righteousness had mastered every nobler impulse, he either misinterpreted signs and visions or was for the time incapable of seeing them. It is an instructive fact that no discernment due to cerebral power and activity and to acquaintance with the phenomenal world brought him to a stand, while on his journey to the court of Moab, and caused him for a moment to waver in his purpose and to think of turning back; it was not until the startling and the sobering consciousness of some mysterious obstacle not to be moved or surmounted had temporarily subdued the ruling passion and begun to excite a feeling of religious awe, that he perceived the angel of the Lord. The irrepressible conviction that he had been persisting in an attempt that was forbidden, and that his madness was rebuked, may be regarded as a means by which his eyes were opened, and his spirit became again susceptible of a vision of a kind with which the religious notions of his age and country, operating in conjunction with the effects of religious discipline and personal idiosyncrasies, and determining the modes and specialities of actual communication from the Eternal Being, had rendered him, we may suppose, familiar. It is probable, however, that of all the revelations he received none were worth transmitting to posterity for the benefit of mankind, and with a view to spiritual enlightenment and edification, except those which the Bible has saved from oblivion; scarcely more than a page or two of prophecy, in point of quantity a very insignificant, although doubtless a very choice, contribution to the treasures among which it is found. But nothing is more certain than that for the most valuable of the stores of moral wisdom which have been accumulating since the world began, and the most profoundly edifying interpretation of phenomena and events, we are chiefly indebted to persons whose lives as well as lips bore noble testimony on

God's behalf, and adorned the doctrine that has advanced His Kingdom and taught submission to His righteousness. And as a benefactor to mankind in this respect-not to mention others there towers unquestionably far above the rest, as any infidel who is worth listening to will acknowledge, a Man whose moral character alone suffices to draw forth from every awakened conscience the confession, "Truly this was the Son of God." 1

13. To adduce further instances relevant to the question under discussion and corroborative of the principle here maintained would be easy, for they abound; but that of the Superlative Exemplar is so suggestive as to leave nothing to be desired in the way of illustration. In the union of heart and intellect, of character and illumination, which He exhibits, will be found the verification of His own saying, "The Father loveth the Son, and sheweth Him all things that Himself doeth."" Assuming, then, that man is essentially distinct from everything common to himself and the ever-changing phenomenal world-everything which came forth from and returns to the atmosphere and the dust, the conclusion at which we have now arrived we find to be, that the purely and properly subjective condition on which he receives through his surroundings communications from the Author of his existence-a condition not to be confounded with, although tending to influence, and liable to be influenced by, cerebral structure, power, and activity -is that he resembles Him. Upon this condition hinges the possibility of a revelation of the Fundamental Mind. "Now are we children (rékva) of God, and it was never yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that if it shall be made manifest, we shall be like Him; for we shall see hath this hope in Him.

Him as He is. And every one who

" h

purifieth himself, even as He is pure." The hope expressed in these simple but pregnant words—a hope which has found its warrant in the revelation of an essentially holy and an eternally living Representative of our corrupt and mortal race—contemplates as inseparably associated a degree of intuition transcending all present experience and a perfect likeness, so far as everlasting limitations permit, to the Source of whatsoever is pure and lovely in any finite mind.

CHAPTER VI.

FUNCTION OF THE MORAL SENSE IN RELATION TO THE DISCOVERY OF THE FUNDAMENTAL CHARACTER.

Σύμφημι τῷ νόμῳ ὅτι καλός.-Rom. vii. 16.

I. IN the title of this chapter, as will be at once perceived, a question is begged. It is obviously of no small importance, and until it has been disposed of there will be no possibility of making further progress in the investigation that has been pursued in the preceding pages, and of establishing conclusions respecting the character of the Hidden Being to whose originating Mind and Will the universe and its history invite attention. Is there in man an innate aptitude or capacity which may fitly, or at least intelligibly, be termed the Moral Sense? Its existence, although for the most part assumed as a first principle in reasonings which have for their object to inculcate morality, and although insisted upon in connection with widely divergent varieties of theological doctrine, I can claim no liberty to take for granted; accordingly, the phenomena which have suggested it I now proceed to examine.

2. Among the characteristics in respect to which Man towers above the lower animals is a certain aptitude for a kind of discrimination which, for want of a more familiar

but equally accurate term, I must call deontological: he takes account of things which ought to be and things which ought not to be. These two categories he makes constant use of and finds indispensable in classifying such action as he assumes to be truly volitional, or its outcome. That which is conceived of as unconditionally due to the Sovereign Will is of course held to be absolutely necessary: and this the common sense of mankind assigns to the former category. To oppose the absolutely necessary to the fitting (τὸ χρεών to τὸ δέον) would be generally regarded as a symptom of mental perturbation or disease: derangement of the power of moral vision is evinced whenever they appear as if standing apart and haunt the soul as distressingly confusing phantasies, instead of blending into one unmistakably substantial reality. Manifestly, the Ruler whose prerogative it is to order and determine all things. cannot be accountable to any one: hence, to ascribe anything simply to His Will is to exclude it from the province of sane and sober criticism. And in fact, unless without the slightest reservation we acknowledge it to be right and fitting, we commit the preposterous mistake of taking upon ourselves, in the use of a faculty which subsists and is exercised no otherwise than by His power and sufferance, to censure His proceedings. "In Him we live and move and have our being: "a therefore, even if any act of His were faulty, we could never by any possibility know that such was the case, except on the supposition that He were to find fault with it Himself, and were moreover to make us privy to the secrets of His conscience—a supposition for which no place will ever be found in the theology of rational, not to say reverential, thought. The human mind, then, in the judgments it forms, instinctively makes the distinction represented by Acts xvii. 28.