[1] What connection is there between the knowledge of mechanics
and morality? What moral duty have you impressed on the
conscience when you have taught a man to make a table? So
with the knowledge of numbers, or of language, whether
ancient or modern. In none of these sciences is there any
principle that can connect itself with moral
feeling.--_Watson._
[2] The Gospel was first preached, beyond the limits of the
Jewish church, to a very refined, but to a very immoral
people. Even with what they had learned from tradition, the
wisest among them--I may not even except Socrates--could
contemplate with perfect indifference, and even practise,
the most abominable vices. The same results are found in
our own day. Wherever infidelity prevails, we witness the
decay and destruction of moral principle. We find, perhaps,
some exceptions in Christian countries; but let us see how
they are produced, and we shall find that they prove the
rule. They proceed from awe of public opinion; from a
feeling of shame with regard to personal honour and
character. But what provides that standard whose elevated
purity men thus practically acknowledge, even while they
reject its source? It is this book, it is the faithful
preaching of the Gospel, which so keeps up the standard of
public opinion that even infidels are obliged to
acknowledge its authority. Even among our peasants who have
been carefully instructed in religious truth--men without a
single ray of science--we find the practice of all the
Christian virtues; whilst, too often, we see the brightest
beams of human philosophy gliding and giving splendour to
baseness and corruption.--_Watson._
[3] Along with the truth of God there goes an accompanying
influence. The words that are spoken to you are "spirit and
life:" this is because the illuminations of the Holy Ghost
go along with them. We may not overlook the fallen state of
man; he is dead in trespasses and sins. The very law is
weak through the flesh; it gives direction, but it cannot
give life. The Spirit must convince man of sin and
righteousness; and if He be removed, the Agent is taken
away by whom only our moral renovation can be effected.
Now, this blessed, this mighty Spirit only works on our
hearts in connection with His own revealed truth; it is not
with human science that He works for the amendment of our
principles and tempers.--_Watson._
[4] I fear it is incontrovertible that what is denominated
poetic literature, the great school in which taste acquires
its laws and refined perceptions, and in which are formed,
much more than under any higher, austerer discipline, the
moral sentiments, is, for the far greater part, hostile to
the religion of Christ; partly by introducing insensibly a
certain order of opinions unconsonant, or, at least, not
identical with the principles of that religion, and still
more by training the feelings to a habit alien from its
spirit. And in this assertion I do not refer to writers
palpably irreligious, who have laboured and intended to
seduce the passions into vice, or the judgment into the
rejection of Divine truth, but to the general community of
those elegant and ingenious authors who are read and
admired by the Christian world, held essential to a liberal
education, and to the progressive accomplishment of the
mind in subsequent life, and studied often without an
apprehension, or even a thought, of their injuring the
views and temper of spirits advancing, with the New
Testament for their chief instructor and guide, into
another world.--_John Foster._