The Moral Rectitude of the Bible

In adverting to the spirit of the Scriptures, 1 have not designed to call the reader’s attention so much to their moral rectitude, as to their unearthly kindness. Benevolence is good will; moral rectitude is conformity to what is right. The spirit of the Bible consults the happiness of men; its moral rectitude, their character. Moral rectitude, though productive of happiness, is a distinct thing from happiness; just as wickedness, though productive of misery, is a distinct thing from misery. The one is the effect; the other, the cause. Moral rectitude is perceived by conscience; happiness, by consciousness. Moral rectitude is the proper subject of command, and must always be required; happiness may not be. Moral rectitude has moral qualities; happiness may not have. The moral rectitude of the Scriptures, therefore, in distinction from their superhuman kindness, furnishes a fair, and as I shall endeavor to show, a good ground of argument, that they are neither the work of an impostor, nor of any human device.

It is inseparable from all just conceptions of God, that it is impossible for him to do wrong. He is the source of all moral rectitude in the universe, and everywhere its supporter and patron. He is holy, and his holiness is infinite. He is the Holy One, and the only one who, by excellence, can challenge to himself the name of Holy. Holiness is an essential perfection of his nature; it is full and perfect without blemish, and without diminution or change. A book of which he is the Author must be a holy book, and must, necessarily, express his irreconcilable aversion to all that is wrong.

We cannot say this of man, nor of any book of which he is the author. We know what the character of man is. It is a humiliating confession, that we cannot give human nature credit for any great degree of moral virtue. There are not only great and obvious defections from moral integrity in every individual of our race, without exception; but wickedness prevails to a degree sufficient to convince us, that the great principles of moral order in this world are all subverted. Wickedness exists in every form: wickedness in principle, and wickedness in practice; wickedness in heart and life; wickedness in every variety and measure. Degraded and degrading wickedness, and wickedness that is polished and honored; wickedness in the solitude of the closet, and in the retirements of the domestic relations; wickedness in nations and in the world; wickedness in human laws and governments; institutions and customs that are wicked; a wicked press, and a wicked literature; and withal, religions in abundance that are wicked, form the leading and prominent features in the history of our race. There are strong propensities in men to that which is evil. The paths of Hcensed and ungoverned. wickedness are pleasant to them; while the paths of virtue, truthj purity, honesty and honor, are uninviting to their depraved taste, and rugged and difficult.

These views of the human character have received the sanction of paganism itself, and are abundantly verified by the writings of its poets, philosophers, and historians. Not a few among infidels themselves do not dispute them. There is no doubt in this matter. There is but this one view that can be given of the character of man. Were the question asked, What are those persons most familiar with, and what reminiscences most haunt their imaginations, who are most versed in the history of our world? The one answer must be, that they, of all men, know most of human wickedness. Save a few bright spots, like the oases in the desert, the pilgrimage of the historian is through regions defiled by crime, polluted by idolatry and blood, agitated by ambition and revenge, desolated by cruelty and despotism, bearing the marks of violence and wrong, and everywhere presenting scenes of misery and horror, which furnish” overwhelming proof of deep-seated wickedness in the heart of man, and in all the elements of his social organization.

Now the simple question we propose for consideration is. Whether such a book as the Bible was the production of the human mind; and whether it is a possible thing that a being, as degraded and morally depraved as we know man to be, unless inspired by the God of spotless rectitude, could have been its author?

In determining this question, it is necessary that we inspect the moral rectitude of the Book itself. Men may inspect detached portions of it, and please themselves with some things, which, at first view, have the semblance of conniving at what is wrong. But let them read it; let them read the whole of it; let them carry along in their minds the character of the persons to which the different portions of it were addressed; the age of the world, and the circumstances under which the different parts of it were written, and the particular objects which even those portions of it have in view, which to an infidel mind appear the most exceptionable; and they may be rationally convinced that, instead of originating in the bosom of an impostor, it owes its origin to men who wrote “as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” Let them scrutinize it with as much severity as they please; only let their scrutiny be well informed, wisely directed, and with a fair and ingenuous mind, and we have no fears for the issue. There are portions of it on which ignorance and folly have put constructions that are forced and unnatural, and which impure minds have viewed in shadows reflected from their own impurity. Montesquieu said of Voltaire, Lorsque Voltaire lit un livre il le fmt puis il ecrit contre ce quHl a fait: ‘^ When Voltaire reads a book, he makes it what he pleases, and then writes against what he has made.” It is no difficult matter to besmear and blot its pages, and then impute the foul stains that men of corrupt minds have cast upon it, to its stainless Author. But if we honestly look at it as it is, we shall find that, like its Author, it is without blemish and without spot.

