the more he knows of his own ignorance, the less will he be given to dogmatise; and the more conscious he is of his own imperfections, the more charitably will he look upon those of others.1

harshly of faults, because we up as judges of God's proviError is permitted by Him to

We ought not to judge too are thereby setting ourselves dential dealings with man.2 exist and reign for a time in order that it may be the means of effecting a greater good. Further, we ought not to judge too harshly of faults, as we can only take cognizance of them when and as they manifest themselves. We know not the sources whence they have sprung, or the circumstances that have called them forth.5 The fault committed

4

structed man is able to keep his judgment undecided-waits for more evidence, contemplates other possible inferences than the one he is inclined to draw, and is ready to abandon or qualify his conviction when he discovers facts at variance with it."-(H. SPENCER: Principles of Psychology.) 1 "You may usually define a dogmatist to be a man exceedingly positive because exceeding well acquainted with one side of a question, and resolutely determined not to examine the other."—(PAXTON HOOD: SelfFormation.) "We have all our secret sins, and if we knew ourselves we should not judge each other so harshly."-(GEORGE ELIOT.) "I see no fault committed which I also might not have committed."-(GOETHE.)

2"It is certain that God hath a hand about all the sinful actions in the world. The selling of Joseph to the Ishmaelites was the act of his brethren; the sending him back into Egypt was the act of God.”—(Dr. CHARNOCK: Divine Providence.) "God doth often effect his just will by our weakness, neither thereby justifying our infirmities nor blemishing his own action. Jacob got the blessing by unlawful means, telling no less than two lies to attain it. God by his providence draws glory to himself and good out of sin."-(Ditto.)

8"We are often wrong in wishing to prevent too much the evil that God himself permits."—(COUSIN.) "The evil in the world is overruled by the author of good, to be a means for the exercise of the highest faculties of benevolence, truth, and goodness, and the education of a moral nature in the discrimination of weeds from flowers."-(Rev. PAXTON HOOD.) "Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good unto themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest."-(J. S. MILL.)

4 "The amount of crime does not necessarily show the criminality of the agent. History, indeed, is concerned with the former, that it may be recorded as a warning to mankind; but it is He alone who knoweth the heart, the strength of the temptation, and the means of resisting it that can determine the measure of guilt."-(PRESCOTT: Peru.) "It is not for us men to apportion the shares of moral guilt and retribution. . . . The problem how far a man is to be held responsible for the unseen consequences of his own deed is one that might well make us tremble to look at it." (GEORGE ELIOT.) not knowing the process

"We judge others according to results,

to-day may have its source in some distant ancestor, and the guilt thereof may have to be shared in by many.1 God alone can unravel the mystery, and attribute to each his due share of criminality. He alone knows the amount of temptation, within and without, that each poor soul has had to contend with, and He will doubtless take it into account at the last day.3

Not that we would be regarded as thinking lightly of by which the results are arrived at." (GEORGE ELIOT.) "God sees us as we are altogether, not in separate feelings or actions, as our fellow-men We are always doing each other injustice,. because we only hear and see separate words and actions. We do not see each other's whole nature."—(Ditto.)

see us.

1 "Every man has a personal connection with the remotest result that flows from his sin. Others have their own separate responsibility and individual guilt; but to the eye of God the line may be visible that connects an act committed at this moment with the influence of some one who has been in his grave a hundred years."-(Rev. J. BINNEY: Both Worlds.) See after PART II.

"Take an immoral person, and go back from manhood to infancy, unfolding the layers of his character as you go, and there is a distinct responsibility for each step of growth; and God knows it. That habit of swearing, lying, drinking, that involves or marks the child or man, has its definite source and steps of increase, the responsibility of which God appropriates." He "knows the first oath the boy heard, and the person from whom he heard it, and the second, and the third, and the precise effect of each instance on the soul; and the precise degree of conscience, of volition, of knowledge, with which the example was imitated, and the habit formed or not resisted."-(Dr. CHEEVER.)

Who made the heart, 'tis he alone

Decidedly can try us.

He knows each chord-its various tone,

Each spring, its various bias.

Then, at the balance let's be mute;

We never can adjust it;

What's done we partly may compute,

But know not what's resisted."-(BURNS.)

