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A perfect religion involves a perfect morality. That a perfect religion must comprise a perfect morality, is certain, because a perfect religion must include every religious duty; and we are under obligation to perform our duty to our fellow-creatures, not simply from our relations to them, but because the performance of that duty is the will of God. Hence every moral duty is, and must be, also binding as a religious duty; and hence no man can be truly religious further than he is moral.

Perfect morality impossible from a false religion. But a true religion, carried out, would thus certainly bear as its fruit a perfect morality. Is it possible that a false religion should bear the same fruit? Then truth would be no better than error; the true God no better than an idol. Then a corrupt tree might bring forth good fruit; "a clean thing might come out of an unclean." The question is not simply to what extent a true morality and a false religion may coexist, but whether such a morality can be the necessary outgrowth and fruit of such a religion. That it can be, is opposed to our primary and intuitive convictions.

It is not conceivable that a perfect system of moral duty should coalesce and harmonize with the religious duty taught by a system of falsehood, such as the Christian system must be, if it did not come from God. But in the Christian system, the moral and religious duties do thus coalesce, and form a part of one independent whole. The religious morality of the Bible, if I may call it so, that which relates to God, is quite as extraordinary as that which relates to man; it is quite as far elevated above that of any other system; and these, when united and interwoven as they are in the Bible, form one whole, perfect and complete. Besides, a perfect system of morality could not be laid down, even in an abstract, or tabular form, in connec

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tion with a false religion; because many of our duties to our fellow-men, as well as the motives by which they are enforced, arise out of our relations to them as the children of a common parent, and a knowledge of these relations can come only from a true religion.

Conclusion. Our conclusion then is, that if the morality is what we claim it to be, the religion must be true; and infidels must either — as they can not — deny that the morality is perfect, or accept the religion. Christianity is no heterogeneous mass, promiscuously thrown together. It is one, an organic whole, and must be accepted or rejected as such. From the nature of the case, therefore, we might expect - what all experience shows has happened — that any attempt to separate this morality from this religion, and yet give it power, would be like the attempt to separate the branch from the parent stock, and yet cause it to live. We might expect, if we were ever to see a perfect morality coming up from the wilderness of this world, that she would come, not walking alone, but, "leaning upon her Beloved.".

LECTURE V.

ARGUMENT FIFTH: CHRISTIANITY ADAPTED TO MAN.-DIVISION FIRST, ITS QUICKENING AND GUIDING POWER. ITS ADAPTATION TO THE INTELLECT, THE AFFECTIONS, THE IMAGINATION, THE CONSCIENCE, AND THE WILL.

CHRISTIANITY is analogous to nature; it coincides with natural religion: it meets the demands of the conscience as a discriminating power; and, as embosoming a perfect morality, it must be from God.

We next inquire after its adaptation to man. What are its capacities to quicken and guide those leading faculties in the right action of which his perfection and happiness must consist. Those faculties are the Intellect, the Affections, the Imagination, the Conseience, and the Will.

Christianity and the intellect. Information and reflection. By the adaptation of Christianity to the intellect, I mean its tendency to give it clearness and strength. I mean by it just what is meant when it is said that nature is adapted to the intellect. The intellect is enlarged and strengthened by the exercise of its powers on suitable subjects. This exercise can be induced in only two ways-by furnishing it with information, or by leading it to study and reflection; and whichever of these we regard, we need not fear to compare Christianity with nature as adapted to enlarge and strengthen the intellectual powers.

Information. And, first, of information. If we consider the Christian revelation, as we fairly may in this connection, as it recognizes, includes, and presupposes the Old Testament, there is no book that can compare with it for the variety and importance of the information it gives; nor can it be exceeded by nature itself. From this, and from this alone, do we know any thing of the origin of the world and of the human race; of the introduction of natural and moral evil; of the history of men before the deluge; of the deluge itself, as connected with the race of man; of the early settlement and dispersions of the race; of the history of the Jews; and of the history of the early rise and progress of Christianity. Without the Bible, an impenetrable curtain would be dropped between us and the whole history of the race further back than the Greeks, or certainly the Egyptians; and who does not feel that the letting down of such a curtain would act upon the mind, not simply by the amount of information it would withdraw, but with the effect of a chill and a paralysis, from the necessity of that information to give completeness to knowledge as an organized whole? It would be like taking the hook out of the beam on which the whole chain hangs. And, again, what information gained from nature can be more interesting than that which the Bible gives concerning God as a Father, concerning his universal providence, our accountability, a resurrection from the dead, the second coming of Christ, and an eternal life? Who would substitute the mists of conjecture for this mighty background, piled up by revelation along the horizon of the future?

Philosophic spirit required. But to say nothing of information, as it is not from that that the mind gains its chief efficiency-I infer that Christianity is adapted

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to the intellect, 1. From the fact of the identity of its spirit with that of true philosophy. Of this I have already spoken.

Indirectly favorable.-2. Christianity is indirectly favorable to the intellect by bringing men out from under the dominion of sensuality, and of those low vices by which it is checked and dwarfed in its growth. The temperance and sobriety of life which it enjoins are essential, as conditions, to the full expansion and power of the intellect.

Its estimate of truth.-3. That Christianity is favorable to the intellect, is obvious from the place which it assigns to truth. Truth, in this system, lies at the foundation of every thing. It is contradistinguished from every other system, pretending to come from God, by this. Christ said that he came into the world to bear witness of the truth. He prayed that God would sanctify men, but it was through the truth. It seems to have been the object of Christ to place his disciples in a position in which they could intelligently, as well as affectionately, yield themselves to him, and to the government of God. How remarkable are his words! "Henceforth," says he, "I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth; but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you." Christ is spoken of as a light to lighten the Gentiles. The object of Paul was to turn men from darkness to light, as well as from the power of Satan unto God. spoke the words of truth as well as of soberness. If he was strongly moved by the conduct of a church, it was because it did not obey the truth. Does the beloved disciple exhort the elect lady not to receive some into her house? It is those who do not teach the truth. Light in the understanding is scarcely less an object,

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