degrading vices, from the most shocking and atrocious crimes, what can it possibly avail in withholding them from committing acts of far more dubious character, but often little less injurious to the peace, order, and happiness of society? Could this code bear any sort of comparison with that which we have ventured to contrast with it, as furnishing the best possible rules for human conduct, even considering the present life as the _only one_, would it not be able to support its claim to our preference, by producing a greater number of persons reclaimed from the paths of vice by _its superior power_, than have ever been recovered by the influence of _the Christian code_? But how stands the fact? Examine it, I beseech you, as impartially as possible. I may answer, I believe, without fear of contradiction, that while the Christian code can show its thousands, rescued by its agency from the lowest depths of profligacy and crime, not one solitary case can be found, nor indeed has ever been heard of, wherein the code of worldly morality has alone effected any such restoration. The utmost scope of _its_ power has never extended beyond carrying a small minority of its votaries through the world, with fair characters, who have never been strongly tempted to give them up for something which they more passionately desired. Its influence, at best, is merely of the _preventive_, not the _reclaiming_ kind, and therefore never brings back, under the power of its own laws, any who have once broken through the feeble barriers which they interpose. The worldly code, besides sanctioning many practices which the Christian code pronounces criminal, looks not beyond the outward seeming of our actions, because when man, who is made the sole judge of its fulfilment, attempts to penetrate to their source, he is incapable of doing more than making mere approximations to the truth. On the other hand, the Christian code, having an all-wise, infallible God for _its_ judge, allows no actions to be _right_, but such as proceed from _right motives_. These being the only certain test--the test by which every Christian assuredly believes that we shall all be finally tried, make the latter code, from this circumstance alone, as far superior to the former, as absolute certainty is, at all times and under all circumstances, much better than uncertainty. All who faithfully obey the requisitions of the last, must really _be_ what they _seem to be_, or they are _not moral_ in the Christian sense. Whereas the professors of the last, who look only to the present life for their rewards, can obtain them all, simply by feigning well the character they wish to possess.