words, when it is such as, with perfectly good intentions, under the guidance of an enlightened and well-informed understanding, he would have performed. An action is said to be relatively right, when the intentions of the agent are sincerely good, whether his conduct be suitable to his circumstances or not. According to these definitions, it is evident, that an action may be right in one sense, and wrong in another; and it is na less evident, that it is the relative rectitude alone of an action, which determines the moral desert of the agent in the sight of God and of his own conscience."

Conscience gives us the conception of duty, or feeling of obligation, but does not apply this feeling to outward conduct. Its sphere of action is wholly internal, motives and intentions being its only subjects; what course of conduct will best carry out these intentions, is a question, not for the moral faculty, but for the intellect, to answer; and the uninformed or perverted understanding may answer it very ill. Thus, conscience approves and enjoins justice, benevolence, veracity, which is a form of justice, and patriotism, which is a department of benevolence; it even pronounces upon the relative claims of these virtues to observance, though not so distinctly, affirming that justice is of higher obligation than benevolence. But what conduct, what outward acts, will be truly just, or truly benevolent, or whether a patriotic intention will justify cunning words or harsh deeds, are doubts of which it furnishes no solution. Reason must here be our guide. The train of consequences, some of them very remote, which every action carries with it, must be foreseen and estimated, a work for the understanding, before these ques

tions can be answered. Our moral sense, which is infallible in its sphere, only declares that an action is just to him who intends it for justice; and to him who thinks a certain deed is benevolent, to him it shall be accounted for benevolence, Apply these principles to history, and to our common observation of mankind, and much of what we are accustomed to consider as evidence of the depravity and wickedness of the human race disappears altogether; nay, if fully considered, it affords proof of >

the existence of high virtues among men, for the action, in the case considered, becomes not only innocent, but meritorious.

This distinction illustrated. - Take war, for instance. To one who reads history in a proper spirit, there is probably nothing so painful as the almost continuous record which it affords of the bloodshed, misery, and corruption caused by this brutal and detestable practice. War is, indeed, "the garment of vengeance with which the Deity arrays himself, when he comes forth to punish the inhabitants of the earth.” Looking at it from a distance, in the light of a calm philosophy, no less than of a pure morality, we are tempted to believe that it must be waged by demons rather than by men, and that its motives are as bad as its consequences are afflicting. The language of Robert Hall seems hardly exaggerated, when he says, that "the plague of a widely extended war possesses, in fact, a sort of omnipresence, by which it makes itself everywhere felt; for while it gives up myriads to slaughter in one part of the globe, it is busily employed in scattering over countries exempt from its immediate desolations the seeds of famine, pestilence, and death. . . ... . While the philanthropist is devising means to mitigate the evils and augment the happiness of the world, a fellow-worker together with God, in exploring and giving effect to the benevolent tendencies of nature, the warrior is revolving, in the gloomy recesses of his capacious mind, plans of future devastation and ruin. Prisons crowded with captives, cities emptied of their inhabitants, fields desolate and waste, are among his proudest trophies. The fabric of his fame is cemented with tears and blood; and if his name is wafted to the ends of the earth, it is in the shrill cry of suffering humanity, in the curses and imprecations of those whom his sword has reduced to despair."

The picture is indeed a terrible one, though but few will think it is overdrawn. Yet the truth, I suppose, unquestionably is, that almost every person concerned in war, whether an originator of the strife or an actor in it, is either actuated, or, what amounts to the same thing in the light in which we are now viewing the matter, believes himself to be actuated, by the highest and holiest

