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Nothing is more noticeable among leading modern seep- ticc than the vehemence with which they repudiate the charge that their preaching will end by proving disastrous to what is commonly called morality, and to the general principles of right and wrong. Indeed, some of them ac- tually claim to exalt these principles into an even higher position than that which they have previously occupied, and contend that right and morality will obviousl}' be more revered when worshipped on their own account, than when merely followed m adjuncts of, and became included by, a dogmatic theological faith. Now the question of whether morality will be able to stand, supposing religion to die out, is one of enormous importance ; and to a lay- man of good general education but small theological at- tainments, it is of special interest, because he will the more readily, we may suppose, unite himself to Chris- tianity, ^d its dogmas if he feel that religion is the main, if not the only, guarantee of a sound moral system. Whether this is a high ground on which to become, or remain, a Christian, is quite another question; but, in these days, when highly educated young men are dis- tracted by the claims of conflicting philosophies, and when the standing ground of every proposition is in- quired into, any additional proof of the necessity of Christianity is, if it be demonstrably a fair one, of some use. Moreover, (since trees are judged by their fruits), if morality can be proved to be a natural und necessary V ' fVnit of religion, and to be prodncible by no other tree, we are bound in fairness to conclude that tree to be healthy. Nor is this question a fanciful or an out of the way one ; on the contrary, it is what thousands of edu' cated men are discussing and thinking of every day. Nothing, perhaps, facilitates the breaking away from faith so much as the conviction that one can be just as moral, and what is called '* good," without a supernatural creed,— the deduction of course oeing that such creeds are unnecessary. This view is especially attrac Uve not only to well edu- cated but also to partially educated men, who have neither ability nor opportunity to arrive at i\n opinion for or against Christianity by the laborious process of studying its evi> dences ; who are unable to weigh the authenticity of the Qreek Testament against destructive German criticism ; to whom the Bampton and the Hibbert lectures are alike unknown, and who find, if possible, even Butler to be uninteresting. The quarrels over the authorship of 8t. John's Gospel reach them not ; Dr. Pusey, Mr. Hatch, Dr. Jowett, Cardinal Newman and the other theological con- troversalists light in an arena into which they cannot enter. Indeed, even the well-educated are apt to find, when they step into this arena and try to gauge the strength of these combatants, that they grow more con- fused than enlightened. What, then, are they to do? Possibly an argument ab extra, if I may so call it, may reach those to whom theology itself is unintelligible. Englishmen are proverbially open to the reasonings of common sense, and it is their boast that they are so. Fairness and moderation are among the best of our. char- acteristics. Cardinal Newman, in his Apologia, deplores the difficulty experienced by those who try to " work an Englishman up to a dogmatic pitch." We love ti compro- mise and care little for logical consistency. What, for example is the Episcopalian Church bat a vi^ media be- tween Rome and Protestantism — whether a logical one it is not my province to determine ? Now, it is possible that this very sense of fairness, this very desire to weigh fally the views of others, is inimical to the formation of fixed Tdligious opinions, and makes us suspend our judgment until we begin to think we need not judge at all. The question of the relation of religion and morality is, there- fore, of interest and importance, and in examining it I propose to begin writh what I venture to call the historic method of inquiry : — I will try to show that a decadence of morality has always followed or accompanied a de- cadence of religious faith ; that the fall of the former is a coHtequence of the fall of the latter ; that where a tem- porary 8ur\*ival of morality is found it is the result of some special circumstances ; that those circumstances cannot last long, and that when they are removed the fall is only all the greater for being delayed. Now, it will perhaps be contended that if a loss of faith in false relig- ions is followed by a fall in morality, nothing is proved as to the objective truth of Christianity — since what one false creed can do and yet be false, Christianity may do too, and be false also. To this contention I have only to answer that the proof of the objective truth of Christianity is not my business in this paper. There is, however, a more cemplete answer to that objection, which J hope to give later on. Proceeding then to the historic method, I have decided, on mature deliberation, to omit all mention of the history of the Jews, because it is open to a sceptic to say that it is very fine and very easy to prove what I like about a special race vs^hose history is mainly known to us through the Bible — which they regard as very poor history and as an ex parte statement. Let us therefore go to the Athen- ians and see what their beautiful and glorious history teaches us on this point. After the second repulse of the Persians (following on the battles of Salamis and Platooa), the state of Attica rises into importance, and begins to produce that nnparalled succession of statesmen, phil- osophers, poets and historians that have made for that little spot of land a name that shall endure as long as the earth exists. And in this succession of wonderful men we find, (as I hope to show,) that the moral tone declines in proportion as the faith in the gods dies out. Let us consider, very briefly, the views of Socrates as far as they bear on this point, and how the Athenians regarded him. Socrates was emphatically a searcher after truth, and his genius was analytical and what is usually called de- structive, as opposed to constructive. His famous erotetic method of argument must have had for its main effect the tuggeiting oj thought. The Athenian image-maker, or herdsman would be set cogitating over the why and wherefore of things he had never dreamed of inquiring into before. Now, when this habit of inquiry had become second nature, the constructive philosopher could step in, but the age of disintegration had to be got through before that of redintegration could find congenial soil. How was Socrates' teaching received by the Athenian Demos ? We all know that he was accused of atheism, and had to drink the hemlock. I am aware that there was another count in the indictment, but the gravamen was infidelity. What his real opinions were on the subject of theology it is hard to say. A purely analytical and questioning mind is very apt to end by regarding the supernatural as an insoluble problem, and by adopting, therefore, what would nowadays be called an agnostic position. It is in- credible that he could have believed in the objective ex- istence of the numerous Hellenic divinities, but he need not on that account have objected to the w^orship of them» or denied that there was beauty in the belief. But his views were eminently practical. Students will recollect that Xenophon, in his Memorabilia of Socraten, tells ns how the great philosopher used to laugh at those whose whole philosophy consisted in abstract speculations as to the origin of the world, etc., and used to say that a deeper and healthier philosophy would be arrived at by the plan of questioning closely and thoroughly the phenomena of every day life. The process of boldly and honestly ask* ing the reasons of why every thing is done as it is, and why men approve of this and no ^f ihat, and what are the real causes lying at the root of such things, was the means by which Socrates pr j 'osed to apn*- »u;h the deeper and more general questions. Out < ho ^t.thenians as a body weie not prepared to look with mi favour on thi? method of inquiry, especially whei. thr/ began to suspect that under cover of so simple a plan tueir cherished concep- tions might be rudely attacked and swept, away Zeus and Athene, Ares and Hermes, were real enough to the Demos, though they might be sneered at in the salont of "thinkers." And, among the philosophers themselves, down to the time of Socrates, the tendency had been to embellish, add to, and rehabilitate the glories of the gods rather than to deny their existence. The old dogmas might have been " restated," as the modern phrase goes, but they were not actually denied. Where these philoso- phers were original, it was only on the most abstract sub- jects, and their ideas wore simply grotesque. They loved to discuss the cosmogony, but their knowledge of that subject was hardly equal to that of Ephraim Jenkinson, and their superstition was as gross as that of the crowd to whom they lectured. Now the Athenian public did not in the least object to having new beliefs thrust on them in addition to the old ones ; on the contrary, they swallowed the principle of "development" with an avidity that is astonishing, though I will not say unparal- wmm 8 leled. When a certain point of credulity is reached, a few dogmas more or less do not seem to make much vliffer- ence. LorjJ Lytton, in his work on the rise and fall of Athens, says, very truly, that superstitious people can rarely reject the superstitions of another creed. But when a philosopher arose whose continual questions were *' why" and " wherefore" it was quite a different matter, and something, it was felt, really had to be done. That something was the hemlock. But when Socrates lay dead the reaction came ; the new cause now boasted of a mar- tyr, and the impulsive Q-reeks were soon ready to cry ** PeccavV Accordingly, Plato is permitted to develop his master's doctrines as he pleases, while Aristotle, after him, though intensely unpopular on account of his politi- cal opinions, is never molested merely on the score of his abstract beliefs. But, to prove the decadence of morals in Athens, we must turn from the philosophers to the poets, and then the gradual declension from a pure to a morbid tone of thought is marked with teni >le clearness. The three great tragedians, ^schylus, Sophocles and Euripides, afford ample matter for the proof of what I have urged, ^schylus represents the age immediately preceding Pericles rather than that of Pericles himself, for, though he lived during the administration of that statesman, thg formation of his mind took place in the time of the Persian wars and Themistocles. In adopting this view I follow Mr. Grote and Lord Lytton. He repre- sented, therefore, what I venture on calling the thorough- ly theological epoch, by which I do not mean that no philosophy was then in existence, but that it had not yet taken the form of questioning the existence of the gods, ^schylus merely intellectualizes, as it were, the gods of Homer, and therefore he need not detain us, especially as he is the least known and read^ at present, of the three. But in Sophocles the ruling idea is Fate, above and beyond the gods ; the power that will shape our ends, rough hew them as we will ; that lowers over the hori- zon of human hopes and ambition ; that appears when' and where we cannot foretell, leading us whithersoever we would not. This is now the great "force behind nature," as modern thinkers would say, that is called in to supersede the caprices of the Olympian divinities ; im- placable, unappeased by hecatombs or prayers, "^r of this divinity alone is it impossible (o go to the shrines or to the altars, nttr does she hear sacrifices" These words do not come from Sophocles, but the sentiment is his. Morality does not seem to be lowered in the dramas of this middle period ; but if we wish to see how mere sophistical rea- soning and casuistry can be at last worked into every cranny of the human mind, till a healthy and spontane- ous judgment becomes completely impossible, let us turn to Euripides. And a little of the general history of thought at that time must be here inserted, or the causes of the morbid view^s of Euripides cannot be completely understood. The Athenian public was the most educated public that the world has ever seen, or, probably, ever will see, and their natural bent lay in the direction of philosophy and metaphysics. We owe that last word to Aristotle, who flourished later than the time of Euripides, but the studies usually understood to come under its meaning were in full flower in Euripides' time. The age of Sophocles was an age of doubt, but all history shows us that the generation in which doubts first begin is not very different from the preceding, because the effects of early education are not easily got rid of. But when .there arises a generation that was not even taught religion, morals and ethics are apt to alter immensely. How far the nev/ views had permeated the masses at Athens it is impossi- ble to say. That a reaction did once occur in the direc- If ! 