A MORAL GOVERNOR. 265 



terfering wishes, might preserve the species in 

 some shape of existence, as we see in the case of 

 brutes. But a person must be strangely con- 

 stituted, who, living amid the respect for law, 

 the admiration for what is good, the order and 

 virtues and graces of civilized nations, (all which 

 have their origin in some degree in the feeling of 

 responsibility) can maintain that all these are 

 casual and extraneous circumstances, no way 

 contemplated in the formation of man ; and that 

 a condition in which there should be no obligation 

 in law, no merit in self-restraint, no beauty in 

 virtue, is equally suited to the powers and the 

 nature of man, and was equally contemplated 

 when those powers were given him. 



If this supposition be too extravagant to be 

 admitted, as it appears to be, it remains then 

 that man, intended, as we have already seen from 

 his structure and properties, to be a discoursing, 

 social being, acting under the influence of affec- 

 tions, desires, and purposes, was also intended to 

 act under the influence of a sense of duty ; and 

 that the acknowledgment of the obligation of 

 a moral law is as much part of his nature, as 

 hunger or thirst, maternal love or the desire of 

 power ; that, therefore, in conceiving man as the 

 work of a Creator, we must imagine his powers 

 and character given him with an intention on 

 the Creator's part that this sense of duty should 

 occupy its place in his constitution as an active 



