experimental, we must attend to things connected with the moral evidence also. When the Bible, for example, affirms the great moral depravation of the human character-to meet this by an independent judgment of our own, we must be able to pronounce, not only on what man is, but on what man ought to be. In other words, there must be a conscience or moral faculty which takes cognizance of the right and the wrong, as well as a consciousness or faculty of internal observation which enters into the penetralia of our own bosom, and takes cognizance of the desires and the affections and the purposes that have their being and operation there.*

4. That men possess, and that natively and universally, the faculty of conscience, or that faculty which takes cognizance of and makes distinction between the morally good and evil, is palpable to all observation. This faculty or power is in fact met with throughout all the members of the human family. Under all the varieties of light and obscuration, and with allowance for every modification of sentiment-still there is a general sense of right and wrong that is characteristic of our species a feeling of approval and complacency associated with the former-a feeling of shame and dissatisfaction and remorse associated

It is unfortunate, that, in the use of language, the terms of conscience and consciousness are not kept as distinct from each other, as are the mental faculties which they express, and the provinces on which it is the part of these faculties respectively to expatiate. Consciousness has been strictly enough appropriated to its legitimate meaning; but conscience has been indiscrimin ately applied both to questions of right and wrong, and to questions which respect the actual state of one's own character,

with the latter. This peculiarity of our nature obtains in all countries, and among all the conditions of humanity. Whatever the practice may be, there is a certain truth of perception as to the difference between good and evil everywhere. There is a law of rectitude to which in every nation, how degraded soever, a universal homage is yielded by the sensibilities of the heart-however little it may be yielded to by the practical habit of their lives. In a word, there is a morality recognized by all men-imprinting the deepest traces of itself on the Vocabulary of every language, and marking the residence of a conscience in every bosom-insomuch that, go to any outcast tribe of wanderers→ and, however sunk in barbarism, if we tell them of right and wrong, they will meet the demonstration with responding and intelligent sympathy. We do not speak to them in vocables unknown. is a common feeling, a common understanding, betwixt us-one ground of fellowship at least, on which the most enlightened missionary from Europe might hold converse with the rudest savages of the desert.

There

5. But again, this conscience, this sense of morality, does not exist alone in the heart. It is more or less followed up by a certain sense or conception of some rightful sovereign who planted it there. The feeling of a judge within the breast, is in no case altogether apart from the faith of a judge above, who sits as overseer upon the doings, and as arbiter of the destinies of men. The moral sense does not terminate or rest in the mere abstract relations of right or wrong; but is embodied into

the belief of a substantive being, who dispenses the rewards that are due unto the one, and inflicts the penalties that are felt to be due unto the other. It is this which gives rise to the theology of conscience, more quick and powerful than the theology of academic demonstration-not so much an inference from the marks of design and harmony in external nature, as an instant suggestion from what is felt and what is feared within the recesses of our own bosom because leading by one footstep from the felt supremacy of conscience within, to the feared supremacy of a God, the author of conscience, and who knoweth all things. It is a mistake to imagine of this theology, that it is not universal, or that any degree whether of ignorance or corruption can wholly obliterate it. It was not stifled by the polytheism of Greece and Rome. Neither is it extinct, as may be seen by their invocations to the Great Spirit, among the tribes of the American wilderness. In short, wherever men are to be found, there is the impression at least, of a reigning and a righteous God. When utterance is made of such a Being, even in the darkest places of the earth, they are not startled as if by the sound of a thing unknown. There is a ready coalescence with the theme-and as he speaks of God and sin and vengeance, there is a felt harmony between the conscience of the savage and the sermon of the missionary.

6. But there is a second faculty concerned in this matter of the experimental evidence, even the faculty of internal observation. Conscience, in the sense that we have just used it, is that faculty

by which cognizance is taken of the good or the evil desert of conduct in general. But conscience by the use of language has obtained a meaning more extended than this. It is implicated with the faculty of consciousness; and so is made to take especial cognizance of one's own character, of one's own conduct.* One man is said to speak to the conscience of another, when he speaks to the independent sense or knowledge which the other has of the state of his own heart and his own history. And certain it is, that never do we feel profounder veneration for any wisdom, than for that which searches and scrutinizes among the arcana of one's own nature, and comes to a right discernment thereupon. The man who can pronounce aright upon my character, and accurately read on this inner tablet the lineaments which I know to be graven there-the man who offers to me the picture of what I am; and I behold it to be at all points the faithful reflexion of what I feel myself to be the man whose voice from without is thus responded to by the echo of conscience or of consciousness within the man who can awaken this inhabitant of my bosom from his slumbers, and make him all alive to the truth of such a representation as he now perceives but never before adverted to-to such a man we render the homage due to an insight and a sagacity so marvellous. And at length, to border on our argument, this sagacity we might conceive enhanced into a dis

We have no doubt that the term is comprehensive of both these senses in scripture-when mention is made of the manifestation of the truth unto the conscience.

cernment supernatural. It might amount to such a divination of the secrets of the heart, as nought but the interposal of the Divinity can explain. It might announce itself to be a higher wisdom than any upon earth, to be wisdom from above-and so draw the very acknowledgement which the first teachers of Christianity drew, to whom when an unlearned hearer listened, he was judged of all and convinced of all-and thus were the secrets of his heart made manifest; and so, falling down on his face, he worshipped God and reported that God was in them of a truth.

7. After these prefatory and general observations on the experimental evidence, we may now resolve it into three leading particulars_viewing it first as an evidence grounded on the accordancy which obtains between what the Bible says we are, and what we find ourselves to be-secondly, as an evidence grounded on the accordancy between what the Bible overtures for our acceptance, and what we feel ourselves to need-and third, or most strictly experimental, as an evidence grounded on the accordancy between what the Bible tells of the events and the changes and the advancements which take place in the mind of an exercised Christian, and what this Christian realizes in his own personal history, in the process which he actually describes, and the transitions from one state and one character to another which he actually undergoes.

8. I. The first thing then that might draw the regards of the inquirer to such a volume, and ultimately draw from him the acknowledgement of