or restrained. A recognition of the supremacy of conscience over the whole intellectual and moral man will lead to a due regulation of all our passions, emotions, and desires. Man is a moral being, and as such his highest state consists in his rectitude and purity-in the deep culture and full operation of those principles which will suitably qualify him for sustaining his relation both to God and man, and for discharging the obligations arising out of such relationships.

As a member of the universal family of man, the perfection of the individual being consists in the measure and excellency of his powers and dispositions-in his being an approved part of the system to which he belongs. There are those who affect to question or deny the reality of all moral distinctions. But does not the language of every nation offer a complete refutation to such scepticism? Do not the words RIGHT and WRONG express the moral qualities of actions? When we assert that a certain line of conduct is just or good, is this nothing more than a mere impression or feeling of the mind; or is not a truth as independent of our constitution as the mathematical axiom that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles? If in reality there be no essential distinction between virtue and vice, whence is it that we conceive one class of qualities to be more excellent and meritorious than another? If candour and benevolence are hypocrisycourage is anger-elevation of mind is pride-and temperance is formality or affectation, why are these qualities held in such esteem? If all virtue be hypocrisy, then hypocrisy itself is a homage which vice renders to virtue. But the fact that so much importance is attached to the actions of men that character is estimated according to those dispositions which enter into its composition-that the exhibition of moral qualities, whether good or bad, calls forth the most vehement sentiments of the human heartand that every language abounds with terms of blame and praise, proves incontrovertibly that the distinction between moral good and evil is real, and universally acknowledged.

if

The distinction between right and wrong being eternal and immutable, no less than the distinction between mathematical truth and falsehood, with the moral faculty to perceive this difference, involves no common obligation. To act in conformity with our sense of rectitude is the highest excellence of which our nature is capable. Conscience is the vicegerent of Heaven; and to attend to its monitions as the voice of Him "in whom we live, and move, and have our being," and the immediate object of whose government is the best good of his creatures, is at once our duty and our happiness. While we give the reverence due to its admonitions, its sanction and approval will yield a satisfaction which no price can purchase.

Viewed as a rational and moral agent, man's first and greatest business is to direct his attention intensely and eagerly to those truths which belong to his moral condition,-whatever affects his character and condition in this world or bears on his prospects and destiny in the world to come. The cultivation and practice of virtue is an obligation from which no power can release him. True morality comprehends justice, prudence, temperance, fortitude. These are the cardinal virtues, and go to make up the moral constitution, of man: without them no character can be complete; and in their absence the highest intellectual endowments are a poor possession. Let us see what these virtues include. JUSTICE is that regard which we show to the rights and happiness of others:-PRUDENCE, that discernment by which we distinguish the value of ends, and the fitness of the means by

which they are to be attained, and without which no one is qualified to act with any degree of steadiness, consistency, or good effect :-TEMPERANCE, that abstinence from inferior pleasures and indulgences which would occupy an undue portion of time, stifle the affections, or impair the powers of either body or mind, and thus mislead our pursuits, or divert us from some great and worthy purpose :-FORTITUDE, that power to, withstand opposition, difficulty, and danger, and without which no important effect can be produced.

The practise of these virtues meets every claim. As a moral agent, man is connected with other moral agents by ties as innumerable as the living objects to whom they relate. But there is one relation above all-the relation which, as a created and dependant being, he bears to the eternal and uncreated One, who is the source of all existence and the fountain of all happiness. Of the existence of God, the proof is abundant and incontrovertible. Apart from the sublime disclosures of Revelation, the things which are seen proclaim his eternal power and godhead; while the splendid manifestation of his character and perfections in the page of inspiration renders every other inquiry almost superfluous. Nature and Revelation

