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THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 



nation and from tne countless ages of eternity 

 past, If. the more grand and diversified scenes of 

 eternity o come the plan of Providence which 

 they unfold, and the views they exhibit of the 

 moral principles of the Divine government, and 

 of the subordination of all events to the accom 

 plishment of a glorious design the character and 

 attributes of the Creator, which they illustrate 

 by the most impressive delineations, and the 

 most lofty and sublime descriptions the views 

 they exhibit of the existence, the powers, the 

 capacities, the virtues, and the employments of 

 superior orders of intellectual beings the de 

 monstrations they afford of the dignified station, 

 and of the high destination of man and the sub 

 lime and awful scenes they unfold, when the earth 

 &quot; shall melt like wax at the presence of the Lord,&quot; 

 when the throne of judgment shall be set, and 

 tho unnumbered millions of the race of Adam 

 shall be assembled before the Judge of all infi 

 nitely surpass every thing which the unassisted 

 imaginations of men could have devised, and 

 every thing which had ever been attempted by 

 the greatest sages of antiquity, either in prose or 

 in rhyme; and, consequently prove, to a moral 

 demonstration, that a Power and Intelligence, 

 superior to the human mind, must have suggest 

 ed such sublime conceptions, and such astonish 

 ing ideas; since there are no prototypes of such 

 objects to be found within the ordinary range of 

 the human mind. 



But the subject to which we have been hither 

 to adverting, when properly considered, suggests 

 an evidence of the truth and divinity of the Scrip 

 tures, as striking, and, perhaps, more convincing 

 than any other. They unfold to us the moral 

 laws of the universe they present to us a sum 

 mary of moral principles and precepts, which is 

 applicable to all the tribes and generations of 

 men, to all the orders of angelic beings, and to 

 all the moral intelligences that people the ampli 

 tudes of creation to man, during his temporary 

 abode on earth, and to man, when placed in 

 heaven, so long as eternity endures precepts, 

 which, if universally observed, would banish 

 misery from the creation, and distribute happi 

 ness, without alloy, among all the intellectual be 

 ings that exist throughout the empire of God. 

 Can these things be affirmed of any other system 

 of religion or of morals that was ever published 

 to the world ? The Greek and Roman moralists, 

 after all their laboured investigations, could never 

 arrive at any certain determination with regard 

 to the nature of happiness, and the means of at 

 taining it. We are told by Varro, one of the 

 most learned writers of the Augustan age, that, 

 the heathen philosophers had embraced more 

 than two hundred and eighty different opinions 

 respecting the supreme good. Some of them 

 taught that it consisted in sensual enjoyments, 

 and in freedom from pain ; others considered it 

 as placed in study and contemplation, in military 



glory, in riches, honours, wealth, and fame. Some 

 of their moral maxims, separately considered, 

 were rational and excellent; but they were con 

 nected with other maxims, which completely 

 neutralized all their virtue, and their tendency to 

 produce happiness. Pride, falsehood, injustice, 

 impurity, revenge, and an unfeeling apathy to 

 the distresses of their fellow-creatures, were 

 considered as quite consistent with their system 

 of morality; and such malignant principles and 

 practices were blended with their most virtuous 

 actions. But we have already shown, that the 

 uniform operation of such principles would ne 

 cessarily lead to the destruction of all happiness, 

 and to the overthrow of all order throughout the 

 intelligent creation. 



Now, can it be supposed, for a moment, that a 

 Jew, who had spent forty years of his life as a 

 shepherd in a desert country, who lived in a rude 

 age of the world, who had never studied a sys 

 tem of ethics, and whose mind was altogether 

 incapable of tracing the various relations which 

 subsists between intelligent beings and their 

 Creator, could have investigated those moral 

 principles and laws which form the foundation ol 

 the moral universe, and the basis of the divine 

 government in all worlds; unless they had been 

 communicated immediately by Him, who, at one 

 glance, beholds all the physical and moral rela 

 tions which exist throughout creation, and who 

 can trace the bearings and the eternal conse 

 quences of every moral law ? Or can we sup 

 pose, that, throughout the whole period of the 

 Jewish economy, and during the first ages of the 

 Christian dispensation, a multitude of writers 

 should appear, many of them unknown to each 

 other, all of whom should uniformly recognise 

 those laws in their minutest bearings and rami 

 fications, unless their minds had been enlight 

 ened and directed by the same powerful and un 

 erring Intelligence ? If these laws are distin 

 guished by their extreme simplicity, they are the 

 more characteristic of their divine Author, who, 

 from the general operation of a few simple prin 

 ciples and laws in the system of nature, produces 

 all the variety we perceive in the material world, 

 and all the harmonies, the contrasts, the beauties, 

 and the sublimities of the universe. If it be 

 asked why these laws, which are so extremely 

 simple and comprehensive, were not discovered 

 nor recognised by the ancient sages ? It might 

 be answered, by asking why the laws of gravita 

 tion, which are also simple and comprehensive, 

 were not discovered, till Newton arose to inves 

 tigate the agencies of nature, and to pour a flood 

 of light on the system of the universe? But 

 the true reasons are the unassisted powers of 

 the human mind were inadequate to the task of 

 surveying all the moral relations which subsist 

 throughout the intelligent system, and of tracing 

 those moral principles which would apply to the 

 whole assemblage of moral agents, so as to se- 



