way
with unerring aim to the hearts of the unlearned. The unanswerable
reasonings of Butler never reached the ear of the gray-haired pious
peasant, but he needs not their powerful aid to establish his sure and
certain hope of a blessed immortality. It is no induction of logic that
has transfixed the heart of the victim of deep remorse, when he withers
beneath an influence unseen by human eye, and shrinks from the
anticipation of a reckoning to come. In both, the evidence is within,--a
part of the original constitution of every rational mind, planted there
by him who framed the wondrous fabric. This is the power of
conscience;--with an authority, which no man can put away from him, it
pleads at once for his own future existence, and for the moral
attributes of an omnipotent and ever-present Deity. In a healthy state
of the moral feelings, the man recognises its claim to supreme
dominion. Amid the degradation of guilt, it still raises its voice and
asserts its right to govern the whole man; and, though its warnings are
disregarded, and its claims disallowed, it proves within his inmost soul
an accuser that cannot be stilled, and an avenging spirit that never is
quenched.

Similar observations apply to the uniformity of moral distinctions, or
the conviction of a certain line of conduct which man owes to his
fellow-men. There have been many controversies and various contending
systems in reference to this subject, but I submit that the question may
be disposed of in the same manner as the one now mentioned. Certain
fixed and defined principles of relative duty appear to be recognised by
the consent of mankind, as an essential part of their moral
constitution, by as absolute a conviction as that by which are
recognised our bodily qualities. The hardened criminal, whose life has
been a course of injustice and fraud, when at length brought into
circumstances which expose him to the knowledge or the retribution of
his fellow-men, expects from them veracity and justice, or perhaps even
throws himself upon their mercy. He thus recognises such principles as a
part of the moral constitution, just as the blind man, when he has
missed his way, asks direction of the first person he meets,--presuming
upon the latter possessing a sense which, though lost to him, he still
considers as belonging to every sound man. In defending himself, also,
the criminal shews the same recognition. For, his object is to disprove
the alleged facts, or to