358 MENTAL FUNCTIONS OF 



contemporaneous with us, or to our successors, be they our pro- 

 geny or not. To obey them is. therefore, our solemn duty. 

 Christianity teaches the very precepts which lead to the greatest 

 happiness : and, if any one disregard the authority of them as 

 taught by Christ., because he sees no proofs of Christ's super- 

 human authority, he must remember that they are already esta- 

 blished in nature ; and that Bishop Butler himself, in his Analogy r 

 declares that man, " from his make, constitution, or nature, is, in 

 the strictest and most proper sense, a law to himself, he hath 

 the rule of right within,"? and that Christianity, as regards its 

 moral precepts, is a republication " of natural religion in its 

 genuine simplicity," and that "moral precepts are precepts the 

 reason of which we see," and " arise out of the nature of the case 

 itself, prior to external command."'! 



So imperative are the natural moral laws, that a man is equally 

 bound to obey them and be virtuous, though he disbelieves not 

 only the divine authority of Scripture, but a future state. Indeed, 

 in proportion to the necessity of being influenced in our conduct 

 by the hope of future reward or the fear of future punishment 

 must be the deficiency of real virtue. Nay, a man would be 

 equally bound to obey the moral laws, though, notwithstanding 

 the evidence of universal design, he should, from the difficulties 

 of the subject, reason himself into a doubt of the personality of 



p ' Sermon iii 



i Analogy, P. ii. c. i. Melanctbon says, " Wherefore our decision is this, 

 that those precepts which learned men have committed to writing, translating 

 them from the common sense and common feeling of human nature, are to be 

 accounted as not less divine than those contained in the tables given to Moses ; 

 and that it could not be the intention of our Maker to supersede by a law given 

 on a stone, that which is graven with his own finger on the table of the heart." 



Volney's Loi Naturette deserves reading; and that part of Dr. Spurzheim's 

 Phrenology which relates to the moral constitution of man. Mr. Combe's work 

 on the Constitution of Man is plain and forcible, and should be in every body's 

 hands, as a guide to happiness and a protection from absurd and superstitious 

 notions. Through a phrenological benefaction, its price is very low. 



Upon the subject of metaphysics, or the science of mind, all our knowledge, 

 I think, may be found in Gall's works, Sur V Anatonde ct Physiologic du 

 Systfrne Nerveux , and his Fonctions du Cerveau ; in Dr. Spurzheim's Phrenology, 

 in 2 vols ; and in the admirable Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, 

 by Thomas Brown, M.D. Edinb. 1826, 1 vol. 8vo. 



Dr. Thomas Brown is not only among the ablest metaphysical writers, but is 

 the latest, and his work approaches as near to phrenology as was possible without 

 the aid of Gail's method of investigation. 



