ht." The direct
object, therefore, of the design is, to supply motives, and not rules;
sanctions, and not precepts. And these were what mankind stood most in
need of. The members of civilised society can, in all ordinary cases,
judge tolerably well how they ought to act: but without a future state,
or, which is the same thing, without credited evidence of that state,
they want a motive to their duty; they want at least strength of motive
sufficient to bear up against the force of passion, and the temptation
of present advantage. Their rules want authority. The most important
service that can be rendered to human life, and that consequently which
one might expect beforehand would be the great end and office of a
revelation from God, is to convey to the world authorised assurances of
the reality of a future existence. And although in doing this, or by the
ministry of the same person by whom this is done, moral precepts or
examples, or illustrations of moral precepts, may be occasionally given
and be highly valuable, yet still they do not form the original purpose
of the mission.

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* Great and inestimably beneficial effects may accrue from the mission
of Christ, and especially from his death, which do not belong to
Christianity as a revelation: that is, they might have existed, and they
might have been accomplished, though we had never, in this life, been
made acquainted with them. These effects may be very extensive; they may
be interesting even to other orders of intelligent beings. I think it is
a general opinion, and one to which I have long come, that the
beneficial effects of Christ's death extend to the whole human species.
It was the redemption of the world. "He is the propitiation for our
sins, and not for ours only, but for the whole world;" 1 John ii. 2.
Probably the future happiness, perhaps the future existence of the
species, and more gracious terms of acceptance extended to all, might
depend upon it or be procured by it. Now these effects, whatever they
be, do not belong to Christianity as a revelation; because they exist
with respect to those to whom it is not revealed.
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Secondly; morality, neither in the Gospel nor in any other book, can be
a subject of discovery, properly so called. By which proposition I mean
that there cannot, in morality, be anything similar to what are called
discoveries in natural philosophy, in the arts of life, and in some
sciences; as the system of the un