exception all the processes of thought and imagina tion and feeling went on upon their old principlesstill would there be a morality among men, a recognition of the difference between right and wrong, just as distinct and decided as a recognition of the difference between beauty and deformity. There would be nought in such a translation of the human family to this new state that could break up the alliance between a view of loveliness in scenery, and the tasteful admiration of it; or between a view of integrity in character and the approval of its worth or its rectitude. By the supposition that we now make, the taste is left entire—and it has only to be presented with the same objects that it may be similarly affected as before. And by the same supposition the moral nature is left entire-and it has only to be presented with the appropriate objects, that it may respond to them as it did before, and come forth with its wonted evolutions. single difference is, that one object is withdrawn, that God henceforth is unheeded and unknown, that he is never present to the eye of the mind so as to call forth from the heart a sense of corre sponding duteousness. But still in the utter absence of all thought and of all knowledge about God, there are other objects whereon with the human constitution unchanged the moral feeling and the moral faculty would find their appropriate exercise. There would still be the reciprocations of morality among men the same relationship as before between injury and a sense of displeasure—between beneficence and a sense of gratitude-between a consciousness of guilt, towards a neighbour, if not

The

towards God, between this consciousness and the pain of self-dissatisfaction-between the exposure of human villany or baseness upon the one hand and the outcries of public execration on the other. The voice of the inward monitor would still be heard. The voice of society whether in applause or condemnation would still be heard. Men would still continue to accuse or else to excuse each other. The whole system of our jurisprudence might remain as at present and superadded to it, there would be a court of conscience and a court of public opinion, by which, even after the world had been desolated of all sense of God, a natural regimen of morality might still be upholden.

29. Let a mathematician retain his geometrical powers and perceptions entire; and though he should become an atheist, he will still apprehend a question of equality between one line and another. And let any one retain his moral powers and perceptions entire; and though he should become an atheist, he will still apprehend a question of equity between one man and another. Atheism does not hinder the resentment which he feels upon a provocation; neither does it hinder the instinctive sensibility which he feels at the sight of distress; neither does it hinder the quick and lively approval wherewith he regards an exhibition of virtue; nor yet the recoil of his adverse moral judgment with all its emotions of antipathy from some scene of perfidy or of violence. Though utterly broken loose from heaven, there would still be the same play of action and reaction upon earth. Both the obligation of a legal right, and the approbation of a moral rightness

would continue to be felt and as in the chamber of a man's own heart there would be a remorse upon the back of iniquity as before, and from the tribunal of society there would descend upon it a voice of rebuke as before the obligations of morality would still have a meaning; and apart from the thought of God, there would be a sense as well as an understanding of moral obligation.

30. With the access which the geometrician has at present to the orbs and the movements which be on high-his mathematics do avail him for the com putations of a sublime astronomy. Let this access be barred; and still his mathematics would avail him as before for all terrestrial positions and distances. And so with the access which either peasant or philosopher has to the knowledge of God, his morals do avail for pointing out the incumbent gratitude and the incumbent obedience. Let this access be somehow intercepted, let the face of the Divinity be mantled in thickest darkness, insomuch that the very conception of Him were banished from our world; and still would there remain a sublunary morals that would take cognizance of the sublunary relationships as before. The astronomer in the one case might sink down into a landed surveyor. The aspiring candidate for heaven, in the other case, might sink down into a mere citizen of earth-yet there would be a surviving mathematics and also a surviving morals. The distinction between the right and the wrong would no more be obliterated by such an interception of our view towards the upper sanctuary, than the distinction between the east and the west would be cancelled

by the destruction of the telescope, and the disappearance of all its wondrous revelations from the memory of our species. The earth that we tread upon would still continue to be a platform for the display and exercise of the moral proprieties—and as it was in the age of Greece and Rome, the period of a distorted theology, so would it be now in the period of an utterly extinct theology_virtue would be felt in its rightness, and also be felt in the obligation of it.

31. When Sir Isaac Newton was first made to know of the Satellites of Jupiter, he had not an essentially new mathematics to learn that he might evolve the law of their movements. The only novelty lay in the facts, and not in the principles that he brought to bear upon them. The geometry which guided him along these celestial orbs was the very same by which he traced the path of a projectile on the surface of our own planet; and to obtain a just estimate of those mazy heavens that now were opened to his view, he had only to transfer the mathematics which he before had to another set of data. And it is the very same with the revelations of a higher moral, as with those of a higher physical economy. It is a revelation not of new principles, but of new objects addressed to our old principles. The very ethics that had been long in frequent and familiar exercise about the things within our knowledge, are available for such things as are now offered for the first time to our contemplation-even though our eye had not before seen, nor our ear heard, nor yet it had ever entered into our hearts to conceive of them. The

very ethics that dictate our gratitude to an earthly benefactor, dictate also the transcending gratitude, the sublimer devotion that we owe to the benefactor who sitteth on high-just as the arithmetic which assigns the units of an earthly, is the same with that which assigns the millions of a distance that is heavenly. It is thus that the revelations of heaven meet with a law already written in the hearts of men upon earth-and so in the whole morality of that relationship which subsists between men and their Maker, do we meet with analogies to the morality of men who live without God in the world.

32. Thus there is a natural philosophy which, when conversant with earthly objects alone, may be denominated the Science of Terrestrial Physics. And in like manner there is a moral philosophy which, when conversant with earthly objects alone, as with the various beings who occupy this globe, may be denominated the Science of Terrestrial Ethics.

33. But even within the cognizance of man's natural eye, there are heavenly objects whose paths and movements can be traced by him; and so be made the subject of mathematical description and mathematical reasoning. When he lifts himself to the contemplation of them, he enters on the confines of a science distinct from the former, though comprehended with it under the general title of Natural Philosophy-even what may be called the science of the Celestial Physics. In as far as he prosecutes this science without the aid of instruments for the enlargement of his vision, he