diately find yourself in regions of sublimity far above the flight of any profane poet.

"Give unto the Lord, O ye mighty,

Give unto the Lord glory and strength.

Give unto the Lord, the glory due unto him;
Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.

"The voice of the Lord is upon the waters:
The God of glory thundereth;

The Lord is upon many waters.
The voice of the Lord is powerful;

The voice of the Lord is full of majesty.

The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars;
Yea, the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon.
He maketh them also to skip like a calf;
Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn.

"The voice of the Lord divideth the flames of fire.
The voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness;
The Lord shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh.
The Lord sitteth upon the flood;

Yea, the Lord sitteth King for ever.

"The Lord will give strength unto his people; The Lord will bless his people with peace."

How congenial the Psalms are to the deep and universal devotional sentiments of the heart, every well read, and well worn Bible is a witness. Next to the precious pages which

contain the words of eternal life, those will bear the marks of having been most often resorted to for light, and strength, and comfort, which are written over with the sublime and fervid aspirations of the sacred poets of Judea. And they have served as models for piety in all succeeding times, as has been well said by a living poet:

"Sweet harp of Judah! shall thy sound No more be heard on earthly ground, Nor mortal raise the lay again,

That rung through Judah's sainted reign?

"Yet harp of Judah! rung thy strain,
And woke thy glories not in vain ;
Yet, though in dust thy frame be hurl'd,
Thy spirit rules a wider world.

"Though faintly swell thy notes sublime;
Far distant-down the stream of time;
Yet, to our ears the sounds are given;
And even thy echo tells of heaven.

"Through worlds remote-the old—the new ; Through realms nor Rome nor Israel knew; The Christian hears-and by thy tone,

Sweet harp of Judah, tunes his own."

LECTURE IX.

ON THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN.

HE subjects to which I have hitherto directed your attention have been of a practical and popular character. You have followed me with ease, if not with profit, for I have touched on nothing deep or abstruse. I am in this lecture to treat a subject a little more abstract, though in the end quite as practical as any which I have presented, The Moral Constitution of Man. I do it by way of experiment, that I may discover how far an audience composed of all ages and both sexes may be interested in a psychological investigation.

The existence of a moral nature in man is

early demonstrated by the rise of the consciousness, on doing certain actions; "This is right; I am justified and meritorious in doing it." And on another occasion, "This is wrong, I am guilty if I do it, and I cannot look on my own conduct with approbation." This power of distinguishing right and wrong, and its involuntary exercise is one of the elementary principles of the human mind. Wherever there is a perfect human soul, there this faculty is developed. The child, the first time that it tells a falsehood, feels compunction, feels that it has done wrong, it cannot tell why. What account is to be given of this fact? Does it see the reasons why it is wrong? By no means. It has had no experience of the evils which the violation of truth brings upon society, and finally upon the fabricator himself. All we can say of it is, that it is the will of the Creator, that such a feeling should spring up in the human mind as soon as the faculty of speech is developed, as a guard against the abuse of that faculty. We can truly say then, that it is a moral instinct implanted by God in the human soul. I know no reason why we should withhold from it this appellation. It

ought to rank with the filial affection, or the desire of society, which is developed much later, but the rudiments of which must have been created within us, or we could never have known what it was. The Almighty, in creating man, foresaw all the conditions and relations in which he was to be placed, and he gave him every power and faculty necessary to fit him for every relation which he was ever to sustain. God's universe is one perfect whole, every part of which is fitted to every other part. He created the ocean, the element of water, and likewise fish to live, and breathe, and swim in it. The myriads of embryo fish, which are formed every year, before they have imparted to them the principle of animal life, before they have touched the element in which they are afterwards to have their existence, have the tiny rudiments of lungs by which they are to draw vitality from the water, and the outline of those fins, which are one day to bear them with wonderful velocity through the waves. Go to the bird's nest, and you will there see the same prospective adaptation. The bones which form within those dark and rounded walls have precisely that combination of strength