Bishop Butler, writing of the nature of virtue, correctly makes the moral faculties to consist in the exercise of our reason. In the next place, Hume altogether rejects the notion of fitness, and adopts the more debatable term, usefulness. Dr. Smith, in his elaborate treatise, refines upon the notion of Hume, and refers us for the measure and proof of that usefulness, to our sentiments, our feelings, and our sympathies. With these learned names, and exalted indeed are the few I have mentioned, in all the acquirements to which human intellect can arrive, we may associate another, whose speculations approached to the truth. Dr. Hutcheson, following the track which was opened by a nobleman, famed for deep thought, asserted the existence of a moral sense; and seemed to argue upon that existence, as if it were the result of a physical organization, and the principle in question the operative cause of its agency. Had he placed this sense in the heart, and seen its incapacity, through the original corruption of its faculties, to answer the purpose of their first formation, he had touched the truth. But Dr. Hutcheson, like all other mental speculators, lost himself in the pursuit of a system, to which both reason and religion must be forced into an accommodation. This notion of a moral sense has been the cause of reviving two others, diametrically opposite. I will state them in the words of an able, some say an eloquent, if not a profound, metaphysician. "From the hypothesis of a moral sense, various sceptical conclusions have been deduced by later writers. The words right and wrong, it has been alleged, signify nothing in the objects themselves to which they are applied, any more than the words sweet and bitter, pleasant and painful, but only certain effects in the mind of the speculator. As it is improper, therefore, (according to the doctrine of modern philo sophy,) to say of an object of taste, that it is sweet; or of heat, that it is in the fire; so it is equally improper to say of any actions, that they are right or wrong. It is absurd to speak of morality, as of a thing independent and unchangeable, insomuch as it arises from an arbitrary relation between our constitution and particular objects. In order to avoid these supposed consequences of Dr. Hutcheson's philo-. sophy, an attempt has been made by some later writers, in particular by Dr. Price, to revive the doctrine of Dr. Cudworth, and to prove that moral distinctions are equally immutable with all other kinds of truth." Between these two assertions respecting the immutability of moral distinctions, and the de pendent meaning of the words right and wrong,. the science of morals is balanced. The latest writer on the subject, who also seems to espouse the former opinion, with much minute and laboured criticism combats the idea of a moral sense; and, strange to repeat, refers all our sense of morality to such of our own feelings and emotions as constitute "the feelings distinctive of vice and virtue, emotions that arise on the contemplation of certain actions observed or conceived." May we not in this system trace the combined principles of three others? the consciousness of Socrates; the moral sense of Hutcheson; and the sympathy of Smith? Certain emotions will arise, from the consciousness of having obeyed or broken certain known laws : our feelings for the effect of our actions upon others, are sympathetic; and whatever may be the "gloriæ domicilium" of these feelings and emotions, it may, with much literal propriety, be called a sense. These feelings, however, may and do exist, without involving, either in their formation or in their action, an inherent truth or moral obligation. They are the creatures of society, the result of experience, or the deductions of reason. Some feelings, indeed, may be the natural, but yet they are the selfish resiliencies of the heart, in its fear of some future but unknown evil. May they not be "ramea fragmenta," some disjointed parts which escaped spoliation, and were suffered to adhere to the stock when the spirit of evil triumphed over man? It will be evident from the foregoing observations, that the writers on this abstruse subject have not only failed to define moral virtue, but also have neither agreed in the nature of, nor even in the existence of a moral principle. Therefore, as neither ancient nor modern, neither churchman nor dissenter, neither infidel nor Christian, has discovered a moral principle, and as all disagree respecting its nature and office, I am warranted by fact in adopting the scriptural doctrine, that the principle itself is corrupted through original sin, and that the sense is lost through the weakness and depravation of its functions. When the curse of disobedience was laid upon the posterity of Adam, the spiritual effect of that curse upon the nature of man was blindness to the being and will of God; hence the reason of our moral (spiritual)"darkness, the necessity of revelation, and the fitness of the doctrine which it teaches, in the spiritual regeneration of the heart. I lament that it is yet necessary to ask some further attention to this subject. Some pious men, and especially some learned divines of our own church, have imagined a mixed kind of system, |