Can

truth, and not be a lover also of the God of truth? he live uprightly without pleasing the God of uprightness? Can he seek the welfare of his fellow men without in so far serving God? To have sought the truth with an earnest, true, and loving heart is very near akin to having found it.2 Of him who had kept the law from his youth our Saviour said that he was not far from the kingdom of heaven.3

a man fails to discharge his duty towards God, his very virtues deserve no honour or approbation. It is curious how this theory that goodness and virtue lose their essential character, and cease to be goodness and virtue in men who do not love and fear God, has been accepted and maintained by theologians both of ancient and modern times, and how it has been professed by hostile churches. . . . Whatever theologians may teach, I will do honour to moral excellence wherever I find it. I will not pervert the plain dictates of my conscience under the pressure of any theological system whatever. Truthfulness, uprightness, unselfishness, these are noble and beautiful wherever they exist, whether they belong to a Christian or to a heathen."-(Rev. R. W. DALE: Discourses.) "It is the fashion with some to say of one person or another, within the enclosure of the Christian Church and Christian household, 'He is amiable, he is moral, he is conscientious, an exemplary son, a watchful parent, even an assi duous worshipper; but he has not a spark of grace.' And if you urge that fallen nature is not thus prolific of good. you are in danger of being charged with an utter ignorance yourself of the thing spoken of." (Rev. C. J. VAUGHAN.) See also p. 19, note. 1

sends his money

1"Will any one tell me that if an irreligious man to buy bread for the hungry, clothing for the naked, to build houses for the homeless women, and schools for destitute children, his work is not right and good in the judgment of God and men ?" I say "that compassion for wretchedness, wherever it is manifested, is a trace and lineament of that divine image which God impressed upon our nature in the beginning."-(R. W. DALE.) "He that is a good man is three-quarters of the way towards being a good Christian, wherever he lives and whatever he is called."-(Dr. SOUTH.)

"I dare not, it is true (with Justin Martyr), canonize the philosophers, and place Socrates and Heraclitus in heaven, neither am I sure that Aristotle, by his learned treatises of it, has obtained a place there. It is too officious a regard and too bold a charity thus happily to dispose of particular men. On the other hand, I dread to pass sentence of damnation on all the ancient pagans, and to aver that none were saved who died before the fifteenth year of Tiberius." "Since Abraham saw his day and was glad, how do we know that men renowned for their prudence, temperance, fortitude, chastity, liberality, and the like, might not also be favoured with a glimpse of the Messias, the desired of all nations, before he appeared in the flesh ?" " Though the mere light of natural reason was not sufficient to conduct them, nor all their morality enough to entitle them to supreme felicity; yet I cannot be persuaded that the infinite goodness would doom the virtuous Gentiles to the abyss of misery.”—(PALMER: Aphorisms.)

"When the young man told Christ that he had kept the commandments from his youth, it is said Jesus loved him. Wherever we have learned to despise morality Jesus loved it."-(TILLOTSON: Sermons.`

While no one can be in the highest sense a moral man without being a Christian, let us not therefore contemn all morality, which is a good thing and a beautiful. A man is a Christian only to the extent that he is a moral man,1 and Christianity is in a sense but the highest morality. Let us hold that no one can be saved by any works of the law that he may do, but do not let us decry morality as something that is despicable, or at least worthless, in place of regarding it as it ought to be regarded, as a necessary part of religion. Need we wonder that many men of culture, and conscientious, feeling that those principles of goodness and morality within them must be true, refuse to accept as religion what professes to despise them, or allows them no place, and prefer rather to trust to their morality than accept such a religion.3 If religion is regarded as something distinct and apart from all other things, if it is viewed as different from morality, and as having nothing to do with our everyday life, then can education have no connection with it, and can be of no service to it in any possible way. But there is or can be no such separation.

We are unfortunately too apt to sit in judgment upon the things or the events that are taking place around us, calling some good and ascribing them to God, others evil and attributing them to the enemy of man.* Such judgments

"The dignity and power of religion depend precisely upon its union with morality. A religion which is not morality is even less valuable than a morality which is not religion. There is no true religion but that which springs from the same source as morality, and which in its principle and development is morality. They are so originally united that the one cannot be taken without the other. You cannot adopt the true morality without, at the same time, adopting the true religion."-(VINET.)

I dare assert "that the best morally honest man is the greatest saint; and that morality is the principal part of true religion, and the test of all the other parts, without which faith is dead, and all other religious performances are a vain show and mere hypocrisy."—(MARSHALL: On Sanctification.)

