est of all authorities, that of a parent. For even in family regimen it is easy to remark the difference between the children who have been wrought upon by persuasion and conviction, and those who have been compelled by dictation and force. The mind abhors that its convictions should be intermeddled with, save by endeavours to convince. It delights in one who leads it by the light of knowledge out of all errors; it hates one who, by any other instrument, attempts the same office.

To these instincts of nature Christ's laws apply most sweetly, bringing in no lordly authority, but operating by means of affection and improvement and hope of eternal gain. With these instruments they apply to conscience or self-judgment alone, setting on no watchman of any kind, except the observation of God, who loveth good and hateth evil; who promoteth happiness, and striveth that unhappiness would cease. They make the mind the mistress of herself; they place her own judgment of herself above the world's second only to God's; they take her into contract with God, no third party being conscious. She rejoiceth in a liberty of her own, inward and unseen. She contemplateth her own growing beauty in the mirror of the divine law, and becomes enamoured of herself-to which the flattery of royal persons is as nothing. Her outward actions are like the motions of her limbs, obedient to an inward willingness, by no outward force constrained. The law of men is under her feet; she sits arbitress over all, obeying or disobeying higher councils. Such intrepid, heaven-guided spirits give the tone to law, when they are in sufficient numbers, in any state. No interest will tempt them to obey the evil, no bribe to forego the good; they submit to the spoiling of their goods, to the deprivation of freedom, to the loss of life, rather than give up any attribute of this divine liberty. This is dangerous for laws which do not keep to God's councils, but auspicious for laws which do; and hence it hath come to pass, that, in those lands where Christians have made head, they have turned towards their own course the stubborn courses both of law and manners. In this land, for example, they have disarmed the thigh of its weapon, and procured revenge to be taken out of the hands of the injured into the hands of the upright judge; they have made reformation to be acknowledged as the only object of punishment ;-they have abolished the divine right of kings to have their will out of subjects; -they have almost got adultery to be acknowledged as the

only righteous cause of divorce ;-they have made the accommodation of others to be sanctioned as the basis of politeness; the spirit of government they have forced, by sundry desperate efforts, to become equitable, open, and disclosed, instead of being, as in the Italian and other conti nental states, crooked and intriguing.-From all which it is manifest, that, in the force of heaven-directed will, there is a staunchness, an intrepidity, and a long-suffering, which brings out equity triumphant against injustice, and liberty against wilfulness, forming a wall of shields around whatever is good in human laws,-smiting, as with a constant battering-ram, against every thing which is evil.

Much more might be said in praise of the spirit of the Christian code, were there not before us a question of far greater moment which requires to be resolved, before we can proceed to the judgment which God is to take of its fulfilment. If judgment is to proceed upon the letter of the laws recounted above, then the world must plead guilty before Him as one man. For however these laws commend themselves to justice and goodness and truth, and with whatever sincerity we may adopt them for our rule, we cannot succeed in keeping them, but do daily break them in thought, word, and deed. How many malicious sentiments do we entertain! How many actions of our enemies do we not forgive! How many quarrels and feuds do we cherish! How many wanton thoughts pass through and find harbour in our minds! How many of our affections doat on worldly objects! How much passion, how much insincerity, how much censure, how much hypocrisy, how much revenge! How many of our good actions are done to be seen of men, thought upon with self-complacency, and talked over with vain delight! How consequential we become when we get wealth, how imperious when we get power, how self-conceited when we get distinction! How covetous before we reach the desired haven, how envious and inimical to those who already hold it! These classes of feelings, which are all dear to nature, are directly opposed to the laws of Christ; and if his judgment be like other judgments, they must every one be proceeded against. And yet the observation of life, and the consciousness of his own breast, must convince every man that not upon one of these counts, but upon every one, the whole world is guilty.

But if any one refuse this appeal which we make to his conscience, and hesitate upon pleading guilty to the several indictments recounted above, it must be under the influence

of some blindness, which we would remove by lifting up the veil of self-esteem and self-interest, which hinders him from seeing into the interior of his breast. We would lie in wait to hear him descant upon the failings of his neighbour -What a range of vision he then takes in, and how keenly he discriminates every feature of the scene; not only condescending upon the wrong without hesitation, but even from appearance anticipating and calculating with most refined skill! His moral tact is nicer than the rules of the exactest moralist-A word, a look, an attitude, a gesture, opens daylight into the recesses of the soul. Now the man who can thus discriminate and denominate to the nicest shade of moral turpitude, and who adventures with such alacrity and self-sufficiency to the work of moral criticism upon the moral characters around him, is no novice in these matters; and if, when doing the same office upon himself, he should seem little inquisitive and little observant, and very merciful, we will ask him whither his discriminative faculties are flown, and where he hath mislaid his moral rule, and require him to shew cause why he should not be measured by the standard of his own choice and application, brought to his own bar, held over to his own judgment, and adjudged according to the spirit of his own decisions. Thus we lift up the veil of a man's self-esteem, and discover to him a world of faults and failings discernible by his conscience in another, which he hath bribed his conscience from discerning in himself.

