this language is dramatic, and in the highest degree figurative and Oriental. A like distinction is drawn in the Bible between the rich and the poor. "The rich and the poor meet together. The Lord is the maker of them all." And yet there is no broad line of distinction between them. They shade into each other imperceptibly, like night and day in the twilight, or like the colors of the rainbow. Our conclusions, drawn from such passages, must be modified by others of a different description, relating to the same subject. Nothing can be more clearly declared, than that the righteous shall receive different degrees of reward, and the wicked different degrees of punishment. "One star shall differ from another star in glory," and "he who knew not his Lord's will and transgressed it, is to be beaten with few stripes, and he who knew it and transgressed, is to be beaten with many stripes"; intimating that all punishment is disciplinary, and must have an end. But we leave the judgment of the world in the hands of a just God. DISCOURSE VII: NATURAL RELIGION. WHEN THE GENTILES, WHICH HAVE NOT THE LAW, DO BY NATURE MEAN THE investigation of the essential character of human nature naturally brings up a very interesting inquiry as to the relation of the heathen to God and his law. What elements of his nature constitute man a religious being, put him in a state of probation, enable him to know God's will, to comply with that will, and thus attain the highest end of his being? All who believe in religion at all, believe that every human being is created for immortality, is made capable of happiness from having done right, and is exposed to suffering from the consciousness of having done wrong. The integrity and justice of the Divine government demand, that beings who are created under such a responsibility should have all those powers and capacities which are necessary to fit them for a state of probation, and, moreover, should know the responsibility upon which they are acting. It would be contradictory to the analogy of the present life to suppose otherwise. Man has been furnished with precisely those powers which are necessary to his well-being here. He has intellect to understand, ingenuity to contrive, and hands and strength to labor. These things are precisely proportioned to the capacities of the earth on which he is to labor, the materials and implements he is to use, and the wants he has to supply. No more is demanded of him in the present world than he has power to perform. If he is destined to an immortal existence, no reason can be given why an Almighty, Allwise, and Omnipotent Creator should not give him moral and spiritual capacities precisely commensurate with his destiny. If goodness is necessary to the eternal happiness of the soul, it is just as incredible that God should bring the soul into existence destitute of the capacity of attaining to goodness, as that he should have created man for a condition in which labor was necessary to his subsistence, and brought him into existence destitute of hands, or with such an indisposition and repugnance to labor, that he would rather starve and die than submit to it. It follows from this, that religious capacities must be coextensive with the human race; in other words, that man must be constitutionally a religious being, that he must, by his original powers, know enough of God and duty to place him in a state of fair moral probation. There must, of course, be such a thing as natural religion, in contradistinction to revealed, and the difference between them must be, not in kind, but in degree. Revelation can be nothing else than the same things made known with greater clearness and certainty, which are discovered by the light of nature. If you deny this, and affirm that a miraculous revelation is indispensable to fit the soul for a happy immortality, then you affirm that the Almighty has created ninety-nine hundredths of the human race in a condition in which it is impossible for them to attain the highest end of their being, a supposition which is wholly incredible. It is the purpose of this discourse to ascertain what is the sum and substance of natural religion, or, what would perhaps be a more accurate expression, of natural revelation, as it is what is made known to us, through the powers and operations of our own minds and the phenomena of the universe, of God, of our relation to him, of our duty and destiny. God is revealed to us by our reason. Revelation does not profess to discover this truth, but takes it for granted, as known to man by the powers of reason. This belief must, of course, be coextensive with reason, that is, universal. The belief of savages in the existence of a power above nature is more vivid than that of the civilized man. Atheism is a state of mind of which he is in no danger. He is disposed to believe too much rather than too little; to multiply gods, rather than believe in none. But, in order to conduct our discussion with more clearness and conclusiveness, it will be necessary to define more accurately what we mean by the term reason. It is one of the most indefinite of words, because it is used in such a variety of senses. In its widest sense, it means that combination of moral, intellectual, and religious capacities, which we possess over and above the most perfect of the animal creation. It is sometimes applied to the intellectual faculties by which we distinguish truth from falsehood, and ascertain what is, and what is not; what is possible, and what is impossible; what is probable, and what improbable. In this sense it is used in contradistinction to the moral faculty, whose province it is to distinguish right from wrong, good from evil, and the various measures and conditions of guilt and desert. It is used in another sense, still more confined, for the process of reasoning, or a verbal statement of the process by which the mind arrives at a given conviction. This distinction between reason and reasoning is particularly important in our present inquiry. The mind may arrive at a conviction in the twinkling of an eye, which it would require an hour, perhaps, to trace and develop in words, and then the process would be but imperfectly described. Language, at best, is but an imperfect instrument of describing intellectual operations, the intellectual powers so run and are so shaded into each other, and are so blended together, and are, moreover, so instantaneous in their action. The mind arrives at results without being itself conscious of the steps of its progress. Some of the wisest and most judicious men that have ever lived, have been utterly unable to state to another the reasons of their conduct, or the grounds of their opinions. And the difference between a cultivated and an uncultivated mind is not so much in the quantity of reason which they possess, or the truths which that reason reveals, which underlie all life and are the basis of all action, as in the power of detecting and explaining the process by which reason makes those truths known. Those powers which constitute the reason of mankind make known to every human being, as soon as they begin to operate, the existence of God, that is, of a Creator and Governor of the universe. This |