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-the saved to have eternity of happiness, the lost to be with the devils in hell.

Again, I am not sure whether it was on the same occasion, but it was in following the same line of thought, Newman described closely some of the incidents of our Lord's passion; he then paused. For a few moments there was a breathless silence. Then, in a low, clear voice, of which the faintest vibration was audible in the farthest corner of St. Mary's, he said, "Now, I bid you recollect that He to whom these things were done was Almighty God." It was as if an electric stroke had gone through the church, as if every person present understood for the first time the meaning of what he had all his life been saying. I suppose it was an epoch in the mental history of more than one of my Oxford contemporaries.

Another sermon left its mark upon me. It was upon evidence. I had supposed up to that time that the chief events related in the Gospels were as well authenticated as any other facts of history. I had read Paley and Grotius at school, and their arguments had been completely satisfactory to me. The Gospels had been written by apostles or companions of apostles. There was sufficient evidence, in Paley's words, "that many professing to be original witnesses of the Christian miracles had passed their lives in labors, dangers, and sufferings in attestation of the accounts which they delivered." St. Paul was a further and independent authority. It was not conceivable that such men as St. Paul and the other apostles evidently were should have conspired to impose a falsehood upon the world, and should have succeeded in doing it undetected in

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age exceptionally cultivated and sceptical. Gibbon 1 had studied also, and had thought about the five causes by which he explained how Christianity came to be believed; but they had seemed to me totally inadequate. I was something more than surprised, therefore, when I heard Newman say that Hume's argument against the credibility of miracles was logically sound. laws of nature, so far as could be observed, were uniform, and in any given instance it was more likely as a mere matter of evidence that men should de

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ceive or be deceived, than that those laws should have been deviated from. Of course he did not leave the matter in this position. Hume goes on to say that he is speaking of evidence as addressed to the reason; the Christian religion addresses itself to faith, and the credibility of it is therefore unaffected by his objection. What Hume said in irony Newman accepted in earnest. Historically the proofs were insufficient, or sufficient only to create a sense of probability. Christianity was apprehended by a faculty essentially differIt was called faith. But what was faith, and on what did it rest? Was it as if mankind had been born with but four senses, by which to form their notions of things external to them, and that a fifth sense of sight was suddenly conferred on favored individuals, which converted conjecture into certainty ? I could not tell. For myself this way of putting the matter gave me no new sense at all, and only taught me to distrust my old ones.

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I say at once that I think it was injudicious of Newman to throw out before us thus abruptly an opinion so extremely agitating. I explain it by supposing that here, as elsewhere, his sermons contained simply the workings of his own. mind, and were a sort of public confession which he made as he went along. I suppose that something of this kind had heen passing through him. He was in advance of his time. advance of his time. He had studied the early fathers; he had studied Church history, and the lives of the saints and martyrs. He knew that the hard and fast line which Protestants had drawn at which miracles had ceased was which no historical canon could reasonably defend. Stories of the exercise of supernatural power ran steadily from the beginning to the latest period of the Church's existence; many of them were as well supported by evidence as the miracles of the New Testament; and if reason was to be the judge, no arbitrary separation of the age of the apostles from the age of their successors was possible. Some of these stories might be inventions, or had no adequate authority for them; but for others there was authority of eye-witnesses; and if these were to be set aside by a peremptory act of will as unworthly of credit,

