LECTURE IV.

ARGUMENT SECOND: COINCIDENCE OF CHRISTIANITY WITH NAT URAL RELIGION. ARGUMENT THIRD: ITS ADAPTATION TO THE CONSCIENCE AS A PERCEIVING POWER.- PECULIAR DIF FICULTIES IN THE WAY OF ESTABLISHING AND MAINTAINING A PERFECT STANDARD. -ARGUMENT FOURTH: IF THE MORALITY IS PERFECT, THE RELIGION MUST BE TRUE.

IF, as was attempted in the last lecture, a distinct analogy can be shown between Christianity and the constitution of nature, it will afford a strong presumption that they both came from the same hand. But if such an analogy can not be shown, it will not be conclusive against Christianity, because there is such a disparity between the material and the spiritual worlds, and the laws by which they must be governed, that a revelation concerning one might be possible, which yet should not seem to be analogous to the other.

COINCIDENCE OF CHRISTIANITY WITH NATURAL RELIGION.

Not so, however, with the argument which I next adduce, which is drawn from the coincidence of Christianity with natural religion. Truth is one. If God has made a revelation in one mode, it must coincide with what he has revealed in another. If, therefore, it can be shown that Christianity does not coincide with the well-authenticated teachings of natural religion, it

will be conclusive against it. Nature is from God. Her teachings are from him, and I should regard it as settling the question against any thing claiming to be a divine revelation, if it could be shown to contradict those teachings. If, on the other hand, it can be shown that Christianity coincides perfectly with natural religion, and indeed teaches the only perfect system of it ever known, it will furnish a strong argument in its favor, especially when we consider how the religion originated.

Natural religion defined. By natural religion, I mean that knowledge of God and of duty which may be acquired by man without a revelation. So far as this phrase is made to imply, as it sometimes is, that revealed religion is not natural, it is objectionable; for I conceive that the original and natural state of man was one of direct communication with God, and even now, that revelation is, in the highest sense, natural. It ought to be used simply to contradistinguish the knowledge, which man might gain from nature, from that which revelation alone teaches. Of natural religion the ideas of many are exceedingly indefinite; but that the definition now given is the true one is obvious, because it is the only one that can give it any fixed and definite meaning. It can not mean what men have actually learned from nature, for this has varied at different times. We should be doing injustice to the teachings of nature if we were to call that knowledge of God and of duty, which has been attained by the most enlightened heathen, the whole of natural religion. We mean, by revealed religion, not the partial and perverted views of any sect, but that system which God has actually revealed in the Bible, and which the diligent and candid can discover to be there. And so we

mean, by natural religion, not what indolent, and biased, and selfish men have discovered, but that which nature

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actually teaches, and which a diligent and candid man could discover in the best exercise of his powers.

Teachings-how made known. If this, then, be natural religion, how are its teachings made known? Its mode of teaching concerning God, and concerning duty, is not the same. Its teachings concerning God and his attributes are made known chiefly by reasoning from effects to their cause. In addition to this, it is supposed by some that all men have certain intuitive and necessary convictions concerning the being of a God. But, however this may be, I think that the being of a God, and the perfection of most of his natural attributes, might be inferred from nature as now known. That nature and Christianity agree in their teachings concerning these attributes, I have already shown; concerning the moral attributes of God, it is more difficult to say what nature does teach. Certain it is that man has never so learned them, from her light alone, as to lay the foundation for any rational system of religious morality; or so as to free the best minds from great and distressing uncertainty.

Her mode of teaching duty is by the tendencies and results of different actions, and courses of action. We can not doubt at least natural religion does not permit itself to doubt that the object of God, in the constitution of things, and in the relations established by him, is the good of man. If, therefore, we see any course of conduct tending to, and resulting in, the good of man, individually and socially, we infer that it is according to the will of God. If we see a course of conduct tending to, and resulting in, the unhappiness of the individual and of society, we infer that it is contrary to his will. It is in this way, solely, by the tendencies and results of actions, that natural religion teaches us our duty.

Not adapted to the common mind. But it must bo

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conceded that this mode of teaching, by relations, and tendencies, and results, is not well adapted to the common mind. Even to comprehend these relations and tendencies fully, much more to trace them out originally, requires a philosophic mind of the highest order. In some cases, indeed, the tendency of actions, or courses of action, is obvious, and the will of God, when we believe in his being and perfections, is thus as clearly indicated as it would be by a voice from heaven; but in others, nothing can be more complex or difficult of determination even after an experience somewhat extended. After all their experience, men are still divided on the tendencies and results of a protective tariff, which we should think it would be perfectly easy to test to the satisfaction of all; but so varied are the interests involved, and so complex are the causes at work, that men seem now no nearer an agreement respecting them than ever. And if this is s on a subject to which attention is stimulated by immediate interest, and which appeals to interest alone, how much more must it be so with those courses of action in which moral tendencies and results, so obscure and tardy, are to be considered, and in which the strong natural feelings of the heart are at work to bias the judgment? Accordingly, though the teachings of nature have been open to all, and have influenced all to some extent, yet it has been only among the enlightened few, and at favored periods, that a system of natural religion could be said to exist at all, or that its teachings have exerted any considerable influence. Nor, when we consider how complex are the tendencies of actions, and how remote are often their completed results, how plausible are some courses of action, which yet experience shows to be injurious, when we consider the eagerness of passion, the blinding power of selfishness, how opposed some of the virtues

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are to the strongest feelings of men, and how evil practices, when once adopted, perpetuate themselves and become fixed by custom and association in the community, can we wonder that nothing like a perfect system of natural religion was ever discovered by man.

Teaching by inference, too, without any immediate sanction to the laws she could establish, and without any certain knowledge of a future retribution, there was very little in the voice of natural religion to arrest the attention of man. Accordingly, we find that her teachings were overlooked and disregarded by the great mass of men. They have been entirely drowned and superseded by systems of idolatry, and superstition, and fanaticism. Far, very far, therefore, have even the wisest heathen been from listening to all the voices. uttered by nature, from reading all the lessons of wisdom and virtue inscribed on her pages.

It is, indeed, often difficult to know precisely how much we ought to attribute to natural religion. It seems certain that there was a primitive revelation communicating the idea of sacrifices, and modifying the religious and moral views of after times; rays of light from the Jewish and Christian revelations may have been more widely dispersed than we suppose, and many things, when once made known, so commend themselves to reason as to cause it to be felt that they might have been discovered. Hence deists have claimed several principles as discovered by reason, as the pardon of sin on repentance, which are unquestionably due to revelation alone. But whatever natural religion might teach, we do know that it can not teach facts, but only laws and tendencies. However complete, therefore, we may suppose it, it never could have taught those great facts which lie at the foundation of a system of mercy; but precisely how much of duty it might have taught, we can not say. We know, also, that the

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