10 tion of npholdinfl: dogmatic faith is proved by Euripides' play of the " BacchoB," and that very same play proves how degraded and superstitious in its essence this reaction was. But, meanwhile, all writers agree in bearing wit- ness to the lowering oi public morality. The dikasts became more and more corrupt ; the agora became the arena for personal quarrels instead of national discussion ; lazury and wealth increased and venality increased pari passu. Things at last reached the stage described in the " Knights " of Aristophanes, but even in Euripides' time they were bad enough. The most morbid, to my mind, o; the plays of that poet is the " Alcestis," though the " Bacchae " is even more instructive in revealing the state of thought of of the times. Unless the " Alcestis ' ' is intended for a comedy, (which has been maintained, though not with much success), the ideas the Athenians had still left concerning the gods must have afforded in- controvertible proof of the saying that when religion is cast out superstition frequently remains. The two characters who appear first on the stage are both of a supernatural order, Apollo and Death. Apollo begins with a soliloquy, and on the appearance of Death the two begin disputing and abusing one another in a style for which the term " undignified " would be a mild one. Of the other characters, Hercules, (a demi-god and the son of Zeus himself), is very near being vulgar, and affords some colour for the hypothesis that the whole play may be a comedy, while his personal combat with Death at the tomb does not elevate the conception of either a demi-god or a spirit. Alcestis herself is represented as doing a noble act, but not a single memorable speech is put into her mouth, except a few lines which the inevitable '* Therapaina" relates that she said on bidding farewell to her couch. Admetus is simply beneath contempt, and Pheres is painfully commonplace. The farewell to 11 ipides* proves saction ig wit- likasts me the ission ; ireased bed in ripides* to my though ing the icestis ' ' itained, tienians rded in- igion is 16 two th of a begins he two ityie for ne. Of son of s some ay be a at the mi-god Loing a »ut into ivitable ■arewell ,pt, and well to the couch and the address of the chorus to fate are posi* tively the only passages worth remembering for their own sake. But the miserable, forced sophistry of the argument between Fheres and Admetus is interesting as a study of morbid mental anatomy, and an audience that could have enjoyed it and sympathised with the speaker must have been of interest in the same way. But when we turn to the " Bacchae" we see how low a great poet can sink, and what stuff he can write, when he panders to the superstition of the mob. A wave of reaction to- wards the grosser portions of the Greek mythology must have swept over Athens, and Euripides, who was of a pretty practical turn of mind, determined to write a play, to set forth the bad end of one who declined to worship and adore — whom ? not Zeus, not the national Athene, not Ares, but Bacchus ; Bacchus in his grossest and most de- graded form. The play is a short one, and the plot is simple enough. Fentheus, the infidel, is cut off in the midst of his infidelity, and meets his fate at the hands of the god and of the drunken female votaries of his wor- ship. The play positively seems written to promote the vice of drunkenness, and one cannot help wondering if Athens were troubled with a " liquor question," and if Euripides were specially retained on the side of the bar- keepers. But there was, beyond doubt, a reaction at this period in favour of the " good old times," and if we wish to see a really talented representative of this reaction let us turn to the comic poet Aristophanes. The only person in our own history who can be compared to him is Swift, but the dean of St. Patrick's is mild and refined when measured against the Athenian. Aristophanes assailed the democratic government of his country with a viru- lence that, if directed against any other government in the world at that time, would have ensured his own. ar- rest and imprisonment. But his satires disclose a state of 12 life and thought and manner that justify the strongest condemnation, and if any good could be done by drama- tizing the lowest phases of Athenian life, and exposing the state of Athenian sor^ioty, we can hardly blame the man who tried to do so. The unfortunate thing was that the Demos was now so demoralized that citizens flocked in crowds to laugh at representations of their own filthi* ness and corruption, and Aristophanes, of course, knew them well enough to know that they would. His fav- ourite trick was parodying the pompous sophisms of Euripides, who was, it must be confessed, a tempting sub- ject. The leading point in the opinions of Aristophanes was his contempt for the mob government into which the Athenian democracy was sinking, and his love of simpler times when manners were more austere and public virtue more inviolate. In the play of the "Knights" he launches a terrible invective against the leaders of the Demos, especially one Kleon, whom he represents as a Paphlagonian slave, the Demos being brought in as his owner, who, at the end of the play, transfers his favour to a still greater rascal. The gradual declension in the characters of the statesmen (or rather mob ora- tors) who swayed successively the votes of the Agora is unmistakable, both during the Peloponesian war and after it. The "Frogs" is mainly directed against Euripides, and the ludicrous position in which Bacchus is placed in this drama is thought by many to be intended to be a caricature of the " Bacchse." He takes the opportunity of ridiculing a famous line in Hippoly- tus, m which Euripides makes a character, when accused of an untruth, reply, " My tongue swore, my mind is un- sworn," an answer which might be^twisted into a defence of what is now called by certain people " mental reserva- tion," — though it is only fair to say that it bears a more innocent constmctiou as used in the Hippolytus. And, to ;i! i u turn to the degradation of politics, how different was the conduct of the Athenians towards Alexander of Macedon to what it had been towards Darius and Xerxes ! But Athens has already detained me long enough, and if it has been tedious my apology must be that my love of the literature and history of that wonderful spot makes it hard for me to quit it. The same result, however, is shown — and on a gigantic scale — in the history of Impe- rial Rome. Philosophy did not find an entrance into her social lifie until she came in contact with Greece, and " Orecia capta ferum victorem cepit." But by the time of Cicero an Athenian education was much sought after by the Roman youth of the upper classes, for the Romans were not so narrow-minder' as to refuse to admit that foreign teaching could be better than their own. So con- temptible a feeling was far from the minds of that great and generous nation, which, excelling all the world in battle, was content to allow to Athens, in the domain of letters, the palm she justly claimed in turn for herself on the field of Mars. Jealousy is the involuntary tribute paid from the small to the great. Those, therefore, who had passed through the Athenian academeia were wel- cotned, as men who had been among associations that Rome as yet could not give, and had breathed an atmos- phere that at Rome was breathed not ; who cou'.d not have walked those magiovgroves, where each tree seemed to resound with the tongues of the dead, without drink- ing in something of a softer and a diviner spirit ; who could not have^azed at the grey stones of the Acropolis, teeming with the associations of the immortal heroes of past ages, without acquiring something of that sense of reverence which was nearly inexplicable to the ruder Roman ; and who Kight have been excused if they bore back with them a filial love for the tiny stream of the Ilyssus which they found it hard to transfer at once to rushing and dashing Tiber. 14 I! Cicero contributed very largely to the spread of the philosophic spirit, and it will at once occur, for instance, to us, that in his famous treatise " de Senectute" he re- gards the existence of a future life as a question that he does not pretend to settle. But in his speeches before the Senate aud the judges it must be admitted that there is not a shred of atheism ; on the contrary, he frequently adjures the gods and is fond of allusions to the Sybilline Fates and so forth, knowing, of course, exactly what would suit his audience. Indeed the great difference be- tween his public speeches and the philosophical disserta- tions that he composed in his own study is so great that a reader not intimately acquainted with his style might almost doubt if they were composed by tk j same maa. But as he had been brought up under the theological sys- tem he shows no f igns of bad morality, though some few of his letters and one or two of the Philippics may per- haps be called coarse, though they are 'ess so than the works of our own Swift and Smollet. Cicero had been educated under a theological system, and its effects indis- putably remain. When we pass to the Augustan age, the names which most readily occur to us are those of Virgil and Horace, of which Horace is Ihe most A'-aluable for the purposes of this paper, as Virgil's greatest poem was on a subject unconnected with Uoman contemporary thought and life. jn. point of attack has been made out of his eclogue to Alexis, but, (I think), rather unfairly, as it is obviously an imitation from a Greek model, and there is an unreal air about the whole piece. But in Horace thare is a great deal of useful information, and some light is shed both on the state of theology at the time and on that of morality. To begin with the former, we find, as might be expected, that the poet's views on the future life are rather vague and somewhat gloomy. Beyond the single line " sedesque discretas piorum,'' there is 15 little or nothing to lead us to think that the " good " will have a happier time in Hades than the " bad." On the contrary, the main reason why we are not, according to Horace, to trouble ourselves about the great questions of this world is because in the next it will be all the same. This point is more important in connexion' with his views on morality, of which we will speak presently, but, to keep to theology proper, we find the Olympian divinities continually invoked, but with a playful sense of unreality running through the invocation ; continually spoken of, but in a manner that does not connote the idea of devc* tion. It has often occurred to me that Horace poured out his libation to Bacchus with feelings very much akin to those with which we nowadays pick up a horseshoe on the road. He would not have felt quite comfortable if he drank without pouring out a few drops to the rosy god, and many of us will only omit to pick up our horse- shoe when we are walking with somebody whose ridicule we have reason to fear if we do so. On the other hand, when Horace speaks flippantly of his gods he does it in a sort of apologetic way that leaves us with the impression that he must have looked over his shoulder, while writ- ing, to make sure that they were not coming. There is, however, nothing approaching a real prayer in his poems, and, as Mr. Hurrell Froude (in his " Remains ") says, '* a man who does not pray must have taken a long and com- plete farewell of all real religion." Surely nothing is truer than this. -Horace had a sort of half faith ; and the husk of superstition remained when the kernel of religion had passed away ; let us, before we blame him, examine ourselves, and be certain we are not a little inclined in the same direction. He was, like most imaginative men, sub- ject to moods, in some of which he would be drawn to- wards credulousness, and in others towards sceptical in- quiry. This being the state of his theological belief, . 