ed when we say that vital religion is commonly represented as a mystery, an enigma, to the mass of their hearers. But let us not dispute about words. They do represent it as something created in their heart, which was not there before; of which no element was there before; of which no man's previous experience ever gives him any information, any conception. If this is not a mystery to mankind, it would be difficult to tell what there is that deserves the name. Suppose the same thing to be applied to men's general knowledge. Men know many things; but suppose it were asserted that in all their knowing there is not one particle of true knowledge, and that only here and there one, who has been specially and divinely enlightened, possesses any such knowledge. Would not such knowledge then, be a secret shared by a few, and kept from the rest of the world? Would it not be a profound mystery to the mass of mankind? Yes; and a mystery all the darker for the seeming light that surrounded it!

How much is there that passes in the bosom of society, unquestioned and almost unknown! It is this which prevents us from seeing the momentous fact and the character of the fact, which I have now been attempting to strip bare and to lay before you. It would seem that we least know that which is nearest to us, which is most familiar and most certain, which is mixed up most intimately with all present thought and usage, and with the life that we daily live. A thing must become history, it would seem, before we can fairly read it. This is commonly allowed to be true of political affairs; but it is just as true of all human experience. Thus, if there had been a sect, among the old philosophers, which pretended to hold the exclusive possession of all science; if certain persons

had stood up in the ancient time, and said, "that which other men call science, is all an illusion; we alone truly know any thing; all other men are but fools and idiots in this matter; they suppose themselves to know, but they know nothing; they use words, and make distinctions, and write books, as if they knew, but they know nothing; they do not even know, what knowing is;" such a pretension we should not hesitate to characterize as a strange mixture of mysticism and arrogance. But the same assumption in regard to religion, is now put forth among ourselves; it is announced every week from the pulpit; it is constantly written in books; it enters into every argument about total depravity and regeneration and divine grace; and men seem totally insensible to its enormity; it is regarded as a mark of peculiar wisdom and sanctity; the men who take this ground, are the accredited Christian teachers of multitudes; they speak as if the secret of the matter were in them, and as if they were perfectly entitled, in virtue of a certain divine illumination which they have received, to pronounce all other religious claims to be groundless and false; to say of all other men but the body of the elect, "they think they know what religion is; they talk about it; they make disquisitions and distinctions as if they knew, but they know nothing about it; they do not even know what true religious knowing is." And all the people say, amen. There is no rebuke; there is no questioning; the light of coming ages has not yet shone upon this pretension; and the people say, it is all very right, very true.

I pray you, in fine, not to regard what I have now been saying as a sectarian remonstrance. Nay, and if it were so, it would not be likely to be half strong enough. There is a heavy indifference on this subject

of religion that weighs down remonstrance, and will not let it rise as it ought. If certain ship-masters or merchants should say that they only understood navigation; if certain mechanicians or manufacturers should assert that they only understood their art or their business; if certain lawyers or physicians should lay exclusive claim to the knowledge of law or medicine, there would be an outburst of indignation and scorn on every hand. "What presumption! what folly! these people are deranged!"-would be the exclamation. But men may make this claim in religion; a few persons comparatively in Christendom, may say, "we only have religion; we alone truly know what religion is;" and the indifference of society replies, no matter; let them claim it: let them have it ;" as if the thing were not worth disputing about. And if some one arouses himself to examine and to resist this claim, indifference still says, "this is but a paltry, sectarian dispute."

No, sirs, I answer, this is not a sectarian dispute. It is not a sectarian remonstrance that is demanded here; but the remonstrance of all human experience. Religion is the science of man's intrinsic and immortal welfare. What is a true knowledge, what is a true experience here, is a question of nothing less than infinite moment. All that a man is to enjoy or suffer for ever, depends upon the right, practical solution of this very question. Every where else, in business, in science, in his profession, may a man mistake with comparative impunity. But if he mistakes here, if he does not know, and know by experience, what it is to be good and pure, what it is to love God and to be conformed to his image, he is, in spite of all that men or angels can do for him, a ruined creature.

Settle it then with yourselves, my Brethren, what

true religion, true goodness, is. I will attempt, in some further discourses, to lead you to the inferences that follow from this discussion. But it is so fruitful in obvious inferences, that I am willing for the present to leave it with you, for your reflections. But this I say now. Settle it with yourselves what true religion is. If it is a mystery, then leave no means untried to become acquainted with that mystery. If it is but the cultivation, the increase in you, of what you already know and feel to be right, then address yourselves to that work of self-culture, as men who know that more than fortunes and honours depend upon it; who know that the soul, that heaven, that eternity, depend upon it.

XXII.

ON THE IDENTITY OF RELIGION WITH GOODNESS, AND WITH A GOOD LIFE.

IF A MAN SAY, I LOVE GOD, AND HATETH HIS BROTHER, HE IS A LIAR; FOR HE THAT LOVETH NOT HIS BROTHER WHOM HE HATH SEEN, HOW CAN HE LOVE GOD WHOM HE HATH NOT SEEN?-1 John iv. 20.

I HAVE presented, in my last discourse, two views of religion, or of the supreme human excellence; and I have offered some brief, but as I conceive, decisive considerations to show which is the right view. The one regards religion or the saving virtue, as a new creation in the soul; the other as the culture of what is already in the soul. The one contemplates conversion as the introduction of an entirely new element, or of an entirely new mode of action, into our nature; the other, as a strengthening, elevating and confirming of the conscience, the reverence and the love that are already a part of our nature. A simple comparison drawn from vegetable nature will show the difference. Here is a garden of plants. The rational gardener looks upon them all as having in them, the elements of growth and perfection. His business is to cultivate them. To make the comparison more exact he sees that these plants have lost their proper beauty and shapeliness, that they are distorted and dwarfed and choked with weeds. But still the germs of improvement are in them, and his business is to cultivate them. But now what does the theological gardener say?