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DISCOURSE 
 
 STUDIES OF THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
 Z 
 
 BY 
 
 ADAM SEDGWICK, M.A. F.R.S. &c. 
 
 WOODWARDIAN PROFESSOR 
 AXD FEr.LOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: 
 
 PRINTED AT THE PITT PRESS. BY JOHN SMITH, 
 
 rniXTEIi TO THE UNIVEIiSITV. 
 
 FOR J. St J. J. DEIGHTON. CAMBRIDGE, 
 AND JOHN W PARKER, WEST STRAND, LONDON 
 
 M.DCCC.XXXV. 
 
TO 
 
 THE MASTER, 
 
 FELLOWS AND STUDENTS 
 
 TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, 
 
 ESPECIALLY TO THOSE AT WHOSE REQUEST 
 
 IT IS PUBLISHED, 
 
 THE FOLLOWING DISCOURSE 
 
 IS DEDICATED 
 
 lY THEIR AFFECTIONATE AND FAITHFUL SERVAN' 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The substance of the following Discourse was 
 delivered in the Chapel of Trinity College, on the 
 day of the annual Commemoration in December 
 last, and is published at the request of the junior 
 members of the Society, to whom it was more 
 immediately addressed. As the long delay in its 
 publication requires some apology, the Author begs 
 leave to state, that the request, on which he is 
 now acting, first reached him during the christmas 
 vacation, when he was absent from the University ; 
 and that for some weeks after his return he was 
 so much occupied in completing a course of lectures 
 and in passing two memoirs through the press, 
 that the Lent Term had nearly expired before he 
 had time to revise his MS for the printer. With- 
 out any further delay it w^-is then struck off as far 
 as page 33 ; and he hoped to have published it at 
 the commencement of the Easter Term. 
 
 During its progress through the press he found 
 however that he had undertaken a more difficult 
 task than he had imagined : for having animad- 
 verted with much freedom on some parts of the 
 Cambridge course of reading, he felt liimself com- 
 
VI TREFACE. 
 
 pelled, before he dared to give what he had written 
 to the public, to enter at more length on a justifica- 
 tion of his opinions. On this account, his remarks 
 on the classical, metaphysical, and moral studies 
 of the University (extending from p. 33 to p. 91) 
 were cast over again, and expanded to at least 
 three times their original length. 
 
 Before this part of his task was completed, an 
 attack of indisposition compelled him for a short 
 time to quit the University ; and on his return 
 the languor of ill health, and a series of engage- 
 ments of which it is not necessary here to speak, 
 prevented him from immediately resuming it : so 
 that the latter part of this Discourse was not printed 
 till a late period in the Easter Term, when most 
 of the junior Members had left the University 
 for the long vacation. On this account (as the 
 Appendix was not written, and perhaps he ought 
 to add, as the determination fell in with the 
 j-eady excuses of a procrastinating spirit) he re~ 
 solved not to publish before the University re- 
 assembled in the October Term. 
 
 Lest he should be accused of printing a dis- 
 course too widely differing from the one he was 
 requested to publish, he wishes to state, that (with 
 the exception of mere verbal corrections) it is, 
 as far as p. 33, in the form in which it was first 
 written, and that the conclusion has undergone 
 
PREFACE. VU 
 
 no change: and in the two parts wliicli liave 
 been so much expanded, he has preserved tlie 
 scope and sentiments, and in many instances the 
 very words, of his first sketch. The notes added 
 in an Appendix are not written to serve any pur- 
 pose of ostentation. By most academic persons 
 they may be considered unnecessary : but should 
 a single reader find them of use in explaining or 
 enforcing what is stated in the text, the Author 
 will not regret that he has written them. 
 
 He has attacked the utilitarian theory of 
 morals, not merely because he thinks it founded 
 on false reasoning, but because he also believes 
 that it produces a degrading effect on the temper 
 and conduct of those who adopt it. It is, how- 
 ever, more easy to pull down than to build up ; and 
 he thinks it unfortunate that there is no English 
 work on morals at once unexceptionable in its 
 principles, and cast in such a form as to meet the 
 wants of the University. Bishop Butler's three 
 Sermons on Human Nature and his Dissertation 
 on the Nature of Virtue have lately become subjects 
 of examination in Trinity College. Of their kind, 
 they are works of inestimable value : but they are 
 devoted rather to the discussion of the principles of 
 morality than to the establishment of a system of 
 moral philosophy ; and they are considered by 
 most persons, who begin to speculate on such 
 questions, both difficult and uninviting. 
 
Vlll PllEFACE, 
 
 Before concluding this Preface, the Author 
 disclaims any notion of holding out the following 
 pages as a formal dissertation on academic studies. 
 Such an attempt would be far above his powers ; 
 not falling in with his usual habits of thought, and 
 requiring research for which he has neither time 
 nor inclination. What is here printed treats of 
 subjects treated of a hundred times before, and 
 professes no originality, except what it derives 
 from the circumstances under which it was de- 
 livered and the persons to whom it was addressed. 
 Should it be the means of leading even a small 
 number of them to think more justly on any of 
 the subjects of academic learning, and to com- 
 bine moral and religious habits of thought with 
 those severe physical studies, during which the 
 best faculties of the mind are sometimes permitted 
 to droop and wither, his most earnest wishes will 
 be accomplished. 
 
 Tri>;tty College, Cambridge, 
 Nov. 5, 1833. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 The Author has learnt from the Pub- 
 lishers (and he may add the Proprietors) of 
 this "Discourse," that a fourth Edition of it 
 is now struck off. Had he seen the sheets 
 during their passage through the Press, he 
 might, perhaps, have made a few verbal cor- 
 rections of the text. 
 
 For many years it has been the habit of 
 English writers, more especially those who 
 have been trained at Cambridge, to apply the 
 term philosophy only to those branches of ex- 
 act science that are designated on the Conti- 
 nent by the name of physics. As this local 
 use of a general term may lead to a misappre- 
 hension of the writer's intentions, it would be 
 well if, in the following pages, the words in- 
 ductive philosophy, and other like phrases, 
 were accompanied with some word limiting 
 their application to the exact physical sciences. 
 
 h 
 
X PllEFACE TO FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 The Author, however, again disclaims the 
 idea of publishing his Discourse as a formal 
 Scientific Dissertation. It was delivered at 
 a ceremonial, by which its matter and 
 language were greatly modified : and the 
 portions subsequently added to it partook 
 necessarily of its original rhetorical form. 
 His first object was to trace the connexion 
 between physical science and natural theo- 
 logy. He then gave a short sketch of the 
 other branches of study in the University of 
 Cambridge, with a view of pointing out some 
 imperfections of the course, and especially of 
 those writings which are the guides of the 
 Undergraduates in the metaphysical and moral 
 sciences. In this part of his task he en- 
 deavoured to establish the reality of a moral 
 sense, and the supremacy of conscience — fol- 
 lowing in these subjects opinions that have 
 been maintained with great skill and power 
 of reasoning by Butler ; and advocated in later 
 times by Stewart, Mackintosh, and Chalmers. 
 Lastly, constrained by the place and occasion 
 of its delivery, he endeavoured to connect the 
 several parts of his Discourse together in such 
 a way as to make the whole subservient to the 
 
PREFACE TO FOUIITII EDITION. xi 
 
 support of Christian trutli. To these objects 
 he exclusively adhered : nor did he think it 
 right to encumber himself with the consider- 
 ation of other matters, which, however im- 
 portant in themselves, or connected with the 
 subjects he was handling, were utterly incom- 
 patible with the limits of a single address. 
 
 Nothing is more idle in controversy than 
 for a man to cast on his opponents the blame 
 of consequences he himself draws from a dis- 
 puted principle. The Author does not believe 
 that he has offended in this way : for in point- 
 ing out the evil consequences of the utilitarian 
 theory of morals, he had in his mind facts noto- 
 rious in the history of modern times, and base 
 conclusions advocated in modern writings. But 
 he was not so unreasonable as to impute such 
 conclusions to all who adopt one side of a con- 
 troverted moral question. 
 
 Several honest but unwise attacks have 
 been made by one writer upon the passages of 
 this Discourse relating to the discoveries of 
 Geology. Had he made himself acquainted 
 even with the simplest elements of the subject, 
 
Xll PREFACE TO FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 it might have been well to reply to him : but 
 he is at present so far removed beyond the 
 reach of any reasonable argument, that his 
 writings must be passed over without further 
 notice. 
 
 Trinity College, Cambridge, 
 June., 1835. 
 
A 
 
 DISCOURSE, 
 
 Psalm CXVI. 17, 18, I9. 
 
 / will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will 
 call 2tpo?i the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows 
 imto the Lord ?iow in the presence of all his people, 
 In the courts of the Lord's house, in the midst of thee, 
 Jerusalem,. Praise ye the Lord. 
 
 How beautiful and how varied are the forms of 
 praise and thanksgiving in the book of Psahns ! 
 They appear as the outpourings of a grateful heart 
 before God for the glories of his creation — for 
 succour in the hour of danger — for deliverance 
 from affliction — for national privileges — and for 
 anticipated salvation. There is an earnestness in 
 many of them that lays hold upon our strongest 
 sympathies : for (without speaking of their inspired 
 and prophetic character) they may be truly said to 
 spring from feelings which are natural to every 
 man who is not utterly debased, and in the ex- 
 ercise of which generous tempers ever take delight. 
 The words I have chosen are the conclusion of a 
 Psalm composed by one who had been raised up 
 from some great affliction — his soul had been de- 
 livered from deathy his eyes from tears, and his 
 feet from falling. I quote them however with no 
 
 A 
 
reference to the purpose for which they were first 
 uttered, but because they are well fitted for the 
 occasion that brings us together — to offer in the 
 courts of the Lord's house the sacrifice of thanks- 
 givings and to call upo7i the name of the Lord. 
 
 A well disciplined mind may perhaps learn to 
 see every thing with an eye of faith, so as to find, 
 in all the dispensations of Providence, a motive for 
 the exercise of holiness. But many of us are, I 
 fear, too little endowed with a spirit leading to a 
 contemplation of God in the common bounties of 
 his creation : our spiritual sluggishness requires 
 something more exciting than sensations arising 
 from large and general views of God's providence 
 — something which comes immediately to our own 
 hearts and bosoms, and seems to bear upon our per- 
 sonal happiness. AVhen the body is weighed down 
 by sickness, or the spirits sunk by present affliction, 
 the glories of this world fade away before us ; and 
 we seek, or at least as christian men we ought to 
 seek, our proper consolation in looking to that 
 heavenly kingdom which suffers no change, and 
 into which sorrow finds no entrance : and after the 
 clouds lately gathered round us are passed away 
 and we are conscious of a great deliverance, the 
 feelings of our hearts (unless quite dead to religious 
 sense) will burst forth in the language of praise 
 and thanksgiving. In like manner, though per- 
 haps in less degree, on the national anniversary, 
 the religious festival, or the solemn commemora- 
 tion, thoughts seemingly extinct within us will start 
 into new life, and trains of association will arise, 
 lifting our thoughts above the selfishness and sen- 
 suality of the world, and fixing them on our noblest 
 destinies. 
 
And let me here observe, that tlie fact of our 
 receiving impressions like these (however interrupt- 
 ed, and by whatever means excited,) is an evidence 
 that the spirit of religion is not dead within us. By 
 the blessing of God, the spark now burning but 
 dimly may be excited to a flame, which shall refine 
 the corruptions of our hearts, and become the ani- 
 mating principle of our lives. On this account, 
 every visitation tending to alienate our affections 
 from the world ought to be considered as the 
 warning voice of God addressed to ourselves, and 
 not to be despised ; and every solemnity of religion 
 (whether public or private), having the power of 
 touching the heart and acting on our better feel- 
 ings, is to be regarded as a merciful invitation of 
 God, and never to be rejected. 
 
 Sentiments such as these are surely fitted for 
 the occasion on which we meet ; to return thanks 
 to God for the mercies he has vouchsafed to us 
 — to recount the names of those pious benefactors 
 to whom we owe the peaceful abode of learning and 
 science wherein we dwell — to place before the 
 mind's eye those illustrious men who have inhabit- 
 ed this our Zion, and obtained for themselves a 
 name imperishable as the records of our race. 
 These men are to us in the place of a glorious 
 ancestry, urging us by their example to an emu- 
 lation of their deeds ; and we are unworthy sons 
 if we turn a deaf ear to that voice by which they 
 still seem to speak to us. 
 
 Among them were found many to join the fore- 
 most rank of those who in ancient times eman- 
 cipated this country from spiritual bondage ; to 
 partake in the great work of translating the records 
 of our faith into our native tongue, and to put 
 
 A 2 
 
forth their whole intellectual strength in diffusing 
 the light of Christian truth among the people. In 
 their lists we read the name of Bacon, who, gifted 
 almost with prophetic spirit, was enabled to climb 
 the Pisgah of science, and point out the land 
 of promise to those who were to follow him — of 
 Newton, who after having achieved, by his single 
 arm, the conquest of the natural world, was not 
 puffed up, but gave God the glory ; combining, 
 with powers which never fell to the share of any 
 other man, the simplicity of a child, and the hu- 
 mility of a Christian — of Ray, who saw the finger 
 of God in the whole frame-work of animated nature, 
 and within these sacred walls taught the listeners 
 to comprehend the meaning of those characters he 
 himself had first interpreted — of Barrow, the learn- 
 ed and the wise, the inventive philosopher, the manly 
 reasoner, the eloquent and single-minded christian 
 moralist — and of many other illustrious men, whose 
 very names time would fail me to tell, who having 
 had their minds braced by the studies of this place, 
 and their hearts sanctified by the wisdom from 
 above, devoted themselves to the high and holy 
 office of extending the empire of truth. 
 
 And surely the happiness we enjoy, and the 
 names we this day commemorate, require something 
 more from us than the gratitude of the lips — some- 
 thing more than a formal and heartless ceremonial. 
 We are here met at our annual celebration where these 
 mighty men have met before; we are worshipping 
 at the altar where they worshipped, we are treading 
 on their ashes, and looking on their tombs, and 
 every thing around us is sanctified by their genius. 
 
 Circumstances like these have ever exerted a 
 powerful influence on generous natures. If heathen 
 
men have felt them, and made tliem the topies of 
 exhortation and the mainsprings of national honour, 
 how much more ought they to affect us who are 
 assembled as a christian brotherhood. We believe 
 that the glorious names we commemorate are not 
 those of men who have perished without hope ; but 
 that having fought the good fight in this life, they 
 have received a crown of glory in that which is to 
 come. They seem to speak to us from their tombs, 
 but with no earthly voice, encouraging us by their 
 example, and telling us to be firm and of good cheer 
 in this our pilgrimage — that beyond the dark portal 
 to which we all are hurrying there is a land of 
 promise — and tliat treading in the steps where they 
 have trodden, and guided by the heavenly hand 
 which guided them, we ourselves may reach that 
 land and dwell with them in everlasting glory. 
 
 The influence of domestic example is I think 
 to be recognized in the institutions of every nation. 
 In all of them, under some form or other, we find 
 the traces of hereditary rank and of transmitted 
 authority : and in infant societies, those institutions 
 did not, I believe, commence in assumed physical 
 superiority, but rather in the experience of moral 
 fitness. 
 
 It is not wise for us too nicely to canvass the 
 decrees of Omnipotence : some of them we can 
 partially comprehend — some of them must ever 
 remain hidden from our sight. We are however 
 justified in saying that, in the moral, as in the 
 physical world, God seems to govern by general 
 laws : and when he declares to us, that he will visit 
 the sins of the fathers on their children ; and that 
 he will have mercy on thousands in them that love 
 him and obey him ; we hear not a new and despotic 
 
6 
 
 annunciation contrary to the ordinary operations of 
 his moral government ; but rather we hear a formal 
 promulgation and a higher sanction of them. It 
 is true as a matter of fact, that some races and 
 kindreds are favoured above the rest of men — that 
 God shews mercy to them in thousands, spreading 
 among them the light of truth, and exalting them 
 above the other nations of the earth. But these 
 temporal blessings, I repeat, are not violations, but 
 examples of the moral government of God ; for in 
 the nature of things they only co-exist with the 
 exercise of those moral and intellectual qualities 
 which bind men and families together, and form 
 the very sinews of national strength. When the 
 lessons and the examples of virtue fail, the nation's 
 strength fails with them ; the voice of eloquence 
 and the maxims of wisdom are no longer heard 
 within its walls, and its proudest monuments soon 
 moulder into the dust; or if they remain at all, 
 are visited in after times as mighty ruins, serving 
 only to contrast its former glory with its present 
 desolation. 
 
 It is then our bounden duty to reflect, that 
 our sentiments and our conduct do not terminate 
 with ourselves. Every man, however humble his 
 station and feeble his powers, exercises some in- 
 fluence on those who are about him for good or 
 for evil : and these influences emanating again as 
 from a fresh center, are propagated onwards — and 
 though diluted by new motives, and modified by 
 new circumstances at each transmission, so as in 
 common cases to be lost to the eye of man, they 
 may still go on producing a silent efl'ect to the 
 remotest generations ; and thus become, under 
 Providence, a part of the appointed means by 
 
which a nation's glory is continued, and its strength 
 upheld. 
 
 What I have said of nations, is true also of 
 families or households like our own. If we have 
 received a goodly inheritance we ought to transmit 
 it unimpaired to our children. It matters not to 
 us that the light of truth has been shed abroad 
 by those who have gone before us, if we be living 
 in intellectual darkness. It is not our honour, 
 but our shame, that the wise and good have dwelt 
 within these walls, if they have now no living re- 
 presentatives. Self-examination is therefore among 
 the most important duties of this solemnity : nor 
 is it to be a mere idle and inoperative retrospect, 
 but must be followed by prayer against intellectual 
 pride and presumptuous sins — prayer for support in 
 those resolves of which our consciences approve — 
 prayer above all for that spirit which will lift us 
 above the temptations of the world. If we be 
 endowed with this temper, we bring a hallowed 
 offering to the altar, and cannot doubt that the 
 incense of our praise will mount up to the throne of 
 grace, and bring down a blessing on our household. 
 
 By the arrangements of Providence, things 
 which to us seem good and evil are so blended 
 in this life, that in the annual celebration of so- 
 cieties like our own, we are seldom permitted to 
 meet with feelings of unmixed joy. In thinking 
 of the past glories of our body and of the mighty 
 minds by which its animation has been continued, 
 it is impossible for any one who has dwelt within 
 its walls but a few short years, not to be struck 
 with the changes in its moral aspect — not to be 
 reminded of early prospects blighted, of the links 
 of friendship severed — not to have impressed upon 
 
8 
 
 his memory, that hearts but as yesterday warm 
 with kindness, and tongues glowing with the ac- 
 cents of genius, are now cold and inanimate. The 
 song of praise and the voice of thanksgiving ought 
 therefore to be heard as notes of preparation ; tell- 
 ing us that this is not our abiding city — that with 
 all the good things it contains, and the goodly 
 recollections belonging to it, it is but a halting- 
 place in the great pilgrimage of life — and that 
 before another returning festival, the names of 
 some of us may be also written on the long scroll 
 of those who are departed. 
 
 These, my brethren, seem to be sentiments not 
 merely fitted for the occasion on which we meet, 
 but such as must force themselves on every serious 
 and reflecting mind. I must however content my- 
 self with this short allusion to them, as the time 
 does not allow me to dwell on them any farther. 
 
 Leaving then these general topics, I proceed 
 to speak of this as a place of sound learning and 
 christian education, and to inquire what ought to 
 be the conduct of the understanding during the 
 course of our academic studies before we enter 
 on the great theatre of life. What I am now 
 saying, though I hope not altogether unfitting to 
 other ears, is chiefly addressed to the younger 
 members of our household. 
 
 In the first place, let me put before you a law 
 and condition of your being, of great influence 
 in the formation of your characters. Impressions 
 independent of the will, whether produced directly 
 through the senses, or by trains of association with- 
 in the mind, gradually lose their power by repe- 
 tition ; but habits, whether of mind or body 
 
9 
 
 depending on a previous determination of the will, 
 gain strength by their very exercise, so as at length 
 to become a part of ourselves and an element of 
 our happiness. It is to the operation of this law 
 that we must refer some of the strangest contra- 
 dictions in human nature. What a melancholy 
 contrast we too often find between the generous 
 temper of youth, and the cold calculating spirit 
 of a later period ! between the actions of a man 
 at one time of his life and those of another ! I 
 believe there is not one whom I am now addressing, 
 who, if he reflect at all, will not acknowledge how 
 much the cold hand of time has already chilled 
 some of his better feelings. Now it is absolutely 
 certain, that sensuality and other sins to which by 
 nature man is prone, will do their work in marring 
 the image of God ; and, unless opposed by some 
 countervailing principle, will end in habits making 
 a wreck both of soul and body. In such a state 
 of things a man becomes utterly spell-bound — 
 he is in the gall of bitterness and the boyids of 
 iniquity^ and has no power to help himself; and 
 the hand of God alone can help him. 
 
 I am not now contending for the doctrine of 
 moral necessity ; but I do affirm that the moral 
 government of God is by general laws ; and that 
 it is our bounden duty to study those laws, and 
 as far as we can to turn them to our account. As far, 
 at least, as this world is concerned, the feelings 
 on which we act in early life may and do diminish 
 in their intensity, and yet we may go on in a 
 course, honourable to ourselves and useful to our 
 country, mainly by what is called the force of 
 liabit. Of what vast importance is it then, to those 
 I am now addressing, many of whom have barely 
 
10 
 
 reached the dawn of manhood, to lay a good foun- 
 dation against the coming time, by fostering habits 
 of practical kindness, and self-control — by mental 
 discipline and study — by cultivating all those 
 qualities which give elevation to the moral and 
 intellectual character — in one word, by not waver- 
 ing between right and wrong, but by learning the 
 great lesson of acting strenuously and unhesitatingly 
 on the light of conscience. 
 
 The studies of this place, as far as they relate 
 to mere human learning, divide themselves into 
 three branches. 
 
 1st. The study of the laws of nature, compre- 
 hending all parts of inductive philosophy. 
 
 2dly. The study of ancient literature — or in 
 other words, of those authentic records which con- 
 vey to us an account of the feelings, the sentiments, 
 and the actions, of men prominent in the history of 
 the most famous empires of the ancient world. In 
 these works we seek for examples and maxims of 
 prudence and models of taste. 
 
 3dly. The study of ourselves, considered as 
 individuals and as social beings. Under this head 
 are included ethics, and metaphysics, moral and 
 political philosophy, and some other kindred sub- 
 jects of great complexity, hardly touched on in our 
 academic system, and to be followed out in the more 
 mature labours of after life. Our duty here is to 
 secure a good foundation on which to build ; and to 
 this end we must inquire what ought to be the 
 conduct of the mind in entering on any of these 
 great provinces of human learning. 
 
 I. A study of the laws of nature for many 
 years has been, and I hope ever will be, held up to 
 
11 
 
 honour in this venerable seat of the discoveries of 
 Newton. But in this, as in every other field of 
 labour, no man can put aside the curse pronounced 
 on him — that by the sweat of his brow he shall reap 
 his harvest. Before he can reach that elevation from 
 whence he may look down upon and comprehend 
 the mysteries of the natural world, his way is steep 
 and toilsome, and he must read the records of crea- 
 tion in a strange, and to many minds, a repulsive 
 language, which, rejecting both the sense and the 
 imagination, speaks only to the understanding. But 
 when this language is once learnt, it becomes a 
 mighty instrument of thought, teaching us to link 
 together the phenomena of past and future times; 
 and gives the mind a domination over many parts of 
 the material world, by teaching it to comprehend 
 the laws by which the actions of material things are 
 governed. To follow in this track, first trodden by 
 the immortal Newton — to study this language of 
 pure unmixed truth, is to be regarded not only as 
 your duty, but your high privilege. It is no servile 
 task, no ungenerous labour. The laws by which 
 God has thought good to govern the universe are 
 surely subjects of lofty contemplation ; and the 
 study of that symbolical language by which alone 
 these laws can be fully deciphered, is well deserving 
 of your noblest efforts. Studies of this kind not 
 merely contain their own intellectual reward, but 
 give the mind a habit of abstraction, most difficult 
 to acquire by ordinary means, and a power of con- 
 centration of inestimable value in the business of 
 life. Were there any doubt of this, I would appeal 
 to modern examples, and point out a long list of 
 illustrious men, who, after being strengthened by 
 our severe studies and trained in our discipline, have 
 
12 
 
 borne ofF the prize in the intellectual conflicts of 
 their country. But I need not attempt to prove 
 what no one is prepared to deny. 
 
 Are there, however, no other consequences of 
 these studies beyond those I have pointed to ? The 
 moral capacities of man must not be left out of 
 account in any part of intellectual discipline. Now 
 these severe studies are on the whole favourable to 
 self-control : for, without fastening on the mind 
 through the passions and the senses, they give it 
 not merely a power of concentration, but save it 
 from the languor and misery arising from vacuity 
 of thought — the origin of perhaps half the vices of 
 our nature. 
 