10 what was his philosophy ? It is generally said to bo merely " carpe diem,'' but it was a very refined form of that principle, and a man who quoted Horace in defence of a life of excess and debauchery would grossly mis- represent him. The key to his view of happiness in life is found in the stanza, -' Auream quisquis mediocritalem Dilistit,'* etc., and the ode beginning, " Nun ebur tieque aureum med renidel in domo lacunar^ It combined a firm belief in the joys of moderation and " modeslia'' with a deep conviction that the real happiness of the truly wise man lay in the world within, not in the world without, and that the really highest enjoyment was the conscious- ness of content, and of purity of life and aim. The real riches, according to Horace, were those of the mind, not those of the pocket, and the happiest man was he who was freest from anxiety and worry, and from the torments of an evil conscience. The light shed by Horace on public morality in Rome is not particularly cheerful, but it reveals a far purer state of things than that v«rhicL existed a century later. The vice most especially called nowadays immorality was un- doubtedly very common in Rome, but probably not more so than in all other countries at that time. The Roman family life was exceptionally pure, the family tie excep- tionally strong, and the victims of the immorality of the city were either of foreign extraction, or else from the very dregs of the populace. It will be remembered that Lydia, Glycera, Lalage, Chloris, etc., arp all Greek names, so that (if they had any existence at all) they were for- eigners, not Romans. The Roma^ policy towards religion was one of universal toleration. Ovid makes a country divinity exclaim, " Rome is a worthy place, where every god may go," and certainly i>*ome received the religions^ of all races with open arms. The city had by this time become the dwelling place of merchants and others of all 17 nations, and these were allowed the free worship of the gods of their country, provided they did not interfere with other people doing the same. So far, so good ; but, as this community of religions existed side by side with the new philosophies, the multiplicity of faiths tended still further (inevitably) to confuse the average Roman mind. The Epicureans and the Stoics had numerous fol- lowers at Rome, . and Plato was much read among the upper classes. Aristotle also was eagerly studied ; and, in short, not only every god, but every school of thought found an ample field for its extension in the Eternal Oity. It was not till after the Augustan age, however, that athe- ism becomes very largely held. The philosophies were studied side by side with the old creeds, and though the former were accepted in theory, the latter were still held on to in fact. The Roman mind was more conservative than the Q-reek, and less inclined to receive new ideas Ha guides in daily life, though they might meet with a sort of intellectual assent. But if philosophical 'ideas were held by the understanding, while the precepts of the waning religion were still followed out in life, it merely fihows again that the generation which first becomes scepti- cal does not depart much from its old habits of life and feeling. The "paterfamilias" was almost as much re- vered, and quite as powerful, in the time of Augustus as he was in that of the early republic, and corruption in public official life was probably not much worse. The offices of state were still objects of ambition to the best men in the country, and had not yet become prizes for mere adventurers. But when we turn from the times of Horace to those of Nero and Juvenal, we find that the decay of public virtue and private morality had become far worse than anything had ever been in Athens. Never, in the course of the world's history, was government in a more corrupt 2 18 •tate ; never wm power in the hands of more utterly un- worthy holders ; never was Inxnry seen on so enormoo* or so barbaric a scale ; never was morality in such an in- expressibly degraded condition. The old Roman patrician families, whose remote forerunners had sent the " Proud"^ Tarquin back to his anpestral Etruria, whose near prede- cessors had destroyed Oarthage, and defied the phalanxes of Pyrrhus ; the old Roman plebeians whose fathers had demanded and obtained their rights as men on the Mons Sacer; both these were now equally the slaves of whom- soever the Proetorian guard might choose to salute as Im- perator. And to whom did the Imperator confide the im- portant offices of government ? Was it to men like the Fabii, the Scipiones, the Bruti, or to any other old hon- oured races whose representatives were still living, and in whose veins the old blood was still flowing ? No ; they were entrusted to freed slaves, to palace favourites, to all the worst and most degraded persons who might have found means to make themselves useful to the Imperator and his guards. The governors of the great Roman provinces could not become very much more rapacious and corrupt than they had been ; but, in the days of a century back, however personally greedy or tyrannical a proconsul might have been, he was at any rate a good public officer in the sense of a serviceable representative of Roman majesty; pa- triotic towards the senate and people at home, and very far removed from being an object of contempt. But the "libertinus" who was sent in the days of Nero to some distant proconsulate was the representative of nothing that was any longer worth representing, and he was not only hated, but began gradually to be despised. Verres might have taken his standing on the old saying, " Oderint dum metttaMt" and have maintained it with success ; but the " fear" was not to last forever. The state of morality y 19 m the city may best be realized from the evidence con- tained in the satires of Juvenal, though Tacitus and various other writers are not without all requisite infor- mation. Nothing is more exquisitely instructive than to compare the general tone of Juvenal with that of Horace, both as regards the question of theology and that of morality. While Horace holda a sort of undefined posi- tion with regard to the gods, Juvenal tells us that '' not even boys believe that there are ghosts and a nether world and a Stygian lake, and Charon with his myriads of men in one boat ;" and he then goes on in the next few lines (sat. ii.) to give an unconscious proof of the good and salutary effect of a belief in another life, by request- ing the Roman youth of the day just to suppose for a moment that the souls of the dead do live, and to ask themselves what the spirits of their great ancestors would think of the way they were every day thinking and act- ing. No doubt such reflexions would have been suf- ficiently unpalatable to the Koman public, unless indeed they had already forgotten the very meaning of shame. The generation that flourished in Juvenal's time had not even been taught as children any religion worthy of the name, and to this fact the whole difference between their morality and that of their grandfathers in the time of Horace is, I think, to be traced. I hope to prove this when I come to another portion of my paper. Any re- ligion there may have been in the days of Juvenal was utterly debased and degraded, like Athenian religion at the time of the " Bacchoe," with this difference, namely, that the harder and coarser character of the Roman gave to vice a barbaric and coarse aspect that it never wore with the cultured Athenians. But it is not only in ancient times that we find material on which to ground the induction by which to proceed to the universal pro- position I have brought forward with regard to the rela- 'f 20 tion of morality to religion. £ngland went through a period of disintegration of religious thought at the time of the commonwealth, and the laxity of morals in the days of Charles II. was the result. It is only those who have studied that Hme pretty carefully who are aware of how faith had become dejraded into superstition. Every one knows how James I.'s pamphlet on witchcraft stirred up the superstition which the new faith hod been for sixty years endeavouring to weed out of the old. But it is only from stray passages in not very widely read books that we find how the very worst features of Romanism were the longest in survival, and how every sort of magic was sought after and held to. Mr. Lilly's work on *' Astrol- ogy" appeared in the time of the commonwealth, and is dedicated to no less a person than the historian Whitelock, a prominent member of the Long Parliament, and Lord Keeper of the Great Seal in the time of Oromwell. Div- ination was much consulted by both sides during the civil war — by the Puritans as wiell as the cavaliers — and all unusual circumstances were regarded as good or bad omens. Clarendon himself condescends to notice the fact that the King's standard was blown down by wind when he first sot it up, at Nottingham, at the beginning of the war, and he says that that circumstance caused great gloom in the royal camp. It is elsewhere said that His Majesty himself was much moved by this event, and when we consider what his bringing up must have been we can hardly wonder at his apprehension. The decline of religious faith, again, was one of the chief causes of the French revolution, and all the horrors which we associate with that event. And we all know that the revolutionary views, such as find their outcome in the assai^sination of kings and emperors, invariably go hand in hand with atheism. All the modern Nihilists are openly infidel ; and, indeed, no theological faith, let us 81 hope, could ever be found to incnlcato the gospel of dynamite and poison. A Deity who could have ordered the murder of the late Czar of Russia would be infinitely worse than none at all, and we have reason for joy in the fact that the Nihilists have not at present attempted to find such an one. But it is competent to me to point out how the extreme revolutionary party in Europe always identifies itself with atheism, and if the views of right and wrong held by the Nihilists are logically deducible from atheistic ethics that fact will in itself be worth a load of argument. I have tried to show by the historic method that a lowering of the moral tone in a race is the natural result of a giving up of religious faith. The next portion of this paper will be taken up with an attempt to show that this sequence is perfectly logical, and that nothing else can be looked for. And let us first examine a point that has been noticed in reference to both Athens and Rome, namely, that the generation which first receives infidelity does not show any great change (as far, at any rate, as others can see) in their views of right and wrong, but that these views become lowered in the generation that follows. We hear a great deal of how so and so, who is a pro- nounced sceptic, is nevertheless a very good man, a good citizen, a good husband, an honourable person and so forth, and he is pointed to as a proof of how needless a creed is to make a man all that he should be ; and that such persons exist there is no need to deny. Bvit the whole matter is surely explained when we reflect Ihat the sceptic of to-day was taught Christian morality as a child, and that the same views on right and wrong will be held by him when religious dogmas have dropped away. I have known several such persons myself, and I have no doubt that others will corroborate what I say. It is more 22 especially the case with men of high education and deli- cate sensibility, who would be only too glad to believe if they could, and who make up, as it were, for their reluc- tant conclusion against the truth of Christianity by a still greater determination to practice her beautiful precepts of conduct to fellow-man, with an inconsistency, if you will, but the logical falseness is '^splendide mendax.'' These men would give all they are possessed of, in many cases, to be able to hold what they were first taught, and, when they find they cannot do that, they at any rate do what they were first told. But what will the case naturally and necessarily be with the sons of these men ? The father was taught as a child not to lie because the Bible forbade it, not to slander because the Commandments told him not, not to bear hatred towards his brother because the sermon on the Mount had declared him who did so to be a murderer ; but when this same man bye and bye teaches his own son not to lie, and slander, and hate, and adds that these things are '* wrong," what can he say if the child asks tohi/ they are wrong and on what authority they are forbidden ? Is he not dumbfoundered ? He is convinced that they are wrong, but the grounds of his '' convictions have been cut away, and the erection of the principle of wrong into a sort of transcendental abstrac- tion may be all very well for him, but will be utterly beyond the comprehension of his child. How is the child to take in such an idea as that there are two great essences, the Good and the Bad, and that all actions are to be regarded as tending to, and suggested by, the one or the other ? What is his young brain to make of long philosophical definitions, which, after all, if the sophisms and long words be swept away, merely amount to saying, " It is w^rong because it is wrong ? " And, should the father merely tell his son to consider these things as wrong because his parent tells him they are so, those M 28 acquainiod with the apirit of this age will know ab.out how far the paternal ipse dixit is likely to go. And the ^ children are right from the infidel point of view, because the father is bound to give his reasons, since by reason alone are his view? supposed to be formed. Whenever a generation has grown up without knowl- edge of a Deity the light it has shed on the question has been a lurid one, and we have no shied of reason for hoping it will now be otherwise. I have heard it urged that a knowledge or recognition of right and