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of benevolence, and of universal charity," and declare that they would preserve Christianity, for the sake of its moral influence on the common people..

276. The morals of the Scriptures embrace all that was really good in the ethics of heathen sages, and in the dictates of natural religion; and reënact them with greater clearness and authority. The scattered fragments of moral truth, which original revelation, or the moral nature of man, or the labor and study of philosophers have dispersed up and down in the world, are found to be comprehended in the Bible.

277. There is a completeness in the Bible code of precepts, found nowhere else. They insist on every virtue and duty for which man was originally formed; and forbid every vice and sin contrary to his real relations and obligations. There is nothing omitted of the duties which he owes to himself, to his neighbor, and to Almighty God; nor, as in heathen and Mohammedan systems, is there anything impure or debasing intermixed with its code.

278. The STANDARD OF DUTY contained in the sacred scriptures, is embodied in these words :- "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment; and the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." When Jesus Christ uttered these memorable words, he raised the true and intelligible standard of morals, which places even a child in a Christian country far above, in this respect, the greatest moral philosophers of the ancient or modern world.

279. It follows from this, that the Christian code omits many false virtues of heathenism, and insists on many real ones-unknown to it.

Christianity rejects from its catalogue of virtues, vanity, pride, the love of fame, jealousy of honor, resentment, revenge, hatred of enemies, contempt of the low and miserable, self-confidence, apathy under suffering, and patriotism in the sense of pushing conquest and upholding the interests of one nation to the hatred and injury of others.

Christianity inserts humility, meekness, the forgiveness of personal injuries, self-denial, abstraction of heart from earthly things, sympathy with the poor and mean, renunF

ciation of confidence in self, cheerful resignation under : affliction.

280. The Christian code requires an abstinence from the proximate causes of evil, and demands what is right in motive and intention, as well as in the overt act.

Human laws chiefly deal with the manifest action, when capable of proof. They argue back very feebly to the intention, which they still do aim at reaching as they can. The divine law lays the restraint upon the intention, the first element of the moral action of man; it considers nothing to be virtuous, unless the motive, as well as the - material action, be right.

281. Christian morality regards all outward forms of devotion and piety as means to a higher end, and as only acceptable to God when connected with that higher end. In this it stands opposed to all false religions, which invariably connive at the substitution of ceremonies and ablutions, for moral duty.

282. The Christian morals go to form a particular sort of character, of such excellence as no other system of ethics ever aimed at.

They go to form a character perfectly attainable, and yet altogether new and lovely; they tend to form a temper and conduct so excellent and praiseworthy, and yet so unknown to heathen moralists, as to stamp upon Christianity the seal of its heavenly origin.

283. The sacred writers placed duty upon its proper basis, the principle of piety, a sacred regard to the will of God; whereas other moralists found it upon the deductions of reason, the fitness of things, and views of private and public good. Separated from piety, morality is merely a matter of decorum or of interest: but in connection with it, morality is the homage of creatures to their Creator.

284. The peculiar excellence of the moral precepts of Scripture, furnishes a convincing argument to prove their divine origin.

The argument is thus clearly presented by Professor Dick:

:

The Christian law is perfect: it embraces all the duties of man, and lays the foundation of the highest attainments in virtue; and were it universally obeyed, the innocence of the golden age would be revived, and the earth would

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be an unvaried scene of peace and good-will. Now, let it be observed by whom this law was given to the world. It was never alleged that they were distinguished by eminence in intellectual vigor, by literary accomplishments, by metaphysical acumen, or by large experience of human life. The greater part of them, confessedly, could lay no claim to these qualifications. Yet they have delivered a code which far surpasses the most celebrated laws and precepts of the legislators and wise men of the heathen world.

To what cause can we ascribe their superiority? I. their wisdom was more than human, it must have been derived from a superhuman source. Since infidels will not admit this inference, let them substitute a better one.

Suppose it possible for the sacred writers to have invented this code of morality, would they have done so? Would impostors have labored to subject the world to a law so holy; a law which, in the first place, condemned themselves for presuming to use the name of God, with a design to deceive their fellow men? Would they who set out with a gross violation of truth and of charity, have been anxious to guard others against evil thoughts and contrivances? Would mer. who entertained no reverence for the Supreme Being, have placed him at the head of the system, and discovered a jealous care of his honor, a desire to make him the object of universal respect and love?

