this principle is sincere, as long as any degree of imperfection remains, or, to speak more accurately, as long as any farther excellence is attainable, farther improvement must be the object. The true Christian, therefore, never can rest in any habits of virtue already attained: his present proficiency he values only as a capacity of better attainments; and, like the great Roman whose appetite of conquest was inflamed by every new advantage gained, he thinks nothing done while aught remains which prowess may achieve.

Such is the principle, as may be collected from the apostle's description of his own feelings and his own practice, such is the principle in which he places the perfection of a Christian; in its origin rational, in its object disinterested, in its energies boundless: and in these three properties its perfective quality consists. And this I would endeavour more distinctly to prove: but, for this purpose, it will be necessary to explain what man's proper goodness naturally is, and to consider man both in his first state of natural innocence, and in his present state of redemption from the ruin of his fall. But this is a large subject, which we shall treat in a separate discourse.

SERMON XXVIII.

PHILIPPIANS iii. 15.

Let us, therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded; and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you.

THE perfection of the Christian character, as may be collected from the apostle's description of his own feelings and his own practice, consists, it seems, in an earnest desire of perpetual progress and improvement in the practical habits of a good and holy life. When the apostle speaks of this as the highest of his own attainments, he speaks of it as the governing principle of his whole life; and the perfective quality that he ascribes to it seems to consist in these three properties,—that it is boundless in its energy, disinterested in its object, and yet rational in its origin. That these are the properties which make this desire of proficiency truly perfective of the Christian character, I shall now attempt to prove; and, for this purpose, it will be necessary to inquire what man's proper goodness is, and to take a view of man, both in his first state of natural innocence, and in his actual state of redemption from the ruin of his fall.

Absolute perfection in moral goodness, no less than in knowledge and power, belongs incommunicably to God; for this reason, that goodness in the Deity only is original: in the creature, to whatever degree it may be carried, it is derived. If man hath a just discernment of

what is good, to whatever degree of fitness it may be improved, it is originally founded on certain first principles of intuitive knowledge which the created mind receives from God. If he hath the will to perform it, it is the consequence of a connection which the Creator hath established between the decisions of the judgment and the effort of the will; and for this truth of judgment and this rectitude of the original bias of the will, in whatever perfection he may possess them as natural endowments, he deserves no praise, any otherwise than as a statue or a picture may deserve praise, in which what is really praised is not the marble nor the canvass -not the elegance of the figure nor the richness of the colouring, but the invention and execution of the artist. This, however, properly considered, is no imperfection in man, seeing it belongs by necessity to the condition of a creature. The thing made can be originally nothing but what the maker makes it: therefore the created mind can have no original knowledge but what the Maker hath infused-no original propensities but such as are the necessary result of the established harmony and order of its faculties. A creature, therefore, in whatever degree of excellence it be supposed to be created, cannot originally have any merit of its own; for merit must arise from voluntary actions, and cannot be a natural endowment: and it is owing to a wonderful contrivance of the beneficent Creator, in the fabric of the rational mind, that created beings are capable of attaining to any thing of moral excellence→→ that they are capable of becoming what the Maker of them may love, and their own understandings approve. The contrivance that I speak of consists in a principle of which we have large experience in ourselves, and may with good reason suppose it to subsist in every intelligent being, except the First and Sovereign intellect. It is a principle which it is in every man's power to turn,

if he be so pleased, to his own advantage: but if he fail to do this, it is not in his power to hinder that the deceiving spirit turn it not to his detriment. In its own nature it is indifferent to the interests of virtue or of vice, being no propensity of the mind to one thing or to another, but simply this property,that whatever action, either good or bad, hath been done once, is done a second time with more ease and with a better liking; and a frequent repetition heightens the ease and pleasure of the performance without limit. By virtue of this property of the mind, the having done any thing once becomes a motive to the doing of it again: the having done it twice is a double motive; and so many times as the act is repeated, so many times the motive to the doing of it once more is multiplied. To this principle, habit owes its wonderful force; of which it is usual to hear men complain, as of something external that enslaves the will. But the complaint, in this, as in every instance in which man presumes to arraign the ways of Providence, is rash and unreasonable. The fault is in man himself, if a principle implanted in him for his good becomes by negligence and mismanagement the instrument of his ruin. It is owing to this principle that every faculty of the understanding and every sentiment of the heart is capable of being improved by exercise. It is the leading principle in the whole system of the human constitution, modifying both the physical qualities of the body, and the moral and intellectual endowments of the mind. We experience the use of it in every calling and condition of life. By this the sinews of the labourer are hardened for toil: by this the hand of the mechanic acquires its dexterity: to this we owe the amazing progress of the human mind in the politer arts and the abstruser sciences. And it is an engine which it is in our power to employ to nobler and more beneficial purposes. By the same principle, when the atten

tion is turned to moral and religious subjects, the understanding may gradually advance beyond any limit that may be assigned, in quickness of perception and truth of judgment; and the will's alacrity to conform to the dictates of conscience and the decrees of reason will be gradually heightened, to correspond in some due proportion with the growth of intellect. "Lord, what is man, that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man, that so regardest him? Thou hast made him lower than the angels, to crown him with glory and honour!" Destitute as he is of any original perfection, which is thy sole prerogative, who art alone in all thy qualities original, yet in the faculties of which thou hast given him the free command and use, and in the power of habit which thou hast planted in the principles of his system, thou hast given him the capacity of infinite attainments. Weak and poor in his beginnings, what is the height of any creature's virtue, to which he has not the power, by a slow and gradual ascent, to reach? The improvements which he shall make by the vigorous exertion of the powers he hath received from thee, thou permittest him to call his own, imputing to him the merit of the acquisitions which thou hast given him the ability to make. What, then, is the consummation of man's goodness, but to co-operate with the benevolent purpose of his Maker, by forming the habit of his mind to a constant ambition of improvement, which, enlarging its appetite in proportion to the acquisitions already made, may correspond with the increase of his capacities, in every stage of a progressive virtue, in every period of an endless existence? And to what purpose but to excite this noble thirst of virtuous proficiency,-to what purpose but to provide that the object of the appetite may never be exhausted by gradual attainment, hast thou imparted to thy creature's mind the idea of thine own attribute of perfect uncreated goodness?