(1.) Christianity is distinguished by the profound sentiment of _individual responsibility_ which pervades it. All the arbitrary forms, and sacerdotal interpositions, and hereditary rights, through which other systems seek the Divine favor, are disowned by it. It is a religion eminently _personal_; establishing the most intimate and solitary dealings between God and every human soul. It is a religion eminently _natural_; eradicating no indigenous affection of our mind, distorting no primitive moral sentiment; but simply consecrating the obligations proper to our nature, and taking up with a divine voice the whispers, scarce articulate before, of the conscience within us. In this deep harmony with our inmost consciousness of duty resides the true power of our religion. It subdues and governs our hearts, as a wise conqueror rules the empire he has won; not by imposing a system of strange laws, but by arming with higher authority, and administering with more resolute precision, the laws already recognized and revered. To trifle in any way with this plain and solemn principle, to invent forms of speech tending to conceal it, to apply to moral good and ill language which assimilates them to physical objects and exchangeable property, implies frivolous and irreverent ideas of sin and excellence. The whole weight of this charge evidently falls on the scheme which speaks of human guilt as an hereditary entail; a scheme which shocks and confounds our primary notion of right and wrong, and, by rendering them impersonal qualities, reduces them to empty names. No construction can be given to the system, which does not pass this insult on the conscience. In what sense do we share the guilt of our progenitor? His concession to temptation did not occur within our mind, or belong in any way to our history. And if, without participation in the _act_ of wrong, we are to have its _penalties_, crimes in the planet Saturn may be expected to shower curses on the earth; for why may not justice go astray in space, as reasonably as in time? If nothing more be meant, than that from our first parents we inherit a constitution _liable_ to intellectual error and moral transgression,--still it is evident that, _until_ this liability takes actual effect, no sin exists, but only its possibility; and _when_ it takes effect, there is just so much guilt, and no more, than might be committed by the individual's will: so that where there is _no_ volition, as in infancy, cruelty only could inflict punishment; and where there is _pure_ volition, as in many a good passage of the foulest life, equity itself could not withhold approval.