wrong is inherent in every one, and that no absence of theological belief will be able to eradicate it, whether fathers and teachers can give reasons for it or no. Now, with regard to this objection, which is frequently urged, let us first enquire into what grounds there really are for its being entertained. Is it not the case that among those who have never really held to religion there is a certain quota- tion continually at hand, and which they frequently bring or*t, namely, the lines " There's nothing either right or wrong, but thinking makes it so ?" And what is really meant by this ? I am entitled to suppose that those who use it intend it to mean that every principle must be en- quired into afresh with a view to the establishment of some newer and better criterion by which to determine whether it is good or bad, for that the present artificial, religious criterion has merely made people adopt a j dg- ment which habit has confirmed, but which does not rest on a sure or correct foundation. Now by what criterion will actions be judged by those who reject a personal superintending Deity ? These persons generally answer that it will be by the effect of the action on " humanity" or on " the State." And so, forsooth, we are to hesitate, on various occasions as they arise, whether to tell the truth or a lie, balancing the probabilities as to whether the community will best be aided by the one or the other. ii 24 Besides, inteUedual confusion will arise, for what one man thinks good for humanity another will think bad, and therefore the same action will be regarded as good by one and bad by the other ; nor will there be any judgment to which either can be expected to defer. I am quite well aware that there are plenty of sceptics whose regard for truth and so on is as good as that of Christians, but that is because they practice the precepts of the faith that has dropped from them, instead of logically following out those of their new doctrines. They give up religion because they say there is no proof for it ; reason iis their guide and their king ; and by reason aloncy therefor '•an they claim to be judged. And how is the moralit) n of what e(?sity, and it the exis- heir ideal, s world in nd of this ^piness or :o them in notion of >f his own requently ty, it will n certain clashing ame corn- sly alters, ed by all )rth,— all control ence be- aken by aided by le evolu- :ht from have to- he state, Bdiency. igs, and this world offers no criterion but its own advantages. In order, then, to secure a maximum of these advantages, it is clear that a criterion of good must be adopted which will exclude all other aims, — at any rate from authoritative recognition — except the attainment of this maximum. And how will any criterion be found except in the " utile," the " expedient," the " plan which conduces to the good of the majority " and so on ? I have attempted to show that good instincts cannot be relied on for more than a couple of generations, or so, and when the old ideas of right are gone, this theory of procuring the purely selfish happiness of the individual and the purely temporary happiness of the state will lead to the contemplation of given actions from some such point of view as the follow- ing : — how will what I propose to do tend to my own advantage, and how to that of the country at large? Should both these questions be answered in a satisfactory manner (i.e., a manner satisfactory to thd questioner) no further hesitation need be felt in proceeding with the action. That such a course of action may, in a great number of cases, be utterly wrong, as we now understand the word, is quite clear. That this will most certainly be the case I will try to show in proving my fourth propo- sition {i.e., the degradation of morality), but I hold, (2), that no interpretation of this principle of expediency can be sufficiently widespread to prevent confusion as to what it is and how to apply it. Now the fact that thinking men have, in all ages, held different views one from another as to what will be for the good of the state is perfectly well known, and it is also indisputable that no one school of politicians or economists has yet arisen which has so fully and completely explored and explained the whole art and science of politics as to practically end all sensible dis- cussion of the matter among intelligent men. Various attempts have been made to bring politics within the 80 III i ii range of the exact sciences, and no one attempt has been successful. Mr. Buckle's History of Oivilization is a bold and able work, but it did not convince, (though it inter- ested and charmed), the average intelligent mind. And the science of politics has not advanced since his time at such a pace as to give any real hope that inductive reason wrill ever bring it within her range. The many motions of the human mind are too various to be counted on beforehand, as one could count on the chemical changes of a human body. At least, this is a very fair conclusion to draw from the small progress made by politico-philo- sophical studies, as distinguished from the large advances achieved by physical science. At any rate, until a great deal more has been done than has been done at present to form an intelligent and authoritative science of what Mr. Herbert Spencer calls Sociology, we are without ground for imagining that the infidel state will be able to set forth and enforce such a complete and elaborate view of the mutual duties of man and man in aU the various relations of life as will satisfy all thinking men of its unimpeachable truth. And to suppose that all will follow it, except where obliged, is to expect a groat deal of human nature ; for, in cases in which the theory laid down by the state interferes with each man's pursuit of his own happiness, unselfish- ness will have made wondrous progress indeed if the man will prefer that of the state. (But I see no possible ground for supposing that such universal rule will ever be found, so that the question of whether it would ever be followed is, to me, one of speculative interest only). Thirdly, let us see whether any interpretation could be, in any high pense of the word, authoritative. As that term is commonly understood, it would not properly apply to a rule a man imposed on himself because what a man imposes on him- self he may afterwards, i^henever he choose, release him- self from. The idea of authority involves the imposition 81 of a law from aome exterior aource, and postulates, there* fore, two distinct persons (at least) for the carrying out of its own meaning, — namely the person who imposes the Jaw and the person on whom the law is imposed. But who will impose the law in the infidel state we are con- sidering ? The people as a corporate body. And on whom will it be imposed ? On the people as individuals. Now with actual laws and statutes, taken by themselves, — in actual rules and by-laws, etc., taken by themselves, — the same principle may ba said to hold good throughout existing nations, — namely that men impose them on them- selves; but this objection is not of real force, for two> reasons, — firstly because the laws and rules, etc., in exist- ing countriea aru the outcome of principles of right and wrong which vrare originally given to them (as they hold) by the Deity, and not evolved by themselves, and, secondly, becausethese laws, etc., only apply to the actions and words of men, and do not touch their thoughts and beliefs, (which are admitted to be beyond the ken of the state), whereas the infidel community will have to give its laws and regulations the force, not only of civil laws but of religious principles also. Now the difierence between a law and a religious principle is just this, that a law we are not called on to approve of but only to obey, and, so long as we obey it, no one troubles whether we regard it as just or whether we abuse and find fault with it, but in the case of a religious principle we are called on to agree with its truth and justice, and not only to obey it but to do so on the ground of its being right. Therefore the infidel state must either neglect to provide anything corresponding to, or taking the place of, the religious principle, or else it must pro- duce some law of right and wrong which while not pre- tending to be (like a religious principle) held to for its own sake, must nevertheless be so widely agreed -with as to furnish to every one a g^ide of life. But since no 82 I such guide can be found, and since an anthoritative principle, (in the sense of a principle imposed from above ' and unquestioned,) is an impossibility to infidels, there will be, and can be, nothing whatever to prevent the indivi- duals in this state from doing whatever they like within the actual criminal law^ ; they have no theory of morality, they have no guide of life, they have no reason for good deeds, excepting such theories, guides and reasons as each may evolve for himself. Many in this state of the same way of thinking may and will join clubs and associations Tor the 'propagation of their own special ideas, and those ideas themselves will, if what I have said on the gradual fall of instinct is correct, grow worse and worse every generation ; while the various schools of thought on these ^subjects will become more and more numerous, and their arguments more and more confounded, till at last the one real guide set by each man before himself will, by tacit consent, be that guide to which man without God must eventually turn, to which alone he can turn, and at whose shrine alone he can consistently worship, — and that is self. Self is worshipped in many cases, as every one knows, by professed christians of every church and sect, but in the case of the infidels there will be no hope of showing, in such a manner as to logically convince the intellect, that the worship of self is in any way wrong, and consequently there will be no hope, either, of winning them from that worship. The christian has all the incen- tives to be self denying that an atheist has ; the state, the poor, his relations and friends, all make the same cla^ius on him that they make on the sceptic, and he has tne precepts of his creed in addition, which the atheist has not, — therefore it is a fair argument d fortiori to say that if the christian with his double incentive towards self denial still remains selfish, the atheist, with one incentive only to self denial, will be even more sure to do so. And 88 this argnment holds good even supposing the instincts of the infidel are on a par with those of the christian ; i. e. admitting, for the moment, a point I do not at all admit. Bat I mnst keep quite closely to the particular points I have brought forward, in the order I have assigned them, or I shall have to overstep the bounds I have set myself for this paper. The next and last proposition of the four that I advanced oonceming the infidel state is that a thoroughly low tone of morality will result from the state of things that I have tried to show will prevail in it. But I do not mean to make this proposition in the least ■dependent on the truth of the other three; I only discussed them first as somewhat leading up to this last and most im- portant point. Let the interpretation discussed above be as widespread and well understood as possibk and the result on morality will be no better. Let it be considered then, and with impartiality and care, whether the worship of self will or will not, must or must not, become the sole ultimate rule of life to infidels,— even though in- fidels are found now who are as devoted to their friends and to humanity as can be possibly desired. First, then, how far will pure reason defend men from this cult of ■selfishness ? Is it possible, for instance, for pure reason to upset the views of the Nihilists in attempting the life of the Czar of Russia ? It may be possible, but it is far from «asy. A man convinces himself, reasoning from such data as are at his command, that the enormous nation of Russia will be infinitely benefitted by the termination of the autocratic form of government — which we may freely ad- mit — and that the murder of one Czar after another will «nd in the Royal party giving way, — which is highly probable, — and then from these two propositions he decides that killing the Czar is for the good of the state,, and that, ihertfore, he is doing right in attempting to do so, and in risking his o#n life in the attenilpt. The tkct of his i^k- 8 84 in^ his own life is worth recollecting as proving the intensity of the man's convictions. To upset this chain of reasoning we have to prove to the Nihilist that, let the benefits to Russia from regicide bo ever so great, murder is, and always must be, utterly and completely wrong. And here comes in the old point of the lack of any criterion for proving to him that actions are wrong, except that of the good and bad of the state ; and even that criticism is, in this case, uncertain (as I have tried to prove that it is always sure to be) because if the Nihilists were to call