Chapter XXV (2)

But municipal codes have always required, and must, from their very nature and purpose require, immediate rewards and punishments. This is common to them all. Moses, as a legislator, had little, or no, concern with anything else. His code, however, required them in a somewhat greater degree than others, because it was to be applied to a singularly rude and intractable people; and where the code is in advance of the general manners and sentiments of a people, as was his, speediness and severity of punishment are needed especially. So would it have been with his code had it been merely as others are. On that supposition he would probably, just as other legislators have done, and for the same reasons, have abstained from putting forward the sanction of future rewards and punishments. As far as his business and object were concerned, they would have introduced considerations which, while they were irrelevant, would also have been confusing; and must have weakened the appropriate sanction of his law, which was so essentially his main reliance, that he could not afford to risk its being at all weakened. Indeed, we see that it was a great object in the code to intensify the sense of the severity, and of the speediness of its punishments.

So it would have been, if the code he delivered had been as other codes. On that supposition, he would, probably, have confined himself to the rewards and punishments of this world. There was, however, one supreme peculiarity which distinguished his from all the municipal codes of civil and criminal law people in this part of the world have ever had to do with; that was that it came direct from God. And it came in such a manner and sense, that it required that God should see, more or less immediately, to its execution. It was His law in such a sense that He must be its executor. This meant that God did actually superintend the distribution of the rewards and punishments it required.

This was a structural necessity. At all events it was recognized as such, and was logically carried out in the system.

It will enable us to see this more clearly, if we consider in what way, and on what footing, could have been introduced the doctrine of future rewards and punishments, had they been superadded to these immediate ones, the distribution of which was superintended by God, and which Moses was compelled to insist on. It could, as far as we can imagine, have been done only in one or other of the two following ways. Either he, and the Prophets after him, must have said, and this was what they did say: ‘This is God’s law; and God rewards and punishes all violations of it here in this world; so that you get, here and now, the rewards and punishments He Himself assigns to your actions, and which He Himself actually apportions. But,’ they must then have gone on to add, ‘you will have the same process repeated in a future world.’ Had this been announced, it would have been equivalent to saying, that the Omniscient and Omnipotent Judge having, according to His own law, unerringly tried, and adequately compensated, every act, would repeat the process a second time. That is to say, that every case, having been already adjudicated upon, without any possibility of error, or of insufficiency of award, or of miscarriage of any kind, would be adjudicated upon again by the same Judge, who had in the first instance known every particular, and had, in accordance with His own law, thoroughly dealt with it. No man in his right mind could have propounded such a system: and in these matters Orientals, down to the very bottom of society, are far more logical than ourselves. Jesus precisely, because He taught that the transgressor is not tried by God in this world, could teach that he would be tried by God in the world to come. But this was just what Moses, and the prophets, could not say, because their system rested on the opposite assumption.

Or, and this is the only alternative, they must have said, ‘This is God’s law; and He executes it here. But though it is God’s business, and in God’s hands, still, notwithstanding, it is executed in a very incomplete and insufficient way. Many escape punishment; and many do not get rewarded at all. And those who are rewarded and punished here, are rewarded and punished in very inadequate measures. In every instance there may be, indeed there is, more or less of a miscarriage of justice. But there will be future rewards and punishments, which with set all this right.’ Suppose this had been what had been said; and then see what would have been the consequences. It would have suggested to every man the thought, even the hope, that he might escape in part, perhaps altogether, in this life, the punishment of any crime he was contemplating. But what was most vitally needed was, that is should be seen, and felt, by the people, that punishment would be quite unerring, and as severe as unerring. This way of introducing the doctrine would have been thoroughly illogical; and not more illogical than, morally and politically, bad in its effects. It would have been illogical, because it would have been in direct contradiction to the idea, that it was God who was seeing to the execution of His own law: a point that was as clear to the people as that intelligence governs the universe is to us; and which was the very thought that gave authority and force to the law. And it would have been morally, and politically, bad in its effects, because the vicious, and the ill-disposed, and the would-be criminals of all kinds, are not withheld from doing evil so much by the fear of punishment in the world to come as by fear of punishment here in this world. Nothing encourages them so much in their evil courses as the expectation of present impunity. And this was peculiarly applicable to the people for whom Moses legislated. They were, throughout the whole of the earlier part of their history, ever ready to forget and abandon God; and their temper required, in the highest degree, immediate punishments. Neither, therefore, could the doctrine have been introduced by Moses in this fashion.

