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let it be made to appear that throughout the vast empire of God no sinful thought or action was ever indispensable to the highest good. Nothing is more obvious from the Bible than that the reason why God requires moral virtue is, not because it is useful, but because it is right. He is "of purer eyes than to behold iniquity and cannot look on sin." He could not be bribed to do this for all the universe, ten thousand times told. He requires the duties of morality because they are right, and in conformity with himself. He does not "do evil that good may come." He never requires men to do what is wrong, even though he foresees in many instances, that their sinful conduct may be turned to the best account. It is utterly immoral to make utility the foundation of moral obligation, and to assign either the direct or indirect tendency of an action to promote happiness, as the reason why it ought to be performed. Moral virtue has a nature besides its tendency to happiness. Just as truth differs essentially and immutably from falsehood, just as light differs from darkness, and sweet from bitter, does good differ from evil. No law can confound them; no beneficial tendency of the one, or of the other can alter their nature; but like the nature of the Deity, they will remain forever the same. To make utility the foundation of moral virtue, seems to my mind to tear up all the foundations of moral virtue itself. Virtue is no longer virtue, and vice is no longer vice, if this theory be true. If this theory were true, then, if in view of

the divine mind, vice is expedient, it is no longer vice; and if virtue is inexpedient, it is no longer virtue. And what wonder if men should abuse this reasoning, put themselves in the place of God, and decide that to be virtue which promotes their happiness, and that to be vice which promotes their misery? There have been such moral philosophers and they are well described by the apostle as-"men of corrupt minds, supposing that gain is godliness." Such a morality were the most changeful and evanescent thing in the world. No matter what its pretensions, it is mere selfishness, and radically hostile to all moral virtue. If virtue is any thing, it is virtue every where and always; and if vice is any thing-any thing but a name, it is vice always and every where. The divine nature is unchanging. It is virtue-the highest virtue; and nothing in the condition of this world, or other worlds-nothing in the divine purposes or government-nothing in time or eternity, can alter its nature. And this is one reason why, when the knowledge of God was lost in the world, there were no longer any just ideas of virtue and moral obligation. How is it possible there should be a sound morality where there is no knowledge of God? There is a chasm in morals which can be supplied only by a just acquaintance with the Deity.

The Bible teaches us that the true and only standard of morality is the divine law. The rule, or standard of duty, is a different thing from the

foundation of moral obligation. No being in the universe is so capable of judging of the nature of moral virtue, of the difference between what is right and what is wrong in all the circumstances and relations of human existence, and of what is, and what is not conformed to his own character, as God himself. No creature has the right to do this to any such extent as would make his own will, or judgment, or notions of any kind, the rule. The only standard to which all human conduct ought to be conformed, and conformity to which is rectitude, is the law of the great Supreme. If there be a God, he must rule; his will must be law. He has no superior, no antecedent; and there is no being of equal claims and rectitude. He only has a right to give law, and he only is able to give it in conformity to the eternal rule of his own perfect nature. We have perfect assurance that his law is like himself, and that he requires nothing but what is right, and forbids nothing but what is wrong. Because his own character is spotless and pure, he requires purity in others. Nothing but moral virtue is the object of his approbation and complacency, and therefore he can require nothing else. His will is the safe standard in kind, weight and measure. Whose will should be law, if not his in whom men live, and move, and have their being; whose, if not the will of that great lawgiver, whose authority is uncontrolled and infinite? How can we wonder at the fluctuating morality of the pagan nations, when they have no unfluc

tuating standard? how can it be otherwise than that their ideas of moral virtue should be low and contracted, when even their very vices are prescribed as virtues?

If the previous remarks are just, it scarcely need be said, that the grand motive of a sound morality is a heart-felt respect for God as the rightful lawgiver. It is a remark of the infidel Volney, that "there is no merit, or crime in intention." Just the reverse of this, is the morality of the Bible. What it uniformly requires is virtuous conduct springing from right motives. It aims at the heart. It addresses its claims, not to the love of pleasure, nor the love of the world, nor the love of fame and power, but to an ingenuous regard for God. It is a sense of duty that governs, and of duty springing from love to God. It is a sense of right. Our selfishness may be never so wisely directed; its calculations may be never so shrewd and politic; but they can never rise to the elevation of holy love. Nay, "though I give all my goods to feed the poor, and my body to be burned, and have not love; I am nothing." The morality and the religion of the Bible are identified. "This is the love of God that we keep his commandments." There is no love to God without keeping his commandments, and there is no keeping his commandments without love to God. There is no religion without morality, and there is no morality without religion. In the language of a modern Scottish writer, "Morality is religion in practice; religion is morality in

principle." The morality of the Bible springs from the predominant principle of holy love. And it is an all-governing principle-fruitful, life-giving and powerful-stronger even than the energetic principles of evil within us, and making the yoke of obedience easy, and its burden light.

Such are the distinctions between the morality of the world and the morality of the Scriptures. The former has no foundation on which it can rest; no unvarying standard, no high-born impulse. It may have instances of cautious abstinence, of ardent devotement, of heroic magnanimity; but they will not bear the inspection of the omniscient eye, nor the analysis of eternal truth. Their elements are pride, vanity, and egotism. Actions whose fame has resounded through the world, atchievements whose praise is recorded on the page of history, men whose proud name has been encir cled with a halo of human glory from age to age, will all be found wanting when once weighed in the balances of eternal truth and rectitude. It is a remark of Foster, in his Essay upon the causes for the neglect of evangelical religion by men of taste, that "the moral philosophers seem anxious to avoid every thing that might subject them to the appellation of Christian divines. They regard their department as a science complete in itself; and they investigate the foundations of morality, define its laws, and affix its sanctions in a manner generally

Wardlaw's Christian Ethics.

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