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make the will of God the rule of moral action; but does he state the case fairly? Who ever dreamed of giving God pleasure or pain, in the sense Mr. Hildreth implies? Does Mr. Hildreth hold it a moral action to tell the truth? To the religious moralist, God is the Good, and nothing is good that is not godlike. God is the standard. But God is a living being, an infinite personality, that is to say, an infinite will, and therefore is he rightly said to approve what conforms, and to disapprove what does not conform, to him. In seeking the pleasure of God, we are simply seeking to obey his law, that is, to do that which he approves, that is, to do that which conforms to his will, that is to say, again, that which conforms to himself. Nobody supposes, that, when we refuse to conform to his will, he suffers pain; or that, when we conform, he experiences what we term the emotion of pleasure. To please God is simply to conform to his will; to displease him is simply to disobey him.

"The mystical theory, however, when it is made the foundation of practical morals, is usually amalgamated with the selfish theory; that is, with the theory, that virtue consists in securing our own greatest happiness. This amalgamation easily takes place; for since, according to the mystics, every thing depends on the volition of God; and as God is supposed to act, at least to a certain extent, as men act, to be influenced by feelings of gratitude; hence, those who please God will certainly be rewarded by him in the end, and those who displease him will be punished. But as this present life does by no means exhibit any such rewards and punishments, mysticism has been led to adopt the hypothesis of a future retribution; a doctrine which the semi-Stoics and the semi-Epicureans have also found themselves obliged to adopt, as the only means of giving any plausibility to their idea of the coincidence of virtue and happiness."Ch. I., §§ 38, 39.

Mr. Hildreth nowhere accepts what he calls the mystical theory; he means to sneer at it, and to hold it up to our abhorrence. He therefore intends to scout the doctrine of future rewards and punishments, and to discard every system of morals that depends at all on a future. state of existence. We have evidently gone far in our downward progress. It is hardly to be presumed, that

our community, designedly, with full consciousness of what it is doing, would reject Christianity; and yet it calls in question every article of the Christian's faith, and, what is remarkable, it does it in the name of Christ. The great labor, for some time, has been to prove that Jesus was no Christian, and that, in point of fact, he was, if not an infidel, very much like a modern comeouter. Men amongst us—and to our shame be it said, we were once, in more respects than one, of their number- there are, who really believe they are honoring Christ as the Teacher of Truth, while they are denying every doctrine he taught, and while, in the poverty of their religious creed, they fall below the most stupid of heathen nations! Nay, we find them parading this poverty, making their boast of what should be their shame. If the great body of Christian believers, from the time of Christ down, have mistaken his doctrines, and given us something entirely different from the Gospel, then one should regard the Saviour as having been wanting in the essential qualities of a teacher, that of making himself intelligible; or else he provided with miserable skill and judgment for the preservation of the right understanding of his doctrine. In either case, we declare him unworthy of our confidence, and, as honest and brave men, we should reject him altogether. It is painful to one who has awaked from the sleep into which he had been drugged by the spirit of his age and country, to see how men, even in the name of Christ, have pared down the Gospel till nothing of it is left. We are, many of us, boasting of our success in this work, and swearing, in the very teeth of gainsayers, that we are true Christians, first-rate Christians, the only genuine Christians, while denying every distinctive doctrine and precept of the Gospel. With what ineffable disdain do we treat the simple follower of Jesus, who is content to believe with the Apostles, the Fathers, and the Church Universal! Why, we have grown infinitely too wise to fall into the absurdity of believing there. was wisdom in the world before we were born. Nobody ever knew any thing of the true meaning of the

Gospel, till we were born! We, for the first time, have. seized its true significance, and, after all, it is no such mighty affair. It is all perfectly simple, and means merely, that, if one is good and does good, then one is good and does good.* We have rejected from the Gospel all that was foreign to it, all that ignorance, superstition, false learning, false philosophy, and priestcraft have added to it; we have demolished hell; scouted the devil; laughed at the fall; reduced the Son of God, first, to a promising Hebrew youth, who was a successful Mesmeriser, and, finally, to a mythic personage, created by the creeds and fancies of men; we have, moreover, successively disrobed God himself of his justice, his truth, his sovereignty, his paternity, his providence, at last of his personality, and resolved him into a blind force, or a mere fate or irresistible necessity. And in all this we have been guilty of no heresy, of no error in doctrine, have been, in fact, good, true, faithful, enlightened, liberal Christians, the reformers of the Church, and the restorers of primitive Christianity! Surely, this is a wonderful age, and we are marvellous people.

