brute is capable of hungering and thirsting after righteousness. Man is capable of aspiring to an ideal, as well as of worshipping the Unseen; other minds are not. Herein lies the insurmountable distinction between man and brute. Yet it is very slowly that any tribes of men have risen into devout longings after moral goodness. The primary and fundamental idea of right conduct is that of Duty owing from man to man, Duty enforced either by public law or by social opinion. Hence the measure of Right and Wrong is for a long time found in the judgments of the neighbours and superiors. A little people which lives besides dangerous enemies needs defence by every man who can bear arms: Bravery is thereupon made the chief virtue and is almost identified with excellence. Aspiring men then hunger for good repute among their own people: that there is any higher standard of goodness, does not occur to them. Praise is desired, not Righteousness. When they do wrong, Ignominy is feared, not Sin; and when Ignominy befals them, Mortification is felt, not Penitence, not Contrition. This is a necessary stage in man's history. It is no more to be blamed, than childish inexperience is to be blamed. It is a childish state, in which many nations continue long. If they hear of earnest desire to be delivered from Sin, and that there is an instinct of the human heart which aspires to Righteousness, they are surprized, even puzzled, and avow that they know nothing of such instinct. "Who is a good man ?" is a question put by a Roman poet. He replies, "Whoever observes the decrees of the senate, the statute-law, and men's established rights." There was no philosophy in that reply; nevertheless, it must be admitted, the mass of mankind generally acquiesce in the demands of local law, as a sufficient code of morals and guide to right. Not so the mind on which a higher light has dawned; which sees special nationalities to be separately fallible, and that when the voice of many peoples combines, it is authoritative only because it echoes the voice of God speaking in the universal conscience. Besides, all thoughtful minds are aware, how small a part of human goodness can be commanded by the laws of any land: therefore we need to aim at a far higher righteousness. But here let me dwell for a moment on the epithet righteous, which the French translate by their word just. The Hebrew adjective which it represents, which also still exists in the spoken Arabic, remarkably combines the idea of Justice and Mercy; hence to us the English word Just very insufficiently represents it. "To hunger and thirst after justice" would not at all convey to us the right idea: the righteousness intended rather includes all moral excellence. Civil Justice indeed has been defined to mean "other people's good;" and inasmuch as all vice lessens our ability for duty and service, it has been argued that Justice, rightly understood, includes all virtue between man and man. Undoubtedly this is the full meaning which we attach to the word Righteousness, a word rising almost above morality into religion. Even in the lowest human tribes there is some groping after an unknown Being or Beings whose favour they seek, whose anger they fear. Childish man had childish thoughts, yet never could be content without an effort to solve the question :- -Where and What is God?-Rather than have no answer, a grotesque and even pernicious doctrine was accepted. Early attempts at Science, equally with early efforts at Religion, were superficial and weak, in great measure from undervaluing the many sources of delusion and the consequent difficulties of research. In religious thought even nations no longer barbarous have shown barbaric credulity. One general doctrine indeed is common to all: namely, that Religion consists in Honour to the Gods; but when the inquiry recurred-"How are we to honour them ?" grave diversity of opinion was elicited. The superficial idea, that gifts could please the gods,-gifts of food, of flowers or other beauty, or limbs of slain animals-this idea could not long commend itself to the wiser. But secondly, sometimes the theory was advanced, that God was jealous, if man became too rich or too prosperous. It was argued : "God's thunderbolt smites lofty trees and towers, while lowly objects fret him not at all." Hence a man who was too prosperous strove to appease divine jealousy by throwing precious things into the sea or into the fire; else by slaying fine horses, nay, it might be, a son or a daughter. Thus folly and cruelty came out of perverse religion, though on the whole such extreme was rare and exceptional. Thirdly, akin to this was another form of self-inflicted suffering. When men began to rise above the atmosphere of sense, and to meditate how much nobler the spirit is than the body, and reflect that the gods must be spiritual and pleased with things spiritual, some devotees originated the idea, that the flesh is the cause and core of evil, and that to mortify the flesh must be the way of pleasing God and aspiring towards his likeness. Hence fasting-that is, partial or entire abstinence from food, became a religious ordinance, and was esteemed to be a righteousness: also abstinence from marriage, penances, scourging, even self-mutilation and other cruel bodily inflictions. Out of all this grew a new evil. Inasmuch as any marring of the body disabled men for ordinary life, only a few out of the multitude could in this way be righteous. Hereby arose the very pernicious idea, that holiness belonged to a select Order of men or women,-priests, monks, nuns,-not to our whole race. We were to delegate our religion, that is, all high virtue, to proxies.