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the echoes of unavailing murmurs. Such mistakes are to be lamented, but not to be scorned; for that suffering is not to be despised which has its foundation in profound and extensive sympathy. And it is not in the power of minds more obtuse and slow to measure or conceive the pain of those who, with a moral imagination that goes out to the very limits of humanity, and a piercing sensibility that enters into the hidden places where suffering weeps unnoted, and sin lies down unredeemed, that in the spirit of unselfish love feels the woe and guilt of a race, as though they were personal afflictions, it is not easy, I say, to estimate the pain such men undergo: when some conjuncture of events, which seemed the dawn of virtue, of liberty, of peace, of brotherhood, turns out a mockery and a contradiction; when they live to see that their noblest aspirings were but as the babblings of vanity; that the circumstances of which they augured most hopefully, proved as empty as shapes of vapour painted by the rising sun; that changes, of which they prophesied in most exulting strains, reversed all their calculations. This is no vague speculation; there have been many instances in fact, and we can imagine many more. Had Luther been defeated in his attempt for religious reformation; had Howard departed to his rest with the sorrowful conviction that he left cells as dark, and prisoners as hopeless, as he found them; had Wilberforce closed his life in despair of all redemption for the slave; had Washington fought in vain the fight for independence, seeing no prospect for his country, but submissively to bear the yoke for ever; we have no doubt that each would have experienced a more oppressive anguish than from the keenest of personal afflictions. In such cases there were, of course, the soundness of conception and wisdom of execution which ensure success; but in others, it often happens that the disappointment is not the less bitter because the expectations were baseless.

Opposed to this scheme is that of rigid Calvinism. By

the latter system the whole nature is described as hopelessly corrupt, and language affords no colouring which can give shades deep enough for the theological picture. Minutest analysis is used to prove man such a being, that when considered you find him to be a compound of fiend and brutesuch a being that you wonder God would allow him to disgrace existence, to pollute creation, and not annihilate, and blot him out from the universe, such a being that if correctly described the very continuance of society becomes a miracle and a marvel. His intellect, we are told, is utterly and spiritually darkened, his will the slave of sin, set to work iniquity greedily, his imagination corrupt, his passions rebellious, his affections perverted, incapable of good in thought, word, or deed, and completely devoted to evil. Taking this view as correct, we might suppose the prime use of man's understanding was to devise wickedness, of his memory to prolong the thoughts of it, of his will to form only guilty resolves, and of his passions to riot in all that is vile and ungodly. We have thus the whole spiritual and moral man steeped in black and hateful infamy. To sustain these assertions, appeal is made to experience; and proof is found of entire and universal depravity in history, laws, and literature. Any conclusion drawn from these goes but to testify what we are ready to concede, that man is an imperfect being, and that the evidence of his imperfection is stamped upon most of his actions and productions. But the testimony is partially and unjustly quoted. Another estimate of the same evidence would argue as strongly, and even more so, for the inherent goodness of man. If we take the instance of human laws it will at once illustrate and confirm my assertion. If laws prove the existence and universality of crime, they prove also the existence and universality of the sense of justice, for laws, so far as they embody general principles, are the expression of common and collective sentiments. Indirectly, they prove yet more: for, after all, the great mass of

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truth and rectitude exists independently of laws, is such as no law could reach, is in fact such that without it no laws could have a moment's force. In the effort to make good an indictment against human nature, an industry and labour are expended, as perverse as they are pertinacious; the lowest purlieus of depravity are raked, the deepest mines of wickedness are worked with a zeal as ardent as the veriest miser would seek for hidden treasure, the blackest evils of the worst times are adduced, the pages of history that are the most darkly stained, are torn out and severed from the context; and for what purpose is all this? Why, to make the noblest work of God odious; to vilify that nature which was glorified in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. If human nature is so thoroughly depraved and vile, as so frequently asserted, the scheme of orthodoxy is most improbable, and a fallen humanity, as it paints humanity, instead of giving Christianity consistency, renders it the most perplexing of paradoxes. For if man be thus naturally vile and depraved-corrupted in every faculty, whence these high counsels in heaven concerning him; whence the union of three infinite and co-eternal persons to save a wretch, the extinction of whom would have been mercy to the universe; whence the counsels of the Father, the incarnation of the Son, and that death of a God-man on Calvary, at which we are told the angels trembled and creation stood aghast; along with all, the constant and supernatural agency of the Holy Spirit? If man be really as worthless and as wicked as we are often told he is, all this, (with reverence I speak it,) seems a want of wisdom and a waste of strength. Though it may be considered over bold I will go a step further. If the one sin of Adam was to work such complete ruin in all his countless posterity; if it was to be the source of such an irremediable wickedness, and unrelieved misery, if notwithstanding the united work of three infinite agents, there was still to be a bottomless pit and an everlasting smoke of torment, a black and boundless ocean of guilt