on you to prove that his course would ultimately dv^stroy Kussia, instead of helping her, however sure you may be that it would bo so, the proof is not particularly easy. You might answer, for example, that such a course as murder would cut at the principles of law, but the Nihilist would reply that those principles themselves were on their trial, and that they might be found to need re- modelling. And the average person has not, as a rule, a a great shrinking from doing a little evil that great good may come. Do we not sympathize with Bassanio when he entreats the Doge to set aside, just for once, the letter of the "Venetian law in favour of his friend? And who would not prefer that Antonio should escape by such means rather than by a contemptible quibble about the .difference between flofch and blood ? Of course the Doge was right to refusn Eassanio's plea, but the admission of .this only comes fron^ k\*owledge of sialescraft, and is by no means an instinct. And even the recognition of the in- evitable wickedness of murder, however noble the end in view, is far from being universal. Did Cicero feel so very sure that GsBsar Should not have been murdered? A Christian of course has only one answer, but I doubt if the same certainty will be found outside the Christian fold. And when we turn from the political to the social principles of the Nihilists and advanced Bepublicans of 85 Europe, we find theories that are, if possible, still more repugnant to our Christian nature. Of many of these theories one riunot even write, and yet it may be doubted if even the w orst of them are to be proved inexpedient by the agency of pure reason. I use the word •' inexpedient " rather than *' wrong " because there are some amongst them who would rid themselves, if possible, of the wordn " right '*hand " wrong," as having a connotation they do not recognize. It may be roughly said that the extreme Republicans a'lid Social Democrats of Europe are mainly to be divided according to their opinions as to the relations of individuals and the state. One school holds that the state is everything and that an individual should so liva as to confer the greatest happiness on the community, sacrificing himself even as the ancient Romans were so proud to do. The other school considers the government and the state machine as a necessary evil, — necessary to prevent violence and robbery and so on, — and that the functions of this government should be pared down as far as possible, in order that the individual should enjoy a maximum of lioerty. The former of these theories is no^ very likely to be realized unless some supernatural belief inspires the citizens with a feeling of the glory of self- sacrifice, as was the case with the Romans, while the latter does away with patriotism altogether, and elevates selfish- ness into a positive ideal. Should any one doubt the effect of absence of patriotism, such as is inculcated by the latter school, let him read the history oC the decline of empires in all ages, and he will see how large a factor in producing such decline an unpatriotic spirit has always been. Horace points with great clearness to the difference between the old spirit of the Romans, in the early days of the Kings and the Republic, and the luxurious selfishness prevailing in his own ; the private houses were then, in old times, built of turf, the public buildings and temples of the gods 86 were decorated with marble ; the private purse of the ancient Boman was short, his public one was long: "Thon, all were for the State," as Lord Macaulay says, " For Eomans in Home's quarrel spared neither land nor gold," etc., — there is no need to quote such well-known lines. In the times of Horace all this was changed ; it was the private villa that was decorated with marble columns and ivory ceUings, and the temples of the gods hnd to shift as best they might. Tet this latter system is by no means undesirable to the school of thinkers who would merge the state in the individuals composing it. According to those who so think the argument ^runs thus; — all these individuals taken together are the state ; if, then, they are rich the state is rich, if they are happy, so is the state. From this proposition they infer that where all the people in a country are looking out for their own welfare, the community approaches most clo- sely to the ideal of what it should be, — care being of course taken that no one shall so pursue happiness as to prevent others doing the same. Devotion to the state in this ^ country will be positively discouraged, because it will tend to making the community something else than an other name for the individuals composing it. However, there is not likely to be very much of such devotion, so the question of its discouragement would be of little practical impor- tance. To those who appreciate the higher side of man's nature the picture of such a state as this is gloomy enough, yet how does pure reason prove it to be anything else but desirable ? What is the use of the higher qualities in a purely infidel state constructed on principles of logic and common sense alone ? What, in short, would become of the finer side of human nature ? — and yet, from their own premises, what need become of it? They look to the complete cessation of wars in the world, and science will minimize all chances of accidents, so that heroism Will be 91 Absolutely unnecessary. Indeed, many look on this qua- lity as rather more harm than good, as tending towards a disposition to quarrel. Readers of the " New Republic " , will remember how Mr. Mallock makes one of his charac- ters say that he looks forward to the time when all shall be completely cowardly, so that these may never be any more fighting in the world. And, from his own point of view, there is nothing to be said against him. The New Republic was, no doubt, a caricature, but it is an interest- ing work as showing, in a pleasantly reltdable form, what the logical carrying out of certain views would be, and the proposition I have just quoted is by no means the most startling of those that are arrived at. It need hardly be said that the qualities most particularly known as the christian virtues will be completely starved in the con^- munity we are considering. Such qualities as self denial and patience, for instance, will be out of place in any land where individual happiness is the summum bonum. The head and reason will condemn them, and the heart and instincts will ultimately follow, — though indeed, there may be some eaaes? in which the gradual weeding out of such sentiments will be very slow. There remains to me now ono more appi ct of the question beyond those I have up to now bf'.dn considering. I have always admitted, argumettt'' ^rattd. that the one point of happiness will actually be secured by infidels, and that all that need be said against them was tkat this earthly > ^^^iness would be purchased at too great a cost But we muy now go on to consider whether these people \7ill be even happy, or whether, perchance, their sum'num bonum may not prove somewhat difficult of attainment. Now whether honesty is always the best policy in this world, as it is now cons- tituted, is not a very easy question, yet I believe that it is 'Usually answered in the affirmative ; — is it is commonly held that the " good " (as the word is now understood) do 86 actually enjoy a happiar life in this \9Cild than the bad. Lei us consider the grounds of this belief. If happiness consists in objective surroundings only, in office, wealth, power, influence, and so on, no one can i)Ossibly hold that scrupulous honesty is always, or even generally, the best policy. Surely those who climb into the highest and most prominent places in this world are not the very scrupulous. Surely those of sensitive conscience a?id scrupulous honour, who decline to lay themselves out to please those in office and who would rather lose any re- ward or position than seek it by questionable means, who refuse to "make up to" influential men or to disguise their real opinions to court the popular sufirage, who act on each occasion simply and solely with a view to doing what is right and what is their duty, and not in order to conciliate the approbation of the great of this world, — surely these do not win the tangible prizes? But the proverb about honesty is true after all, and the meaning lies deep in the recesses of human nature. It is true because the man who has not '* got on," as the world calls it, in the matter of money and position, but who has failed because of a determination alwt 's to piefer the honestum to the utile, is happier and more proud within himself, and consequently more to be envied, than the man who has surpassed him in the race of life by employing the means which he himself has declined to employ. The knowledge that one is the real and intiinsic superior of the man who has been more successful, and that that superiority consists in the possession of a " mens conscia recti" is a far greater source of happiness to a man of a high type of nature and constitution than the success itself could ever be. Let us now turn to the infidel state we have been considering above, and show how the aspects of this question are altered when the principle is applied to its denizens. But we may notice that there is a certain group of cases in 39 which, even with things as they now are, the proverb is hardly trae. Its truth has been explained as lying not in the tangible advantages obtained by the honest, b at in their ease of mind. This argument understands the vsord honest as equal rather to " honourable " than to mere honesty in the pense of not cheating and stealing, — as equal, that is, to its ancient meaning rather than its modem. In the sense of mere abstinence from dishonesty, as the word is commonly used now, the proverb ought to be true of any well governed country, and true of all classes in it. But the class, or group of cases, in which the saying would not be true when interpreted in the sense I have given it, is the class of men in whom the instinctive knowledge, or consciousness, of right and wrong is so defective that the fact that they owe their success to questionable means would in no way interfere with enjoyment. But, if they still fail, after the employment of these questionable means, they are unhappy from failure, and from failure alone, since they have not the consciousness of right to support them, — nor would it support them (as members of the class mentioned above) even if they had it. Now in the infidel state, after a certain time, this consciousness will have worn away, so that there will be nothing to interfere with the worship of success, except, of course, such motives as personal disinclination, arising from indo- lence, etc., or the direct worship of pleasure as such. In other words, all will pursue success as an ideal except those who, being rich to start with, do not regard the increase of their wealth and influence as a great enough object to induce them to take the requisite exertions to obtain it, and those who, from merely desiring to enjoy the moment, do not care whether they go up the hill or down it. Both these classes act on prudential motives alone, and neither has any claim for consideration or pity for their non-achievement of glory, or power, or 40 whitever it may be that they would otherwise have been striving for. With the exception of these classes, more*^ over, all who fail to command snccess will fedl to attain, happiness also, — for they are not comforted by the consol- ing reflections of a " mens conscia recti." I am of course supposing that a sufficient amount of time has elapsed since the state became atheistic to allow the instincts and theories derived from christian days to die out. In an infidt^ of the present day, whose ethics are christian though Li . tb;.ets are not, the satisfaction derived from consciousnebt " right is probably just as strong as in a. Christian. Nor is there any need to deny that in a few exceptional cases the old sense of right and wrong will live on even when religion has completely disappeared. But in the immense majority of mankind a disbelief in the- Deity will be followed by a worship of self, and I am un- able to see how a student of history can deny this propo-^ sition. But what sort of happinass will, after all. be attained by even the successful in t lis state, and by those who, from prudential motives alone, do not care about success? Now the relation between happine^ and the surroundings that conduce to ease and affluence is not to- be readily fixed. There are some in whom, beyond doubt,, happiness is dependent, almost entirely, on the comfort and prosperity of their objective surroundings ; who are nearly certain to be unhappy when these are uncomfortable. Probably this would be the case with a far larger number than in a Christian state, since there would be less induce- ment to look for sources of happiness elsewhere, but it. may be allowed that there would still be some who would find enjoyment from the