Looking, then, at the circumstances, I cannot imagine how the two systems, of present and of future rewards and punishments, could have been taught together under the old heaven-given, heaven-administered, heaven-executed law. A choice had to be made between teaching, on the one hand, what was logical and in conformity with the instinctive beliefs of the people, and might prove to be politically sufficient; and, on the other hand, what, equally in whatever way it might have been put, would have been glaringly illogical and full of contradiction, and could only have caused confusion of ideas, and enfeeblement of the system. This brings me to the conclusion that it was the doctrine that God was seeing to the execution of His own law, in this world and in this life; this law being also, at the same time, a code of municipal law; which in the main decided Moses in making his choice, that is, in leading him to restrict the sanction of his law to what was mundane and immediate.

The three other conceivable reasons we at first examined, and rejected as being inadequate to account for all the phenomena, might have had, and perhaps had, some weight in influencing his decision; but that decision was, I believe, arrived at mainly on the ground of the reasons I have just now been pointing out. No legislator could have overlooked them; and they must have presented themselves with peculiar force to the mind of Moses. They were reasons, too, the force of which was never at all abated as long as the Dispensation continued in existence: just as they had affected the teaching of Moses, so did they the teaching of the Prophets.

So was it at the origin of, and so was it throughout, the old Dispensation. It is the object and the character of the Dispensation which explain to us the omission. If, then, we were to conclude our inquiry at this point, we might feel pretty well satisfied that we had discovered what we were in search of. But we will proceed farther, because by so doing we shall find what will confirm our discovery.

At last the time came when the old Dispensation, though still apparently maintained, and in force, had, in reality, through the progress of events, been completely worked out, both in respect of its moral effects and of its sanction. It had been intended for a certain condition of things; the world had advanced into a totally different condition; and the spontaneous teaching of the new condition of the world brought conviction to every enlightened mind, that the old state of things could never be reverted to any more than manhood can revert to childhood.

The old Dispensation had been worked out morally, because it had issued in a narrow and dead formalism. Another reason was, that the human heart had begun to repudiate exclusiveness, which had been one of the requirements of the old Dispensation, and to catch glimpses of, and to yearn for, universal fraternity. A higher form of religion and of morality could now be imagined, indeed was suggested by the condition and the circumstances of the world, and was seen to be within men’s reach—a morality, and a religion, which would take their start from the idea and sentiment of the brotherhood of mankind. And in morality and religion, as soon as anything better begins to appear, that which is not so good, _ex rerum naturâ_, and _ex vi terminorum_, begins to lose its hold, to decay, and to cumber the ground.

And as respected its sanction, as well as its morality, had the old Dispensation been worked out. Centuries of foreign domination, and that of Rome was now the apparently immovable order of the world, had rendered impossible the supposition that the law was being executed, here and now, by God. For that supposition national independence was the primary, and one absolutely indispensable, condition. But God was no longer supreme, administratively and executively, among His own people. That position was now occupied by the Roman Governor. Under these circumstances, a new religion, in the old form of statute law, and supported by the old sanction of immediate rewards and punishments, the execution of which was superintended by God, might conceivably have been at that time promulgated, though with certainty of failure, from Imperial Rome, but not from subject and provincial Jerusalem. That was inconceivable. For these reasons, then, it was that the new Dispensation could not be cast, as the old had been, in the mould of, and be made dependent on, statute and municipal law. The same conclusion resulted also from the fact that it was foreseen that it must be of its very nature and essence that it should embrace all people, whatever their statute and municipal law might be. That this feeling was springing up, coupled with the fact that the old Dispensation was evidently worked out, both morally and in respect of its sanction, is the meaning of the statement that the fulness of time had come. It was evident, therefore, that no further use could be made, either at the present, or, as far as could then be seen, for the future, of the sanction of immediate rewards and punishments, which fall entirely within the sphere of statute and municipal law. The only rewards and punishments the new doctrine could resort to, as sanctions, must be those of a future life.

