Nay, take the case of our very children, when our hearts being most interested to promote their happiness, we must be supposed most desirous of determining on right principles, and where therefore the real standard of our deliberate judgments may be indisputably ascertained: in their education and marriage, in the choice of their professions, in our comparative consideration and judgment of the different parts of their several characters, how little do we reflect that they are immortal beings! Health, learning, credit, the amiable and agreeable qualities, above all, fortune and success in life, are taken, and not unjustly taken, into the account; but how small a share in forming our opinions is allowed to the probable effect which may be produced on their eternal interests! Indeed the subjects of our mutual inquiries, and congratulations, and condolences, prove but too plainly what considerations are in these cases uppermost in our thoughts. Such are the fatal and widely spreading effects, which but too naturally follow from the admission of the grand fundamental error before mentioned, that of not considering Religion as a principle of universal application and command. Robbed of its best energies, Religion now takes the form of a cold compilation of restraints and prohibitions. It is looked upon simply as a set of penal statutes; these, though wise and reasonable, are however, so far as they extend, abridgments of our natural liberty, and nothing which comes to us in this shape is extremely acceptable: Atqui nolint occidere quemquam, posse volunt. Considering moreover, that the matter of them is not in general very palatable, and that the partiality of every man where his own cause is in question, will be likely to make him construe them liberally in his own favour, we might beforehand have formed a tolerable judgment of the manner in which they are actually treated. Sometimes we attend to the words rather than to the spirit of Scripture injunctions, overlooking the principle they involve, which a better acquaintance with the word of God would have clearly taught us to infer from them. At others, "the spirit of an injunction is all;" and this we contrive to collect so dexterously, as thereby to relax or annul the strictness of the terms. "Whatever is not expressly forbidden cannot be _very_ criminal; whatever is not positively enjoined, cannot be indispensably necessary--If we do not offend against the laws, what more can be expected from us?--The persons to whom the strict precepts of the Gospel were given, were in very different circumstances from those in which we are placed. The injunctions were drawn rather tighter than is quite necessary, in order to allow for a little relaxation in practice. The expressions of the sacred Writers are figurative; the Eastern style is confessedly hyperbolical."