inner storehouse of the mind rather than from outside comfort and riches. Whether, there will be much food for enjoyment for this latter class, is a question we will come to presently, but let us first consider how much happiness can be secured by those 41 who only look to their objective surroundings. If we refer to writers of all ages, ancient and modem, Pagan and Christian, we get only one answer. A little money and no anxiety is better than a great deal with the cares and responsibilities which its possession involves. This opin* ion has been expressed in some form or other by writers of every land, language, and religion ; Yirgil and Horace, Swift and Fielding, are all agreed on this point. To quote passages would be an endless task, and as everybody's memory will supply him with a large stock there is no need to do so. What great truth is there lying at the bottom of this belief in the " deceitfulness of riches ? " Probably it lies in the fact that among the many sides of human nature there are some to which material luxury fails to minister. Comforts, in the long run, secure more animal happiness than great luxuries do, and when we rise from the animal to the mental side of man's nature, the blessings of the " golden mean " are still more appar- ent. That riches involve cares, and that office brings more worry than privilege, has been found out by all thinkers and philosophers from time immemorial. Per- haps I may be told, in answer that the everyday action of the world gives the lie to the dictum of the writers and philosophers; that these are days when everybody is making haste to be rich and that when riches increase they do, in spite of all com- mand to the contrary, set their hearts upon them, and that offices and honours and titles are still eagerly sought after in spite of the cares they bring with them. But to say that these objects are pursued and to say that they bring happiness are two different assertions, and though there is no denying the former there is a great deal to be said against thei latter. To argue that they would not be followed unless they brought happiness is to argue in the teeth of all experience of human nature. At Men frequently strive for objects which yield them no happiness whaerer ; it is almost impossible to read any biography and not see this. Now the snccessful winners of wealth and office in the infidel state are no mere likely to obtain happiness as a necessary result than they would be under the present state of things, while those who attempt the following of a Horatian line of philosophy are without any real basis for supposing that they will be completely happy, for the Horatian must be "Integer vHoj f '^erisque purus ; " he must feel the existence of sumoti'uig higher within his own mind and constitution than is offered by external wealth and show, and he must be a \. "?r ihe purer and simpler times of the past before barbaric luxury had obtained sway over the world, and before the race for wealth had crushed all idealism and beauty out of nine tenths of his fellow men. In short* the saying about honesty discussed above fails to be true in the infidel state, for the person who fails to obtain suc- cess owing to scrupulousness, under the materialist regime, will not have the comfort from within himself that will fall to the enviable lot of one so failing under a christian system. Love of the beautiful and poetic is pre- eminently the offspring of religion, and is not (or has not yet been) found in materialistic nations or ages. Horace had, may be, only a half belief in the gods, but the beauty of his conceptions rose from the half of him that believed, and not from the half of him that denied. The sunset of faith is a very different *T)henomenon from the night of developed materialism. There is no real poetry in that night ; unillumined by moon or stars, unbroken by any- thing but the cry of some one or two, here and there, who dream of higher things and wake abruptly only to find that the lowest depth of murky darkness has become a yet lower deep. "What poetry was produced by the^ age of Juvenal ? He was almost the only writer of the 48 age who wrote poetry even in the sense of verse, and his lines are memorable for their subject-matter alone, and not for any " invention," — the true meaning of poetry — in their composition. The intimate connection between re- ligion and the higher and more etherialized side of man's nature affords considerable indirect evidence of the truth of the former, and I hope in a future paper to say some- thing more on this point. But, to return to the infidel state, if even the rich are |iot wholly happy, what is to lighten the burthens of the poor ? What will become of those who, distanced in the race for material prosperity, sink into the hovel or cellar, with all the miseries now attendant or. that condition, but with no cherub Hope from the Pandora's box to leaven the lump of sorrow ? The lot of the poorer workmen in our great cities is quite wretched enough already, even with the hope of another world to lighten it, and the pursuit of earthly hap- piness will have a strangely mocking sound to those whose main struggle is against actual destitution and starvation. The toiler of to-day can look out through his factory window and picture to himself another land beyond, where the drudgery of toil shall be exchanged for endless joy, and the thought may add brightness to his heart and vigour to his arm ; but how shall the same man be comforted when scientists and philoso* phers hare made hiOi believe that there is no such future, and that his monotonous toil on this earth is the sum total of his whole existence. What is then to gladden the leaden-footed hours, in which, should his thoughts wander from his work, they will have little to fly to, save, probably, to a comfortless home, with squalid children, whose mouihs would lack bread should he, in despair, cease to go through his daily task? Will any system secure happiness that takes away from us the hope of seeing again our lost friends in another world ? Will any- 44 thing reconcile us to injustice in this world but the hope of all being made right in the next? Surely this point of happiness must be given up to us. There remains to me one point on which I propose to dwell. At the beginning of my paper I said that I might meet with the following objection to my line of argument^ namely that if heathen religions could support^ morality and yet be false, Christianity could also support morality and be false too. And I thijik some sort of answer to this objection can be made without assuming the direct work of an apologist. Int^^ theology proper I have no wish (and little ability) to stray ; I am only a layman, and^ like a good cobbler, I have no wish to go beyond my last. But, without borrowing from the works of Butler and Faley, I think some suggestions may be offered, which, when followed up and thought out at leisure by any who may care to do so, may lead to the conclusion that Chris* tianity is objectively true. The first suggestion is that while the G-reek and Boman mythologies sank in a short time under the attacks of rationalism and philosophy,. Christianity has endured the sharpest blows of all sorts of antagonism for eighteen centuries, and still remains a great power in the world — whether increasing or decrease ing in strength it is hard to say, but still a power,— retaining in her service the majority of the greatest intel- lects of the age. Another suggestive line of argument may be drawn out from a comparison of ancient mytho- logies with Christianity. These old religions contained a. mixture of truth as well as error, and they had many points in common with Christianity, not only in their morality but also even in their theology. Now I hope to- show that the portions of those creeds in which they resembled Christianity were the portions from which the good morality proceded ; and that the special points which differentiate Christianity from these religions are all emi- 46 \ nently adapted to a healthy ethical tone. Let us examine these old religions ? The same remarks may be applicable, mutatis mutandis, to all of them, for all I know to the contrary, but I choose the religions of Hellas and Rome, , simply as being those with which I am best acquainted. A very good summary will be found in Lord Lytton's **Itise and Fall of Athens" of the way in which the Hellienic religions became gradually developed. His object, however, being historical merely, he does not tak^ any especial care, in his handling of the subject, to dis- tinguish the false from the true, the healthy from the morbid, among the belief and imaginations of the warm blooded Q-reoks. The elements in common with Chris* tianity are worth searching for, and I will try to enumerate them, in order to show that there was more moral truth in the ancient religions than is commonly supposed. Now, although the G-reek and Roman religions were polytheistic, yet there was a vein of practical monotheism running through them. This is shown by nearly all writers in some form or other, but the chief evidence lies in the use of the word '• eeoc " in the Greek, and of the words " Deus " and "Numen" in the Latin languages. It would seem as though, after all, let the individual manifestations of the Divine principle be what they might, yet there was a Godhead somewhefe which showed itself in each and all of them ; as though it were this common Divine essence for which men looked, and to which they prayed under the name cf Zeus or Hermes or whoever it might happen to be ; and as though the condition on which divinity was to be attributed to these individual gods was the fact of their sharing in this essence. *' Numen " is a word used in so many different ways by Yirgil alone that to attempt to give any one English word or phrase for it would be ' a fruitless waste of time. But as a general rule it may be fairly construed " the Divinity," and is used in that 46 sense in many cases where no one particular God is present (as far as we can tell) to the Author's mind ; while Oeof and Deus are often used in a similar manner. Take "DeuB nobis hfBC otia fecit," for example, and who is to say what God is meant? If the writer had been a ;7ur0 polytheist he would, surely, have mentioned the divinity to whose beneficence his " otium " was to bo attributed. And it may also be remarked that Virgil put this sentiment into the mouth of a shepherd, who would probably cling to old faiths as much as any one, and that if the common people had held to pure polytheism Virgil would have been sure to have shown that they did so by the language he put into their mouths. He had quite enough dramatic talent and instinct to put into the mouth of Tityrus the sentiments appropriate to such a character. Even when the gods are spoken of all together, as, for instance, in such passages as " Divom inclementia, Divom, Has evertit opes " it would seem as though a sort of singularity ran through their action. Thus, in this particular instance, where the ghost of Hector speaks of the gods having des- troyed Troy, he does not say "the majority of the gods;." through we know that, according to the story, Venus at least was on the side of the Trojans. Another point of truth in the ancient creeds was their ethical teaching, — as far as it went. We find that, for the most part, the actions called by Christianity " sins " are condemned by these religions also. This is not in every case true, and I have certainly no intention of '' begging the question " by appearing to assume that whatever Christianity condemns is wrong ; but I merely wish to call attention to the fact that a large number, perhaps the majority, of the actions considered wrong in the old religions are also considered wrong in Christianity, though in a different way, and by a different chain of reasoning. Other points could be men- tioned, but I must go on to consider the points of ethical / i1 and dogmatic teaching which differentiate Christianity from other creeds, and will try to show that these are eminently healthy in the morality they produce, and eminently suited to supply the various {leedsof humanity. The most obvious distinguishing point in connection with Christianity is its capacity of adapting itself to the various nations and races of the world, so that there is no country to which it is unsuited. It may be, (as indeed seeems to be the case) that different /ormx of Christianity are suitable to different races ; Roman Catholicism, for instance, being apparently appropriate to the Latino-Celtic races, while the Teuton and Scandinavian prefer Protestantism , but the main doctrines, — or, at least, the more obviously dif- ferentiating doctrineB^ — of Christianity are common to both. Of the various Protestant religious systems, again, each seems to suit best some particular class ol society or type of character, but the difference, between the more pre- valent forms of faith is very small in proportion to the vastly important doctrines which all hold in common. Are not the Romans, the Episcopalians and the others all alike in holding to the Divinity of Our liord, the existence of a future state of rewards for the good and punishments for the bad, the necessity of repentance after sin, the for- giveuess of such sin after such repentance, the resurection of the body, and other doctrines? Do not all say the creed? Far indeed is it from me and from my thesis to discuss such subjects as these ; I only mention facts in order to bring'out what I mean to advar.