pain are not in the catalogue of things within his power, and that the sufferers themselves are not unhappy, since misfortunes are unavoidable, and he knew that his wife or child were not naturally exempt from them. When he dies, he expects that his soul, being a particle detached from the Universal Mind, will be absorbed in it again, and that his separate consciousness will be lost for ever.

These are the great outlines of the famous philosophical system of Zeno, which is said to have made so many great men; but it has certainly no foundation in nature. The principles of it can never have been really felt, and all the boasted effects of it must have arisen from conceit and obstinacy.

How differently, and how much more naturally, does the Christian think and act in the cases above mentioned! He does not pretend to deny the evidence of his senses, nor has recourse to whimsical distinctions; and, not having maintained that pain is no evil, he finds himself under no necessity of behaving as if he was unaffected by it. He owns that present sufferings are not joyous, but grievous; but he still thinks them nothing in comparison with the glory that shall be revealed, and therefore he endures patiently for righteousness' sake, in a firm belief of being more than recompensed for them at the resurrection of the just. If his friends be in distress, he has no principles that lead him to check, but, on the other hand, such as encourage him freely to indulge his natural sympathy with them; and these feelings will certainly prompt him to exert himself to the utmost in their favor. At the same time, he will not fail to exhort his friends to the duties of Christian patience and fortitude, inculcating the great Christian doctrine of the transitoriness of this world, and its subserviency to another. When he dies, he indulges no extravagant, but really uncomfortable conceit, about being absorbed in the Divine Mind; but believes that he shall, in his own person, rise again from the dead, when he shall resume and retain his own separate

consciousness, live again under the government of that God whose goodness he has experienced and whose friendship he has secured, know all his virtuous friends once more, and rejoice with them through all eternity.

If we consider the principles of morals in the heathen world, we shall see the manifest advantage there is over it in the plan of revelation. The views of the heathens upon this subject were exceedingly confined, and did not require that comprehension of mind which is necessary to the practice of those duties that were enjoined both in the Jewish and Christian systems. The great duties of piety, consisting in the fear and love of God, and a cheerful reliance on his providence, were, in a manner, unknown in ancient times beyond the boundaries of Judea. And what can more evidently tend to enlarge the comprehension and faculties of the human mind, than the regards which are due to the Maker and Governor of the world?

While the attention of the heathens was wholly engrossed by sensible things, those who were favored with Divine revelation, even in its most imperfect state, were engaged in the contemplation of their invisible Author. They considered the enjoyments of life as the effects of his bounty, and all the events of it as taking place according to the wise appointment of his providence. Thus was the power of association enabled to present to their minds the ideas of great and remote objects, by which their sentiments were influenced and their conduct directed. By this means, limited as were the views of the ancient patriarchs, their conceptions were far more enlarged, and consequently their minds more intellectual, than those of the gentile world.

It is true that all the heathens were prone to superstition, and that a great number of their actions were influenced by regards to invisible agents; but (not to say, what is very probable, that their religion was, in this respect, a corruption of the patriarchal) all the gods they had any idea of, at least all with whom they maintained any intercourse, were

local and territorial divinities, liable to the influence of low and vulgar passions, and limited in their powers and operations. It was not possible, therefore, that their theology should suggest such sublime ideas, as must have been conceived by the Jews, from the perusal of the books of Moses; in which we find the idea of one God, the Creator and Lord of heaven and earth, who established and who controls the laws of nature, and who superintends the affairs of the whole world, giving the kingdoms of it to whomsoever he pleases; a Being of unspotted purity, and a friend and protector of all good men. So far were the notions which the gentiles entertained of their gods below the conceptions of the Jews, concerning their Jehovah, the Lord of heaven and earth, who brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, destroying their enemies in the Red Sea, and feeding them with bread from heaven for the space of forty years; that they could hardly have had any ideas to some of the finest expressions which occur in the sacred books of the Jews, as, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart;" and many others, which express sentiments of the most pure and exalted devotion.