the Gospel miracles themselves might fall before the same methods. The argument of Hume was already silently applied to the entire post-apostolic period. It had been checked by the traditionary reverence for the Bible. But this was not reason; it was faith. Perhaps, too, he saw that the alternative did not lie as sharply as Paley supposed, between authentic fact and deliberate fraud. Legends might grow; they grew every day, about common things and persons, without intention to deceive. Imagination, emotion, affection, or, on the other side, fear and animosity, are busy with the histories of men who have played a remarkable part in the world. Great historic figures-a William Tell, for instance-have probably had no historical existence at all, and yet are fastened indelibly into national traditions. Such reflections as these would make it evident that if the Christian miracles were to be believed, not as possibly or probably true, but as indisputably true -true in such a sense that a man's life on earth, and his hope for the future, could be securely based upon them-the history must be guaranteed by authority different in kind from the mere testimony to be gathered out of books. I suppose every thinking person would now acknowledge this to be true. And we see, in fact, that Christians of various persuasions supplement the evidence in several ways. Some assume the verbal inspiration of the Bible; others are conscious of personal experiences which make doubt impossible. Others, again, appeal justly to the existence of Christianity as a fact, and to the power which it has exerted in elevating and humanizing mankind. Newman found what he wanted in the living authority of the Church, in the existence of an organized body which had been instituted by our Lord Himself, and was still actively present among us as a living witness of the truth. Thus the imperfection of the outward evidence was itself an argument for the Catholic theory. All religious people were agreed that the facts of the Gospel narrative really happened as they were said to have happened. Proof there must be somewhere to justify the conviction; and proof could only be found in the admission that the Church, the organized Church with its bishops

and priests, was not a human institution, but was the living body through which the Founder of Christianity Himself was speaking to us.

Such, evidently, was one use to which Hume's objection could be applied, and to those who, like Newman, were provided with the antidote, there was no danger in admitting the force of it. Nor would the risk have been great with his hearers if they had been playing with the question as a dialectical exercise. But he had made them feel and think seriously about it by his own intense earnestness, and, brought up as most of them had been to believe that Christianity had sufficient historical evidence for it, to be suddenly told that the famous argument against miracles was logically valid after all, was at least startling. The Church theory, as making good a testimony otherwise defective, was new to most of us, and not very readily taken in. To remove the foundation of a belief, and to substitute another, is like putting new foundations to a house. The house itself may easily be overthrown in the process. I have said before that in a healthy state of things religion is considered too sacred to be argued about. It is believed as a matter of duty, and the why or the wherefore are not so much as thought about. Revolutions are not far off when men begin to ask whence the sovereign derives his authority. Scepticism is not far off when they ask why they believe their creed. We had all been satisfied about the Gospel history; not a shadow of doubt had crossed the minds of one of us; and though we might not have been able to give a logical reason for our certitude, the certitude was in us, and might well have been let alone. I for one began to read Hume attentively, and though old associations prevented me from recognizing the full force of what he had to say, no doubt I was unconsciously affected by him. It must have been so, for I remember soon after insisting to a friend that the essential part of religion was morality. My friend replied that morality was only possible to persons who received power through faith to keep the commandments. But this did not satisfy me, for it seemed contrary to fact. There were persons of great excellence whose spiritual beliefs were ut

terly different. I could not bring myself to admit that the goodness, for instance, of a Unitarian was only apparent. After all is said, the visible conduct of

men is the best test that we can have of their inward condition. If not the best, where are we to find a better?-Good Words.

VI.

THE UNITY OF NATURE. BY THE DUKE OF ARGYLL.

ON THE MORAL CHARACTER OF MAN CONSIDERED IN THE LIGHT OF THE UNITY OF NATURE.

THE Consciousness of unworthiness in respect to moral character is a fact as fundamental and as universal in the human mind as the consciousness of limitation in respect to intellectual power. Both of them may exist in a form so rudimentary as to be hardly recognizable. The limits of our intelligence may be felt only in a dim sense of unsatisfied curiosity. The faultiness of our character may be recognized only in the vaguest emotions of occasional selfreproach. But as the knowledge of mankind extends, and as the cultivation of their moral faculties improves, both these great elements of consciousness become more and more prominent, and occupy a larger and larger place in the horizon of their thoughts. It is always the men who know most who feel most how limited their knowledge is. And so likewise it is always the loftiest spirits who are most conscious of the infirmities which beset them.

But although these two great facts in human consciousness are parallel facts, there is a profound difference between them; and to the nature and bearing of this difference very careful attention must be paid.