^ ; namely that the differences between the various forms ok Christianity are small compared with the points held in common, while the essentials and spirit of Christianity are adapted to all nations and all characters. This universality of adapta- bility cannot be predicated of any other form of religion whatever. We can imagine all the world as ultimately Christian, but we cannot imagine all the world as em* 48 bracing any other existing faith. Who, for instance, can conceive of Mahommedanism as the prevailing creed of the United States? Now this distinguishing "note" of Christianity is an eminently good and sonnd one, ar n- tains, I think, considerable evidence of its objeotivt .* ath. Bnt far grander and more suggestive evidence will be found when we turn to the consideration of the indi* vidual differentiating points of Ghristianity. I recollect once reading an article in an English Review in which the writer was discussing the question of whether demo- cratic or conservative views in politics were moat favoured by Christianity, and after he had gone into the point at some length he said that anyhow, whether we decided that Christianity was in favour of equality or not, there was no doubt of its being in favour of Fraternity. |Now this appears to me to bo so completely true as ev to express, in one word, the leading characteristic of s- tianity as distinguished from other religions systems. Each scheme of religious belief or philosophical teaching has its ideal of life ; its rule of conduct ; and Christianity is no exception. Speaking from the outside point of view I have all along adopted, I should certainly say that the leading ethical doctrine of Christianity was brotherhood. It is no answer to this to throw out the usual sneer as to the quarrelling and bickering of Christian churches and sects with one another, * because this quarrelling and bickering is not part of the teaching of Christianity, but is eminently opposed to it. Proof of this may be found by referring to the list of the specially Christian virtues given by St. Paul. Besides, such of the members of the various Christian bodies as go to synods and congresses -are not typical representatives of the average members of those bodies. The kind of man who likes to get elected as a lay member of a church conference is probably an * Whiob, hf the wfty, ia ludloroualy exaggerated. 4» excellent character in many wayH, but he it not, a^ a rule, a good type of the average oducatesM these into the utmost pro- minence ; while his utterances are not restrained by the strong sense of responsibility that is felt by hio clergy. The smaller the points, indeed, the more he enjoys tht; discussion of them ; nor does this mean necessarily, that he is narrow minded ut h/eart, but his feeling is something akin to the pride that a member of a club or association frequently feels in acting as champion of the s^^cial cus- toms and traditions of that association. Add to this that some minds have a natural li!.ing for small details, and that it is the purpose of church assemblies to discuss differences rather than points on which all are agreed, and I think the apparently unchristian tone of these meetings, against which so much sarcasm is hurled,' will be sufficiently accounted for. I touch on this subject because the proceedings of such assemblies are often pointed to as a proof that fraternity is not now-a-days a characteristic of Christianity, and I wish to show that the party rancour of these meetings is only to be taken as re- presenting the views of the people from whom it proceeds, and not those of the bulk of the members of the religions bodies. A " representative " is a fine title, but it is not always to be taken in its literal meaning. And now let us turn to the positive evidence for regarding fraternity as a distinguishing mark of Christianity. I have observed above, in some connection, that Christianity alone had built hospitals and orphanages, and so forth, and I exem- plified the connection between religion and the spirit that keeps up such institutions by citing the French name for a hospital, — the " Hotel Dieu." No heathen extended his 8 50 self denial furthur than his own family, as a matter of duty ; though some showed it towards intimate friends as a matter of spontaneous feeling. To " the state " there was^ perhaps, even more devotion in ancient times than in modem ; but the feeling sprang from the intensely strong sense of membership in their community that characterized the early nations, and was in no way connected with sacrifice in the sense of giving up to those with whom we have, from a selfish point of view, no concern. A man who fightd well in a battle field, in order that his own country may win, is no more a,elf denying than a boy who plays well in a football field, in order that his own school may win ; or, rather, the love of ourselves in our individual capacity is swallowed up by a pride of our- selves in our capacity as members of a certain association. The latter feeling may be infinitely higher than the former, but it is not self denial pure and simple. Patriotism has been described, let us remember, as " the noblest form of selfii&hness," and there is a great deal of truth in that des- cription. But the Apostolic command to christians to bear one another's burthens is not qualified by any limi- tations as to the race or creed of the person whote distress we relieve. Now where we have no sense of community, or identical interest, with one for whom a service is done, such a service is wholly unselfish : otherwise it is only partially so ; and the inculcation of the duty of perform- ing such wholly altruistic actions is a differentiating mark of Christianity. In a case in which our own interests and those of others coincide, no moral credit can be claimed for any benefits we may confer, — a point which Mr. Herbert Spencer seems to miss,— but an ordinary human being may fairly be thankful when such occasions arise. Mr. Spencer contends that too much " altruism," as he calls it, would end by ruining the community, and that where each man looks after his own interests, in an honest 61 way, the good of the whole will naturally follow. Now, as there is a certain amount of truth in his views as to the dangers of excessive " altruism," it is as well to try to find out what the attitude of Christianity upon the subject really is, — not, immediately, in order to praise or condemn that attitude, but merely to see what it actually is, and then to inquire into its suitability to the existence of a healthy ethical tone among men on the question of their duty to one another. Mr. Spencer's objection to excessive altruism, or acting for the good of others, is that people will look to their neighbours to bear their burthens for them, instep of bearing them for themselves. He also rather implies that Christianity aids and abets this depen- dence on others by inculcating so strongly the duty of helping those who have need. But does Christianity give any colour to the casting of our burthens on other people ? On the contrary, the theory of individual respon- sibility is held by every christian church. And if it be argued that nevertheless the tone of Christianity is in favour of an inclination to shirk responsibility, let us look at the actual words of the New Testament on the subject. We are told to bear one another's '.' rthens, but told also in the same breath that each mau must bear his own burthen. The latter precept is in the form of a statement, as if it were a perfectly obvious fact, and the command to bear one another's burthens must not therefore be taken AU such a sense as to destroy the force of what is stated as an existing truth. How theologians may explain the two texts I do not know, but to an ordinary intelligence the logical and sensible explanation seems to be this; that while it is our duty to help our friends by suggestion, example, &c., the ultimate responsibility for following or rejecting such suggestion or example rests on the individual who is the object of our care ; in other words that oxLi: own alfairs we are dound to settle, and are • 62 answerable for the settling of them, (whether we will or no,) while, as to the affairs of others, we are to do our best, in a fitting and inoffensive manner, to give a help- ing hand where we can, but we do not take the respon- sibility off our friends' shoulders. For instance, suppope I go to some friend for advice as to which of two courses to pursue when in some temporary difficulty, and suppose his advice is the opposite to whf iy own judge- ment would have suggested, the ultima^j responsibility of taking his advice or following my own opinion rests on myself; and, if, after weighing the grounds of his opmion, I still decidedly prefer my own, I o^ght to act on my own, and even if I do act on his advice after all, * the responsibility for results rests on me. Surely this view is a sound and practical one, and eminently adapted to the development of the spirit of helping one another without losing the sense of individual responsibility : and such a reconciliation as is here afforded of the principles of mutual help and of minding one's own business could not, I venture to think, be improved upon by modern political pnilosophers. But this " note " of Christianity beings no element of compromise into its command to relieve the necessities of those in actual want. A starv- ing man must be fed even if he is starving from his own fault ; and in no other system is this duty insisted on. I would be glad to enter somewhat more fully into this part of the teaching of Christianity, but I do not wish to seem to digress from the rule I have laid down, «. e. that of merely mentioning the points of Christianity that appear to be eminently suitable to man, and leaving others to draw conclusions. If these points of ethical teaching are more suited to mankind than any other that thinkers have yet devised, though in no way can the objective truth of * It is of course his duty, if he advise me at all, to do so to the best of his ability. 68 the christian religion be concluded as an actual consequence, yet some amonnt of probability may be pretty fairly inferred. I will only mention one more disttngnishing "note" of Christianity, and will then briefly sum up what I have urged in this paper. Religious systems are frequently to be readily distinguished from one another by the different lines they have adopted in dealing with the every day worldly life of their adherents ; some laying down elaborate rules of condiT jt, (like the Jewish,) and othera leaving men pretty much to themselves, as was the case with the Eoman and Hellenic religions. Between these lines of action Christianity holds a middle course, not laying down a number of rules to cover individual actions as such, but supplying us with a sufficient; stock of general principles of conduct to enable us to judge, by reference to these principles, what our course of action ought rightly to be. Thus we are neither hampered and tied in by the cords of elaborate and petty regulations, nor, on the other hand, are we left floundering in a sea of uncertainty without a light house by which to shape our steps. We have principles upon which to form our judgement in each aflair as it arises, without our indivi- dual actions being prescribed for us. I am not aware that any other religion has adopted this method ; most others, if not all, having either left^ their adherents to their own devices, (provided they committed no actual crime) or laid down a system of rules that gave the human judgement little or no scope for deliberation. If this lines argues health in Christianity, I think the point is not unimportant, as the question of how to reconcile the existence of the independent judgement of man with ethical laws laid down by a system has always been a puzzle to thinkers and to statemen alike. • And now, what is it that I have been urging ? Of the historical portion of what I have said there is nothing 64 farther to be remarked ; I answer for the accuracy of the facts I have mentioned, and it is for others to accept or reject the conclusions that I have attempted to draw from them. And, for the rest, I will briefly recapitulate what I have brought forward. I am the first to admit the fact that among the present generation of agnostics and infi- dels there are many who are actuated, in their schemes for the regen' ^tion of morality and society, by the best and purest of motives ; and that their love of humanity urges them to