Hence it is, that nothing is more common than for persons of the most debauched and abandoned lives, to acknowledge that they are not what they ought to be, and to express a wish that they were better,-at the same time that they speak upon a subject of such great concern with a tranquillity and coolness that shows that nothing is farther from their thoughts than the purpose of making any vigorous efforts toward their own reformation. These wishes are not insincere; but they are involuntary, resulting, by a natural necessity, from that constitution of the human mind which is indeed its perfection, considered as the work of God, but is no more a part of the moral virtue of the man, considered as a free agent, than any other of his natural endowments,--the strength of his memory, for instance, or the quickness of his apprehension, or even than the exterior comeliness of his person, his muscular strength, or the agility of his limbs: In all these natural gifts and faculties, among which conscience is the first in worth and dignity, there is reason to admire the good and perfect work of God: but it is in the application of them, by the effort of the will, to God's service, to the good of mankind, and to self-improvement, that we are to seek the true perfection of the human character. The bare, unprevailing wish that we were what we necessarily understand we ought to be, hath nothing more in it of moral merit than the involuntary assent of the mind to any other self-evident truth. In the Epistle to the Romans, St. Paul, describing the condition of the mind in its most corrupt and ruined state, when reason is become the slave of appetite, and the prohibitions of God's pure and holy law serve only to irritate the passions which they ought to control, -in this ruined condition of the mind, St. Paul supposes that the natural sense of what is right remains, accompanied with an ineffectual desire of performing it: and it is not to be supposed that he speaks of that quality here as the perfection of a Christian, which there he attributes to the reprobate. That desire of improvement which

makes the perfect Christian, the apostle describes in himself as an active principle, maintaining the ascendant in his heart over every other appetite, and displaying its energy in the whole tenor of his life. He describes it as derived from a conviction of the understanding that the proper business of this life is to prepare for the next. The formal nature of it he places in this,--that its immediate object is rather virtue itself than any exterior prosperity of condition with which virtue may be rewarded: for he compares his thirst of virtuous attainments to the passion that stimulated the competitors in the Grecian games; and he describes the reward which the Christian seeks under the image of the prize to be bestowed on him that should be foremost in the race. The passion which fires the competitors in any honourable contest is a laudable ambition to excel; and the prize is no otherwise valued than as the mark and seal of victory. Of that reward which is the object of the Christian's hope, it were madness to affirm that it has not an intrinsic value; for we are taught that it will consist in a state of perfect happiness: but that happiness is therefore perfect, because it is the condition of a nature brought to perfect holiness; and that desire of improvement, in which the apostle places our perfection, hath for its immediate object those virtuous attainments which insure the reward, rather than the reward itself, otherwise considered than as the honourable distinction of the approved servants of God. It is easy to perceive that this thirst for moral excellency must be in its nature what the apostle in himself experienced-a principle of growing energy; for, wherever this principle is sincere, as long as any degree of imperfection remains, or, to speak more accurately, as long as any farther excellence is attainable, farther improvement must be the object. The true Christian, therefore, never can rest in any habits of virtue already attained: his present proficiency he values only as a capacity of better attainments; and, like the great Roman whose appetite of conquest was inflamed

by every new advantage gained, he thinks nothing done while aught remains which prowess may achieve.

Such is the principle, as may be collected from the apostle's description of his own feelings and his own practice, such is the principle in which he places the perfection of a Christian; in its origin rational, in its object disinterested, in its energies boundless: and in these three properties its perfective quality consists. And this I would endeavour more distinctly to prove: but, for this purpose, it will be necessary to explain what man's proper goodness naturally is, and to consider man both in his first state of natural innocence, and in his present state of redemption from the ruin of his fall. But this is a large subject, which we shall treat in a separate Discourse.

SERMON XXVIII.

Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded; and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you.PHILIPPIANS iii. 15.

THE perfection of the Christian character, as may be collected from the apostle's description of his own feelings and his own practice, consists, it seems, in an earnest desire of perpetual progress and improvement in the practical habits of a good and holy life. When the apostle speaks of this as the highest of his own attainments, he speaks of it as the governing principle of his whole life; and the perfective quality that he ascribes to it seems to consist in these three properties,—that it is boundless in its energy, disinterested in its object, and yet rational in its origin. That these are the properties which make this desire of proficiency truly perfective of the Christian character, I shall now attempt to prove; and, for this purpose, it will be necessary to inquire what man's proper goodness is, and

to take a view of man, both in his first state of natural innocence, and in his actual state of redemption from the ruin of his fall.

Absolute perfection in moral goodness, no less than in knowledge and power, belongs incommunicably to God; for this reason, that goodness in the Deity only is original: in the creature, to whatever degree it may be carried, it is derived. If a man hath a just discernment of what is good, to whatever degree of quickness it may be improved, it is originally founded on certain first principles of intuitive knowledge which the created mind receives from God. If he hath the will to perform it, it is the consequence of a connexion which the Creator hath established between the decisions of the judgment and the effort of the will; and for this truth of judgment and this rectitude of the original bias of the will, in whatever perfection he may possess them as natural endowments, he deserves no praise, any otherwise than as a statue or a picture may deserve praise, in which what is really praised is not the marble nor the canvass--not the elegance of the figure nor the richness of the colouring, but the invention and execution of the artist. This, however, properly considered, is no imperfection in man, seeing it belongs by necessity to the condition of a creature. The thing made can be originally nothing but what the maker makes it: therefore the created mind can have no original knowledge but what the Maker hath infused-no original propensities but such as are the necessary result of the established harmony and order of its faculties. A creature, therefore, in whatever degree of excellence it be supposed to be created, cannot originally have any merit of its own; for merit must arise from voluntary actions, and cannot be a natural endowment: and it is owing to a wonderful contrivance of the beneficent Creator, in the fabric of the rational mind, that created beings are capable of attaining to any thing of moral excellence -that they are capable of becoming what the Maker of them may love, and their own understandings approve.

The contrivance that I speak of consists in a principle of which we have large experience in ourselves, and may with good reason suppose it to subsist in every intelligent being, except the First and Sovereign intellect. It is a principle which it is in every man's power to turn, if he be so pleased, to his own advantage: but if he fail to do this, it is not in his power to hinder that the deceiving spirit turn it not to his detriment. In its own nature it is indifferent to the interests of virtue or of vice, being no propensity of the mind to one thing or to another, but simply this property, -that whatever action, either good or bad, hath been done once, is done a second time with more ease and with a better liking; and a frequent repetition heightens the ease and pleasure of the performance without limit. By virtue of this property of the mind, the having done any thing once becomes a motive to the doing of it again: the having done it twice is a double motive; and, so many times as the act is repeated, so many times the motive to the doing of it once more is multiplied. To this principle, habit owes its wonderful force; of which it is usual to hear men complain, as of something external that enslaves the will. But the complaint, in this, as in every instance in which man presumes to arraign the ways of Providence, is rash and unreasonable. The fault is in man himself, if a principle implanted in him for his good becomes by negligence and mismanagement the instrument of his ruin. It is owing to this principle that every faculty of the understanding and every sentiment of the heart is capable of being improved by exercise. It is the leading principle in the whole system of the human constitution, modifying both the physical qualities of the body and the moral and intellectual endowments of the mind. We experience the use of it in every calling and condition of life. By this the sinews of the labourer are hardened for toil; by this the hand of the mechanic acquires its dexterity; to this we owe the amazing progress of the human mind in the politer arts and the abstruser sciences. And it is an engine which it is in our