Divinely kindled lamp, and this intelligence will burn brighter if fed with the oil of faith: for the religious sense, the highest which we can entertain, is based upon the aspiration and endeavour after complete fulness of life. We dip into the future, far as eye can see, the world and all its wonders are moving into light. It is easy to understand that men of hard mechanical mind, "who," Scaliger roughly said, "lick the vessel but never touch the pottage," are incapable of fulness, have little or no sense of religion; but it is not easy to understand by what right, with least power to judge of the Supernatural, they assume authority to decide that the world is nothing but matter, containing only material organisms. Why, if our own material organism is governed by intelligence, shall not the universe be governed by Intelligence! They say "There is no actuality in the Supernatural, no reality in any knowledge we can obtain of it;" but true men of science are well aware that the appearance of things is not the essential reality, but representative of eternal energy -the Supernatural. Every fact in history and science, even if it occupy but a moment in time, is rooted in an unsearchable past, and enters an endless future. The first link hides in the past eternal, and the last vanishes in the future eternal. All Nature, on one side, touches the seen; on the other, the unseen. The Power underlying, beyond and interpenetrating all, is the Great Reality. No term can be used in precisely the same sense of essence and phenomenon ; of man and God; there is, none the less, an analogy. In limited fashion, we know the Unknown; and the effort to know more; to co-ordinate consciousness and intellectual cognition, is the highest, purest, most strengthening exercise of our reason; the source of good words and works of power; the sign and seal that we can and shall know more. We admire and applaud the noble Roman, Regulus, who voluntarily returned to torture and death rather than violate duty to his country, and faith plighted to an enemy. Who could interpret that man's life and mind by their material conditions? or, interpreting, would, according to material conditions, interpret aright-make hardest task the best delight? We commend Andrew Fuller, who, willing to lose his life to serve his country, would not do a base thing to Expansion of Human Nature. 9 save it. Does not every good man say "I would be virtuous for my own sake, though no man should know it; and clean for my own sake, though no one should see me?" The reality, the animating principle of such holy conduct, is more active and powerful in life than the merely intellectual: new possibilities are opened in this world, and new certainty as to the next. "Sanctus sanctè sancta tractat." The fact, "that no human being, and no society composed of human beings, ever did or ever will come to much, unless their conduct was governed and guided by some ethical ideal,"1 renders our acceptance of that ideal not merely a requisition of common sense, but an indispensable condition to true and lasting welfare. We appeal to the good and the great, whether the highest and best ethical ideal is not found in the Bible? We ask those of high moral nature, whether recognition of Divine love and purity does not make them affectionate and reverential? Whether the things which have been surely believed among us are not the root of national and individual morality? Whether they do not take that place in the heart which, otherwise, superstition would usurp? Whether it is not right to urge the pure in spirit to maintain these things in integrity? If our race lose faith in the soul's immortality, in Providence ; if, on the intellectual side, we lose the recognition of Deity; and, on the emotional side, a yearning for closer union with Him; we can neither attain nor retain the virtues, happiness, and true civilisation of well-ordered communities. We shall not move out of night's shadow into daybreak; nor believe that the world is moving into light. There are many reasons for supposing that human nature will expand its powers, and occupy a wider sphere of knowledge and action than the present; but that advance, if made without the establishment of harmony between knowledge and aspiration, will rather bring more anxious care and sharper pain than augment happiness and enlarge peace. Appalling facts of grim and gloomy aspect prove, as Bishop Butler said, that "Mankind are for ever placing the stress of their religion anywhere than upon virtue;" and experience shows that sceptical men, denying Divinity, pave the way to sensualism and thence to superstition: their habits, usages and propensities, not leading them forward 1 66 'Critiques and Addresses: " Prof. Huxley. to be good and happy. Sin is that gross error by which they miss the road that leads to Heaven. 2 We are told "The teaching of Jesus carried morality to the highest point attained or even attainable by humanity. The influence of the spiritual religion has been rendered doubly great by the unparalleled purity and elevation of His own character . . . so that the 'imitation of Christ' has become almost the final word in the preaching of His religion, and must continue to be one of the most powerful elements of its performance." It "is the highest conceivable by humanity. . . . Its perfect realisation is . . . extinction of rebellious personal opposition to Divine order, and the attainment of perfect harmony with the will of God." Now, would it be believed that, immediately preceding, we find these words "The disciples, who had so often misunderstood the teaching of Jesus, during His life, piously distorted it after His death?" 