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"A theory like this repels, and naturally repels irreligious men. flatly contradicts their conscience, and they know it cannot be true. They feel that if religion is responsible for it, religion is out of harmony with the strongest convictions of their moral nature, and is hostile to morality itself." Such a theory seems to me destructive of the very foundations, not only of morality, but of religion itself." (R. W. DALE: Discourses.) 4 "Satan can drive men, under several colours, to act such things as he did the Boors in Germany and John of Leyden and his followers, whose practices are deservedly detested by all that have any spark of Christianity

can only be based on ignorance and are attended with the most pernicious consequences.1 Our faculties are at best but very imperfect, and it is only an infinitesimal portion of God's works that can be seen by us." We cannot

or humanity."-(Rev. A. SHIEL: Hind Let Loose.) In speaking of the religious controversies in Scotland during the 17th century, Mr Burton says: "It has been an evil thing for truth that the writers about such periods should think it their duty to paint the one side as angelic and the other as diabolical."-(History of Scotland.) "This articulate individualizing of the powers of good and evil, and the severing of the two into opposite armies, set in material hostility with each other, had a terrible and brutalising influence on the polemical and superstitious passions."-(Ditto.) The Secession Church of Scotland, we are told, were so opposed to Mr. George Whitefield, that "his popularity and the wonderful effects of his preaching, like those which happened at Cambuslang, were ascribed to diabolical influence."-(Dr. SOMERVILLE: My Own Life and Times.) "The Associate Presbytery proceeded so far as on the 15th of July, 1742, to pass an act, appointing the 4th of August following to be observed as a Fast, chiefly because (1) The Lord hath, in His righteous displeasure, left this Church and land to give such an open discovery of their apostasy from him in the fond reception that Mr. George Whitefield has met with;' and (2) Because the people are so much 'imposed upon by several ministers who, notwithstanding of all the ordinary symptoms of a delusion attending the present awful work (at Cambuslang) upon the bodies and spirits of men, yet cry it up as a great work of God.""-(Ditto.) "It is hard to discern when the Devil doth thus immediately tempt any, and it is so ordinary to accuse the Devil of that which comes from our own evil inclinations and customs."-(Dr. HAMMOND.) "It is somewhat interesting to observe that, as the doctrines of the Church were gradually developed in the lapse of ages, the kingdom of Satan was put more and more into the background as the shadows disappear before the light."-(HAGENBACH: History of Doctrines.)

"In his notions respecting the good and evil which exist in the world, man's view is commonly too general, too simple and vague, and has too little respect to the mingled state in which everything exists in this world." -(Manual of Conduct.) "This world is not in the state in which the intelligent and benevolent mind would have expected it to be a priori. Let the problem be: Given a God, of infinite power and wisdom, to determine the character of the world which He would fashion, and man's solution would present a very different world from the actual one."-(Dr. McCosH: Divine Government.) "Dangerous it were for the feeble brain of man to wade far into the doings of the Most High whom, although to know be life, and joy to make mention of His name; yet our soundest knowledge is to know that we know Him not, as indeed He is neither can know Him; and our safest eloquence concerning Him is our silence, when we confess without confession that His glory is inexplicable, His greatness above our capacity and reach." (HOOKER.) "Things, seemingly the most insignificant imaginable, are perpetually observed to be necessary conditions to other things of the greatest importance."-(BUTLER.) "We frequently find that, in the actual course of things, events of great moment have their origin in circumstances of such apparent insignificance, that at the time of their occurrence they scarcely solicited our attention."-(Manual of Conduct.) "We are all short-sighted, and very often see but one side of a matter

discern the end from the beginning, and the end of all things is hid.1 Every event that is happening now had its commencement in the beginning of time, and its results will continue to the end of the world.2 How

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our views are not extended to all that has a connection with it. see but in part, and we know but in part, and therefore it is no wonder we conclude not right from our partial views."—(John Locke.) No human capacity ever saw the whole of a thing.”—(J. RUSKIN.) "We are to the grand system and series of God's government like a man who, confined in a dark room, should observe through a chink of the wall some large animal passing by; he sees but an extremely narrow stripe of the object at once, as it passes by, and is utterly unable to form an idea of the size, proportions, or shape of it."-(JOHN FOSTER.) "The view of man is limited to but a small portion of this infinitely extended and eternally continued dominion; and hence it happens that the arrangements of that portion of this universally extended empire, with which we are connected, or which is exposed to our view, necessarily assume to us the appearance, not so much of means leading to future ends as of ends terminating in themselves, and assuming a character unconnected with the whole scheme of which they are a part, or with the more distant issues towards which they are conducive."—(Manual of Conduct.) "The scheme of Providence, the ways and works of God, are too vast, of too large extent for our capacities. There is, as I may speak, such an expanse of power and wisdom and goodness in the formation and government of the world, as is too much for us to take in or comprehend. Power and wisdom and goodness are manifest to us in all those works of God which come within our view; but there are likewise infinite stores of each poured forth throughout the immensity of the creation: no part of which can be thoroughly understood without taking in its reference and respect to the whole: and this is what we have not faculties for."—(Bishop BUTLER: Sermons.)

