DISCOURSES.

I.

WHERE IS THY GOD?

EZEKIEL VIII. 10-12.

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SO I WENT IN AND SAW; AND BEHOLD EVERY FORM OF CREEPING THINGS AND ABOMINABLE BEASTS, AND ALL THE IDOLS OF THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL, POURTRAYED UPON THE WALLS ROUND ABOUT AND THERE STOOD BEFORE THEM SEVENTY MEN OF THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL, WITH EVERY MAN HIS CENSER IN HIS HAND; AND A THICK CLOUD OF INCENSE WENT UP. THEN SAID HE UNTO ME, SON. OF MAN, HAST THOU SEEN WHAT THE ANCIENTS OF THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL DO IN THE DARK, EVERY MAN IN THE CHAMBERS OF HIS IMAGERY?

To a wise man there is no surer mark of decline in the spirit of a people, than the corruption of their language, and the loss of meaning from their highest and most sacred words. In the affairs of government, of morals, of divinity, we retain the phrases used by our forefathers in Shakspeare's time: but it is impossible to notice the dwindled thought which they frequently contain, without feeling that the currency struck for the commerce of giant souls has been clipped to serve the traffic of dwarfs. Observe, for example, the low

ered meaning of the word RELIGION. If you ask, in these days, what a man's religion is, you are told something about the place he goes to on a Sunday, or the preacher he objects to least; of his likings and dislikings, his habits and opinions, his conventional professions. But who, from all this, would draw any inference as to his character? You know, where to find him, and how he looks; but have obtained no insight into what he is. Yet, can it be doubted that if we knew his religion in the true and ancient sense, we should understand him perfectly?-should see him, ast God alone can see him now, stripped of the disguises that hide him even from himself, and with the vital pulse itself of thought and act laid bare to view? The divine Omniscience, in relation to our nature, may be said to consist in nothing else than a discernment of our several religions. Not indeed that in his infinite Reason he knows anything about Churchmen, and Methodists, and Quakers; or distinguishes the silent meeting from the organ's pomp; or takes account of vestments black or white. These things only denote what a man will call himself when he is asked: they refer, even when most sincere, to nothing that has necessarily any deep seat within the character; only to certain emblems, either in conception or in outward habit, adopted for the expression of affections the most various in direction and intensity. But whoever can so look into my heart as to tell whether there is anything which I revere; and, if there be, what thing it is; he may read me through and through, and there is no darkness wherein I may hide myself. This is the master-key to the whole moral

nature; what does a man secretly admire and worship? What haunts him with the deepest wonder? What fills him with most earnest aspiration? What should we overhear in the soliloquies of his unguarded mind? This it is which, in the truth of things, constitutes his religion ;—this, which determines his precise place in the scale of spiritual ranks ;-this, which allies him to Hell or Heaven;-this, which makes him the outcast or the accepted of the moral sentiments of the Holiest. Every man's highest, nameless though it be, is his “living God:" while, oftener than we can tell, the being on whom he seems to call, whose history he learned in the catechism, of whom he hears at church,-with open ear perhaps, but with thick, deaf soul,-is his dead God. It is the former of these that gives me his genuine characteristic: that uppermost term in his mind discloses all the rest. Lift me the veil that hides the penetralia of his worship, let me see the genuflexions of his spirit, and catch the whiff of his incense, and look in the face the image at whose feet he is prostrate; and thenceforth I know him well; can tell where to find him in the world; and divine the temper of his home. The classifications produced by this principle are not what you will meet with in any "Sketch of all religions." Their lines run across the divisions of historical sects, wholly regardless of their separations: but as they are drawn by the hand of nature and of conscience, rather than by that of pedants and of bigots, to study them is to gain insight into divine truth, instead of wandering through the catalogue of human erLet us endeavor then to distinguish between real

rors.

and pretended religion, by adverting to the several chief aims that manifestly preside over human life.

Of many a man you would never hesitate to say, that his chief aim was to obtain ease, or wealth, or dignity. These are the objects manifestly in front of him, and, like some huge magnetic mass, drawing his whole nature towards them. The fact is apparent, not altogether from the amount of time which he devotes to them; for often the thing dearest and most sacred to the heart may fill the fewest moments, and, though providing the whole spirit, may scarcely touch the matter, of our days; nor even from the topics of his talk ; for there are those who, in conversation, seek rather to learn what is most foreign to them, than to speak what is most native; but from certain slight though expressive symptoms, hard to describe in detail, yet not easily missed in their combination. The engagements to which he takes with the heartiest relish, the sentiments that raise his quickest response, the occasions that visibly call him out and shake him free, the moments of his brightening eye, and genial laugh, and flowing voice, leave on us an irresistible impression of his sincerest tastes and deepest desires. And above all, does he reveal these, when we discover the persons who most occupy his thoughts; in whom he sees what he would like to be or to appear, and whose lot or life he feels it would be an ascent to gain. Judged by signs infallible as these, how many are there, surrendered to a low Epicurean life!—who know no higher end than to be comfortable or renowned !-whose care is for what they may have, and not for what they might be!