liberty that is founded on the word of God, that it is of no consequence what a man believes. No where is this thought, or feeling encouraged in the Scriptures, but every where discouraged, frowned upon and denounced. "Keep specially clear," says a forcible writer "of uncommon pretenders to charity. Satan will mask his designs as long as he can, and so will all his ministers. Believe that God is love, that he is the great and essential charity. Be satisfied then with as much charity as he has shown, and do not think of improving upon your Maker by entertaining and expressing a more charitable opinion of sinners than himself."

The other extreme is to have no charity at all. There are things spoken of in the Bible, which are neither fundamental to the gospel, nor essential to salvation, and about which good men may differ. Men may be ignorant and uninformed in these things, and yet be saved. And I would not dare to say, that they may not misunderstand and pervert these things, and yet be saved, any more than I would dare to say how much indwelling sin is compatible with true holiness of heart, or how much remaining unbelief is consistent with saving faith. The least truth perverted, as well as the least remaining sin in the heart, is without excuse; while neither of them proves that the bosom in which they dwell has no interest in the Son of God. I hold it one of the great duties of a Christian, to judge severely of himself; of others, caa

ritably. "Judge not that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye meet, it shall be measured to you again." I may not necessarily break charity with men as Christians, with whom I would not deem it expedient, nor for edification to be united in the same ecclesiastical connexions. I would hope not to sympathise with their errors; but I would charitably impute their errors to causes which may exist in the hearts of good men. "Humanum est errare." I may err, as well as they.

"Hanc veniam petimusque damusque vicissim."

The flock of Christ will be a little flock indeed, even after it is all gathered in, if there be not many sheep that are not of our own fold. The many mansions in our Father's house will be but sparsely inhabited, if it be not found at the last day that God our Saviour can hold fellowship in the Church above, with not a few with whom it is not for edification for us to maintain ecclesiastical connexions in the Church below. The charity that "rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth,” also “beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things." As men may be heretics, and excluded from the Church without being delivered over to the secular arm, so they may err in judgment without being heretics. They may differ in their religious opinions, and yet be Christians;

they may differ without animosity, without the fury of intolerance, without having recourse to courts of law, and without disturbing either the public peace, or the charities of social life.

I do not know that I have expressed your views, my young friends, in the present lecture. For myself, I solicit no greater liberty of conscience than this, and I will not be satisfied with less. It is impossible for the Church to flourish either in alliance with the civil power, or controlled by its authority, except so far forth as it extends an impartial protection to her civil rights. Nor is it less impossible for her to flourish while composed of essentially jarring materials-of the mingled iron and clay-of men who believe and profess, and men who disbelieve, and deny, and ridicule the fundamental doctrines of the gospel.

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The liberty of conscience is your birthright. You are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free." There is nothing in the Scriptures which debars you from full inquiry into all truth, or which demands of you an assent to its doctrines without an examination of the evidence that they come from God. You boast of this liberty. But it is this which renders you so fearfully responsible. It is this which gives the divine government such resistless claims upon you, if you turn your liberty into licentiousness, and under the specious pretence of this right, become sceptics, or deists, or the enemies of God and his truth, by whatever name they may be called.

LECTURE VI.

THE MORALITY OF THE BIBLE.

There is no one particular in which the Bible has effected a greater change in the condition of the world, than its outward and visible morality. To say nothing of that spiritual character upon which the Scriptures every where insist, there is not now, nor has there been ever, any portion of the world where the principles of revealed religion have been received, where the most astonishing changes have not been produced in the moral habits of society. This justice must be done to infidelity, that while it has waged war upon the truths of the Bible, it has commended its moral precepts; and while it has ridiculed its miracles and prophecies, it has ingenuously acknowledged that its morality is altogether more pure and lofty than that which philosophy ever taught. And however involuntarily, or incautiously made, such confessions are no unmeaning homage rendered to

the truth of the Sacred Scriptures. For, if disjointed, disfigured, mutilated, torn from its foundations, and deprived of all its natural life and vigor, as it has been by the great mass of infidel writers, the morality of the Bible has grandeur and excellence enough to extort the commendation of its enemies; what must it be, when undisturbed from its foundations, unsevered from its proper aliment, it is seen and recognized in its true power and excellence!

Neither pagan philosophers, nor modern infidels, nor the philosophical world in Christian lands have been without their moral theories. When the Saviour of men descended from heaven, the Gre cian and Oriental philosophy had obtained powerful influence over the thinking part of mankind;→ the former prevailing throughout Greece and Rome, the latter throughout Persia, Syria, Chaldea, and Egypt. "The Greeks sought after wis-. dom." And yet among them we find the sect of the Epicureans, who believed that the world arose from chance; that the god's extended no care over human affairs; that the soul was mortal; that pleasure was the chief good; and that virtue was to be prized only as it contributed to man's enjoyment. The academical philosophy, from Plato down to the period when the academic school was transferred to Rome, was professedly a system of doubt and scepticism. Its disciples denied the possibility of arriving at truth and certainty; held it doubtful whether the god's existed, or did not