more certainly than the man who believes there is no God and no hereafter, and yet fears God and shapes his deportment with a view to an hereafter. His morality must take its rise from his principles. Moral principles constitute the seed, the germ of which moral character is but the development. Men are every where the subjects of moral law, and capable of moral actions. Their conduct as moral beings is good or evil, as it rests upon a true or false foundation, as it is determined by a true or false standard, as it flows from right, or wrong motives. And hence it is, that pagan morality is so defective. Detached from the Bible, it has no other guide than the passions of men, and those few principles which may be suggested by the lights of reason and nature. It is no caricature of pagan morality to say, that it had no settled standard of right and wrong, and that we look in vain throughout all their philosophy for any well established principles of duty, or motives and aims that commend themselves to an enlightened conscience. What is the nature and foundation of virtue; what is the rule of moral conduct; what is the ultimate object toward which it should be directed; in what does the duty and happiness of man consist? are inquiries which never have been satisfactorily answered by the unassisted powers of the human mind. What the practical results of these uncertain speculations were, the annals of all pagan history show. Nor are they any where more comprehensively exhibited than in the following declarations of the great apostle, concerning the whole pagan world. "They became vain in their imaginations and their foolish heart was darkened. They were filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, envy, murder, deceit; malignity. They were backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without natural affection, implacable and unmerciful." Their manners and customs, where not dictated by the love of wickedness, seem to have been dictated by mere caprice and whim. What was virtue in one country, was vice in another; and what was unpardonable rudeness in one, was refinement in another. Egypt was distinguished for great corruption of morals, as early as the time of Abraham and Joseph. Their public festivals were celebrated by practises so shameful, that they disgrace the page of the historian. If from Egypt you pass to Asia Minor, you see the prominent traits of moral character still the same, unrighteousness, malignity, luxury, effeminancy, and sensuality. If you look to Greece, in the early part of their history, you see brutal savageness in its most shameless forms; while, in the age of greater refinement, iniquity only "put on an embroidered garb, and of more delicate texture." The Olympic, Pythian, and Isthmian games, while they imparted that strength of body and courage in battle, which were formerly the most enviable qualities which this nation knew, degraded and polluted their minds and morals to the lowest degree of debasement. Wherever indeed you read of the "heroic ages" of ancient times, you may be assured they are fruitful in crime and horror, in parricide and incest, and all those melancholy and tragic catastrophes which present the most dismal and hideous picture of our race. The monarchs of Assyria passed the greater part of their lives in voluptuousness and debauchery. The proud Semiramis, notwithstanding all the commendations passed upon her heroism, led her subjects a career of unrestricted voluptuousness and debauchery. The most brilliant ages of Babylon were most distinguished for dissoluteness, and even the greatest refinement in debauchery. Gorged with riches, they tasked their ingenuity in the invention of all that could delight the senses, and alternately excite and gratify the basest passions. Here was that memorable temple in which every female was obliged by law, once in her life to prostitute herself to a stranger, for the purpose of augmenting the public revenue. As a general fact, debauchery was not only allowed by the ancient pagans, but approved by their religion. Even as cultivated a mind as that of Cicero, regarded it as no crime. Horace represents Cato as commending the young men who frequent the public houses of pollution, because they did nothing worse.* If such were the morals of the purest state of Rome, and of Cato, the severest censor of public manners, what must have been the most impure? I will tell you what they were. The emperor Nero drove through the streets of his capital with his naked mistress; and the emperor Commodus first dishonoured and then murdered his own sister. "If these things were done in the green tree, what were done in the dry?" Vice always descends from rulers to subjects. If such were the morals of emperors, what must have been the morals of the common people? And what but such a depravation of morals is to be expected, where reason, blinded by appetite, is the only guide; where conscience has no firm mooring, and the only impulse is the fitful breath of passion? How could the doctrines of paganism excite to moral virtue? It is perfectly obvious from the character of * "Macte Virtute esto, inquit sententia dia Catonis. Huc juvenes æquum est descendere, non alienas Sat. lib. I. ii. 32. their gods, and from their hopes of a voluptuous paradise, that the whole system of the pagan world had not the least tendency to produce and cherish virtuous emotions. And how much better are the moral principles of modern infidels? Lord Bolingbroke resolves all morality into self love. And so does Volney. Hobbes maintains that the sole foundation of right and wrong is the civil law. Rousseau says, "All the morality of our actions lies in the judgment we ourselves form of them." Lord Shaftesbury declares that "all the obligations to be virtuous arise from the advantages of virtue, and the disadvantages of vice." Hume affirms, that "moral, intellectual, and corporeal virtues are nearly of the same kind." Have such moral principles ever reformed the world? Did they reform their authors? Where will such principles lead, if carried out into practice? What are their fruits? What is there in an enlightened conscience that responds to their pretensions? And are there not some systems of ethical philosophy which are not found either among pagans or infidels, that are far below the spirit of the Bible? What is the morality, the foundation of which is simply what is useful and expedient; the standard of which is the spirit and maxims of this world; and the motives of which are purely mercenary and selfish? Can that be called morality, which recognizes no immutable distinction between what is right and what is wrong; which has no reference to the obligations of the divine law; and is concerned only with our own interests? Can that be called morality which asks, not what is right, but what is profitable? which inquires not for duty, but for interest, for the opinions of men, for the spirit of the age? Such a morality is most certainly radically defective. It is the morality of the world, not of the Bible. It is a mere external morality. It has no thorough lodgment, no permanent abode in the hidden chambers of the soul. It is a superficial observance. It is what all morality must be, separated from the truth of the Scriptures a body without a soul; a whited sepulchre; splendid only in sepulchral magnificence. The morality of the Bible is well and intelligibly defined. Its foundation, its standard, its motives are distinctly set before us, and ought not to be misunderstood. Why then is any being in the universe under obligations to be morally virtuous? Why is the divine Being bound to be holy, unless because holiness is right, and he is capable of perceiving it to be so? And why are intelligent creatures bound to be morally virtuous, unless because they are so made as to be able to perceive, and feel under obligation to approve and practise moral virtue? "Be ye holy, for I the Lord your God am holy." If the divine Being were malevolent, or selfish, would that circumstance bind us to be so too? The moral excellence of the divine character is a good and sufficient reason why men should be morally excellent. God requires them to be holy, because he is holy. The character that is right in God, is right in creatures. It is in its own nature just what it ought to be. The Deity would not be satisfied with himself without possessing such a character; nor would virtuous and holy minds. be satisfied with him, if he were not thus perfectly amiable and excellent. God is love; God is truth; God is rectitude; God is mercy; God is justice. There is a wide and immutable difference between such a character and the opposite. The former is right, and the latter is wrong. Nothing can reconcile |