creatures, and supplying them with everything necessary for their happiness, the sentiment of veneration and gratitude must be excited in the mind. A faith, thus founded, and deeply felt, is nearly connected with a true moral taste, and has a powerful efficacy on the temper and manners of the believer. It is the duty of every man to be grateful and devout towards God. This is internal piety, or the worship of the mind.

All those affections which regard the Deity as their immediate and primary object, are vital energies of the soul, and consequently exert themselves into acts, and like all other energies, gain strength and activity by exertion. It is therefore our duty, at stated times, and by decent and solemn acts, to contemplate and adore the great Original of our existence, the Parent of all beauty and all good; to express our veneration and love by a devout recognition of his perfections, and to evince our gratitude by celebrating his goodness, and thankfully acknowledging all his benefits. It is likewise our duty, by proper exercises of sorrow and humiliation, to confess our ingratitude and folly, to signify our dependence upon him and our submission and resignation to his will. Such are the duties of Public Worship.

As God is the parent and head of the social system; as he has formed us for a social state; as by the one we find the best security against the ills of life, and in the other enjoy the greatest comforts; and as by means of both, our nature attains its highest improvement and perfection; and moreover there are public blessings and public transgressions in which we

all share in some degree, and public wants and dangers to which we are all exposed ;—it is therefore evident that the various and solemn offices of public religion, are duties of indispensable moral obligation among the firmest cements of society, the surest prop of government, and the fairest ornament of the whole social system.

We have here given a sketch of Moral Philosophy, as deduced from the reflections of the mind upon man's character and relations. We may add that these views acquire great force from a reference to the Scriptures. According to this unerring standard, the great law under which man is laid by his Creator is this; "LOVE THE LORD THY GOD WITH ALL THY HEART, AND THY NEIGHBOR AS THYSELF." This is the whole compass of religion. The love of God, or piety, is the object of the first branch of the law; the love of mankind, or benevolence, is that of the other. This last is usually denominated the moral law, and includes duties to ourselves and our fellow-men. Morality is sometimes considered as independent of religion, and we often hear people speak of a moral man, as distinct from a religious man. But true morality is but a portion of religion; it has its foundation in the love of God, and exists only through that love. There is no such thing, therefore, as morality without religion-as a moral man who is not a religious man. A man may observe externally the rules of society, from a selfish regard to his own interests, and thus be called, in common phrase, a moral man; but the truly moral man is one who feels the force of the great law—

"LOVE THY NEIGHBOR AS THYSELF," and who obeys it, because his heart approves it, because it is a good law, and because it comes from the great Lawgiver. It is obvious that such motives of action only belong to one who loves the Lord his God with all his heart, and who is therefore pious. Morality and religion, accordingly, go together: whatever a man's pretences may be, he is unsound in both, if unsound in either.

NATURAL THEOLOGY.

Ir a voyager were thrown upon some distant and unknown shore, and should there discover artificial edifices, so contrived as to be suitable dwellings for man, he would infer that they were the work of man. It would not be necessary that he should there find human beings; that he should see them at work; that they should tell him the history of these structures. In the absence of all this testimony, he would be just as sure that these were human contrivances; that intelligent, thinking, devising man had been there, and executed these works, as if he had witnessed the process.

Nor would his knowledge stop here; if these structures were mere wigwams, he would conclude that they were erected by savages; if they were of a more ingenious and artificial character, he would infer that the builders were farther advanced in civilization; if they were elegant and commodious dwellings, he would know that they were the work of a refined and instructed people.

Thus, by inference drawn from objects, which cannot speak, which have no lettered inscriptions, which are mere unconscious wood and stone-the voyager acquires as clear and certain convictions,—those which are as much entitled to his faith and confidence, as if

they rested upon the testimony of a thousand living witnesses. It is precisely by this process that a large share of the unquestioned history of mankind is made up. History tells us not who reared the pyramids of Egypt; but no one doubts that they were the work of man, and of man far advanced in the arts. In Nubia, there are vestiges of temples, built of marble and chiseled with the skill of the Grecian sculptor; history tells us not who reared them; but we know that thinking, contriving, refined man, was the builder. There is no written record of the nations that constructed the cities, whose vestiges are now the wonder of the traveller in Copan, Palanque, and Yucatan; yet, in the utter silence of history, we look at the mouldering ruins,-shafts, columns, cornices, architraves, and statues,-and feel as much assured that intelligent human beings have existed here, as if the story were inscribed in marble or brass. Indeed, it is plain that this kind of evidence is the strongest that can be offered: words may deceive; the pen and the tongue may bear false witness-but works, such as those to which we refer, cannot lie.

Now, Natural Theology proposes to prove the existence of God, and to discover some of his attributes, by the same process as this by which history traces the existence and character of men and races of men, whom we have not seen, and of whom we have no knowledge, but that which is inferred from their works. We throw aside, in this investigation, both history and revelation; and guided by the light of nature alone by the contemplation of the various natural objects around us, seek to discover whence