1. Among the characteristics of the Bible which are somewhat remarkable expressions of moral rectitude, the first that we notice is, the truth and just — ness of its moral distinctions. Pagan lands have never known in what moral rectitude consists, nor have pagan writers ever described it. Nothing can be found in their works to induce the belief that any true knowledge of it has ever sprung up as an indigenous plant upon the soil of unenlightened reason, or natural conscience.

The peripatetic philosophy, or the philosophy of Aristotle, described moral rectitude as consisting in the mean betv)een two extremes; a definition, than vvrhich nothing is more undefinabie. The stoical system, or the system of Zeno, describes it as living according to nature: alas, for the rectitude that consists in such a life! The system of Epicurus, in its best estate, described it as living as free as possible from the evils incident to life, and in the enjoyment of as large a measure as possible of its happiness; while in its subsequent corruptions, it is a system of mere animal pleasure and unrestrained sensuality. Human reason, untaught of God, has never been able to discover, to any such extent as is available for practical purposes, the difierence between what is right and what is wrong. There is

Bible not gf Man. 5 no doubt thatj to some extent, the natural universe recognizes this distinction, while no well-informed person will deny that there are both graces and sins, virtues and vices, which the language of paganism has not words to express.

The history of the world does not furnish examples of more manly thought, nor of greater sagacity and shrewdness, nor more wonderful powers of discrimination, than are found in the writings of pagan philosophers; yet on moral subjects their notions/j were not only vague and obscure, but in many instances absolutely puerile and foolish. They spoke, j of conduct as sacred, of which the Bible speaks as infamous; they treated as religious and honorable, what the Bible treats as debasing and flagitious. To, such an extent, and so boldly, did they “put dark-r ness for light, and light for darkness, good for evil, and evil for good,” that their very religion required them to be immoral.

All their religious teachers did not indeed inculcate the same doctrines; what one condemned as a vice, another, equally profound, inculcated as a virtue. Nor were their teachings consistent and uniform;. the same writers, and the same legislation that sometimes discountenanced wickedness, at others emboldened the perpetration of it. The reason why there are no accurate delineations of moral rectitude in heathen writers is, they had no divine teaching, and therefore no discernment of it. Right and wrong with them were arbitrary distinctions, and depended for the most part upon custom, upon the authority of human laws, and upon the opinions of men. This is the ground on which Hobbes and other infidel writers rest all their moral distinctions. The history of pagan philosophy is interesting, because it is mournfully instructive as a history of the errors of the human mind, and as a practical proof of that excessive degradation to which the most refined and cultivated intellect is reduced, when destitute of Divine guidance. If we except those writings which derive their instructions from the Bible, there is but this one book that lays the foundation of moral obligation in the nature of the Deity, and in the nature and relations which men sustain towards him and one another, as he has revealed them. In the sparklings of pagan poetry, there are occasional scintillations of moral sentiment that are just and exalted; and so there are in the more sober discussions of such a writer as the great heathen moralist, Seneca. But they are too varying and contradictory; they affirm and deny almost in the same paragraph; while the most unexceptionable, both of their poets and philosophers, are the teachers of flagrant wickedness. It is not so with the Bible. At a great remove from the ethics of the whole pagan and infidel world, the rectitude it describes is no scintillation of poetry, nor is it any sudden outbreaking of conscience; it is not brought out occasionally, and for effect, but is inwoven with all its revelations, and is the uniform characteristic of the book itself. Instead of being influenced by the opinions of men, and controlled by their example, customs, and laws, its aim is to influence and control men themselves. Instead of inculcating a rectitude that is based on the principles of expediency, and urging the claims of godliness as a profitable speculation, and sacrificing the interests of moral rectitude to any other interests, it uniformly pursues the opposite course; and in every instance where other interests come in collision with the claims of moral rectitude, the latter hold absolute supremacy.

