or physical, rather deserve our pity than our scorn. They contracted it because they were exposed to its noxious germs. The antecedent evolution of Scotland and France had produced the moral miasma and the minds ready to receive it, which led to the breaking out of those two dreadful pestilences, Scotch Calvinism and French Terrorism. While they prevailed in their greatest virulence, the minds of men were deformed and made hideous, as their bodies might be by small-pox or elephantiasis.

In this slight retrospect over the darker side of theology, I should misrepresent my meaning if I seemed to blame the men who held opinions, according to my view, very pernicious. Our war should be not with men but with dogmas, principles. The dogmas, under the conditions, were inevitable, just as the Plague of London, under the then conditions of overcrowding and neglect of cleanliness, was inevitable. But we cannot blame the men who suffered from the Plague; we cannot even blame their ignorance of the laws of health, because they could not then have known better. We now do know better, and we keep down the Plague. In the same way, Calvinism was a creed held by men who could not know better. The antecedent history of Scottish thought had led to a superstitious adoration of a fragment of old oriental literature, the Bible, which was supposed to

contain the authentic will and testament of the Creator of the universe. This supposed divine word had been, so it was thought, somewhat kept in the background and slighted by the powerful Catholic Church, which had reigned supreme for centuries, and pressed on men's minds with no light yoke. Every word of this old oriental book, very interesting and valuable in its own way, as a specimen and picture of primitive culture, was imagined to be in the handwriting of the Most High. Every bloody deed recorded, every fantastic and horrible thought enunciated, such as must appear in such a document or collection of documents compiled in such an age, was regarded as approved and authenticated by Almighty Wisdom. When these and similar facts are considered, it does not seem inexplicable that the Scotch and other Calvinists thought and acted as they did. They came to horrible results and conclusions, but these were logical conclusions from the premises. Similarly Rousseau and Robespierre were the most logical of men. The fault lies in the premises, in the one case, that the Bible is the word of God; in the other, that the Contrat Social is the utterance of pure reason.

CHAPTER V.

ON CHRISTIANITY AS A GUIDE TO CONDUCT.

THE next point to be considered is whether the Christian religion is really so strong and efficient a support of morality as it is common to suppose. An affirmative answer is generally taken for granted, as if the case were too obvious to admit of doubt or even of argument. The purity and elevation of the ethics of the gospel are indeed often asserted to be a sufficient proof of its divine origin. Those theologians who wince somewhat under the scientific argument against miracles, recover all their selfpossession when they dwell on the ethical side of their creed. If the casting out of devils from demoniacs is admitted to present difficulties, on the ground that it was and still is a common Eastern superstition to regard lunatics as possessed by evil spirits, a superstition which the evangelists shared with their countrymen and contemporaries, it is maintained

that the Sermon on the Mount is its own evidence of

divine inspiration. "Never man spake like this man." The spiritual depth and sublimity of Christ's teaching must, it is argued, be superhuman, from the fact that to this day they have never been surpassed or approached, and never will be in the most remote future. It is agreed that all the great changes and improvements that have been made in public and private morals, between pagan and modern times, must be set down to the vivifying effects of Christianity, which has raised woman, struck the fetters from the limbs of the slave, moralized war, conquest and commerce, in short, done every good thing that has been done in the last sixteen or eighteen centuries. This is that moral evidence for Christianity which is far more convincing than the evidence derived from works of power. Not that the latter is to be slighted or ignored; but one speaks to the heart, and must abide valid and persuasive through all time; the other addresses the head, and perhaps may not always be equally cogent.

of

Now it will not be necessary for the purpose this inquiry to dispute the claims thus advanced. Many of them indeed are obviously without foundation, as the raising of the status of women, and the liberation of the slave. But, for the sake of argument, and to avoid complicated side issues, let them

be granted; and even then we maintain that it can be proved that Christianity is not favourable to morality in the way and degree commonly supposed. And by morality is meant right conduct here on earth; those outward acts and inward sentiments, which, by the suppression of the selfish passions, conduce most to the public and private well-being of the race.

Paley, with that clear, but at times somewhat cynical, common sense which marked his acute intellect, is willing to admit that "the teaching of morality was not the primary design" of the gospel. "If I were to describe," he goes on to say, "in a very few words, the scope of Christianity, as a revelation, I should say, that it was to influence the conduct of human life, by establishing the proof of a future state of reward and punishment,-' to bring life and immortality to light.' The direct object, therefore, of the design is, to supply motives, and not rules; sanctions, and not precepts. And these were what mankind stood most in need of. The members of civilized society can, in all ordinary cases, judge tolerably well how they ought to act but without a future state, or, which is the same thing, without credited evidence of that state, they want a motive to their duty; they want, at least, strength of motive, sufficient to bear up against the