as to morals, was obscure, weak, uncertain, partial. Man having lost the knowledge of his Maker, had lost the rule of his law. Blot out our decalogue, our sermon on the mount-leave men to hammer out moral truths by the dim light of reason, in the midst of a thousand corrupt passions, and you have the state of the whole heathen world as to morals before the coming of Christ.

3. In a Christian country, further, we have a popular course of religious instruction from the hands of an order of persons dedicated and set apart by a peculiar education and a sacred appointment. Truth is expounded and appliedevery parish has its teacher-the whole mass of mankind is educated and trained in religion.

But in the heathen world, there was no instruction, no moral teaching, no popular doctrine. There were a few philosophers, the founders of sects and the heads of schools. But these men were themselves involved in the greatest obscurity, and not at all able to direct mankind. Few of them attempted to bring down religion to human life and practice. They commonly engaged in endless disquisitions and disputes on the eternity of matter, the soul of the world, and other fruitless topics. They countenanced the prevailing idolatries and vices. Even Socrates, the wisest of their number, did this. In their codes of morals (the Ethics of Aristotle, for example, or the Offices of Cicero) there were some beautiful theories indeed, but all were corrupted by sinful motives and principles, by the want of a divine authority, and by being built on a foundation of pride and selfsufficiency. The influence of the philosophers was little, if any, on the mass of mankind. Any education of youth in religion and morals was unknown. The great body of the poor was neglected, despised, accounted even as the brutes that perish. The whole human race, as to religion, was dispersed and scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd.

4. Once more, we are accustomed in Christian countries to reverence the public ordinances of religion. We feel instinctively that impiety and vice are inconsistent with the

(a) Æquum mi animum ipse parabo.-HOR.

worship of the great and holy Lord God, whose infinite purity strikes even the profane mind with dread.

But the heathen were impure and abominable even in their religion. Their gods and goddesses were profligate, impure, revengeful, odious. The very light that was in them was darkness. For what could the histories of Jupiter and Juno and Bacchus and Mercury and Venus teach, but vice and drunkenness and lewdness and theft and fraud? What were the Eleusinian mysteries, what the Floralia and Bacchanalia and Saturnalia? It is a shame, observes the great apostle, even to speak of those things which were done of them in secret. Christians as individuals may be wicked and unjust, and alas! often are so; but this is, NOTWITHSTANDING their religion, and in spite of it, as Bishop Warburton has finely remarked, and therefore cases of the grossest iniquity are rare; but the heathen were impure and abominable IN CONSEQUENCE of their religion and because of it; and therefore a depravity of which we have no conception prevailed, and cases of virtue and comparative purity were rare and

uncommon.

5. This universal corruption, accordingly, is the strong point of contrast resulting from the preceding observations. In Christian countries corruption exists in those who neglect revelation; but it is not of that debasing and dark character, nor to that deplorable extent which was the case before the coming of Christ. Religious knowledge, religious feelings, moral order, Christian virtue and piety, social peace, mutual charity, as we shall hereafter have to show, abound. The grosser vices are discountenanced, and some of them not even named, amongst us.

But in the heathen world, the depravity both as to knowledge and practice was deep and universal. Whether you consider the barbarous nations, or those which were most polished, whether you look back to the earliest times of which we have any authentic history, or those nearer the birth of our Lord, all was one thick impenetrable mass of moral disorder and ruin. The most abject and disgusting idolatries, the worship of stocks and stones, the deification of kings and warriors, of human virtues and vices, of in

sects, and even of that most disgusting of all reptiles, the serpent, prevailed. Practices the most flagitious were interwoven in the histories and ceremonies of these wretched deities. From this source, aided by the corrupt heart of man, flowed out a torrent of vices and abominations in public and private life-fraud, theft, rapine, fell revenge, suicide, fornication, adultery, systematic abortions, murder of infants, unnatural crimes, the atrocious cruelties of war, the slavery and oppression of captives, gladiatorial shows, not only abounded, but were patronized, vindicated, countenanced by the great body of men-connived at, if not practised, by statesmen and philosophers-publicly reprobated by

none.