-When to these pitiable errors was added a worse, a detestable doctrine, that the person who did not believe, accept, practise and honour the doctrines sanctioned by the priests and pontiff, was an enemy of God and deserved no mercy of man;-the ecclesiastical system thus built up became inhuman and odious. On this account many widely informed and free-minded men came to hate the very profession of religion, and it is to be feared that even now more than a few regard it as a calamity that mankind have an innate and insuperable tendency to search after God and worship him, imagining that this is a part of Righteousness. Strange to add, the upholders of religious error scold against mankind, as naturally irreligious. Nay, but we are naturally religious; only some are driven away from religion by the follies or cruelties of pretentious religious systems. We must of course admit the credulity of rude mankind. We cannot but deplore what so often happens, that public law nails down upon a nation the religious errors of less enlightened times, and prolongs their existence artificially. Yet we must not conclude that the earlier and crude efforts of religious thought were wholly without valuable result. Rudimental religion was almost identical with rudimental science, and much enlarged the world of man to the imagination of man. Consider how very small is the world of even the noblest beasts. The horse notices his pasture and its fences. If he travel, he has a very retentive memory of the road; but it would seem, only near objects draw his attention. The pure breath of the mountain or the desert, equally with the favourite herbage, attracts the healthy animal: but beautiful scenes which feed the eye, are too spiritual an enjoyment even for the horse or the elephant. The glorious canopy of the stars overhead allures the gaze of man, but of man alone. His upright form lifts his face towards heaven, whence the rudest barbarian drinks-in floods of mysterious thought unknown to the brute races. Religious speculation thereupon opens a still wider world, asking: Whence did we come? Where and What is the primal power which gave us being? What is his relation to us now ?-The answers to these questions may be shallow in the extreme, yet the questions themselves cannot dwell upon the mind without a grand result to the thoughtful; namely, a conviction sinks deep, that behind the seen and sensible is an unseen world, behind the material is a spiritual world, behind our transitory life is an unchanging Power. -Pure Atheism is partial and exceptional, if ever real. Some Long-lasting Power, whose limits are by us unassignable, stands out to our convictions as an undeniable fact; and the mind which thus discerns God finds itself in some sense akin to God, spirit to spirit, from whom our spiritual being is derived. The higher minds of every cultivated nation, when they cast off antiquated errors without despairing of religious truth, are not slow to discern that the only way to honour God is by obeying the laws of God; which laws are to be discovered by a study of our own nature and of the world that surrounds us. To one who looks on the Universe as the work of God, Nature is one side of God manifest. To live according to Nature is the most obvious way of trying to live according to the law of God. Now as man is not a solitary being, but born in a family and soon ushered into a community; as he cannot ordinarily live at all, and at least in any security and comfort, except by mutual aid and cordial co-operation, social life is eminently a part of his nature, nor can he live according to the laws of Nature and of God, except by a scrupulous performance of social duty. Thus right moral conduct becomes a primary precept of advancing and noble religion. Moral right must be judged of by a study of man and society. Religion cannot dictate what things are right: it takes morality for granted and well-known: nevertheless it adds energy to moral precept, urging us to charity and purity, truth and justice, industry and bravery, as the proper and direct way of pleasing God. You will see at once, that when such a conviction begins to prevail, a new and nobler estimate of the Divine character is formed by the devout mind. The idea that God is malignant, jealous, wrathful, capricious, is discarded with contempt. That he must desire the perfection of all his creatures, each according to its own nature, becomes an Axiom; and among men in particular the performance of mutual duty is presumed to be U according to God's will. In this stage, the two phrases, a religious man and a good man become almost exchangeable. At least, if we have to admit, that in rare cases a man may be esteemed good without religion (though probably less good than the same man would have been with religion), yet no man is truly and wisely religious who does not strive to be good, does not hunger after righteousness. A Roman moralist has put into two verses nearly the following sentiment: "Bad men hate sin through fear of punishment: Herein undoubtedly is a real and deep distinction. The same conduct may be pursued from different motives. We must not undervalue any right conduct: yet a man is not yet virtuous in any high sense, if merely his conduct is right: his heart, as we call it, needs to be right also. The springs of action test the character. Each man's moral position is determined mainly by his loves and his hatreds, and the chief emphasis of religion is in intensifying right loves and right hatreds. To infuse an energetic love of holiness, is, to minister the Holy Spirit. Has any one a passion for relieving distress? Has he a delight in mercy? Is he attracted to admire and love unknown persons, because he hears of their noble, generous and brave deeds? Is he firm to insist on justice and condemn oppression? Does he rejoice when a bad man improves, and grieve when a better man fails of goodness? Does he desire most, for himself and those whom he loves, improvement in virtue and count this to be God's best gift, nay, esteem it to be eminently God's grace and favour? Not till any one is thus in love with virtue can we say that Virtue is firmly planted within him. Not until he is athirst for righteousness can we feel sure that he will be filled. As far as we know historically, to hunger and thirst after righteousness is normally connected with a belief in a Holy and Loving God: so also is an acute sorrow for such sin as human law could not notice. Does any of you believe that the righteous God loveth righteousness? If then you sincerely desire to please him who is Essential Goodness, you will sincerely grieve over your own failures. This grief, which we call Penitence or Contrition, is at the basis of all highly sensitive virtue, and is almost essential to a wise and tender character. Self-satisfaction, self-righteousness, puffs up, hardens, and conduces to stagnating in our present attainments. It is related of an eminent sculptor, |