unmoved upon the most stupendous crimes, for no other feature of our moral constitution can be a substitute for this. The danger of its abuse, the fact that it often degenerates into a feeling of malevolence or a desire for private revenge, does not alter its nature, or render the indulgence of it unlawful. It remains a principle implanted in our nature by the Creator himself, as really as pity, or any other emotion.

Had all the angels in heaven persevered in their allegiance to their Maker, one power within them had for ever slumbered; one susceptibility had remained unawakened. They had never known by actual experience the feeling of joy in seeing the course of justice fulfilled. The angels who kept their first estate must have approved the sentence which doomed their companions to those penal fires which they still feel. A new aspect of their moral being thus becomes apparent; a new principle of their original nature is developed; a resource is provided against an exigency which was to happen. A fresh illustration is given of the wisdom of Him, who fearfully and wonderfully framed the angel's nature; so constituting it, that an act of punitive justice, when demanded, would not seem arbitrary, but would be fully justified by every one who should behold the spectacle, or who should suffer in consequence of his deeds.

While in para

So, also, with the father of our race. dise, he could hardly be conscious of the powers

that were

wrapped up within him. All which he had seen was clothed in the smile of perfect love; all which he had felt or imagined was an index of naught but of self-satisfying delight, and of the overflowing Divine benignity. But when he was exiled from his happy abode, he had a new experience of

the awful wisdom of his Creator. He was not expelled by arbitrary authority. Those flaming cherubim were not an emblem of gratuitous wrath. In the depths of his being, he felt that it was just. His newly awakened moral instinct justified his expulsion. So when he stood over the lifeless body of his second-born, with emotions such as no other father since has looked upon a dead child, one part of his experience must have been the perception of the Divine justice. "In that still form, and closed eye," he might say, a strange aspect of my being is evolved. I feel within me the workings of a hitherto unknown sensation. I felt at first like imprecating vengeance on the fratricide, but that is past. My own sin is here visible. It was my hand that opened the great flood-gate. Righteous art thou, O Lord, in thy judgments."

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Cain, too, we have sometimes wondered that, instead of complaining of the severity of his sentence, he did not imprecate a heavier doom; that he did not desire that the demands of justice should be executed speedily on himself. That he did not so wish may indicate that he was qualified, by the possession of a hardened character, to stand at the head of the long line of murderers.

In thus briefly considering one of the sterner features of our constitution, and some of its practical developments, we cannot but be struck with the morbid type of much of the philanthropy and religion current at the present day. Love degenerates into weakness; compassion becomes itself an object of pity; benevolence is degraded into an undiscrim. inating instinct. The employment of force is branded as a relic of barbarous times. The exercise of authority is scouted as contrary to the spirit both of the Gospel and of an enlightened age. The world must now be controlled by

persuasion. It was formerly supposed that law, with its rigorous penalty, was a chief instrument in moral reformations; that it was one of the main elements in the means which God and man must employ in meliorating the state of society.

So, likewise, in respect to religion. In our days, there is such a prominent and reiterated exhibition of the paternal character of God, as to endanger, if not destroy, its legitimate effect on the character of His intelligent creatures. There is such a protrusion of the promises of the Bible, and such a concealment of its threatenings, as to neutralize the influence of both. Religion is sometimes so divested of its grander and sterner qualities, as to fail to secure any respect. It becomes a mere collection of pleasant counsels, an assemblage of sweet recommendations, which it would be very well to observe; instead of presenting, as it does, an alternative of life or death, an authoritative code of morals, a law with inflexible sanctions, a Gospel to be rejected on peril of eternal damnation.

These shallow philanthropists and religionists are as ignorant of the nature of man, as they are of the revelation of God; as little versed in the more imposing features of our constitution, as in the high and solemn themes of Christianity. They have little to do with the deeper wants of our moral being. They do not understand how curious and almost contradictory a piece of workmanship is man. They seem never to have imagined, that he has the closest relations to a moral law, to an atoning Saviour, to a righteous moral Governor, and to an impartial judgment-seat.

Equally ignorant are they of the bonds which hold society together. Much of the doctrine which is industriously. promulgated at the present day, tends to form a counterfeit

philanthropy; to make men sympathize with the misfortunes of the criminal, rather than with injured virtue, or with public morals; to weaken the arm of the law, and reduce government itself into a compact remarkable for nothing but its weakness.

HEBREW POETRY.*

ASIDE from the fact that Hebrew poetry forms part of an inspired book, it has points of attraction to every man who feels any interest in literature, or in the condition of the human race in past ages. This poetry is indeed small in amount. It is all found in the compass of one volume. The words of the language in which it is written, so far as that language has come down to us, are said to amount to only five thousand six hundred and forty-two, while the words in the Greek language exceed eighty thousand.

The Hebrew poetry has also suffered somewhat, in the view of many, from its being found where it is, from its being associated with systems of divinity, or with the warring tenets of different religious sects. It is well enough for theologians and Christians to be familiar with it, but it is out of the circle of general literature; it is found in an unclassical language; it has little to do with modern culture.

But poetry, certainly, does not cease to be such, though its authors are the subjects of Divine inspiration. There are compositions in the Hebrew Scriptures, which, if they

*This is one of the lectures delivered by Professor Edwards before the Junior Class of Andover Theological Seminary.