"While we are coldly discussing a man's career, sneering at his mistakes, blaming his rashness, and labelling his opinions,

that man, in his solitude is, perhaps, shedding hot tears, because his sacrifice is a hard one, because strength and patience are failing him to speak the difficult word and do the difficult deed."-(GEORGE ELIOT.)

3"There is our comfort, that, for our conduct in so doubtful a voyage as that of life, amidst so many conflicting opinions, each courting our adherence to it-amidst such a variety of circumstances without and of feelings within, and on which, notwithstanding, our condition for all eternity must depend-we shall be judged, not by erring man, not by our own fallible conscience, but by the all-wise and all-righteous God."- (Dr. ARNOLD.) "The standard decision at that Great Assize shall be the moral law of the universe, under which God has placed all his intelligent creatures; and

faults, or viewing them as small matters in those who wilfully, knowingly, or without due care fall into them. They are at best disease, deformity, hideous blemishes on a fair body, repulsive alike in the sight of God, and of all rightthinking men. We do not, indeed, think lightly of faults, but we think more highly of action,-the acting out of our thought and belief, so that not even the fear of falling into error may be allowed to deter us.1 Next to making too much of faults, so as to interfere with our own free action or that of others, is the error of thinking too lightly of them, and consequently not taking sufficient care to avoid them.

1

The greatest of all faults, in our opinion, is to be so impressed with the magnitude or turpitude of them, as to be deprived of all power of action. The child will never learn to walk who is too much afraid of a fall, nor will he do

2

the question in each case will be: Has that law been kept as it ought to have been kept? To determine this, the character and conduct of the individual whilst on earth will be strictly investigated; a survey of his entire existence here below will be taken; every thought, and word, and deed of which he has been the subject whilst on earth shall come into judgment. . . . In forming this judgment, due respect will be had to the circumstances of the individual whilst under probation; the talents he possessed, the privileges he enjoyed, the opportunities with which he was favoured. This, both the reason of the case and the clear declaration of Scripture, forbid us to doubt. . . . The moral differences which exist between different persons are often very great; and in forming a judgment as to the moral worth of the conduct of each, it is as needful that these differences should be taken into account, as it is needful that differences of weight, and force, and motive power should be taken into account in estimating the comparative merits of machines. To man, limited in knowledge and limited in faculty, such comprehensive survey is impossible; and, therefore, all human judgments of the moral worth of individual agents are more or less imperfect. But to the judgment of God no such imperfection attaches. To His omniscient scrutiny all things stand revealed; and in His infinite mind every element that bears on a perfectly equitable decision in the case of each of His intelligent creatures receives due consideration. That this shall be the principle of His adjudication, He himself has assured us.”—(Dr. W. L. ALEXANDER: St. Paul it Athens.)

1 "Vice and crime were not regarded by Christ as being as guilty as moral purity without any heart, without any sympathy, without any charitable judgment."-(H. W. BEECHER.)

2" To be more anxious to avoid little sins than to develop great virtues will produce an effeminate moral delicacy, instead of a heroic vigour; and people who are very scrupulous about small matters are often miserably weak in the presence of great temptations.”—(Rev. R. W. DALE.) "For the most part," says Condorcet, "people abounding in scruples are not fit for great things. A Christian will throw away in subduing the

much good in the world who is always afraid of erring.' It is often by committing faults that we come to know them to be so, and learn the best means of avoiding them. It is by acting out our belief, by putting our opinions to the test of experience, that we are best able to judge of their truth or falsehood, and happy is he who makes a right use of the knowledge so acquired. It is in individuals as in the

darts of the flesh, the time which he might have employed on things of use to mankind,"

"There is no blameless life,

Save for the passionless, no sanctities

But have the selfsame roof and props with crime,
Or have their roots close interlaced with vileness."

(GEORGE ELIOT.)

1 "Error, when more closely scrutinized, is found not so much to consist in the contradictory activity of our cognitive faculties, as in their want of activity. . . . Error first commences when thinking is remitted."— (Sir W. HAMILTON.) "Is not a man's walking, in truth, always that—a succession of falls ?"-(CARLYLE.)

