away. That the maiden ought to have some voice as to a matter of such life-long interest to her, above all, that she ought not to be given to a man for whom she has no love,—does not seem to cross Paul's mind. Not that he takes for granted that she is of very tender years; for he expressly puts the case of one who is near to passing the flower of her age. It is wonderful how notions so savouring of the old barbarism should be glorified as sacred, and trumpeted as elevating woman. Nay, but nowhere in the New Testament does its doctrines concerning the sexes elevate man any more than woman; for no allusion to Love as essential to marriage is anywhere dropt. Yet this is the cardinal matter to distinguish man from brute, and to moralize into permanent relation what else is mere sensual appetite. Euripides is here a nobler teacher than Jesus, Paul or John. The Greek poet says:

"A school of Wisdom and Virtue is LOVE

Pre-eminently,......and to young men I proclaim

Never to shun LOVE, but to use it rightly when it comes."

Sad to say, Paul gives not a hint, that marriage without love is a fraud on one's partner, and involves all vehement natures in severe danger. But it is better to pass to another side of this subject, which is scarcely less important.

VI.—I mean, the basis on which the duty of Chastity is placed. The apostolic doctrine was excellently intended, but fails to go to the bottom of the duty,-which is, Justice to Woman, and thereby it is not merely unsound in theory, but mischievous in practical result. Paul's argument makes "continence" to be the duty of saints, not of unconverted ordinary men. Celibacy he accounts a higher state, but one for which not all saints have "a gift." The natural appetite which exists in all men (except idiotic and imperfect natures) he stigmatizes as "motion of sin," and advises marriage solely to avoid or quell troublesome desire. This doctrine is not only degrading and demoralizing, but has certainly been the germ of misery to many devout souls, and the impetus to morbid penances,-if penance be the right name. That childbirth is the divine purpose of sexual union, no apostle can have been ignorant; but to continue the human race was to them of very small importance in a world about to be burnt up speedily. Paul approves of marriage neither as fulfilling the instinct of personal Love, nor as due to the national claim for successive citizens; but only as a legal vent (!) to a very undesirable appetite, from which high saints (it seems) are free. Thus marriage was inevitably degraded, and a foundation was laid

for the noxious identification of Chastity with Celibacy, whereby the Catholic Church insults Marriage as Unchaste. That Love was not thought essential to virtuous marriage is excusable in that age, but not the less stamps the New Testament morality with grave imperfection.

If it were expedient here to go into details which verge on Physiology, it would be easy to show that unless Polygamy be allowed, marriage is insufficient as a "vent;" that marriage without love merely stimulates lower propensities, and debases manhood; while Love, and Love alone, ennobles and spiritualizes natural instinct; aiding chastity in the unmarried, self-controul in the married; moreover, that in neither sex does Chastity tend to disease, whatever may be asserted by base modern doctrine. It is credibly reported that many of the worst sensualists are married men; and no wonder, if Love is to be driven out by Lust. To this alas! the apostolic letter tends, if the letter is accounted sacred and divine.

Bad is made worse, when Chastity is propounded as only a spiritual and transcendental duty, binding on the saints, only because their bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. Saints ought not to take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot. In this we have no basis for a world-wide morality.

If we are to establish Chastity on a sound foundation, we must begin by exploding the noxious phantasy, that man is driven by physiological necessity like the brutes. No modern physician, however he may apologize for male unchastity, justifies by like argument unchastity in young women, in whose case the plea would be more plausible. Unchastity in man (except where it is wholly unnatural and monstrous) may be broadly entitled, Injustice to Woman. This is its main, its cardinal condemnation. Thus Chastity, like Honesty, is a universal human duty, not transcendental and specially saintly. To avoid morbid theory, the moralist must cease to censure the instincts which God has implanted;-instincts essential to the continuance of the race, and sources of its most sacred duties and joys. Let him direct his severity against man's corruption.-Not only is marriage now variously discouraged, but fleshly desire in which is no personal Love, is stimulated artificially. Voluptuous pictures, statues, literature, inflammatory to the mind, are a vast weight against Chastity; likewise alcoholic drinks, inflammatory to the body, lessen the delicacy of mental perceptions, loosen the tongue to unseemly utterances, derange the balance of the judgment, weaken

the power of self-guidance and the energy of the will. Of all the causes which make unchastity the visible and flagrant disgrace of Christian cities, intoxicating drink is the greatest by far. Not until a very severe check is put upon its use (severer than any contemplated in the New Testament) and boys are trained as modestly as girls, shall we learn how natural is purity to man, how unnatural is impurity, equally with all sin and all disease.

