could know it. The feeling is not visible. The feeling is not visible. You do not with your bodily eyes see it. But you know that it is in your neighbour's heart, when he is sincerely doing a kind action; and you know it from sympathy; you know it because you feel with him, or have, at some former time, felt as he does. In short, you know nothing, and can know nothing, about any mental qualities and exercises, but by experience of them. And as you know what memory is only by remembering, or what reason is only by reasoning, so do you know what a virtuous or holy exercise in the mind is, only by feeling it.

We know that it is common to make an entire and radical distinction between conscience and feeling. But we regard this as one of those artificial divisions of the mind into different powers and departments, which the thinking and judicious have now agreed to discard. Conscience is not only a judgment, but it is a feeling. It is the same soul acting, with greater or less energy, upon moral objects. The difference between conscience (as that word is commonly used) and moral feeling is a difference, not in kind, but in degree. It may be a cold approbation; it may be a warm emotion; but still it is the same thing. We perceive the difference between right and wrong. We feel the difference between right and wrong. Here is the same thing. We feel this more or less strongly.

Here is all the difference. When we witness a simple act of justice, as the paying of a debt, we simply approve it. When we witness an act of great, generous, and even self-denying benevolence, we warmly approve it. In both cases, it is, in its nature, the same action of the soul, put forth with greater or less energy.

But, it may be said, are not conscience and feeling often directly opposed to each other? May not the conscience be right, when the feeling is wrong? Is not this especially the case in envy? A man approves, it will be said, the excellence that he hates; his conscience perceives a virtue, to which his heart is opposed. Undoubtedly the feeling of conscience may be overborne by other feelings; but this does not prove it to be any the less a feeling, and, so far as it goes, a right feeling. There is no difficulty here. It is just as filial affection may be overborne by the love of worldly pleasure, or evil company. All we say, in this case, is, that the filial affection is the weaker feeling. And, if this feeling should strengthen and gain the predominance, we should not say,

that it was changed in its nature, but only, that it was increased in power. And so the weak conscience, when it becomes a strong principle, when it becomes the habitual love of God and good beings, is yet the same conscience increased in vigor. It has passed through a change, not of nature but of degree. It is the same single, solemn homage of human nature to what is right and good.

The case of envy which has been stated only proves, that the desire of admiration is stronger than the love of excellence. A man hates, we may say, the excellence that he loves; and it is this conflict, in part, that makes the passion so painful. And yet, in this strongest of all cases, so true is human nature to itself, that envy is commonly said to distort the excellence that it dislikes. Conscience is too strong, the homage of his nature is too strong, for the envious man, and he cannot let the goodness, that casts him into the shade, be any longer the same bright, unmarred, overpowering goodness. His eye soon becomes jaundiced, and discolors all that it looks upon.

Conscience, we say then, is a feeling. It is the foundation of virtue. It does not make a man decidedly and habitually virtuous; it does not make him a good man. It may not be strong or constant enough. But so far as it goes, so far as it controls a man, it is of the very nature of virtue. When a noble deed is done, when a base and black treachery is committed, why is your mind affected so differently from that of a mere animal? It is, that you have a conscience; and that conscience, that fervent admiration, that indignant abhorrence, is it not a feeling? And if such feelings glowed in your heart continually, and if they rose in homage to the Supreme Excellence, would you not be a good and pious man?

Such, then, is the origin of what is good in man. Such is the doctrine in moral philosophy, which, for the sake of its own obvious importance, and for the sake, also, of important results and inferences, we would establish on this subject. Before we proceed to those results and inferences, two or three objections are to be noticed.

In the first place it will be asked, what account we make of the Scriptures. Are not these, it will be said, the source of our ideas of religion and goodness? A disposition has, of late, manifested itself among moral inquirers to defer to the

records of our faith, which we shall welcome if it be well directed, and which, at any rate, makes it incumbent on us to state our views explicitly on this point.

We say, then, of the Scriptures, that they certainly are not the original source of our ideas of rectitude. The Scriptures were designed to improve, to exalt, our conceptions of religion and goodness, but not to create, not originally to impart them. Of this, any one must be satisfied, who will observe the process of his own mind in reading the Bible. You open this book, and let us suppose, to test the argument, that you do so for the first time. You read such words as good, upright, holy, righteous, just; and you perceive that you are commanded to possess the qualities for which these words stand. Now, if you had no previous idea of what goodness, uprightness, holiness, &c. are, these words would convey to you no meaning whatever. We know of nothing that can add to the clearness and strength of this argument.

