A life which is irreproachable before the world, which is warmed by all the kindly affections and elevated by a steadfast adherence to noble principles, is still an irreligious and godless one, if its acts are not sanctified by this reference to the Supreme Will. This is but a definition of religion, the meaning of which, as shown by its etymology and its universal acceptance, is to religate, or to bind anew, to the performance of duty, by offering an additional motive and guide; and this meaning constitutes the only possible distinction between religion and mere morality. In the family, a rule obligatory in itself acquires a new claim to observance from the command or wish of a parent, the motive of obedience and love being thus added to our almost involuntary homage to conscience. So, in the great human family, the primal duties of life-truthfulness, temperance, justice, and charity— become alike more awful and engaging, I do not say more binding, because the performance of them is the declared will of our Heavenly Father.

Observe, then, that the whole practice of religion depends upon our knowledge of this fact, that God has commanded us to do, or to abstain from doing, certain acts. It matters not how this knowledge is obtained, whether by direct revelation, or by inferring the will of the Creator from the character and tendency of his works. In either case, the light of nature, or a Divinely appointed messenger, or a miracle, announces to us a solemn, an awful reality,—that the moral law is His law, and transgression of it is violation of His command. I may even infer the fact only from my instinctive perception of the duty; still, the inference is one that leads to a fact, and not to an abstract principle. I argue, not from one general law to another, but from a given effect to a particular cause; not from one rule enforced by conscience to another rule enjoined by the Almighty, but from the fact that conscience speaks at all to another fact that God also speaks, and that the voice of conscience is also the voice of God.

These views, I am well aware, are directly opposed to a theory now very popular with a certain class of minds, which

tends, first, to identify revealed with natural religion, and next, to merge both in the practice of a sublime but rather indefinite morality. A pure life is held up as the only true criterion of a religious character, and then as the only desirable object of attainment. Especially has this disposition been manifested when treating of the nature and functions of conscience; so that many earnest but injudicious persons have now become quite as fanatical, quite as bigoted, irrational, and intolerant, in regard to moral principle, as were formerly the wildest sect of the Puritans in respect to their religious faith. Reverence of their own nature seems to them quite as just and proper as reverence of the Deity, and a glowing though vague conception of virtue takes the place of religion as a guide of life. Nay, a sort of ecstatic contemplation of the mere ideas of duty and right has, with some, usurped the place of a practical manifestation of these ideas in outward conduct; and thus a species of Antinomianism has been established on ethical grounds, quite as absurd and dangerous as the same theory is when nominally resting on Scripture. If these vagaries must exist, let them, at any rate, appear in their true character, and not borrow the name and garb of the faith which they dishonor. Religion is indeed an affair of the heart and the life; but a belief in religion is an affair of the intellect. Impulses cannot take the place of convictions, nor can morality itself find anywhere a sure and permanent support except in a recognition of its dictates as the commands of God.

LECTURE III.

THE IDEA OF SELF, OR PERSONAL EXISTENCE.

THE object of my last Lecture was to draw a dividing line between the provinces of Philosophy and Religion; to show that the one was occupied with abstractions, and the other with realities; and, accordingly, that they rested upon different species of evidence, and any confusion of the two was likely to be injurious to both. During the reign of Scholasticism, says Mr. Whewell, "it was held, without any regulating principle, that the Philosophy which had been bequeathed to the world by the great geniuses of heathen antiquity, and the Philosophy which was deduced from and implied by the revelations made by God to man, must be identical; and therefore that Theology is the only true Philosophy." We do but invert this error in our own day, when the opinion of many seems to tend towards the conclusion, if indeed it be not openly avowed, that Philosophy is the only true Theology. Against this conclusion, I endeavoured to show, by a very brief review of the questions that are chiefly considered by metaphysicians and by religious inquirers, that they differed as widely from each other as logic from history, so that reasoning from one to the other was not merely feeble and unsatisfactory, but irrational and absurd. The great truths of Religion are the being of a God, the moral government of the world, the immortality of the soul, and the promulgation of certain duties as directly enjoined by the authority of God. These truths, I reminded you, for no proof of a self-evident proposition is

needed or possible, are matters of fact, quite as much so as the existence, at some antecedent time, of a certain political community upon this earth, the authority of its first magistrate, and the enactment of laws by its legislature; that is, we rely upon sensible evidence, the testimony of others, and upon reasoning from effects to causes, the usual media of physical and historical inquiry,- for establishing our belief in their reality.

This division is not made because of the superior sacredness of religion, but simply to avoid confusion of terms and illogical conclusions. We are not entitled to claim any thing for theology beyond what is proved; and to repudiate any kind of reasoning simply on the ground of the irreverence of its application to such a theme, or even of the pernicious results to which it leads, would be an assumption alike unreasonable and unfair. I take nothing for granted. The inquiry, hitherto, has related solely to the logic or method of the investigation;- not to the validity of particular arguments used for a special purpose, but to the proper classification of all arguments, and to the explanation of the terms which must be used in the reasoning. Thus, I have not yet sought to prove the being of a God, but to show what is the meaning of the question, whether God exists. The idea of religion, also, not its verity, has been assumed according to the common understanding of men, in order that we may know the nature of the problem before us, and not pursue an aimless discussion, or end in conclusions of no practical importance.

Considering these preliminaries as established, we approach now the body of the subject, and attempt to prove the particular facts in the case, and to free them from the metaphysical speculations and difficulties by which they have been encumbered. In seeking to know the relation of God to man, we must begin by an investigation, to some extent, of human nature itself, as our conclusions upon this point cannot fail to affect every part of the inquiry. What are we, considered as subjects of the Divine law, and what light is thrown by our physical constitution upon the purpose or end for which we began to exist? or is it likely that there was no purpose in the case, but that our creation was as

objectless as the gambols of an infant, - a mere freak in the disposition of matter? The common belief, that man is a complex being, made up of body and soul, has been disturbed by strange doubts respecting the possibility of any immaterial existence, and by arguments which go to destroy our confidence even in our personal identity, and consequently in our continuous responsibility to any authority. I do not say, that a solution of all these doubts is absolutely necessary before the great truths of religion can be established. Dr. Priestley was a materialist, yet he believed in the immortality of man; he was a necessarian, but he held to human accountability; and few who are familiar with his theological writings will deny that he was even a profoundly religious person, whatever may have been his errors in scientific, political, or theological speculation. Still, it was for him to vindicate his own consistency; in ordinary minds, if such opinions are not immediately destructive of all religious belief, they certainly tend to darken and perplex it, so that a consideration of them cannot properly be omitted here. The principles already laid down do not permit us to waive the discussion as metaphysical, and therefore out of place; for the point of inquiry is a fact, the continued, identical, conscious existence of a human being, his personality, the reality of a man to himself. Metaphysical skepticism has gone so far, that, before undertaking to establish the existence of a God, we are called upon to prove our own existence. In considering the argument upon this head, lest I should be accused of breaking my own rules, let me remind you that the testimony of consciousness has been admitted to be as legitimate a source of knowledge in physical inquiry as the evidence of the senses themselves.

In the attempt to disprove the doctrine of materialism, it has been usual to adopt the argument to which I briefly alluded in a former Lecture ; · -to say that mind is the seat or subject of certain phenomena which are entirely distinct from another class of attributes or qualities which inhere in matter. What that substance is, in either case, we cannot determine, for our knowledge both of mind and matter is merely relative. As "we know the