to the self-reformation and continual self-regulation which were necessary to produce a right-minded being, habitually acting with rectitude of conduct. We must think rightly before we can act rightly, and learn and know what is right before right thoughts will arise in our minds or the right action be performed. Therefore, instead of again obliterating offending man from the earth, the Deity proceeded to institute and carry on a kind and intelligent plan and process for his progressive melioration. This was necessary not only as to the religion of the human race, but also as to its morality.

The abstraction of the mind from God, and its devotion to the chimeras which the fancies of the leaders and founders of the earliest nations invented as his substitutes, not only precluded true piety and rational worship, but also intercepted and prevented the moralization of the world. Man has to learn to be moral, as he has to learn to be skilful in any art or acquainted with any science; but true morality, like true religion, must originate from the Deity, and be at first derived from his instructing precepts. It will not and does not arise in its truth and excellence in its first commencement, nor will it generally prevail or be practised from any other source. It is he who must first teach mankind what they are to do, and what they are to be to please him; to become what he desires, and to fulfil his plans and purposes in our being. None can know his mind and will but himself, except as he reveals it. He must tell to his human creatures what the moral rules, and habits, and qualities, and feelings are which he desires them to acquire and act upon. But this cannot be done or will be uselessly done unless they will receive the requisite knowledge and counsels from him; obey them, when given, because he enjoins them; and make them the guides of their reasoning thought and daily conduct. But when paganism obtained possession of the mind, all moral benefit and influence from his tuition were annulled as this counteraction prevailed. His commands and admonitions became unheeded and neglected when he was superseded; and mankind chose to act as they pleased, independent of his rules and restrictions, and without any regard or reference to them or to himself.

The consequences are palpable in the history of every nation in the world. When the human population ceased to learn morality from the Creator, they could not or would not deduce and establish it for themselves. It is true, that we are so

constituted as to have moral sensibilities and moral capabilities, which often act instinctively; but instinct is not principle, nor is an impulse a habit, nor is feeling the reasoning judgment; but, without principle, reasoning, habit, and judgment, there cannot be morality. This must be taught, and learned, and practised before it can be acquired or retained. Man is so framed as to be impressible and excitable by it, and to feel often the appeals which are made to him for it; but he is also susceptible to every bad impulse and incitation, and also prone to gratify the instant desire or emotion as it arises. He will not and he does not, therefore, willingly submit himself to any moral rules and restrictions, and does not seek to trace them, or to know them, or desire to be governed by them. I speak now of the general world, in all ages and countries; for there are some individuals, at all times and in all places, who cultivate their moral sensibilities, who study moral principles, who love moral qualities, and who train themselves to moral habits; but these are the noble exceptions and anomalies of society, which have become innumerable since Christianity was disseminated, and especially in our cultivated age, but which were very rare before that predominated. What human nature naturally is we see in the uncivilized nations of the world; and in none of them is morality either a study, a part of their knowledge, an object of their cultivation or desire, a rule, or a practice. Each acts as he pleases, and obeys no law but what he likes, and makes his passions his laws and guide. The same spirit and conduct pervade civilized society in all pagan countries. Law and custom are nearly the only sources of all the morals they know or care for, except those influences which the natural affections occasion; and as these are feelings and not principles, they produce no steady moral rectitude of mind, nor are ever reasoned or acted upon as such. The usual morals of all nations, that do not derive them from the religious tuition which they believe to be the will of God, are no more than obedience to their civil laws, the practice of customary manners, and the observance of the rites and superstitions which their priesthood enjoins. The Egyptians had no other, nor the Greeks before Socrates appeared. Some of their more intellectual men had reduced many points of their experience to the short axioms of prudence which sayings and proverbs contain. But for even this they were signalized above the rest of society as the seven

wise men of their age. Yet these were but the acute and praised remarks of able men. These were not taught or made rules of conduct, nor enforced as moral laws or obligations.

It was Socrates who began the practice of reasoning out moral rules and of inculcating principles. Schools of men, thinking and teaching on this plan and subject, arose from him; but so little agreed with each other, either in the rule or in the principle, that they were continually combating each other on both; and thus no obligatory morality was or could be established for the regulation of human conduct by such speculations; nor was anything regarded as such but what the laws of their city or state enjoined; all else was individual choice and fancy, and ingenious discussions and partisan disputes, very rarely influencing the conduct. Alcibiades showed how little he was moralized by Socrates, and Aristophanes indicates to us how little Socrates was revered or cared for as a moral teacher; as the facts and remarks of Thucydides prove how little morality was practised by the Athenians. The difference between the lectures of the philosophers and their conduct is a perpetual subject of satire of their ancient poets and other writers, from Aristophanes to Lucian. The latter brands them all as hypocrites, sensualists, flatterers, and knaves.