It was to this state of things that the teaching of the Saviour was addressed. And as His teaching grew out of, was founded upon, and was logically deducible from, the existing state of things, to see this will also be to see why what He taught had not been taught fifteen hundred years earlier.

The old Dispensation could not be revivified. It was indeed the very reverse of desirable to revivify it. It could not even be maintained. If it was not dying, it was because it was dead. It had been good for its own day; but it was now an anachronism that was both undesirable and impossible.

The new doctrine, then, not being able to cast itself into the form of municipal law, must appeal to the enlightened consciousness of man. Neither could it have any municipal sanctions. The only sanction at that time, and thenceforth, imaginable was that of future rewards and punishments.

Still the old Dispensation stood in the way. It was, without being at all adapted to existing requirements, occupying the ground, and hindering the erection of the structure that was to take its place. It must, therefore, be got rid of.

Under the conditions of the case, that could be done only argumentatively. But what process of reasoning would serve the purpose? We cannot see any way in which it could have been done, except the one in which it was done. The Author of the new Dispensation addressed Himself to the establishment of the proposition, that God is not, here and now, the Executor either of the municipal law, or even of that which would be the law of the new Dispensation. The end is not yet. It was a corollary to this, which did not escape observation, that the municipal law is Cæsar’s concern, that is to say, that it falls within the sphere of the State.

Everything Jesus said in establishment of His main proposition, and by implication of its corollary, was in direct contradiction to the fundamental ideas of Mosaic Dispensation. In fact, the direct opposites of His proposition, and of its corollary, were the old Dispensation itself in its simplest expression: the whole of that Dispensation, just as it stood at work amongst God’s people, and just as it is presented to us in its authentic documents, being only the concrete enlargement, or organized embodiment of these opposites, with a view to the maintenance, under existing conditions, of the order of society.

The reason why Christ denied and disproved the proposition that God is the Executor, here, in this life, of His own law—the proposition of which the old Dispensation was an expansion—was that it hindered the perception of, and barred Him from teaching the doctrine of future rewards and punishments. Moses had seen precisely the same point, only reversely: for he had seen that the doctrine of future rewards and punishments would have barred him from teaching that God is the Executor here, in this life, of His own law. He, therefore, and the Prophets after him, had not taught it. Christ was restricted to the promulgation of a law which is not directly, but mediately, from God; the mediate stage being the moral consciousness of man; and, therefore, if we may so put it, He had no choice but to insist on the demonstration of the fact that God does not Himself directly execute the moral law here, for His not executing it here is the only logical basis of the doctrine of a future life. And He had no choice but to establish the doctrine of a future life, for the rewards and punishments of that life are the only sanctions of the law written in the heart. And, again, He had no choice but to promulgate that unwritten law, for it alone could be the law of His kingdom—of the kingdom of heaven as distinguished from the kingdoms of the world.

First, then, an examination of the position and aims of Moses, and of the means at his disposal, or, at all events, which he was led to adopt for effecting his work, tells us why he did not teach the doctrine of a future life. And then we see that Christ could not logically teach this doctrine, till He had undone that part of the work of Moses which had been a bar to his teaching it. The work of Moses, when analyzed and questioned, gives, itself and alone, the answer we are in search of. The work of Christ, when similarly analyzed and questioned, confirms the answer the work of Moses had already given. It makes clearer what was clear enough before.

In order that the intellectual, or scientific structure of morality and of religion might stand, instead of collapsing, and be enlarged, and rendered more commodious, and be made suitable to the new conditions and requirements of the world, Christ had to take out a part of the foundations of Moses, and to substitute other foundations for them. The foundations He took out were what had hindered Moses from teaching the great doctrine. Having taken these out He could, as He did, insert the great doctrine in their place as a foundation for the new religion. He abrogated the two ideas, that God does, in this world, give and execute the municipal law. Those two ideas being indispensable for the work Moses had to do, contain the reason why the Hebrew Scriptures ignored the future life.

