show the relation of this part of our nature to the grace of the gospel. But there is another relation in which we are required to study this subject, which is this, that the Christian religion demands obedience to the moral law. If we are religious according to the Christian standard, we must show in our life a cultivation of the whole system of morality, which is the development of our nature. We must exhibit in our lives the cardinal virtues, and all the subordinate virtues, which may be classed under those cardinal divisions. Every virtue which nature indicates is a part of the human constitution, and must be cultivated and formed in us. There are three declarations in the Bible concerning these two sides of the religious life. That life must exhibit these two phases. There is no real religion where one is wanting. The first one is the declaration of the prophet Micah, "What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" (Mic. vi. 8). So our blessed Lord said, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" (St. Matt. xxii. 37-39). And St. Paul said, "Herein do I exercise myself to have always a conscience void of offence toward God and toward man" (Acts xxiv. 16). Here we have the moral life. presented to us as only one part, but as an essential part, of the good life, of the life which is acceptable to God. The Christian life is one in which all the moral virtues and graces must be cultivated. Christianity did not come to create a morality, but it came to give spiritual power; so that we can cultivate and develop and form it. This is the first thing that we are to learn and inculcate, that morality is just as much a part of the religious life, of the Christian life, as the worship of Almighty God, as He is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. We go to church to worship. We go to sacraments to receive grace and divine power. But the grace and divine power are given to enable us to exhibit, not only one side of religion, but also the other side, the moral side. - That morality is part of the religious life we shall see if we inquire into the relation of nature to grace. The word nature is used in the New Testament in three senses, as Bishop Butler has clearly pointed out. St. Paul says that we are "by nature the children of wrath" (Eph. ii. 3), where he uses it in the sense of our fallen condition, by which we become sinners. But in the Epistle to the Romans (chap. ii. 14), he uses it of that original constitution of man, which gave him form and character, and which made him to be the being that he is. God made man "in 1 Bishop Butler's Second Sermon on Human Nature. His own image, after His own likeness" (Gen. i. 26), just as He gave to every material thing a form, and the power of performing a certain function. The man that God made and constituted would have performed all the duties which pertained to him had he not fallen, but had he continued perfect. When we say that nature imposes certain moral duties, we are not referring to man's fallen condition spoken of in the Epistle to the Ephesians, but to that nature referred to in the Epistle to the Romans. God made man "very good." The entire restoration of man, according to the image in which he was created, would exhibit him as a perfect man, and a man perfectly religious according to the Christian standard. When we say, then, that Christian grace is given to regenerate and renew man, we are using language in accordance with this. It is something given again; it is a restoration; it is a bringing back. We mean this by it. We say that justice is the first cardinal virtue. We say that God, in making man after His own likeness, made him a just being. But we have to confess, because we plainly see that he is a fallen being, that man's justice is imperfect. It often fails. But we say that the grace of Christianity will restore man, that it will again make him a just being, that it will nourish and cultivate the virtue of justice. It will not create it, but it will restore it. We say that it is a natural virtue, because it was part of the original constitution of man. It was one of the functions which he was made capable of performing. But we say now, when man has fallen, that this virtue can only be developed and cultivated and performed by the aid of supernatural power, by the supernatural grace of the gospel. So we might say the same of each of the cardinal virtues. The first man was so constituted that these virtues formed part of his nature. They were at the beginning a possibility, so that when the occasion arose, when man was brought into such relations as to require them, he would be just, benevolent, truthful, pure, and obedient. Christianity comes to restore man, to develop all these virtues, to bring them all into exercise. And Christianity has only done its perfect work in man when it enables him again to attain the character which is after the likeness of God in its fivefold moral aspect. We should remember, when we are speaking of nature in this sense, that we are speaking of the work of God, and not of that fallen and unbalanced condition of man which leads to sin and transgression. And when we say that Christian grace aids nature, we mean that Christian grace is bringing man into the condition in which God gave him a perfect constitution which was in harmony with His divine will, and entirely in subordination to it. We must see that we cannot be said to live the Christian life unless we cultivate all the virtues and graces of morality; unless, in addition to our faith in God, and our worship of God, we are also merciful and kind and truthful and pure and just and obedient. The tendency to ignore morality, or to disparage the cultivation of it as a requirement of Christianity, has manifested itself on several occasions in the history of our religion. One of the causes of the Reformation was the immoral lives of those occupying high places in the Church, and the immorality which was infecting what were called "religious houses." But the form in which Luther preached faith tended to beget a feeling that the cultivation of morality might be dangerous to the reception of Christ as the sole cause of redemption. There was the attempt made to present faith as so separated from works, from any thing which we could do, from any act that we could perform, that a fear of works actually arose, not only in the mind of simplehearted Christians, but also in the teachers of Christianity. It became part of the philosophy of religion to show the independence of faith, and how through faith there was the sole reliance on Christ without works. The moral life was forgotten. There was no inculcation in connection with faith of the moral virtues, of the every-day duties. The mind was fastened on certain views and certain feelings and certain experiences, which views and feelings |