SERMON XI.

ON THE RELATION BETWEEN PIETY AND

PHILANTHROPY.

1 JOHN IV. 21.

And this commandment have we from Him, That he who loveth God love his brother also.

THE Services of this morning', the Collect, the Gospel,

and more especially the Epistle, point so much to one subject, that we could scarcely avoid it, even if it did not claim our attention by the peculiar magnitude of its intrinsic interest and importance. That subject is, the connexion between the love of God and the love of man; with the imperative obligation, which lies consequently upon us, if we pretend to Christian piety, to exercise Christian philanthropy.

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'Beloved,' says St John, and his own disposition and history give a beautiful appropriateness to his exhortations- Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God. In this was manifested the love of God towards us, because that God sent his only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. Herein is love, not that we loved God; but that He loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.'

1 First Sunday after Trinity.

Here the basis of all is laid in the Divine character, the Divine acts; and the necessary result of all is to be our reciprocal love among ourselves, as well as our supreme and universal love towards that Being who has made us the objects of his gratuitous, undeserved, and ineffable tenderness. And this commandment have we from Him, that he who loveth God love his brother also.' By the term brother, we are, of course to understand-for after our Lord himself, all the writers of the New Testament, and, most of all, St John, the Apostle of love, leave no doubt upon the point, who are to be recognized and treated as brethren-we are to understand the whole human race, all for whom Christ died, all over whom God watches, with his loving compassionate guardianship, and for whom he has provided the dispensation of infinite mercy.

Wherefore, it is plain, our religion is to be the ground of our charity, and our charity is to be the fruit of our religion. The Divine love is to be the parent of human or brotherly love. To inculcate and produce in us this heavenly disposition, is, as Bishop Horne has well observed, the end of the Gospel, and of all its doctrines. It is deduced in Scripture even from those which may seem to be of the most mysterious and speculative nature, the Unity of the Divine Persons, the divinity and satisfaction of Christ, doctrines which cannot therefore be denied or degraded, without removing or proportionably lessening the most endearing and affecting inducements to the Christian life. Indeed, the happy temper of the Christian is the natural and kindly effect of the great evangelical truths, when treasured up in the mind, and made the subjects of frequent meditation.'

Following up this train of thought, I propose now

to consider, so far as a single discourse can afford room for such consideration, the relation between religion and morality, and, more specifically, between piety towards God and kindness towards our fellow-creatures.

The great obligations, love to God and love to man, must be assumed. We are not about to discuss the persuasives to either; or the extent, mode, and occasions of their respective exercise. These are matters most worthy of attention; but they do not constitute the special subject to which the text directs our thoughts. What we are called to examine is the relation between the two. Now the word, 'relation,' as you know, implies both connexion and distinction; for things which have no ties of connexion can hardly be related; and things which have no distinction between them, are not related, but identical. The connexion is our more immediate and proper topic; but it may be advisable to trace the distinction, in the first instance, even in order that the connexion may be afterwards better understood.

We say, then, that our duty to God, and our duty to man, are, in some sense, distinct duties. They stand, in a measure, on their own ground, and have their own internal principles. Either of them would exist, even if the other had no existence.

With regard to our duty towards God, if only we believe that God is the supreme reality, the great source and preserver of our being, the matter is obvious and incontrovertible. When Adam stood alone in Paradise, ere yet sons and daughters were born to him, ere Eve was yet created, he beheld in the Lord God the infinite object of love, reverence, adoration. So, at this hour, if any one of us stood alone upon the earth, and there were no other human being upon the whole face

of it, he would stand, nevertheless, in God's presence; his relation to God, his dependence upon God, would remain unaltered in his solitude. Severally and individually, we are, every one of us, indebted to God for all that we are, or can be; all that we have, or can have for our life, health, and reason; for all our means and capacities of happiness; for the air which we breathe, for the food which we enjoy, for the fair world which we inhabit, and the brighter world which we hope for; and, therefore, all the offices of piety, our prayers and praises, our love and gratitude, the full tribute of our loyal allegiance, our undivided homage, our devoted service, must be for ever His due.

With regard to our duty to mankind, the case is by no means so self-evident; and yet it admits of sufficient proof. Even if the idea of God were set aside, it were possible to construct, to a certain extent, a scheme of human duty. For the study of Ethics may, and does, constitute a science in itself. This moral science, like Political Economy, or any other branch of philosophical investigation, has its own proper subjects of inquiry; its own proper data and conclusions; its own special laws, axioms, and conditions; while bound up, like other particular sciences, with all science, or knowledge, as a whole. And we have a common interest in its being carefully and rightly framed.

Indeed, it would be most instructive to examine, if we had time, how far, irrespective and independent of religion, such a science can carry us, and at what point it inevitably stops or fails. The foundations of such a science, not indeed very broad, or very deep, but such as they are, may be laid in the reason and conscience of men; in their moral sentiments and instincts; in their feeling of self-respect, or even of pride and shame :-or

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again, in their natural affections, social and domestic, parental, filial, conjugal, fraternal; and in all their sympathies with their kind:-or yet again, in their sense of utility, and the general interest of that collective humanity of which they are component parts. Such a science may teach the necessity of public order and private virtue; may prohibit the promiscuous or excessive gratification of the sensual appetites, the wanton indulgence of the voluptuous or the vindictive passions; may urge the claims of consanguinity, of friendship, of citizenship; may enjoin prudence and self-discipline, sobriety and purity; the regulation of the desires; the cultivation and practice of truth and honesty, truth, which is the honesty of speech; honesty, which is the truth of action. Nor have there been

wanting, even where the thought of God has been absent from the heart, some shining instances of zeal and perseverance, in redressing the wrongs, and advancing the improvement, of the human race; some splendid, though but occasional, exhibitions of amiability and courtesy of probity and disinterestedness; of generosity; of magnanimity; of self-devotion to the cause of patriotism and freedom, whatever it might demand of cost and labour in execution, of fortitude and resignation in endurance. So far, even the Atheist, perhaps, has recognized the obligations of morality. It can scarcely be supposed that they will have much force or weight with him, under fierce temptations, when the eye of the world is withdrawn ; but still he can include these obligations in his theory of what is. Even though he refuses to acknowledge a personal and Divine Being, to whom he is responsible in his lifetime and after death, he may yet deem himself bound by the law of kindness to his fellow-creatures;-he may yet feel that he has