The supersession of the old by the new Dispensation is, at all events, an historical fact; and if our explanation of that fact is satisfactory in the historical, it cannot be unsatisfactory in the religious, order; because all truth, which is only the ascertained order of the world, or sequence and relation of things and of events, is coherent and beneficent. The following are the particulars of the fact, and all of them appear to be sufficiently intelligible:—The law of the old Dispensation had been regarded as given and executed by God. Under the mental conditions of the times, it could not have been regarded otherwise; and that view of it was true in a general and absolute sense, because everything in the universe and on this earth is a link in the order of things, which is aboriginal and external to man. The existence of the material universe itself, of this world of ours, of all natural phenomena, of man, of the order of society, and, therefore, of law, and of the execution of law, are all, in this sense, from God. It was true also in a relative and particular sense, because the human mind was then, and especially was it so throughout the East, in that state in which no conception has as yet been formed either of the existence and action of general laws in nature and in human society, or of the spontaneity and freedom, within certain limits, of human action. Everything, therefore, is unavoidably and honestly referred to God, and in an especial degree the giving and execution of the law. And so did it continue in after times, so long as the Dispensation stood, with respect to everything that was said or done on its behalf, or that in any way bore upon it. Every word that every prophet uttered in exposition, enlargement, or support of it, was regarded by the congregation, and, too, by the prophet himself, as coming from God; and every event also that occurred in connexion with it was brought about by God. At that epoch—we have in our hands the evidence for the period of the Homeric poems—it was so in Greece. And, doubtless, it was so then in Italy and all over Europe. Such ideas belong to a certain stage in mental progress, the stage in which the world was then. This was the natural philosophy, this was the metaphysics of those times.

But to go on, in chronological order, with the particulars of the general fact: at last advancing knowledge and the progress of events began to give form to the ideas of order in nature, and of spontaneity and freedom, within certain limits, in man. The collapse of their own Theocracy, and their long subjection to Greeks and Romans, had obliged the Hebrews to understand the latter of these ideas. For those, therefore, among them who could understand facts it was an impossibility any longer to suppose that God was the sole, immediate, originator and executor of the law. In the minds of all such, the intellectual supports upon which that idea had rested had been completely cut away from beneath it. Still there was, but now removed back a step, an Originator and Governor of the universe, and of all that it contains, and of the moral sense among its other phenomena. This moral sense, therefore, must henceforth be the ground of religion; for that could not be found any longer in municipal law, which had become to their enlarged experience only a human manifestation of the divinely-ordained working of society. There was a Divine purpose and element in it; but in the results were blended so many elements of human error and wrong, especially when men were legislating, not for, or through inspiration from, the idea of God, but for themselves, and through the inspiration of their own supposed interests, as was the case with the heathen, that those results could not be accepted as the frame of religion. The moral sense must, therefore, be recognized, called forth, instructed, enlightened, purified, strengthened, and appealed to; and all this with a constantly understood reference to the knowledge of the day and to the existing conditions of society. But there could be no sanction for this moral sense excepting that of future rewards and punishments. They, therefore, must be recognized. They must be brought to the front. Belief in them must be laid in men’s minds as a foundation—the only foundation, with the mass of mankind—for the desired structure.

This implied that the idea that God gives and executes here the law must be abandoned. And with it must go the idea of His maintaining by any means of this kind a kingdom of this world, such as the old Jewish polity had been. Thenceforth God’s kingdom would be within. Its law would be found, in the moral sense, in the conscience, in the moral consciousness of the God-respecting, and so of the God-taught, individual. The old kingdom had been external; the new would be internal. It would come without observation. Its citizenship would not be of this world. This is the interpretation of those chapters in the history of religion which are contained in the whole range of the old, and in the inception of the new, Dispensation.