This were a somewhat remarkable fact in a work to be traced no higher than the artifice of an impostor. Whence is it, that in an age of the world when human learning was so ignorant, human philosophy so unwise, and the virtue and teachings of its sages so erring, a collection of impostors should have this strange preeminence? Whence is it, that a system of morals, devised by such men, should strike its roots so deep into the great principles of God’s government, and the moral constitution of; man? Whence is it, that all the results of human philosophy are so infinitely surpassed by the moral principles of a book, which has its origin in deception and falsehood? ‘Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?” Does not this revelation, by the mere truth and justness of its moral distinctions, show that it is God’s work, and not the work of man?

2. It is the great peculiarity of the Bible also, that it furnishes the only perfect standard of moral rectitude. Human reason does not know enough to furnish such a standard; nor is it sufficiently impartial to do so, if it were able. Conscience is not sufficiently enlightened to furnish such a standard; nor, in fallen man, is she sufficiently honest to do so, were she enlightened. One Being in the universe there is, and only one, who is capable of deciding what in all instances of human conduct is right in itself j and of revealing the unerring rule of right to the creatures he has made.

There is a law in the Scriptures, called the Moral Law, and comprised in ten precepts, there affirmed to have been written by the finger of God. It is a law which uniformly and always commands what is right, and prohibits what is wrong. Without stopping to expound it, it is enough to say, that it is so comprehensive as to be applicable to every creature in the universe, and to every instance of his moral conduct. Just as it is proof of the Divine wisdom, to secure and control ten thousand events in the natural world by one simple law of nature; so it is one of the proofs of his wisdom, to govern every creature in the universe by this one, simple law of rectitude. This law is a perfectly decisive standard, and one that is perfectly adapted to the workings of natural conscience. The conscience of every man that is enlightened by it, endorses it as truly as the congregation of Israel did, when, at the rehearsal of every precept and penalty, “all the people said, Amen.”

There are several things in relation to this great rule of moral conduct, that are worthy of a moment’s thought.

It is a consideration not to be overlooked, that it extends itself to the hearty and does not stop short of the inward principles and motives of human conduct. It does not sever the outer from the inner man; but regards his principles and motives as the germ of which his outward conduct is the developement. It reaches the fountain, and gains nothing, and cares for nothing, until it carries the heart. It identiiies the love of God with keeping his commandments, and keeping his commandments with the love of God. It condemns the boasted rectitude of principle which is without an outward and visible morality, as well as a Pharisaic morality that is destitute of right principle.

Another fact in relation to it is, its wonderful comprehensiveness. It comprises everything that men think, or say, or do, as well as everything they omit which they ought to perform. In its inductions of particulars, the thought of evil, and the murderous act, the two extremes of human wickedness, are specified as including the entire range of human conduct.

Another fact in relation to it is, that it is applicable to all men alike, regards all their conduct, and is to be carried everywhere. It is not for the old only, but for the young; it is not for the poor only, but for the rich; it is not for the monastery and the cloister, the closet and the family merely; nor is it confined to the sanctuary and the Sabbath; but it regards all the relations of society as the spheres of its influence. It consecrates the reciprocal dependencies, obligations, and intercourse between man and man, as well as between man and his Maker; and looks upon this whole earth, with all the variety of its aspects and employments, as a temple, every part of which ought to be vocal with God’s praise and devoted to his glory.

Another fact is, that it is unbending in its claims, and requires a rectitude that is sinless. Its course is a straight one, and without the least deviation from a right line. No departure from it is allowed, under any possible pretence or any imaginable circumstances. It never modifies its high claims in accommodation to the character and condition of men, the maxims of the world, the laws and usages of society, or the force of temptation. Nothing in the universe relaxes the obligation, or countervails the life and spirit of it; but it is of perpetual force and obligation in all worlds, and throughout eternity.

