the arithmetical faculty, as to mingle a feeling of hesitation and doubt in that science.

So the everlasting law of righteousness, morality, the perfection and end of all science, admits not of indecision and uncertainty, but leads from one conclusion to another, with the infallible precision of geometry and arithmetic, determining only what is absolutely and irrefragably right, or determining nothing. The first point of all real knowledge is, when you know nothing, to know that you know nothing, and that point gained, your vessel is at least righted for fair sailing, whatever port she's bound for. Morality therefore is more opposed in nature to that indistinctiveness of the mind's action, and that surrender of the mind's inherent independence, to the dictation of others, which constitutes religion, than to all other vices. Because, as you now perceive, morality and religion are essentially, and in principle, the absolute negation and contrariety of each other, and like day and night, can only exist, the one when the other is out of existence.

Following therefore the principles of our moral science, from the blended perfection of justice in all his actions, and truth in all his communications, and that justice and truth sustained by fortitude of character, the wise and good man will exhibit to the world his crowning and distinguishing quality of SINCERITY.

That noble virtue, which I now undertake to commend to you, by such certain demonstrations of its excellence, as shall not leave it to your choice, whether you shall wish to be of such a character or not, nor borrow your admiration from your favour, but shall make you in love with sincerity; which, establishing its claims upon you in the clearest convictions of your understandings, shall command the affections and mould the heart itself to its impressions.

You will observe that our science has not arranged the virtue of sincerity, according to the theological method, in the basement as previously existing, and competent to sustain the virtues of fortitude, justice, and truth; but as the capital of the great pillar sustained by those virtues, resulting from them, and never to be looked for, and never to be found, where they are wanting.

A sincere fool, a sincerely ignorant, or a sincerely wicked man, are incongruities of the conceit, to which the necessarily clear -and precise notions which constitute the moral science, are abhorrent, 'tis out of nature, there never were such, there never Can be such characters.

Low cunning, pitiful artifice, and contriving mystery, are hecessarily the characteristics of ignorance and impotence; and Surely, it is not any degree of obstinacy or shamelessness, with which such characteristics may be exhibited, that should be mistaken for their apology, or give to the transparent dunce, whom we see through and through to be a dunce, the grace of a

virtue, which he not only does not possess, but has not the capacity of wishing to possess.

And if we are convinced that sincerity is not to be looked for, as a quality that can co-exist with a state of ignorance and stupidity; still less shall we ascribe its merit to the obstinate resolution or determined hardihood of the bravo or the martyr, to the man who suffers, or who causes suffering in the prosecution of the purposes of his ambition, or of his fanaticism.

But as in our study of the quality of moral fortitude, which is the basis and substratum upon which all the excellences which we call virtues, take their rise; we clearly distinguished that quality, not merely from the physical diathesis that results from the felicity of our anatomical organization, but also, from all affinity to any character of mind that could degenerate into a brute obstinacy or unyielding inflexibility. So, in the study of this quality of sincerity, which is the key-stone of the noble arch of virtues, at once crowning and locking them altogether in one glorions cycloid, we must learn to distinguish it from any kind of quality which can possibly find its place in an uncultivated understanding, or in a hard and unfeeling heart. It is a solecism in language, to speak of sincerity in error, or in ignorance. The state of ignorance and error, as it cannot but result from a perturbed, a dark, and a bewildered mind, is therefore, in nature utterly incompatible with that clear perception of what is right, that ardent love of what is right the moment it is perceived, and that spontaneous coming forth of the soul, to embrace that which it loves, which makes up the only and complete definition of sincerity. 'Tis of the essential nature of sincerity therefore to destroy ignorance and error, how great soever they may seem to be, and to work out its way through all obstructions and impediments, and to wed itself to the intelligence that it delights in, sole objects of its pure and generous passion.

"So the pure limpid stream when foul with stains
Of rushing torrents and descending rains,
Works itself clear, and as it runs refines,
'Till by degrees the floating mirror shines,
Reflects each flow'r on its bright bank that grows,
And a new heaven in its clear bosom shows."

ADDISON'S Cato.

Give us but the quality of sincerity of heart in any man, and there at once have you that Promethean fire in the chambers of the mind, whose nature is to light up a general illumination there, or to go out for ever. And can we then suppose the existence of one single spark of such a quality, or entertain a hope that the breath of Reason shall kindle it into brightness, where the miasmata of religion, and the cold and blasting fogs of superstition, poison and wither all wholesome things of nature,

and give growth alone to the dark cypress, the speckled hemlock, and the deadly night-shade?

Sincerity is virtue, and therefore like all other virtues, is nothing more nor less than a cultivated reason, the definition therefore excludes this virtue, as it does all others, from any connection with a system of which reason is not the supreme principle. But this virtue of sincerity, is more emphatically cut off from all coexistence or connection with what are called religious impressions, than any other: because it is more directly than any other pitted against the influence and operation of those impressions, and its nature more directly contrary, and more diametrically opposed to them. Which an easy analysis of the state of mind in the very sincere man, compared with an analysis of the state of mind in a very religious man, as each of them would recognise his faithful likeness in it, will clearly demonstrate. Look then upon this picture and on that. The very religious man, even as he would describe himself to you, whenever he feels a doubt rise upin his mind, as all religious men have their doubts, (and God knows, not without cause enough) does all he can to suppress that doubt, and considers it as a suggestion of the black prince; and if in some unlucky hour, his curiosity should so have overcome his faith as to lead him to some place where they don't exactly deal in baby's meat, nor feed the whiskered infants with the sincere lolipop of the gospel, as soon as he makes the fatal discovery, he makes his retreat, for fear the devil should come and fetch him. Yet all this is compatible with the profoundest humility of heart, the most fervent piety, the deepest sense of the infirmity and weakness of human reason, an earnest affection for the souls of men, and an ardent desire for the glory of God. All which virtues, (not to say any thing in their disparagement) are of no more use to a man, than pen and ink to a horse.