In fact, the language of the apostle in the text is attested by all kinds of evidence—their knowledge of God in the works of creation was corrupted—their imagination vain— their foolish heart darkened-the whole body of learned men were become fools, even when professing themselves to be wise-the glory of the uncorruptible God was changed into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. In consequence, as the apostle proceeds to state, as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them up to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient, being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents. Without understanding, covenant-break-⚫ ers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful.

6. Add to this melancholy, but too faithful picture, that there was no hope of recovery from this state by any means then existing there was no principle of reformation, no spring of revival from decay. Now, in Christian countries there is a standard of doctrine in our sacred books, where truth remains fresh and vigorous, and ready to be applied to the restoration of piety and virtue, if for a time they have declined and accordingly reformations of pure religion from time to time take place, and the knowledge and love

of the true God, and the purity of his worship, and obedience to his laws, are re-established.

But in the heathen world there was nothing to bring man back to God-no standard of truth-no written revelation -no code of morals-no order of men to instruct the people-no pure religious worship-nothing but the corrupt remains of natural light, with broken and disjointed traditions, and the defective institutions of civil society. These, indeed, just kept men together, and, aided by the enfeebled law of conscience, restrained some of the violence of human injuries-and left man without excuse before God, as the apostle argues-but were utterly insufficient to restore a lost world, to check the current of corruption, to open the path of truth, and make known a way of pardon and holiness.

This state of mankind had been going on for three thousand years. The light even in the sacred, but narrow and almost unknown, land of Judea had become nearly extinct by prevalent vices, divisions, and notions of a temporal Messiah-so that the condition of the world may be pronounced to have been inveterate and incurable, just before the coming of our Lord. The disease had proved itself to be more and more hopeless as time rolled by the institutions of society were become more corrupt-the standard of morals sank lower and lower-the excesses of lewdness and cruelty in religious rites were more frightful; whilst, as if to mark the dire necessities of man, demoniacal possessions prodigiously increased. The moral misery, in short, had reached its deepest point of depression, had intercepted, like a vast portentous cloud, the last scattered rays of truth, and overshadowed with its thickening gloom the prospects of a lost world, exactly when the Christian revelation, as the morning sun, arose to dissipate the darkness and reveal the day.

I ask, then, of any serious inquirer, (and I am concerned with none other,) whether the absolute necessity of a divine revelation be not shown beyond all contradiction? And I assure him that the picture I have drawn is utterly incapable of giving a just conception of the actual ignorance, idolatry, and depravity of the heathen world. The fact is,

there never was a case so clearly made out. It is too late in the day of trial for the infidel of the nineteenth century to avail himself of the light of revelation blazing for so many ages, and then to turn about and say, We can guide ourselves by our own reason, without the aid of Christian truth. But this brings us to consider,

II. The UNBELIEVERS NOW SCATTERED OVER CHRISTIAN COUNTRIES. And here we ask, whence did they derive their light? Is it sufficient to direct man? Has it any force when disjoined from revelation?

They tell us, indeed, that they allow the being and attributes of God, that this one God is to be worshipped, that piety and virtue are the principal parts of his worship, that God will pardon our sins upon repentance, that there are rewards for the good, and punishments for the bad, in a future state. They consider all these truths as absolutely necessary that is, some amongst them do, for the number is perhaps but small. They call these truths common notices, perfectly clear, so that a man cannot be a rational creature if he deny them.

But whence did these truths break in upon men in the sixteenth or seventeenth century,"except, from the habitual exhibition of them by the Christian revelation, and by the Christian revelation exclusively-all the wisest heathen philosophers having failed to discover one of these truths during the lapse of ages? How came it to pass that Socrates and Plato and Aristotle wandered in total darkness about every one of them? How came it to pass that these principles were first taught by persons educated in the Christian religion, taught these truths in the greatest purity, and in conjunction with many others, by the lips of the Christian ministry, and trained up in all the habits and usages of a Christian community? Had these doctrines been wrought out by the study of some heathen philosopher of Northern Europe or distant Asia, some recluse in the deserts of Africa or the

(b) Lord Herbert of Cherbury, the earliest of our English Deists, wrote in 1624. The name of Deist was unknown till about the year 1565.-Leland's Deistical Writers, vol. i. p. 2, 3.