Nor does it stand unenforced with appropriate and equitable penalties. It does not merely describe the rectitude it enjoins; nor does it simply coufisel men to obedience: it binds them at their peril, and on the most fearful penalties. Its language is in the highest degree authoritative. It is not at their option; they have no choice in the matter; the only alternative is obedience, or death, death eternal, and without reprieve. Its punitive power is not passion, but principle; it is not a vacillating policy, but an established law of the Divine kingdom. It is one upon which the great moral Governor of the universe conducts his government towards every part of it, and with impartial equity; one which he will emphatically act out, when he bids the incorrigible depart into everlasting fire. The Scriptures magnify this unbending rectitude of the Divine government; they represent it as one of the excellencies of the Divine character, that he ^’ is angry with the wicked every day;” that he ‘^ hateth all the workers of iniquity;” and that his punitive justice is as truly the befitting theme of praise on the lips of the unfallen and of the redeemed, as his larger and preeminent grace.

Infidels have reviled the Bible, for this perfect and unbending standard of moral rectitude which it reveals. Here we are fairly at issue with them: what they affirm to be evidence of its imperfection, we affirm to be evidence of its perfection; what they affirm could not have originated with a Being of perfect benevolence, we affirm could never have originated with man, whose benevolence and rectitude are so imperfect. We are content to make the appeal to every honest mind, whether such a standard of rectitude, enforced by such penalties, is of human origin, or Divine?

The conclu3ion is rational and just. Such moral rectitude never originated in this imrighteous world. Such precepts and sanctions of righteousness are not the device of an impostor. From what we know of the character of man, can we suppose him to be such a lover and vindicator of moral rectitude, as to have guarded it by such a code?

Let the complaints of this wicked world against this eternal rule of right, and these eternal sanctions of it, be an answer to these inquiries. Let the reproach, and reviUng, and bitter and malignant sarcasm of infidelity, so profusely bestowed on those portions of the Bible which most insist on claims like these, be our answer to them; and let them teach us, that the moral rectitude of this book is as far above the conceptions and device of men, as the thoughts of God are above the thoughts of man, and the ways of God above man’s ways.

3. Another expression of the moral rectitude of the Bible is found in the solicitude it expresses and the means it adopts for the promotion of moral rectitude among men. The moral distinctions, the standard of rectitude, and the sanctions by which its great rule of right is supported and enforced, are doubtless expressions of this solicitude, and themselves to be numbered among these selected means. But these are not the whole of them.

Men have strayed very far from rectitude, and are perpetually, and on all sides, exposed to greatei and endless aberrations. They need to be instructed in the path by which they may retrace theij steps. Their apostate character, the obtuseness of their consciences, and great moral blindness, call for some adequate means of moral transformation; some animating stimulus to what is right; some protection from the storm of passions that assault the soul; some secure guardianship against the seductions of a corrupting world; some interposition of a power that is effective to the production of a more sound and better mind: some supporting hand to keep them

Bible not of Man. g# from falling; some sacred influences that shall fit them to behold the face of God in peace, and to live and reign with him forever.

If we reject the Bible, where are these varied influences to be found? Infidels ought to feel themselves under obligations to tell us where. They would fain take away the rectitude which the Bible imparts; but they leave us nothing, absolutely nothing, in its place. Natural science does not reclaim men from wickedness; if it did, why were the most scientific and literary nations of ancient times the most wicked? Human laws cannot reclaim them; for it is an acknowledged fact, that in the best forms of civil government the world has seen, there is nothing to effect this moral renovation.

I need scarcely say, that we must despair of producing anything like an exemplary moral rectitude in the world, if we abandon those principles and means of reform, which are found alone in the Bible. If we except those human writings which draw their instructions from this source, there is but this one book that is at all fitted to accomplish, or that seriously aims at accomplishing this great work. It is not easy for us to estimate the difficulty of accomplishing it, or even the difficulty of making a hopeful commencement. If you advert to the early instructions given to men after the first apostacy had its terrific sweep over the nations, you cannot but observe the concern, the caution, and the great condescension which the Bible expresses, merely to imbue the minds of the nation, to whom its first revelations were given, with some just conceptions of moral rectitude itself. By all that was fearful in the moral, and all that was exact in the ceremonial law, and by all that was peculiar in their own separation from the surrounding and idolatrous nations, lessons were taught them which all the volumes of pagan philosophy could not inculcate. It was only thus progressively that their minds could be opened to moral distinctions, and their consciences awakened to the consideration of what God himself approves and will accept, and what he disapproves and will punish. This is one great point to be secured in the minds of fallen men, and a most important beginning in the work of moral culture.

