ble, although not a complete influence upon the public
judgment of morals. And this is very important. For without the
occasional correction which public opinion receives, by referring to
some fixed standard of morality, no man can foretel into what
extravagances it might wander. Assassination might become as honourable
as duelling: unnatural crimes be accounted as venal as fornication is
wont to be accounted. In this way it is possible that many may be kept
in order by Christianity who are not themselves Christians. They may be
guided by the rectitude which it communicates to public opinion. Their
consciences may suggest their duty truly, and they may ascribe these
suggestions to a moral sense, or to the native capacity of the human
intellect, when in fact they are nothing more than the public opinion,
reflected from their own minds; and opinion, in a considerable degree,
modified by the lessons of Christianity. "Certain it is, and this is a
great deal to say, that the generality, even of the meanest and most
vulgar and ignorant people, have truer and worthier notions of God more
just and right apprehensions concerning his attributes and perfections,
a deeper sense of the difference of good and evil, a greater regard to
moral obligations, and to the plain and most necessary duties of life,
and a more firm and universal expectation of a future state of rewards
and punishments, than in any heathen country any considerable number of
men were found to have had." (Clarke, Ev. Nat. Rel. p. 208. ed. v.)

After all, the value of Christianity is not to be appreciated by its
temporal effects. The object of revelation is to influence human conduct
in this life; but what is gained to happiness by that influence can only
be estimated by taking in the whole of human existence. Then, as hath
already been observed, there may be also great consequences of
Christianity which do not belong to it as a revelation. The effects upon
human salvation of the mission, of the death, of the present, of the
future agency of Christ, may be universal, though the religion be not
universally known.

Secondly, I assert that Christianity is charged with many consequences
for which it is not responsible. I believe that religious motives have
had no more to do in the formation of nine tenths of the intolerant and
persecuting laws which in different countries have been established upon
the subject of religion, than they have had to do in England with the
m