VII.-Next after the bodily needs of man, Moral law has to treat our mental desires. First may be named the desire of knowledge, which when methodized culminates in science. It is now to us a familiar thought that knowledge enlarges and science ennobles the mind; that both of them tend to make industry more fruitful, and are often necessary to make liberality beneficial. On their development and diffusion we see the physical and moral welfare of the millions of mankind largely to depend, and that they are of prime importance to the truth and purity of religion. What then is the doctrine of the New Testament concerning (secular) knowledge and science? In brief, the few allusions to them are disparaging; at which we cannot wonder; such, however, is the fact. The only knowledge mentioned with approbation is knowledge of religious doctrine. Knowledge (gnosis) is several times sarcastically glanced at, "Knowledge puffeth up;" "the Greeks seek after wisdom." But, that knowledge deserves to be pursued systematically, as the labour of a life; that the desire of knowledge may be a virtue, indeed an ennobling and fruitful virtue; that its steady advances, displaying God's works and mode of working, are adapted and destined to exalt our conception of Him and to explode superstitious fables, no hint appears in the New Testament. Such thoughts have come to us by the enlarged experience of near two thousand years; thoughts necessarily too high for these writers, saintly as they were. We must not expect to glean from the New Testament intelligent moral instruction on this head, any more than lessons in astronomy or chemistry.

VIII. The love of Beauty rises in nations earlier than the love of knowledge, and already had been widely cultivated in Greece, especially under the forms of Sculpture, Painting, Architecture, and Poetry. Is this love a legitimate passion, which has to be controuled and wisely directed? or is it illegitimate, and as such, needing to be extinguished? The question is important to morality now, and was important then; yet who can point out any passage of the New Testament which propounds and

answers it? Some will say that all its books are totally silent on the topic: others will say that the love of beautiful forms and colours is sternly prohibited under the contumelious description, the lust of the eye, while the possession of things beautiful and valuable is stigmatized as the pride of life. "Love not the world, nor the things that are in the world: for, all that is in the world, -the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, -are not of the Father, but are of the world; and the world passeth away, and the lust thereof." Certainly experience seems to show that precisely according as any class of Christians has become devotedly Biblist, subjecting itself humbly to the decisions of the book, and looking to it as the single source of moral wisdom, in the same proportion it has abhorred music, painting and all high art and high poetry, contenting itself with (at most) a few grand psalm tunes and hymns of doubtful poetical merit. Elegant art and literature have been treated by out and out Biblists as carnal accomplishments, too frivolous for one, who, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ, is warring against the world, the flesh and the devil. To this and only to this conclusion, it seems, the spirit of the New Testament leads those, who honestly make it their sUFFICIENT and INFALLIBLE teacher. But is this to be received as sound morality? Has God for no purpose given us minds susceptible of beauty, minds that can derive from it a pure and serene pleasure? Is it for nothing that he has spread before us so richly the beauties of earth, sea and sky? It is not credible, that even the faculty of laughter was given to be simply suppressed: how much less that sense of beauty which is so refining and so feeding; which adds so largely to grace of character and imparts pleasures unexhausted. Even if the aspect of the New Testament be not strictly hostile to the cultivation of this faculty, its silence is a grave defect, if the book be held up as an authoritative and sufficient teacher of morals.

The two last topics press peculiarly on the question of Education. A Christian parent, aware of the immense moment of Education to his children, consults the New Testament as to the staples of which Education is to consist: but he finds there nothing but that he is to bring up his child in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Meagre indeed is this, when he wishes to learn,-Ought I to seek to qualify my child for ambitious effort, for the enjoyment of polished society and refined pleasures, for playing his part as a good citizen, for the service of arms, for

a learned profession? or, because I am a Christian, ought I to limit him to sacred literature and to arts humbly useful for things material? Or again, if Education be treated on a greater scale, a Christian may consult the New Testament to discover what sort of education will be of general benefit, and whether it is to go beyond sacred catechisms: but he will consult it in vain for any positive result. The utmost that can be maintained, is, that the New Testament does not actually forbid intellectual culture. That the writers had any adequate idea of its importance, it would be foolish to assert. How could it seem important, to men expecting the descent of the Lord from heaven ?

Instead of struggling to ascribe to them a superhuman foresight of our age, while they manifestly misdated the glorified return of the crucified Saviour; let us use the book "legitimately," as Paul said the old Law ought to be used. Then we may retain its invaluable excellencies without shutting ourselves out from nearer lights. Instead of dreading national demoralization from a total overthrow of the sacredness of the letter, we ought to discern that its authority stifles that higher morality which already asserts itself in literature. A nobler religion is dawning on the world, which will unite the nations by Free Thought, not by Dogma, and will establish through JUSTICE a more general goodwill, than endless talk about Love can ever produce.