agree in setting him forth as the First Cause and Final End of all that isa being of unrivalled excellence and glory, who gathers around him the burning light of eternity, and retires to an infinite distance from every created nature. Having brought all things into existence, he is ever "upholding all by the word of his power," lavishing on his creatures the riches of his goodness, and so arranging the whole economy of his providential superintendence and control as to ensure the largest amount of permanent happiness to his intelligent and moral universe. This is not the place to enter on the argument in support of these truths. We assume them as undeniable; and therefore the first duty of every creature is to cultivate a habitual love and reverence of that high and lofty One who inhabiteth eternity. Himself possessed of infinite moral excellence, there should be on our part a corresponding degree of love, gratitude, and confidence. The contemplation of his perfections ought to awaken our most devout feelings, and call forth the deepest homage of our hearts. Who will deny that it is our duty to recognize and acknowledge the benevolence to which we owe all that we possess? Where is the heart which refuses to express, with all the warmth and readiness of love, its gratitude for kindness received? And shall we feel no joy in contemplating that immense Divine goodness by which we are every moment surrounded, and of which we so largely partake? Would it be a crime of no common character to requite the kindness of a friend with indifference, ingratitude, and forgetfulness? And shall we trample in the dust the bounties and blessings of that gracious One "from whom cometh every good and perfect gift?" Shall we drink at every stream, and never rise to the fountain? Shall we take the gift, and deny the Giver? Shall we accept the boon, and slight the hand that conveys it? Would that the words of the French philosopher could be verified: "A kindness that was truly a kindness never yet found a bosom that was ungrateful!" What could be more generous, more munificent than the conduct of Heaven, and yet what can equal the ingratitude of

man!

If, in the contemplation and experience of the Divine goodness, it be our duty to love, and revere, and confide, it is no less incumbent on us, under

a conviction of the Divine rectitude, to view every act of Heaven's administration as bearing on the aggregate and ultimate happiness of the universe. There may seem to be anomalies and discrepancies in the moral government of the world which we can neither explain nor comprehend; but if the tone of the moral feelings be sound,-if our minds rest in the belief that benevolence on the highest and most stupendous scale be the end of this economy of things, this cannot fail to bring our will into cheerful submission-into unrepining confidence amid all the events which time disclose. We shall regard each event, even the most unpropitious, as tending to beneficent purpose, and working out the perfection and happiness of our nature. These are the sentiments of true virtue. Nor is the virtue of that man complete-it is not even consistent-in whose mind these moral feelings and sentiments are wanting.

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The cultivation of these feelings and sentiments towards God, as our Creator and Benefactor, will prompt to the faithful discharge of those obligations, which arise out of our relation to our fellow-men. Each individual is a part of the universal community,-to that community he is bound by certain ties, and owes to it certain duties. What are these duties? Not only are we to abstain from all intentional injury of others—it becomes us to seek their good in every practicable way. If we hold the life of our neighbour a sacred thing, not less sacred is his property, or character, or reputation, or virtue, or happiness. This is the dictate of reason and morality. More than this. We have been sent into the world not to be idle spectators, but interested and active agents. We have a part to act; and, if that benevolence which is the moral link between man and man, and which is never absent from the heart of the virtuous, possess our bosoms, we shall not be strangers to those genuine wishes of diffusive good, which can be expressed and gratified only in enlarged and beneficent action. Whatever be the duties arising out of consanguinity, friendship, good neighbourhood, citizenship, we shall carefully study and seek to fulfil. Our grand inquiry will be, how we may best add to the sum of human happiness? Whether we can repress vice or promote virtue, assail error or defend truth, remove ignorance or extend knowledge, mitigate suffering or augment enjoyment, narrow the stream of human misery or deepen the current of human felicity,-we shall take this to be both our business and our pleasure.

Our own welfare

Nor shall we be wanting in our duty to ourselves. must lie near our hearts. Each individual owes a duty to himself. He has moral excellence to cultivate, and corresponding happiness to provide. Happiness is the possession of the greatest good-the possession of a mind endowed with good qualities, and pure affections, and taking hold of objects of inherent and unchanging worth. Moral excellence is in every case preferable to mere physical enjoyment; and there is no enjoyment which, if virtue forbid it, is worthy of the choice of man. This excellence implies a force and elevation of mind which no inferior pleasures can seduce-no pressure of endurance can overcome. It not only occupies the mind to the exclusion of what is little and debased, but becomes a principle of deep purity and power. In its cultivation there will be temptations to resist and evils to shun-goodness to imitate and virtues to practise. "It is not a blessing to live merely, but to live well. Life in itself if life without wisdom be a good-is a good that is common to me with the meanest rep

tile; and he who gave me nothing more than life, gave me only what a fly or a worm may boast." So said the ancient Seneca, and said truly. Our business is to improve our nature to render it more noble in the sight of Heaven. And this we can do only by living well-by setting before ourselves the purest and most perfect models, and aiming at the closest assimilation. The miser lives; but in his pursuits there is no mixture of the social affections: he is absorbed in self; he sets his own interest in opposition to that of every other man. The sensualist lives; but his enjoyments all expire within his own person. In both cases the mind is so occupied that the duties and obligations of life are entirely neglected. Habits of sloth are induced; inoccupation and idleness, which are the certain effect of depraved feelings and vicious conduct, are preferred to that activity which terminates in some serious purpose. In such circumstances it is vain to dream of happiness. This is to be found in the personal qualities of the man, not in his situation or circumstances; and, unless there be present all the moral properties which are requisite to attain so blessed an end, the enjoyment of which thousands boast is like the bow painted in the cloud,