If any people have exalted and sublime ideas, they are sure to be found in their poetry; but how poor and low is the sacred poetry of the heathens in comparison with the Psalms of David! The poems of Homer, of Hesiod, or of Callimachus in honor of the Grecian gods, can hardly be read without laughter; but the book of Psalms (the greatest part of which were written long before the works of any of those Grecian poets, and by persons who had travelled and seen far less than they had done) cannot be read without the greatest seriousness, and are still capable of exciting sentiments of the warmest and most exalted, and yet the most perfectly rational devotion. They give us the most sublime ideas of the infinite power, wisdom, and goodness of God. This difference between the poetry of the Jews and the Greeks, in favor of the former, is so great, that I

think it cannot be accounted for without the supposition of Divine communications. In point of genius, the Greeks seem to have been evidently superior, and they were certainly possessed of the art of composition in much greater perfection.

Whence, then, could arise so manifest an inferiority in this respect? It must have been because the Jewish theology gave that nation ideas of a Being infinitely superior to themselves, the contemplation of which, with that of his works and of his providence, would tend to improve and exalt their faculties; whereas, the heathen theology gave them no ideas of beings much superior to the race of man. In general, the gods of the Greeks and Romans were supposed to have been mere men, beings of the same rank and condition with themselves; and, though their powers were supposed to be enlarged upon their deification, their passions and morals were not at all improved, but continued just the same as before, so that their greater powers were employed about the gratification of the lowest appetites. This theology, therefore, could not infuse that noble enthusiasm which was inspired by the Jewish religion, but must rather have tended to debase their faculties.

That extensive and perfect benevolence, which is so strongly inculcated in the New Testament, implies more enlarged sentiments, and greater perfection of the intellectual faculties, than that more limited benevolence, which is treated of by the heathen moralists, which was hardly ever thought to extend farther than to a love of one's own countrymen, and which admitted slaves to none of the privileges of men, but considered them as no other than the property of their masters. But, in the eye of a Christian, Jew and Gentile, Barbarian, Scythian, bond and free, are all equal. The boasted attachments of private friendship are not more endearing than that mutual love which Christ recommends to his disciples. But, whereas private friendship was, with the Greeks and Romans, the perfection and almost the end of all virtue, the brotherly love of Christians is only considered

as a branch of a more extensive benevolence, and leads to the love of all the human race.

It is evident that the duties of contentment, trust in Divine Providence, meekness, patience, forbearance and forgiveness of injuries, are more insisted on by Christ and his apostles, than by any of the heathen philosophers; and these virtues certainly require a greater comprehension of mind than any other social duties. Children are quick in their resentments, their anger is presently excited, and they are unable to conceal what little malice or revenge they are capable of; but in proportion as men advance in age, in experience, and consequently in intellect, they are able to overlook affronts, and to suspend, or wholly to stifle their resentments; because they are able to take in more distant consequences of passions and actions; and the sentiments which are suggested by these extensive views, moderate and overpower those which are prompted by their present sensations.

Christianity, therefore, by extending these duties, supposes, and thereby favors and promotes a still greater advance in intellectual perfection. To act like a Christian, a man must be possessed of true greatness of mind, a self-command, fortitude, or magnanimity, which is infinitely more superior to the disguised revenge of which some are capable, and which they can brood over for years, than this is superior to the quick resentments of children. It requires a more just knowledge of things, more experience, and more foresight.

Thus does the Christian scheme appear to be perfectly consonant to nature. It supposes a series of dispensations, in which the human mind is operated upon, and its improve ment promoted in a manner analogous to that in which it is actually operated upon, and its improvement promoted every day. As the one, therefore, is conducted according to the ordinary providence of the Divine Being, the other is what might be expected from his extraordinary dispensations. Both these schemes have the same great object in view, and in both of them the same end is gained by the same methods.