In prosecuting this hallowed design, the next step is, to furnish some clear and distinct exemplification of moral rectitude.

This the Scriptures do, especially in the delineations they make of the holy character of God. They could accomplish nothing without this; for men had lost the knowledge of God. Not one thought of his immutable excellence, or of the unblotted rectitude of his nature, entered into their religious systems. Their subordinate deities were examples of shameless vice; while their notions of the supreme Deity betray the profoundest ignorance, and the most contemptuous disrespect. It is a remarkable fact in the history of men, that the conceptions they form of moral rectitude depend upon their conceptions of the Divine character. They are uniformly like the gods they worship. The devout worshipper of the true

God resembles his Father who is in heaven. The devotee of false gods resembles the gods he worships, gradually acquires the character of the object with which he has religious intercourse, and receives the stamp and seal of it upon his own mind. And this is in perfect accordance with the laws of our intellectual and moral constitution. The Scriptures, speaking of the idols of the heathen, teach us that ‘^ they who make them are like them, and so is every one that putteth his trust in them.” The conception of perfect moral rectitude is nowhere found to exist in the human mind, save where there are just conceptions of the Deity. The holiness of God binds men to be holy: it is written, Be ye holy, for I am holy:’

God himself is represented in the Scriptures as a holy God: his purposes are holy; his government is holy; his word is holy; his day is holy. Him they make the pattern and the patron, the shield, and the exceeding great reward of holiness in men, while they everywhere teach us, that in becoming holy, men become his people, and God himself becomes their God. All the instructions of the Bible are designed as means of grace, and helps to godliness. Its choicest privileges exert the most hallowed influence. Its ordinances, its sanctuary, its ministry, its fellowship, were all instituted for the purpose of training up ‘* a peculiar people, zealous of good works;” nor are the mere literalities and mechanism of their outward observance there regarded as of any avail, or otherwise than mockery. If we prize its promiseSj they are revealed that “we might be partakers of the Divine nature.” If we vahie its mercy-seat, “there,” says the God of all grace, “will 1 meet thee, and I will commune -with thee, of all things which / will give thee in coiiiTnandTnent.’’^ If we value fellowship with God, we are reminded that if we ‘^ regard iniquity in our heart, the Lord will not hear us.” The entire worship which the Bible requires is “in the beauties of holiness.” This spirit of heaven, transferred to earth, as the “dew of youth from the womb of the morning,” and constituting the highest adornment of his followers, is the promised reward of its great subject and Redeemer. “Fruit unto holiness” is its end and its heaven.

Again, I ask. Is there no difficulty in coming to the conclusion that this Book is of human origin? Can it be the production of a mind whose great characteristic is, that it hates righteousness?

4. There is still another expression of moral rectitude, which strongly marks the revelations made in the Scriptures. I mean, the protection they extend to the claims and interests of moral rectitude in the dispensations of pardoning mercy. The expiatory death of Christ, as a satisfaction to Divine justice, in the behalf of repentant and reformed transgressors, must ever be regarded as the strongest proof of moral rectitude in the instructions of the Scriptures themselves. Can any lesson be more instructive to the world, or to the universe, than that great lesson taught from Calvary, where the Eternal Son of God himself died on the cross to make an effective atonemerit for the sins of men, for the purpose of vindicating the stern claims of righteousness? Rather than sacrifice, or trifle with eternal rectitude, or connive at wrong, the sword of justice was commissioned to awake against the ‘’ Fellow” of the Lord of hosts, and pierce his righteous soul, who “thought it not robbery to be equal with God.” Let the infidel scofi* no more, nor indulge his learned curiosity in picking at this mountain of God’s holiness. He will not find in it the alloy he hopes to find: ia this mass of pure gold there are not even those grains of sand he is seeking after. Rectitude and mercy have here no conflicting interests; because the claims of rectitude are propitiated by an adequate and honorable atonement. It is the language of mercy which is here uttered, but only as it is warranted, echoed by justice. The moral rectitude that is outraged by the sin of man, is vindicated by the death of Christ. The redemption by Christ stands forever side by side with the only revealed standard and sanctions of moral rectitude; and while it pardons those whom the law condemns, it does so without impugning either the veracity or righteousness of the Lawgiver. It does more than this. Its very love and mercy are the great and only effectual means of restoring apostate men to the moral rectitude from which they have fallen. If the true Christian enters upon a course of obedience, freed from the embarrassments of a legal condemnation, and no longer struggling under the thraldom of the curse; it is that he may run in the way of God’s commandments with an enlarged heart, and be cheered by the light of his countenance in doing his will. The salvation the Bible speaks of is a salvation fro7n sin, and restores not less to the Divine resemblance than the Divine favor. This is the most important, as it is the most prominent feature of the Christian economy; it covers indeed the whole ground of a supernatural revelation, and employs all the pens that have given it to the world, from Moses to John. Its enemies have severely scrutinized its moral influence; and not a few of them have been constrained to acknowledge, that it reveals the only system of truth, and the only motives by which men become holy.

