pany the adventurous navigator of more modern times to the distant shores of the western world: the same religious notions, and the same expiatory ceremonies, will be found universally prevalent. The rude idolater of the recently discovered hemisphere, and the polished votary of ancient polytheism, equally concur in the belief, that without the shedding of blood there can be no remission of sins.*

"Nor was the life of the brute creation always deemed sufficient to remove the taint of guilt, and to avert the wrath of heaven. The death of a nobler victim was frequently required; and the altars of Paganism were bedewed with torrents of human blood. The original design of these horrible rites was well known in the secluded groves of Mona; and the mysterious priesthood of Britain unanimously pronounced, that, unless the pollution of our guilty race was washed in the life-blood of a man, away the anger of the immortal gods could never be appeased.

"The universality of sacrificial rites will naturally produce an inquiry into the source, from which a custom, so inexplicable upon any principles of mere natural reason, could have been derived.

"Whence, we may ask, could originate the universal practice of devoting the first-born, either of man or beast, and of offering it up as a burnt-offering? Whence, but from a deep and ancient consciousness of moral depravation? Whence, but from some per

* It is observed by Acosta, that, in cases of sickness, it was usual for a Peruvian to sacrifice his son to Virachoca, beseeching him to spare his life, and to be satisfied with the blood of his child.-Acost. apud Purch. Pilgr. book ix. c. 11.

verted tradition, respecting the true sacrifice to be once offered for the sins of all mankind?"—See Horæ Mosaicæ, vol. i. cap. iii. § ii.

BRING FORTH YOUR STRONG REASONS.

F. SERMON III. p. 31.

FREE WILL.

"SPEAK to a young Liberal, fresh from Edinburgh or Hackney, or the Hospitals, of Free-will, as implied in Free-agency, he will perhaps confess to you, with a smile, that he is a Necessitarian; proceeds to assure you, that the liberty of the will is an impossible conception, a contradiction in terms, and finish by recommending you to read Jonathan Edwards, or Dr. Crombie; or, as it may happen, he may declare the will itself a mere delusion, a nonentity, and ask you if you have read Mr. Lawrence's Lecture. Converse on the same subject with a plain, single-minded, yet reflecting neighbour, and he may probably say (as St. Augustin said long before him, in reply to the question, What is Time?) I know it well enough when you do not ask me. But alike with both the supposed parties, the self-complacent student, just as certainly as with your less positive neighbour-attend to their actions, their feelings, and even to their words: and you will be in ill luck if ten minutes pass without affording you full and satisfactory proof that the idea of man's moral freedom possesses and modifies their whole practical being, in all they say, in all they feel,

in all they do and are done to; even as the spirit of life, which is contained in no vessel, because it permeates all."-Coleridge.

If we deny the existence of all we cannot explain, we must deny every thing: and to assert the nonexistence of the will, because we cannot thoroughly understand the mode of its operation, appears not more reasonable than to deny the existence of a prospect before us, because it is bounded by an horizon, or to desist from the use of the mariner's compass, because its motion is a mystery.

G. SERMON III. p. 35.

"WHO does not perceive the accomplishment of the sentence upon the woman * in her present circumstance and condition? The female of the human species alone has sorrow' during her pregnancy; she alone experiences excruciating pangs in parturition; and she alone is subjected to the authority of her husband, who, from the moment of their union, becomes her lord and master, not unfrequently her stern and unrelenting tyrant. What rational account can philosophy give of the 'pudor circa res venereas?' The several kinds of animals mix openly, without restraint; whereas in the human race not only does nature bid certain parts to be concealed, but their legitimate use is ever in secret, thereby acknowledging, even in the indulgence of a natural instinct, the effect of original sin, when our first parents immediately

* Gen. iii. 16.

after their offence ، knew that they were naked.'---Holden.

H.-SERMON IV. p. 43.

HUMAN SORROWS.

"IF we could, from one of the battlements of heaven, espy how many men and women at this time lie fainting and dying for want of bread; how many young men are hewn down by the sword of war; how many poor orphans are now weeping over the graves of their father, by whose life they were enabled to eat; if we could but hear how mariners and passengers are at this present in a storm, and shriek out because their keel dashes against a rock, or bulges under them; how many people there are that weep with want, and are mad with oppression, or are desperate by too quick a sense of constant infelicity; in all reason we should be glad to be out of the noise and participation of so many evils. This is a place of sorrows and tears, of so great evils and a constant calamity: let us remove from hence, at least, in affections and preparations of mind."-Jeremy Taylor.

.

I. SERMON V. p. 61.

KNOWLEDGE.

"In the physical world, to whatever part we turn our eyes, we are presented with a regular succession of causes and effects. By gradual and almost imperceptible experience, man learns to accommodate his

actions to the fixed laws and ascertainable properties of matter; and by observing the conjunction and succession of phenomena, he acquires the power of foreseeing events in their causes."

Nothing, perhaps, gives its possessor such a decided superiority over the multitude as the power of clearly tracing the consequences of actions, the concatenation of mental causes and effects, and the adaptation of moral means to ends.”—Essays on the Formation and Publication of Opinions, pp. 197, 200.

"A vessel, sent with some scientific men to New South Wales to make lunar observations, was, when within a week's sail of Sydney, wrecked upon a sandbank in the midst of the ocean. At the dawn of day the crew escaped to that part of the bank which the tide had not yet reached. It was rising, and, wave after wave, the sea approached them. The tide turned. Thank God,' said an astronomer,

we are

safe for a month, it is a spring-tide, and will not be so high again for four weeks.' ”*

"The worth and value of knowledge is in proportion to the worth and value of its object.

What, then, is the best knowledge?"

"THE FEAR OF THE LORD, THAT IS WISDOM: AND TO DEPART FROM EVIL IS UNDERSTANDING."†

See p. 14 of Lecture delivered at the Mechanics' Institution, upon the Connexion between Knowledge and Happiness. By Basil Montagu. Lecture I. on Vain Fear.

f Job xxviii. 28.