God has ordained progress in human affairs. We are sure of this, for history demonstrates it. Those affairs mean ultimately, in their highest form, morality and religion, towards the perfecting of which further approximations are ever from time to time being made; and these successive approximations are the steps of true progress. The most conspicuous instance of this progress, in the historical period, is Christianity itself. Progress means, when we look backward, a lower precedent condition of things just as much as it does, when we look forward from any point, a higher subsequent condition. Of any particular time, it means what was, in the progressive order of things, possible under the circumstances of that time. That was what was ordained for that time. The Mosaic Dispensation, therefore, was just as much ordained of God as the Christian, and the Christian as much as the Mosaic. Each, looking at the contemporary condition of the world, was from God in the same sense, and on analogous grounds. Moses was not wrong in allowing facilities for divorce. Under the circumstances, polygamy was one of them, he was right. Just so with his abstention from using the sanction of the rewards and punishments of the future life. The promulgator of the old Dispensation, we may suppose, felt and understood that mankind would attain, in some coming time, to a higher law than that which he was himself delivering, when he spoke of a Prophet like himself, that is, a moral legislator, who would some day arise, and to whom it would be the duty of God’s people to hearken. Christianity did not contemplate the abolition of slavery. Yet its abolition was a logically and morally right deduction from, and evolution of, Christianity. It was done rightly on Christian principles. If (for argument’s sake) the world should ever grow to a higher moral condition than that apparently contemplated by the first promulgators of Christianity, that would be no proof that Christianity had not been ordained of God as a step in the foreseen and appointed progress of humanity. Just the contrary. It was necessary for that condition, which would not have been possible without it. So was it with the old Dispensation.

* * * * *

It may, in passing, be noticed that the foregoing argument appears to throw some light on the much-vexed question of the historical relation of the New Testament to the Old. It, also, almost brings one to suspect that there must be some error in that teaching which supposes that in respect of the doctrine of a future life, and of the closely connected doctrine of Divine Interposition, particularly of a retributive character, in the ordinary course of human affairs the two are in perfect accord. Of course, they are in accord, though, it would seem, not in the way popularly taught. Their accord consists in the fact that each treats these doctrines in the way that was logically necessary for its own objects. Its own requirements, which were very much those of the knowledge and circumstances of the times, is the point of view from which each regards them.

Here I would ask leave to remark that doctrines, or different ways of stating some particular doctrine, which, from some points of view, or to some minds, appear discordant and contradictory, may, from other points of view and to other minds, appear quite the reverse: that is to say, in a higher and profounder sense they may be eminently accordant. It is so, for instance, I believe, with the doctrines, or doctrine, for it may be only the same idea stated reversely, of a Particular Providence and of General Laws. Our popular theologians on one side, and our men of science on the other, speak of the two as irreconcilably hostile, and exclusive of each other. But is there not an eminence, higher than that occupied by either of these two classes of expositors, from which the two doctrines are seen to be identical? Does not, in fact, the doctrine of general laws imply, and necessitate prevision of, and provision for, every particular case that has ever arisen, that is now arising, and that ever will arise? If so, then, it contains implicitly the doctrine of a Particular Providence. And does the doctrine of a Particular Providence at all imply that God ever acts otherwise than in conformity to the dictates of complete knowledge, perfect wisdom, unvarying justice, and unfailing goodness? If so, then, it contains implicitly the doctrine of General Laws. The two doctrines, therefore, must be mutually inclusive. Each presupposes the other. In fact, the two are one and the same thing.

