LECTURE II. ON MISTAKES IN THE METHOD OF PURSUING OUR INQUIRIES PRESENT CHARACTER OF HUMAN NATURE. 1 TIM. VI. 20. "Science falsely so called." I SHALL enter at present into no inquiry what LECT. II. was the particular description of "science," or knowledge, which the Apostle meant to characterize by these words. Whatever it was,whether the vaunted illumination of Jewish doctors, or the fanciful theories of Gentile philosophers, all may be justly comprehended under the designation, that proceeds upon false principles, and, by necessary consequence, conducts to false conclusions. In all science whatever, the entire value of it depends upon the adoption of right principles:-and to no one of its departments does the remark more truly or forcibly apply, than to that of morals. Here, right principles are every thing. There is nothing, in actions themselves, that can be called moral or immoral, considered abstractedly from the principles of the agent. A moral action is D Importance of right principles. LECT. II. the action of a moral agent; and the moral character of the action depends on the state of the agent's mind in the doing of it. An action may be contemplated in its merely physical properties, abstractedly from this altogether; and, along with its physical properties, the consequences too may be considered to which it gives rise. It is obvious, however, that neither the one nor the other of these constitutes at all its moral goodness or delinquency. As the action of a particular agent, the good or the evil of it must be sought in the mind from which it has proceeded,-in the motive or principle there, by which it has been suggested and influenced;-the amount of moral good or of moral evil in the action being neither more nor less than the amount of good or evil principle in exercise in the performance of it. What is thus true of individual actions, or courses of conduct, may with equal truth be predicated of systems of morality. A system must be right or wrong, according as the principles on which it rests, or into which it ultimately resolves itself, are right or wrong. An error in these must affect the whole. All the diverging streams will have the taint of the fountain. The entire superstructure will correspond, in stability or in frailty, to the soundness or the erroneousness of the primary elements which constitute its foundation. And, the present being a subject in which theory never can be purely and abstractly speculative, but must, to LECT. II. a greater or less degree, in as far as the minds of moral agents are concerned, affect the correctness of their feelings of responsibility, our inquiries into principles are not mere intellectual exercitations, with no other result than the gratification of a metaphysical curiosity;-they have a direct and important bearing on the characters of accountable beings, and consequently on their ultimate and everlasting destinies. Under these impressions, we proceed to our subject. between the foundation, or standard And I enter upon it with the statement of a Difference distinction, which is a sufficiently obvious one, principle or but not on that account the less deserving of at- and the rule tention, the distinction between the principle or of virtue. foundation of moral virtue, and the rule or standard of its requirements. Without at present making any affirmation respecting either the one or the other, without being so unreasonable as thus, at the very outset, to take aught for granted in answer to the questions What is the principle? and What is the rule? I merely state the theoretical distinction. It is one which admits of a very simple and satisfactory illustration from what has place under human governments. A law appears in the statute-book, or the recorded enactments, of a particular country, requiring or prohibiting some specified act. This law, then, is the rule, by which, in the matter whereto it relates, the conduct of the inhabitants of the country, and subjects of its government, must of LECT. II. course be regulated. We shall suppose the law a prohibitory one,-simply affixing a definite penalty to a definite deed,-without assigning any reason for the prohibition. But, although no reason appears on the statute-book, it does not follow that no reason existed in the minds of those legislators by whom the enactment was introduced. Here then we have the rule, and the principle of the rule. Whatever it was, by which the original framers of the law were induced to enact it, that was the principle; by which is here meant, the consideration, on account or for the sake of which the law was enactedor that which, in the minds of the enactors, constituted it right: while the law itself, in its simple terms of prohibition, independently of the reason or principle of it, is the rule of conduct to the subject. In ten thousand cases, the subject may know nothing beyond the rule itself. He finds the law existing; and, without further inquiry, without troubling himself with any investigation of the principle,—with any attempt to discover the grounds of its original enactment, he regulates his conduct accordingly. In some minds, however, there may preside a more inquisitive disposition. Though living, like other good subjects, in obedience to the law, they may not be satisfied with the mere knowledge of its existence. They may be desirous to trace it to its origin,-to ascertain its reason, to find a satisfactory reply, not merely to the question, What is the law? but LECT. II. to the further question, Why is the law what it is? The answer to the first inquiry determines the rule, the answer to the second the principle of the rule. The distinction is thus sufficiently intelligible, between the simple rule or standard of duty, and the reason why this rule or standard is what it is, and not something different or something opposite. I do not apply this distinction at present; but, having stated it, keep it in reserve for future use. To show you, in part at least, my reason for Grand defect enlarging, as I have done, on the hazard arising, in the structure of most theories of morals; the omission of vity. in questions of morals, from the theories of human philosophy, I now come at once to the man's deprapoint which I have had principally in view, and to which I alluded in the close of the former lecture. It is this, that in by much the larger proportion of these theories there is an entire, or almost entire, overlooking of a fundamental article in the statements of fact and of doctrine contained in divine revelation, relative to the character and condition of man as a subject of God's moral government :-I refer to the innate depravity of human nature. It has long been my conviction,-a conviction which has been progressively confirmed by observation and reflection, that a large proportion of theological errors,―of heretical departures from evangelical truth, may be traced to mistaken or defective views of this great point. It is reasonable to -- - |