world brings to our knowledge, of the objects, the properties and the laws of nature, that is to philosophical and scientific truth. The increase of knowledge is here evidently the increase of our power-our power of applying to our own use the stores which the author of nature has laid up in it for our benefit, and of averting from ourselves those inconveniencies to which he has wisely and benevolently made us subject, in order that the effort to avoid them may lead us to exert and cultivate our faculties. It is not, however, of truth in general but of religious truth that it is my present object to show, that he who loves his brethren must love it for its influence on their happiness. Can any one doubt that if it so much concerns us to have just ideas of those laws of nature which are nothing more than the rules which the wisdom of God has prescribed for the exercise of his power, it much more concerns us that we conceive justly of Him in whom these ener

gies reside, in whom we live and move and have our being, who made us what we are, and alone upholds us in existence? If we are so anxious to know thoroughly the properties of every one of those material bodies which surround us, and may have some trifling influence upon our happiness in the short time during which this world of matter is our dwelling place, can we think it a point of no moment, whether we have formed just conceptions of that infinite and eternal Spirit in whose power we shall continue, in whose mercy and favour we must place our hope of happiness, when all that now gratifies or offends our senses shall have returned to the state whence his word called it forth? If it be so important to us to form a right judgment of the character of our fellow creatures, in order to know what to imitate, and what to shun, in their conduct, to judge of the motives by which they are guided, and the behaviour which they are likely to pursue

towards us, is it possible that it should be indifferent to our happiness how we -conceive of Him, whose approbation it is the first object of our lives to gain, whose character must be the anchor of the soul, sure and stedfast, when every earthly support is taken away, 'in the knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, before whose face the spirits of the just made perfect are to dwell, deriving the blessedness of eternity from communion with him and contemplation of his perfections? Our religious opinions are the judgments which we form of the character, will and dispensations of God, the nature which he has given to his creatures, his conduct towards them and his designs concerning them; and if any one will maintain that it matters not whether we conceive of him as a being stern, vindictive and capricious, or one whose name and nature is love, he may also maintain that the most salutary food and the deadliest 'poison can be received with equal safety

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and pleasure into the animal system. There is nothing which calls forth the good affections of the heart more powerfully than true religion, nothing which more expands the affections and exalts the intellectual powers; but, as the corruption of the best things produces the worst, nothing sinks the human mind into a deeper abyss of degradation, filling the heart with despondency, terror and malignity, than false religion. Whether its errors arise from the imperfection of the light of nature, or from the corruption of revealed religion, it changes that which should be the joy, the consolation and the hope of man, into the source of gloom, of wretchedness and despair.

If such be the value of religious truth, and the mischief of religious error, there needs little argument to show that to labour for the diffusion of what we deem the truth is one of the first duties of benevolence. He who is perfectly in

different whether truth or error prevail in the world, who looks on while his fellow creatures are struggling with the evils arising from ignorance of God and of their duty, without aiding in their deliverance, as much neglects his obligations, as much violates the gospel law of love, as he who sees his brother stript and wounded but passes by on the other side, or who says to the hungry and to the naked, Depart, without giving them those things that are needful for the body. As to those who directly countenance and propagate error, believing it to be such, theirs is a blacker crime and a heavier condemnation: they not only withhold the bread of life from those who are perishing for want of it, but give them a serpent in its stead.

I know that it may be said that I have taken extreme cases, that there are many religious truths and errors capable of producing all the effects ascribed to them, but that many also of the one class are