away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh and I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments and do them; and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God." Those in whose experience this promise has been fulfilled, are in the state required by Cicero's first condition; while they are at once fully prepared to do and suffer all that is demanded by his second. With these strong and clear lights of philosophy and of Scripture in our hands, let us now for a little walk abroad throughout the earth, and inquire into the moral greatness of the ancient heathen world,-an exercise from which it is impossible to return without enlarged conceptions of the Missionary character.

The Tyrian Hercules is the most ancient historical personage that deserves notice on the score of his moral qualities, and the building of Tyre was the first step in his mighty career. From this great emporium his regards extended to all nations, whom he sought by means of commerce to civilize and improve. This wonderful man was, in some respects, a prototype of our missionaries. According to history he was "the terror of oppressors, the friend of liberty and of mankind, for whose interest and happiness he braved the greatest dangers, and surmounted the most arduous toils, going through the whole earth with no other view than the establishing of peace, justice, commerce, and freedom."+ Like Williams, too, he lost his life in a voyage undertaken "to promote the reformation of mankind by the cultivation of true religion and the arts of civilization.”‡ After making every deduction demanded by the severity of historical truth, enough remains to demonstrate that the founder of Tyre planted colonies in many parts of the earth, and was pre-emi

* Ezek. xxxvi. 25-28. + Cooke, vol. i. p. 30.

Ib. p. 21.

nent among the sons of men in point of moral greatness. Osiris, although inferior to Hercules, is not unworthy to be mentioned next in succession to him. He, too, was a great social reformer, who, although he had at his disposal a vast military power, trusted for success not to the sword, but to truth, reason, and persuasion. At the close of his very extended marches, he could make this boast :-" Nor is there a place where I have not been; I, who freely dispensed my benefits to all mankind." Sesostris was a mixed character; his martial spirit and brutality, during the first half of his reign, afterwards gave place to a display at least approaching to moral greatness. Cyrus, surnamed the Great, was not without princely virtues; he was mighty in war, but wanting in magnanimity. Darius, the son of Hystaspes, in most respects, resembled Cyrus; with regard to their moral stature, they appear to have been much upon a par, though Darius certainly excelled in the softer virtues.

We are next conducted to the Greeks, among whoin, notwithstanding all their boasting, their politeness, and their learning, we have very few instances of moral greatness, but some of these are noble and splendid. Minos is entitled to high consideration for the wisdom of his laws, but he was speculative rather than practical, and had more understanding than benevolence. Lycurgus was much superior to Minos; and, it appears to me, that, nearly to the same extent, Solon surpassed Lycurgus. No ancient heathen nation can boast three such men as these. They were all highly endowed, though in different degrees, with some of the chief attributes of moral greatness. They particularly excelled in that which Cicero pronounces the crowning part of it-in pursuits of self-denied, perilous, and practical utility. Leonidas was a madman rather than a moralist. His greatness was of a very humble order; it was purely military; it largely partook of a suicidal

character; he has no claim whatever to rank with men pre-eminent for moral greatness. He was one of the least of Grecian heroes. It is difficult to speak in too

high terms of Pericles; he appears to me to have been the Chatham of Athens. With at least as much grandeur of mind, the Greek had far more equanimity and humanity, learning and solidity, than the Englishman ; and, perhaps, he had more real patriotism and philanthropy. He strikingly exemplified his strong sense of the superior value of moral greatness, in his last moments on earth. His friends, supposing him to have become insensible, were expatiating upon the glorious events of his life, when, on a sudden, the dying man raised himself and said: "I am astonished that you should commend me for those things which were as much owing to fortune as to any thing else, and which have happened to others as well as to me, and take no notice of the greatest and most honourable part of my character-that no Athenian, through my means, ever went into mourning" In the midst of all his power and greatness, which amply supplied the means of public plunder, his hands were clean. He did all things for Athens, and nothing for himself; his paternal fortune was diminished rather than increased, at his death.

The greatest of the Greeks is still to be mentioned. All others were but little men as compared with So- whom our own Thomson thus correctly and beautifully describes :

crates

"O'er all shone out the great ATHENIAN SAGE,

And FATHER of PHILOSOPHY: the sun,

From whose white blaze, emerged each various scct,
Took various tints, but with diminished beam.

Tutor of Athens! He, in every street,

Dealt priceless treasure. Goodness his delight,
Wisdom his wealth, and glory his reward.
Deep through the human heart, with playful art,
His simple question stole; as into truth
And serious deeds he smiled the laughing race;
Taught moral happy life, whate'er can bless,
Or grace mankind; and what he taught, he was."

All

Of all the heathen, in point of moral greatness, Socrates was incontrovertibly the most eminent. He was their head and chief. No man ever arose either in Greece or in Rome, that could for a moment stand before him. Alone in his glory, like the sun in the firmament, he swept his circuit through the region of thought, enriching all and borrowing from none. He was in every respect a grand original. He had no prototype. Cicero's conditions of greatness were fulfilled in him. He was equally great in moral thought, and in moral action. Streams of light occasionally shot across his mind which bore marks of being light from heaven. He appears to me to have been a link which connected inspired with uninspired men. Every thing about him was sui generis, unless it may without impiety be said, that in several important points there is a very remarkable analogy between him and the Saviour of the world. The mode as well as the matter of his instructions was wholly his own. He did not keep a local school of wisdom for the tuition of regular classes; he instructed small and great at all times, and in all places. He was always ready to speak when men were ready to hear. Along with the most profound respect for authority, he entertained particular regard for the common people, whom he laboured to elevate; and to this the tyrants referred when they said, "We forbid you more especially to harangue a knot of artizans, and weary their ears with your definitions." Although comparatively poor, he did not, like other philosophers, receive emoluments, but taught all who would listen to him without money and without price, declaring that the highest reward he could enjoy was to see mankind benefiting by his labours; he left behind him no writings; his chief disciples became the historians of his life and labours; and, to crown all, he submitted to die rather than flee his country, or renounce his principles !

It is now time to enlarge the field of inquiry and of comparison. Let us, therefore, glance at the collective

genius of Greece and Rome, and investigate the moral greatness of their men of letters. This will tend both

to instruct and to edify; for it will strikingly illustrate the awful truth that "the world by wisdom knew not God."

In attempting this task, it will be convenient to divide both Greeks and Romans into two classes-the prose writers and the poets. Among the chief Greek prose writers, I suppose you would enumerate the following: Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Polybius, Diodorus Siculus, Dionysius Halicarnassus, Arrian, Appian, Herodian, Lucian, Plutarch, and Demosthenes; and amongst the principal Roman prose writers these : C. Nepos, Cæsar, Sallust, Velleius Paterculus, Quintus Curtius, Petronius, Cicero, Livy, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Justin. Let us look at this cluster of celebrated men, and try them by the standard of Cicero ; there is not one among them who is not fully entitled to a high place on the scale of intellect; but considerable difficulty stands in the way of an accurate estimate of their several claims, on the ground of moral greatness. tle is known concerning some of them beyond what may be gathered from their works, which, in several instances, have been largely mutilated. This mutilation, however, is of less consequence in relation to my present object, in the case of prose writers than of poets; for the moral image of the former is in general far less distinctly reflected by their pages than that of the latter.

Lit

Of the Greeks just mentioned there is not one, excepting Plutarch, entitled to any very high consideration on the ground of moral greatness. Plutarch, all things included, was a great, a very great man: but even his greatness was speculative rather than practical, intellectual rather than moral, as his writings were. He was nevertheless profoundly skilled in the knowledge of human nature; and understood, as well as exemplified,