what triumphs, in the arts and sciences! What gigantic strides in the mastery of mind over nature’s elements! What a shadowing of omnipotence in the power by which all are made tributary to the augmented comforts and enhanced enjoyments of man! But this is not all. The apex of the British social pyramid, with its clustering pinnacles, does not sparkle with the brilliancy of a cultured intellectualism only; for then might it merely exemplify and realise the garnishing of a corpse or the whitening of a sepulchre. No, there are—thanks to a gracious over-ruling Providence—thousands and tens of thousands that are morally and spiritually good, as well as intellectually enlightened. These, from higher, nobler, and more constraining motives than the children of this world ever knew, strive immeasurably to outstrip the latter, even in the chosen sphere of their own favourite earthborn moralities. As they name the name of Jesus, they feel themselves under solemn oath and covenant to depart from all iniquity—to be holy as He is holy—to refrain from all those fleshly lusts and carnal desires by which men’s lives are polluted and their religion defiled, from all riotous and luxurious excesses, from all covetousness and usury, from all extortion and oppression, from all envy and jealousy, from all hatred and malice, from all pride and arrogancy, from all ambition and vain glory, from all slander and backbiting, from all enmity, and strife, an uncharitableness. From the same high and holy motives thed feel themselves also bound positively to cultivate all the personal virtues, all the social and domestic charities; that tenderness which awakens sympathy; that gentleness which wins on the affections; that generosity which excites the sense of gratitude; that benevolence which stimulates affectionate regard; that unflinching integrity which is greeted with salutations in the haunts of business, and unbending fidelity, with the tribute of warmest acknowledgments, and open-handed liberality, with the heart-felt responses of the poor, the needy, and the fatherless; and unalterable friendship, with the enthusiasm of quickened sensibility; and untainted honour, with the generous approbation of high-minded men; and devoted patriotism, with the enkindled ecstasies of a benefited people. And, above and beyond all those virtues and moralities, which may not have their roots deeper than in the more generous impulses of unrenewed nature, or the more prudential maxims of a wisely-regulated self-love, and which, consequently, may never raise their heads, or exhale their perfume beyond the unsettled region of this earthly atmosphere; these feel themselves additionally bound, by every obligation, the most sacred and divine, to cultivate those purely evangelical tempers and graces, the roots of
