It sanctions these duties, it illustrates their nature, it enforces their observance by new and powerful motives; but it presupposes the existence of Conscience, as God's vicegerent in the heart, and appeals to "a law" by which every man is "a law to himself." The _law revealed_ in Scripture is binding by reason of the authority of the Lawgiver; but not more binding than the law written on the heart, without which we should be incapable alike of moral instruction and of moral government.

The question, then, is not whether morality be entirely dependent on the authority of Scripture, but whether it be so independent of Religion as to be equally authoritative and binding with or without the recognition of God?
And if this be the real question at issue, few will be bold enough to affirm either that the nature of moral duty is in no wise affected, or that its foundation is in no degree weakened, by the non-recognition of God and His supreme will.

The will of God may not be the ultimate ground of duty, but it is the expression of the essential holiness of His nature, which is the unchangeable standard of rectitude.

The supposition of His non-existence, therefore, or even the skeptical Atheism which doubts, without venturing to deny, the reality of His being, deprives morality of its only absolute support, and leaves it to depend on the fluctuating opinions or the capricious tastes of individual minds.

It affects both the _nature_ and the _extent_ of moral duty, by resolving it into a mere regard to utility, and excluding a large class of duties which Religion sanctions, while it deprives every other class of their sacred character as acts of obedience to God.