But some one may plead off from this capacity of discerning failings in his neighbour, and deny such power of conscience to perceive his own offendings as we have asserted to be in every man. Then with such a one we would make a tour of observation upon human life, and in our turns we would remark to him what caution and address men display in their intercourse among themselves. How slowly they unfold their mind, how they choose the most indifferent topics of discourse, and have a common-place phraseology upon those which lie nearer their heart. How, when they come to trade and barter, they approach, and recede, and affect indifference. How prudent is their first acquaintance, and how few of their acquaintances ripen into confidence, and how much mutual proof before that confidence is matured. How every one is calculating upon much being behind the stage-curtain of his neighbour, and keeping much behind the stage-curtain of himself; and how when they do raise the curtain and take their parts, these

are not real characters which they personate; and, you would not be further out in the theatre to drop the knee before him who seems a king, sit at the feet of him who seems a philosopher or band with him who seems a patriot, than in the world you would be out in clasping to your bosom every one who professes friendship, or committing your all to him who protests honesty, or opening your heart to him who is all faithfulness and truth. Then I would twitch the sleeve of my companion, and ask, "What say you to all this?" He would answer, That is all as it should be; these are knowing ones, that is human life, and the invaluable knowledge of mankind." "So," I would reply, "you are acquainted with all this." Acquainted with it,' he would say; 'do you think I am a novice or a fool, or what do you take me for?' "Then you have played your part in that game?" Sure; what else have I been doing since I began life for myself. If I had not been as dexterous as the rest, they would soon have plucked me.' Now then I would reply, though it be rather unhandsome to condemn you out of your own mouth, yet as it is for your own good, you will excuse my saying that you have confessed that your conscience perceives a deal of things which you not only hide in your conduct, but make a merit of hiding. Your deed, your word belies your thought-you make believe-you save appearances you seem to be what you are not you would not be that which you seem.

If any man be self-blinded, we would by such means disabuse him, and if he be obstinate, overcome him, to confess himself an enormous transgressor when measured by the laws of Christ, which reach to every secret thought, and will have nothing but the purest in every kind. But perhaps a better way than either of the above, for operating conviction, will be to lift up the veil of ignorance, which hangs upon our minds, as to what God really requires of us in our several places and relations: which being rightly perceived will not only silence farther parley upon our guilt, but also show the hopelessness of ever working out acquittance, and prepare the mind to look for and receive some other revelation, which may make this constitution of law, so excellent in itself, and so favourable to all kind of moral improvement in this world, likewise, as it respects future judg ment, tolerable for mankind to live under, hopeful to the mind conscious of its own guiltiness, and practicable for God to acquit upon, without dishonouring his statutes and dissolving our responsibility.

In the analysis of the divine law with which we commenced this discourse, we have lifted up this veil of ignorance in so far as it hung over the mind and will of God; and in now removing it from the fields of active duty upon which God would have us to exhibit our obedience, we enter upon a sea or ocean of discourse in which we might expatiate for ever without finding any shore. Therefore it becomes expedient for the end in view that we single out some specific department of human agency within which to confine ourselves. Take then the use of the fortune which God hath put amongst our hands. This it is generally understood is a man's own to do his pleasure, without interference of any foreign authority. It is our own, hard-earned, and surely with our own we may do our will. No, saith God, it is a gift from me, which I could have sent to your serving-man, or to the beggar at your gate. You hold it of me, and for high purposes which I warn you of, and will look into when I call from every man an account of his stewardship. No law of the land can hinder one from hoarding his wealth and glutting his eyes with it night and morning, meditating of it by day and dreaming of it by night. No law can hinder him from scattering it to a scrambling mob, or drowning it in the depths of the sea, or burying it in the bowels of the earth. He might bribe honest men with it, and seduce modest women, and play the rake upon the largest, broadest scale. Such is the limitation of human law, that it could not touch him within this wide sphere of wickedness. Such is the easiness of public opinion and fashionable society, that he could bribe the one to be silent with a few acts of generosity, the other with a gay equipage and a courteous address. These several courses, and many more into which men direct their fortune, all unconscious of any faults,-as to indulge vanity, or foster pride, or pamper appetite, or gratify passion, or outpeer a rival, or humble an enemy, or nourish self-sufficiency and independence upon the providence of God,—all these, which the poor timorous eye of law beholds, but dares not challenge however it disapproves, the law of God takes up as with a touchstone, tries and condemns, and commands us to use our fortune for the sake of good,- to preserve the health of our body, and the equanimity of our mind, to procure power for the purpose of being useful, to educate our families in knowledge and wisdom, and to establish them in the most influential places, that they also may be serviceable in the highest degree to that which is good ;-therewith, not