128 SANCTIONS OF SCRIPTURAL MORALITY. 289. What other scriptural examples, illustrative and enforcive of human duty, might be adduced? 290. What constraining and persuasive motives of duty do the sacred writers employ to render their moral teachings availing? 291. What are the facts on which the revealed doctrines rest, and which prepare for the operation of motives most powerful, universal, and permanent? 292. How is the morality of revelation supported and brought into exercise by means of its doctrines? 293. What aid to good morals is furnished in the promises and privileges of Christianity? 294. How are the precepts involved in all the other parts of revelation? 295. Since the Scriptures do not furnish us with all the details of duty, how is that deficiency to be supplied? 296. A question has been raised whether it is lawful to draw inferences from Scripture, and what authority should be assigned to them? 297. What consequence is involved in the denial of the lawfulness of drawing inferences from Scripture? CHAPTER IV. SANCTIONS BY WHICH THE MORALS OF REVELATION ARE ULTIMATELY ENFORCED. 298. WHATEVER be the extent and purity of the rule of duty, whatever the means by which it works, whatever its inseparable connection with the doctrines of revelation, all is inefficient, unless the authority which it brings to bear upon the conscience, and the rewards and punishments attached to it, are weighty, solemn, efficacious. A hand dissevered from the body, might as well be represented as sufficient for the purposes of labor, as unconnected and unauthoritative principles, for the purposes of morality. 299. Heathen morals, in addition to innumerable other deficiencies, labored under one which was fatal to the whole system; they had no adequate sanction, no authority, no knowledge clear and definite of a future state, or an eternal judgment. Infidelity builds on no firmer foundation, when she pretends to raise her morals on the love of glory, honor, interest, utility, and the progress of civilization, with some feeble admissions of the belief of a future life. 300. Christianity stands forth in the midst of mankind, the only religion which asserts the will of God to be the IDENTITY OF MORALITY AND RELIGION. 129 clear and unbending rule of duty, and refers men to an eternal retribution as its ultimate sanction. Her morality conduces, indeed, to the welfare of man, it is agreeable to the reason of things, it responds to the voice of conscience; but none of these is its foundation. The WILL OF GOD, founded on the infinite rectitude of his nature, is the brief, undeviating authority of moral obedience. And what majesty does this throw around the precepts of the Bible! "Thus saith the LORD," is the introduction, the reason, the obligation of every command. 301. Concerning a future state of rewards and punishments, nature is ignorant: nature knows nothing distinctly of the rules of the last judgment. Revelation alone pronounces, with its awful voice, the immortality of the soul. Revelation unveils the eternal world. [Wilson's Evidences.] 298. Of what importance are the sanctions of morality? 299. What was a fatal deficiency in heathen morals? 300. Wherein consists the superiority of Christian morals as to adequate sanctions? 301. What contrast exists between the teachings of paganism or of infidelity, and those of revelation, concerning a future state of rewards and punishments? CHAPTER V. IDENTITY OF MORALITY AND RELIGION. 302. UPON the question, whether a man may be properly denominated a moral man, though destitute of religion, the doctrine of the Scriptures is comprehended in one proposition, "This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments." The "keeping of God's commandments," is a comprehensive definition of morality: the "love of God," is the sum of religious principle and of religious character; and the proposition quoted from the New Testament affirms, "This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments." The meaning of this proposition obviously is, that there is no love of God without the keeping of his com 130 PECULIARITY OF BIBLE MORALS. mandments; and that there is no keeping of his commandments without love to God: a statement which amounts to the same thing as this other, that there is no religion without morality, and that there is no morality without religion. He who loves God keeps the commandments in principle: he who keeps the commandments, loves God in action. Love is obedience in the heart: obedience is love in the life. Morality, then, is religion in practice: religion is morality in principle. 