viewed, the commonest necessities of mortal life are ennobled ; and the toiling multitude labouring for their daily bread, with all things else that maintain the course of nature or keep this material machinery, thus required for so important a moral and intellectual purpose, in repair, are visibly aiding in the splendid design of benevolence, wisdom, and power, willing, planning, and executing the extension of felicity, by means of moral order.

This doctrine of the soul of man being not only in a state of probation during mortal existence, but being actually undergoing a gradual process of creation, and the whole material universe having been formed but to be machinery which, moved by the Almighty fiat, is performing certain stages of the process, is strictly analogous to the whole course of God's visible providence. It is surely in perfect harmony with all that we behold in our original instructor, the book of nature, that God, who has been pleased to ordain the production of all things, from the blade of grass upwards, by the adaptation of means to ends, should have been further pleased to ordain that the ends of all other means should be but means to this the ultimate end, namely, intellectual nature perfected, or capability of the highest order of virtue, and susceptibility of the highest order of felicity produced, to be transplanted into an eternal future!

If God has been pleased to work out physical purposes by the adaptation of means to ends, that

man, while looking on at the operations of nature, might learn to adapt the laws of physical nature to useful physical sciences; can it be doubted that God has been pleased also to adapt means to ends, in the production of intellectual powers, and good will producing sympathies, for the far more important purpose of suggesting to reason and free-will, the means of performing that part of the modelling of intellectual nature, which he has been pleased to commit to them.

Out of such views can piety fail to arise ? While the most effectual means are every where thus visibly at work, co-operating to produce the most benevolent of ends, is it possible not to feel a reverencial consciousness of being in the actual presence of an awful, incomprehensible, all-pervading influence; an intelligent first cause; a God whose attributes are power, wisdom, and benevolence? Power, because nature is visibly under the dominion of laws-wisdom, because all those laws act in consort, tending to one great end-benevolence, because that one great end is the happiness, temporal and eternal, of all created beings. Comprehend thus, our God is no longer an invisible God-we see him every where !

With such views, shall we dare to deny to the labouring classes the cultivation of their reasoning powers? With such views, shall we dare to reduce the bulk of mankind, that wondrous apparatus, thus designed by benevolence, wisdom, and power,

for this mighty and eternal purpose, into mere temporal machinery, to minister to the passing purpose of our wants or our luxuries ?

If this be not sacrilege, if this be not desecrating the vessels of the altar, and placing the tables of the money changers in the temple of the highest, where shall we seek the modern crimes which these offences typify? For if nature at large has been justly and beautifully styled the temple of God, is not intellectual nature the very altar of that temple?

Again, our being able to trace the formation of the moral sense to natural causes, therefore to causes ordained by the God of nature, is not only no objection to, but is the strongest possible proof of the divine origin, and therefore divine authority of the moral sense. For, had the moral sense been purely an instinct, of which, though conscious, we could not trace the rise or origin, we might have said, how do we know that this or that opinion is not a mere traditional precept, which, one time or other, had its rise in artificial circumstances, and which has been handed down from father to son, and so transmitted to us? But, when we see the opinion growing out of the natural organization and natural circumstances of man, which we know to be the work of God, we must know the opinion to be dictated by that God himself, who created the natural organization and ordained the natural circumstances!

FOURTH EXCEPTION OBVIATED.

If it be still objected that there are portions of the material creation which, however beautiful or excellent, or conducive to present enjoyment, yet do not seem to convey any special moral lesson, it is replied, that every part of the abundance which nature is capable of yielding, even for the supply of the commonest necessities of food, raiment, and shelter, will be found, if duly considered, to be not only sources of temporary indulgence, claiming feelings of gratitude, but also portions of that natural revelation, which visibly commands that moral order shall be the means by which, not only temporal enjoyment, but that state of man's intellectual nature which constitutes susceptibility of eternal felicity shall be attained.

The justness of this assertion will become obvious on a simple reference to familiar facts. Who is there, for instance, who is not aware of the suffering and multiplied vices which invariably follow the want of production, and consequent scarcity of the necessaries of life, attendant upon a want of industry, whether individual or national? Again, when industry does exist, and has produced, who has not seen and lamented the wide

spread wretchedness induced by an unjust distribution of the products of industry? Again, common daily experience teaches almost every human being that no one of the necessaries, comforts, or means of the pleasures of life, however abundantly possessed, can be enjoyed without the observance of temperance in their use.

The same experience teaches that the contempt and hatred which men incur, as well as the violence they commit against the natural sympathies God has implanted in them, when they neglect the claims of helplessness, or yield to the unjust desires of selfishness, is always a price much higher than their unjust gains are worth.

Unfortunately, however, these views of the coincidence of virtue with self-interest, thus by God's ordination, taught for an immortal purpose, by the necessities of mortal life, are too generally considered in the light of mere worldly prudence, and fatally separated from religion; so that the too many who are unhappily wanting in knowledge of, or reverence for scriptural revelation, fancy themselves at liberty, when they please, to sacrifice prudent calculation to precarious gratification, promising themselves to balance accounts with themselves at some future period. But were all men taught from infancy to recognize in every intimation of God's will, thus given by natural revelation, that is, in every consequence following its cause, a command from