and pain, swelled by gloomy streams ever and ever flowing in from earth, for which infants were sealed in their birth, to which the lost are consigned in their death-if this be the lot to which the great mass of our species is destined-of which the first tear is a symbol, and the last sigh a passport, —if hell still is more peopled than heaven, then the infinite agencies of redemption might have been spared, this hopeless and illimitable anguish might have been extinguished, and the annihilation of our first parents would have been the greater mercy and the greater salvation.

Appeal is made to scripture with still greater confidence than to experience. There is one to whom reference is never made for testimony to this doctrine, and that is our Lord Jesus Christ; and if such doctrine were true, it is strange that he who needeth not that any should testify of man, because he knew what was in man, did not reveal it, and stamp it with all the solemnity of his authority. It may with confidence be asserted that such a dogma as the inherent and universal corruption of human nature is neither asserted nor justified by any Scripture from Genesis to Revelations. The Bible, I admit to be a moral, and also a providential history ; and in this relation, I admit also, that it contains many strong statements of human wickedness; but they all refer to periods of peculiar degeneracy, and a fair study of the context will plainly show they have defined limitations. In the appendix to this lecture I will subjoin a list of texts usually pleaded for this doctrine, the mere exhibition of which is sufficient to expose its utter want of a Scriptural foundation.* On the present occasion I shall confine my remarks to the proofs alleged from Paul to the Romans. Stripping the subject of all the mysticism with which it has been encumbered, and identifying ourselves with the mind and times of the apostle, let us clearly see what was his object, and then we shall truly apprehend the nature of his argument. Paul's object was twofold: first, to show that the Gospel was *See Appendix, Note 1.

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universal. This was opposed to the circumscribed nationality of Judaism. Secondly, that it was inward and spiritual. This was again opposed to the ritual and legal exactitude of Judaism. The General course, therefore, of the argument is directed against Jewish thoughts and Jewish prejudices, and to maintain the admissibility of the Gentiles to the Christian church. He has then to make good two propositions namely, "that God is impartially and equally the God of all men; and that fidelity of heart is the essence of all true religion. We might sum up the whole system of the Apostle in two simple sentences of his letter: "Is he the God of the Jews only? is he not also the God of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also." The other assertion is, that "with the heart man believeth unto righteousness." Proving these two principles, he utterly demolishes all Jewish claims. The Apostle proceeds to open the new aspect which Jesus presented of the character of God-that of grace or mercy. Moses proclaimed Jehovah as a God of law, Jesus revealed him as a God of grace. Paul cautiously, but with power, argues most convincingly that in this relation only can men confidently approach him, but in this relation there is free access for all. None have a claim from merit, for all are guilty. With remarkable prudence, he takes, first, the case of the Gentile, and the state of the world in his own time supplied him examples in melancholy abundance. There was, therefore, no ground for Gentile exultation or Jewish jealousy, for the gospel was offered to the Heathens, not as a thing of merit but of favour, not as reward for their holiness, but as a remedy for their sin. To the Jews, who looked with bitter contempt on all men but themselves, who imagined every spiritual advantage was for them alone, this would be most offensive. The next question which thence arose was this:As the Gentiles obviously were accepted before God, only on the ground of his mercy, whether the Jews could claim acceptance on any other ground? The Apostle had most con

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