 Again, the study of the higher sciences is well 
 suited to keep down a spirit of arrogance and in- 
 tellectual pride : for, in disentangling the phenomena 
 of the material world, we encounter things which 
 hourly tell us of the feebleness of our powers, and 
 material combinations so infinitely beyond the reach 
 of any intellectual analysis as to convince us at once 
 of the narrow limitation of our faculties. In the 
 power of grasping abstract truth, and in the power of 
 linking together remote truths by chains of abstract 
 reasoning, we may be distinguished from the lower 
 orders of the beings placed around us ; but, in the 
 exercise of these powers, we bear perhaps no re- 
 semblance whatsoever to the supreme intellect. 
 Applied to an Almighty Being with the attribute 
 of ubiquity, in whose mind all things past and to 
 come co-exist in eternal presence, time and space 
 have no meaning, at least in that sense in which they 
 are conditions of our own thoughts and actions. To 
 him all truth is as by intuition ; by us truth is only 
 apprehended through the slow and toilsome process 
 
13 
 
 of comparison. So that the powers and capacities, 
 forming the very implements of our strength, are 
 also the indications of our weakness. In some of 
 our capacities, we may perhaps exliibit a faint sha- 
 dow of a portion of our Maker's image ; but in the 
 reasoning power, of which we sometimes vainly boast, 
 we bear to him, I believe, no resemblance whatso- 
 ever. 
 
 Simplicity of character, humility, and love of 
 truth, ought therefore to be (and I believe generally 
 have been) among the attributes of minds well 
 trained in philosophy. After all that has been 
 done since the thoughts of man were first turned to 
 the phenomena of the material world — after all the 
 boasted discoveries of science, from the first records 
 of civilization, down to our own days — those glo- 
 rious passages of the Old Testament, contrasting 
 the power and wisdom of God in the wonders of his 
 creation, with man's impotence and ignorance, have 
 still, and ever will continue to have, not merely a 
 figurative or poetical, but a literal application. 
 Gird up now thy loins like a man : for I will de- 
 mand of thee, and answer thou me^. Where wast 
 thou when I laid the foundations of the earth ? 
 declare, if thou hast under standing... Whereupon 
 are the foundations thereof fastened ? or who laid 
 the corner-stone thereof ; when the morning-stars 
 sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for 
 joy ? Or ivho shut up the sea with doors, when it 
 brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb ? 
 When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and 
 thick darkness a sivaddling hand for it... and said. 
 Hitherto shall thou come, but no further : and here 
 shall thy proud waves be stayed?... Where is the 
 
 * Job, chap, xxxviii. 
 
14 
 
 way where light dwelleth ? and as for darkness^ 
 where is the place thereof ?.,. Know est thou it, be- 
 cause thou wast then born ? or because the fiumber 
 of thy days is great 9 
 
 Before such an interrogator, we can only bow 
 in humble adoration. The study of the laws of 
 nature may strengthen and exalt the intellectual 
 powers : but strange must be our condition of self- 
 government and tortuous our habits of thought, if 
 such studies be allowed to co-exist with self-love 
 and arrogance and intellectual pride. 
 
 A study of the Newtonian philosophy, as affect- 
 ing our moral powers and capacities (the subject I 
 am now pressing on your thoughts), does not ter- 
 minate in mere negations. It teaches us to see the 
 finger of God in all things animate and inanimate, 
 and gives us an exalted conception of his attributes, 
 placing before us the clearest proof of their reality ; 
 and so prepares, or ought to prepare, the mind for 
 the reception of that higher illumination, which 
 brings the rebellious faculties into obedience to the 
 divine will. 
 
 We learn, by experiment, the different actions 
 and relations of the material things around us, and 
 we find them bound together by a law of mutual 
 attraction. Following our master of philosophy in 
 the loftiest generalization recorded in the history 
 of mankind, we attribute this property, found in 
 the matter on the surface of our planet, to every 
 other mass of matter within the limits of the visible 
 universe. We bring our generalization to the test 
 of observations of a new and certain kind, and we 
 find that it is true. We find that no parts of the 
 visible universe are insulated from the rest ; but 
 that all are knit together by the operation of a 
 
15 
 
 common law. We follow this law into its remotest 
 consequences, and we find it terminating in beauty, 
 and harmony, and order*. 
 
 Again, if we commence our examination of the 
 natural world with the small portions of matter 
 which surround us, and following our induction in 
 a new direction, resolve them into their elements, 
 and unravel the laws of their combination ; we see 
 at every step new cause for wonder — new objects for 
 admiration. Every portion of the matter we tread 
 beneath our feet (however insignificant as an object 
 of sense) propagates its influence through all space, 
 and is felt in the remotest regions of the universe. 
 However small the particle of dust we trample on, 
 it may present traces of a mechanism subservient 
 to the complicated functions of a living being ; or 
 it may be a compound inorganic body, possessing 
 properties of indefinite complexity : and though it 
 be what we call a simple substance, still it is held 
 together by its own laws of cohesion ; it is com- 
 posed of elements not brought together fortuitously, 
 but in obedience to a fixed law, by which they are 
 congregated in definite proportions, and grouped in 
 symmetry and order. Not only is every portion of 
 matter governed by its own laws, but its powers of 
 action on other material things are governed also 
 by laws subordinate to those by which its parts are 
 held together. So that in the countless changes of 
 material things and their countless actions on each 
 other, we find no effect which jars with the mecha- 
 nism of nature ; but all are the harmonious results 
 of dominant laws. 
 
 Again, if we pass from the consideration of 
 things visible and tangible to the subtile and 
 
 * See Note {A ) at the end. 
 
IG 
 
 imponderable agents of the material world, we not 
 only witness the manifestation of their powers in 
 every physical change and every combination ; but we 
 know that some of them, and we may perhaps sup- 
 pose that all of them, are diffused uninterruptedly 
 through every portion of the universe. We are 
 certain that the material of light is at least as far 
 extended as the force of gravitation. It places us 
 at once in physical contact with the remotest bodies 
 of our created system, and by its vibrations they 
 become manifest to us through our visual sense. 
 There is, therefore, no portion of space, however 
 small or however distant, which is not filled at all 
 times with subtile matter — which does not every 
 moment transmit material influences, in number, 
 complexity and rapidity beyond the grasp of 
 thought, yet never anomalous or fortuitous, but 
 governed by fixed laws, and subservient to ends 
 most important in the economy of nature, and es- 
 sential to the very existence of sentient beings. 
 
 In speaking of the laws of nature and of the 
 harmonious changes resulting from their action, 
 in spite of ourselves we fall into language in which 
 we describe the operations of intelligence : and 
 language, let me observe, was never formed by a 
 convention of learned men, or constructed on the 
 scheme of an hypothesis. It is the true offspring 
 of our intellectual nature, and bears the image of 
 such ideas as rise up of necessity in the mind, from 
 our relation to the things around us. If we forget 
 him in our thoughts, with our lips at least we must 
 do homage to the God of nature. What are the 
 laws of nature but the manifestations of his wisdom ? 
 What are material actions but manifestations of his 
 power ? Indications of his wisdom and his power 
 
co-exist witli every portion of the universe. They 
 are seen in the great luminaries of heaven — they 
 are seen in the dead matter whereon we trample — 
 they are found in all parts of space, remote as well 
 as near, which we in our ignorance sometimes re- 
 gard as mere vacuities — they are unceasing — they 
 are unchangeable*. 
 
 Contemplations such as these lift the soul to a 
 perception of some of the attributes of God ; im- 
 {)erfect it may be, but still suited to the condition 
 of our being. But are thoughts like these to pass 
 through the mind and produce only a cold acqui- 
 escence ? Are we to dwell in the perpetual pre- 
 sence of God and yet dishonour him by the worship 
 of ourselves, and refuse to him the homaoe of our 
 humble praise ? Such were not the feelings of the 
 holy Psalmist, when, contrasting his own feebleness 
 with the all-pervading wisdom and power of God, 
 he was kindled as by fire from heaven, and burst 
 out into rapturous expressions of adoration. Whi- 
 ther shall I go from thy spirit ? or ivhither shall 
 I Jtee from thy presence f If I ascend up into 
 heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in liell, 
 behold, thou art there. If I take the icings of the 
 morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the 
 sea ; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy 
 right haiid shall hold me. If I say. Surely the 
 darkness shall cover me ; even the night shall be 
 light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not 
 from thee : but the night shineth as the day : the 
 darkness and the light are both alike to thee -f*. 
 
 How any believer can deny the reality of a 
 natural religion when he reads those passages in 
 the Bible where its power is so emphatically ac- 
 
 * See Note (B) at the end. t Psalm cxxxix. 7—12. 
 
 B 
 
18 
 
 knowledged, is more than I ca4i understand. We 
 are told by St Paul, that even the Gentiles are 
 without excuse, /or the invisible things of God from 
 the creation of the world are clearly seen, being 
 understood by the thhigs which are made, even 
 his eternal power and Godhead'^. Yet I have 
 myself heard it asserted within these very walls, 
 that there is no religion of nature, and that we 
 have no knowledge of the attributes of God or even 
 of his existence, independently of revelation. The 
 assertion is, I think, mischievous, because I believe 
 it untrue : and by truth only can a God of truth be 
 honoured, and the cause of true religion be served. 
 
 But there is another class of objectors, who not 
 only adopt this cold and unnatural conclusion, but 
 rejecting revelation along with it, banish utterly all 
 thought of God from the world. It is indeed true, 
 as these objectors state, that all material changes 
 are governed by fixed laws, and that the present 
 condition of all material things is but a natural con- 
 sequence of these laws operating on that condition 
 of matter which preceded the phenomena we con- 
 template. They rest their strength, as far as I 
 understand their meaning, in this immutability of 
 the laws of nature : and having, with much labour, 
 decyphered a portion of these laws, and having 
 traced the ordained movements of the material 
 world without ever thinking of the Being by whom 
 these movements were directed, they come at length 
 to deify the elements themselves, and to thrust the 
 God of nature from his throne. But where is the 
 reasonableness of this conclusion ? The unchange- 
 ableness of the laws of nature is not only essential 
 to the well being, but to the very existence of crea- 
 
 * Rom. i. 23. 
 
19 
 
 tures like ourselves. The works of our hands are 
 liable to perpetual change, from caprice, from 
 violence, or from natural decay : but in the material 
 laws ordained by God, there are no such indications, 
 because they partake of the perfections of his at- 
 tributes, and are therefore unchangeable. 
 
 The single-minded writers of the New Testa- 
 ment, having their souls filled with other truths, 
 thought little of the laws of nature : but they tell 
 us of the immutable perfections of our heavenly 
 Father, and describe him as a being in whom is no 
 variableness or shadow of tiirning. The religion 
 of nature and the religion of the Bible are therefore 
 in beautiful accordance ; and the indications of the 
 Godhead, offered by the one, are well fitted to give 
 us a livelier belief in the promises of the other. So 
 far from offering any foundation for an atheistical 
 argument, the constancy of the laws of nature, 
 might, T think, have been almost anticipated by a 
 well ordered mind, though unacquainted with the 
 great discoveries of physics : and should the framer 
 of the universe have other changes in reserve for 
 the material world beyond those that follow from 
 the laws by which he has already in part revealed 
 himself to us, we have no right to suppose that 
 such changes can be known or understood by be- 
 ings like ourselves — so feeble in capacity — so 
 limited in time — and confined to such a speck of 
 the universe. 
 
 But after all, we do contemplate something more 
 than a mere succession of material changes. We 
 find that these changes are limited by an adjusting 
 power, and tend to a condition of equilibrium, and 
 that the ultimate results of the laws of nature are 
 harmony and order. We find them operating in 
 
 1{ 2 
 
20 
 
 differ ent portions of space with endless complexity, 
 and yet producing effects perfectly adapted to each 
 other. We see innumerable portions of matter not 
 only obeying laws common to all matter, but acted 
 on by new laws subservient to vital powers ; and 
 by these laws gradually moulded into a beautiful 
 form and mechanism — suited at once to all the 
 complicated functions of a sentient being, and to all 
 the material elements which surround it. Are we 
 to believe that there can be such beautiful and har- 
 monious movements in the vast mechanism of na- 
 ture, and yet think that the Spirit of God hath not 
 brooded over them, and that his hand hath not 
 guided them ? Can we see in every portion of the 
 visible world the impress of wisdom and power, and 
 yet believe that these things were not foreseen in 
 the Divine mind, and these ends not contemplated 
 before he called the universe into being ? 
 
 The external world proves to us the being of 
 a God in two ways ; by addressing the imagination, 
 and by informing the reason. It speaks to our 
 imaginative and poetic feelings, and they are as 
 much a part of ourselves as our limbs and our 
 organs of sense. Music has no charms for the deaf, 
 nor has painting for the blind ; and all the touching 
 sentiments and splendid imagery borrowed by the 
 poet from the world without, would lose their magic 
 power, and might as well be presented to a cold 
 statue as to a man, were there no pre-ordained 
 harmony between his mind and the material things 
 around him. It is certain that the glories of the 
 external world are so fitted to our imaginative 
 powers as to give them a perception of the God- 
 head, and a glimpse of his attributes ; and this 
 adaptation is a proof of the existence of God, of 
 
21 
 
 the same kind (but of greater or less power accord- 
 ing to the constitution of our individual minds) 
 with that we derive from the adaptation of our 
 senses to the constitution of the material world. 
 
 The heavens declare the glory of God, and the 
 firmament sheweth his handy work*. Here is a 
 direct assertion — an appeal to the heart and not to 
 the understanding; and every unsophisticated heart 
 will beat in unison with it. The fool hath said in 
 his heart, There is no God : corrupt are they aiid 
 have dofie abominable iniquity f. In this passage 
 the denial of God is coupled in the mind of the 
 sacred poet with foul and sensual sin. And is not 
 such a union justified by experience ? A soul 
 corroded by sensual sin can ill reflect the pure 
 image of God — can ill discern the indications of 
 his will in the glories of his creation. 
 
 Leaving, however, the proofs of an intelligent 
 cause from the connexion between the external 
 world and our imaginative powers, let us once more 
 glance our eye over the proofs which appeal to the 
 reasoning faculties. The mind becomes bewildered 
 among the countless movements continually going 
 on, and the perpetual changes produced by material 
 actions, of which we see neither the beginning nor 
 the end : but we find repose in the study of ani- 
 mated nature. Every being possessing life may 
 first be considered apart from the rest of nature. 
 Its bodily organs are produced by powers of vast 
 complexity and understood only in their effects — 
 confined in their operation to the individual being, 
 and entirely separate from the ordinary modes of 
 atomic action. Yet these organs thus elaborated, 
 exhibit throughout a perfect mechanism, in all its 
 
 * Psalm xix. 1. f Psalm jLiii. 1 
 
22 
 
 parts (as far as we can comprehend them) exactly 
 fitted to the vital functions of the being. Contri- 
 vance proves design ; in every organic being we 
 survey (and how countless are the forms and func- 
 tions of such beings !) we see a new instance of 
 contrivance and a new manifestation of an intelli- 
 gent superintending power. 
 
 This proof is so strong that it never has been 
 and never can be gainsaid. It is in vain that we 
 attempt to shut out the belief in an intelligent 
 Creator by referring all phenomena to a connected 
 succession of material causes, not one of which is 
 fully comprehended. This thought should indeed 
 fill us with deep humility, but takes not from us 
 the fair inductions of our reason. We do not 
 understand that complicated material action by 
 which the God of nature builds up the organic 
 structure of a sentient being : but we do, in part at 
 least, comprehend the adaptation of its mechanism 
 to various ends, and we see those ends accomplish- 
 ed : and this enough to warrant our conclusion. 
 
 An uninstructed man sees a piece of mechanism, 
 and from the form and the acting of its external 
 parts (though he comprehend neither its whole 
 structure nor its objects) is certain that it is the 
 work of a skilful hand. Another man understands 
 all its complicated movements, but knows not the 
 nature of the moving power in which they origi- 
 nate. A third can explain the alternate expansions 
 and condensations of an elastic vapour, and point 
 out this action as the origin and support of the 
 whole propelling force. At length we find one, 
 who will not only explain the whole mechanism 
 from first to last ; but tell us of the nature of 
 its materials, of the places whence they were de- 
 
23 
 
 rived, of the modes of their fabrication, of the 
 manner in which they were put together, and of 
 all the effects of their combined action. But it 
 is not necessary to know all this to be certain 
 of an intelligent contriver. The first observer 
 drew this conclusion rightly from what he saw, 
 though he comprehended little of these compli- 
 cated movements. And after all, what relation 
 does the most skilful mechanist bear to his own 
 workmanship ? He does not create one particle of 
 matter — he does not supersede one law of nature : 
 but using the matter created to his hands, and 
 forming and combining it in subordination tg the 
 laws impressed on it, he produces a connected 
 succession of material actions, and obtains a series 
 of results — foreseen in his own mind and deter- 
 mined in his will before he commenced the building- 
 of his fabric. 
 
 Something like this we can trace in the de- 
 velopement of organic beings. They are formed 
 of matter, which was created, and governed by 
 its own laws, anterior to their existence : they are 
 matured by a regulated succession of material 
 actions : when perfected, they exhibit an exquisite 
 combination of mechanical contrivances, and organs 
 fitted to carry them into effect. To such a struc- 
 ture are superadded vital functions and appetencies, 
 which (like the moving force of a complicated en- 
 gine) put all its parts into motion, and compel them 
 to obey the laws of their destination. The external 
 forms of organic bodies we can study, their func- 
 tions we can observe, their internal mechanism wc 
 can partly trace : but wlien we consider the vital 
 powers connected with their origin and develope- 
 mcnt, we find ourselves among phenomena out of 
 
24 
 
 the ken of our senses, and removed beyond our 
 intellectual grasp ; and are compelled to acknow- 
 ledge our utter ignorance. But, on this account 
 to exclude an intelligent contriver, would not be 
 more wise, than for a man to assert the fortuitous 
 concourse of the wheels of a machine, because he 
 knew not the power by which it was set in motion. 
 
 It is in vain that we attempt to banish an 
 intelligent Creator, by referring all changes organic 
 and inorganic, to a succession of constant material 
 actions, continued during an eternity of past time. 
 Were this true, it would not touch our argument : 
 and every clear instance of organic contrivance or 
 material adaptation, would be a phenomenon un- 
 explained, except on the supposition of a contriver. 
 It would only prove that, in a certain portion of 
 space, God had thought fit to give a constant mani- 
 festation of his wisdom and power through an 
 indefinite period of duration. The eternity of 
 material forms is, however, but a dream of false 
 philosophy, unfounded in reason or analogy ; and, 
 as far at least as organic nature is concerned, con- 
 tradicted by the plainest physical records of the 
 past world. 
 
 Assuming, then, that the structure of every 
 being, endowed with life, demonstrates the existence 
 of an intelligent overruling power, to what more 
 does the conclusion lead us ? — To the inevitable 
 belief that all inanimate nature is also the pro- 
 duction of the same overruling intelligence. As 
 all parts of matter are bound together by fixed 
 and immutable laws; so all parts of organic nature 
 are bound to the rest of the universe, by the re- 
 lations of their organs to the world without them. 
 If the beautiful structure of organic bodies proves 
 
25 
 
 design, still more impressive is the proof, when 
 we mark the adaptation of their organs to the 
 condition of the material world. By this adapta- 
 tion, we link together all nature, animate and 
 inanimate, and prove it to be one harmonious 
 whole, produced by one dominant intelligence. 
 
 The organs of sense and the materials around 
 them are related to each other in the way of adap- 
 tation, but not in the way of cause and effect. 
 The eye is not formed by the vibrations of light, 
 nor the ear by the pulsations of the air. Had 
 this been the case, such beings as the blind and 
 the deaf would never have been heard of ; for no 
 being can be removed from the influence of those 
 elements. The eye and the ear are formed in the 
 womb by the mysterious operations of organic se- 
 cretion and assimilation, before the pulsations of 
 the air have ever reached the ear, or the vibrations 
 of light have ever acted on the visual sense. They 
 are examples of beautiful mechanism demonstrating 
 design ; but they are adapted only to a future con- 
 dition of the being ; and so also demonstrate a 
 provident intelligence. Should any one deny con- 
 clusions such as these, I can only reply that his 
 mind is differently constituted from my own, and 
 that we have no common ground on which to build 
 a reasonable argument. 
 
 By the discoveries of a new science (the very 
 name of which has been but a few years engrafted 
 on our language), we learn that the manifestations 
 of God's power on the earth have not been limited 
 to the few thousand years of man's existence. The 
 Geologist tells us, by the clearest interpretation of 
 the phenomena which his labours have brought to 
 light, that our globe has been subject to vast 
 
26 
 
 physical revolutions. He counts his time not by 
 celestial cycles, but by an index he has found in 
 the solid framework of the globe itself. He sees 
 a long succession of monuments each of which may 
 Jiave required a thousand ages for its elaboration. 
 He arranges them in chronological order ; observes 
 on them the marks of skill and v/isdom, and finds 
 within them the tombs of the ancient inhabitants 
 of the earth. He finds strange and unlooked-for 
 changes in the forms and fashions of organic life 
 during each of the long periods he thus contem- 
 plates. He traces these changes backwards through 
 each successive era, till he reaches a time when the 
 monuments lose all symmetry, and the types of 
 organic life are no longer seen. He has then enter- 
 ed on the dark age of nature"'s liistory ; and he 
 closes the old chapter of her records This ac- 
 count has so much of what is exactly true, that it 
 hardly deserves the name of figurative description. 
 
 Geology, like every other science when well 
 interpreted, lends its aid to natural religion. It 
 tells us, out of its own records, that man has been 
 but a few years a dweller on the earth ; for the 
 traces of himself and of his works are confined to 
 the last monuments of its history. Independently 
 of every written testimony, we therefore believe 
 that man, with all his powers and appetencies, his 
 marvellous structure and his fitness for the world 
 around him, was called into being within a few 
 thousand years of the days in which we live — 
 not by a transmutation of species, (a theory no 
 better than a phrensied dream), but by a provi- 
 dent contriving power. And thus we at once re- 
 move a stumbling block, thrown in our way by 
 those Avho would rid themselves of a prescient first 
 
27 
 
 cause, by trying to resolve nil phenomena into a 
 succession of constant material actions, ascending 
 into an eternity of past time. 
 
 But this is not the only way in which Geology 
 gives its aid to natural religion. It proves that 
 a pervading intelligent princi})lc has manifested its 
 power during times long anterior to the records 
 of our existence. It adds to the great cumulative 
 argument derived from the forms of animated na- 
 ture, by shewing us new and unlooked-for instances 
 of organic structure adjusted to an end, and that 
 end accomplished. It tells us that God has not 
 created the world and left it to itself, remaining 
 ever after a quiescent spectator of his own work : 
 for it puts before our eyes the certain proofs, that 
 during successive periods there have been, not 
 only great changes in the external conditions of 
 the earth, but corresponding changes in organic 
 life ; and that in every such instance of change, 
 the new organs, as far as we can comprehend their 
 use, were exactly suited to the functions of the 
 beings they were given to. It shews intelligent 
 power not only contriving means adapted to an 
 end : but at many successive times contriving a 
 change of mechanism adapted to a change of ex- 
 ternal conditions ; and thus affords a proof, pe- 
 culiarly its own, that the great first cause continues 
 a provident and active intelligence. 
 
 I forbear to dwell on other questions deeply 
 connected with this science — Proofs of a higher 
 temperature, as shewn by the organic forms of 
 the old world — indications of the same thing, in 
 the crystalline structure of the lower strata, and 
 the masses on which they rest — and further proofs 
 derived from the figure of the (>nrth itself. The 
 
28 
 
 spheroidal form of the earth seems to have preceded 
 all geological phenomena, and makes probable the 
 condition of primeval fusion : and, following in the 
 same train of thought, we have only to imagine 
 another accession of heat, and the whole earth must 
 have been dissipated through planetary space, and 
 have appeared (were there then an eye like our own 
 to behold it) as a mere expanded nebulosity. 
 
 Speculations like these, starting at least from 
 actual phenomena, are not without their use. For, 
 without lowering one jot the proof of a pre-ordain- 
 ing intelligence, they point, through a long suc- 
 cession of material changes, towards a beginning 
 of things, when there was not one material quality 
 fitted to act on senses like our own ; and thus they 
 take from nature that aspect of unchangeableness 
 and stern necessity which has driven some men 
 to downright atheism, and others to reject all 
 natural religion. 
 
 If, then, our planetary system was gradually 
 evolved from a primeval condition of matter, we 
 may well believe, that every material change within 
 it, from first to last, has been but a manifestation 
 of the Godhead, and an emanation from his im- 
 mediate will — Or we may suppose, that new powers 
 bave, by an act of creative interference, been im- 
 pressed on it at successive epochs of its changes ; 
 and that these new powers, working together with 
 the old, may have brought about the next system 
 of material conditions* — Or, if it be thought more 
 in conformity with what we see of the modes of 
 
 * This second hypothesis (though perhaps less philosophical 
 than either of the other two) is suggested by the analogy of the 
 repeated changes of organic species, alluded to above, each of which 
 can be regarded only as a positive creative interfcTcncc. 
 