2 "Man's nature is naturally so averse from sin that he cannot continue in the practice of it without being aware that he is doing wrong." -(VINET.) "He who inveighs against immoralities and vices has not half so strong a conviction of their rottenness as they who commit them. No man has such a sense of the mischief and misery of intemperance as the very drunkard himself, when for a moment he staggers back from his bowl, and has one of those lucid intervals in which his better nature returns, and he is led to loathe himself as other men loathe him."—(H. W. BEECHER.) "Providence builds our improvement upon our defects; wisdom springs, if I may say so, from folly; and vice is made a minister of virtue."-(Dr. FORDYCE.) "Men cannot, on any subject whatsoever, arrive at what is rational till after having in that very subject exhausted all imaginable folly."-(FONTENELLE.) "De vitiis nostris scalam nobis

facimus si vitia ipsa calcamus."-(St. AUGUSTINE.)

"St. Augustine, well hast thou said,

That, of our vices we can frame

A ladder, if we will but tread

Beneath our feet each deed of shame."-(LONGFELLOW.)

Conviction, were it never so excellent, is worthless till it converts itself into conduct. Nay, properly, conviction is not possible till then, inasmuch as all speculation is by nature endless, formless-a vortex amid vortices." "If thy knowledge be real, put it forth from thee: grapple with real nature; try thy theories, then, and see how they hold out. Once turn to practice, error and truth will no longer consort together: the result of error involves you in the square root of a negative quantity; try to extract that--to extract any earthly substance or subsistence from that."-(T. CARLYLE.) It is impossible to one who has once fulfilled it, were it but in one isolated act, not to find in the impression made on him by that very act, the proof that virtue is a reality-the greatest of realities."-(VINET.) "Some who begin by abstaining from evil, or se

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race, truth is the offspring of error, and its progress is greatest where it meets with most opposition.1 The great thing for each individual is to be in earnest, to strive to be fully assured in his own mind, and to bring his conduct into accordance with his belief.2 It may be a lie, be it so, there is more hope of convincing a man of his error who

about doing good from a principle not entirely pure, are graciously led to the principle by doing or forbearing the action; and are finally landed at the higher point from beginnings far below those at which we might rashly have asserted they could only set out with any hope of success. (HANNAH MORE: Christian Morals.) "We must exercise our strength, were it only to know its limits. It is to be feared that they who have not made this experience will never make any other."-(VINET.) "Would a man know whether he be lame or no, let him rise; he will be sooner satisfied by one turn in a room than by a long dispute while he sits still." -(W. GURNALL: Christian Armour.) "Do one thing; for the first time in thy life do a thing; a new light will rise to thee in the doing of all things whatsoever." (T. CARLYLE.) "There is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works."-(Ditto.) "There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home."-(J. S. MILL: On Liberty.) "Action sometimes will hit the mark when the spoken word either misses it, or is but half the truth."—(J. A. FROUDE.) "How can doubt ever be fully met, but by action ? "(GEORGE MACDONALD.)

1 "The greatest sinner is more hopeful than the formalist without piety; the soul of the former is grievously diseased, but at least the remedy has not lost its power."-(VINET.) "The wickedest man is often not the most insurmountable obstacle to the triumph of good." (GEORGE ELIOT.) "They that have respect only to an honest life," says Luther, "it were better for them to be adulterers and adulteresses and to wallow in the mire." "This comparison is not stated betwixt these two considered simply as to their different manner of life, but in point of pliableness to receive conviction, wherein the latter have the advantage of the former." (Rev. THOMAS BOSTON.) "With the reckless profligate, the bold infidel, the foolhardy denier of God and His Christ, you can do something; of the publicans and harlots you are not quite hopeless; but these men who believe everything you say, and yet, in fact, believe nothing, drive you to your wits' end, and put your faith and patience to the severest test."(ANON.) "Discord is better for the advantage of piety than dissembled concord."-(Nazianzen.) 'Hate, terrible as it sounds, even hate is better than indifference. Hatred has often been the prelude to love, the soul having passed victoriously through a solemn crisis. But indifference, which denotes the greatest possible distance between man and God, is the last of outrages."-(VINET.) "The daily mortification of sin is essential to growth in grace."--(J. G. PIKE.)

"No man adequate to do anything but is first of all in right earnest about it, what I call a sincere man. The man whom nature has appointed to do great things is first of all furnished with that openness to nature which renders him incapable of being insincere."—(T. CARLYLE.) "We may always be easy as to the results of a sincere inquiry; to have sought God's will is to have found it, and to him who has done all he could to enlighten himself error is imputed as truth."—(VINET.)