303. In the language of general society, the good man is the man who has sufficient means, and sufficient honor, to pay his debts. The term virtue is applied merely to relative and social virtues, and especially those which support one's credit in the business world. The virtues of truth, and integrity, and honor, especially when united with generosity and practical kindness, will secure the designation, although there should be no very rigid adherence to those of temperance and chastity; but if these, in any unusual degree, are united with the former, the man becomes a paragon of goodness, the very best of men, and sure of heaven if any on earth are. Meanwhile, piety, which is entitled to the precedence of all these virtues, and without which they are destitute of the very first principle of pure morality, is altogether omitted in the account. Even in the writings of ethical philosophers religion and morality are severed in the same way. They embrace discussions on morals, such as would require no very material alteration to accommodate them to atheism. 304. It is one of the distinguishing peculiarities of all Bible morality, that it begins with God, that it makes godliness its first and fundamental principle; and this peculiarity forms one, and not the least considerable, of the internal evidences for the divine original of the Bible. No right moral principle is there admitted to exist, independent of a primary and supreme regard to Deity. There is no such anomaly to be found there, as that which meets us so frequently in the language of the world's morality,-a good heart, or a good man, without the principles and sentiments of godliness. 305. The Scriptures, in thus identifying morality and religion, may easily be vindicated on principles of reason: for does not the Bible, in the ground it takes, give God MORALITY AND RELIGION IDENTICAL. 131 his proper place? Would not the adoption of a lower position, in any book pretending to be from God, have been of itself, sufficient to discredit and repudiate its pretensions? We are often told that relative morality consists in giving every one his due. The definition is a good one; but the application of it should commence at the highest point in the scale of obligation. Is there nothing due from creatures, but to their fellow-creatures? Has the everlasting God nothing due to him? Is not love his due? Is not worship his due? Is not obedience his due? The Deity must not be degraded to a secondary station: he is entitled to the first. 306. The obligation to God, compared with other obligations, is the first that binds the creature, and in this obligation all other obligations originate; they depend upon it; they are comprehended in it. What are the duties which we owe to our fellow-creatures, but integrant parts of his law? It is as His precepts that they must be fulfilled; so that, if they are duly done, they must be done from regard to his authority, which amounts to the same thing with their being done from a religious principle. The precepts of the first and second tables of the revealed law come equally under the designation of moral duties. The obligation to the one and to the other is the very same. The man who obeys his parents, who keeps his word, who pays his debts, who dispenses his charities, who performs any other acts, under the influence of principles that rise no higher than to a recognition of the claims of his fellow-creatures, has the first principles of moral obligation yet to learn. 307. In the department of morals, as well as in that of natural science, mischief often arises from the substitution of the word Nature, instead of the word God. Though the term Nature is used only by a figure of speech, yet it is employed by writers on natural philosophy in such a way, and so often, that there is danger of its assuming in the mind an imaginary personality, like the mysterious "plastic power" of some of the ancients; putting forth voluntary energies in the production, arrangement, and superintendence of the universe. Thus also it happens in the science of ethics. Moral 132 PIETY THE SOURCE OF VIRTUE. theorists speak of the dictates of nature, till they too are Is virtue, then, and piety the same? Good-will to men; nor know, they strive to part "Tis the first-born of rationality. On piety, humanity is built; And, on humanity, much happiness; And yet still more on piety itself. A soul in commerce with her God, is heav'n; The whirls of passion, and the strokes of heart A Deity adored, is joy advanced; YOUNG. 302. Do the sacred scriptures warrant the too prevalent opinion that morality and religion are distinct attributes of character; that a man may be properly denominated a moral man though destitute of religion? 303. How does the sentiment of Scripture differ from the sentiment expressed in society and in the writings of philosophers? 304. What, in contrast with prevailing sentiment, is one of the distinguishing peculiarities of all Bible morality? 305. Can the Scriptures be vindicated on principles of reason for thus identifying morality and religion; for asserting that the one cannot exist without the other? 206. How is our obligation to God related to other obligations, and what is their relative importance? 307. In the department of morals, as well as in that of natural philosophy, what danger arises from the substitution of the word nature instead of God? |