If, in some points, the preceding statements and conclusions do, at all, diverge from anything that is popularly taught on the subjects to which they refer, there need be no attempt here to gauge and discuss such divergences. Because all that the inquiry that has been before us calls upon me to consider, in a work of this kind, is the higher question (which, in fact, embraces, and is decisive of, the minor ones) of what in this matter is historically true. We have been endeavouring to ascertain the right interpretation, and the real connexion of some particulars in the history of our religion, regarded as a part of general History. That the conclusions we may be brought to have an important bearing on morality and religion themselves, which are the chiefest concerns of mankind, ought to have the effect of making us only more careful, and more determined, in our search for the truth. We are all agreed that truth, together with the effects it has on men’s hearts and lives, is, or at all events ought to be, religion: not what any person, or persons, at the present time think, or at any past periods may have thought; but, as far as is attainable, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We owe no fealty to anything else. Any error in this matter, just like any mistake in the statement of an arithmetical problem, must vitiate every step that follows. If any mistakes exist in the data, either of the arithmetical, or of the religious, problem, it cannot be worked out to any useful conclusion. From the beginning it was apprehended that religion was the truth. In this sense it was that it was described as ‘the Knowledge of God.’ In no other sense can it be ‘the Inspiration of Gods Spirit.’ We, at this day, looking back over the pages of History, can see that wherever this knowledge was clouded, or something else mistaken for it, the result was bad; and, as far as it went, destructive of religion. However venerable any mistakes may be, and however useful they may appear, supposing there are such mistakes, it is our interest, as well as our duty, to rid ourselves and the world of them as speedily and as completely as possible.

I hardly need say that there is nothing in the foregoing argument, or in any of the remarks that have arisen out of its course, which militates against the ideas, that God has so ordered the course of this world as to show on which side He is; and that He has made doing right to be good in itself and good in its general and final consequences; and doing evil to be evil in itself, and evil in its general and final consequences. In fact, as much is assumed in the argument.[6]

But, however, if the discussion we have been passing through supplies a true and complete solution of the interesting question this chapter propounds, and I cannot but think that it does, then one of its consequences will be, (though, indeed, it is a consequence in which the world will not, now, take much interest) that Bishop Warburton’s much-bruited Theory of the Divine Legation of Moses—as a schoolboy I rejected it, but could not then answer it—will prove to be but an Escurial in the air. That the Mosaic Dispensation made no use of the Doctrine of a future life does not prove that it was upheld by a daily renewed miracle. With contemporary and subsequent history before us, we can see that the omission was originally made on logical and administratively wise grounds.

* * * * *

We ask permission for one remark more. It will be observed that the foregoing disquisition assumes to some degree that there is a logical basis for belief in a future life. It is the argument which arises in the bosom of social development. It is not precisely the same process of thought as that which appears to have first implanted the idea in the mind of the Aryan: that was, in some measure, founded on a sentiment, which arose from the bosom of nature. But, however, the old Aryan sentiment which, though a sentiment, had its logic, combined with the distinctly logical argument, founded on the recognition and eternity of justice, which there is no possibility of working out on the stage of this world, where the same act carries one man to the gallows and another to the throne, and which argument social development makes palpable and intelligible, will satisfy many minds and must have weight with every mind. That something, and even that much, can be said on the other side, is a remark of no weight. It is merely an assertion that, in this respect, the question before us does not differ from other moral and religious questions. The same observation may be made of every one of them; for this is a world, as all must see, in which belief, just like virtue itself which is the matured fruit of belief, can be the result only of a right choice, after honest deliberation, between conflicting considerations. This is of its very essence. The great argument, however, itself, and everything that depends upon it, are lost to, and obscured by, those who have persuaded themselves, and are endeavouring to persuade others, to accept precisely what Christ overthrew, and which He overthrew precisely that He might establish belief in the future life.

* * * * *

I have dwelt on the question of this chapter, not on account of its intrinsic interest, although that is great, but because it is a necessary part of the survey of old Egypt. The history of Egypt must include some account of the influence it had upon the world; and a great part of that influence had to pass through, and be transmitted onward by, the Hebrews. It was imperative, therefore, in a work of this kind, that some attempt should be made to obtain a true conception of the relations of Israel to Mizraim; and the most essential part of those relations is that which is intellectual, moral, and religious. This appears to be the only intelligible meaning that can be attached to the reference ‘out of Egypt have I called my son’: His capital doctrine was what had been the capital doctrine of Egypt. If, however, the reference was not intended to have any meaning in the intellectual, moral, and religious order, this passing comment is non-suited and must be withdrawn. But, whatever may be the value of the explanation I have been just attempting to give of the particular question that has been before us, the fact itself remains, standing forth on the long records of history as one of the most important they contain, that, while the belief in future rewards and punishments was the motive power of morality and religion in Egypt, among a neighbouring people, who had in some sort been a secession from Egypt, and always continued to be more or less affected by it, morality and religion were able, under most adverse circumstances, to maintain themselves for fifteen centuries without any formal or direct support from this belief.

