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 grown into an established rule, that when the latter were unobjectionable, the former were not to be questioned; and on the other hand, that in reference to a Being who searches the heart, our motives, rather than our external actions, would be granted to be the just objects of inquiry. But we exactly reverse these natural principles of reasoning. In the case of our fellow-creatures, the motive is that which we principally inquire after and regard. But in the case of our Supreme Judge, from whom no secrets are hid, we suffer ourselves to believe that internal principles may be dispensed with, if the external action be performed!