3 We are to believe that disciples, capable of receiving, keeping, and handing down to future ages, the highest system of morality attainable by humanity -in the light of which they lived, and for the truth of which they died-" piously distorted" that system! This "spiritual religion" of "sublime simplicity and moral grandeur," putting all other systems to the blush, "uniformly noble and consistent," is really built on "mere human delusion!" No inconsistency, no folly is greater than this: to regard the Bible as morally true, yet wilfully lying; pure, yet defiled by hypocritical assumption of supernatural power and authority; recording the highest attainable morality, yet disgraced by superstition and jugglery of wonders. As if a thing could be of heaven and heavenly, yet filled by the devil with the breath of delusion and deceit; inspired with highest wisdom, yet everywhere penetrated and pierced with tales and marvels of the most puerile character, inserted by those who, in all other things, were gloriously wise and true. We are to believe, on the one hand, "no supernatural halo can brighten its spiritual beauty, no mysticism deepen its holiness, in its wisdom it is eternal;' ;" but to hold, on the other hand, “the falsity of all miraculous pretension;" that St. Paul worked no miracles; that the birth, marvellous death, resurrection, "Supernatural Religion," vol. ii. p. 487. Ibid. p. 488. 3 Ibid. p. 485. • Ibid. p. 489. Irrational Oppositions. II and ascension of Jesus, are "pious distortions;" that the Apostles' testimony is full of falsehoods; that "upon all grounds of reason and experience the supposed miraculous evidence, by which alone we could be justified in believing the Divine Revelation, must be pronounced mere human delusion." What a comment on the inspired words-" I work a work in your days, a work which ye shall in no wise believe, though a man declare it unto you"! (Acts xiii. 41). It reminds one of a sarcastic speech-" I believe that the philosophers of every age are equally foolish, but that the common people gradually increase in wisdom." 2 "3 "We feel that common sense shows no difficulty in the way of belief in miracles; surely the Power who made all things may again, at any time, create or annihilate force or matter, and interfere with natural laws at His pleasure." Common sense sees that the argument of unspiritual men must be pushed to the bitter end; and, if it be true doctrine, all providence, all government, all Divine interest in human affairs, must be banished from our thoughts. If these men are right, all men of piety are wrong. Kant should not have said "Two things impress me with awe: the starry heavens without, and the moral law within." Those vastly ·our superiors in wisdom and virtue, whom we contemplate with involuntary admiration-admiration kindling emotions of love-are in nowise to be followed. We must take for guides men who say-" There was no Creation, and is no personal God. The Old and New Testaments are legends; incarnation, redemption, glorification, are fond delusions." Hume, unbeliever as he was, declared-" The whole frame of Nature bespeaks an intelligent author;" but now the words of Goethe-" Matter can never exist and be active without mind," are made to mean that matter is eternal, and that the combination of matter into diversified forms of beauty, and the wonders of organic life, are without design, and unguided by intelligence. The eye was not made to see, nor the ear to hear; the complex and compact apparatus of the human mouth was not arranged to breathe, to taste, to eat, to talk; nor legs and feet to walk and run; nor heart and lungs to circulate and purify the blood; verily, "Nihil 1 "Supernatural Religion," vol. ii. p. 480. 2 "Social Pressure," by the author of "Friends in Council." tam absurdum, quod non quidam philosophi dixerint”—such words are infamous for wreck of human hope. The man of real science is sure that common morality and all knowledge are based on Divinity. John Hunter to wit, sees that the eye did not make itself, nor man make it, nor his parents, it was made by One who understood the transmission, reflection, and refraction of light; how to make lenses of different powers, adjust them for clear perception of near or distant objects; to make and use most ingenious mechanical contrivances, in order to turn the eye in every direction, and increase or diminish light; to place the eye so as to be of most service, protected from injury, moistened from time to time, and able to open or shut. Common sense is sure that Divine Intelligence made the eye; and, in duty bound, worships God. "Lend an ear, a patient ear, and thou❜lt blush to disbelieve." If there is no Supernatural in Religion and Nature; of course, morality is without Divine sanction; there is no vindication of right, no condemnation of evil. Mistakes there may be, but not sins. Herbert can be defended, who declared lust and passion to be no more blameworthy than hunger and thirst; and Hobbs, that right and wrong are but quibbles of the imagination; and Bolingbroke, who held that the chief end of life is to gratify our passions; and Hume, who deemed humility a vice rather than a virtue. We may tell those who are sensual as swine, fierce as wolves, knavish, petulant, wayward, that all are fashioned of the selfsame dust. Monsters of cruelty are not monsters, nor blameworthy. Those who break the law, knowing that they shall escape the law, whom we account deserving of ten times more punishment, are to be free from all punishment if they take care of their health. Human nature is outraged by such doctrine. The moral element beautifies our structure; "peccatum non est natura, sed vitium naturæ ; our consciousness of right and wrong says "there will be, there must be, a future reckoning.' Temptation resisted, pure impulse discreetly yielded to, noble thought encouraged, sinful desire extinguished, good words spoken, enrich our character and testify of a higher life. Present before any audience the spectacle of a pious, loving, watchful mother, whose son requites her unselfish, unwearied efforts for his welfare, by barbarous murder, that he may |