sense of obligation to obey the instinct. But no reason, and no foresight of interest can explain the peculiar feeling of obligation, which springs up in the mind on the first presentation of certain moral acts. Reason and experience will more and more confirm the obligation of truth, but can never explain the sense of guilt, and shame, and fear, with which the first violation of truth is accompanied.

Then there are details of duty and artificial relations of society, which are not anticipated in those moral intuitions. The sense of obligation with regard to them is elaborated solely by reason and experience, but it is out of materials previously existing in the mind. For after all, the power to see what is right, which resides in reason and experience with regard to many duties, is altogether different from the feeling of obligation to do it, which is an independent principle in the mind, and seems to lie farther back and deeper than reason itself.

The sense of obligation to do what is right is itself an intuition, an ultimate fact, which cannot be resolved into any principles

more simple. It is so because God has willed it.

Thus you perceive that public opinion, which is the aggregate moral sense of mankind, and the means of enforcing the moral convictions of the soul of man, is itself continually undergoing the process of refinement. Experience is accumulating, knowledge is increasing and more and more diffused, the reason of mankind is becoming daily more and more developed. Thus the grounds of obligation are becoming better and better known. New force is added to the moral instincts as the reasons for which they were implanted become more and more understood, as the eye of reason sees farther and farther into the social mischiefs which they were inintended to prevent. Those conventional wrongs too, which reason alone perceives, become more and more glaring the more they are examined, the more they are investigated. Vice after vice comes under the scrutiny of the public eye, and becomes blacker as it is contemplated, till at last it is frowned out of being. This process is destined, I believe, to go on with accelerated activity. This great office of enlightening and refining public

opinion devolves on Education and the Press. Already great progress has been made since the invention of printing, every year is marked by some achievement, some inroad made into the ancient and undisputed dominions of sin.

But there is one element of the moral nature of man which we merely touched upon, but did not pursue, yet which when developed, leads to conclusions of the last importance to human condition and destiny. The violation of the primitive moral instincts is accompanied not only by a sense of guilt and shame, but likewise of fear. All is not right, and something bad must come of it. Nor is this fear annihilated by the certainty of earthly impunity. It comes up in the desert solitude, and in the darkness of the night, and seems to prophecy some future unknown retribution. This fear has no reference to any thing in this world, and no account can be given of it except that it is the will of the Deity, that it should spring up in the mind. This fear leads directly to religion, for it is impossible for man to believe that his Maker would deceive him. There must be some reality to which it corresponds, and

of which it is the warning. So when a man obeys the moral instinct, particularly if at the expense of sacrifice or danger, faith and hope immediately spring up in his bosom. He feels assured that however present appearances may be against it, the time will come when he shall reap a rich reward. That hope and faith he feels to be the voice of God approving the present and promising the future. That shame and fear is likewise the voice of God, condemning the present, and threatening all ill to the future. These universal and unalterable sentiments of the human heart, reveal the moral attributes of the Deity. That vice is really culpable, is a conviction that we have, merely because it is his will. We cannot doubt it, for a belief in the veracity and goodness of God is equally instinctive and necessary. Our instinctive persuasion of his veracity is the undoubted ground of our expectation that he will reward and punish us. Thus our religious convictions grow out of our moral natures, and thus the convictions of our moral nature receive an Almighty sanction. He, who made us, made all things. He, who created us, sustains all things. He who made

our souls, upholds and guides all their operations. He is the ever present Witness, the Judge and Rewarder.

Here then comes in a new moral power, that of religious conviction, of greater strength than either of the preceding, to enforce the moral instincts and sentiments of mankind, and thus to purify and elevate them. There are besides, certain sentiments in the human heart which immediately spring up toward this august Being, such as reverence and gratitude, and demand expression. Times are set apart for the purpose, and ceremonies invented. An order of men springs up, consecrated to conduct these ceremonies, to make what may be known of God and our relations to him, the moral and religious nature of man, their peculiar study. At set times, and in various manners, they teach the result of their investigations to the people. In all Christian countries all original investigation on these subjects is rendered unnecessary and is superseded by the possession of a Divine Revelation, in which all the truths of religion are laid down in wiser words than man's wisdom teacheth, and enforced, moreover, by an authority which no human demonstration