operate, effectually and permanently, so far as we can judge, on a creature like man; in whom repeated acts, whether of corporeal skill, intellectual effort or moral virtue, produce a facility by repetition, and recur on the recurring occasion with augmented ease, and with less labour of reasoning and delay in comparing opposing probabilities. It is thus the racer (both in a natural and spiritual sense of the word) acquires vigour in his course, the wrestler in his struggle, the soldier in his combat, the scholar in his discipline.7 Holy habits result in the formation of what we mean by CHARACTER, which is the end Revelation has in view in its morals.

3. Christianity, further, directs men to aim at THE

VERY HIGHEST ATTAINMENTS, WHilst she eNCOU

RAGES THE WEAKEST EFFORTS. Never did any religion but the Christian lay man so low in abasement and self-humiliation, and yet at the same time raise him to such a height of holy pursuit, and cheer him with such encouragements under his weakness and failures. Thus it unites every thing requisite in the moral machinery which is to operate upon man. It applies a mighty lever, so to speak, which lifts him up from the depths into which he was sunk, and places him on the elevated course where he is to run his race. It says to him, "Be ye holy as God is holy;" and then adds, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” It bids man aim at the standard of supreme love to Almighty God, and of love to his neighbour for God's sake; and yet assures him that it will not "break the bruised reed nor quench the smoking flax."10 never says to him, You have done enough, you have attained a sufficient measure of holiness;' and yet it never says to him, 'Your faulty efforts are un

7 Butler, Horsley, &c.

8 Lev. xi. 44. 2 Pet. i. 15, 16.
10 Isaiah xlii. 3.

9 Matt. xi. 29, 30.

It

acceptable, your imperfect beginnings are useless.' In short, it animates the advanced disciple to higher attainments, and condescends to the infant scholar in his incipient efforts: it never lowers its standard, on the one hand, nor discourages the feeblest essays, on the other; but unites the loftiest aim with the most genuine humility in the temper of its aspirants: and thus carries the clearest testimony within itself of a divinely-inspired code.

Again: Revelation works its practical precepts by KEEPING ALOOF FROM SECULAR POLICY and inferior ends. There is a superiority, a freedom from low objects and concerns and partizanships, a separate and elevated and undeviating purpose in Christian morals, which exempt them from the scuffle of human passions and local ambition. There is no trimming, no time-serving, no eye-service, no acceptance of persons, no yielding to the interests of this or that party, of this or that individual; no subserviency to petty projects or human contrivances; nothing like the schemes of heathen morality, where all was made to bend to state policy and the ends of national aggrandizement. Christian morality knows nothing of this. She teaches rulers and subjects their mutual duties; but in terms applicable to all governments and every form of polity. She ever keeps in view, not the interests of a favoured few, but the general welfare and salvation of mankind as the creatures of Almighty God.

Christianity sets men to work, also, by delivering her code IN THE FORM OF MAXIMS AND CLEAR, DE CISIVE PROHIBITIONS, rather than by systematic treatises reasoned out in detail. Thus she is brief and intelligible. The ten commandments, who cannot remember? The vindication of them, in the sermon on the Mount, from the false glosses of the Jews, who cannot understand? The exposition of the Christian temper, in the twelfth chapter of the Romans, where

is the heart which does not feel? The picture of charity, in the thirteenth of the first of Corinthians, is familiar to a child. The maxims of the book of Pro

verbs are in every mouth. Revelation, thus, does not reason as a philosopher, but commands as a lawgiver. We observed this in a former Lecture; " but this is the place for applying the remark to the morals of the Bible. Revelation utters with sententious authority her brief determinations, as occasions require, in popular language, for the understanding of all; and leaves man to collect, as he can, her maxims into systems, or compare and illustrate them by the aid of sound reason and conscience. Human treatises on morals stop to define and prove every duty, to contrast it with its proximate defect and excess, and to reduce the whole to an elaborate system. Revelation takes for granted that man knows what temperance, chastity, fortitude, benevolence mean, or may learn them from other sources, and contents herself with binding them on the conscience. The consequence is, that a child at school in a Christian country knows more of the standard of morals, and the details of social virtue, than the most learned of the ancient sages.