Do not mistake me as meaning to say that moral laws and principles cannot be discerned or deduced by the human mind. We see by the recorded conversations of Socrates, the Politica of Plato, the Ethics of Aristotle and Nicomachus, the lost work of Panetius, the Officia of Cicero, the Essays of Seneca, the Meditations of Antoninus, the Morals of Epictetus, and other books of the ancients, as well as by those of the Hindoos and Chinese, and by numerous modern ethical writers of Europe, that many individuals desire to reason on the subject, and can think and write admirably about it. But these various authors, although they agree in several points, yet differ from each other in many more. We also know that men of talent, who reject Christianity, have urged and still urge theories, and systems, and principles of conduct subversive of the most essential rules, and conclusions, and qualities, and habits that have hitherto been deemed virtuous: and they claim to be as right as those who support them. The morality, therefore, which stands on human reasoning or on human authority only, will be as fluctuating as individual taste, in

clinations, passions, humours, feelings, and worldly interests usually are.

We need to learn from moral tuition three things-how to please God; how to act rightly towards each other; how to use our own senses, powers, qualities, limbs, desires, and faculties as we ought, for our own present and future comfort and wellbeing. We shall not be with each other longer than we are together in this world, but we shall be in society with some beings or other in the next. We shall be there also ourselves; and the same God will be the God of future time who is the present Deity. Our moral tuition, to be complete, must therefore always relate to both states of our being, and fit us for that which is to come as well as for that in which we are now placed. But this view-the true and certain view of the case -at once shows us that our moral teacher must be God; for who but he knows or can inform us what qualities, rules, habits, and conduct will suit his future world and our position in it! No morality is sufficient which suits this world only; for we may not be here a day, a month, a year, or ten years longer; nor can we command or ensure our stay here one hour or one moment. Our present life is never in our own power to continue, though we may abridge it; therefore, whatever system trains us for this world only is notoriously defective. It will leave the great range of our being quite unprovided for. The morality which does not educate us for that as well as for our present uncertain duration is imperfect and deceptive. It is deceptive if it goes no farther, unless it teaches us where we may obtain what it does not afford; because, without this confession of its insufficiency, and the direction of us to that which will supply us with what we so essentially need; without this, it assumes the aspect of a completeness of which it is entirely destitute.

For these reasons, there can be no true, or complete, or obligatory, or duly-influential, or all-embracing moralization of the human mind which does not come from our Creator and is not inculcated by him. All else will be but habit, custom, inclination, temper, humour, feeling, caution, fear, imitation, or chance with the great body of mankind, and even more commonly with our individual selves, than we like to believe or may choose to admit.*

* With the most reasoning men, moral theories and moral codes can

But all Divine tuition and improvement were lost to the human world as soon as paganism separated it from its God; and hence the process for the recovery and melioration of the human mind, which then became necessary, was wanted as much for the moral illumination and guidance as for the religious instruction of human nature.

LETTER XXXVII.

Mankind unable to liberate themselves from their Pagan Superstitions or from Atheism.-The general Disposition to discredit Specific Revelations,-Divine Agency has been indispensable to rescue Mankind from those Errors and Perversions.

MY DEAR SYDNEY,

The preceding facts and remarks lead us to the conclusion that the renewed race of mankind, if they had been left wholly to themselves, would have become, as they did generally become wherever thinking and acting solely on their own will and inclinations, a pagan and unmoralized population, grossly superstitious or atheistical, selfish, violent, cruel, fantastical, and corrupt. Such was the general result. Some were more ignorant and animalized than others; brutish in most of their habits; addicted to war and revenge; indifferent to human bloodshed; persecuting, attacking, and deceiving each other; plundering and murdering, or indolent, stupid, and debased. These were the too frequent features of the ancient population, with pleasing mixtures of better qualities in some; and such our contemporaries too much incline to be, in those regions of our present world where paganism, or the abnegation but be individual argument, individual speculation, and individual inferences, which others may concur in or dispute, and which will always be a subject of ingenious discussion. The attacks lately made on Dr. Paley, one of our wisest moralists, are existing evidence of this fact. If he be right, his opponents are wrong; if their notions are more just, he has erred. So it will always be with all human systems of morality. Human moralists, urging only their reasonings, are intellectual gladiators, successively combating each other before the public eye, frequently gaining temporary victories, but never an acknowledged or commanding sov ereignty. Certainty and real obligation will attend wise precepts and instructions only.

VOL. III-K