It is no unusual thing for infidels themselves, in many instances, to do homage to the moral rectitude of the Bible. ‘’ We always recur,” says Melvill, “with great delight to the testimony of a Deist, who, after publicly laboring to disprove Christianity, and to bring Scripture into contempt as a forgery, was found instructing his own child from the pages of the New Testament. When taxed with the flagrant inconsistency, his only reply was, that nowhere was there to be found such morality as in the Bible! We thank the Deist for the confession. Whatever our scorn of a man who could be guilty of so foul a dishonesty, seeking to sweep from the earth a volume to which all the while himself has recurred for the principles of education, we thank him for his testimony, that the morality of the Scriptures is a morality not elsewhere to be found; so that if there were no Bible, there would be comparatively no source of instruction in duties and’ virtues, whose neglect and decline would dislocate the happiness of human society. The Deist was right. Deny oi disprove the divine origin of the Scriptures, and nevertheless, you must keep the volume as a kind of text-book of morality.” Lord Herbert himself acknowledges, “that in this respect, Christianity is the best religion;” nor, strange as the inconsistency may be, does he hesitate to say, that “the great design of all its doctrines, and even of the rites and ceremonies there enjoined, is to establish those great principles in which true religion properly consists.” No man ever rejected the Bible without exhibiting the demoralizing influence of his unbelief. I care not who the person is that makes this disastrous experiment; but let him deny the truth, obligations, and hopes there revealed, and lie will find, to his cost, that his sinful propensities gain augmented power, and that in every instance he becomes a worse, instead of a better man. Without the Bible, men are atheists or idolaters, and always wicked men; with it, if they are not virtuous and good men, it is from the power of wickedness, which is prcfof against the best means of reform. It is because the safest and surest directory, the most cheering encouragement, the plainest and most weighty obligations and sanctions, and the best fitted and most urgent motives to rectitude that are known in the universe, cannot control them.

Such is the moral rectitude of the Bible. Let US, m a few words, close up the argument for its divine origin from this single consideration. Our argument is simply this. In the language of Lord Bacon, ‘^ Truth is in order to goodness.” Goodness never was, never can be the genuine fruit of error. There is no absurdity more monstrous, than that truth and moral rectitude are at war with one another. No system of falsehood is thus distinguished for its love of rectitude, and its uniformly hallowed influence. If this Bible be indeed the production of uninspired man, it is not in keeping with his well-known character, or his well-known religious inventions. If it be the production of uninspired man, it were a phenomenon, a miracle, more difficult to be accredited than the inspiration which is the scoff of the unbeliever. Nothing is more distant from human thought, than habitual familiarity with holy things and a holy God. Corrupted man never devised a book so pure and holy; proud man, a book so humbling; selfish and worldly man, a book so self-denying and spiritual: man, depraved, wicked man, a book so full of rebuke for his wickedness, that it stings with unsparing and immeasurable severity all his vices, has no truce with sin, and actually wages against it a war of extermination. Was it ever

“heard in tale, orong,

From old, or modern bard, in hall or bower,”

that such a revelation is the work of man? There

3S absurdity in such an hypothesis which evinces this holy Book to be its own witness. ^’ Every kingdom divided against itself, is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself, shall not stand.” If the Bible be the work of an impostor, it is a most unhappy ‘effort for his own cause. The arch-deceiver must have taken leave of his usual sagacity, in not restraining the pen that gave it to the world. If it be the devil’s work, it is a complete failure. “If Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself: how shall then his kingdom stand?” Men are “wise to do evil;” — too wise to have erected a standard that should be the rallying point of every virtuous thought and affection, and give currency to a system that shall be absolute ruin to themselves.

