is a species almost of puerility to take up with it; for these reasons, minds, which are habitually in search of invention and originality, feel a resistless inclination to strike off into other solutions and other expositions. The truth is, that many minds are not so indisposed to any thing which can be offered to them, as they are to the flatness of being content with common reasons: and, what is most to be lamented, minds conscious of superiority are the most liable to this repugnancy."

But-" After all the schemes and struggles of a reluctant philosophy, the necessary resort is to a Deity. The marks of DESIGN are too strong to be gotten over. Design must have had a designer. That designer must have been a person. That person is GOD."

"When the atheist denies a God, if he have no notion at all what is meant by the word God, he denies he knows not what."-Hancock.

C. SERMON II. p. 23.

GOODNESS OF GOD.

"WHEN God created the human species, either he wished their happiness, or he wished their misery, or he was indifferent and unconcerned about either.

"If he had wished our misery, he might have made sure of his purpose, by forming our senses to be so many sores and pains to us, as they are now instruments of gratification and enjoyment; or, by placing us amidst objects, so ill suited to our perceptions, as to have continually offended us, instead of ministering

to our refreshment and delight. He might have made, for example, every thing we tasted, bitter ; every thing we saw, loathsome; every thing we touched, a sting; every smell, a stench; and every sound, a discord.

"If he had been indifferent about our happiness or misery, we must impute to our good fortune (as all design by this supposition is excluded) both the capacity of our senses to receive pleasure, and the supply of external objects fitted to produce it.

"But either of these, and still more, both of them, being too much to be attributed to accident, nothing remains but the first supposition, that God, when he created the human species, wished their happiness; and made for them the provision which he has made, with that view and for that purpose.

"The same argument may be proposed in different terms; thus:-Contrivance proves design; and the predominant tendency of the contrivance indicates the disposition of the designer. The world abounds with contrivances; and all the contrivances which we are acquainted with, are directed to beneficial purposes. Evil, no doubt, exists; but is never, that we can perceive, the object of contrivance. Teeth are contrived to eat, not to ache; their aching now and then is incidental to the contrivance-perhaps inseparable from it; or even, if you will, let it be called a defect in the contrivance: but it is not the object of it. This is a distinction which well deserves to be attended to. In describing implements of husbandry, you would hardly say of the sickle, that it is made to cut the reaper's hand; though, from the construction of the

instrument, and the manner of using it, this mischief often follows. But, if you had occasion to describe instruments of torture or execution: this engine, you would say, is to extend the sinews; this, to dislocate the joints; this, to break the bones; this, to scorch the soles of the feet. Here pain and misery are the very objects of the contrivance. Now, nothing of this sort is to be found in the works of nature. We never discover a train of contrivance to bring about an evil purpose. No anatomist ever discovered a system of organization calculated to produce pain or disease; or, in explaining the parts of the human body, ever said, This is to irritate; this, to inflame; this duct is to convey the gravel to the kidneys; this gland to secrete the humour which forms the gout. If, by chance, he come at a part of which he knows not the use, the most he can say is, that it is useless: no one ever suspects that it is put there to incommode, to annoy, or to torment."-Paley.

D. SERMON II. p. 26.

MORAL TRUTH.

Ἡ κάθαρσις κοιεῖ ἐν γνώσει τῶν ἀριστων εἶναι.

"RELIGION being the corner-stone and the keystone of morality, must have a MORAL origin; so far, at least, that the evidence of its doctrines are not, like the truths of abstract science, wholly independent of the will.

"It were, therefore, to be expected, that its fundamental truth would be such as might be denied, though only by the FOOL; and, even by the fool, from the madness of the heart alone."- Coleridge.

"By natural consequence, every moral delinquency, and much more, every habitual desertion of moral rectitude, disturb the soundness and integrity of the mind, and produce an infatuation, approaching much nearer in degree to insanity, than the word infatuation, in common use, expresses.

"This consequence the heathen writers attributed to a judicial sentence of the gods; from whence the mimic poets borrowed the tragic frenzy of Orestes, and the burning torches of the Furies." - Cobb. Bampton Lectures, p. 57. 1783.

See Exod. ix. 12; 1 Sam. xvi. 14; Prov. i. 28; Isa. i. 15; vi. 9; Jer. xiv. 12, 10; Hos. v. 6; Mic. iii. 4; Matt. xii. 45; John xii. 39; Acts xxviii. 25; Rom. xi. 8; 2 Thess. ii. 11, 12; 2 Tim. i. 7 ; 2 Pet. i. 9.

"Before leaving the subject of Insanity," says Dr. Abercrombie," there is a point of great interest, which may be briefly referred to. It bears, in a very striking manner, upon what may be called the pathology of the mental powers; but I presume not to touch upon it, except in the slightest manner. In the language of common life, we sometimes speak of a moral insanity, in which a man rushes headlong through a course of vice and crime, regardless of every moral restraint, of

every social tie, and of all consequences, whether more immediate or future. Yet, if we take the most melancholy instance of this kind that can be furnished by the history of human depravity, the individual may still be recognized, in regard to all physical relations, as a man of a sound mind; and he may be as well qualified as other men for the details of business, or even the investigations of science. He is correct in his judgment of all the physical relations of things; but, in regard to their moral relations, every correct feeling appears to be obliterated. If a man, then, may thus be correct in his judgment of all physical relations, while he is lost to every moral relation, we have strong ground for believing, that there is in his constitution a power, distinct from reason, but which holds the same sway over his moral powers, that reason does among his intellectual; and that the influence of this power may be weakened or lost, while reason remains unimpaired. This is the moral principle, or the power of conscience. It has been supposed by some to be a modification of reason, but the considerations now referred to appear to favour the opinion of their being distinct. should so completely lose its sway, while reason remains unimpaired, is a point in the moral constitution of man which it does not belong to the physician to investigate. The fact is unquestionable;-the solution is to be sought for in the records of eternal truth."

That this power

Inquiries concerning the Intellectual Powers, and the Investigation of Truth, p. 364. See also "Philosophy of the Moral Feelings."