Too many alas there are who part with their heavenly birth-right at a viler price than Esau! It is humiliating to see by what poor sophistries they are deluded,—by what pitiable vanity they are led astray! And it is curious to note how the same evil effect is produced by causes the most opposite. The drunken pride of intellect makes one man deny his Saviour and his God: another under the humiliating sense of mortal insignificancy, feels as though he were “a worm and no man,” and therefore concludes that men are beneath the notice, still more beneath the care, of the Almighty. “When I consider thy Heavens, the work of thy fingers, the Moon and the Stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man that thou visitest him?” Of those who pursue this feeling to a consequence as false as it is unhappy, there is yet hope; for the same arguments (and they are all-sufficient) by which the existence of the Deity is proved, prove also his infinite goodness; and he who believes in that goodness, if he but feelingly believe, is not far from trusting in it, _—σύ δέ κεν ῥεα πάντ᾽ ἐσορήσαις Ἄι κεν ἴδης αὐτόν._[3] [Footnote 3: ORPHEUS.] It is a good remark of Mr. Riland's in his Estimate of the Religion of the Times, that men quarrel with the Decalogue rather than with the Creed. But the quarrel that begins with one, generally extends to the other; we may indeed often perceive how manifestly men have made their doctrines conform to their inclinations. _Αἱ ἀκροάσεις κατὰ τὰ ἔθη συμβαίνουσιν· ὣς γὰρ εἰώθαμεν, οὕτως ἀξιοῦμεν λέγεσθαι._[4] They listen only to what they like, as Aristotle has observed, and would be instructed to walk on those ways only which they choose for themselves. But if there be many who thus make their creed conform to their conduct, and are led by an immoral life into irreligious opinions, there are not a few whose error begins in the intellect and from thence proceeds to their practice in their domestic and daily concerns. Thus if unbelief begins not in the evil heart, it settles there. But perhaps it is not so difficult to deal with an infidel who is in either of these predicaments, as with one whose disposition is naturally good, whose course of life is in no other respect blameless, or meritorious, but who owing to unhappy circumstances has either been allowed to grow up carelessly in unbelief, or trained in it systematically, or driven to seek for shelter in it from the gross impostures of popery, or the revolting tenets of Calvinism, the cant of hypocrisy, or the crudities of cold Socinianism. Such persons supposing themselves whole conclude that they have no need of a physician, and are thus in the fearful condition of those righteous ones of whom our Lord said that he came not to call them to repentance! The sinner, brave it as he may, feels inwardly the want of a Saviour, and this is much, though not enough to say with the poet