Never could the depraved intelligence and depraved heart of man have inculcated such lessons. Nothing is farther from man’s invention than such a theory, such a code, such a system of obligations, and such delineations of excellence — excellence, at once so lofty and so untarnished, that, like this Book of gems, it is difficult to say whether it attracts most by the loveliness of its spirit, or its unvarying, transparent rectitude.

I know of but one answer to this argument that is even plausible. It may be said, that all men are not equally bad; that we have given too sombre a shading to the character of the race; and that there have been all along through the tracts of time, noble and exalted specimens of humanity; men of truth and probity, benevolent men, who desired above all things the moral elevation of their fellows; and that it is no impossible thing for such men to have been the authors of the Sacred Writings. Our conclusive answer to this objection is threefold. In the first place, no such men have ever claimed to be the authors of this remarkable volume; and if it be the work of such men, is there any possible motive for them to have left it anonymous? On the other hand, is there not every motive in the excellence of the book itself, for them to have avowed themselves its authors? In the next place, such men never would have been impostors claiming the unerring guidance of inspiration. In the third place, we fall back upon the assertion, that the thing itself is impossible. We know there are exceptions to the unmixed sinfulness of our race, in lands where the Scriptures have exerted their influence upon the human character; and that in other lands all are not equally bad; that there have been here and there rare lights amid the moral darkness of the pagan world; and that men like Socrates, and Plato, and Seneca, Plutarch and Marcus Aurelius, aimed to act the part of reformers. Men have invented systems of religion; they have enjoyed the unembarrassed opportunity of exerting their inventive powers on religious themes; they have brought to their inventions, genius and learning, logic and eloquence. And the results are before the world. The works of the best heathen philosophers speak for themselves, bear the moral image of their authors, and carry with them their own evidence of a human origin. All human systems of religion are wicked systems, because their authors were wicked men — systems of immorality and abomination, cherishing and calling into action the most depraved passions of the human heart, and degrading their votaries to the level of brutes. The best of them, like those of Confucius and Mahomed, are but memorials of great minds made little by falsehood, and degraded by sin; of splendid and original talents actually deformed by moral depravity — proofs of imaginative genius, and affecting indications that “the light that was in them was darkness.” When infidels tell us] of systems of faith and codes of morality that are of; human origin, they speak intelligibly; nor would we depreciate these marvellous discoveries. We look at them just as they are: and what are they? It is difficult for human ingenuity and human wickedness combined, to render them worse than they are. Nor have they been improved, from the days of ancient Assyria to the present hour. They may have originated splendid temples, but their divinities are mean and contemptible; their offerings may have been costly, while the most costly are the most degrading and ruinous; and their worshippers, like their divinities and rites, dishonorable and dishonored — vile in their affections, filled with all unrighteousness, and to every good work reprobate. Aside from those human compositions of which the Scriptures are the basis, there is not a volume in all the rich and accumulated libraries of earthj which diffuses the least fragrance of a celestial atmosphere, much less that “savors the things that be of God,” and like the Bible, glows with the splendors of his holiness.

It need not surprise us that men like those who have written against this Book of God, should not have the clearest conceptions of its moral rectitude.’ The moral rectitude of the Scriptures nauseates them. Let there be but the infant breathings of moral virtue in the soul, though it were the gentlest movement brooding upon the face of chaos, and the spirit within them will give a ready response to the still holier spirit within these Sacred Oracles, instinctively recognizing their beauty, their glory, their divinity. There are no more direct antipodes than sin and the Bible. He who would enjoy and profit by it, as a mere production of wisdom, must cultivate a conformity to its rectitude. This great characteristic he will find stamped upon it everywhere — sanctifying its history, elevating its poetry, breathing itself into all its principles, and throwing a hallowed and joyous influence around its varied scenery. It will please no man, the state of whose mind is at war with its rectitude; nor can he profit by it. so long as it displeases him.