29 
 
 material action, to suppose that the primeval system 
 contained within itself the elements of every sub- 
 sequent change, then is the primeval matter to the 
 matured system of the world, as the seed to the 
 plant, or the egg to the living creature. Following 
 for a moment the last of these hypotheses — shall 
 this embryo of the material world contain within 
 itself the germ of all the beauty and harmony, the 
 stupendous movements and exquisite adaptations of 
 our system — the entanglement of phenomena, held 
 together by complicated laws, but mutually adjust- 
 ed so as to work together to a common end — and 
 the relation of all these things to the functions of 
 beings possessing countless superadded powers, 
 bound up with life and volition ? And shall we 
 then satisfy ourselves, by telling of laws of atomic 
 action, of mechanical movements, and chemical com- 
 binations ; and dare to think, that in so doing, we 
 have made one step towards an explanation of the 
 workmanship of the God of nature ? So far from 
 ridding ourselves, by our hypothesis, of the ne- 
 cessity of an intelligent first cause, we give that 
 necessity a new concentration, by making every 
 material power, manifested since the creation of 
 matter, to have emanated from God's bosom by 
 a single act of omnipotent prescience. 
 
 Leaving, however, these subjects of lofty spe- 
 culation, and retracing our steps from the first 
 condition of created matter towards the order of 
 things now going on before us, we see, from the 
 form and structure of the solid masses on the sur- 
 face of the earth, that many parts of it have been 
 elaborated during successive periods of time ; and 
 if we cannot point out the first traces of organic 
 life, we can find, at least, an indication of its 
 
30 
 
 beginning. During the evolution of countless suc- 
 ceeding ages, mechanical and chemical laws seem 
 to have undergone no change ; but tribes of sentient 
 beings were created, and lived their time upon the 
 earth. At succeeding epochs, new tribes of beings 
 were called into existence, not merely as the pro- 
 geny of those that had appeared before them, but 
 -as new and living proofs of creative interference : 
 and though formed on the same plan, and bearing 
 the same marks of wise contrivance, oftentimes as 
 unlike those creatures which preceded them, as if 
 they had been matured in a different portion of the 
 universe and cast upon the earth by the collision of 
 another planet. At length, within a few thousand 
 years of the days in which we live (a period short 
 indeed if measured by the physical monuments of 
 time past), man and his fellow beings are placed 
 upon the earth. Of the whole creation, he alone 
 has an appetence for abstract truth — he alone sees 
 material powers, and by the capacity of his mind 
 grasps at them, not as accidents, but phenomena 
 under some ruling law — and, in describing them, 
 he uses language (and what is language but the 
 connected natural signs of internal thoughts ?) in 
 which, in spite of himself, he describes the ope- 
 rations of intelligence and power. He turns these 
 laws to his own account ; by his own volition works 
 upon them, and produces consequences important 
 to himself and foreseen in his own mind : and thus 
 he learns, from what he has done himself, and from 
 the constitution of his intellectual nature, to see in 
 all things around him contrivance and causation. 
 All nature is but the manifestation of a supreme 
 intelligence, and to no being but him to whom 
 is given the faculty of reason, can this truth be 
 
31 
 
 known. By this faculty he becomes tlie lord of 
 created beings, and finds all matter, organic and 
 inorganic, subservient to his happiness, and work- 
 ing together for his good. A part of what is past 
 he can comprehend ; something even of the future 
 he can anticipate ; and on whatever side he looks, 
 he sees proofs, not of wisdom and power only, but 
 of goodness. 
 
 But these abstract powers form not the whole 
 immaterial part of man. He has moral powers and 
 capacities unsatisfied with what he sees around him. 
 He longs for a higher and more enduring intel- 
 lectual fruition — a nearer approach to the God of 
 nature : and seeing that every material organ, as 
 well as every vital function and capacity in things 
 around him, is created for an end, he cannot believe 
 that a God of power and goodness will deceive him ; 
 and on these attributes he builds his hopes of con- 
 tinued being, and future glory. 
 
 This is the true end to which the religion of 
 nature points. Her light may be but dim, and 
 beyond the point to which she leads us there may 
 be a way which the vulture s eye hath not seen, 
 the lion'^s whelp hath not trodden, nor the fierce 
 lion passed — a cold and dismal region, where our 
 eyes behold none but the appalling forms of nature's 
 dissolution : but here our heavenly Father deserts 
 us not ; he lights a new lamp for our feet, and 
 places a staff in our hands, on which we may lean 
 securely through the valley of the shadow of death, 
 and reach and dwell in a land where death and 
 darkness have heard the doom of everlasting banish- 
 ment. 
 
 In ending this portion of my discourse, let me 
 exhort you not only to mingle thoughts like these 
 
32 
 
 with your abstract studies, but to give them an 
 habitual personal application — to seek above all 
 things a spirit of single-niindedness and humility — 
 to believe yourselves in the perpetual presence of 
 God — to adore him in the glories of his creation — 
 to see his power and wisdom in the harmony of the 
 world — ^his goodness and his providence in the 
 wonderful structure of living beings — Not merely 
 to admit these things as general truths, but to make 
 yourselves familiar with them by frequent trains of 
 reasoning founded on such examples as are con- 
 tinually before you*. 
 
 To deny all natural religion is not more strange 
 than to commence a system of moral philosophy 
 by denying the existence of moral feelings. It 
 is, I think, to deny that very constitution of our 
 minds on which the fabric of our religious cha- 
 racter must be built. How such a character is 
 matured and upheld I do not now inquire : but 
 among persons of intellectual habits, it depends 
 for its commencement, mainly on the conduct of 
 the mind in early life: and during the changes 
 of advancing years cannot perhaps be so well 
 upheld by any ordinary means as by a steady 
 habit of seeing, and adoring with thankfulness of 
 heart, the wisdom and goodness of God in the 
 wonders and bounties of his creation. The mate- 
 rials for thoughts like these are placed abundantly 
 around us. 
 
 To many minds, the forms of natural know- 
 ledge, presented in the abstractions of severe science, 
 are cold and uninviting : but if we follow them with 
 the light of other kindred studies, such as those I 
 have endeavoured faintly to shadow out, we bring 
 
 * See Note (C) at the end. 
 
down the fire from heaven which at once gives them 
 movement and animation. 
 
 II. In the comments I think it right to make 
 on the second branch of pur studies, I may take for 
 granted that every one of those whom I now ad- 
 dress, has from his tender years been taught the 
 languages of Greece and Rome, and is familiar with 
 at least a portion of their literature. It is no part 
 of my object either to praise or blame the system 
 of early education in this country : but, before I 
 pass on, I may recall to your minds the wonderful 
 ease with which a child comprehends the conven- 
 tional signs of thought formed between man and 
 man — not only learns the meaning of words de- 
 scriptive of visible things ; but understands, by a 
 kind of rational instinct, the meaning of abstract 
 terms, without ever thinking of the faculty by 
 which he comes to separate them from the names 
 of mere objects of sense. The readiness with which 
 a child acquires a language may well be called a 
 rational instinct : for during the time that his know- 
 ledge is built up, and that he learns to handle the 
 implements of thought, he knows no more of what 
 passes within himself, than he does of the structure 
 of the eye, or of the properties of light, while he 
 attends to the impressions on his visual sense, and 
 gives to each impression its appropriate name. As 
 the memory becomes stored with words, and the 
 mind accustomed to their application, this readiness 
 of verbal acquisition gradiially decays, and at length, 
 with some persons, almost disappears. That this is 
 true, I need only appeal to the experience of those 
 who, after being long disused to such studies, have 
 attempted to learn a language. They will tell you 
 
 C 
 
34 
 
 of their feelings of mental drudgery and intolerable 
 fatigue, during their slow, laborious progress, in 
 acquiring what a child gains without knowing how, 
 and a young person learns cheerfully and without 
 a sense of toil. A smaU part of these remarks 
 applies only to our vernacular tongue and to oral 
 teaching : the greater part bears on the acquisition 
 of all languages — the dead as well as the living. 
 Our fathers then have done wisely, and followed 
 nature, in making the study of languages a part of 
 our earliest discipline. By this study we gain ac- 
 cess to the magazines of thought — we find our way 
 through the vast storehouses wherein are piled the 
 intellectual treasures of a nation, as soon as we have 
 capacity to understand their value, and strength to 
 turn them to good account. 
 
 With individuals as with nations, the powers of 
 imagination reach their maturity sooner than the 
 powers of reason ; and this is another proof, that 
 the severer investigations of science ought to be 
 preceded by the study of languages ; and especially 
 of those great works of imagination which have be- 
 come a pattern for the literature of every civilized 
 tongue. From time to time there arise upon the 
 earth men who seem formed to become the center 
 of an intellectual system of their own. They are 
 invested, like the prophet of old, with a heavenly 
 mantle, and speak with the voice of inspiration. 
 Those that appear after them are but attendants in 
 their train — seem born only to revolve about them, 
 warmed by their heat and shining by their reflected 
 glory. Their works derive not their strength from 
 momentary passions or local associations, but speak 
 to feelings common to mankind, and reach the in- 
 nermost movements of the soul ; and hence it is 
 
35 
 
 that they have an immortal spirit whicli carries 
 them safe through the wreck of empires and the 
 changes of opinion. 
 
 Works like these are formed by no rule ; but 
 become a model and a rule to other men. Few, 
 however, among us are permitted to shew this high 
 excellence. Ordinary minds must be content to 
 learn by rule ; and every good system of teaching 
 must have reference to the many and not to the 
 few. But surely it is our glorious privilege to 
 follow the track of those who have adorned the 
 history of mankind — to feel as they have felt — to 
 think as they have thought — and to draw from the 
 living fountain of their genius. Wonderful and 
 mysterious is the intellectual communion we hold 
 with them ! Visions of imagination starting from 
 their souls, as if struck out by creative power, are 
 turned into words, and fixed in the glowing forms 
 of language : and, after a time, the outward signs 
 of thought pass before our sense ; and, by a law of 
 our being not under our control, kindle within us 
 the very fire which (it may be thousands of years 
 ago) warmed the bosom of the orator or the poet — 
 so that once again, for a moment, he seems in word 
 and feeling, to have a living presence within our- 
 selves I 
 
 As the body gains strength and grace by the 
 appropriate exercise of all its members, so, also, 
 the mind is fortified and adorned by calling every 
 faculty into its proper movement. No one will in- 
 deed deny, that the imaginative powers are strength- 
 ened and the taste improved, especially in young 
 minds, by the habitual study of models of high 
 excellence. It may, however, at first sight well 
 admit of question, when w^e consider the shortness 
 
36 
 
 of life and the multitude of things demanding our 
 efforts and pressing on our attention, whether a 
 study of the dead languages ought to form a pro- 
 minent part of academic discipline. Had Europe, 
 after the darker ages, advanced to civilization with- 
 out the aid of ancient learning, this question might 
 not have been so readily answered in the affirma- 
 tive. But, without troubling ourselves with ima- 
 ginary difficulties, we may reply — that the best 
 literature of modern Europe, is drawn more or less 
 from the classic source, and cast in the classic 
 mould ; and can neither be felt nor valued as it 
 ought without ascending to the fountain head — 
 that our superstructure must suffer if we allow its 
 foundations to decay — If this answer be not 
 thought sufficient, there is another which admits 
 of no reply, and the force of which no time can take 
 away. Our classical studies help us to interpret 
 the oracles of God, and enable us to read the book 
 wherein man's moral destinies are written, and the 
 means of eternal life are placed before him. 
 
 Assuming then that our fathers have done well 
 in making classical studies an early and prominent 
 part of liberal education ; there still remains a 
 question whether they are wisely followed up in 
 the system of our University. Those who are best 
 acquainted with our studies will confess with what 
 delight they have witnessed the extent and accuracy 
 of erudition displayed, of late years, by many of 
 our younger members. Whatever is taught in this 
 place ought to be taught profoundly : for superficial 
 information is not merely of little value, but is a 
 sure proof of bad training. Hence, that critical 
 skill which teaches men to dissect the ancient lan- 
 guages — to unravel all the subtilties of their struc- 
 
37 
 
 ture — and to transfuse their wliolc meaning into 
 a translation, well deserves the honors and rewards 
 we have long bestowed upon it. 
 
 In the department of verbal criticism some of 
 the mighty men whose names adorn our domestic 
 history (and whose remembrance we keep alive by 
 this day's ceremonial), have earned a lasting fame; 
 and have proved' how in their hands, that know- 
 ledge, which with vulgar minds is trifling and 
 without fruit, can be made to assist in the illumi- 
 nation of history, the detection of sophistry, and 
 the support of sacred truth. Few persons are, 
 however, gifted with the powers of a Bentley or a 
 Porson : and were we permitted, on a day like 
 this, to allude to the imperfections of such men, 
 we might perhaps lament, that so little even of their 
 time was employed on matter worthy of the giant 
 strength that God had given them. 
 
 I think it incontestably true, that for the last 
 fifty years our classical studies (with much to de- 
 mand our undivided praise) have been too critical 
 and formal ; and that we have sometimes been 
 taught, while straining after an accuracy beyond 
 our reach, to value the husk more than the fruit of 
 ancient learning : and if of late years our younger 
 members have sometimes written prose Greek almost 
 with the purity of Xenophon, or composed iambics 
 in the finished diction of the Attic poets, we may 
 well doubt whether time sufiices for such perfec- 
 tion — whether the imagination and the taste might 
 not be more wisely cultivated than by a long sacrifice 
 to what, after all, ends but in verbal imitations — 
 In short, whether such acquisitions, however beauti- 
 ful in themselves, are not gained at the expense 
 of something better. This at least is true, that 
 
38 
 
 he who forgets that language is but the sign and 
 vehicle of thought, and while studying the word, 
 knows little of the sentiment — who learns the mea- 
 sure, the garb, and fashion of ancient song, without 
 looking to its living soul or feeling its inspiration — 
 is not one jot better than a traveller in classic land, 
 who sees its crumbling temples, and numbers, with 
 arithmetical precision, their steps and pillars, but 
 thinks not of their beauty, their design, or the 
 living sculptures on their walls — or who counts the 
 stones in the Appian way instead of gazing on the 
 monuments of the " eternal city." 
 
 There is one province of verbal criticism which 
 has often been overlooked, or set at nought, and 
 yet would abundantly repay the labour of its culti- 
 vation. Words are the signs of thought ; and from 
 words themselves (without following them through 
 all their inflexions and combinations in the finished 
 structure of a language,) we may see into the 
 natural feelings and judgments of men, before they 
 become warped by the prejudices of sect or the 
 subtilties of system. If in reading the ancient 
 writers, we meet with words describing virtue and 
 vice, honor and dishonor, guilt and shame, coupled 
 with the strongest epithets of praise or condem- 
 nation ; then we are certain that these things existed 
 as realities before they became words ; or at least, 
 that in the minds of those who, during the early 
 progress of society, built up the ancient languages, 
 they were considered as realities ; and on that account 
 (and that account only) had their representatives 
 among the symbols of thought. I believe we might 
 in this way make a near approach to a true system 
 of moral philosophy : and our progress would at 
 every step record a series of judgments, not derived 
 
39 
 
 Irom any doubtful train of reasoning-, but forced on 
 men by the very condition of their existence. 
 
 In following up the manly studies of this place, 
 we ought to read the classic page, not merely to 
 kindle delightful emotions — to gratify the imagina- 
 tion and the taste — but also to instruct the under- 
 standing ; and to this end the philosophical and 
 ethical works of the ancients deserve a much larger 
 portion of our time than we have hitherto bestowed 
 on them. It is indeed notorious, that during many 
 past years, while verbal criticism has been pursued 
 with so much ardour, the works to which I now 
 allude (coming home, as they do, to the business of 
 life ; and pregnant, as they are, with knowledge 
 well fitted to fortify the reasoning powers) have, by 
 the greatest number of us, hardly been thought of; 
 and have in no instance been made prominent sub- 
 jects of academic training. The classical writers 
 did not cultivate the imagination only ; but they 
 saw deep into the springs of human thought and 
 action : and rightly apprehending the capacities of 
 man and their bearing on social life, they laid the 
 foundation of their moral systems in the principles 
 and feelings of our nature, and built thereon a noble 
 superstructure. Should any one object to these 
 ancient systems (as Paley and many other writers 
 have done), and tell us that they are obscure, in- 
 definite, and without sanction : we might reply, that 
 in every question, even of physical science, we take 
 but a few steps towards a first cause, before we are 
 arrested by a boundary we cannot pass — before we 
 are encompassed with a darkness no eye can pene- 
 trate : — that in moral questions (founded^ not on 
 the properties of material agents, which we can 
 examine and sift, again and again, by new experi- 
 
40 
 
 mentSj but on the qualities of rational and responsi- 
 ble beings), still narrower is the limitation of our 
 inquiries. To suppose that we can reason up to a 
 first cause in moral questions — that we can reach 
 some simple principle, whence we may descend with 
 logical precision to all the complicated duties of 
 a social being ; is to misapprehend the nature of 
 our faculties, and utterly to mistake the relation 
 we bear both to God and man. Such a system may 
 delight us by its clearness, and flatter our pride 
 because it appears, at once, to bring all our duties 
 within our narrow grasp : but it is clear only be- 
 cause it is shallow ; while a better system may seem 
 darker, only because it is more profound. 
 
 If it be contended, that in the trying circum- 
 stances of life the moral systems of the ancients are 
 without sufficient motives : we may reply, that in 
 this respect all moral systems are alike — that all of 
 them lead to consequences, and point to actions, 
 beyond the power of any earthly sanction. When 
 we ascend to the highest virtues and capacities of 
 our moral nature, and think of the tens of thou- 
 sands who in every age have encountered a voluntary 
 death for the good of their kindred men and the 
 glory of their country, or the still more exalted 
 heroes who have died as solitary martyrs in the 
 defence of some high and holy principle ; we tell of 
 deeds which moralists and historians of every age 
 have adorned with their praise, and held up for 
 imitation. But still, however common acts like these 
 may have been in the history of mankind, we have 
 no right to class them as social duties, grounded in 
 mere moral and social feelings ; and in accounting 
 for them, our souls recoil from the vulgar sanction 
 of this world's praise. If deeds like these be com- 
 
41 
 
 patible with our nature ; then is there something 
 within us, which, however obscured or ill-informed, 
 points to a higher destiny : and in asking for motives, 
 we must quit the province of morals, and enter on 
 that of religion ; and in its hopes, faint and feeble 
 as they may often be, we may not only find an 
 answer to our question, but a reason why such high 
 feelings and capacities are implanted in us ; leading 
 us, as they do, into acts opposed to the strongest 
 instincts of our nature, and above the sanction of all 
 ordinary moral rules. 
 
 It is, I think, certain that the study of an 
 ethical system, grounded on the moral and social 
 feelings, and exemplified by that course of action 
 which in all ages has been honoured by the virtuous 
 and the wise, is not only a good practical training 
 for the mind (which in the busy commerce of life 
 has often more to do with moral than with physical 
 reasoning), but prepares it for the acceptance of 
 religious truth. Whether this opinion be true or 
 false, it is at least certain, that many of the writers 
 of antiquity had correct notions on the subject of 
 natural religion. The argument for the being of 
 a God, devived from final causes, is as well stated 
 in the conversations of Socrates, as in the Natural 
 Theology of Paley. Nor does Socrates merely re- 
 gard God as a powerful first cause, but as a provi- 
 dent and benevolent being : and he tells us, that 
 as man is the only animal with a soul capable of 
 apprehending a God, he is the only being by whom 
 God is worshipped — that prayer and sacrifice are 
 our duty — that by such services we may learn some 
 of the secrets concealed from men, and know, that 
 the Divinity sees every thing, hears every thing, is 
 present every where, and cares for all his works. 
 
42 
 
 Few however of the heathen Philosophers conceived 
 or uttered sentiments like these ; and trained as 
 they were in a superstition which deified their bad 
 passions, and sanctioned their vices under the im- 
 pure forms of its religious rites, we need not wonder 
 at their limited knowledge of the attributes of God, 
 or their feeble hopes of a more exalted state of 
 future being*. 
 
 In speaking of the spirit which ought to guide 
 us in our classical studies, we must look also to 
 their lessons of practical wisdom. History is to 
 our knowledge of man in his social capacity, what 
 physical experiments are to our knowledge of the 
 laws of nature : and well it is for that country 
 which learns wisdom by the experiments of other 
 nations. In ancient history we can not only trace 
 the fortunes of mankind under almost every con- 
 dition of political and social life ; but all the suc- 
 cessive actions we contemplate are at such a distance 
 from us, that we can see their true bearings on 
 each other undistorted by that mist of prejudice 
 with which every modern political question is sur- 
 rounded. We may see that the higher virtues, 
 which are the only secure foundation of a nation's 
 strength, are confined to no time or country ; and 
 altliough sometimes called into their fullest action 
 by a sudden and trying circumstance, are in the 
 common course of things but the slowly matured 
 fruit of good discipline and good government. We 
 may look on states rising out of small beginnings, 
 and watch the means by which they gradually 
 ascend in the scale of national strength. We may 
 mark the giant power of despotism wasting away 
 before a petty combination of free men. We may 
 
 * See note (D) at the end. 
 
43 
 
 see that liberty is the handmaid of genius and 
 virtue — that under her fostering care, feelings and 
 sentiments, embodied in national literature, spring 
 up and knit men together as one family, and for a 
 time give them an almost unconquerable might — 
 and lastly, that the loss of national sentiments and 
 national independence, whether commencing in decay 
 from within or violence from without, is alike fol- 
 lowed by moral and physical desolation. 
 
 We study to little purpose, if while we unroll 
 the history of past time we look but at one side of the 
 portraiture of our race. If we read in it the maxims 
 of wisdom, we find also the annals of crime. If 
 great actions have shewn man's high capacities, the 
 sins and follies, by which all history is blotted, 
 prove also the feebleness of his purpose. We may 
 find in every page the records of selfishness — the 
 desolation produced by the jarring interests of 
 faction. We may see that the foulest crimes have 
 oftentimes been enacted under the fairest forms of 
 government ; and that in all conditions of a state 
 (from its beginning to its end) corruption of man- 
 ners is ever incompatible with true liberty. We 
 may trace the history of a vast empire, from its 
 first beginnings — find it, after many mutations of 
 fortune, rising to great power by the exercise of 
 great virtue — and during the lapse of ages, see its 
 citizens jealous, even to a crime, of their civil free- 
 dom. We may then go on, and find the same 
 people becoming willing tools in the hands of bad 
 men, and, at length, so utterly corrupt, as to rush, 
 with one consent, into the basest servitude : and in 
 those evil days, we may find that even the best 
 men were willing to surrender their inheritance, 
 and to seek, in the despotic authority of one, a 
 
44 
 
 refuge against the more intolerable license of the 
 many. We leave however our lesson incomplete if 
 we follow not this history to its end, and see that 
 the calm of despotism, superinduced on a corrup- 
 tion of manners, is followed by a stagnation of 
 all the higher virtues which minister to national 
 strength ; and so becomes but the dismal presage 
 of dismemberment and final dissolution. 
 
 In the moral, as in the physical, convulsions of 
 the world, the good and the bad are often mingled 
 together in a common calamity ; and were we to 
 limit our views to this life only, we might see, in 
 the dealings of God with man, much to perplex and 
 to confound us. Still it is true, even in this nar- 
 row view, that there is in the history of past times 
 enough to shew that God will in the end vindicate 
 his character as a moral governor: for we find, 
 that in all ages virtue and wisdom have been the 
 only firm supports of national strength — and that 
 as in individual men, where sin rules in the bodily 
 members, there is a degrading moral servitude, 
 and a loss of capacity for high thought and action — 
 so also that among states and empires, depravity of 
 manners has ever been followed by a loss of glory 
 and a loss of freedom. Hence we may conclude on 
 a large experience, grounded on all history, past or 
 present, sacred or profane, that those public men 
 who have sought to gain their ends by inflaming 
 the bad passions of the people and pandering to 
 their vices, have been traitors to the cause of true 
 liberty, and blasphemers against the very God they 
 professed to worship. 
 
 Another conclusion, not less general than the 
 former, may also be drawn from the universal 
 experience of past liistory — that under no form of 
 
45 
 
 government is man to be maintained in a condition 
 of personal happiness, and social dignity, without 
 the sanction of religion. Finally, as all material 
 laws, and all material organs throughout animated 
 nature, are wisely fitted together, so that nothing, 
 of which we comprehend the use, is created in vain; 
 and as the moral and intellectual powers of man, 
 working together according to the laws of his 
 being, make him what he is — teach him to compre- 
 hend the past and almost to realize the future — 
 and rule over his social destiny ; we may surely 
 conclude, as a fair induction of natural reason, that 
 this religious nature (so essential to his social hap- 
 piness) was not given to him only to deceive him ; 
 but was wisely implanted in him, to guide him in 
 the way of truth, and to direct his soul to the 
 highest objects of his creation. And thus we reach 
 (though by steps somewhat different) the same end 
 to which I endeavoured to point the way in the 
 former division of this discourse. 
 
