are among the most essential conditions of the effect to
be produced. Much harm is done by the vagueness and
confusion of ideas in which this subject is often involved.
When you tell men that religion consists in moral purity
and freedom from sin-that the end of religion is perfect
goodness, so that a man shall grow to be like God,- that
God wills this perfect goodness, that he sent his son into
the world to promote it -
that Jesus Christ lived and died
to save men from their sins, and make them good and
godlike, and that all prayer and worship are to be resort-
ed to for this purpose,- you present definite objects to
the mind; you offer a plain system which the simplest can
understand, and which the most enlightened will not dis-
pute. But when you represent religion as an independent
and mysterious entity, which men are to get all at once,
if at all, like a shock of palsy, or a fever,-when you tell
them that their best actions, previous to the period in

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which they have experienced that shock, are equally sin-Ca

ful with their worst, and equally worthy eternal damnation, that no amount of practical goodness can save them, without the vicarious suffering of one, who, inno cent himself, has satisfied the wrath of God by his own death on the cross, you offer paradoxes which no man ean lay hold of and apply to any practical end. It is true, the manner in which these representations are made, their constant repetition day by day, and hour by hour, through a protracted series of public and pri vate meetings, the intonations and emotions of the speaker, and other circumstances with which they are accompanied, sometimes produce an effect on the nerves, and, through the nerves create a mental excitement, which results at last in what is called conversion.

Let us be candid, and confess that these mental excitements are often attended with the happiest consequences, and eventuate in the permanent reformation of some wicked and thoughtless person whose heart had never before been touched by any appeal to sacred things. Still, I maintain, it is not the views themselves that produce this effect, but the manner in which they are presented, acting rather on the nerves than on the mind. I maintain further, that this is not the only way, nor the best way, in which a religious character is formed, and that, if good is sometimes produced, much injury is likewise done, both by the representations themselves, and the system of operations, with which they are connected. One evil, and a very common one, resulting from this system, is, that men of cool temper and strong understanding, who have never seen religion in any other form, become so disgusted with the views and practices of these religionists, that they grow, at last, to nauseate the whole subject. On the one hand, the understanding revolts from the doctrines, and on the other hand, the taste is offended by the weary repetition of certain cant phrases common on such occasions, where it is whispered round, that this person is "under conviction," that that person has "obtained a hope," and another has become “serious:"- terms which have been warped from their gen. eral import, into a technical signification, and like all technicalities, connected with sacred subjects, have at last become offensive. Add to this occasional instances of hypocrisy and wickedness, among the professors of these views, and, what with one cause and another, the natural and frequent result, with the class of persons of whom I speak, is downright infidelity. As another evil, I may mention the great amount of mental suffering, often

terminating in mental derangement and suicide, which this system occasions. "The total destruction of human reason," says one, "the quenching of every faculty, the blotting out of all mind,-fatuity, folly, idiotism, are the evils which it too often carries in its train. At this moment, a thousand human creatures are chained to the earth, suffering, in imagination, all the torments of Hell, groaning under the fancied vengeance of an angry God. What has broken them down, and what is the cause of their great ruin? Zeal without knowledge. Passions let loose upon the most exalted of all subjects, utter contempt of all moderation, suspicion of the moderate, a dereliction of the old, safe and established worship, a thirst for novelty and noise, a childish admiration of every bold and loquacious pretender, fanaticism in every branch of its folly, and the full measure of its arrogance." Yet again, besides the infidelity which is, sometimes, its direct consequence and legitimate product, the amount of religion in any community, through a long series of years, is, on the whole, rather diminished than increased by the system in question. It appears, from the confessions of the parties themselves, as well as the observation of those who are not interested in these movements, that, when the excitement subsides, a corresponding languor and lassitude ensues. The excitement has to be renewed again and again, in order that religion, once introduced in this manner, may not go out for want of fuel to feed the fire. The consequence is, that religion, on this principle, exists only by a series of unnatural heats. It lives a galvanic life, and threatens to become extinct, whenever the system of excitement loses, as, in the course of buman culture, it surely must, the power which it now has, to move and inflame the mind.

16

PRACTICAL GOODNESS THE TRUE RELIGION.

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I have dwelt, contrary to my usual practice, somewhat at length, on what I consider to be the errors of other sects. I should feel that I had done great injustice to them and to the subject of this discourse, did I not acknowledge that some of the purest specimens of the religious character are to be found among those sects, and that they exhibit, in general, a greater degree of zeal and interest in what they believe to be the truths of religion, than our own. All sects have their errors, and those which characterize our own denomination are, perhaps, quite as glaring as any I have mentioned. How quickly do we discover the mote in our brother's eye, and how hardly do we detect the beam in our own! If tumult and excitement profit little, still less will indifference and coldness avail. If God is not served by zeal without knowledge, feeling without action, and faith without works, still less is he served by the utter absence of ́either. Let us beware, lest those who make less count of practical goodness in their theory, should contrive, after all, to secure a greater amount of it in practice, than we who concentrate the whole scheme and scope of our religion there. If we believe that strict obedience to the will of God is the only means of access to him and to his heavenly kingdom, let us see that the will of God be strictly obeyed, not only by outward decency of deportment, which may proceed from worldly wisdom, or any other motive than the love of God; but in the whole frame and disposition of our mind and heart, in our pri vate habits and innermost soul. While those who walk not with us, rejoice, from time to time, in an outward and formal revival of their faith and hope, let us strive and pray that we also may be inwardly and secretly revived, from day to day, in our characters and lives.