ness, and so, to suspend that agony, which, when thrown back upon itself and dissevered from all its objects of gratification, will be felt, without mitigation and without respite. In the busy whirl of life, the mind, drawn upon in all directions, can find, outwardly and abroad, the relief of a constant diversion from the misery of its own internal processes. But a slight change in its locality or its circumstances, would deliver it up to the full burden and agony of these; nor can we imagine a more intense and intolerable wretchedness, than that which would ensue, simply by rescinding the connection which obtains in this world between a depraved mind and its external means of gratificationwhen, forced inwardly on its own haunted tenement, it met with nothing there but revenge unsatiated; and raging appetites, that never rest from their unappeased fermentation; and withal, joined to this perpetual sense of want, a pungent and pervading sense of worthlessness. It is the constant testimony of criminals, that, in the horrors and the tedium of solitary imprisonment, they undergo the most appalling of all penalties-a penalty, therefore, made up of moral elements alone; as neither pain, nor hunger, nor sickness, necessarily forms any of its ingredients. It strikingly demonstrates the character of Him who so constructed our moral nature, that from the workings of its mechanism alone, there should be evolved a suffering so tremendous on the children

of iniquity, insomuch that a sinner meets with sorest vengeance when simply left to the fruit of his own ways-whether by the death which carries his disembodied spirit to its Tartarus; or by a resurrection to another scene of existence, where, in full possession of his earthly habits and earthly passions, he is nevertheless doomed to everlasting separation from their present counterpart and earthly enjoyments.

13. There is a distinction sometimes made between the natural and arbitrary rewards of virtue, or between the natural and arbitrary punishments of vice. The arbitrary is exemplified in the enactments of human law; there in general being no natural or necessary connection between the crimes which it denounces, and the penalties which it ordains for them-as between the fine, or the imprisonment, or the death, upon the one hand; and the act of violence, whether more or less outrageous, upon the other. The natural, again, is exemplified in the workings of the human constitution; there being a connection, in necessity and nature, between the temper which prompted the act of violence, and the wretchedness which it inflicts on him who is the unhappy subject, in his own bosom, of its fierce and restless agitations. It is thus that not only is virtue termed its own reward, but vice its own greatest plague or self-tormentor. We have no information of the arbitrary rewards or punishments in a future state, but from revelation

alone. But of the natural, we have only to suppose, that the existing constitution of man, and his existing habits, shall be borne with him to the land of eternity; and we may inform ourselves now of these, by the experience of our own felt and familiar nature. Our own experience can tell that the native delights of virtue, unaided by any high physical gratifications, and only if not disturbed by grievous physical annoyances, were enough of themselves to constitute an elysium of pure and perennial happiness: and, again, that the native agonies of vice, unaided by any inflictions of physical suffering, and only if unalleviated by a perpetual round of physical enjoyments, were enough of themselves to constitute a dire and dreadful Pandemonium. They are not judicially awarded, but result from the workings of that constitution which God hath given to us; and they speak as decisively the purpose and character of Him who is the author of that constitution, as would any code of jurisprudence proclaimed from the sanctuary of heaven, and which assigned to virtue, on the one hand, the honours and rewards of a blissful immortality-to vice, on the other, a place of anguish among the outcasts of a fiery condemnation.

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CHAPTER IV.

On the General Adaptation of External Nature to the Moral Constitution of Man.

1. Ir needs but a cursory observation of life to be made sensible, that man has not been endowed with a conscience, without, at the same time, being placed in a theatre which afforded the most abundant scope and occasion for its exercise. The truth is, that, in the multitude of fellow-beings by whom he is surrounded, and in the manifold variety of his social and family relations, there is a perpetual call on his sense of right and wrong-insomuch, that to the doings of every hour throughout his waking existence, one or other of these moral designations is applicable. It might have been stigmatised as the example of a mal-adjustment in the circumstances of our species, had man been provided with a waste feeling or a waste faculty, which remained dormant and unemployed from the want of counterpart objects that were suited to it. The wisdom of God admits of glorious vindication against any such charge in the physical department of our nature, where the objective and subjective have been made so marvellously to harmonise with each other; there being, in the ma

terial creation, sights of infinitely varied loveliness, and sounds of as varied melody, and many thousand tastes and odours of exquisite gratification, and distinctions innumerable of touch and feeling, to meet the whole compass and diversity of the human senses-multiplying without end, both the notice that we receive from external things, and the enjoyments that we derive from them. And as little in the moral department of our nature, is any of its faculties, and more especially the great and master faculty of all, left to languish from the want of occupation. The whole of life, in fact, is crowded with opportunities for its employment -or, rather, instead of being represented as the subject of so many distinct and ever-recurring calls, conscience may well be represented as the constant guide and guardian of human life; and, for the right discharge of this its high office, as being kept on the alert perpetually. The creature on whom conscience hath laid the obligation of refraining from all mischief, and rendering to society all possible good, lives under a responsibility which never for a single moment is suspended. He may be said to possess a continuity of moral being; and morality, whether of a good or evil hue, tinges the whole current of his history. It is a thing of constancy as well as a thing of frequency; for, even when not carried forth into action, it is not dormant, but possesses the mind in the form of a cherished purpose or cherished principle, or, as