 III. I now enter on the third branch of our 
 studies, in which we are ourselves considered phi- 
 losophically, as individuals, and as social beings. 
 Under this head are included, as was observed be- 
 fore, many subjects of great complexity, requiring 
 for their investigation long habits of patient thought 
 — bearing directly on the business of life — and in 
 their application deeply affecting our moral and 
 intellectual characters. If the shortness of time 
 permits us not, in our academic system, to enter 
 largely on this great province of inquiry, and if some 
 departments of it are fitted only for the labours of 
 after life ; we are at least bound to give, as far as 
 we are able, a right bias to the youthful sentiments 
 
46 
 
 on all great questions concerning human nature, so 
 that those who begin their moral studies here may 
 be enabled to lay a good foundation, whereon, in 
 maturer manhood, they may build in safety. 
 
 Locke's " Essay on the Human Understanding" 
 and Paley's *' Principles of Moral and Political 
 Philosophy" have long formed such prominent sub- 
 jects of instruction in this Universit}^, that the 
 remarks I have time to make on our metaphysical 
 and ethical studies will be almost confined to these 
 two works. 
 
 It is, perhaps, unnecessary for me to inform 
 you, that Locke supposed the mind to be first of 
 all "as white paper^ void of all characters," and 
 that all its subsequent ideas — all its materials 
 of reason and knowledge — are derived from two 
 sources, sensation and reflexion. By ideas from 
 sensation he means the natural perceptions Ave have 
 of external things through our senses ; by reflexion 
 he understands the notice the mind takes of what 
 passes within itself, " whereby it becomes furnished 
 with ideas of its own operations :" and he affirms, 
 " that however great the mass of knowledge lodged 
 within the mind, there can be nothing there which 
 did not come in by one of these two ways." 
 
 It is incontestably true, that the senses are the 
 first avenues of our knowledge, and that through 
 them we become first acquainted with external 
 things. In describing the modes in which the 
 mind is furnished with knowledge through the 
 senses, the " Essay on the Human Understanding" 
 is, I think, rather to be considered as defective in 
 execution, than faulty in principle. Since its pub- 
 lication, much good service has been done in this 
 department of inquiry, by Reid and other writers ; 
 
47 
 
 but much, if I mistake not, still remains to be 
 done ; and were I to speculate on the coming for- 
 tunes of the philosophical literature of this country, 
 I should look forward to the time when some one, 
 learned in physiology, instructed in all the laws of 
 those elastic fluids by which we are surrounded and 
 acted on, and skilled in the analysis of the inner 
 workings of the mind, shall bring his strength to 
 bear on this one subject, and present us with a work 
 detailing the whole office of the senses, from child- 
 hood to manhood — from the dawn of reason, to its 
 full maturity. 
 
 In discriminating the ideas we derive from re- 
 flexion, and pointing out the modes in which the 
 mind is gradually raised to its full strength and 
 stature, the "Essay on the Human Understanding" 
 is not only defective in execution (sharing the com- 
 mon fortune of man's work), but is also, I think, 
 faulty in its principles. The account it gives of 
 some of our simplest abstract notions is erroneous ; 
 parts of the work are doubtful and obscure ; and 
 the whole greatly devoid of philosophic symmetry 
 and order*. Still there are, in every chapter of it, 
 the marks of deep thought — of a strong mind, 
 clearing away the masses of intellectual rubbish by 
 which his whole subject was encumbered — and, 
 above all, of a lofty independent spirit, holding 
 
 * It is impossible, in a sketch like this, to descend into particulars ; 
 but, without alluding to the faults of omission, I may, in justification 
 of what is here stated, point out, by the way, that Locke's account of 
 the origin of our idea of tune is universally considered as wrong — that 
 by a large school of metaphysicians his account of our knowledge of 
 space is regarded as not less erroneous — that most men look upon his 
 discussions, respecting personal identity and the determination of the 
 will, as either defective or false — and that there is no one who does 
 not regard his dissertation on power as crude and obscure. 
 
48 
 
 allegiance to no authorit}/ but that of truth. Hence, 
 whatever the coming history of letters may bring 
 to light, I cannot imagine the day when the works 
 of Locke, under proper limitations, will not form 
 noble subjects for academic study. 
 
 Men seem to differ little in the impressions they 
 first receive from their senses ; and perhaps quite 
 as little in the first abstractions they are by nature 
 led to form. Yet how widely separated is one in- 
 tellect from another ! From the stones of the same 
 quarry one man builds a hovel ; another chisels out 
 the breathing image of the human form. It is in- 
 contestably true, that men are chiefly distinguished 
 from each other by their habits of combining the 
 same original elements of thought. But, in making 
 these combinations, they are not led on blindly and 
 fortuitously, but in obedience to intellectual laws 
 operating with greater or less force on every rational 
 being. What would be the value of the senses 
 were there no sentient principle within.? And 
 where would be the use of teaching were there no 
 inborn capacities in the soul to apprehend and to 
 be acted on? It may be true that we have no in- 
 nate knowledge ; but we have innate intellectual 
 powers : and that they are essentially the same in 
 all men, differing only in degree, is evident from 
 the individual habits, the social sympathies, the 
 civil institutions, and the languages of our race; 
 the common feelings that hurry us into action ; the 
 common proofs that gain our deliberate assent. 
 
 The distinction between innate ideas and innate 
 capacities is almost overlooked in the work of 
 Locke*. To this cause we must attribute the 
 
 * The habit of disregarding the distmction between abstract ca- 
 pacities and their particular manifestations, seems to have led Locke 
 
49 
 
 greatest mistakes and imperfections of his system, 
 and the strange omission of many of the highest 
 faculties of our nature. Of tlie imaginative powers 
 he hardly says one word, or speaks of them only 
 to condemn them. Yet are they so woven into our 
 nature that they mingle themselves with almost 
 every word and deed — aid us in the interchange 
 of thought — ever give delight, in their exercise, 
 both to savage and civilized man — nor can they 
 for a moment be put off, except by an effort of the 
 mind, in the severe abstractions of exact science. 
 For a metaphysician to discard these powers from 
 his system, is to shut his eyes to the loftiest quali- 
 ties of the soul, and is as unaccountable as it would 
 be for a physiologist to overlook the very integu- 
 ments of our animal frame. 
 
 It is by the imagination, more perhaps than by 
 any other faculty of the soul, that man is raised 
 above the condition of a beast. Beasts have senses 
 in common with ourselves, and often in higher 
 perfection : to a certain extent also they possess, 
 I think, the powers of abstraction, though this is 
 denied by Locke ; but of the imaginative powers, 
 they offer perhaps no single trace. These high 
 
 into his strange paradox respecting personal identity. Consciousness 
 (in the sense in which he uses the word) is the proof of our own 
 identity to ourselves ; and it is through this principle, in our nature, 
 that we know that we continue one and the same being, and feel that 
 we are personally responsible for our past actions. Remembering or 
 associating the past with the present is one of the faculties of a rational 
 being. But the individual mind existed anterior to the manifestation 
 of this faculty ; otherwise there is no common connecting principle 
 among our thoughts, and no such thing as personal identity. In the 
 chapter on "our ideas of substances," he considers a "spiritual sub- 
 stance as the substratum of those simple ideas we have from without;" 
 and he justly discriminates between the soul itself and the manifesta- 
 tion of its powers. His distinction is well drawn ; but it is^ I think^ 
 at variance with his discussion on personal identity. 
 
 D 
 
50 
 
 attributes of the soul confer on it a creative energy 
 — aid it even in its generalizations from pure rea- 
 son — bring before it vivid images of the past and 
 glowing anticipations of the future — teach it to 
 link together material and immaterial things, and to 
 mount up from earth to heaven. All that is refined 
 in civilized life, all that is lofty in poetry or enno- 
 bling in art, flows chiefly from this one fountain. 
 
 As a matter of fact men do possess imaginative 
 powers, and ever have delighted, and ever will 
 delight in their exercise : and to exclude them from 
 a system of psychology is to mutilate, and not to 
 analyse, the faculties of the soul. They may have 
 been abused ; but what of that ? every faculty has 
 been abused and turned to evil. Shall we, then, 
 not merely overlook the powers of imagination ; 
 but, with Locke, regard men who appeal to them 
 in their proofs and mingle them in their exhorta- 
 tions, as no better than downright cheats? If 
 this be our conclusion, then must the sublime 
 morality of Job — the inspired song of David — 
 the rapturous anticipations of deliverance in the 
 prophecies of Isaiah, stamped in the loftiest forms 
 of poetic imagery, and falling on the ear as if 
 proclaimed by an angePs voice from the gates of 
 heaven — and the fervent testimony of thousands 
 of holy men in every age declaring and enforcing 
 the oracles of God — all and every one of these 
 heart-stirring appeals must fall under our cold 
 and senseless condemnation. 
 
 In denouncing the exercise of the imagination 
 as a fraud upon the reason, Locke would have 
 done well had he been considering mere demon- 
 strative truth ; but I find no such limitation to 
 his censureS: All reason is not mathematical, nor 
 
51 
 
 is all truth demonstrative : and one fault of the 
 Essay of Locke is its attempt to extend too far 
 the boundaries of demonstration. It would indeed 
 be as absurd to apply imaginative language to the 
 demonstrations of pure reason, as to apply the 
 language of demonstration to the analysis of ideal 
 beauty. Each faculty must have its proper place ; 
 but none can be lopped off without marring the 
 handy-work of God. 
 
 If it be demanded what is the office of the 
 imagination ? we may reply that its office consists 
 in its appropriate exercise conjointly with every 
 other faculty of the soul. In one respect, however, 
 its use, as well as its abuse, is so obvious as to 
 deserve a formal notice. Men decide not on reason 
 only — incline not naturally to the right side, like 
 the scale of a balance, by the mere weight of evi- 
 dence. They act in common cases through habit 
 or affection ; and in trying circumstances the de- 
 termination of the will is often more by feeling 
 than by reason. Hence the imaginative powers, 
 in kindling up the active feelings of the soul, have 
 ever been mighty instruments of persuasion, whe- 
 ther for good or for evil. When Demosthenes, 
 in pleading before the Athenian multitude, swore 
 by the souls of his fellow-countrymen who had 
 periled their lives in battle on the field of Marathon 
 — and when St Paul, speaking in the presence of 
 King Agrippa, held up his hand before the as- 
 sembled crowd and wished to God that every one 
 of them was not only almost but altogether as 
 himself excepting his bonds — each spoke from the 
 momentary fulness of his own feeling — each spoke 
 to the hearts and bosoms of those around him ; 
 and put forth a weapon of persuasion a thousand 
 
 d2 
 
52 
 
 times more sharp than ever issued from the cold 
 armory of reason. 
 
 Another great fault in the Essay of Locke 
 (involved I think in his very system, which look- 
 ing only to the functions of the soul forgets its 
 innate capacities), is its omission of the faculties 
 of moral judgment. That such faculties exist, is 
 proved by the sense of shame in a child, by the 
 natural feelings of manhood, by the language of 
 every country, and the code of every nation : and 
 lastly, by the word of God, which speaks of con- 
 science not as a word of convention — a mere creation 
 of the social system ; but as something implanted in 
 our bosoms by the hand of our Maker, to preside 
 there and pass judgment on our actions. AVe read 
 of men cofivicted in their own conscience — living 
 in all good conscience — we are told of the law 
 written in the hearts (of the Gentiles), and of 
 their conscience also hearing witness — we read of 
 a conscience void of offence — of the answer of a 
 good conscience towards God — of holding faith and 
 a good conscience — and of a conscience seared with 
 a hot iron through long familiarity with sin. What 
 meaning have words like these, if we may at our 
 own will strip conscience of its sanction, and think 
 of it no longer as a heaven-born rule of action ? 
 
 The faculties of moral judgment, combined to 
 a certain degree with power of choice and liberty 
 of action, not only distinguish us from the lower 
 beings of creation, but constitute the very essence 
 of our responsibility, both to God and man. Their 
 omission, then, is a great blemish in any system 
 of psychology. 
 
 Let it not be said that our moral sentiments 
 are superinduced by seeing and tracing the con- 
 
53 
 
 sequences of crime. The assertion is not true. 
 The early sense of shame comes before such trains 
 of thought, and is not, therefore, caused by them ; 
 and millions, in all ages of the world, have grown 
 up as social beings and moral agents, amenable 
 to the laws of God and man, who never traced 
 or thought of tracing the consequences of their 
 actions, nor ever referred them to any standard of 
 utilitv. Nor let it be said that the moral sense 
 comes of mere teaching — that right and wrong pass 
 as mere words, first from the lips of the mother 
 to the child, and then from man to man ; and that 
 we grow up with moral judgments gradually in- 
 grafted in us from without, by the long-heard 
 lessons of praise and blame, by the experience of 
 fitness, or the sanction of the law. I repeat that 
 the statement is not true — that our moral per- 
 ceptions shew themselves not in any such order 
 as this. The question is one of feeling ; and the 
 moral feelings are often strongest in very early 
 life, before moral rules or legal sanctions have once 
 been thought of. Again ; what are we to under- 
 stand by teaching? Teaching implies capacity: 
 one can be of no use without the other. A faculty 
 of the soul may be called forth, brought to light, 
 and matured; but cannot be created, any more 
 than we can create a new particle of matter, or 
 invent a new law of nature. 
 
 Philosophy is not grounded on external au- 
 thority, but in the observed nature of the things 
 we contemplate, whether they be material or im- 
 material. We may invent systems of legal ethics 
 drawn from the prudential maxims of society, or 
 we may act on a system of Christian ethics founded 
 on the positive declarations of the word of God : 
 
54 
 
 but without an inherent moral capacity, without 
 a moral sense placed in the breast of man, by the 
 same hand that made him, the science of moral 
 philosophy has not, I think, the shadow of any 
 foundation whereon to rest. 
 
 Returning then to the point from which we 
 started ; if the mind be without innate knowledge, 
 is it also to be considered as without innate feelings 
 and capacities — a piece of blank paper, the mere 
 passive recipient of impressions from without ? The 
 whole history of man shows this hypothesis to be 
 an outrage on his moral nature. Naked he comes 
 from his mother''s womb ; endowed with limbs 
 and senses indeed, well fitted to the material 
 world, yet powerless from want of use : and as for 
 knowledge, his soul is one unvaried blank ; yet 
 has this blank been already touched by a celestial 
 hand, and when plunged in the colours which 
 surround it, it takes not its tinge from accident 
 but design, and comes forth covered with a glorious 
 pattern. 
 
 If the senses be the first link, connecting the 
 soul with the world without, it is equally certain 
 that they are no sooner excited, than the affections 
 begin to shew themselves : not long after, the moral 
 and imaginative powers appear to germinate- 
 feebly and interruptedly it may be, yet with vigor 
 enough to show that they were rooted in the soul 
 by the same hand that formed it. The powers of 
 pure reason come later into exercise : and at length, 
 by the joint action of all his powers, man becomes 
 what he is — a social, a moral and an intellectual 
 being — fitted in all his capacities for the material 
 world without, and for the social condition in which 
 God has placed him. Some of his faculties may 
 
55 
 
 be powerless because untried — may have withered 
 for want of nourishment ; others by good training 
 may have reached their full maturity : but no train- 
 ing (however greatly it may change an individual 
 mind) can create a new faculty, any more than it 
 can give a new organ of sense. In every branch 
 of philosophy the limitations are alike ; we may 
 observe the phenomena and ascend to laws, and, 
 by another movement of the mind, ascend to the 
 notion of intelligent causation : but in coming down 
 from these laws to their practical application, cre- 
 ative power is ever out of question with us, whether 
 we have to do with the material or immaterial 
 world ; and every change produced by philosophic 
 skill is still subordinate to all the phenomena from 
 which we first ascended. 
 
 To the supposition of an innate capacity of 
 moral judgment, some one may oppose the passions, 
 the vices, and the crimes of mankind ; and thence 
 infer, either that man is without moral capacity, 
 or that conscience is utterly devoid of sanction. 
 We may, however, reply, that under the blind 
 impulse of passion men not only take that side 
 which their conscience warns them to be wrong, 
 but also in a thousand cases wilfully do that, which 
 reason tells them to be against their highest in- 
 terest : and if, after all this, we do not deny the 
 faculty of reason, neither ought we to deny the 
 reality of a moral sense. In a diseased action of 
 the bodily frame, the organs of life may become 
 the implements of death : but no one, on that 
 account, discards the inductions of physiology — 
 denies that all parts of the frame are skilfully 
 knit together — or ceases to believe that every organ 
 has its fitting use. So in the immaterial part of 
 
56 
 
 man, sin, like a burning fever, may make havoc 
 among his highest faculties, and end in moral 
 death : but we have no right on that account to 
 regard sin as our proper condition, or to affirm 
 that it is not a moral pestilence destructive of the 
 supreme law of our moral nature. Neither have 
 we any right to say that it blots out the knowledge 
 of good and evil, and overturns the judicial throne 
 of conscience. Such a decision is at war with the 
 recorded judgments of mankind, and strikes at the 
 foundation of all human law. Sin may hold our 
 souls in bondage ; but, as long as reason lasts, 
 it destroys not our responsibility ; nor is the con- 
 tinued perpetration of crime ever tolerated as a plea 
 in bar of a penal sentence. 
 
 The objection just considered, does however 
 prove the feebleness of moral rule — shows that 
 there is something wrong within us, which jars 
 with nature's harmony — that there is in the moral 
 government of God much that is beyond the grasp 
 of mere philosophy ; and so teaches us to look 
 beyond this world, and in the consolations of re- 
 ligion and the hopes of a future life to seek a 
 better and a higher sanction ; and in the motives 
 of Christian love to find a steadier and more abiding 
 principle of holy action, than all the philosophy 
 upon earth ever has given or ever can give to man 
 in the hour of temptation*. 
 
 With all its faults, the *' Essay on the Human 
 Understanding '"* is a work of great power; and 
 were any one to need a proof of this, he has only 
 
 * On the subject here alluded to, I would earnestly recommend to 
 the reader's perusal an excellent Sermon by Dr Chalmers, entitled 
 " The Expulsive Power of a new Affection." Glasgow 1823. 
 
57 
 
 to consider the impression it produced on the specu- 
 lations of a former age. Its greatest fault is the 
 contracted view it takes of the capacities of man — 
 allowing him, indeed, the faculty of reflecting and 
 following out trains of thought according to the 
 rules of abstract reasoning ; but depriving him 
 both of his powers of imagination and of his moral 
 sense- Hence it produced, I think, a chilling ef- 
 fect on the philosophic writings of the last century : 
 and many a cold and beggarly system of psychology 
 was sent into the world by authors of the school of 
 Locke ; pretending, at least, to start from his prin- 
 ciples, and to build on his foundation. It is to the 
 entire domination his " Essay " had once established 
 in our University that we may, perhaps, attribute 
 all that is faulty in the Moral Philosophy of 
 Paley — the work on which I now proceed to com- 
 ment. 
 
 I would ever wish to speak with reverence of 
 a man whose name is an honour to our academic 
 body, and who did, I believe, during his time, 
 much more for the cause of revealed truth than any 
 other writer of his country. His homely strength 
 and clearness of style, and his unrivalled skill in 
 stating and following out his argument, must ever 
 make his writings popular : and, speaking for my- 
 self, I ©annot describe, in terms too strong, the 
 delight I once experienced in studying his Moral 
 Philosophy, where truth after truth seemed to flash 
 on the mind with all the force of demonstration — 
 on questions too which, in other hands, seemed only 
 involved in mystery and doubt. On this account, 
 if there be a defective principle in his system, it 
 ought the more boldly to be combated, lest the 
 influence of his name and the charm of his philo- 
 
58 
 
 sophic manner, lead us only the farther from the 
 truth. 
 
 He commences by denying the sanction and 
 authority of the moral sense ; and brings the matter 
 to a point, by putting forth an instance, which, like 
 an eivperbnentum C7'ucis, is at once to be decisive 
 of the question. Having detailed a case of cold- 
 blooded parricide, he asks whether "a savage, cut 
 off in his infancy from all intercourse with his 
 species, would, when told of this, feel any sentiment 
 of disapprobation."" We may reply, (as Paley 
 seems to do) that he certainly would not : for 
 neither could he possibly comprehend the meaning 
 of the tale ; nor, if he did, could he find a word to 
 express his natural abhorrence of the crime. If 
 this reply be thought too technical and only a 
 shifting of the difficulty, we may meet the case in 
 a different way, and combat one ideal instance by 
 another. Suppose a solitary being placed from 
 childhood in the recesses of a dungeon and shut 
 out from the light of day, then must he grow up 
 without one idea from the sense of sight. But 
 should we thence conclude that the sense was want- 
 ing ? Let him be brought into the light ; and by 
 laws of vision, over which he has no control, he will, 
 like other beings, gain knowledge from the sense of 
 sight. Let the solitary savage, in like manner, 
 come from the recesses of the forest into commerce 
 with his fellow beings ; and he will also, by the law 
 of his intellectual nature, as inevitably gain a sense 
 of right and wrong ; and he will then pass a natural 
 judgment on the crime of parricide, like that of any 
 other rational and responsible man. No one now 
 speaks of an innate knowledge of morality . an in- 
 nate moral sense or faculty, defining and determin- 
 
59 
 
 ing the quality of our moral judgments, is all for 
 which we contend ; and Paley's instance is quite 
 worthless for his argument. 
 
 Had he grounded his rejection of the moral sense 
 on the avowed depravity of our nature, and the im- 
 potency of moral rule, in putting down the evil 
 that is at war with our better feelings, we should, 
 with one mind, have allowed the force of his ob- 
 jection ; and some would, I doubt not, have ac- 
 cepted his conclusion. In so doing they would 
 however have done wrong : for the rejection of the 
 moral sense, on religious grounds, is one of the 
 errors of fanaticism. Amidst all the ruin that is 
 within us, there are still the elements of what is 
 good ; and were there left in the natural heart no 
 kindly affections and moral sentiments, man would 
 be no longer responsible for his sins; and every 
 instance of persuasion against the impulse of bad 
 passion, and of conversion from evil unto good, 
 would be nothing less than a moral miracle. On 
 such a view of human nature, the Apostles of our 
 religion might as well have wasted their breath on 
 the stones of the wilderness as on the hearts of their 
 fellow-men in the cities of the heathen. 
 
 Had Paley, rejecting the authority of the moral 
 sense on grounds like these, proceeded to build up 
 a system of christian ethics, founded on the word 
 of God, enforced by its heavenly sanction, and re- 
 commended through the affections to a practical 
 acceptance as a rule of life, he might have conferred 
 a great benefit on the cause of morality and reli- 
 gion. He might then have gone on to shew, that 
 the code of christian morals contains a set of rules 
 co-ordinate with other rules which the wise and the 
 good of all ages have endeavoured to establish and 
 
60 
 
 enforce (with a fainter light indeed, and under a 
 more feeble sanction) as in accordance with the law 
 of our nature, and therefore with the will of God : 
 and afterwards he might have proved, that the rules 
 of action, derived from these two sources, are not 
 only in conformity with each other, but call our 
 highest faculties into activity and return into our 
 bosoms incomparably the greatest sum of earthly 
 happiness. Thus might he have arrived at a per- 
 ception of an attribute of God, in the only way in 
 which it is permitted us, by the mere force of na- 
 tural reason, to reach high points of knowledge — 
 by ascending from particular to general truths, 
 from phenomena to laws ; and thus might he have 
 concluded, that as in the material world we see in 
 all things the proofs of intelligence and power ; so 
 also, that in the immaterial world we find proofs, 
 not less strong, that man is under the moral go- 
 vernment of an all-powerful, benevolent, and holy 
 God. Following this train of thought he might, 
 lastly, have enunciated a proposition (resembling in 
 its words what stands in the front of his moral 
 system, but far different in its meaning and incom- 
 parably more true), that whatever is right is also 
 expedient for man. 
 
 Whatever be the faults of Paley's system, as- 
 suredly they spring not from fanaticism. After 
 rejecting the moral sense, but on no such grounds 
 as have been just imagined, he proceeds to prove 
 (by reasoning I shall shortly examine) that actions 
 are only to be estimated by their general tendency — 
 that utility is the touchstone of right and wrong. 
 Here we have a rule, simple in its enunciation, and 
 flattering to human pride: for man no longer ap- 
 pears as the subject of a law, but presides with the 
 
61 
 
 authority of a judge, and his rule of action is tlie 
 leading interest of himself and his fellow-men. 
 
 In the material world we have no control over 
 the laws of nature ; we gain physical knowledge 
 only by studying them ; and new physical power 
 only by obeying them : and in questions of mora- 
 lity — of right and wrong — we are equally the ser- 
 vants of a law, either written in the heart or re- 
 corded in the word of God. To hesitate is to 
 rebel ; and to wait for the calculations of utility, 
 would be, too often, but to seek a cloak of sophistry 
 as a shelter for evasion. 
 