Verily we are debtors to the Jew for the great lesson contained in this fact. Another religion—that one indeed which at the present day commands the greatest number of believers—does, as some of its own doctors tell us, leave open, to a considerable extent, this question of future rewards and punishments, contenting itself with teaching that virtue is its own sufficient reward; and that should it have any consequences in a life to come they cannot be evil: and the bearing of this evidence on the point before us is not unimportant. Those, however, who are in the habit of passing by unheeded what more than 300,000,000 of the human family have to say on such questions, will not think it immaterial what the Jews believed. And never had any people more unclouded faith in the eternity and ultimate mundane triumph of truth, of right, and of goodness than the Jews, although they seldom had any thought, and then only very dimly; that they should themselves participate in, or witness that triumph: they lived and died in the faith of it, never having been supported and strengthened by the sight of it, but only by the desire to see it: the better condition, which was to make perfect theirs, having been reserved for other times. Never, however, were any people more ready to sacrifice everything, even to life itself, in proclaiming, and endeavouring to carry out, what they believed. It was this that prompted, and made successful, the Asmonæan insurrection against Greek domination; and which afterwards impelled them to challenge single-handed the world-Empire of Rome. Contemporary history, like much that has been written subsequently, did not understand, indeed quite misunderstood, their motives, and what was stirring within them; and so failed to do them the honour they deserved for their heroic efforts to prevent the extinction of their religion and morality. We, however, can now, at the same time, both do them justice, and acknowledge our obligations to them, for having taught us that the moral sentiments have such deep root in man’s nature; and can maintain so vigorous an existence by their own inherent power, without aid from other-world hopes and fears, and against all of force or seduction with which this world can assail them. This, I submit, throws light upon much that, at the present day, and amongst ourselves, stands somewhat in need of proof and distinctness.

It shows, I think, that there are in our composite mental and bodily constitution principles, or laws, of morality, which, as they are indestructible, and capable of maintaining themselves, and of acting vigorously, under even the most adverse circumstances, must be regarded as inseparable and essential parts of our being. This fact in the natural history of morality may be illustrated by an analogous fact in the natural history of language. A man cannot but use language, and he cannot but use it in conformity with certain rules and laws. He cannot alter one law of language any more than he could invent a new language: he can even hardly add a single word, deliberately and designedly, to an existing one. And he must not only use language in conformity with its natural laws, but he must also use that particular form of it which the working of general laws has developed, necessarily, both for him, and in him. Just so is it with morality. Indeed, the parallel is so complete as to lead one to suspect that morality must to some considerable degree be dependent upon language. Man seems to invent it; and so he does in a certain sense. But, however, he cannot help inventing it; and he must invent it in conformity with certain laws. Over these he has no control: for though he must use, yet he does not invent, or originate, them. That falls within the sphere of a Higher Power. In some form or other, better or not so good, and in some measure, more or less, morality is a congenital necessity of our being, and if society be fairly and wisely dealt with (but of this when we speak of the wisdom of Egypt, and again in our summing up) there are grounds for disposing us to believe that moral, and not animal instincts, may in any people be made the lords of the ascendant.

It will be enough to say here that extremes, then, appear in some sense to have met. We believe just as distinctly as the Jew, or as the Egyptian, that the law came from God; that in it God speaks within us, and through us; and that our part is to hearken to, to bow down before, and obey the Divinity. This involves morality, religion, responsibility, conscience. They saw this through moral intuition. We see it also through history and science. The primæval intuition, and the modern demonstration, constructed out of the materials with which our hoards of experience and observation have supplied us, are in perfect accord. Intuition prior to knowledge, and accumulated knowledge reasoning out the problem, have both arrived at the same conclusion: and so we have sufficient grounds for believing that no other conclusion is possible; and that what history has demonstrated to be inseparable from the working of society, and from the being of man, will endure as long as society and as man shall endure.[7]