1 JOHN iv. 24: "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?"

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 bo 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 now. Let me not be misunderstood, as if I 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 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.

were

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 aud 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 question, 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 patience.

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.

It may

be

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. 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.

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 creature. 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 by 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 calledsupposed 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 the act of regeneration, will they not say that they do not know? And all that they can say about itprovided they have any serious thoughts-will it not be this—that they hope they shall know some time or other? But they know what truth, kindness, honesty, self-denial, disinterestedness are. They know, or suppose that they know, what penitence, sorrow for doing wrong is. Gratitude to God, also-the love of God-they deem is no enigma to them. They certainly have some idea of these qualities. I do not say how much, by experience, they know of all these things; but I say they have some idea of what these things mean. If, then, they are told, and if they believe, that all this does not reach to the true idea of religion, it follows, that religion must be, in their account, some enigma or mystery-it is some inconceivable effect of divine grace, or moving of gracious affections in the heart; it must be something different from all that men are wont to call goodness, excellence, loveliness.

But to make this still plainer, if need be; what, let it be asked, are most men looking for and desiring, when they seek religion? In a revival of religion, as it is termed, what is the anxious man seeking? Is it not something as completely strange and foreign to his ordinary experience, as would be the effect of the mystery called animal magnetism? A man is declining into the vale of years, or he is lying upon the bed of death, and he wants religion-wants that something which will prepare him for a happy hereafter. He has got beyond the idea that the priest can save him, or that extreme unction can save him, or that any outward rite can save him. He knows that it must be something in his own soul. And now, what shall it be? What does he set himself to do, or to seek? What is the point about which his anxious desires are hovering?" "Oh! that that thing could be wrought in me, on which all depends! I know not what it is; but I want it; I pray for it." And this something that is to be done in him, is something that can be done in a moment? Can anything be plainer, then, than this which I am saying-that he is not looking to the increase, and strengthening, and perfection of truth, kindness, disinterestedness, humility, gratitude to God, to save him-not for the increase and strengthening of anything that is already in him; but for the lodgment in him of something new that will save him. He does not set himself, in seeking religion, about the cultivation of known affections, but about the attainment of unknown affections.

Look again, for further proof, at the language of the popular religion, whether heard from the pulpit, or coming from the press. What is more common than to hear morality decried, and the most lovely virtue disparaged, in comparison with something called grace in the heart? Morality is allowed to be a very good thing for this world, but no preparation for the next; or it is insisted on as a consequence of grace, but is considered as no part of grace itself; or if it is admitted, that by an infusion of grace, morality may become a holy thing, still, by this supposition, the grace maintains its position as the distinct, peculiar, and primal essence of virtue. Observe, that I do not say that anybody preaches against kindness, honesty, and truth-telling, absolutely. Nay, they are insisted on. But in what character? Why, as evidences of that other thing, called religion or grace. They are not that thing, nor any part of it; but only evidences of it. And observe, too, that if it were only said that much that is called morality and kindness is not real morality or kindness; that the ordinary standard of virtue is too low, and needs to be raised, -to that discrimination I should have nothing to object. But the point maintained is, that nothing that is called simple kindness or morality ever comes, or ever can, by any increase, come up to the character of saving virtue.

There is one further and decisive consideration which I am reluctant to mention, but which I will suggest, because it is, first of all, necessary that I should clearly make out the case upon which my discourse proceeds. The church has ever been accustomed to hold that the virtues of heretics are nothing worth. Now suppose a case. Here is a body of men called heretics: Protestants they were once-Church of England men, Puritans, Presbyterians. No age has wanted the instance. Here is a body of men, I say, called heretics. To all human view, they are as amiable, affectionate, and true-hearted—as honest,

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