not her beauty, but they were alive. In one word, obligation to virtue is eternal and immutable; but sense of obligation is lost by sin.

3. MOTIVE. We will not enter here on that difficult question, the origin of evil. We will not attempt to wade across that boundless ocean of difficulties, so full of shipwrecks. Evil is in the world, and the permission of it is certainly consistent with the attributes of God. Our inability to account for it is another thing, and the fact is not affected by it. Experiment hath convinced us, that Revelation, along with a thousand other proofs of its divinity, brings the irrefragable evidence of motive to obedience; a heavenly present, and every way suited to the condition of man!

It would be endless to enumerate the motives to obedience, which deck the scriptures as the stars adorn the sky: each hath been an object of considerable magnitude to persons in some ages and situations; but there is one of infinite magnificence, which eclipses all the rest, called the sun of righteousness, I mean, Jesus Christ. In him the meekness of Moses, and the patience of Job, the rectitude of the ten commandinents, and the generosity of the gospel, are all united; and him we will now consider a moment in the light of motive to obedience.

By considering the prophecies which preceded his advent, and by comparing his advent with those prophecies, we are impelled to allow the divinity of his mission. This is one motive, or one class of motives to moral obedience. By observing the miracles which he wrought, we are obliged to exclaim

with Nicodemus, No man can do what thou doest, except God be with him. This is a second class of motives. By attending to his doctrines we obtain a third set of powerful and irresistible motives to obedience. His example affords a fourth, for his life is made up of a set of actions, all manifestly just and proper, each by its beauty commending itself to every serious spectator.

This moral excellence, this conformity to Jesus Christ is the only authentic evidence of the truth of our faith, as the apostle Paul teaches us with the utmost clearness in the thirteenth chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians. Faith and practice, in the christian religion, are inseparably connected; for as there can be no true morality without faith in the doctrines of Christ, so there can be no true faith without christian morality; and it is for this reason chiefly, that we should be diligent to distinguish the pure doctrines of revelation from human explications, because a belief of the former produces a holy conformity to the example of Christ; while an improper attachment to the latter leaves us where zeal for the traditions of the fathers left the Jews. We have treated of this at large in the preface to the third volume, and it is needless to enlarge here, Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. Amen.