The precepts of the Bible are an irresistible proof that the Bible did not emanate from bad men: and good men would not have passed it on the world as divine, if it had originated from themselves. They might have presented it to the public as their view of a subject about which so many have delivered their sentiments; but they would have given it in such a form, and accompanied it with such declarations, as would have satisfied all that it was a work of their own.

275. What concessions have the most distinguished infidels published in reference to the morals taught in the sacred scriptures?

276. How will the morals of the Scriptures bear a comparison with the ethics of heathen sages?

277. Are we justified in asserting the completeness of the Bible code of precepts?

278. What sort of a standard of duty do the Scriptures hold up to men? 279. What inference is to be drawn from this alleged fact?

280. Does the Christian code of morals extend its requirements and prohibitions beyond the external act?

281. How does Christian morality regard all outward forms of devotion? 282. What sort of character do the Christian morals go to form?

283. How does the superior excellence of the Christian morals appear from the basis on which they are made to rest?

284. May we not found an argument for the truth of revealed religion upon its moral precepts, the peculiar excellence of which has now been demonstrated?

CHAPTER III.

THE MANNER IN WHICH OUR DUTY IS TAUGHT IN THE HOLY SCRIPTURES.

285. SOMETIMES the Scriptures enter into a detail of duties; but had they attempted to point out all the minutiæ of duty, they would have swelled to such a size as would have defeated their design, because few could have found leisure to peruse them, and still fewer would have been accurately acquainted with their multifarious

contents.

286. The sacred writers deliver their instructions in the

form of maxims, and of clear, decisive prohibitions or requirements, rather than in systematic treatises reasoned out in detail. And there is great advantage in such a course of instruction in our duty. It is brief and intelligible. The Ten Commandments, who cannot remember? The vindication of them, in the Sermon on the Mount, from the false glosses of the Jews, who cannot understand? The exposition of a right temper in the twelfth chapter of Romans, where is the heart that does not feel? The picture of charity, or love, in the thirteenth of the first of Corinthians, is familiar to a child. The maxims of the Book of Proverbs are in every mouth. Revelation, thus, does not reason as a philosopher, but commands as a lawgiver.

287. Revelation utters with sententious authority her brief determinations, as occasions require, in popular language, for the understanding of all; and leaves man to collect, as he can, her maxims into systems, or compare and illustrate them by the aid of sound reason and conscience.

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Human treatises on morals stop to define and prove every duty, to contrast it with its proximate defect and excess, and to reduce the whole to an elaborate system. Revelation takes for granted that man knows what temperance, chastity, fortitude, benevolence, mean, or may learn them from other sources, and contents herself with binding them upon the conscience. The consequence is, that a child at school, in a Christian country, knows more of the standard of morals, and the details of social virtue, than the most learned of the ancient sages.

288. The sacred writers set forth human duty by strong and affecting examples. This is peculiar to the writers of the Bible. All its precepts are illustrated and embodied in the historical parts. All the separate virtues, duties, graces, acts of abstinence and self-denial, effects of the Christian spirit, and of its principles carried out into habit and character, are set forth in the lives of Christ and of his apostles.

All the infirmities, and errors, and vices to be shunned, are exposed in the fearful punishments of guilty nations, in the destruction of the cities of the plain, in the deluge, in the captivity of Babylon, in the lives of wicked princes.

With this view also, the sins and falls of the true servants of God are held forth for our caution, with a fidelity unknown except in the inspired scriptures-the drunkenness of Noah, the incest of Lot, the falsehoods uttered by Abraham and Jacob, the irritated expressions of Moses, the sin, the gross and awful sin of David, the rashness of Josiah.

The attempts made by infidel writers to misrepresent the purport of some of these narratives are too absurd to be noticed. The tendency of the scriptural exposure of vice is to excite abhorrence; to which the plainness and brevity of its descriptions, and even the directness of the terms which it employs, greatly conduce. A few expressions have acquired an import, from the mere lapse of time since our English translation was made, not originally designed, and are instantly corrected by every intelligent reader.

289. The sacred writers furnish examples which hold forth the duties of parents and children, of masters and servants, of husbands and wives, of ministers, of missionaries, and of teachers of youth. They supply us also