as much unselfishness as love of G-od could urge a christian. But this unselfishness is a part of the creed they have rejected, not of the new creed they have adopted instead. They cling to their old teaching as to their duty towards their neighbour with the same tenacity with which some of those who have cume to live in the New World keep up the beloved habits and cus- toms that link them with their past life in the old. But their children have no such abiding memories, and can accept the new state of things without a sigh. This second generation, unhampered with any idea of loving their neighbours as themselves, will devote themselves to a discussion of what is right and what wrong, without any preconceived ideas as to there being anything beyond themselves to work for or even to sigh for. They cannot look back from the domains of materialism across an ocean of doubt and uncertainty into an old land of faith, and propably they count themselves the happier for their inability to do so. Instincts themselves with these people will alter, before many generations have passed, and, if no next world be believed in, what will be the ruling force in this life ? I contend that it will be selfishness, and for the reasons that I have stated at length above. This selfishness will only be stopped by the actual criminal law ; and this law, (I omitted to mention,) will have to be of terrible severity, since a hungry man will have no 66 reason for preferring the endurance of hardship to stealing, unless the prison is such a dreadful place that any con- ceivable misery outside it would be preferable to a sojourn within its walls. The hungry man in our own time has the precepts of his religion to urge him to every attempt to earn his bread by honest means before he gives way to temptation, and he has its terrors also to look forward to if he steal. Of course no one desires tiiat such a consi- deration as fear should be brought forward as an element in anyone's determination to act rightly, but, though, in the case of a man who continually does his best to follow the precepts of his religion, this element may become com- pletely eliminated, yet, with low and debased natures, who are not accustomed to take right action upon the simple promptings of their ovi n better judgement, — trained by a long course of religions instructions, — and to men who have never been under humenizing and elevating influences, probably the belief in a future penalty of some severe kind is not without a strong deterrent effect. It is incorrect to suppose that the brutalized and criminal classes do not believe in a future state, for the evidence of prison chaplains, jailers, ' and other persons specially qualified to form an opinion, leads to the conclusion that they do believe in some kind of penalty * in another world. This consideration is probably one reason why the death penalty is so much dreaded, and it is certainly a cause of the infrequency of suicide. The increase in the percentage of suicides in Germany has been attributed by thinkers in that country to the increase of materialistic and infidel views. And this is very likely, for who, when in hopeless misery would " grunt and sweat under a weary life but that the dread of something after death puzzles the will," etc. ? To resume the thread of what I have urged, let us suppose an infidel state to have grown up, and to * Of what kind this penalty may b« has of course no bearing on the question. have existed as an infidel state long enough for the ins- tincts and habits of thought logically generated by atheism to have taken complete possession of the minds of the people, and what is likely to bo the result ? Their ideas being bounded by this world, their summum bonum must be sought in this world also, and their hopes and aspira- tions bounded by it. Laws and philosophy will be, in the end, equally impotent to induce the majority to adopt any other end and aim than self, and the selfish desires — riches, office, etc. ; — and these laws themselves will only be obeyed in so far as they are supported by threats of penalty, since there will be in them no element that will ensure their being respected, owing to the absence of a religious principle as their nominal foundation. " A Deo lex " is a theory that gives to many people the requisite patience to obey cheerfully a law of the state which they may consider a very bad and unjust one, but the citizens of the infidel state will have no such motive, and indi- viduals will evade a law they may happen to dislike from the mere fact that by no principle but necessity do they hold their actions bound. If history is more clear on one point than another in connexion with this subject, it is on this, viz. : the decline of patriotism as a conse- quence of a decline of religious faith. The real fact pro- bably is that the higher side of human nature is, as it were, starved under a materialistic regime, while the lower desires, — the money making capacity, etc. — are given a a correspondingly high position. A country governed by the " bourgeoisie " will usually prefer its material interests to its honour in cases where the two may happen to clash, and this will of course be specially the case with a country whose rulers and other inhabitants do not even pretend to care for other than their purely selfish interests. And if they do not care to work for their own country except where their individual interests would be benefited by it, \ 57 d fortiori they will do nothing for the good of countries and people that are not connected with them. They will strive for happiness alone, and will they obtain it ? Even if confortable objective surroundings are sufficient to attain it, without any higher graces of the mind baing necessary it will only be attained by the minority. The majority in any country, (as^ven Mr. Stuart Mill admits, and as Mr. Adam Hinith most distinctly asserts,) will always be poor, and what is to lighten the hard lot of the poor if this life is regarded by them as the sum total of their existence ? Even people in fairly comfortable circumstances are fre- quently overtaken with the feeling that there are more pains than pleasures in life ; even to them there come occasions in which the sky seems to have lost its blue and the herbage its green, in which no object in life seems worth the striving for, and in which we seem to have neither the will nor the power to take up and carry on our daily cross. Who of us has not felt this ? Yet, with those who are tolerably comfortable, life on this earth contains, and must contain, more of happiness of a purely selfish kind than it offers to the poor toiler, so what must these feelings be to him V All the evils of this world, with no hope of joy in another existence ; what a picture is here ! Yet it is a perfectly true and fair one, and nothing in it, as far as I can see, is in any way exaggerated. Pro- bably it will be said that, if Christianity be false, the inculcation of its doctrines for the sake of the good they may effect is a highly immoral and degrading course to take. I hold this view also, so strongly indeed as to agree completely with the forcible language of Professor Huxley, who wrote, in a recent article on the subject in the ** Nineteenth century," that, in his opinion, whatever might be the amount of wickedness and immorality pro- duced by a generation of infidelity, the lowest depth of meanness would not be reached unless people began to 4 58 teach Christianity, knowing it to be false, in order that a certain result might be produced by it. I quote from memory, but I am sure that I have not overstated the force of his words. But the fact that Christianity actually does produce this good, and that no ethical system has yet been yet thought out that even the thinker himself has really hoped could do more, and the fact that the Christian system is suitable to all men and all times, — all these facts, I say, afford evidence, though not proof, that Christianity is true. Probably these can never be a better indirect argument for the truth of Christianity than Bishop Butter's Analogy, a work which is far more valuable than Dr. Paley's Evidences, as the latter work is, to a great extent, specially directed against the particular attacks on Christianity that were made by the Deists of that day. Butler's work is a book for all time, and is as valuable now as when it was written. But the actual proof of Jhe objective truth of Christianity is not what I have been trying to give,— except by throwing out one or two sugges- tions which may lead to trains of thought on the subject, from which some definite conclusion may be finally arrived at. For the rest I have contented myself with trying to prove that a lowering of the tone of morality has always followed a decline of theological belief, and that such lowering is the perfectly natural and logical consequence. I will conclude with a word as to how, in my opinon, the question of the truth of Christianity should be ap- proached and studied by an educatdd man who has begun to feel grave and radical misgivings upon the subject. I believe he will find nothing worse than to sit down to read with a frantic determination to prove Christianity right if possible, and to give the utmost weight to all arguments that he may find to tell in her favour. For he will never be able to forget that this is his desire, and, therefore, during the periods xti, which the objections to 69 Christianity press most nearly home to him, he will be sure to remember that, in his investigation into the matter, he has not given these quite fairplay ; and will then be bound to confess that the particular position he holds with regard to the question is, therefore, slightly more in favour of Christianity than, in perfect fairness, it ought to be ; and the hold that the arguments on the Christian side have obtained over him will thus be considerably weakened. In other words, the lurking knowledge that he has set out on his inquiry with the spirit of an advocate rather than that of a Judge will oblige him to feel that his conclusion will, in consequence, be untrustworthy. Let him, therefore approach the subject with his mind com- pletely without preconviction, and even without a desire to come to any particular conclusion ; and let him, for a long time, refrain from even asking himself to which end he is tending. And, in ridding himself of prejudgement in favor of Christianity, let him recollect that there are other prejudices than those generated, by religious cre- dulity, — that there are prejudices generated by the catch, words of the materialistic philosophers, ^ many of whose many of whose aphorisms and maxims involve a peiitio principii every bit as much as do any of the dogmas of theologians. Let him recollect also that proof of the truth or falsity of matters concerning the soul, the existence of another world, etc., is out of the question, and that con- clusions must be arrived at from probabilities ; and that the rules that govern mathematical reasoning are not the only rules of thinking in existence. Let him discuss the question freely and fairly with intelligent men of all schools of thought, in order to see upon what foundations each builds his conclusions. This will lead him to see that the habit of unconsiously begging the question is * a. ff. " T>e non apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est ratio." This may do for some studies, but not for philosophy. ■.S.i^lithrj 60 found equally among all parties, and will cause him to be careful before coming to a very decided conclusion upon any particular point. Finally, let him not worry himself for too long at a time over any one part of the matter, but rather take time to let the evidence soak into him, and rest while it is doing so, or work at some other part. Frequently it will happen that one side of the question will shed light upon another ; and, as information from outside will sometimes be of much assistance in the same way, it will do him no harm to read, during his inquiry, on other subjects. * I think it is not too much to hope that the result of such an inquiry will be that one who pursues it may be ultimately induced to return home from the mazes of uncertainty to the old light that seemed clear to him early days, and to penetrate through the finely woven arguments of the Greeks and the Germans, '* To where, beyond those voices, there is peace." LEAD, KINDLY LIGHT. Due me, Stella Dei ; per caeca ciepuecula due me, Nox atra est ; nequeo, Stella, redire domum : Til, t«, siste pedes, non fas milii tota videre Luminn, Hit modo fas, Stella, movere pedem. i Non sic usque fui, nee opem Stellre usque poposci, Optavique diem ; — nunc, Dea, siste pedes.^ Turn lucem petii claram, spretoque timore, Jactabam ; — oh, sceleris, Stella, eris usque memor ? Tu, quae ine per saecla juvflsti, in gcecla juvabis, Per mar^ per terram. Lux mihi donee erit ■ Me quoque, mane novo, coelestes undique vultus Quos dilexi olim, perdideramque, petunt. Inductive Logic will, I think, be useful.