therefore only morally good, because they are done in obedience to the will of God;-in hope of the rewards which He can bestow, or in terror of the vengeance which He can inflict;—we by no means express the whole of the belief on such subjects, which resides in the minds of the most humbly pious men. For certainly such persons would not maintain, if the tenet were clearly brought before their understanding, that we obey our Divine Master, merely and solely as a master, without respect to his glorious moral attributes of justice and holiness. They would think it a monstrous and intolerable saying, if any one were to teach that we are to obey God out of the mere impulses of hope and fear, without love of his laws and admiration of his perfections. They would look with consternation at the supposition of an obedience such as that which the slave, untouched by affection or esteem, pays to the master who menaces or indulges him. They would pray that such obedience may be far from them. They would exclaim, that it is an obedience fit only for the reprobate spirits who believe and tremble ;an obedience such as might be rendered by misguided heathens, imagining the principle of evil to have the empire of the universe.

Thus it is certain, that even they who would

most earnestly insist upon obedience to God as a main element of morality, do not really intend, if they are compelled to unravel their thoughts, that obedience alone, irrespective of the character of that power to which it is rendered, can invest actions with a moral beauty or goodness. To do the will of God, it may be truly taught, is the sum and substance of our duties; but to complete this teaching, there must be added that other truth, that God is a heavenly Master and Lawgiver, of whom we know that He is holy, just, and true;— that all his ways are righteous and all his commandments pure. Without this fundamental persuasion of the perfect nature of God and of his laws, it would not be in our power, as reasonable creatures, to see aught of right or good, in the most exact and undeviating conformity to his will.

Thus the opinion which makes the goodness of our actions depend upon their being done in obedience to the Divine will, is consistent with itself, and in harmony with the belief of pious minds, only when we combine it with the conviction, that in God are all justice and truth, righteousness and holiness. And thus, such an opinion does not negative, but on the contrary implies, that we have already ideas of those moral perfections which we thus ascribe to our Almighty Governor. As moral creatures,

we look up to him as our supreme Judge, because we look up to him also as just and pure.

Nor has the course of the thoughts of holy men, the servants of God in all times, been any other than this. "He hath appointed," St Paul told the Athenians *, "a day in which he will judge the world." But is this all? Is this to be an arbitrary judgment, where good and evil will depend on positive command alone?-By no means; "He hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness." To the same effect speak the teachers under the old dispensation. "Let him that glorieth," says the prophet †, "glory in this; that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord, which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth." And this strain breathes so perpetually through all the books of the sacred Scriptures, that to accumulate passages would be but to reiterate what the memories of all Christians can at once supply.

And thus the rule which directs us to avoid all wickedness and unrighteousness for its own sake, and that which enjoins us to avoid all which God prohibits and punishes, are in the most perfect

*Acts xvii. 31.

† Jer. ix. 24.

harmony and agreement. They never confuse us by their diverse injunctions; but whatever one condemns, the other also forbids. The most pure and exalted views of our duty which can be drawn from the indications of our moral faculties, are confirmed, extended, purified, by the commands. of a heavenly Master; and sanctioned, strengthened, armed with irresistible weight, by the promises and threatenings of a Judge of the quick and dead. The still small voice within, and the majestic announcement of a judgment to come, ever direct us to the same path of safety, hope, and joy. There is no strife between the law of righteousness and the law of God, because God is a righteous God. And thus what we have to say on the behalf of the views already presented, in answer to such difficulties as have been suggested, is, like the argument of Elihu in the text, that "we ascribe righteousness to our Maker."

But we may go further. How is it that there is this constant and universal concordance between the commands of God and the precepts of the most enlightened reason? How do we come to know that our Master, Governor, and Judge, is righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works? We have already, in a former discourse, attempted to explain that we are led to this con

ways

viction by the moral faculties which God has given us. Our consciences, which tell us that there is a distinction of just and unjust, of pure and impure;-our hearts, which conceive and aspire to a being of more perfect holiness than man's and works can realize ;-prepare and urge us to ascribe to the Creator of the world, to the Maker of us and of our faculties, all moral perfection. They compel us to look upon Him as the Guardian of the moral law, no less than the Upholder of the physical laws of nature. We believe that he will make the law of right the actual rule of the moral world, because we cannot conceive it possible, that such a law should exist, and should nevertheless be crushed in pieces and trampled under foot by the wild and unclean passions of man. Our belief that God will punish the disobedient and evil-doer, is closely intertwined with, or rather is identical with, our belief that the disobedient ever is the evil-doer. And that evil shall not be the permanent and final law of the universe, our reason earnestly persuades us, even before the voice of heaven confirms her anticipations. And thus the thoughts by which we are led to the conviction of a Judge of the world, executing vengeance on those who violate his commands, spring from the same point with those