aw, or ignorance or inattention in him who administers it, and it may
very often interfere with the essential requisites of justice. But, in a
moral governor of infinite perfection, there can be neither ignorance of
facts nor change of purpose;--the requirements of his justice must stand
unshaken; and his law, written on the hearts of all his rational
creatures, must be upheld, in the face of the universe, as holy, and
just, and good. Is, then, the exercise of mercy to be excluded from our
conception of the divine character,--and is there no forgiveness with
God.--The soundest inductions of philosophy, applied to the actual state
of man, bring us to this momentous question; but the highest efforts of
human science fail to answer it. It is in this our utmost need, that we
are met by the dictates of revelation, and are called to humble the
pride of our reason before that display of the harmony and integrity of
the divine character. We there learn the truths, far beyond the
inductions of human science, and the utmost conceptions of human
thought,--that an atonement is made, a sacrifice offered;--and that the
exercise of forgiveness is consistent with the perfections of the Deity.
Thus, by a process of the mind itself, which seems to present every
element of fair and logical reasoning, we arrive at a full conviction of
the necessity, and the moral probability, of that truth which forms the
great peculiarity of the Christian revelation. More than any other in
the whole circle of religious belief it rises above the inductions of
science, while reason, in its soundest conclusions, recognises its
probability, and receives its truth; and it stands forth alone, simply
proposed to our belief, and offered to our acceptance, on that high but
peculiar evidence by which is supported the testimony of God.

The truth of these considerations is impressed upon us in the strangest
manner, when we turn our attention to the actual moral condition of
mankind. When we contemplate man, as he is displayed to us by the
soundest inductions of philosophy,--his capacity for distinguishing
truth from falsehood, and evil from good; the feelings and affections
which bind him to his fellow men, and the powers which enable him to
rise to intercourse with God:--when we consider the power, which sits
among his other principles and feelings, as a faithful monitor and
guide, carrying in itself a rule of rectitude without any other
knowledge, and a right to go