 Leaving, however, mere general objections, let 
 us come to the system itself, and to the rule of its 
 application. Paley first resolves all right into con- 
 sistency with the will of God : and here, at least, 
 is no matter for dispute ; for every moral system 
 implies some law or other, which can only emanate 
 from God, and to obey that law is plainly to obey 
 his will. But how are we to discover that will ? 
 We answer, by studying the moral nature of man, 
 and his relation to the things around him — by 
 ascending from moral phenomena to moral laws, 
 which thus become the manifestations of the will of 
 God, and may be embodied in the maxims of moral 
 philosophy : or, by humbly accepting the revelation 
 of his will, which is religious knowledge. But by 
 whatever means we try to discern the will of God — 
 by whatever path we endeavour to ascend towards 
 his holy temple — we see but in part and understand 
 in part ; we grasp not one of his attributes ; we 
 comprehend not how they co-exist within his bosom ; 
 we remain but worshippers at the gate ; the veil 
 which conceals him from us cannot be lifted up, nov 
 could our eyes endure the brightness of his glory. 
 
62 
 
 But how little does Paley seem to think of this 
 when he reasons of his Maker as if he were a man, 
 and dares to bind up the great first cause in the 
 links of a single disjunctive proposition. God, as 
 far as regards the interests of man, must be bene- 
 volent, malignant, or indifferent. This is the fun- 
 damental proposition of his moral system. But by 
 what right can man set limits to the moral con- 
 dition of the Almighty ? — the creator of a million 
 worlds, each bound to the others, by never changing 
 laws; and perhaps also of a million intellectual 
 systems, each connected with our own by myste- 
 rious relations, conceived in his mind and pre- 
 ordained in his will, yet not revealed to us. In 
 vain we try to comprehend even a single attribute 
 of God ; we know him only as he has thought good 
 to reveal himself, by the law written in the heart — 
 by the laws of the material world — and by the 
 declarations of his word. He may, and does, con- 
 sult his glory in countless ways we know not of. 
 And is it not the height of arrogance in any 
 creature like ourselves, to limit, even in thought, 
 the workings of his power, and to confine the ope- 
 ration of his attributes to such channels only as 
 our language can define and our souls can com- 
 prehend ? 
 
 In the history of moral reasoning, there is not 
 to be found a fundamental proposition more faulty 
 in its principles or more dangerous in its applica- 
 tion, than the one just considered. Is it not noto- 
 rious, that scoffing men, reasoning on like grounds 
 and with like fallacy, have impugned the benevo- 
 lence of God — have profanely dared to entangle the 
 great first cause in a dilemma; pretending to prove, 
 from the misery and desolation they saw around 
 
63 
 
 them, that he either wanted goodness or wanted 
 power ? 
 
 If the fundamental reasoning in Paley's system 
 be unsound, its rule is unsuitable to our nature. 
 If expediency be the measure of right, and every 
 one claim the liberty of judgment, virtue and vice 
 have no longer any fixed relations to the moral 
 condition of man, but change with the fluctuations 
 of opinion. Not only are his actions tainted by 
 prejudice and passion, but his rule of life, under 
 this system, must be tainted in like degree — must 
 be brought down to his own level : for he will no 
 longer be able, compatibly with his principles, to 
 separate the rule from its application. No high 
 and unvarying standard of morality, which his heart 
 approves, however infirm his practice, will be offered 
 to his thoughts. But his bad passions will continue 
 to do their work in bending him to the earth ; and, 
 unless he be held upright by the strong power of 
 religion (an extrinsic power which I am not now 
 considering), he will inevitably be carried down, by 
 a degrading standard of action, to a sordid and 
 grovelling life. 
 
 It may perhaps be said, that we are arguing 
 against a rule, only from its misapprehension and 
 abuse. But we reply, that every precept is prac- 
 tically bad when its abuse is natural and inevitable 
 — that the system of utility brings down virtue 
 from a heavenly throne and places her on an earthly 
 tribunal, where her decisions, no longer supported by 
 any holy sanction, are distorted by judicial igno- 
 rance, and tainted by base passion. Independently 
 however of the bad effects produced on the moral 
 character of man, by a system which makes expe- 
 diency (in whatever sense the word be used) the 
 
64 
 
 test of right and wrong, we may affirm, on a more 
 general view, that the rule itself is utterly unfitted 
 to his capacity. Feeble as man may be, he forms 
 a link in a chain of moral causes, ascending to the 
 throne of God ; and trifling as his individual acts 
 may seem, he tries, in vain, to follow out their 
 consequences as they go down into the countless 
 ages of coming time. Viewed in this light, every 
 act of man is woven into a moral system, ascending 
 through the past — descending to the future — and 
 preconceived in the mind of the Almighty, Nor 
 does this notion, as far as regards ourselves, end 
 in mere quietism and necessity. For we know 
 right from wrong, and have that liberty of action 
 which implies responsibility : and, as far as we are 
 allowed to look into the ways of Providence, it 
 seems to be compatible with his attributes to use 
 the voluntary acts of created beings, as second 
 causes in working out the ends of his own will. 
 Leaving, however, out of question that stum- 
 bling block which the prescience of God has often 
 thrown in the way of feeble and doubting minds, 
 we are, at least, certain, that man has not fore- 
 knowledge to trace the consequences of a single 
 action of his own ; and, hence, that utility (in the 
 highest sense of which the word is capable), is, 
 as a test of right and wrong, unfitted to his under- 
 standing, and therefore worthless in its application. 
 
 By what right, either in reason or revelation, 
 do we assert the simple and unconditional benevo- 
 lence of God ; and, on this assumption, go on to 
 found a moral system and a rule of life ? If he 
 be a God of mercy, is he not also a God of justice ? 
 Sin and misery are often among the means of bring- 
 ing about the ends of his providence ; and are so 
 
65 
 
 far consistent witli his government, that they are 
 permitted to last their time upon the earth. Nor 
 is this all. The authority of any law may be 
 abrogated by the same power that made it : and 
 in the revealed history of the dealings of God 
 with man, acts, which under ordinary circum- 
 stances would be crimes of the darkest die, have 
 more than once been made tests of obedience or 
 conditions of acceptance. Contemplations such as 
 these make the unassisted reason shrink within 
 itself through pure despair of comprehending the 
 whole moral government of the world. One thing, 
 at least, they do prove — how rash and vain a thing 
 it is, for a feeble and narrow-sighted being like one 
 of us, to construct a moral code, on his own in- 
 terpretation of a single attribute of the God- 
 head. 
 
 A religious man has a happy escape out of all 
 the difficulties of these dark questions. He feels 
 within himself the liberty of choice ; his conscience 
 tells him he is responsible for his actions ; the word 
 of God points out a remedy for the evils which 
 encompass him : he applies the remedy to himself 
 in humble thankfulness, for it meets his wants and 
 is fitted to his capacity ; and, in the terms of his 
 acceptance into the christian covenant, he finds no 
 condition annexed but the love of God and man. 
 
 It may perhaps be said, that the moral system 
 of Paley is compatible with the most exalted mo- 
 tives, inasmuch as it takes in the whole christian 
 sanction of a future state ; and no man, under any 
 reasonable view of morality and religion, can be 
 called on to act in opposition to his eternal interests. 
 Part of this observation may be just; but it gives 
 no colour of truth to the moral system liere con- 
 
 E 
 
66 
 
 sidered, unless it can be also shewn, that our future 
 condition, as revealed to us in the religion of Christ, 
 depends on our following a rule of life, measured 
 by the standard of utility. But is this true ! I 
 believe the contrary ; and that the holiness, without 
 which no man shall see the Lord, is as different 
 from a temper governed (no matter how consist- 
 ently) by any worldly rule whatever, as light from 
 darkness. 
 
 Christianity considers every act grounded on 
 mere worldly consequences as built on a false foun- 
 dation. The mainspring of every virtue is placed 
 by it in the affections, called into renewed strength 
 by a feeling of self abasement — by gratitude for 
 an immortal benefit — by cummunion with God — 
 and by the hopes of everlasting life. Humility 
 is the foundation of the Christian's honour — distrust 
 of self is the ground of his strength — and his 
 religion tells him that every work of man is counted 
 worthless in the sight of heaven, as the means of 
 his pardon or the price of his redemption. Yet 
 it gives him a pure and perfect rule of life ; and 
 does not, for an instant, exempt him from the duty 
 of obedience to his rule : for it ever aims at a pur- 
 gation of the moral faculties, and a renewal of the 
 defaced image of God ; and its moral precepts have 
 an everlasting sanction. And thus does christian 
 love become an efficient and abiding principle — 
 not tested by the world, but above the world; yet 
 reaching the life-spring of every virtuous deed, and 
 producing in its season a harvest of good and noble 
 works incomparably more abundant than ever rose 
 from any other soil. 
 
 The utilitarian scheme starts on the contrary 
 with an abrogation of the authority of conscience — 
 
a rejection of the moral feelings as the test of right 
 and wrong. From first to last, it is in bondage to the 
 world, measuring every act by a worldly standard, 
 and estimating its value by worldly consequences 
 Virtue becomes a question of calculation — a matter 
 of profit or loss ; and if man gain heaven at all on 
 such a system, it must be by arithmetical details — 
 the computation of his daily work — the balance of 
 his moral ledger. A conclusion such as this offends 
 against the spirit breathing in every page of the 
 book of life ; yet is it fairly drawn from the prin- 
 ciples of utility. It appears indeed not only to 
 have been foreseen by Paley, but to have been 
 accepted by him — a striking instance of the tenacity 
 with which man ever clings to system, and is ready 
 to embrace even its monstrous consequences rather 
 than believe that he has himself been building on 
 a wrong foundation*. 
 
 Utilitarian philosophy and christian ethics have 
 in their principles and motives no common bond of 
 union, and ought never to have been linked together 
 in one system : for, palliate and disguise the diff^er- 
 ence as we may, we shall find at last that they 
 rest on separate foundations ; one deriving all its 
 strength from the moral feelings, and the other 
 from the selfish passions of our nature. Religion 
 
 * The following are the passages here referred to : 
 
 " The Christian religion hath not ascertained the precise quantity 
 of virtue necessary to salvation." 
 
 " It has been said, that it can never be a just economy of Provi- 
 dence to admit one part of mankind into heaven, and condemn the 
 other to hell ; since there must be very little to choose between the 
 worst man who is received into heaven, and the best who is excluded. 
 And how know we, it might be answered, but that there may be as 
 little to choose in their conditions ?" Moral Philosophy, Book i. ch. 7- 
 
 In the latter years of his life Paley would, I believe, have been 
 incapable of uttering or conceiving sentiments such as these. 
 
 e2 
 
68 
 
 renounces this unholy union ; and the system of 
 utility standing by itself, and without the shelter 
 of a heavenly garment not its own, is seen in its 
 true colours, and in all the nakedness of its de- 
 formity. 
 
 It has indeed been said that all men are govern- 
 ed by selfish motives, and that a Christian differs 
 from a worldly man only in acting on a better cal- 
 culated selfish rule. I hope that no one whom I 
 am now addressing has been for a moment imposed 
 upon by such flimsy sophistry. The motives on 
 which man acts are not less varied than the faculties 
 of his soul ; and to designate them by one base 
 name (even if done honestly) would only prove 
 an utter confusion of thought or a helpless poverty 
 of language. 
 
 If we adopt, as some have done, the notion 
 of absolute moral necessity, we destroy the very 
 foundation of morality : for every moral system, 
 in implying responsibility, implies also, at least 
 to a certain degree, the liberty of choice between 
 right and wrong. By the long-continued com- 
 mission of sin, a man may, however, forfeit the 
 power of self-control — may lose the highest pre- 
 rogative of his nature, the liberty of soul and body. 
 In such a condition he is said, in the emphatic 
 language of Scripture, to be given up to a reprobate 
 mind — to be in the bonds of iniquity. But no 
 one comes from his Maker's hands in this condition 
 — he gradually sinks into it by a series of voluntary 
 acts for which he has himself to blame, and of 
 which he bears within his bosom the accumulated 
 evil. 
 
 The determination of the human will has ever 
 been considered a dark and difficult subject of in- 
 
69 
 
 quiry. One cause of this may be, that it takes 
 place more by passion and affection than by reason ; 
 and we should be almost justified in affirming, that 
 the will is never determined by reason only, unless 
 some affection be superadded*. But this destroys 
 
 * Locke affirms (Essay on the Human Understanding, Book ii. 
 chap. 21.) that " the motive for continuing in the same state of action, 
 is only the present satisfaction in it : the motive to change, is always 
 some uneasiness:" and consistently with this opinion he goes on to 
 state, " that the most pressing uneasiness naturally determines the 
 will, when man is distracted with different desires." Here is a fal- 
 lacy of like kind with that which has led men to resolve all motives 
 into selfishness. Uneasiness, mental or bodily, is a poiverf^d motive 
 in determining the will, but it is not the 07ily motive. The passion of 
 maternal love which urges a mother to caress and protect her child, is 
 surely a feeling very different from the pain which induces a child to 
 withdraw its finger from the flame of a candle. To describe the two 
 feelings by the same term uneasiness, tends only to confusion both of 
 thought and word. If the doctrine of Locke be true, a man is in a 
 state of absolute moral necessity — a conclusion, I think, directly con- 
 trary to reason and to our own experience Again ; the doctrine, even 
 
 in extreme cases, is not true. A man of courage will sometimes en- 
 dure the protracted torture of a surgical operation without flinching. 
 But no one will, surely, say, that the remembrance of past suffering, or 
 the hope of future good, is at the moment a more intense uneasiness 
 than the pain inflicted by the surgeon's knife. In such a case the 
 will is determined by the hope of future good, and directly against the 
 impulse of present uneasiness. 
 
 Locke saw clearly that the will is not generally determined by 
 reason, pointing out to us the greatest positive gocd : and he was 
 thence led to the theory above stated ; which, however inadequate to 
 explain all the active principles of our nature, has in it much truth ; 
 and ought to have modified several of the opinions advanced in the 
 latter part of his work, (Book iv. Chap. 17, 18, 19.) Describing the 
 diflferent grounds of assent, he well distinguishes reason and faith from 
 each other. " Reason is natural revelation, whereby the eternal Father 
 of light communicates to mankind that portion of truth which he has 
 laid within the reach of their natural faculties. Revelation is natural 
 reason enlarged by a new set of discoveries communicated by God im- 
 mediately ; which reason vouches the truth of, by the testimony and 
 proofs it gives that they come from God." Faith, according to the 
 same author, is the assent to any proposition, coming directly from 
 God in the way of revelation. But he forgets that religion is a rule of 
 
 life, 
 
70 
 
 not the sanctity of moral rule ; for we are clearly 
 as responsible for the exercise of our passions and 
 affections as for the other faculties of our nature. 
 Whatever may be the clouds first raised by the 
 subtilty of man, and still hanging over certain moral 
 questions, practically we feel that we are free ; and 
 the judgment of conscience declaring to us that we 
 are responsible for our deeds, is recorded in the 
 language and institutions of every civilized nation 
 in the history of the world. If this does not satisfy 
 the metaphysician, it is at least enough for the 
 christian moralist ; whose rule of life is simple, and 
 whose light is clear. 
 
 Leaving, however, all dark questions connected 
 witii the determination of the human will ; let us 
 for a moment consider men as they are, and the 
 obvious motives of their actions. However they 
 may differ in the natural strength or cultivation of 
 their individual powers, there are the same essen- 
 tial elements in all ; and morally speaking one man 
 seems to be distinguished from another, only by the 
 direction and expansion he has given to his innate 
 faculties, and the governing power he has gained 
 over them. We see one obeying the movements of 
 
 life, and that faith is worthless unless it influence the will : yet, on his 
 own system, the will is never determined by a mere perception of the 
 greatest positive good. In short, whatever practical view we take of 
 human nature, faith, in the sense in which the word is used by Locke, 
 is of no value unless there be added to it some of that very element of 
 assent which he condemns under the name of enthusiasm. Without 
 the co-operation of the affections, the influence of christian rule 
 would soon be extinguished within the bosom — would go out like fire 
 in a damp vault for want of the air of heaven to keep it burning. 
 I have thought it right to point out this inconsistency, because it in- 
 volves consequences of great importance : and the chapters last re- 
 ferred to, are written with an energy and spirit most captivating to the 
 judgment of young minds. 
 
71 
 
 brute passion — habitually disregarding others, and 
 seeking only his own sensual gratification. In 
 calling such a one selfish we use a term of unqua- 
 lified reproach ; and he stands convicted, not 
 merely by our own moral judgment, but by the 
 recorded sentence of every age and country. 
 Another may be selfish in a different way. He 
 may seek some end his natural feelings and his 
 reason pronounce to be good ; but he seeks that 
 end immoderately, and without reference to the well- 
 being of his fellow-men. Such a man is called 
 selfish, when we estimate his life by that perfect 
 rule which tells him to love his neighbour as him- 
 self; or even when we try his motives by the 
 humble standard exhibited in the conduct of the 
 world; and in the latter case, though the word 
 selfish be used only in a relative sense, it is still 
 adopted by us as a term of reproach. 
 
 But if selfish passions have exercised a pre- 
 dominating influence over the conduct of mankind ; 
 there are other motives in our moral nature, lead- 
 ing to acts of self-denial, and to ends connected 
 only with the good of others. Benevolent affection 
 — a desire for the well-being of others, is a natural 
 feeling of the soul, and even the basest of mankind 
 will sometimes manifest its partial influence. It 
 comes not by teaching, for it is perhaps first seen as 
 a mere animal instinct : neither is it the fruit of 
 reason or calculation ; for however choked it may 
 be, in common cases, by our baser passions, and 
 kept down by motives returning only into self; it 
 sometimes becomes a strong predominating feeling, 
 leading us into acts contrary both to reason and 
 our worldly interest. Can we then, without a gross 
 abuse of words, confound acts originating in bene- 
 
72 
 
 volent affections, with those that spring from brute 
 passion or the lust of worldly gain ? Cruelty and 
 pity, selfishness and generosity, are words in the 
 vocabulary of every tongue ; and are placed there, 
 only because they are wanted in the interchange of 
 thought, and in the description of what is ever be- 
 fore us in our commerce with mankind. 
 
 All the phenomena of the material world ori- 
 nate in laws of nature, acting either singly or in 
 combination : but to designate all these laws by 
 one name, so far from contributing to philosophic 
 clearness, would prove in us an utter confusion of 
 thought, and an incapacity for understanding the 
 use of general terms. — So also in the immaterial 
 world, the determination of the will takes place in 
 accordance with the laws of man's moral and intel- 
 lectual nature, and his actions correspond witli the 
 passions and affections working within his bosom. 
 But if the actions of man exhibit all the shades of 
 character recorded in written language — then also 
 must the passions and affections be as varied ; and 
 to designate them all by one name (hitherto defin- 
 ing only what is base and sordid), would, I think, 
 argue a distorted view of human nature, arising out 
 of moral obliquity or judicial blindness. — A utili- 
 tarian philosopher acts wisely, indeed, in hiding the 
 deformity of his moral code by confounding the 
 distinctions between right and wrong : and should 
 his system ever triumph in society, it can only be, 
 by defacing the beauty of language, as well as by 
 destroying the moral dignity of man. 
 
 How a Christian can resolve all actions into the 
 effects of mere selfish passion is more than I can 
 comprehend. The Head of our Church, while he 
 had the form of man, shewed not in one act the 
 
73 
 
 element of selfish feeling. The love of man was 
 the principle of his life — the beginning and the 
 end of his ministration. Are we not told to walk 
 even as our Saviour walked — to make his example 
 our rule of life ? And is it not true, that the 
 Apostles of our religion, warmed by the spirit of 
 their Master, w^ent about doing good — spent their 
 lives in works of self-denial, recommending them- 
 selves as ministers of Christ, by pureness, by know- 
 ledge, by lo7igstiff'ering, by kindness, by the Holy 
 Ghost, by love unfeigned, by the ivord of truth, by 
 the power of God, by the armour of righteousness 
 on the right hand and on, the left ? * To call such 
 men selfish, is to desecrate our language, to blind 
 our moral sense, and to insult all the better feelings 
 of our nature. A man may be saved from the com- 
 mission of crime through fear — he may do his duty 
 through the hope of reward — but, as the will is 
 ruled mainly by the affections, he cannot go on 
 consistently in the right way unless they be enlisted 
 on the side of his duty : and until he reaches that 
 condition, he is not for one moment in a state of 
 safety, nor do his principles resemble, even in de- 
 gree, those exhibited by the high examples of 
 christian love. 
 
 Coming down, however, to men as seen in com- 
 mon life, we find that selfish passion too often tri- 
 umphs over all their better feelings, and desolates 
 the moral aspect of the world. There is no fear 
 that they will ever be too kind or generous : now, 
 at least, all fear is from another quarter. Still it is 
 not true that they act exclusively on a selfish rule. 
 They cannot destroy all those kindly elements of 
 their nature which lead them to mingle their own 
 
 * 2 Cor. vi. R, 7. 
 
74 
 
 happiness with that of others. In ordinary cases 
 they act on mixed motives ; and their practical 
 standard of right and wrong is the opinion of their 
 fellow-men. No wonder that worldly minds should 
 take their rule of life from the world's opinion. 
 And how operative this rule is upon the human 
 heart, may be seen in the patient endurance of the 
 captive savage on the bed of torture — in the cou- 
 rageous acts of which even vulgar minds are capable 
 when hurried on by the applauding sympathy of 
 those around them — in the fantastic but high- 
 minded chivalry of the middle ages — in the heroic 
 deeds of self-devotion adorning the history of Greece 
 and Rome. Sentiments of honor, founded on opi- 
 nion, have ever been among the living springs of 
 national glory — and should any one doubt their 
 power in our days, he has only to reflect, how often 
 the love of life, the suggestions of conscience, and 
 the hopes of the favor of God have all been swept 
 away before them. 
 
 Let me not be misunderstood ; I am not com- 
 mending the law of honor as the rule of a Christian's 
 life, I am only speaking of its power : and while its 
 power exists in society, it is of the utmost conse- 
 quence that its rule be as elevated as is compatible 
 with its worldly nature. Whatever exalts the na- 
 tional sentiments, and extends the dominion of con- 
 science by working on the better feelings, must 
 practically influence the moral judgments of man- 
 kind, and tend to purify the law of opinion. The 
 indirect influence of the religion of Christ has been 
 in this respect of inestimable value. It has ba- 
 nished slavery from our houses, thrown a charm 
 over the relations of social life, taught us to abhor, 
 and hardly to name, crimes against society once 
 
75 
 
 perpetrated in the light of day, and thrown a thou- 
 sand links about the bad passions of men, who 
 neither feel its sanction, nor for one moment think 
 of it as a law proclaimed for their acceptance by the 
 mouth of the Almighty. And thus it is that the 
 law of honor, however false and imperfect as a rule 
 of life, has been exalted and purified by the law of 
 God. 
 
 If the poet's song inflamed, and the funeral 
 oration sanctified the heroic courage of the citizens 
 of Greece and Rome, they were taught also to be- 
 lieve in the supremacy of conscience, and to regard 
 vice as a violation of the law of their moral nature. 
 A lofty standard of right and wrong was ever set 
 up before them ; and, however corrupt their prac- 
 tice, virtue was honored, at least in word, and was 
 never permitted to pass before their view without 
 its fitting eulogy. 
 
 The law of God is indeed written in the heart 
 in characters too plain to be easily misunderstood ; 
 and hence, unless when fettered by system or 
 blinded by passion, men have seldom wandered far 
 from the truth in their speculative judgments be- 
 tween right and wrong. — Whatsoever things are 
 true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever 
 things are just, whatsoever things are pure, what- 
 soever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of 
 good report; if there he any virtue, and if there 
 be any praise, thi^ik on these thijigs^. This is the 
 language of St Paul — a man quite as deeply im- 
 pressed with a conviction of the depravity of our 
 nature as the other Apostles; and in fervent zeal 
 and knowledge of mankind superior to them all. 
 Yet does he never shut out the better feelings of 
 * Philip, iv. 8. 
 
76 
 
 the heart — strip us of our power of natural judg- 
 ment between right and wrong — or put aside the 
 authority of conscience. Still less, in speaking of 
 things honest and just and pure and lovely and of 
 good report, did he for a moment fix their price by 
 a standard of utility, or estimate their worth by any 
 reference to mere worldly good. 
 
 Utilitarian philosophy, in destroying the do- 
 minion of the moral feelings, offends at once both 
 against the law of honour and the law of God. It 
 rises not for an instant above the world ; allows not 
 the expansion of a single lofty sentiment ; and its 
 natural tendency is to harden the hearts and de- 
 base the moral practice of mankind. If we sup- 
 press the authority of conscience, reject the moral 
 feelings, rid ourselves of the sentiments of honour, 
 and sink (as men too often do) below the influence 
 of religion : and if at the same time, we are taught 
 to think that utility is the universal test of right 
 and wrong; what is there left within us as an 
 antagonist power to the craving of passion, or the 
 base appetite of worldly gain ? In such a condition 
 of the soul, all motive not terminating in mere 
 passion becomes utterly devoid of meaning. On 
 this system, the sinner is no longer abhorred as 
 a rebel against his better nature — as one who pro- 
 fanely mutilates the image of God : he acts only 
 on the principles of other men, but he blunders in 
 calculating the chances of his personal advantage : 
 and thus we deprive virtue of its holiness, and vice 
 of its deformity ; humanity of its honor, and lan- 
 guage of its meaning; we shut out, as no better 
 than madness or folly, the loftiest sentiments of the 
 heathen as well as of the Christian world ; and all 
 that is great or generous in our nature droops 
 
77 
 
 under the influence of a cold and withering selfish- 
 ness. 
 