which fades and dies away from the eye that gazes upon it. For man to

be happy he must be good. Not only must his mind be enlightened, but his affections pure and benevolent. He who, in his beneficent providence, has wonderfully adapted our sensitive powers to the scene which we here occupy the eye to all the beauties and glories of creation as they lie spread out before us, the ear to the melodies which float on every breath of Heaven,—the smell to the fragrance and the perfumes which scent the air, and the taste to that endless profusion of luxuries which our earthly habitation affords-has made far richer provision for our enjoyment in the pleasures of the understanding, the affections of the heart, the purity of the soul, and the activity of a well-directed life.

It follows that, in a course of SELF-CULTURE, no common attention must be directed to the state of the moral feelings. As has been justly said,— "The sound exercise of the understanding is closely connected with the important habit of looking within, or of rigidly investigating our intellectual and moral condition. This leads us to inquire what opinions we have formed, and on what grounds we have formed them,-what have been our leading pursuits--whether these have been guided by a sound consideration of their real value, or whether important objects of attention have been lightly passed over or entirely neglected. It leads us further to contemplate our moral condition-our desires, attachments, antipathies-the government of the imagination, and the regimen of the heart; what is the habitual current of our thoughts, and whether we exercise over them that control which indicates alike intellectual vigour and moral purity. It leads us to review our conduct, with its principles and motives, and to compare the whole with the great standard of truth and rectitude. This investigation is the part of every wise man. Without it an individual may make the greatest attainments in science-may learn to measure the earth and to trace the course of the stars, while he is entirely wanting in that higher department-the knowledge of himself."*

* Abercrombie on The Intellectual Powers, pp. 448, 449.

ESTHETICAL CRITICISM.

WHATEVER tells upon the human heart and modifies the human character cannot but be worthy of our notice. Whatever one man has looked upon as true, that, though it were scouted before, has henceforth a claim on every heart, and an utterance that, to the best of his ability, every one should seek to understand. The shapeless block of wood that I in the sunshine may look upon with indifference or scorn, my brother living in the dark places of the earth may view as the very personification of his idea of God; it may be to him the symbol and outward sign of the highest majesty and might, and as such he may gaze on it with wonder, and approach and worship it with awe, and I have not the feelings of a man if I can pass it and look upon it as I should upon a common block. In the wild, and bleak, and mountain fastnesses of Scandinavia arose a religion as wild as her wildest glens as unwieldy and shapeless as her ice-bound and rudest rocks,— a religion that told how the cow Andumbla, the symbol of the atmosphere, licked the earth in its chaos state, or the giant Ymer, and how Rune was born; that is, how the earth emerged from the sea-how his children, Odin, Viel, and Vie (air, light, and fire) put an end to the chaos, or, in the language of the northern cosmogony, slew the giant Ymer-how his blood made the sea, his flesh the earth, his bones the mountains, his teeth the rocks, and his brains the clouds-how the tree of human life sprang up and grew-how there are agencies that defy the power and pride of man-how Lolu eat up all except the bones-and how Loje, or devouring flame, eat up bones and all-how Tialf ran a race and was beaten by the dwarf Hugo or thought-how Thor volunteered to empty the drinking horn, but in vain, for it was the ocean that baffled him-how he wrested with an haggard and decrepid dame named Hela, but was beaten by her, for Hela was time. Why all this mysterious yet graphic personification of the elements of nature-this seeing the Godhead in every thing strange and wonderful around,—the norseman standing upon the mountain ridge, and believing himself standing upon the bones of the giant Ymer, was the norsemen's best and fairest theory of the beautiful and divine? It was his best, and what more can the sternest of us require? It was nursed in a land of snow and storm-of mountain and of mountain mists; and it has an earnestness and sincerity about it which the more graceful mythologies of Greece and Rome had not.

Next to a man's theory of the divine is his theory of the beautiful, and the latter depends much upon the former. In an age when a man believes not in divinity-when rites are forms and religion is a lie, there is a tone of heartlessness and flippancy tainting the thought of the age or man, and the literature in which that thought is embodied. Witness Voltaire and his criticisms on Shakspeare and Addison-his preference of Cato and its unities to those proudest achievements of human genius, which have ren