evil in separation from him. It ought to inform us, that we are full of darkness, which hinders our knowing and loving him; and that, our duty thus obliging us to love God, and our concupiscence turning our whole affection upon ourselves, we are full of unrighteousness. It ought to discover to us the cause of our enmity to God, and to our happiness. It ought to teach us the remedies, and the means of obtaining them. Let men compare all the religions of the world, in these respects, and let them see whether any one but the Christian answers all these purposes."*

This view of human nature is appropriately followed up in another part of Pascal's "Thoughts," by an argument showing "that there can be no saving knowledge of God, except through Jesus Christ." This is the chief medium of the knowledge of God; but your lordship's system wholly excludes Jesus Christ. me, therefore, lay before you the substance of Pascal's argument.

Let

"The God of Christians is not barely the Author of geometrical truths, or of the order of the elements; this is the divinity of the heathen: nor barely the Providential Disposer of the lives and fortunes of men, so as to crown his worshippers with a happy series of years; this is the portion of the Jews. But the God of Abraham and of Jacob, the God of Christians, is a God of love and of consolation ;-a God who fills the heart and the soul where he resides a God who gives them a deep and inward feeling of their own misery, and of his infinite mercy,-unites himself to their spirit, replenishing it with humility and joy, with affiance and love, and renders them incapable of any end but hiinself. The God of Christians is a God who makes the soul perceive and know that he is her only good, and that she can find no peace but in him alone, no

*Thoughts, No. III.

delight but in his love; and who, at the same time, inspires her with an abhorrence of those impediments which withheld her from loving him with all her might. The self-love and concupiscence which prevent this, are insupportable to her. This gracious God makes her know and feel that this self-love is part of her nature, and that he alone can expel it. This is to know God as a Christian. But to know him after this manner, we must, at the same time, know our own misery and unworthiness, together with the need we have of a mediator, in order to draw nigh to God, and unite ourselves with him. We ought by no means to separate the knowledge of these two things; because each alone is not only unprofitable, but dangerous. The knowledge of God, without the knowledge of our own misery, engenders pride; the knowledge of our own misery, without the knowledge of Jesus Christ, despair. But the knowledge of Jesus Christ exempts us alike from pride and from despair, by giving us, at once, a knowledge of God, and of our misery, and the only remedy provided for it.

“Thus all they who seek God without Jesus Christ can never meet with such light as may afford them true satisfaction, or solid use; for either they advance not so far as to know that there is a God; or, if they do, it avails them nothing, because they frame to themselves a method of communicating with God without a Mediator, as without a Mediator they have known him. Thus they unavoidably fall either into atheism or deism -two things which the Christian religion almost equally abhors. We ought, therefore, wholly to direct our inquiries to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, because it is by him alone that we can pretend to know God, in a manner advantageous to ourselves. He alone is the true God to us men, that is, to miserable and sinful creatures. He is the centre of all, and the object of all; and whoever knows not him, knows nothing either

in nature or in himself. For as we know God only by Jesus Christ, so it is by him alone that we know ourselves. Without Jesus Christ, man is, of necessity, in vice and misery: with Jesus Christ, man is released from vice and misery. In him is all our happiness, our virtue, our life, our light, our hope out of him there is nought but vice, misery, darkness, and despair, and we can discover nought but obscurity and confusion, whether in the Divine nature, or in our own

:

Such, my Lord, are the views of Pascal; it is easy to show that they are also the views of the prophets and apostles of God; and that they lie at the foundation of all efficient schemes of human improvement. That method is little worth, and it will only prove a delusion, which promises to raise and renovate the human race, while it shuts out God and his justice, Christ and his sacrifice. Religion is the only true philosophy. The oldest of all literature is that of the Jews; it is the store-house of all right principles in politics as well as in morals; all systems of ethics and of legislation have owed to it whatever was best or even good in them; and every step of improvement, every advance towards perfection, is invariably found to be a nearer approximation to the principles of the Bible. The intellectual and moral state of individuals and of nations may be always accurately ascertained by an inquiry into the degree in which the knowledge of God prevails among them. This will prove an infallible criterion of a people's condition. The scriptures both of the Old and of the New Testament uniformly speak the same language in relation to the knowledge of God, as the grand element in forming the character of man. Prophets and apostles knew no other means of purifying his heart, reforming his habits, and promoting his happiThe first lesson of those best of teachers, was,

ness.

Thoughts, No. XX.,

that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge;"* and that "the fear of the Lord is to hate evil." The Jewish teachers always began with this principle, and considered nothing accomplished till "the fear of the Lord" began to manifest itself in a prompt departure from all evil. The royal Psalmist thus addresses the youth of his kingdom, "Come, ye children, hearken unto me: I will teach you the fear of the Lord." This was the only thing he condescended to teach, and it was a lesson worthy of a king. It was the prime philosophy, the highest knowledge that creature could communicate to creature. The most exalted angel that "adores and burns" before the throne of God, is not superior to such a task. In death, as in life, King David viewed this as the only thing deserving inculcation. Before "going the way of all the earth," he assembled the princes of Israel, the chief fathers, and captains of thousands and hundreds, with the officers and with the mighty men; and, after he had spoken to the congregation, he thus addressed his successor :-" And thou, Solomon, my son, know thou the God of thy father, and serve him with a perfect heart, and with a willing mind; for the Lord searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts. If thou seek him, he will be found of thee; but if thou forsake him, he will cast thee off for ever." To know God, in the Scripture sense, is to love and serve him.

Solomon walked in his father's footsteps. While he made the knowledge of the moral character of God his chief study, it was also the chosen theme of his instructions to his own descendants and to mankind. This unrivalled monarch was, in relation to science and literature, a man very much to your lordship's liking. His biographer thus delineates his character:-" And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceed1 Chron. xxviii. 9,

* Prov. i. 7.

Ps. xxxiv. 2.

ing much, and largeness of heart, even as the sand that is on the sea-shore. And Solomon's wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east country, and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he was wiser than all men, than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol: and his fame was in all nations round about. And he spake three thousand proverbs; and his songs were a thousand and five. And he spake of trees, from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes. And there came of all people to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all kings of the earth, which had heard of his wisdom."

""*

What are all the sages of heathen antiquity, my Lord, when compared with Solomon ? To say that he stands at the head of the whole host of moral and natural philosophers, and literary men, is a very inadequate tribute to his merits. The distance between him and them is immeasurable. His mighty mind delighted to expatiate among the works of God. Nothing that came from the Creator's hand was beneath his notice. Never were the manifold and multiform subjects of human knowledge so thoroughly blended and harmonized in a human understanding. He was attentive equally to all the aspects in which the Creator has presented himself to the creature. His religion was one which comprised whatever could then be known of God, whether from nature, or from Revelation. He was far from satisfied with the knowledge of God to be obtained from his Works. This he viewed as secondary, and therefore unsatisfactory. He felt and taught that the soul required a knowledge of God which nature cannot communicate.

My Lord, on this point, I beg your attention to

* 1 Kings iv. 29.