 Were it true, that as we grow up to the stature 
 of manhood we cast behind us our passions and 
 affections— that the judgment determining between 
 right and wrong, and the will carrying us into 
 action, are but the measured consequences of ab- 
 stract reason pointing to us the greatest good ; 
 then might the system of utility have some claim 
 to our acceptance. But this is not our moral 
 nature. Our will is swayed by passion and af- 
 fection : and if we suppress all the kindly emotions 
 which minister to virtue ; do we thereby root up 
 the bad passions that hurry us into crime .^^ In- 
 contestably not. On the contrary, we destroy the 
 whole equilibrium of our moral nature, giving to 
 the baser elements a new and overwhelming energy 
 — we sow the wind and reap the whirlwind — we 
 unchain the powers of darkness which, in sweeping 
 over the land, will tear up all that is great and 
 good and lovely within it, will upset its monu- 
 ments of piety, and shatter its social fabric into 
 ruins ; and should this hurricane be followed by 
 a calm, it will be the calm of universal desolation. 
 These are no ideal evils. The history of man is 
 too often but a sanguinary tale of the devastations 
 produced by the licence of bad passion. 
 
 It is notorious that no man acts up to the pure 
 rule of his religion — that many are indifferent to 
 it, or openly deny its sanction. In examining the 
 effects of the utilitarian philosophy, we have no 
 right to bind up its maxims with the book of life, 
 thereby producing an incongruous system, oifensive 
 alike to sound philosophy and true religion — we 
 must try it among men acting on worldly princi- 
 
78 
 
 pies, and knowing no higher sanction than the 
 current sentiments of honour : and, not appealing 
 to extreme instances, but taking men as they are, 
 it may I think be confidently stated, that the gene- 
 ral acceptance of Paley^s moral rule in any Christian 
 society, would inevitably debase the standard of 
 right and wrong. It strikes indeed at the very 
 root of the higher virtues which in the past history 
 of mankind have ever been held up to honor, as 
 the strong bonds of social happiness, and the foun- 
 dation of national greatness. And while human 
 nature is what it is, every system that is sterile in 
 great virtues will be fruitful in great crimes. On 
 this truth history is but a continued comment. 
 
 If we accept a system of philosophy which 
 looks on actions only as the means to obtain a 
 worldly end, have we not cause to fear that the 
 end will be made to sanctify the means ; and that 
 sensual sin, in its most hideous form, will be en- 
 dured, or perhaps impudently recommended, as a 
 counterpoise to the evils that are wound about our 
 nature, and enter into the very elements of a con- 
 dition of probation ? Have we not cause to fear 
 that private virtue will, before long, be set at 
 nought, or sink under the domination of universal 
 selfishness — and that, in the prevailing disbelief in 
 individual honor, public men will become the mere 
 implements for carrying into effect the basest aims 
 of faction ? In such a degraded state of public 
 opinion, bad, unscrupulous, and boasting men, may 
 be elevated to places of high authority ; and in 
 their hands the fountains of law and justice may 
 become polluted — the sacred cause of liberty bar- 
 tered or betrayed — and the national faith sacrificed 
 to vanity, to personal interest, and to party violence. 
 
79 
 
 Wlien once sunk to this condition, a nation lias 
 parted with the materials both of its strength and 
 glory — the very elements of its cohesion are passing 
 away : and should there not be found ten just men 
 within it to turn away the avenging wrath of hea- 
 ven, before long its high places will be laid low, 
 and its pleasmit land ivill be laid desolate. 
 
 The moral system of utility resolves virtue into 
 a single principle, from which our social duties are 
 all to be evolved as a rational consequence. This 
 simplicity (constituting in truth the greatest fault 
 of the system), gave it a ready acceptance in so- 
 ciety : for however impatient man generally is in 
 tracing the unascertained connexion of phenomena, 
 he is never wearied with following out the con- 
 sequences of an hypothesis. In the latter case his 
 natural pride is flattered — he stands forth not as 
 a humble seeker after truth, but as a dispenser 
 of the laws of nature — and he looks on every con- 
 clusion he deduces from his principles, as his own 
 intellectual progeny, to be supported by him at 
 whatever cost. 
 
 If a rash spirit of generalization have often re- 
 tarded the advance of physical science, its conse- 
 quences are incomparably more baneful in moral 
 reasoning. A false theory in physics affects only 
 our views respecting the connected properties of 
 dead matter : and may be set right, sometimes by 
 a single experiment. But moral theories have no 
 simple experimenta crucis whereby their truth or 
 falsehood may be tested ; and in their application 
 they may effect the social dignity and the happiness 
 of millions, each gifted with an immortal nature. 
 I am not fighting with ideal evils. Who has not 
 witnessed the effects of false principles carried into 
 
80 
 
 the social system ? In severe science a rediicHo ad 
 absurdum drives us at once from a false position. 
 But in moral and political reasoning, a man must 
 be a pitiful advocate whose breast is not hardened 
 against such a weapon, and who, in defending his 
 theory, is not ready to bear up against its most 
 preposterous consequences. 
 
 False opinions on moral questions are then not 
 mere idle aberrations of the mind : for they produce 
 a direct, and sometimes, an overwhelming influence 
 on the practical judgments of mankind — on all the 
 maxims of society by which men are generally go- 
 verned. Not, however, to dwell on the strange 
 errors in modern moral speculations, we may, I 
 think, conclude that utilitarian philosophy, where- 
 ever it is received and acknowledged, will teach 
 man to think lightly of the fences the God of 
 nature has thrown around him, and so prepare 
 him for violent and ill-timed inroads on the social 
 .system, and for the perpetration of daring crimes. 
 
 To return once more to the questions with which 
 I started ; I think that to reject the moral sense is 
 to destroy the foundation of all moral philosophy — 
 that the rule of expediency, as stated by Paley, is 
 based in false reasoning on the attributes of God — 
 that the rule itself is ill-suited to the capacity of 
 man — that it is opposed to the true spirit of the 
 Christian religion — and that, however honestly it 
 may be accepted, it tends inevitably to lower the 
 standard of what is right and good. Lastly, we 
 may, I think, assert, both on reason and experience, 
 that wherever the utilitarian system (avowedly 
 based on a rejection of the moral feelings, and an 
 abrogation of the law of conscience) is generally 
 accepted, made the subject of a priori reasoning. 
 
81 
 
 and carried, through tlie influence of popular writ- 
 ings, into practical effect ; it will be found to end 
 in results most pestilent to the honor and happiness 
 of man*. 
 
 Having examined at so much length the doc- 
 trine of expediency, considered as the foundation 
 of moral right, I shall not dwell long on its appli- 
 cation to questions of political philosophy, especially 
 as these subjects' form so small a part of our system 
 of academic instruction. I may however remark, 
 that as every state is but an assemblage of in- 
 dividuals, each of whom is responsible to moral law, 
 the state itself cannot be exempt from obedience to 
 the same law : and hence if expediency be not (as I 
 have endeavoured to shew) the general test of right 
 in abstract questions of morals, neither can it be 
 the general test of right in questions of political 
 philosophy. 
 
 ''Right is consistency with the will of God:" 
 and strange must be our notions of the attributes 
 of the Godhead if we can suppose individual and 
 national right to be essentially different from each 
 other. We believe that a nation's honor is a nation's 
 strength ; that its true greatness consists in the 
 virtue of its citizens ; and that the decay of prin- 
 ciple and the frequency of crime are the sure 
 preludes of its downfall. Truths like these are 
 attested by every chapter in the written history of 
 our race : and what do they prove, except that 
 God is a moral governor of the world ; and, there- 
 fore, that in the end high principle and sound 
 policy will be found in the strictest harmony with 
 each other ? If in the probationary condition of 
 
 * See Note (E) at the end. 
 
 F 
 
82 
 
 the world, nations, as well as individuals, be some- 
 times involved in calamities they seem not to 
 deserve ; we have no right on that account to argue 
 from an exception to a rule, or to deny a general 
 truth attested at once by the voice of history, and 
 the repeated declarations of the word of God. 
 
 But if principle and policy be thus in general 
 accordance, may we not admit expediency as the 
 basis of political right ? I reply, incontestably not. 
 All the objections urged against the utilitarian prin- 
 ciples of moral philosophy apply with three-fold 
 force in questions of national policy: and for this 
 reason among many others, that men, acting for 
 the state with a divided responsibility, have gene- 
 rally a less elevated standard of right than when 
 acting for themselves. Were utilitarian philosophy 
 ever practically recognized among the leading nations 
 of Europe, bodies of men, already base and sordid, 
 would become more base and more sordid, under 
 the shelter of pretended principle ; and national 
 faith and honor would soon be banished from the 
 world in the public contests of unblushing selfisli- 
 ness. 
 
 I have before remarked that, as a matter of 
 historical experience, religion is essential to the 
 social happiness of man, and consequently to the 
 well-being of every nation. The Christian religion 
 is liowever of national importance not merely be- 
 cause it is expedient, but because it is true ; and 
 because its truths are of an overwhelming interest 
 to every individual member of the state. It is not 
 my present object to speak either of the proofs or 
 the doctrines of our religion ; but I may point out, 
 by the way, its humanizing influence on the whole 
 complexion of society. The life and happiness of 
 
83 
 
 a fellow-being is, in a Christian's eye, of a tliousantl- 
 fold more consequence than in the cold speculations 
 of infidel philosophy. 
 
 If there be a superintending Providence, and 
 if his will be manifested by general laws operating 
 both on the physical and moral world, then must 
 a violation of those laws be a violation of his will, 
 and be pregnant with inevitable misery : and if it 
 be forbidden to man to "do evil that good may 
 come;" for like reason it is forbidden to a nation 
 to seek any end, however great and important it 
 may seem, by evil means. Prudence is however 
 a virtue in private life ; and a wise regard to utility 
 is indisputably the duty of a state. Truths like 
 these are denied by no one : all we contend for is — 
 that the maxims of utility must ever be held sub- 
 ordinate to the rules of morality and the precepts 
 of religion. And to what does this conclusion lead 
 us.-^ Only to refer all right to the supreme authority 
 — to look to the will of our lawgiver as our ulti- 
 mate rule — and to believe that nothing can, in the 
 end, be expedient for man, except it be subordinate 
 to those laws the author of nature has thought fit 
 to impress on his moral and physical creation. 
 
 If in moral reasoning it be mere mockery to 
 use the language of demonstration, and to build up 
 systems by trains of a priori reasoning upon a single 
 principle ; it is assuredly not less absurd to affect 
 the forms of inductive proof in political specula- 
 tion. Every political, as well as every moral prin- 
 ciple, practically involves the determination of the 
 will, and thereby becomes at once separated from 
 that class of investigations in which we consider the 
 immutable relations of physical phenomena. That 
 the will is influenced by motives, no one pretends 
 
84 
 
 to deny ou that subject enough has been said 
 
 before : but to compare that influence to a physical 
 cause, followed by an unvaried pliysical effect, is only 
 to confound things essentially different, and must 
 ever end in metaphysical paradox or practical folly. 
 
 Again, discussions on the principles of govern- 
 ment are not merely removed from the province of 
 demonstration, but are encumbered with difficulties, 
 peculiarly their own, arising out of the blindness 
 of party spirit or the violence of bad passion. We 
 may argue on the powerful influence of the social 
 affections — we may assume, as a general truth, 
 that man is sufficiently watchful of his worldly 
 interests — we may deduce conclusions from our 
 principles, not as mere abstractions (in which case 
 they would be little worth), but as results founded 
 in long experience and fortified by numerical de- 
 tails : yet with all this, which may be called an 
 extreme case of moral certainty, do we find men 
 ready to accept our conclusions ? Do we not find, 
 on the contrary, that their eyes are shut to every 
 gleam of light not reflected from their own precon- 
 ceived opinions — that the small voice of truth cannot 
 be heard amidst the brawlings of faction — and that 
 reason is compelled to hide her head among the 
 contentions of vulgar passion ? 
 
 Nor have we yet done with difficulties in the 
 application of abstract political principles. Men are 
 commonly ruled by habit and affection. The love of 
 our friends and of our native land — the love of the 
 institutions under which we have been trained, and 
 which, in common cases, give to the mind its whole 
 stamp and character — a feeling of participation in 
 our country''s glory — a veneration for forms of 
 government that are blended with historical recol- 
 
85 
 
 lections : — sentiments such as these are honourable 
 and natural to man ; and without them, no one, con- 
 sidered as a member of the state, could be a good 
 citizen ; nor, as an individual, could he possess 
 either social happiness or moral dignity. Without 
 these feelings, laws would be no more binding than 
 a rope of sand, and the complex and artificial fabric 
 of society would lose its best principles of cohesion, 
 and soon crumble into its first elements. 
 
 It is not true that national habits and sentiments 
 are merely the fruit of reason, or that they become 
 confirmed only through an experience of utility. We 
 might, perhaps, assert that they are most inveterate 
 when they are least reducible to any rules of ab- 
 stract reason. Is it not, indeed, true, that in the 
 Eastern world many centuries and dynasties have 
 passed away, while social institutions, and habits of 
 thought, to European eyes the most strange and 
 fantastical, have continued to flourish in full ascend- 
 ency, as if exempt from that power of time which 
 changes all things else ? In the great christian 
 families of Europe, similar institutions, and a com- 
 mon religion, have put men more nearly on the same 
 level, and hindered the growth of strongly contrasted 
 national sentiments. Still, whatever be his external 
 condition, there will remain the same original prin- 
 ciples in the inner man ; and we know, not merely 
 from the evidence of times past, but from the ex- 
 perience of our own days, that civil institutions are 
 not commutable — that a form of government, se- 
 curing peace and happiness in one country, may be 
 followed by anarchy and misery in another — and 
 that sudden changes in any part of the social system, 
 whatever may be their ultimate advantage, are always 
 accompanied by enormous evils. The axe of the 
 
86 
 
 despot, or the sword of the conqueror, may have 
 sometimes succeeded in lopping off all national sen- 
 timents and cutting men down to a common type 
 and pattern. But such a change implies the de- 
 struction of every germ of freedom and national 
 honor : it can only be introduced under the dreadful 
 symbols of servitude, and is the sure prelude of 
 misery and moral degradation. 
 
 To what then are we led by considerations such 
 as these ? To the belief, that all systems of political 
 philosophy based on the doctrines of utility, and 
 deduced by a priori reasoning from assumed simple 
 principles (without comprehending all the great 
 elements of man's moral nature, and without, per- 
 haps, even regarding his social condition), are either 
 mischievous or impracticable. Universal systems, 
 like universal nostrums, savour more of political 
 quackery than political philosophy. They are nearly 
 akin to that system of morals which resolves virtue 
 into general benevolence, while it sets at nought 
 the domestic and social affections : and should they 
 hereafter be found applicable to the government 
 of any portion of mankind, it can only be where 
 men have parted with those sentiments and feelings 
 which have hitherto supplied the firmest cement 
 of social happiness and national strength. 
 
 In mechanical philosophy we may make what 
 hypotheses we please ; we may theoretically con- 
 struct an arch, without considering the friction of 
 its component parts, and obtain results, which 
 (however unlike any thing found in a natural con- 
 dition of equilibrium) are mathematically true, and 
 are not without their speculative use. But political 
 philosophy, in this abstract form, has no certainty 
 and no value of this kind. Its objects are essen- 
 
87 
 
 tially practical ; and it must be applicable to some 
 real condition of society, or it is worse than nothing. 
 And most strange and mischievous is that philoso- 
 phy, which, in considering the stability of a state, 
 overlooks that moral friction whereby its social 
 elements are kept in their true position. 
 
 Perhaps it may be said, that the preceding ob- 
 servations are mere truisms denied by no one. But, 
 practically, they have too often been contradicted 
 or overlooked ; and more, I believe, in modern than 
 in ancient times. 
 
 A wide examination of such facts as throw light 
 on the statistical history of mankind, and a laborious 
 observation of the causes regulating the accumu- 
 lation and distribution of national wealth, are among 
 the circumstances by which modern political phi- 
 losophy has been most distinguished : and as we 
 believe that the knowledge of truth will always, 
 in the end, minister to the honour and happiness 
 of man, we must, as honest lovers of our neighbour, 
 rejoice in the progress of economical science. The 
 economist is mainly employed in observing and 
 classifying phenomena, from which he deduces con- 
 sequences that are to him in the place of moral 
 laws. The legislator, on the contrary, assumes the 
 principles he carries into action, applies them to 
 a given condition of society (perhaps never con- 
 templated by the economist), and anticipates the 
 results of moral causes working on new social 
 combinations. Under this view the position of the 
 two philosophers is seen in the strongest contrast. 
 The one, like the early observers of tlie heavens, 
 marks tlie phenomena out of which he endeavours 
 to trace the relative position and movements of the 
 great bodies of the social system. The other, more 
 
m 
 
 like the physical astronomer, not merely takes for 
 granted all the great movements of the political 
 fabric ; but combining with this a knowledge of 
 the perturbations proceeding from the mutual ac- 
 tions of its parts, dares to look into futurity, and 
 to speculate on events, that time may hereafter 
 bring to light within the world he contemplates. 
 The labours of the one belong chiefly to the ele- 
 ments of political philosophy, the labours of the 
 other belong to its consummation. 
 
 The great objects, with a wise legislator, are 
 the security of the state and the happiness of its 
 subjects. But national wealth (in however extended 
 a sense the term may have been used) is, after all, 
 but one of the means of securing these great ends. 
 And among the greatest blunders the economist 
 has committed, has been a hasty spirit of generali- 
 zation (and what infant science has not suff*ered by 
 that spirit ?), an affectation of deductive reasoning, 
 and a rash attempt to usurp, before his time, the 
 chair of the lawgiver. Political economy has, how- 
 ever, now a permanent place among the applied 
 moral sciences, and has obtained an honorable seat 
 in most of the academic establishments of the civilized 
 world. Surely then we may dare to hope (with- 
 out being accused of rashness in counting on the 
 coming fortunes of mankind), that it may, in the 
 end, assist in enabling men to see more deeply 
 into the sources of social happiness or national 
 greatness — that it may allay the bitterness of na- 
 tional animosity ; teaching kingdoms, as well as in- 
 dividuals, how much they gain from mutual support 
 and mutual good-will — and, more than all, that 
 it may (when combined with christian knowledge) 
 help to lighten the pressure of such evils as belong 
 
89 
 
 to our fallen nature, and are among- the unavoid- 
 able conditions of our probation. 
 
 No one denies that the moral and political 
 characters of men are in a great measure formed 
 by the institutions under which they live ; and were 
 it asked, whence these institutions derive their 
 permanency and power ; we might reply in general 
 terms — only from being well fitted to the social 
 condition of the state. But if we take a histo- 
 rical view of this great question, we shall see more 
 deeply into the origin of national sentiments. We 
 shall generally find that national character has not 
 been formed merely by national institutions ; but 
 on the contrary, that the institutions themselves (so 
 far as they are peculiar and permanent) have for 
 the most part taken their original form and impress 
 from the moral condition of the state — that they 
 have grown with its growth — that they have (like 
 the external covering of the bodily frame) been 
 secreted from its life-blood — and that they are the 
 representatives of opinions and feelings called into 
 being from time to time, and too often during suc- 
 cessive ages of conflict and struggle. Happy is 
 that country which is rising in the moral scale of 
 nations, and where the constitution contains within 
 itself a provision for the perpetual adaptation of its 
 institutions to the healthy movement of the state I 
 Laws, like those of the Medes and Persians, which 
 alter not, must soon be followed by premature decay, 
 by secret crimes, or bloody revolutions — the sure 
 attendants of unbending despotism. 
 
 Lastly, before I quit the subject of political 
 philosophy, let me endeavour to impress upon you 
 the great truth, that no human system can bring 
 tlie rebellious facidtic?> of man under tlic law of 
 
90 
 
 obedience; and that no external change of govern- 
 ment whatsoever can make him even approach toward 
 a state of moral perfection — an idle dream of false 
 philosophy, contradicted by all the records of man- 
 kind, and directly opposed to the word of God. 
 In the latter part of last century there existed a 
 large body of men calling themselves philosophers, 
 the best of whom (as they were seen in a neighbour- 
 ing kingdom) might be described under the name of 
 moral fanatics : for with all the evils they helped to 
 bring upon the world, they still dreamt of doing 
 good. In the internal government of the kingdoms 
 of Europe they saw enormous evils ; sufficiently 
 accounting, on their theory, for all the wickedness 
 and misery they saw around them. Hence, they 
 sought not merely to improve, but to re-model the 
 whole social fabric of the world ; and they looked 
 forward to a time of moral perfectibility, when the 
 image of philanthropy was to be set up in the high 
 places of the earth, and all the people^ the stations , 
 and the languages^ were to fall down and wor- 
 ship it. Unhappily for themselves and for their 
 country, the leaders of this school of fanaticism 
 were, almost without exception, sunk in infidelity. 
 Had they accepted, even in the humblest degree, 
 the doctrines of the religion of Christ, they never 
 could have made such portentous errors in esti- 
 mating the moral character of man. With all the 
 sanctions of religion, the terrors of the law, and 
 the numerous links thrown round him by the 
 domestic and social affections, how hard is it to 
 keep him in the right way ! And if we free him 
 from these complicated bonds, there is nothing left 
 for him but the base servitude of brutal and 
 selfish passion. 
 
91 
 
 P^rrors like those just pointed out, are not per- 
 haps likely ever to rise again into political import- 
 ance, although they may long continue more or less 
 to taint the speculations of one school of moral and 
 political writers. 
 
 Having now glanced over the course of your 
 academic studies, let me endeavour shortly to give 
 this discourse a more personal application. I need 
 not tell you, that your high privileges imply cor- 
 responding duties — I need not call upon you by 
 the love of honor and the fear of shame — by the 
 duties you owe to yourselves, to your country, and 
 your God, to buckle on your armour while yet you 
 may, and to be prepared at every point, before you 
 go into the world, and enter on those fields of 
 conflict unto which hereafter you may be called. 
 Topics like these are felt by every soul not sunk 
 in sloth and sensual sin ; and by generous natures, 
 like those I am now addressing, perhaps the only 
 fear is, that they should be felt too much. 
 
 But there still remains untouched another sub- 
 ject, which, by the laws of our foundation, is the end 
 of all our studies. To enter on the subject of 
 sacred learning at any length is foreign to my 
 purpose; and I have a right to take for granted 
 that I am speaking to christian men instructed in 
 the record of their religion — believing in its au- 
 thority — and acknowledging its sanctions. Are then 
 our lives and affections in accordance with the reli- 
 gion we profess and the high privileges we enjoy ? 
 Let every one put this question to himself — let him 
 look into his innermost soul by the light of the 
 word in God, and his own conscience will find the 
 proper answer for him. Though I spcnk with the 
 
92 
 
 tongues of men and of angels, and have not cha- 
 rity, I am become as sounding brass or a, tinkling 
 cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, 
 and understand all mysteries and all knowledge; 
 and though I have all faith, so that I could re- 
 move mountains, and have not charity, I am no- 
 thing .. .Charity suffer eth long and is kind; charity 
 envieth not ; charity vaunteth not itself, is not 
 p7(ffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh 
 not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no 
 evil ; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the 
 truth ; beareth all things, believeth all things, 
 hopeth all things, endureth all things^. If our 
 conscience reply that such is our temper, it is well 
 with us. But if, on the other hand, we find lurking 
 within us a spirit of pride, of bitterness, of intoler- 
 ance, of harsh judgment, of party-spirit, and of 
 other feelings the very opposite to those described 
 in this most touching passage of St Paul; then, 
 whatever be our condition and our attainments in 
 the wisdom of the world, we are outcasts from the 
 flock of Christ, and have no inheritance in his 
 kingdom. 
 
 Learning, almost beyond that of man — a happy 
 power in tracing out the proofs of natural religion 
 — a critical knowledge of the word of God — a grasp 
 of the sharpest weapons of polemical theology, may 
 coexist in a mind manifesting hardly one single 
 Christian grace : nay, hardly performing the most 
 vulgar acts of moral obligation, enjoined, between 
 man and man, by the sanction of the law, and 
 without which the very frame- work of society could 
 not be held together. I will not however dwell on 
 any extreme case like this, but appeal once more to 
 
 * 1 Cor. xiii. 
 