We have seen in regard to all living things what the relation is between the physical powers which they possess and the ability which they have to use them. It is a relation of close and perfect correspondence. Everything requisite to be done for the unfolding and upholding of their life they have impulses universally disposing them to do, and faculties fully enabling them to accomplish. We have seen that in the case of some animals this correspondence is already perfect from the infancy of the creature,

and that even in the case of those which are born comparatively helpless, there is always given to them just so much of impulse and of power as is requisite for the attainment of their own maturity. It may be nothing more than the mere impulse and power of opening the mouth for food, as in the case of the chicks of many birds; or it may be the much more active impulse and the much more complicated power by which the young mammalia seek and secure their nourishment; or it may be such wonderful special instincts as that by which the newly hatched Cuckoo, although blind and otherwise helpless, is yet enabled to expel its rivals from the nest, and thus secure that undivided supply of food without which it could not survive. But whatever the impulse or the power may be, it is always just enough for the work which is to be done. We have seen, too, that the amount of prevision which is involved in those instinctive dispositions and actions of animals is often greatest in those which are low in the scale of life, so that the results for which they work, and which they do actually attain, must be completely out of sight to them. In the wonderful metamorphoses of insect life, the imperfect creature is guided with certainty to the choice and enjoyment of the conditions which are necessary to its own development; and when the time comes it selects the position, and constructs the cell in which its own mysterious transformations are accomplished.

All this is in conformity with an absolute and universal law in virtue of which there is established a perfect unity between these three things:-first, the physical powers and structure of all living creatures; secondly, those dispositions and instinctive appetites which are seated in that structure to impel and guide its powers; and thirdly, the external conditions in which the creature's

life is passed, and in which its faculties find an appropriate field of exercise.

If man has any place in the unity of nature, this law must prevail with him. There must be the same correspondence, between his powers and the instincts which incite and direct him in their use. Accordingly it is in this law that we find the explanation and the meaning of his sense of ignorance. For without a sense of ignorance there could be no desire of knowledge, and without his desire of knowledge man would not be man. His whole place in nature depends upon it. His curiosity, and his wonder, and his admiration, and his awe--these are all but the adjuncts and subsidiary allies of that supreme affection which incites him to inquire and know. Nor is this desire capable of being resolved into his tendency to seek for an increased command over the comforts and conveniences of life. It is wholly independent of that kind of value which consists in the physical utility of things. The application of knowledge comes after the acquisition of it, and is not the only, or even the most powerful, inducement to its pursuit. The real incitement is an innate appetite of the mind-conscious in various degrees of the mystery, and of the beauty, and of the majesty of the system in which it lives and moves; conscious, too, that its own relations to that system are but dimly seen and very imperfectly understood. In a former chapter we have seen that this appetite of knowledge is never satisfied, even by the highest and most successful exertion of those faculties which are, nevertheless, our only instruments of research. We have seen, too, what is the meaning and significance of that great reserve of power which must exist within us, seeing that it remains unexhausted and inexhaustible by the proudest successes of discovery. In this sense it is literally true that the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. Every new advance has its new horizon. Every answered question brings into view another question unanswered, and perhaps unanswerable, lying close behind it. And so we come to see that this sense of ignorance is not only part of our nature, but one of its highest parts-necessary to its development, and indicative of those unknown and indefi

nite prospects of attainment which are at once the glory and the burden of humanity.

It is impossible to mistake, then, the place which is occupied among the unities of nature by that sense of ignorance which is universal among men. It belongs to the number of those primary mental conditions which impel all living things to do that which it is their special work to do, and in the doing of which the highest law of their being is fulfilled. In the case of the lower animals, this law, as to the part they have to play and the ends they have to serve in the economy of the world, is simple, definite, and always perfectly attained. No advance is with them possible, no capacity of improvement, no dormant or undeveloped powers leading up to wider and wider spheres of action. With man, on the contrary, the law of his being is a law which demands progress, which endows him with faculties enabling him to make it, and fills him with aspirations which cause him to desire it. Among the lowest savages there is some curiosity and some sense of wonder, else even the rude inventions they have achieved would never have been made, and their degraded superstitions would. not have kept their hold. Man's sense of ignorance is the greatest of his gifts, for it is the secret of his wish to know. The whole structure and the whole furniture of his mind is adapted to this condition. The highest law of his being is to advance in wisdom and knowledge; and his sense of the presence and of the power of things which he can only partially understand is an abiding witness of this law, and an abiding incentive to its fulfilment.

