ponding duty. It does not present to us a beautiful picture merely,-it commands us to copy it; it does not merely hold forth to us the image of perfect virtue, -it declares to us also our own guilt, and denounces our condemnation; it does not merely exhibit to us the sublime idea of a spiritual and universal sovereign, -it also calls upon us, by this very exhibition, under the most awful sanctions of hope and fear, to humble ourselves before Him, and to look to Him as the rightful proprietor of our thoughts and words and actions. There is something in all this very harassing and unpleasing to our nature; and the fact that it is so, may account for the real rejection that it generally meets with even amongst its nominal friends, and may also operate as a warning against ascribing too much weight to that contempt or aversion which it sometimes receives from those whose talents, when directed to other objects, we have been accustomed to follow with our admiration and gratitude. The proud man does not like to give up the triumph of superiority; the vain man does not like to give up the real or fancied applause of the circle in which he moves; the careless or worldly or sensual man does not like to have himself continually watched and scrutinized by

a witness who never sleeps, and who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. Now, as great talents are often to be found in men of such characters, we need not wonder that they employ these talents in defending the foundation on which their chief enjoyment is built, rather than in pursuit of a truth which, they are conscious, would level the whole fabric with the ground. Men do not look very diligently for that which they would be sorry to find.

It is difficult to persuade a careless profligate to live a life of temperate and useful exertion; because it is difficult to obtain from him a candid hearing on the subject. He thinks exclusively of the gratifications which he is called upon to renounce, and never allows his mind to rest calmly on the motives which would induce him to do so. Whilst he apprehends fully and distinctly the pleasures connected with his own habits, he has a very vague idea of the evils resulting from them, or of the advantages of an opposite course. If the latter apprehension were as vivid as the former, the man's character would change. And there are arguments, and those of a mere worldly nature, which have often produced this effect. All that is necessary to accomplish it, is a candid

The best

attention on his part to the whole truth of the case. There is in his mind, indeed, a natural opposition to the argument; but there is also in the argument a natural destructiveness of his faults; and if it be vividly apprehended and retained, it will gain the victory and cast out its enemy. The argument, then, must, in the first place, be a sufficient one in itself; that is to say, it must show, that, in reason, the advantage gained by complying with it exceeds the advantage of rejecting it. And, in the second place, this sufficient argument must be distinctly and fully apprehended. argument in the world is of no use, unless it be properly understood, and the motives which it holds forth be vividly apprehended. To a mind that does not distinctly comprehend the subject, a good argument will appear bad, and a bad one may appear good. We account, in this way, for the different success which the same argument meets with when it is addressed to a number of individuals. Some are moved by it-others are not; that is to say, some fully apprehend it-others do not. And this may arise either from their misunderstanding the terms of the argument, or from their unwillingness to admit a principle which interferes with their own inclinations.

Thus it fares often with human arguments; nor do the arguments of God escape a similar fate. We have already seen how the spirituality of the Christian requirements naturally excites an unwillingness to admit its principles. This unwillingness can only be overcome by a full view of its glorious inducements. But, unfortunately, this view is often intercepted and obscured by various causes, and by none more than the usual way in which religion is studied.

Most people in this country, and probably even the majority of the population in Europe, think that they understand Christianity; and yet a very small proportion of them have read the Bible with that degree of ordinary attention which they bestow on the common concerns of life. Their ideas on this subject are derived almost entirely from creeds and catechisms and church articles, or human compositions of some kind. The evil consequences arising from this are most grievous. To convince ourselves that they are indeed so to a high degree, we have only to compare the two methods.

In the Bible, we uniformly find the doctrines -even those that are generally considered most abstruse-pressed upon us as demonstrations or evidences of some important moral

feature of the Divine mind, and as motives tending to produce in us some corresponding disposition in relation to God or man. This is perfectly reasonable. Our characters cannot but be in some degree affected by what we believe to be the conduct and the will of the Almighty towards ourselves and the rest of our species. The history of this conduct and this will constitutes what are called the Christian doctrines. If, then, the disposition or character which we are urged to acquire, recommend itself to our reasons and consciences as right and agreeable to the will of God, we cannot but approve that precept as morally true; and if the doctrine by which it is enforced carries in it a distinct and natural tendency to produce this disposition or character, then we feel ourselves compelled to admit that there is at least a moral truth in this doctrine. And if we find that the doctrine has not only this purely moral tendency, but that it is also most singularly adapted to assert and acquire a powerful influence over those principles in our nature to which it directs its appeal, then we must also pronounce that there is a natural truth in the doctrine,-or, in other words, that however contradictory it may be to human practice, it has however a natural consistency