motives. The statesman thinks that the welfare and honor of his country are at stake, and that it is his stern duty to stifle his feelings of compassion for the multitude, and to punish aggression, arrogance, and injustice, even at the expense of a long and bloody conflict. The military chieftain feels that the safety and honor of his troops depend upon his courage and conduct, and that he acts under an awful responsibility to the rightful government of his country, which has confided this awful mission to his hands; it may be, that he goes to a hopeless contest, and then the feelings which support the martyr at the stake are hardly superior to his. Hence the strange contradiction, as it seems, of which history affords more than one instance, that a commander, on the morning after he had achieved a great victory, should be found weeping like a child over the spectacle that the field afforded of suffering and death which his own hand had caused. Lord Collingwood was one of the most highminded, pure, affectionate, and strictly moral men of whom the British peerage can boast; yet this man commanded the ship which fired the first English gun in the sanguinary naval conflict of Trafalgar. The common soldier is ignorant and brutal, most likely; but he, too, in the moment of action, has learned to suppress all other feelings at the mandate of duty, the duty on which every thing then depends, that of implicit submission to his superiors. It would be a strange paradox to say, that a camp is a nursery of lofty and stern virtues; yet it certainly does foster a chivalrous exaltation of feeling, which reason, indeed, condemns, as an impure mixture of false sentiment with an austere regard for duty, but which has so much of the moral element in it, that it cannot be harshly reprobated.

I am not palliating the evils of war; God forbid that I should say one word, to make any human being look upon the practice of it with less horror and detestation than he now feels! I am only suggesting some reasons why it should not make us think so badly of our fellow beings, as to doubt whether they are under the moral government of God. If the distinctions here suggested do not tend at all to abate the severity of our condemnation of immoral practices, but only to render our feelings more

charitable and just towards those who are engaged in them, they may well be kept in mind even by the professed philanthropists. The spirit of our religion certainly requires us to hate sin, but holds up the sinner to us as an object of compassion, kindness, and love.

Conclusions respecting the moral government of God. I have not intended in this chapter even to approach the great problem of the origin of evil; that remains for subsequent consideration. I have only wished to show, that, in the moral constitution of man, there is the plainest proof, not only that we live under the immediate government of God, but that this government is effectual, the results produced being commensurate with the means employed. Not only is the will of God made known to us, at every moment of our lives, as the absolute rule of our conduct, the supreme law; but the announcement of this law is made compatible with human freedom, and the law itself is practically recognized and observed, to a greater or less extent, by every human being. Human government, the direction and control of organized societies of men, rest upon this Divine government, and would not be practicable without it. Property, as we have seen, is supported in the same manner. God, promulgated through the conscience, and acknowledged both by the savage and by civilized man as supreme, exerts an influence that no man can measure over the life of every individual; it forms the basis of those institutions which are essential to the very existence of society; it sways the councils of nations; it governs the course of human affairs.

The law of

And the means by which these great ends are accomplished - especially the manner in which we are perpetually reminded of the Divine command, as if by a voice from heaven, and the made of reconciling liberty with law -are as beautiful instances of contrivance, they furnish quite as striking indications of Divine wisdom and goodness, as any which the material universe affords.

CHAPTER V.

THE CONTENTS OF THE MORAL LAW A REVELATION OF THE CHARACTER OF THE DEITY: THE ENFORCEMENT OF THE MORAL LAW.

Summary of the last chapter.-I attempted to prove, in the last chapter, that the moral constitution of man affords direct and irrefragable evidence, that he is under the constant and immediate government of God. That the pleasures and pains which we experience in this life, and which proceed from regular and determinable causes, and therefore may be foreseen by us, may properly be regarded as rewards and punishments, indicating to us the will of the Deity that we should perform certain actions and abstain from others, is another argument tending to the same conclusion; but it does not seem to me so complete and satisfactory as the former one. Conscience announces to us a law of absolute authority for the guidance of our hearts and lives; its monitions are frequent, if not incessant, and the obligation which it imposes is recognized, whether we will or no, to be supreme. At the same time, it does not compel or force obedience, so that the liberty of the will is not infringed, but government is made compatible with freedom. This idea of pure and absolute obligation, or the sense of duty as such, as distinguished from compulsion on the one hand, and from a perfectly unregulated and ungoverned will on the other, is one which the intellect alone could never frame, and it does away with the apparent contradiction between liberty and law. Here, I observed, is contrivance, the indication of purpose, in the moral nature of man, just as visible as in the curious physical apparatus by which we see, and just as clearly indicative of the intention of the Creator. The law thus revealed to us is His law who reveals it. If the fashioning of our bodies—