The very sincere man, on the contrary, by the necessary operation of his sincerity upon the very first emotions of a doubt in his mind, awakens to the business to which that doubt summons him, inquiry, research, and investigation. To suppress a doubt is treason against the majesty of Truth.

To dissemble, to cheat, to lie, to forswear, and every sordid villainy might be reconciled to the mind that could once be reconciled to suppress the struggle of its own honest doubtings. Truth, like Cato's daughter, must not want to have her purity impeached. It must be absolutely unimpeachable-suspicion is enough, and more than enough-to sincerity, its very presumptions are evidence. The door that shuts out the officer, shuts in the thief:-he's there! How then, can the virtue of sincerity exist, or be conceived to exist, in alliance with religion, whose discipline is in every point of its requisition, not excepting one, in diametrical forbiddance of every sentiment which sincerity would prompt, of every act to which sincerity would lead? The

sentiment of religion, (I mean of all religions, for there is not a pin to choose between any one or any other of them,) is to controul, coerce, and restrain the mind, and its characteristic mandate is " Thus far shall thou go, but no further”—and that thus far is never much above two inches before the nose.

The sentiment of sincerity gives to the mind its illimitable. range, and knows no forbiddance in height or depth, which its conjecture can penetrate, or its research explore.

The discipline of religion, (that is alike of all religions,) as it necessarily requires a conformity of expression in all its votaries, and demands nothing less than the same and the highest degree of professed assent to propositions which have different degrees of claim on that assent, necessarily, habituates the mind to practices of dissimulation.

The discipline of sincerity is to make the expression sole daughter of the heart-to feel first, and to speak only as we feel. For when once the mind has departed, though in never so small a degree, from the observance of truth, and consecrated to itself the allowance of that departure, there is no scale of latitude and longitude in the vast inane of falsehood and dissimulation, to measure its aberration, or to set a limit to its wandering.

The conscience which has once vaulted over a falsehood no bigger than a mole-hill, in its path, is springy enough to jump at Dhawallagiri, There is no shade of difference in moral guilt between uttering as truth that which you don't absolutely know to be so, and uttering what you know to be a falsehood. So that the believer is at least first cousin to the liar, an' suppose his belief to be every thing that he believes it to be.

The simplicity of an unsophisticated mind will naturally indispose a man to suspect in another, a dishonesty of which he himself would be incapable: and a simple mind is naturally most easily imposed on: but simplicity is not sincerity. The sincere man is the hardest in the world to be imposed on; and that, for no other reason, than because he can by no possibility be brought to lend a hand to the practising upon himself.

Our only danger of mistake, lies in confounding simplicity with sincerity, or giving the name of this great and ingenuous quality of mind to the ardour and impetuosity with which young enthusiasts have been observed at first to embrace the tenets o their sect, and apparently, or perhaps really, to believe them. But sincerity is not ardent: it is not impetuous. It is discovered rather by the length to which it will go, and the strength with which it will continue to go, than the haste with which it sets out on its journey. Like Truth, of which it is the daughter, the effect, and the most natural expression, it never puts a man in a passion.

The irresistible admiration which the mere appearance of it conquers even from the hearts of the most false and perfidious

of men, is an involuntary homage, wrung from their sense of the presence of a degree of nobility which was never found in any weak man, nor ever graced a bad one.

"Tis the volute of the Ionian capital, that will fit on nothing but its own fair and perfectly proportioned shaft. It is the curl on Beauty's forehead, where a thousand Loves reign in the native divinity of their excellence, and make Barbarity itself adore them.

"No radiant pearl that crested Fortune wears,

No gem that twinkling hangs from Beauty's ears,
Not the bright stars that night's blue arch adorn,
Nor rising suns that gild the vernal morn,
Shine with such lustre."

Is it possible then, for a moment, that we can attribute its glories to the mere impetuosity of heart, or simplicity of understanding, with which the passionate votary of superstition, prosecutes the darling scheme of his vanity, or his self-will? or to the shallow-hearted fools whose only appearance of sincerity results from their lack of wit enough to hide from the world, that they are just as shallow as they seem to be?

Simplicity, and that remorseless inflexibility of character which led martyrs to the stake for their religion, that is to say, for nothing at all; and which enables a man to maintain the consistent obstinacy of a bad heart; bad from the beginning, and so bad all through; is the result of the utmost conceivable degree of weakness of understanding.

Sincerity is the noblest expression of the highest degree of strength of understanding, of which the mind in which it is found, is capable. It is the acmè of perfection, when what is clearly understood and distinctly arranged in the mind, finds it fair and distinct expression in communication; and all is clear without, because all is clear within.

Some little difference this, I trow which would you trace it further, you shall have but to follow its developement to the finale of the drama of human character. The universal issue is, that the merely simple-hearted begin with being dupes, and end with being knaves; first practised upon by others, afterwards revenging their dishonour by going into the trade themselves. The violence, or moral suicide, which the mind inflicts on itself when it first strangles the infant suspicion that whispers that "there's something rotten in the state of Denmark," deafens it against the loudest thunders of subsequent demonstration and evidence. Men first suspect the lie, and not acting as sincerity would prompt upon that suspicion, the faculty of sincerity leaves the mind for ever. The next stage is to endure the lie. The next to that is to shake hands with it. The line of distinction between the moral guilt of conniving at imposture, and practising it, is too nice to catch the observance of a mind that has once blinked the eyesight of it own convictions.