conduct would be no indication of virtuous disposition, vice and
virtue would be blended together in one common mass, and though
the all-seeing eye of God might distinguish them they must
necessarily make the same impressions on man, who can judge only
from external appearances. Under such a dispensation, it is
difficult to conceive how human beings could be formed to a
detestation of moral evil, and a love and admiration of God, and
of moral excellence.

Our ideas of virtue and vice are not, perhaps, very accurate
and well-defined; but few, I think, would call an action really
virtuous which was performed simply and solely from the dread of
a very great punishment or the expectation of a very great
reward. The fear of the Lord is very justly said to be the
beginning of wisdom, but the end of wisdom is the love of the
Lord and the admiration of moral good. The denunciations of
future punishment contained in the scriptures seem to be well
calculated to arrest the progress of the vicious and awaken the
attention of the careless, but we see from repeated experience
that they are not accompanied with evidence of such a nature as
to overpower the human will and to make men lead virtuous lives
with vicious dispositions, merely from a dread of hereafter. A
genuine faith, by which I mean a faith that shews itself in it
the virtues of a truly Christian life, may generally be
considered as an indication of an amiable and virtuous
disposition, operated upon more by love than by pure unmixed
fear.

When we reflect on the temptations to which man must
necessarily be exposed in this world, from the structure of his