Allied with the preceding observation is the remark, that the gospel works its moral system by setting every thing forth by STRONG AND AFFECTING EXAMPLES. This, like almost every thing else in this fruitful subject, is peculiar to Christianity. All its precepts are illustrated and embodied in the historical parts of the Bible. All the separate virtues, duties, graces, acts of abstinence and self-denial, effects of the Christian spirit, and of its principles carried out into habit and character, are set forth in the lives of Christ and his apostles.

All the infirmities and errors and vices to be shunned, are exposed in the fearful punishments of guilty nations, in the destruction of the cities of the plain,

11 Lecture XIV.

in the deluge, in the captivity of Babylon, in the lives of wicked princes-Pharaoh, Saul, Ahab, Jehu, Nebuchadnezzar. With this view, also, the sins and falls of the true servants of God are held forth for our caution, with a fidelity unknown except in the inspired Scriptures the drunkenness of Noah, the incest of Lot, the falsehoods uttered by Abraham and Jacob, the irritated expressions of Moses, the sin, the gross and awful sin, of David,1 the rashness of Josiah. And in the New Testament, the infidelity of Peter, and the dispute between Paul and Barnabas, to say nothing of the accounts of the ignorance and dulness of our Lord's disciples, and of the corruption of some of the converts in the first churches;—these examples deter from vice by exposing it in its darkest colours, and by marking the severe judgments of God which followed his most holy and sincere servants in consequence of it.13

I do not dwell on the examples which hold forth the duties of parents and children, of masters and servants, of husbands and wives; nor on those which

12 A lesson this of the greatest moment to princes, as showing the connexion of the grossest transgression of the seventh commandment, with the concerted and aggravated breach of the sixth.

13 The attempts made by infidel writers to misrepresent the purport of some of these narratives are too absurd to be noticed. The tendency of the scriptural exposure of vice is to excite abhorrence; to which the plainness and brevity of its descriptions, and even the directness of the terms which it employs, greatly conduce.

It may be observed here, how pure and manly is the delineation of the Christian's love to his Redeemer and to his fellow-creatures, as detailed in the Scriptures. There is nothing of effeminacy, nothing that can be misinterpreted; all is elevated and holy. In like manner, the accounts, the necessary accounts, of vice and crime, are most pure; and calculated, like the inquiries of a physician, to promote the recovery of man. A few expressions have acquired an import, from the mere lapse of time since our English translation was made, not originally designed, and are instantly corrected by every reader.

exhibit the minister, the missionary, the teacher of youth. Nor do I dwell on the examples which display the faults and excellencies of nations, of bodies politic, of legislators, of magistrates, of churches and spiritual societies. It is sufficient for me to have shown the plan, in this respect, on which the Christian morals work-by strong and affecting examples.

I add only, that it proceeds by referring men to the ALL-SEEING EYE OF GOD, and the constant aid of the Holy Spirit. Christian morality is built on the faith of the invisible God who seeth in secret, and on the habitual persuasion of the agency of the Blessed Spirit, which is granted to all them that ask for it. But this leads us to consider

III. The inseparable CONNEXION OF THE MORALS

OF

OF CHRISTIANITY WITH EVERY OTHER PART REVELATION, AND ESPECIALLY WITH ITS PECULIAR DOCTRINES.

For, notwithstanding this extent and purity of the Christian theory of morals, and those subordinate means by which it works, the question yet remains→→ What is to set the machine actually in motion ? What are to constitute the prevailing motives of duty? Every rule is a constraint, and every constraint is unpleasant. We must, therefore, have motives-powerful, because we have to conquer powerful passions— universal, because morals are designed for all men— permanent, because virtue is necessary for all times and all places."4

Here, then, the peculiar truths of the gospel, as well as those other parts of Revelation with which the precepts are inseparably connected, appear in all their influence. It is on the deep and ample basis of the Christian doctrine that the whole superstructure of Christian morals is grounded.

14 Frassynous.