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"It is impossible that we should comprehend those dispensations which we only see a part of, and that oftentimes a very small one. Were we able to view the chain from beginning to end, that which now appears confusion, we should then discover to be the exactest order and regularity. . . . But, alas! we seldom see more than a few broken links; and being thus shortsighted, it is no wonder if we be often puzzled and confounded."—(Rev. J. BALGUY: Sermons.) "How foolish, how wicked is it in man, who is but of yesterday and knows nothing, to prescribe to the Almighty, and arrogantly to censure the counsels and conduct of him whose views are from everlasting to everlasting. A man must be capable of tracing the connection between what has taken place at this moment, and that which shall occur at the distance of centuries to come, before he dare to pronounce or form the most imperfect opinion or prediction on the present or future procedure of God.” -(Rev. J. PHILIP.)

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Everything that now is has sprung from the vast series of events that have gone before, and is connected with all the future changes that are yet to diversify the history of the universe."-(Manual of Conduct.) "All the ages are linked together by a succession of causes and effects which bind the present state of the world to all the states which have gone before."(CONDORCET.) "No atom can be disturbed in place, or undergo any change of temperature of electrical state or other material condition, without affecting by attraction, or repulsion, or other communication, the surrounding atoms. These again, by the same law, transmit the influence

then shall we venture to judge that of which we know so little? 1

The man of observation and thought soon comes to see

to other atoms, and the impulse thus given extends through the whole material universe. Every human movement, every organic act, every volition, passion, or emotion, every intellectual process, is accompanied with atomic disturbance, and hence every such movement, every such act or process, affects all the atoms of universal matter. Though action and reaction are equal, yet reaction does not restore disturbed atoms to their former place and condition; and, consequently, the effects of the least material change are never cancelled, but in some way perpetuated, so that no action can take place in physical, moral, or intellectual nature, without leaving all matter in a different state from what it would have been if such action had not occurred."-(G. P. MARSH: Man and Nature.) According to Leibnitz, "from the given state of any Monad at any time, the eternal Geometer can find the state of the universe, past, present, and to come." Every particle of matter affects, firstly and chiefly, its immediate neighbours, then less strongly those more remote. To some extent each particle of matter attracts the whole universe. Similarly, may we not say, that every incident happening in a moment of time (for incident in time corresponds to matter in space) affects its immediate consequent, and again less powerfully the entire process of the world's action ?"-(E. E. BOWEN: Force of Habit.)

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1"God is the Sovereign of the world... Who shall take upon them to control God and prescribe laws to him how to deal with his creatures? Why should a finite understanding prescribe measures and methods to an infinite majesty ?"-(Dr. CHARNOCK.) "If we question his providence we question his wisdom. Is it fit for us, who are but of yesterday and know nothing, to say to an infinite wisdom, 'What do'st thou?' and to direct the only wise God to a method of his actions?"-(DITTO.) "Much of the difficulty which we feel in contemplating the events of Providence, arises not so much from the perplexity of the subject itself, as from our taking too partial views of it. We do not judge of the parts by the whole, but we judge of the whole by those parts only which come under our own observation."-(Rev. J. PHILIP.) "A cause in our usual mode of conceiving it is commonly but one event immediately preceding some other, respecting whose appearance we feel disposed to speculate; but who can doubt that innumerable preceding occurrences were as necessary to the production of any particular event as that one by which, in the scheme, it was immediately preceded. While we consider any event, as related only to those that are most immediately in juxta-position to it, a wider and better view of the arrangements of the universe, even at any particular moment, would show us that the event under contemplation was connected not only with all that had gone before and that was to follow it, but with the whole combination of co-existing events which are at that moment in actual occurrence. In a word, the whole scheme of nature and of Providence is one infinitely connected and ever-expanding evolution, and as the condition of the universe at the moment in which we now contemplate it has resulted from the operation of the infinity of causes or eventsall under the guidance of perfect wisdom, and power, and goodness, which have preceded it, so its present state is one moment in the infinitely diffused course of that stream which is bearing forward the entire system of things towards its final destination."—(Manual of Conduct.) "To an