In all these aspects there is an absolute contrast between our sense of limitation in respect to intellectual power (or knowledge) and our sense of unworthiness in respect to moral character. It is not of ignorance, but of knowledge, that we are conscious here-even the knowledge of the distinction between good and evil, and of that special sense which in our nature is associated with it-namely, the sense of moral obligation.

Now it is a universal fact of consciousness as regards ourselves, and of observation, in regard to others, that, knowing evil to be evil, men are never

theless prone to do it, and that, having this sense of moral obligation, they are nevertheless prone to disobey it. This fact is entirely independent of the particular standard by which men in different stages of society have judged certain things to be good and other things to be evil. It is entirely independent of the infinite variety of rules according to which they recognize the doing of particular acts, and the abstention from other acts, to be obligatory upon them. Under every variety of circumstance in regard to these rules, under every diversity of custom, of law, or of religion by which they are established, the general fact remains the same-that what men themselves recognize as duty they continually disobey, and what according to their own standard they acknowledge to be wrong they continually do.

There is unquestionably much difficulty in finding any place for this fact among the unities of nature. It falls therefore in the way of this inquiry to investigate how this difficulty arises, and wherein it consists.

And here we at once encounter those old fundamental questions on the nature, the origin, and the authority of the moral sense which have exercised the human mind for more than two thousand years; and on which an eminent writer of our own time has said that no sensible progress has been made. This result may well suggest that the direction which inquiry has taken is a direction in which progress is impossible. If men will try to analyze something which is incapable of analysis, a perpetual consciousness of abortive effort will be their only and their inevitable reward.

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For just as in the physical world there are bodies or substances which are (to us) elementary, so in the spiritual world. there are preceptions, feelings, or emotions which are equally elementary that is to say, which resist all attempts to resolve them into a combination of other and simpler affections of the mind. And of this kind is the idea, or the conception, or the sentiment of obligation. That which we mean when we say, "I ought," is a meaning which is incapable of reduction. It is a meaning which enters as an element into many other conceptions, and into the import of many other forms of expression, but

it is itself uncompounded. All attempts to explain it do one or other of these two things-either they assume and include the idea of obligation in the very circumlocutions by which they profess to explain its origin, or else they build up a structure which, when completed, remains as destitute of the idea of obligation as the separate materials of which it is composed. In the one case, they first put in the gold, and then they think that by some alchemy they have made it; in the other case, they do not indeed first put in the gold, but neither in the end do they ever get it. No combination of other things will give the idea of obligation, unless with and among these things there is some concealed or unconscious admission of itself. But in this, as in other cases with which we have already dealt, the ambiguities of language afford an easy means or an abundant source of self-deception. One common phrase is enough to serve the purpose-the association of ideas." Under this vague and indefinite form of words all mental operations and all mental affections may be classed. Consequently those which are elementary may be included, without being expressly named. This is one way of putting in the gold and then of pretending to find it as a result. Take one of the simplest cases in which the idea of obligation arises, even in the rudest minds

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namely, the case of gratitude to those who have done us good. Beyond all question, this simple form of the sense of obligation is one which involves the association of many ideas. It involves the idea of self as a moral agent and the. recipient of good. It involves the idea of other human beings as likewise moral agents, and as related to us by a common nature, as well as, perhaps, by still more special ties. It involves the idea of things good for them, and of our having power to confer these things upon them. All these ideas are "associated" in the sense of gratitude toward those who have conferred upon us any kind of favor. But the mere word associa tion" throws no light whatever upon the nature of the connection. "Association" means nothing but grouping or contiguity of any kind. It may be the grouping of mere accident-the associations of things which happen to lie to

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