NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION.

I am about to consider religion under two forms, Natural and Revealed. A careful discrimination of the proper nature and distinct province of each, is not only important on its own account, but will help us to understand certain questions that are attracting some attention at the present moment.

I. And, first, let us consider what is the proper nature, and what is the distinct province of Natural Religion.

I have intimated that there are questions to be discussed. Indeed, no subject seems to give birth to more, or more agitating questions than religion. This is sometimes brought as an argument against its realityagainst its having any foundation in truth. I think it proves the very contrary proves the natural power and

interest which the subject has in the human mind. Nothing but the depth of that interest accounts for the questions. And it is deep. Nothing is so deep in the human heart as the sense of religion I do not say the love of it, but the sense of it-the sense of right and wrong the sense of duty and the feeling, either for

it or against it. The indifference that we hear so much

complained of, is an indifference about technical religion, and not about this deeper, this natural religion of the soul. I will prove it to you from your own experience, and in one single sentence. Nothing in the human bosom was ever sweeter than self-approval; nothing was ever sharper than self-reproach. In the awful depths of human nature these things lie, deep-seated, beneath all else; there they lie, deep-embedded and ineradicable; for God has placed them there. Now the very strength of the feeling, I say, produces diversity of manifestation diversity of opinion. Let any thing-like the political concerns of a country, for instance. become a subject of strong interest, and instantly there springs up boundless dispute. But religion, unlike politics, lies in the depths of the spiritual and unseen nature, and has relations with infinity. All the deeper and vaster it is, all the more various and remarkable are its manifestations. The inly working might, like volcanic energy, heaves from its depths, and flames up in wild fanaticism; or pours itself out in the, first, glowing, then deadened and indurated and many-folded crust of creeds; and after that, perhaps, comes over all, the cold and death-like silence of skepticism. But still, all is manifestation of the principle within; whether it be love or hate of religion; whether it be faith or doubt; the Revival or the painful coldness that follows it; the martyr's endurance, or the persecutor's rage. For if a man hates, he hates something; if he doubts, he doubts something. His doubt does not remove, but recognises that thing. What then, is that thing? what is that something, to which every thing in our nature bears reference? The answer to this question points to the very depths of natural religion.

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It is obvious that we have already, in this preliminary survey of the subject, taken much for granted. But this is not mere assumption. It is granted by our naturegranted by the universal experience granted by the natural religion of the human heart. Let me sit in judgment upon human nature, as a mere philosopher; let me investigate the bare anatomy of the soul, and with nothing to interest me in the subject but mere curiosity; let the question be, as whether in the body a certain nerve exists or does not exist. So inquiring, what do I find? I do find a moral nerve in the soul. I find that along that nerve feelings live-ay, the strongest feelings that I ever know. And what are they? Feelings of pleasure when 1 do right, of pain when I do wrong. It is in vain to disguise or deny it. A man may repudiate these convictions; he may laugh if he can, at the conscious pain of wrong-doing; but he might as reasonably laugh at the pang he feels, when some nerve in his body is lacerated or cut asunder. There it is, and he cannot help it. There is the pain, and he cannot deny it. He would not be very well pleased, if his physician should come in and look at that lacerated nerve, only to ridicule the whole thing-only to say, it is a mere notion-nothing but fanaticism and fatuity, and not worth minding. And as little, I think, are we required to have pleasure or patience at the levity of him, who pours ridicule upon the great religious convictions of our nature.

Here, then, is the original element of religion; here is natural religion. I have said that we take much for granted. And does not our nature, I repeat, grant much? The delight with which we look upon a noble deed, and the indignation at baseness and wrong; the VOL. XVI. NO. 182. 1*

sweetness of love and pity, and the pain of anger and envy; the canonization through all the world, of patriotism, of heroism and of martyred blood, and execration through all the world, of treachery and meanness, and the base desertion of truth and conscience our nature not only grants, but demands the admission of these things, and would feel itself utterly desecrated without them. And then the inward joy of disinterestedness and purity, and the sting and the crushing shame of a violated conscience who does not feel that these are revelations from the very depths of his being? And he who should abide ever by these convictions and ever act upon them would he not be a good and lofty man? would he, I ask, be a man who could ever look with slight or scorn or indifference, upon the natural sanctity of religion?

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Nay, there is a direct argument that would lead him from these feelings and sentiments to the very heights of religious conviction. Conscience, I hold, is the revelation of a God. When, with a solemn and stern feeling of justice, I say, "I deserve pain and penalty"- my cheek flushed or blanched with shame - my eyes cast upon the ground that feeling within me looks up though the eye be sunk in shame- mentally looks up to an authority above me. Perhaps I am speaking now more strongly than the general experience, or than the natural, original experience of the mind, will warrant. I may not say that conscience sees a God as the eye sees a landscape. But this, I say, that the fact of conscience, has for its only logical counterpart, the fact that there is a God.

Let us look at this position, a moment. When I descend into the depths of my own heart, I find that this

awful and indescribable sense of desert, is not voluntary, but involuntary. It is not left to me to determine whether I will feel it or not, as it is to determine whether or not I shall stretch out my hand; but feel it I must; and the interposition of a world cannot save me from it. In other words, conscience is a law, not made by me, but set over me. But a law implies a lawgiver; obeying or disobeying implies an authority, somewhere. Who then gave that law? If man gave it, man could take it away. But we know that the might and rage combined of the whole world, would not tear that law from the human heart. Misapplied that law may be sometimes, but abrogated it never was and never can be. But if man did not make that law, if all the world did not make it, then there must be a power above man and beyond the world, that made it. Thus the motion of the world itself-of the physical world — is a fact; and nothing will explain it, but an attractive physical force beyond it. And is not this dread motion in the soul, a fact? And can any thing but a moral power beyond it, account for it? Almost may say that it recognises that power; that all the world has recognised it, and this, not from any accurate reasonings, but from the inward feeling of an authority, answering to the law within it. And this law exists, not by consent of the world, but in spite of it-in spite of all its vices and crimes. Conscience is not consent. It is most power

ful when it is dissent, when it stands alone, when it dwells in the secrecy and silence of the heart. Stand thou alone in the world and do the evil deed; or let there be but one other in the world, and do thou the deed of Cain; and it would need no audible voice, saying