of temptation, clothed in musical and seducing accents, charms us one
way, the voice of holiness, speaking to us from within, in a solemn and
powerful manner, commands us another. Does one man obtain a victory over
his corrupt affections? an immediate perception of pleasure, like the
feeling of a reward divinely conferred upon him, is noticed. Does
another fall prostrate beneath their power? a painful feeling, and such
as pronounces to him the sentence of reproof and punishment is found to
follow. If one, by suffering his heart to become hardened, oppresses a
fellow-creature, the tear of sympathy starts up in the eye of another,
and the latter instantly feels a desire, involuntarily generated, of
flying to his relief. Thus impulses, feelings, and dispositions have
been implanted in our nature, for the purpose of preventing and
rectifying the evils of life. And as these have operated, so as to
stimulate some men to lessen them by the exercise of an amiable charity,
so they have operated to stimulate others in various other ways to the
same end. Hence the philosopher has left moral precepts behind him in
favour of benevolence, and the legislator has endeavoured to prevent
barbarous practices by the introduction of laws.

In consequence then of these impulses and feelings, by which the pure
power in our nature is thus made to act as a check upon the evil part of
it, and in consequence of the influence which philosophy and legislative
wisdom have had in their respective provinces, there has been always, in
all times and countries, a counteracting energy, which has opposed
itself, more or less, to the crimes and miseries of mankind. But it
seems to have been reserved for Christianity to increase this energy,
and to give it the widest possible domain. It was reserved for her,
under the same divine influence, to give the best views of the nature
and of the present and future condition of man; to afford the best moral
precepts, to communicate the most benign stimulus to the heart, to