ment, and encourages virtue by promises of recompense; which opens the prospect of the future for the edification of the present; and which, while it awakens and justifies the high ambition of immortality, converts the children of earth into the disciples and the heirs of heaven.

Singularly framed, indeed, must be the heart of that man who can look up, through the medium of faith, to an Almighty Governor watching over and regulating all events; a recording spirit to whose eyes are open the most secret recesses of the soul; a redeeming, mediating, and sanctifying God; a tribunal of judgment before which all the generations of men are one day to bow down, and receive the final decree and unalterable allotment-Singularly constituted must be that man's heart who can contemplate objects like these, without being impressed with the resolution to restrain his will, to correct his passions, and to consecrate his future life to holiness and to virtue.

Nor is Christian hope, perhaps, less fruitful of salutary persuasions, than Christian faith.

The religion of the Gospel is no gloomy and melancholy system of painful ceremonies, afflicting rites, and ascetic austerities. Represented though it has been by some weak and fanatical minds, as sent forth to detach mankind from the joys and comforts of life, it disclaims the repulsive rigours with which ignorance and despondency have loaded and disgraced it. Hope is not merely to be indulged, but is required and sanctioned as a cardinal virtue. That which is to be the happiness of man, becomes matter of precept and of obligation; and evangelical trust is permitted and inspired, for the stay and support of evangelical integrity.

The hope thus authenticated, becomes, at once, a light and a blessing to the heart. Elevating our contemplations, as it does, to a Deity no less perfect in wisdom and goodness than in power; teaching us where to repose our confidence in the day of trial, and to seek for aid in the period of conflict; contrasting the evils and sufferings of the present life, with the palms, and robes, and scepters of the just in heaven; it affords ample grounds for those emotions of love and reverence towards God, which quicken the sense of duty and obligation in the heart. And, while it speaks to us of future blessedness, while it announces the glad tidings of favour and acceptance with the Almighty, and proclaims to the sinner the means by which he may be saved;--can we hear the voice that tells us of these things, without being im pressed, in the most affecting manner, with a consciousness of the obligations we owe to God, and without being encouraged to contend for the prize of our high calling, and to run with patience the race that is set before us?

Hope and faith, in their genuine and evangelical character, cannnot but exist together, and co-operate for the moral improvement of man. Hope springs from faith, faith is animated by hope. Faith is obedience, hope desire. Faith elevates our views to celestial blessings, hope aspires to their attainment. Faith exhibits to us the Omnipotent in the mighty but merciful operations of redemption and providence; hope deduces the inference from the facts which are thus disclosed, and reposes on the attributes which are thus displayed. Faith soars from the cross of Calvary to the throne of mediation and of grace; hope feeds on the persuasions which are thus matured in the bosom of man. It is

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the peculiar office of faith to tender to the sinner, dead in his trespasses and sins, the means of life. It is the peculiar office of hope, rich in the consolations of the gospel, to become the soother of human misery, to rock the cradle of old age, to seat itself by the bed of disease, to hold the cup of peace to the parched lip, and to soften the agonies of death by prospects of heaven. In thus administering to the aid of afflicted man, it establishes the resignation and fortitude of the heart, and supports and encourages the perseverance of virtue. Without it, the Christian would be left to suffer in darkness and despair; and, with it, darkness is converted into light, and despair is elevated to confidence and joy.

If there be some who describe evangelical hope but as the fair vision of enthusiastic credulity, a fabled form of ideal and unsubstantial beauty, which fades into nothing before the light of reason and truth, how many are there in the secret walksof life to testify the reality of its existence, and the efficacy of its power! That which the pretended philosopher may deride, the martyr and the saint take to their bosom; and suffering is endured, and integrity is sustained, with heroic magnanimity. Sad, indeed, would be the pilgrimage of man, if his trust and expectation were confined to this dim spot. Scanty would be the encouragement of virtue, if it were limited in its confidence to earthly recompence. But, when the voice of promise is heard, and evangelical hope proclaims the everlasting destiny of the children of God, sorrow may well rejoice, and integrity will persevere. The glooms of trial are gilded as if by a beam from heaven; and the disciples of virtue prosecute their journey with a fortitude

and a trust which sustain their strength, and cheer and elevate their spirit.

In this manner the institutions of Christianity, and the views of faith and hope, contribute to form and fortify the moral temper of man. We can scarcely meditate on the being and attributes of God, as they are described in the Gospel, with less salutary effect. In the religion of the Greek and of the Hindu, the divine example was often to encourage the breach of the divine precept; in that of the Koran, the authority of the Almighty was brought down to afford its sanction to fraud, to libertinism, and to persecution. The Christian is taught to look up to a deity of a different character, and to deduce from the views which are opened upon him of celestial justice and mercy, inferences in the highest degree salutary to piety and to virtue. What encouragement to sin can he experience, who beholds in the being he adores but sinless perfections? What inducements to injustice, to malignity, to cruelty, or to falsehood, may not be resisted by him who venerates in God but illimitable benevolence and immutable truth? Or is he not to learn the offence and danger of disobedience and of crime, and to feel, deeply and intensely, the obligations of virtue, while he raises his eyes to him whose justice is concerned to punish the guilty and recompence the upright, and who has declared that his vengeance shall overtake the first, and his blessing descend upon the last.

From these more general views we may proceed to examine the morality itself which derives from them such high authority, and such affecting motives.

I. And here we may first observe, that the sum

and substance of the Christian law are included in the love of God, and the love of man; that the love of man is described as the test of the love of God; and that the good and merciful offices of the first are required and enforced as yet more acceptable to heaven, than the prayers and sacrifices of the last. Consistently with this great and primary principle, the Gospel, in almost every page, adds precept to precept, and motive to motive, to purify the heart, in the first instance, from all those evil and malignant passions which are directly opposed to individual and social happiness; and, in the next, to awaken that warm and generous benevolence which extends itself in good will, and, as far as possible, in good deeds, to all the family of mankind. It may be, therefore, affirmed, that wherever the religion of Christ prevails in its purity, "it promotes the innocence of village neighbourhood, and inculcates a universal community of bosom *;" the innocence, which mingles itself in the intercourse of life, with guileless and affectionate simplicity; and the community, which flows from a spirit of unsuspecting amity, and connects man with man in the bonds of confidence and of love.

The graces of benevolence which are thus inculcated by evangelical wisdom, are not merely to display themselves in beneficent deeds. They are to reach and humanize the manners and modes of life; to extend their influence to the forms of intercourse, and the habits of intimacy; and, for the polished dissimulation, the politeness existing only in pretence, and the smooth and artificial address in which the world may instruct its disciples, to substitute the

* Davenant. Pref. to Gondibert.