But it may be said, the Scriptures originally introduced the ideas of uprightness and holiness into the world, and then they descended from parent to child in the way of education. Go back, then, to those whom the Scriptures originally addressed, and the case is still the same. They must have had ideas of goodness and righteousness, or these words could have conveyed no meaning to them. The sacred writer must have adopted words in common use, or he could have communicated no ideas. He must have intended to use those words in the common and received sense, or he would have communicated false ideas; he would have mislead those he professed to guide. By the most obvious and indisputable implication then, the Scriptures presuppose in mankind, some ideas, and just ideas too, of religion and goodness.

Again; we have laid the foundation of the ideas of rectitude in simple consciousness. And in this point, as a second objection to our general views, we expect to be confronted with the consciousness which Calvinism has to allege in its favor. It is said that there is a consciousness, an experience, of hundreds and thousands to prove, first, that human nature is totally depraved, and, secondly, that true piety, true rectitude, is essentially and totally different from any thing that exists in the mass of mankind; that is to say, there are hundreds and thousands, who, by their own experience, are convinced that both these things are true. The argument is

from experience. But let us ask, — Is this the only experience there is in the world? Nay, if experience is to decide, the argument is altogether in our favor. For whose experience shall we trust? That of a few thousands, or that of the whole human race, in all ages?

If the conscience

Let us apply this to the case of reason. of the whole human race fails to perceive what virtue is, and what it is to practise virtue, how shall we know but their reason fails to perceive what truth is, and what it is to act in accordance with truth? If the moral impressions of all mankind about their nature, are completely wrong, how shall we be sure that their speculative judgments are not all wrong? If the human race is not moral, not good, in any degree, how shall we know that it is rational? How shall we know but we live in a world of the insane? There is a class of lunatics who think the whole world insane; and there are some ingenious arguments to establish the point. And, on the principle of this objection, we seriously ask what we should have to answer them? We know of nothing, indeed, but the universal sense of mankind. And this universal sense and opinion of men is, to the full, as much agreed upon what is correct in morals, as upon what is just in reasoning, to the full as much agreed about actual virtue, as about speculative truth. And if this general conviction, this dictate of our nature, this voice of the universal mind is nothing, then let us boldly rush to the conclusion, that men, for aught we know, are as insane in the matter of reason, as they are alleged to be in the matter of conscience.

But there is another view to be taken of this universal experience. There is an experience, that is to say, with regard to the sense and import of the Scriptures. The Scriptures address all men. They were given, it will be admitted, to teach men their duties, that is to say, they lay commands upon us. They command us to be good and holy. They address these commands, let it be remembered, to all men, to unenlightened, unregenerate men, to those very men, of whom the objector avers, that they have no true idea of holiness. What purpose, then, does it serve to command them to be holy? This is our question. Why command them to be holy? They do not, according to the objector, they do not understand the word. And yet they think they understand it; while they are, on the supposition,

altogether deceived; and so much the worse deceived, as they are the more certain they are right in their conceptions of the matter. It would have been better, it would have been more honest to have spoken in an unknown tongue; for then the reader would have been conscious of his ignorance. But let us not think, that this dishonesty is to be charged upon the holy Scriptures. They speak well-known words; they speak words of which we well know the meaning.

But, in the third place, it may be said, that in regard to morals, there is no certainty; that our very disputings show that there is no certainty; that consciousness, in which we confide, tells men strange things; that right and wrong have taken their complexion from different ages and countries, now bearing one aspect, then another; and, therefore, that nothing is certain. As the result of this sort of objection, the fanatic, laying claims to special illumination, asks us to trust him; the skeptic calls upon us to trust nobody. Our position, amidst these specious doubts, and clashing directions, is very firm and satisfactory. We know that there is a right and a wrong in human actions; and so does the objector know it too. Let him write a thousand books against this conviction, and it stands just where it did before he began. Reason as we may, we all feel it, we all act upon it, we all know it to be true. If we needed to go beyond this irresistible consciousness, we would ask the objector one question. How do you know that there is any truth at all in the world? There is as much diversity in the operations of reason among mankind, as there is in the operations of conscience. If there is no truth in morals, how do you know that there is truth in any of the judgments of mankind? The objection, that would sweep away all truth from the world, must have more than the ordinary presumption of skepticism, if it expects to set itself up in the place of all human conviction.

Our moral consciousness, then, is as true and infallible a consciousness as it is possible for us to have. It is as universal as it is certain. It cannot be resigned, therefore, in favor of any religious arrogance, that would set up a pretension to superior light, or of any irreligious skepticism that would put out all light. This consciousness, therefore, we say again and in fine, must be accredited as the original of all that is good in man. It is this moral feeling, this con