.
"There is indeed no surer mark of a false and hollow heart, than a
disposition thus to quibble away the clear injunctions of duty and
conscience[81]:" It is the wretched resource of a disingenuous mind,
endeavouring to escape from convictions before which it cannot stand,
and to evade obligations which it dares not disavow.

The arguments which have been adduced would surely be sufficient to
disprove the extravagant pretensions of the qualities under
consideration, though those qualities were _perfect_ in their _nature_.
But they are not perfect. On the contrary, they are radically defective
and corrupt; they are a body without a soul; they want the vital
actuating principle, or rather they are animated and actuated by a false
one. Christianity, let me avail myself of the very words of a friend[82]
in maintaining her argument, is "a Religion of Motives." _That_ only is
Christian practice, which flows from Christian principles; and none else
will be admitted as such by Him, who will be obeyed as well as
worshipped "in spirit and in truth."

This also is a position of which, in our intercourse with our
fellow-creatures, we clearly discern the justice, and universally admit
the force. Though we have received a benefit at the hands of any one, we
scarcely feel grateful, if we do not believe the intention towards us to
have been friendly. Have we served any one from motives of kindness, and
is a return of service made to us? We hardly feel ourselves worthily
requited, except that return be dictated by gratitude. We should think
ourselves rather injured than obliged by it, if it were merely prompted
by a proud unwillingness to continue in our debt[83]. What husband, or
what father, not absolutely dead to every generous feeling, would be
satisfied with a wife or a child; who, though he could not charge them
with any actual breach of their respective obligations, should yet
confessedly perform them from a cold sense of duty, in place of the
quickening energies of conjugal, and filial affection? What an insult
would it be to such an one, to tell him gravely that he had no reason to
complain!

The unfairness, with which we suffer ourselves to reason in matters of
Religion, is no where more striking than in the instance before us. It
were perhaps not unnatural to suppose that, as we cannot see into each
other's bosoms, and have no sure way of judging any one's internal
principles but by his external actions, it would have gro