93 
 
 your own experience. We have capacities tor the 
 perception of moral truth ; we know tlie difference 
 between riglit and wrong ; we naturally approve 
 the one and contemn the other ; and our natural 
 perceptions are cleared and elevated by the light 
 of christian truth : our duty is plainly pointed 
 out, and enforced by the most awful sanctions. 
 Nay, more than this ; while removed from the 
 influence of temptation, we wish to obey the word; 
 we wish to walk in the paths of the great and the 
 good : and yet we are infirm of purpose, and can- 
 not do what our heart approves and our conscience 
 dictates. 
 
 The sensualist surrenders his liberty to base 
 appetite ; binding day by day fresh fetters about 
 his limbs, till they have no power of movement. 
 His course of life is often followed by judicial 
 blindness : his mind loses its upright attitude, and 
 becomes tortuous, because it finds no rest ; and he 
 casts about his soul the mist of scepticism to keep 
 off that light of truth his eyes can not endure. 
 A religion without power over the heart is deprived 
 of its best evidence ; and hence he learns to doubt 
 the truth of a system of which he feels not the 
 benefit, and to turn away from that doctrine by 
 which his own life is condemned. A character like 
 this is of no unfrequent occurrence in the ordinary 
 commerce of life. 
 
 But I will suppose you sincere believers in the 
 word of God, and not weighed down by the habitual 
 burden of any flagrant sin. Still, if you look at 
 yourselves, you will find that you not only come 
 immeasurably short of the standard set up by the 
 Word of God, but far short of that you could 
 yourselves set up by the natural light of conscience. 
 
94 
 
 Thuughts like these nuist pass tlirough the minds 
 of every reflecting Cliristian : and, at times, while 
 toiling in his earthly vocation, or even when striv- 
 ing after what he thinks his duty, he will be 
 weighed down with a feeling of self-abasement, 
 and be ready to cry out with St Paul, Oh wretched 
 man that I am^ who shall deliver me from this body 
 of death ? Religion gives an answer to this ques- 
 tion. We have the power of discerning good and 
 evil ; this coexists with our natural condition ; but 
 the power of acting steadily and undeviatingly on 
 the dictates of conscience, is not given us by na- 
 ture : and here religion steps in and points out the 
 only remedy for this discordance and confusion in 
 the moral world. 
 
 If we be not the basest hypocrites in our re- 
 ligion — if we do not utter within this sanctuary 
 a mere idle form of words, opposed both to the 
 conviction of our reason and the approval of our 
 conscience — then must we believe that there is a 
 superintending Providence who governs the world. 
 To this doctrine we can make an approach, even 
 by the feeble light of natural religion. We must 
 further believe, that for the moral ruin and con- 
 fusion we see around us God has provided a special 
 remedy, by the sacrifice of his Son ; who now sits 
 exalted at his right hand, as our mediator and 
 spiritual head. And, lastly, we must believe, that 
 by communion with this our head (sustained by 
 all the ordinances of religion — by public and by 
 secret prayer), we obtain at once the benefit of this 
 sacrifice, and the covenanted promise of a new prin- 
 ciple of life, and a new power of moral obedience. 
 It is by winding itself into our affections — by re- 
 animating the principle of love — that religion has 
 
95 
 
 this power. In expelling from tlie heart its corrupt 
 affections, it leaves it not an open prey to still baser 
 appetites, but fills it with its first and noblest 
 occupants : and thus restores the moral man to his 
 Maker's image and his Maker's favour. It is thus 
 that the religion of Christ does not oppose, but 
 lends support, to all those high faculties that give 
 its only true elevation to the character of man : 
 in proof of which (were there any doubt of what 
 I am stating), we need only cast our eyes over 
 Christendom, and contrast its glories with the intel- 
 lectual darkness of every land whereon the light of 
 the Gospel hath not yet shone*. 
 
 Finally, to bring this home to ourselves : we 
 are no true children of our Lord and Master — we 
 are no part of his flock — if we honor him not by the 
 outward forms of allegiance he has himself en- 
 joined ; if we seek him not by the way he has 
 himself appointed — by acts of public devotion — 
 by the earnest petitions of private prayer, lifted 
 up to him, not only as the giver of all good, but as 
 the giver of that power by which alone we can root 
 out our corrupt affections, and bring into full life 
 the better principles of our nature. Let, then, 
 prayer be the beginning and the end of our studies; 
 and so they will be consecrated to God. In this 
 way, by his blessing, may we persevere unto the 
 end ; treading in the steps before trodden by the 
 great and good men, whose names are the precious 
 inheritance of this house. 
 
 Feelings of Christian devotion, unlike ordinary 
 movements of the soul, lose not their strength by 
 repetition : and habits of devotion, like all other 
 habits, gain strength by frequent exercise. But if 
 
 * See note (F) at tlie end. 
 
96 
 
 the habit of secret prayer be suspended, though for 
 a short time ; I ask your conscience, whether, 
 during that interval, your moral fences have not 
 been broken down ; and whether the spoiler hath 
 not entered in, and committed havoc among some of 
 the best faculties of your inner nature ? 
 
 Let, then, this ceremonial at which we meet, be 
 an occasion of communion with the living God — 
 let us pray for his protection over ourselves and 
 our houshold ; so that we may all be enabled to 
 walk in the light of truth, and in imitation of the 
 great patterns of Christian life he has vouchsafed to 
 give us. So shall we do our duty to God and man 
 — so shall we be bound together by holy bonds no 
 worldly power can break asunder — and so may we 
 hope that God, as he has done abundantly in times 
 past, will continue, in times to come, to vouchsafe 
 to this christian family the proofs of his protecting 
 love. Except the Lord build the house, they la- 
 bour in vain that build it: except the Lord keep 
 the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 Note (A), p. 15. 
 
 The paragraph here referred to requires no 
 explanation to any one instructed in the first prin- 
 ciples of physical astronomy. The following note 
 is therefore addressed exclusively to those who are 
 unacquainted with the severe parts of inductive 
 philosophy. 
 
 In order to understand the nature and import- 
 ance of Newton's discoveries, we must remember 
 that, in the preceding century, the Copernican sys- 
 tem had been promulgated ; and that Kepler, after 
 incredible labour, had established the following 
 general propositions on the evidence of direct obser- 
 vations. 
 
 1. That if each planetary orbit be considered 
 as a space traced out by a line drawn from the sun 
 to the revolving body ; this line traces out equal 
 successive areas in equal successive times. 
 
 2. That the planets move in elliptical orbits, 
 having the sun in a common focus. 
 
 3. That the squares of the times of revolution 
 of the several planets and the cubes of their mean 
 distances from the sun, are in a fixed proportion to 
 each other. 
 
 It must also be admitted that, before the dis- 
 coveries of Newton, there was current in the philo- 
 sophic world, a vague and general notion of some 
 material action of the planets on each other. No 
 
 G 
 
98 APPEKDIX. 
 
 one, for example, doubted that the tides were some 
 how or other influenced by the moon : and, perhaps 
 no one who had adopted the Copernican system, 
 and speculated on the nature of mechanical motion, 
 could doubt that the planets were aff*ected by some 
 action or power emanating from the sun. Before 
 the time of Newton, no one had, however, ventured 
 to promulgate any definite or numerical law of gra- 
 vitation ; still less had any one, on the assumption 
 of a definite law, demonstrated a single fundamental 
 proposition in astronomy. What had been done by 
 preceding philosophers, takes no more from the 
 glory of Newton than the predictions of Seneca take 
 away from the honour of Columbus. 
 
 If any one anticipated Newton, in the application 
 of the law of gravitation to the system of the Uni- 
 verse, it was Kepler, and not Hook, as has been 
 sometimes erroneously asserted. Hook did not de- 
 monstrate a single fundamental proposition in astro- 
 nomy ; and Newton, I believe, preceded him in the 
 very speculations on which his claims have been 
 sometimes set up. For we must remember that 
 Newton, when a very young man, had just notions 
 of the nature of a central force ; and that he endea- 
 voured to prove, by calculation, that the moon was 
 held in its orbit by the sole force of the earth^s 
 attraction ; and failed, only because the distance of 
 the moon had been falsely estimated by practical 
 astronomers. Leaving, however, mere historical 
 discussion, let us consider one or two of the early 
 steps of his philosophic progress. 
 
 He first appeared as the improver of the ele- 
 ments of mechanical philosophy, giving the laws of 
 motion a generality they had not before, and extend- 
 ing their application to the investigation of motions 
 
APPENDIX. 99 
 
 arising from the combined action of many forces. 
 Starting', then, with the laws of motion (which, in 
 the first instance, may be regarded as an enunciation 
 of certain material phenomena ascertained by direct 
 experiment), his next grand generalization led him to 
 extend these laws to all the bodies of the solar 
 system : and, combining this assumption with the 
 first proposition of Kepler (above quoted), he at 
 once demonstrated that the planetary bodies are re- 
 tained in their orbits by a force tending to the centre 
 of the sun. Combining then this demonstrated truth 
 with the second proposition of Kepler (above 
 quoted), he then went on to prove, by a new and 
 most refined geometry, that the force, emanating 
 from the sun, must vary inversely as the square of 
 the distance from its centre; or, in other words, 
 must diminish in the exact proportion in which the 
 square of the distance increases. Having once 
 established this great truth, he then proved that the 
 third proposition of Kepler was a necessary conse- 
 quence of the demonstrated law of central force. 
 Nothing can be conceived more perfect than this 
 induction ; which, starting with laws ascertained by 
 observation, ascended by successive demonstrations, 
 and proved that the most striking phenomena of the 
 solar system were necessary truths involved in the 
 operation of one single mechanical law. 
 
 By a similar train of demonstrative reasoning, 
 Newton proved that the planets act on the several 
 satellites revolving round them according to the 
 same law by which the sun acts on them ; and that 
 the moon is retained in her obit by the same power 
 which, on the earth's surface, brings a heavy body 
 to the ground. Generalizing the truths at which he 
 had so far arrived by demonstrative reasoning, and 
 
 g2 
 
100 APPENDIX. 
 
 asserting of gravitation only what was known of its 
 nature by direct experiment at the earth's surface, 
 he proved that the centre of each planet may be con- 
 sidered as a distinct centre of a force, not primarily 
 impressed upon the centre ; but derived as a secon- 
 dary phenomenon from the combined action of every 
 particle composing the planetary mass ; and he also 
 demonstrated (with a skill almost supernatural, con- 
 sidering the feeble instruments at that time placed 
 within his hands,) that the irregularities of the 
 moon's motions are necessary consequences of the 
 universal law of material action. 
 
 Again, knowing as a matter of fact that the 
 planets are not perfect spheres, he proved that their 
 forms are necessary effects of his own theory : and 
 combining these conclusions with the law of universal 
 gravitation, he proved, by most subtle calculations, 
 that certain irregularities in the annual motion of 
 the earth (producing the phenomena of equinoctial 
 precession) are the necessary consequences of the 
 sun's action on the mass of a spheroidal body. 
 
 In tracing out the consequences of the law of 
 gravitation, and explaining the minute secular ine- 
 qualities of the heavenly bodies, much, no doubt, 
 was left by him unfinished. But he had lighted the 
 way for those who were to follow, had given them 
 the key whereby the mysteries of the kingdoms of 
 nature were to be unlocked, and had laid the foun- 
 dations of every part of that superstructure which 
 has been since reared only by the united labours of 
 the philosophic world. 
 
 The refined geometry of Newton, however beau- 
 tiful as a mode of exhibiting known truths, is now 
 thrown aside as an implement of discovery. " It 
 was like the bow of Ulysses, which none but its 
 
APPENDIX. 101 
 
 master could bend ;"' and the difficult questions of 
 physics are now assailed by weapons of greater 
 power*. We must not however forget, that he was 
 a great inventor in pure mathematics : and though 
 he had not made a single optical experiment, nor 
 taken a step in expounding the laws of the material 
 world, lie would still have had an exalted place in 
 the philosophic history of man. 
 
 Of the theory of universal gravitation, in the 
 form it has at length assumed, it is not too much to 
 say, that it can be changed by no hand but that 
 which first impressed on matter the laws whereby it 
 continues to be governed. Should man be ever per- 
 mitted to ascend to some higher universal law, bind- 
 ing together the phenomena of light, heat, magnet- 
 ism, and all the other subtile agents of our system, 
 still no part of the foundations of physical astronomy 
 would be shaken; and the utmost change to be intro- 
 duced into it would be a trifling modification of the 
 mere language of some of its propositions. 
 
 In the following words (taken from the preface 
 of the first edition of the Principia) Newton has 
 recorded with great simplicity, his own method of 
 arriving at philosophic truth. Omnis philosophice 
 difficultas in eo versari videtur, ut a phcenomenis 
 motuum investigemus vires 7iaturcB, deinde ah his 
 viribus demonstremus phcBnomena reliqua. Ex 
 phcenomenis igitur ccelestibus, per propositiones 
 mathematice demonstratas, derivantur vires Gravi- 
 tatis, quihus corpora ad solem et planetas singulos 
 tendunt : deinde, ex his viribus, pef propositiones 
 etiam mathematicas, deducuntur motus planetarum, 
 cometarum, luncB, et maris. 
 
 * Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy^ by Sir John 
 Herschel, p. 273. 
 
102 APPENDIX, 
 
 Near the end of his book of Optics, he writes in 
 the same philosophic spirit — " As in mathematics, 
 so in natural philosophy, the investigation of difficult 
 things by the method of analysis ought ever to pre- 
 cede the method of composition. This analysis 
 consists in making experiments and observations, 
 and in drawing general conclusions from them by 
 induction, and admitting of no objections against the 
 conclusions, but such as are taken from experiments, 
 or other certain truths. For hypotheses are not to 
 be regarded in experimental philosophy. And 
 although the arguing from experiments and obser- 
 vations by induction be no demonstration of general 
 conclusions, yet it is the best way of arguing which 
 the nature of things admits of, and may be looked 
 upon as so much the stronger, by how much the in- 
 duction is more general. And if no exception occur 
 from phenomena, the conclusion may be pronounced 
 generally. But if at any time afterwards any ex- 
 ception shall occur from experiments, it may then 
 begin to be pronounced with such exceptions as 
 occur. By this way of analysis we may proceed 
 from compounds to ingredients, and from motions to 
 the forces producing them ; and in general, from 
 effects to their causes, and from particular causes to 
 more general ones, till the argument end in the most 
 general. This is the method of analysis. And the 
 synthesis consists in assuming the causes discovered, 
 and established as principles, and by them explain- 
 ing the phenomena proceeding from them and prov- 
 ing the explanations." 
 
 The former of these methods when applied to 
 the investigation of physical phenomena, has long 
 been known by the term mduction : the latter, in 
 one of the writings of Sir John Hcrschel, is called 
 
APPENDIX. 103 
 
 the method of deduction. This word had nearly 
 been forgotten, but was wanted, and is again be- 
 coming current in the language of philosophy. 
 
 In the method of analysis and induction Newton 
 stands without a rival in the history of man ; whe- 
 ther we regard the boldness and certainty of his 
 generalizations, or the inventive skill by which he 
 linked together truths before his time sterile and 
 unconnected. In the power of deductive reasoning, 
 he may perhaps have had some equals ; but it must 
 ever be difficult to form any just comparison of the 
 intellectual powers of men labouring during distinct 
 periods in the advance of science. 
 
 Deductive reasoning is the consummation of 
 
 o 
 
 exact science, and its importance is shewn in two 
 ways — First, in deducing from first principles, phy- 
 sical truths already known by observation ; in which 
 view, it not only offers the highest possible confir- 
 mation of the principle from which we start, but it 
 assists and perfects the results of observation. 
 Secondly, in deducing consequences hitherto con- 
 cealed in tlie unexplored regions of nature. Such 
 were some of the great secular inequalities, and as- 
 tronomical periods discovered by Laplace — and such 
 (to quote more recent instances) was the conical 
 refraction brought to light by Professor Hamilton, 
 and the modifications of Newton's coloured rings 
 predicted by Professor Airy before they had ever 
 been exhibited by any experimental test*. 
 
 It must however be obvious, that deductive rea- 
 soning can never have any value, except when we 
 
 * On the effects of inductive and deductive habits of thought on 
 the mind of man, see two very original and beautiful chapters in the 
 latter part of a work published during the past year by the Rev. 
 W. M'hewell. Astronomy and General Physics considered icith refer- 
 ence to A'atural Theology, 
 
104 APPENDIX. 
 
 have to do with the laws of fixed and unchaiifreable 
 elements : without this condition it leads only to the 
 extension and complication of error. In. moral and 
 psychological questions (for example) where all the 
 elements are ill defined, the analytic is the only 
 method of approaching truth. Logic may teach us 
 to disentangle sophistry, to marshal our ideas, and 
 to limit our conclusions : but it cannot, without a 
 miracle, draw fixed consequences from unfixed ele- 
 ments. Those who, on psychological questions, 
 have dealt in the forms of deductive proof, have 
 perhaps done the least harm when they have allowed 
 the imagination entirely to usurp the seat of reason. 
 Their works may then amuse and instruct mankind, 
 though not perhaps in the way the authors first 
 intended. But the affectation of the language of 
 synthetic demonstration on moral questions, has, 
 almost without exception, been followed by practical 
 evils ; giving rise to a train of shallow reasoners, 
 venders of trifling propositions, or propagators of 
 antisocial paradoxes. 
 
 Note (B), p. 17. 
 
 When the great bodies of our system are de- 
 scribed as revolving in vacuo about the sun, we 
 merely understand by such words_, that they revolve 
 in a space offering no sensible resistance to their 
 motions ; and even this assumption must now be 
 modified, for the most attenuated of these bodies 
 (the comets) probably meet with a resistance sen- 
 sibly changing the periods of their return. That 
 Newton did not suppose the existence of an exten- 
 sive vacuum within the limits of our system, is evi- 
 
APPENDIX. 105 
 
 dent from his speculations respecting the nature of 
 light and the cause of gravitation ; and in the tenth 
 proposition in the third book of the Principia, he 
 gives the following reason for supposing, that the 
 motions of the planets may be continued for an in- 
 definite period of time ; si ascendatiir m ccelos ubi 
 pondus medii, in quo planetcB moventur, diminui- 
 tur in itnmenstim, resistentia prope cessahit^'. 
 
 We may perhaps make the words this note re- 
 fers to, somewhat better understood by taking an 
 imaginary case. Let us suppose a sentient being- 
 sustained in any part of our system, which is not 
 occupied by the grosser matter of the planetary 
 bodies, and endowed with a power of sight as great 
 as is our own when assisted by the best telescope 
 yet invented. To such a being, all the bodies of 
 our system would at once become visible, and the 
 firmament around would be seen by him, glittering 
 with the light of many million stars. But we must 
 remember that each of these shining points is seen 
 only through the intervention of a beam of light 
 sent down by it directly to the eye. There is, 
 therefore, not a single point in the empty spaces of 
 our system, through which millions of beams of 
 light do not pass unceasingly, yet with a material 
 action so subtile that one beam interferes not with 
 another, but each passes onward, as if moving by 
 itself — the sole messenger from the centre of light 
 to the sentient beings of the universe. 
 
 In general considerations like these the mind 
 seems to lose its power, and becomes almost be- 
 wildered : and if we call in the aid of calculation, 
 though we build on demonstration and clothe our 
 
 * See also the concluding parts of Newton's Optics, • especially 
 Queries 18, 19, 20, and 28. 
 
106 APPENDIX. 
 
 results in numbers, our conclusions seem, perhaps 
 more than ever, removed from the grasp of sense. 
 If we accept the theory (considered, by some of 
 those who have most deeply studied it, as well es- 
 tablished as the theory of gravitation) which derives 
 the sensation of sight from vibrations propagated 
 through an elastic ether, by the visible object to 
 the eye : then is each beam of light but a part of a 
 distinct system of vibrations, every wave of which 
 diverges through space with a sustained velocity 
 sufficient to carry it eight times round the earth in 
 a single second, and each wave is followed by an- 
 other at so short an interval, that 100,000 of them 
 are packed within the space of every inch. Mil- 
 lions of such systems of vibrations pass, then, un- 
 ceasingly through every point of visible space, yet 
 without disorder and confusion : so that each system 
 of waves goes on vmobstructed by the others, pre- 
 serving the individual powers impressed upon it, 
 and through them ministering to the wants of 
 millions of sentient beings. 
 
 Our knowledge of the complicated fabric of the 
 material universe (even in those parts we sometimes 
 describe as mere vacuities) does not end here. 
 There is not a point in any portion of our system 
 through which millions of material influences (im- 
 plied indeed in the law of universal gravitation) are 
 not constantly transmitted. That they differ from 
 the subtile material action last considered is certain; 
 yet no one will deny that they belong to some mode 
 of material action, though he knows nothing of the 
 mechanism whereby they are propagated and main- 
 tained. 
 
 Had there been any extended vacuities in tlic 
 universe, it might, perhaps, liavc been said, that 
 
APPENDIX. 107 
 
 such portions of space were without any manifesta- 
 tion of the Godhead. But what has been stated is 
 enough to shew that there are no such places within 
 the ken of our senses or the reach of our thoughts. 
 That God is every where is the language of re- 
 vealed religion ; that God manifests his power every 
 where is, in like manner, the voice of natural re- 
 ligion spoken through the universal domination of 
 material laws. 
 
 Considerations like these fill the mind with feel- 
 ings of the vastness of the power and skill employed 
 in the mechanism of the world ; yet, of the great 
 Architect himself and of the materials employed by 
 him, they give no adequate notion whatsoever. 
 Still we are (in part at least) permitted to ascend 
 up to the laws impressed on matter, and to see how 
 they have been adapted to each other, so as to work 
 together for a common end, and to minister to the 
 wants of man and his fellow beings ; and this is 
 enough for the argument built upon such knowledge. 
 
 Truth depends not on authority : but it may 
 be well to fortify this conclusion by two quotations 
 from the latter part of Newton's Optics. ''Though 
 every true step made in this philosophy brings us 
 not immediately to the knowledge of the first Cause, 
 yet it brings us nearer to it, and on that account is 
 to be highly valued."*"* Again, he writes, "If na- 
 tural philosophy in all its parts, by pursuing this 
 method (of analysis and induction), shall at length 
 be perfected, the bounds of moral philosophy will 
 be also enlarged. For, so far as we can know by 
 natural philosophy what is the first Cause, what 
 power he has over us, and what benefits we receive 
 from him ; so far ovu' duty towards him, as well as 
 towards one another, will appear to us by the light 
 of nature.'' 
 
108 APPENDIX. 
 
 Note (C), p. 32. 
 
 It has been sometimes objected to natural reli- 
 gion that it misleads men by a dim and deceitful 
 light, on matters clearly put before them in the 
 word of God. The objection is sound, so far as it 
 applies to those who set up natural, in the place of 
 revealed truth : but it is invalid in any other sense, 
 as it strikes at the root of all knowledge that is not 
 religious. If the conclusions of natural religion be 
 true, then must they well deserve our study ; and they 
 are of no small moral worth, provided they be kept 
 in their proper place, and in subordination to truths 
 of a higher kind. Were all men honest believers 
 in the word of God, then could the inductions of 
 natural religion add nothing to the strength of their 
 convictions of his being and providence. But to 
 doubting minds, entangled in the mazes of a false 
 philosophy, or lost perhaps in sense, and unused to 
 any severe exercise of thought, the ready induc- 
 tions of natural religion may bring convictions of 
 the greatest moral worth — at moments too, when 
 proofs of a different kind would be denied all ac- 
 cess to the understanding. Moreover, the habit of 
 contemplating God through the wonders of the 
 created world, and its adaptation to the wants of 
 man, is not only compatible with firm religious be- 
 lief, but with the highest devotional feeling ; as is 
 proved by passages, almost without number, in the 
 sacred poetry of the Bible. 
 
 The chief ground, however, for urging the ha- 
 bitual study of natural religion upon those to whom 
 the preceding discourse is addressed, is the belief 
 that it is a wholesome exercise for the understanding. 
 In rising, step by step, to an apprehension of the 
 
APPENDIX. 109 
 
 great laws of the material world, it is surely well 
 for us to have ever present to our thoughts the con- 
 viction that these laws are but a manifestation of 
 the will of a preordaining mind ; and in noting the 
 countless relations of material things around us, 
 and their fitness for each other, we surely ought 
 not to shut our eyes to the ever living proofs of 
 wisdom and creative po-wer. The study of the 
 kingdoms of nature, conducted in such a spirit, not 
 only strengthens and elevates the natural powers of 
 man, but tends, I believe, to produce a cheerful 
 sobriety of thought most favourable to the reception 
 of sound religious impressions. Such appears to 
 have been the temper of Paley, especially during 
 the latter years of his life : and in mentioning his 
 name, I cannot but urge on all those who are com- 
 mencing their academic course, the habitual study 
 of his delightful work on Natural Theology. It is 
 hardly possible to read this book without catching 
 some part of the Author''s spirit ; and if this spirit 
 be gained, we shall then find the material world 
 with a new life breathed into it, and speaking a lan- 
 guage which, to those uninstructed in its meaning, 
 may fall upon the ear without suggesting a single 
 appropriate train of thought. 
 
