opposition to all that self-love would dictate. We may here just remark by the way, the wisdom displayed in this constitution of our animal frame. Our Creator has not left us to discover that without being invigorated by food, and refreshed by sleep, our bodies could not long subsist; and thus, from a principle of self-love to attend, to the taking of food and repose, as duties which it was necessary to perform, in order to self-preservation: but He has endowed us with special affections; with a desire for food and sleep when the body requires them: just as he has given us a sense of injury, and a feeling of resentment, to preserve us from the injustice of our fellow men.

Now in morals there are facts analogous to those which we have just mentioned, with regard to our animal frame. As there is a desire for food altogether apart from any future consequences; and as there is a more immediate pleasure, and a more remote advantage which attend the satisfying of this desire,-so is there a motive to the performance of a virtuous action, altogether for its own sake, and apart from all its consequences; and there is also a more immediate pleasure; and a more remote happiness attending the performance of such an action. As it has appeared that there are different motives which may induce us to take food, so are there different motives which may urge us to the performance of a virtuous deed. The abettors of the selfish system seem to have erred in confounding these together, or rather in making the one motive of selfishness swallow up the rest.

It may be true that much of the seeming virtue of our world must be put to the account of selfishness; and much of it, too, to the account of

sentimentalism; and yet, is it true, that virtue may be followed for her own sake; that she has a native grace and attraction of her own altogether, independent of the pleasure and the happiness which follow in her train.

In the illustration which we took from our animal nature, we felt it difficult to adduce a solitary instance where selfishness was the actuating motive; and there one would think it impossible to confound, unless designedly, self-love, with the more special affections; but in the moral world, alas, the case is different. Here are thousands who perform virtuous actions, altogether from selfish motives, for one that follows virtue for her own sake. And when we find that many seem virtuous in their outward conduct, who care not to swerve from the path of rectitude, if they can but do it unobserved;-that the merchant who would shudder at the thought of forgery, or any such gross and palpable crime, can yet in his every day transactions, impose on those he deals with, and indulge in a thousand little and unperceived deceits; and when we find that this is a true delineation of the moral character, not of one in a city, or even one in a family, but of the great bulk of our species,-need we wonder that, from such a view of human nature, some should have come to the conclusion that all virtue is the result of selfishness, or rather that there is no true virtue at all.

But all this is easily accounted for by the fact, that a blight hath corrupted the moral scenery of our world; and it just tallies with what we are told in the book of revelation, of the total depravity of our whole race.

If, then, there were a system which professed to be able to renew our nature, and to restore us to our original purity, we should most confidently expect that the disciples of such a system should follow virtue, not from any selfish principle, but simply and solely for her own sake. There is such a system, by which these expectations have been fully realized, even the system of evangelical Christianity. We know that it has been asserted, that here, too, self-love is the actuating motive; that the disciples of this system are influenced in their conduct by the hope of reward, and the fear of punishment; but if we rightly understand this system, the assertion is most false. It is true that the evangelical system makes its first appeal to our self-love, or otherwise it could not have been adapted to depraved and selfish creatures; but it is equally true that the virtue to which it leads, is of the most pure and disinterested nature. The way in which this is accomplished, is, we think, well illustrated, in the case of that young man who was couched for a cataract in the beginning of the last century, and whose case so much interested the philosophers of Europe. To induce him to submit to the operation, his friends told him of the loveliness of scenery, and of the pleasure to be derived from gazing on beautiful objects. Such reasoning had no effect, he could form no conception of beauty; they were in fact addressing a special affection which did not exist. An appeal was made to his self-love, he was told of the advantages to be derived from reading, and this we are told, proved effectual. And thus it is that the gospel addresses itself to man. It might tell him of the loveliness of virtue, and the deformity of vice; and well do we know that such reasoning

would prove utterly powerless. True, he has a faculty for perceiving moral beauty, just as the blind man has an eye; but as in his case, too, there is a thick film spread over it. True, the most depraved of our race can distinguish virtue from vice, and perceive a rightness in the one, and a wrongness in the other, just as many blind people can tell the light from the darkness; but just as they cannot perceive that harmonious variety of color and shade which constitutes the loveliness of natural scenery; so cannot the unrenewed mind perceive that which is so emphatically termed the beauty of holiness. The same appeal which proved effectual in the case of him who was blind, is also effectual in the case of fallen man,—an appeal to self-love. The Bible can tell him of the future punishment of sin, and to the whispers of his own conscience it can add the voice of its authority, in telling him that he is a sinner:-it can constrain him to cry out, "What shall I do to be saved?" and to such a question it can give a most satisfactory answer. If he is thus led to accept of its terms, he no sooner does so, than the film which obscured his moral vision is removed. He is now in some degree restored to the lost image of the Godhead, and can therefore perceive an independent beauty in virtue, and an independent deformity in vice. It is not now, we conceive, from the hope of heaven, or the fear of hell, that he is virtuous;-it is because he loves holiness, that he follows after it; -it is because he hates sin that he flees from it; -his attachment to the one, and his recoil from the other, will still continue to strengthen: and even now, all weak and imperfect as they are, do they proceed from a principle similar to that which determines the choice of Deity himself.

Little do they understand the evangelical system who urge against it the plea that the virtue of its disciples is a virtue of selfishness. So far is this from being the case, that let but self-love be the principle that regulates our conduct,-let but the hope of reward, and the fear of punishment be all that prompts us to virtue, and the reward itself will never follow. Some there have been, who from this principle have refrained from many of the vices, and even from many of the innocent enjoyments of life,-who have been ingenious in inventing self-torments here, that they might escape eternal punishment hereafter; but yet, is the character of such virtue, and the final judgment which shall be passed upon it, most truly described by the poet, when he exclaims,

"What is all righteousness that men devise?
What, but a sordid bargain for the skies?
But Christ as soon would abdicate his own,
As stoop from heaven to sell the proud a throne."

While engaged in these interesting exercises of his academical course and in the prosecution of his plans of usefulness he was called to sustain a painful trial, in the death of his youngest brother. Nothing of this kind had before occurred within his knowledge, in the family. He was suddenly summoned to Perth; and after spending a few days by the dying bed of his brother, and endeavoring to interest his mind in religion, he returned to St. Andrew's, as the nature of the complaint left it very uncertain how long his brother might continue. On being informed of his death he wrote to his father and mother, as follows: