255

Conduct and Character arising out of this Condition of
the Moral Feelings 256

Means of Cultivating it 262

Nature and Operation of Faith 264

Province of Faith in the Philosophy of the Moral Feelings 269

Truths which are its more Immediate Object 273

Its Influence on the Moral Condition 276

Province of Faith in the Scheme of Christianity 282

Certain Errors regarding Faith 287

Harmony of Christian Truth with the Philosophy of the
Moral Feelings 290

PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS.

SECT. I.

NATURE AND IMPORTANCE OF THE SCIENCE OF THE MORAL FEELINGS.

Man is to be contemplated as an intellectual, and as a moral being. By
his intellectual powers, he acquires the knowledge of facts, observes
their connexions, and traces the conclusions which arise out of them.
These mental operations, however, even in a high state of cultivation,
may be directed entirely to truths of an extrinsic kind,--that is, to
such as do not exert any influence either on the moral condition of the
individual, or on his relations to other sentient beings. They may exist
in an eminent degree in the man who lives only for himself, and feels
little beyond the personal wants, or the selfish enjoyments of the hour
that is passing over him.

But, when we contemplate man as a moral being, new relations open on our
view, and these are of mightier import. We find him occupying a place in
a great system of moral government, in which he has an important station
to fill and high duties to perform. We find him placed in certain
relations to a great moral Governor, who presides over this system of
things, and to a future state of being for which the present scene is
intended to prepare him. We find him possessed of powers which qualify
him to feel these relations, and of principles calculated to guide him
through the solemn responsibilities which attend his state of moral
discipline.

These two parts of his mental constitution we perceive to be remarkably
distinct from each other. The former may be in vigorous exercise in him
who has little feeling of his moral condition,--and the latter may be i