If there is any one doctrine dear to a Christian heart, it is the doctrine of future retribution, the only doctrine capable of clearing up the confusion and apparent anomalies of this life, and of giving us, at all times, in the darkest moments, a ground for unwavering confidence in God. The man, who denies a future state of rewards and punishments for deeds done in this life, denies, in the plainest and fullest manner possible, Christianity itself, and saps the foundation of all morals, both theoretical and practical. The great evil we have now to contend with is this wide-spread doubt in respect to a future state of retribution. Men have ceased, to an alarming extent, to believe in future rewards and punishments, and we lose our hold on their consciences.

* See Parker's Discourse, passim. The statement in the text contains the whole sum and substance of the Christian Revelation, according to this erudite, eloquent, and philosophic divine.

There is a wide-spread feeling, that what people have heretofore feared is all a fable, and men have seriously published books to prove that there is no punishment for the wicked after death, because, forsooth, certain Greek and Hebrew words, translated hell in the English version of the Bible, did not, in their primitive use, designate a place of punishment. As well say that there is no such place as London, because the word London, in its primitive sense, does not mean a great city. Men everywhere around us say to themselves, "Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die, and there is an end of us"; or else they say, "Go to, who's afraid? God is good; our conduct cannot affect him; he is compassionate and kind, and is not willing that any should perish; and so he will not damn us; but as soon as we die, he will take us right into heaven, to enjoy inconceivable bliss, for ever and ever." So, through faith in universal annihilation, or faith in universal salvation, there is no longer any chance of touching a man's conscience, and arresting him in his wickedness. The law has no terrors for the wicked, and love can operate only on the redeemed. Hence the deplorable state of our morals, the terrible moral corruption spreading over Christendom. And now, here is a man who judges himself wise enough to instruct his countrymen, coming out with a work on morals, in which he makes it a reproach for moralists to rest any portion of their systems on considerations drawn from a future life!

We should like to have Mr. Hildreth show us how he would enforce the disinterested morality he contends for, by considerations drawn only from this life. He requires me to sacrifice myself for the good of others. Very well. I do not complain of him for this; but through what motive am I to do it? I do not ask him to assure me of a personal reward which I am myself to receive, but I do want him to show me that this good of others, which I am to promote, is worth sacrificing myself for. If you tell me the evil men suffer is only for this short life, to be succeeded, whether I

make an effort to remove it or not, by an eternity of bliss, I am very sure that I shall put myself to no great inconvenience to make them happy here; for their present sufferings will only enhance the relish of their future joys. If, again, you tell me that there is no hereafter, that this life is man's whole life, and that it is only for men's good, while on this side the grave, that I can labor, you make them such miserable abortions, and the greatest amount of good that can be procured for them so contemptibly little, that I cannot disturb myself on their account. "Poor devils," I must say, "ye are born in the morning, to be cut down at noon, and wither away in the evening; at best, mere insects, born to flutter an hour in the sun; - flutter on, and flutter as ye will; it's enough for me to take care of my own wings." A cold and heartless selfishness would possess me, and I should be utterly incapable of a benevolent emotion, or a disinterested act. If I am to act for others' happiness, you must show me that it is worth acting for; that it may be hazarded; that my acts are needed to secure it; and that it may continue for ever. In seeking to save others from misery, if I am to seek with much earnestness, I must feel that they are exposed to an infinite loss, that it is not from the petty ills of this short life merely, but from the pains and woes of eternity, I must save them. Hence, we regard the moralist, who sneers at a state of future rewards and punishments, as guilty of the grossest wrong. He is undermining the very foundation of morals, depriving morals of all sanction, and virtually letting men loose in the wildest license. We have no charity for such a man, no excuse. No community can tolerate him, without the greatest conceivable danger to its institutions, to its peace, to its moral and religious life.

But we have no disposition to pursue Mr. Hildreth further. His system professedly belongs to the class of moral systems, usually denominated the sentimental. He makes all moral distinctions originate in the sentiment of benevolence, and makes the moral character of the act depend entirely on its producing pleasure or

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