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the warmth of pious affection, we are assured that we ought to pray with the understanding likewise. Petition, praise and thanksgiving, if they are not accompained with some knowledge of the grounds of those duties, as they are laid in a sense of our own wants, and of the infinite power and unbounded mercy of God, can never be esteemed a reasonable service.

When our Lord directs us to worship God in spirit and in truth, he enjoins the use of that power of the soul, without which truth itself cannot be distinguished. For by what other power but the understanding, can God be worshipped in truth? And which of our faculties shall take the lead in religious duties, when reason shall be excluded?

There is no character under which our Lord seems with so much pleasure to represent his dispensation as that of truth. But the understanding is the only seat of truth; of revealed truth as much as of every other kind. Truth can be embraced only by the understanding, to which it is as evidently related as light is to the power of vision. The establishment of the object supposes the use of the corresponding faculty, without which in vain would the object be established. As clearly then as the light, poured out opon the face of the creation, points out the use of vision, so clearly doth that truth, which shines through every part of revelation, point out the use of that

faculty, by which alone truth is comprehended and discerned.

No one fact is more clear in the whole history of the human mind, than that reason hath been improved by revelation. It is undeniable, that the efforts of the human mind have been much stronger, and its success much greater in deducing from their first principles, and explaining all the moral and social duties of life since the publication of the gospel, than they were before. And yet you will hardly venture to maintain, that the human mind doth now possess a native force surpassing that with which it was endowed in those bright periods of genius which preceded the introduction of the gospel. Experience therefore joins with revelation itself, in proving that the mind is so far from being weakened or depressed by the gospel, that it derives new strength from it, and is never cultivated with so much success, never yields so ample or so rich a produce, as where it lies open to the influence of the gospel.

Faith and reason are so far from being rivals, or adversaries, that there is the clearest relation, and the strictest union between them. Reason without faith is feeble and obscure. Faith without reason, if it is possible that there can be faith without reason, is no better than "a light shining in that darkness which comprehendeth it not."

In a word, it cannot be that the mind should be obscured, and its light extinguished under

a dispensation which was given expressly to remove the errors, and to lighten the darkness of our souls. Light is the favorite character by which the gospel is described both in the prophetic and the evangelical writings. Ours is the inestimable advantage of having our understandings conducted by that true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. Ours is the unspeakable happiness to behold that glory which shines round the onlybegotten of the Father, a glory as we are assured not supplied by grace alone, but formed by the mingled and united rays of GRACE and TRUTH.

To sum up all, faith is given for the improvement of the human soul; and all its powers, our reason, our affections, and our will, obtain their perfection by being exercised in its service. Faith is given to fit us for heaven; and as far as we can apprehend, the chief pleasures even of a future state will be intellectual. Strange therefore indeed would it be to suppose that that faculty should have no concern in religion, which is to be the chief seat of our heavenly pleasures. Faith fills the soul with knowledge as well as virtue; and the truths, as well as the virtues, which it here imbibes from the gospel, shall exercise its growing faculties to all eternity. That dawning light of celestial truth which we here enjoy, shall in heaven increase into a bright eternal day.

Faith is an instrument which the heavenly Agent employs for the amendment and sanc

tification of our souls. When faith shall be succeeded by perfect vision, the instrument shall be laid aside.

As the sun enlightens the material world, and shows us all the wonders of nature, so doth faith here enlighten the religious system. But the time will come, when the sun shall be turned into darkness, and when faith shall be

no more.

FINIS.

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