Christ, when he gave himself for us, intended, not only to redeem us from iniquity, but " to purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works." To these christian affections I need not add the comprehensive one of love, for it is not only represented as the source, attendant, and result of true religion, but it is, in numerous passages, commended as the substance and epitome of duty, the fulfilling of the law, the end of the commandment. From this enumeration you may understand, that religion is not a bare comprehension of truths, not the knowledge and remembrance of facts, not the confession of a faith, or the observation of duties formally defined; but it is a celestial spirit, which mingles with and informs all our duties, in secret, and in public, which agitates the mass of our intellectual and moral faculties, which discovers itself in fears and hopes, joys and sorrows, gratitude and humiliation, earnestness and all-hallowed love.

I know there are some, who doubt the possibility, and more, who doubt the propriety of introducing the affections into real religion; and their objections we propose now to consider. As God must, in every system of faith, be the principal object of religious contemplation, if we can establish, upon rational grounds, the sentiment of love to him, the most important characteristic of the religion of the affections is secured. It is objected, then, that a being, so far removed beyond the limits of human conception, can hardly be the object of confidence and love. We can fear infinite power, we can be astonished at unsearchable wisdom, we can be awed by inapproachable purity, joined with inconceivable grandeur; but to love a being, who has nothing in common with mortality, nothing visible, tangible, or audible about him, is not within the ordinary exercise of man's affections. Yet it appears to me, that this single circumstance, that God is not the object of any one of

our senses, is abundantly compensated by the consideration, that he is never absent from us; that he compasseth continually our path and our lying down, and that we cannot remove a step from the sphere of his presence; that every sigh, which escapes us, reaches his ear, and not an affectionate movement springs up in our hearts, to which he is not intuitively attentive. The faintest glow of gratitude, which lights up the countenance, shines before his eyes; and the least cloud of godly sorrow, which passes over the brow, sends its shade to the throne of God, encompassed as it is with " undiminished brightness." Why, however, is the affection of love toward infinite goodness more unintelligible, than that of fear toward infinite power? A power unseen is commonly the more dreadful from its obscurity. Why, too, should not the other perfections of God, as well as his power, be the objects of affections, refined into more sublimity and purity, and wrought into higher force, under the chastising influence of an all-pervading awe? Let it not be inferred from any of these remarks, that God is to be loved, merely because he has been good to us, or because his favour may be profitable to us hereafter. Affection is nothing, which rests not in its object. Love of God, it is true, may be originally generated by acts of personal benefaction; but he, who, loves his Creator, merely because he has considered him as the source of all that he has yet enjoyed, and the security of all that he has yet to expect, loves him not yet for himself alone. If the fig-tree should not blossom, and there should be no fruit on the vine, if the labour of the olive should fail, and the herd be cut off from the stall, such a man loses all the consolations of religion, and looks round in disappointment for a resting place for his affections. His God beams only in the sunshine; clouds come over his prospect, and, behold, his sun is set. No, christians, the love, which God demands, is disinterested and supreme.

It

sways the mingled crowd of the other affections, and presides in the large assembly of the inelinations of the heart. "The christian's love of God," says Wilberforce," is composed of admiration, of prefe rence, of hope, of trust, of joy, chastised by a reverential awe, wakeful with continued gratitude."

But why is it, that, in religion alone, things spiritual and invisible are to have no command over the affections? Is not this theory perpetually disproved by every observation of men's ruling passions? The metaphysician becomes extravagantly fond of his obscure and lofty speculations. The mathematician is in raptures with the beauty of a theorem, of which the world sees nothing but the lines and angles. The artist glows with imaginations of ideal beauty. The man of taste has his fancies and his fondnesses, and discerns and loves a thousand inexpressible delicacies, impalpable to ordinary minds. And has religion nothing to elevate the soul, nothing to absorb the thoughts, to summon the passions, to make men feel? Because God cannot be seen, shall he be therefore excluded from our affections? Because he is purity and goodness, unmingled with the grossness of human nature, is the grandest object, on which our minds can dwell, to be for ever contemplated in distant, uninteresting speculation? God is not to be loved! Cold, calculating mortal, go with your theory and your conclusions to the company of the worldly projector; unfold them to the plodding drudges of avarice; proclaim them in the haunts of men and women without souls, and in the dens of savage philosophy. There they may listen to you. You have nothing to do among christians. It is all absurdity to your ear, that God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten and dearly beloved Son, that those who believe on him should not perish, but have everlasting life. No doubt, in your estimation, Paul was little short of a madman, when he exclaimed, 1

am sure, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

A more plausible objection to the admission of the affections into religion arises from the enthusiasm, to which they are said naturally to tend. Mysticism and fanaticism have ever had their numerous and insane admirers. I know, that some men are constitutionally apt to mistake their sensations for sentiments of the heart, and love to feel, rather than to think ; men, to whom the fluctuations of their religious feelings are a kind of mercury to their religious improvement. Indeed, it is one of the hardest problems of religion, to define the sphere, or ascertain the extent, of religious affections. Good men, who have seen the heat of fanaticism generating in every soil a thousand noxious weeds, and innumerable mushrooms of sanctity, which have perished almost as soon as they appeared, have fled, perhaps too precipitately, to what has been called the frigid zone of christianity, where all is hard and frost-bound, and even the light of the region seems reflected only from snows, from which it plays without any joyous warmth, or fertilizing influence.

But why should we perpetually resort to the old fallacy of reasoning, from the abuse of what is good, to its utter inutility? Is it the affections only, which are liable to this corruption? Is not every thing valuable in human life exposed to grosser perversion, exactly in proportion to its greater intrinsic worth? What think you of reasoning? Has not that sure and celestial instrument of human instruction, as some would dignify it, been often debased into the most wretched sophistry, exerted in every possible form of fallaeious deduction, and turned against the dearest interests and expectations of man? Suppose you could

convert christianity into a mere system of metaphysics, do you think it would be more stable, or influential, or excellent? Indeed, I think the abuses, to which our religion would then be exposed, would not be less deplorable, than those produced by the abuse of the affections. A sophism may be as fatal to the interests of the soul, as a convulsion or a trance; and is sometimes as rapid in its private circulation, as the progress of a sigh or a groan through a fanatical assembly.

I may appeal to you, that I have never been the advocate of what may be called the madness of sanctity; but, if christianity is to exist at all, my friends, let it exist with some vitality. Let us not substitute in its place a senseless, motionless statue of marble, however polished or well-proportioned. True, our religion is a religion for philosophers; but it is a religion also for men, for poor and ignorant men. It provides consolations, and joys, and hopes, as well as truths. You may sit calmly in your closet, and smile at the imagined raptures and holy musings, as you may call them, of your less informed fellow christians. But take care that the time do not come, when you may envy them their feelings; take care, that your philosophy does not chill the last blood, that passes through your heart. You may strive in vain to catch a breath of enthusiasm, to buoy you up in the arms of death. Your religion will not then first descend from the head to the heart. You have disdained the aid of the affections in religion, while your attention was engrossed in the affairs of the world, and you had enough of occupation to keep you from too much interest in the affairs of your soul. When you now find it vain to love the world any longer, when you find, that you cannot enjoy the fondness of your friends but a few hours, the soul, astonished and alarmed, looks round, as it departs, for an object for its affections. But in vain! All