 Since the preceding discourse was delivered, 
 some very important and elaborate treatises have 
 appeared (and others are in progress), enforcing 
 different parts of the great argument to be drawn 
 from final causes. It is, I think, impossible that 
 any one of them, or all of them together, should 
 supersede the work of Paley. They may expand 
 and enforce his argument by new and pregnant 
 illustrations ; and they may supply some deficiencies 
 in his work, especially in the part that treats of 
 
110 APPENDIX. 
 
 the adaptation of the mechanical laws of the uni- 
 verse to each other, and to the wants of man. With 
 one part of the mechanical argument he has indeed 
 attempted to grapple ; but not, I think, with the 
 same power he has put forth in the other portions 
 of his volume. 
 
 To comment on the treatises just alluded to 
 would be quite out of place in a note like this : 
 but I may be allowed to rejoice, in common with 
 many other Members of the University, at the 
 appearance of a work (referred to in a former note, 
 p. 103) which, combining a philosophic view of the 
 highest generalizations of exact science with an 
 original and well-sustained argument drawn from 
 the universal proofs of wisdom and design, falls 
 in admirably with the course of reading of our 
 best class of students. It is assuredly not too 
 much to say, that this author has well earned the 
 honor of filling up a chasm in the moral literature 
 of his country. 
 
 Paley has stated with his usual clearness and 
 skill the importance of comparative anatomy to 
 the doctrine of final causes*. The philosophic 
 anatomist tells us that the organs of each animal 
 may be described as parts of a machine well fitted 
 together, and exactly suited to the functions they 
 have to perform. He reasons from the function 
 to the organ, or from the organ to the function, 
 with perfect confidence; and in cases too where 
 the living type has been never seen. This adap- 
 tation may now be called a law of organic structure ; 
 and it has been proved only by patient observation, 
 like every other inductive physical truth. When 
 once established it becomes the animating principle 
 
 * Natural Theology, Chap. xii. 
 
APPENDIX. Ill 
 
 of every department of natural history : both help- 
 ing us in the arrangement of known objects, and 
 in the interpretation of new phenomena. To form 
 an adequate notion of the importance of this law, 
 we have only to bear in mind how it enabled Cuvier 
 to reassemble the scattered organs of many beings 
 of a former world — to determine their place in the 
 scale of animated nature — and to reason on their 
 functions with as much clearness as if they were 
 themselves still living before him. 
 
 In passing from one order of beings to another 
 as they stand arranged in a museum of comparative 
 anatomy, we see a continued repetition of the same 
 organs, yet in each successive instance we find them 
 changed in a greater or less degree in their pro- 
 portions and manner of adjustment. This most 
 striking fact bears directly on the argument for 
 design. "Whenever we find a general plan pur- 
 sued, yet with such variations in it as are, in each 
 case, required by the particular exigency of the 
 subject to which it is applied, we possess, in such 
 a plan and such adaptation, the strongest evidence 
 that can be afforded of intelligence and design ; 
 an evidence which the most completely excludes 
 every other hypothesis." This view of the ar- 
 gument admits of endless illustrations. To each 
 man those instances are the best that spontaneously 
 offer themselves to his mind. The real difficulty 
 is to teach men first to enter on such trains of 
 thought, and to shake off that torpor in which 
 their senses seem often to be steeped. Paley's 
 instances are well put, and full of meaning : I 
 will endeavour to add one or two familiar examples 
 to them, though at the risk of extending this note 
 to an unreasonable length. 
 
112 APPENDIX. 
 
 Of all the solid parts of the animal frame, the 
 most obviously mechanical are the jaws and teeth ; 
 we know, in each instance, the office they have to 
 perform, and we know that they perform it well. 
 Let us then examine, in a museum of anatomy, 
 the jaws of some one order of animals — for ex- 
 ample, the carnivorous. In each instance we find 
 cutting teeth in front, sharp fangs on the sides, 
 and molar teeth in the back part of the jaws. The 
 molar teeth rise into sharp lance-shaped points of 
 hard enamel, and overlap each other in the upper 
 and lower jaw, like the edges of a pair of shears. 
 We see at once an apparatus well fitted for tearing 
 and for clipping flesh, and, in some cases, fitted 
 also for cracking bones; but not at all suited for 
 grinding the seeds or stalks of vegetables. Let us 
 then observe the manner in which the jaws are 
 fitted to one another. At each end of the lower 
 jaw rises a well defined transverse process, working 
 in a corresponding depression of the skull ; in short, 
 the jaws work together by a firm hinge, allowing 
 them to open and shut like a pair of shears, but 
 admitting of no grinding motion. That such an 
 articulation is important for the carnivorous animal 
 no one can doubt, who has observed how ill a pair 
 of scissars perform their office with a loose hinge. 
 Thus we see, from one end to the other, an im- 
 plement well suited for its work, and all its parts 
 in good adjustment. But all these nice adjustments 
 would be lost, were there not levers attached to the 
 jaw, and muscles to work the levers — were not each 
 part of the animal frame adapted to all the other 
 parts — and were not the instincts and appetites of 
 the animal such as are fitted to give to this frame- 
 work its appropriate movement. 
 
Al'PENDIX. 113 
 
 Let us then turn to another order of animals 
 of strongly contrasted habits — for example, the 
 ruminating. We find the lower jaw armed with 
 incisor teeth, working against a hard callous pad, 
 placed upon the upper. This prevents the animal 
 from inflicting a severe bite, but enables it readily 
 to crop grass and to tear off the stalks of vegetables. 
 The sharp fangs are wanting; but, were this the 
 place for the observation, we might shew how it is 
 protected from the fiercer beasts by the instinct of 
 fear combined with acute senses and great fleet- 
 ness — by gregarious habits — and by formidable 
 weapons of defence placed on its brow, and given, 
 be it observed, to none of the carnivorous tribes. 
 Its flat-topped molar teeth are not formed for 
 cutting, but for grinding ; and its jaws are loosely 
 fitted together, so as to allow of a grinding move- 
 ment. With a change of form in one part, is a 
 change of adjustment in another, and the parts 
 continue to work well together. Had the articu- 
 lation of the carnivorous jaw remained unchanged, 
 the herbivorous tooth could not have performed 
 its oflice. But we have not yet done with the 
 adjustments. In the ruminating animal, the enamel 
 is not all placed on the top of the tooth, as in the 
 carnivorous ; but is arranged in deep vertical layers, 
 alternating with bony matter ; and this arrange- 
 ment, in all states of the tooth, secures a rough 
 grinding surface. These layers are arranged in 
 irregular curves running lengthwise in the jaw, and 
 their convex and concave portions are so delicately 
 opposed in the upper and lower jaw, as to produce, 
 during a lateral movement (like that of a cow chewing 
 the cud), the greatest possible quantity of friction. 
 Again, we might go on to shew the adaptation of 
 
 H 
 
114 APPENDIX. 
 
 the muscles of the head to the apparatus here de- 
 scribed ; and, beginning with the jaw, we might go 
 through the whole animal frame and prove that all the 
 parts were skilfully contrived and fitted together so 
 as to minister to the wants of the beings they belong to. 
 Let us next see what is the structure of the 
 jaw in animals of some different and intermediate 
 order. Perhaps the best for our selection are the 
 rodentia, or gnawers. Like the ruminating animals, 
 they are without fangs ; but they have long sharp 
 cutting teeth, meeting together like a pair of 
 pincers. That these implements are useful to 
 the creatures possessing them, no one can doubt. 
 It is by their help that the beaver saws down a 
 tree for his water-dam, that the rat gnaws his 
 way through a board, and that the squirrel drills 
 a hole through the shell of a nut, and extracts 
 the kernel. Most of the animals of this order 
 are herbivorous, and therefore grind their food 
 with flat-topped molar teeth. But how is this 
 duty to be performed, as the front teeth lock to- 
 gether in such a way as to make a transverse grind- 
 ing movement almost impossible.? It is provided 
 for by a new adjustment. A process of the lower 
 jaw works in a depression of the skull, as in the 
 carnivorous order. The articulation admits how- 
 ever of more play, and its direction, instead of being 
 transverse, is lengthwise, and thus allows the lower 
 jaw to rub, like a carpenter's plane, backwards and 
 forwards upon the upper. Every one must have 
 been struck with this movement who has seen a 
 rabbit eating the leaf of a cabbage. The work 
 of nature would still be left incomplete, were there 
 not also a corresponding adjustment in the enamel 
 of each tooth. We find then, on inspection, that 
 
APPENDIX. 115 
 
 the enamel of the molar teeth is arranged in vertical 
 layers (as in the ruminantia), and that they form 
 a good grinding surface; but the direction of the 
 layers is now transverse to the jaw. This is what 
 it ought to be, in order that the teeth may work 
 to the best advantage. The layers of enamel are 
 transverse to the teeth, for the same reason that 
 the iron of a carpenter's plane is transverse to the 
 direction in which the workman uses it. But this 
 is not the only new adjustment in the teeth of these 
 animals. The incisors being implements of per- 
 petual use, are renewed by perpetual growth ; there 
 is a special provision for their support in a bent 
 socket, and being enamelled only in front they are 
 always kept sharp. By the very act of gnawing, 
 the hinder part of the incisor wears away quicker 
 than the fore part, and in that way always preserves 
 a sharp inclined edge like that of an adze or chisel 
 — the very form that is wanted by the animal. It 
 is not enough to say that all these adjustments are 
 complete : what would be their value, were not the 
 muscular frame also fitted to them, and the animal 
 powers such as to call them into action ? 
 
 These instances are among the most obvious and 
 well-known, in comparative anatomy, and have been 
 quoted on that very account. The same kind of 
 reasoning might be applied to the organs of all 
 animated beings; and there is literally no end to 
 the examples of mechanical adjustment. Considered 
 in this way, they put the proofs of contrivance and 
 design in the clearest point of view, and give the 
 argument a unity and connexion it cannot have by 
 the mere consideration of detached instances. 
 
 Once for all, and by way of recapitulation, we 
 see the proofs of wisdom and design in the structure 
 h2 
 
116 APPENDIX. 
 
 of every being endowed with life. The argument 
 is cumulative ; each instance being perfect in its 
 kind. We see the proofs of wisdom still more 
 clearly when we review the classes and orders of 
 animated nature ; for we find the God of nature 
 working upon a plan, and adapting the same organs 
 to different ends, by a series of delicate mechanical 
 adjustments. Our argument gains strength as we 
 ascend to a consideration of the mechanical laws 
 impressed on matter : for law implies a lawgiver, 
 and without that notion the word law is without 
 meaning. Still more strengthened is our argument 
 as we learn to comprehend the exquisite adaptation 
 of these laws to the organs and functions of all 
 living beings. We see, then, through all nature, 
 animate and inanimate, but one unbroken impress 
 of wisdom and power : and the conclusion at which 
 man thus arrives, elevates his intellectual condition, 
 and falls in with the appetencies of his moral nature. 
 Surely then we may conclude with Paley, that the 
 world around us proceeds from design and intelli- 
 gence — "intelligence properly and strictly so called, 
 including under that name foresight, consideration 
 and reference to utility.''..." After all the schemes 
 of a reluctant philosophy, the necessary resort is 
 to a Deity. The marks of design are too strong to 
 be gotten over — design must have a designer — that 
 designer must have been a person — that person is 
 God."* 
 
 Note (D), p. 42. 
 
 In confirmation of what is stated in pages 35 
 and 36, I may refer the reader to Xenophon's 
 
 * Paley's Nat. Theol. end of Chap, xxiii. 
 
APPENDIX. 117 
 
 Memorabilia^ Book I, Chap. iv. The following 
 extract shews Socrates"* strong and graphic manner 
 of putting the argument from final causes. 
 
 Ttoi/ oe dTeK/ULCLpTcos e-^ovTwv, otov eveKo. eaTi, 
 Kui Twv (pavepw^ eir (iXpeXeia ovtujv, worcpa Tu^rj^ 
 Kal TTorepa yfco/mr]^ epya Kpiveis '■, — Tlpeirei /ixeu to. 
 ew axpeXeia yevo/neva yucojmri^ epya eJi^at. — Oukovv 
 coK6^ aoL 6 ef CLp-^rjs ttolwv dvOpcoTrovs err (v<pe\€i(f. 
 irpo^OeivaL avTol^, m cou alaOauovTai, e/cacrra, o0- 
 OaX/JiOV^ /uei/, w^O' opav xa opaTa, wra oe, w'sr' 
 CLKoueiv Tci cLKOvaTa; odiJ.wv ye lurjv, el ixrj pTve^ 
 TrpoiereOrjaav, tl av rnxiv oCpeXos r}v -^ t\<s ^' dv 
 aiaOricTL^ r}v yXvKewu Kai cpt/ixewv Kal irdurcou twu 
 cia cTTOfxaTo^ rjcecovj el jurj yXcoTTa tovtoov yvcvimoov 
 eveipydaOrj ; YIp6<$ ce tovtol^, ov cok€l aoi Kal ToSe 
 Trpovoia<s €py(p eoiKevai, to, eirel aaOev}]^ inev ecrriu 
 7] ov//f9, fiXecpdpOLi avTYiv Ovpcocrai, dj orav fxev 
 avTrj -^prjaOat, tl cer], dv air eTavvvTai, ev ce Tip 
 virvip (TvyKXeieTaL ; tek o dv /urjce dve/uoi j^XaTTTooaiVy 
 tjOjuLOv f3Xe<papidas enKpyaaC o<ppucri Te dTroyeiacoaaL 
 Tct VTrep Tcov ojufxdTwv, w9 fJLfjc o €K Trj<s KeipaXrjs 
 lopcos KaKovpyfj' to ce t-^v dKorjv ce^eadai /mev 
 Tracra? (pcovds, efXTriTrXao-Qai ce firjiroTe' Kal tovs 
 ywei/ irpoadev ocovTa^ irdai ^cooi^ o'lov^ Te/uLveiv elvai, 
 tov^ ce yo[x(piov^ oiov^ Trapd tovtcvv ce^ajuevovs 
 Xeaipeiv' Kal to aTOjua fxev, ci ov wv eTTLOv/uel Ta 
 ^wa eUireinireTai, irXrjaiov ocpOaX/uwr Kal pivcov 
 KaTadeivai' eirel ce Ta air o-)((i)povvT a cus\eprj, 
 a7roa'TjOe'v//ai tovs tovtwv o;>^eToi)s, Kal aweveyKeiVy 
 Y] ovvaTov TTpocrcoTdTcOj aird twv aiaOrjaewv' TovTa 
 OVTW irpovorjTLKw^ ireirpayiieva, airopei^, iroTepa 
 Tv^rjs ri yvwfxrjs epya eaTiv ; — Oi* /ua tov AT, 
 6 0*;, dXX ovTO) ye (TKOirovixevip iravv eoiKe TavTa 
 (To(pov Tii'69 Srj/uLiovpyov Kal (piXo'^wov Te^vji/maTi. 
 
118 APPENDIX. 
 
 I have quoted this passage in the hopes of in- 
 ducing the reader to reconsider the whole chapter ; 
 both for its own value, and because it is in itself an 
 ample refutation of an opinion unaccountably main- 
 tained by some writers, that the heathen philoso- 
 phers of antiquity had no knowledge of God except 
 what was derived through a corrupted tradition. 
 
 Were it true (which it certainly is not) that the 
 heathen writers never argued from final causes to the 
 being of a God, still we should not be justified in 
 saying that the argument had no weight when 
 handled by a Christian. Truths, whether physical 
 or moral, are not less real because they have been 
 hidden for many ages, and are only brought to light 
 by the progress of other truths. No wonder that 
 the truths of natural religion should have been 
 oftener pressed by christian than by heathen writers. 
 The Christian makes them not the foundation of his 
 faith. He seeks them not because he doubts, but 
 because he believes : for they are the external means 
 of communion with a being whom he is taught to 
 love, and in whose more immediate presence he hopes 
 hereafter to dwell. It is through these embodied 
 truths that in the mechanism of his own material 
 frame, in the wonderful adaptation of his senses to the 
 material world without, in the constitution of his 
 mind whereby he learns the existence of intellectual 
 natures like his own, in his power of modifying the 
 order of events by the operations of his will, in his 
 capacity of ascending from phenomena to laws, and 
 of contemplating through them the marks of pre- 
 ordaining wisdom — it is through these truths that in 
 all the world around him, in whatsoever manner his 
 soul regards it, he is taught to read an everliving 
 lesson of the benevolence and the power of God. 
 
A P P E N ]) I X . 119 
 
 We think that we have some adequate knowledge 
 of our fellow-beings, because they resemble what we 
 have a consciousness of within ourselves. Without 
 stopping to inquire how we come by this knowledge, 
 let us suppose some one to ask how we come by the 
 knowledge of a God : we can only reply, as has 
 often been done before, that we know him by his 
 works, animate and inanimate, and by the written 
 revelations he has given of himself. Should how- 
 ever this interrogator go on to say, that God speaks 
 not to us through his works, but only through the 
 words of his revelation, wherein he told us from the 
 beginning that He created the heaven and the 
 earth ; we may then retort another question, and 
 ask. What knowledge could mere sounds like these 
 convey through the ears to the heart, were there 
 not already placed within it some knowledge of the 
 being of a God ; or at least were there not in the 
 soul some natural and inborn power of rising to the 
 apprehension of a general religious truth when pre- 
 sented to it in the form of a mere abstraction ? 
 
 That our knowledge of God is in a certain sense 
 inadequate, whether it be conveyed to us as a truth 
 of natural or revealed religion, no one can for a 
 moment doubt. It may be suited to our wants, but 
 it can bear no measure to his glory. No man hath 
 seen God at any time, because he is every where. 
 And if he has sometimes, during the brief history of 
 man, given a sensible manifestation of his more im- 
 mediate presence, it has been by stripping himself 
 (if I may so speak) of his attribute of ubiquity, and 
 condescending to put on the semblance of some ma- 
 terial power, or the glorified similitude of the human 
 form. So also in the language of his written word, 
 he is either described by negatives, or diverted of 
 
120 APPENDIX. 
 
 his immaterial attributes, that he may be brought 
 down to the grasp of human thought. Not only in 
 the extent and power of his operations, but assuredly 
 also in their very kind, he is infinitely above the 
 reach of man's imagination. If revelation cannot, 
 without a miracle, give to a blind man any know- 
 ledge of the sensations caused by the pulsation of 
 light upon the eye ; still less can it convey to the 
 mind's eye any knowledge of God that is not limited 
 by the conditions of our being. Surely we may, 
 then, believe that in religious knowledge there is 
 much that is imperfectly comprehended : and if in 
 the natural world each step of discovery bring to 
 light new and unexpected truths, we may well 
 believe that a revelation (expounding our moral 
 condition in relation to God, and giving us a 
 glimpse of our future destinies) must also bring to 
 light something that is above reason — something that 
 is new and unlooked for. 
 
 Let me not, however, be misunderstood. If 
 revelation teach knowledge above reason, it does not 
 thereby destroy the fair inductions of reason, other- 
 wise the God of nature would be in contradiction 
 with himself — A demonstration is not the less true 
 because it is confined to its own premises : and if 
 we deny the value of natural truth because of the 
 narrowness of our faculties ; we might, by like rea- 
 soning, set religious knowledge at naught, because 
 it is limited by the conditions of our intellectual 
 nature. In one word, whether we argue from man's 
 ignorance or knowledge, we have no right to rob 
 him of his inborn capacities — of the power of ascend- 
 ing from phenomena to the contemplation of laws, 
 and of deducing general truths — of discerning the 
 marks of designing wisdom in the universe — and of 
 
APPENDIX. 121 
 
 seeing that there is over all matter and all mind the 
 will of a presiding God. 
 
 It may perhaps be well to consider some of the 
 causes that have led men to reject the proofs of 
 natural religion. One cause is the affectation of 
 originality. '' The proof of a Deity drawn from 
 the constitution of nature, is not only popular but 
 vulgar ; and many minds are not so indisposed to 
 any thing which can be offered to them, as they are 
 to the Jlatness of being content with common rea- 
 sons*."" This remark of Paley's is applied to 
 certain writers, who, to rid themselves of an intelli- 
 gent Creator, have loaded natural history and phy- 
 siology with the wildest and most preposterous 
 hypotheses. 
 
 Another cause is ignorance of the laws of nature. 
 Man is unwilling to think himself ignorant ; and he 
 naturally enough thinks lightly of the proofs he 
 does not understand. Religious men may easily fall 
 into this error : for their minds dwell on proofs not 
 derived from any study of the material world, and 
 they know full well, that the hopes and sanctions of 
 natural religion are little fitted to satisfy the wants 
 of man. Hence they reject it altogether. But they 
 ought to know that the laws of nature, when pro- 
 perly understood, are records of the will of God, 
 and are therefore fit matter for exalted study : and 
 they have no right to argue from their own igno- 
 rance. 
 
 A third cause for rejecting natural religion is the 
 reception of a narrow and false psychological system. 
 This cause has, during the past century, tainted 
 some of the best writings of the Ecclesiastical Mem- 
 bers of our Church. Let us suppose some one to 
 
 * Natural Theologj', Chap, xxiii. 
 
122 APPENDIX. 
 
 Start with such propositions as the following : Know- 
 ledge is only a perception of the agreement and disa- 
 greement of our ideas — we can form no ideas without 
 perception — and we have no perceptions, except 
 through impressions on the organs of sense. If all 
 this be taken for granted, he may soon go on to 
 prove that, out of such beggarly elements, it is im- 
 possible to rise to any moral or religious truth ; and 
 therefore that all knowledge which is not physical, 
 must be supernatural, and can come to us only by 
 the teaching of revelation. Without stopping to 
 ask whether man, if such were the whole of his im- 
 material powers, could be a fit recipient for any 
 religious truth, or could ever comprehend it, we may 
 ask the supporters of this hypothesis what account 
 they have to give us of the thousand abstractions 
 which, by our nature, we are compelled to form — of 
 our moral sentiments — of the creative energies of 
 the imagination — of the efforts by which we mount 
 from individual phenomena to the comprehension of 
 general laws, and of the skill by which we elicit 
 from them unknown truths. There are incontesta- 
 bly, in the mind of man, innate capacities for the 
 reception of knowledge according to the measure of 
 his intellectual nature ; and to these there are super- 
 added innate active principles (absolutely distinct 
 from the passive reception of impressions from with- 
 out) whereby he is constrained to fashion the mate- 
 rials of thought into such forms as he is taught to 
 seek after or his soul desires. These active prin- 
 ciples are as much a part of the inner man as his 
 eyes and his fingers are portions of the framework 
 of his body. Religion takes these inner powers and 
 capacities for granted. She appeals to them, sets 
 them in a new movement, and makes them the levers 
 
APPENDIX. 123 
 
 of her strength ; but she creates them not anew, any 
 more than she gives to the outer body new limbs for 
 motion and new senses for perception. 
 
 We know from our own experience two kinds of 
 material changes — one chiefly dependent on the will 
 of man — the other, as far as our senses are con- 
 cerned, dependent on the mere qualities of matter. 
 From the nature of an effect produced, we can also 
 judge whether it be the result of mere material 
 action, or a production of design and skill. Starting 
 from these elements, we can ascend to the knowledge 
 of a higher order of causation — of what we call ma- 
 terial laws regulating a succession of material actions 
 — and of a preordaining will manifesting its power 
 in contrivance and adaptation. Whether we stop 
 short, or whether we ascend to the highest truth, we 
 are immeasurably above the reach of that narrow 
 system of psychology which, in denying innate 
 knowledge, deprives man also of those innate capa- 
 cities and active powers whereby his whole know- 
 ledge is built up. 
 
 Those who start with a psychological foundation 
 on which nothing can be built, and end by re- 
 jecting the moral sense, and the power of discerning 
 God in the wonders of his creation, ought also (if 
 they mean to be consistent) to deprive man of the 
 capacity of apprehending general truth of every kind. 
 Let them, however, look well to it, whether they 
 do not contradict the plain declarations of the word 
 of God; and whether, in mutilating the best facul- 
 ties of man, they do not shut out from religion both 
 its evidence and meaning. In plain truth, they cheat 
 themselves by the mere jargon of metaphysics ; and, 
 without knowing it, they surrender one of its 
 strongest out- works, to a cold and atheistical philo- 
 sophy. 
 
124 APPENDIX. 
 
 Lastly, some men have rejected natural religion 
 through mere fanaticism. They believe our cor- 
 ruption to be so entire, that they deny to the 
 natural man, all perception of the beauty of moral 
 truth — all knowledge of God — and almost shut out 
 from him the faculty of reason. That the powers 
 of natural reason are in a great measure indepen- 
 dent of religious light is, however, certain from the 
 fact — that some of the greatest discoveries in exact 
 science have been made by men notoriously not re- 
 ligious. Again, religion herself appeals to reason, 
 and has nothing whereon to rest, if we abrogate all 
 the natural powers of reason. Were this the pro- 
 per place for the discussion, we might say that 
 man's depravity is in his heart — that it is shewn 
 not so much in the dimness of his moral and intel- 
 lectual vision, as in love of self, in impurity of 
 thought, and in the want of an inherent power of 
 struggling with temptation and keeping in order the 
 fiercer passions. If we deprive man of all power 
 of moral judgment, does he not cease to be re- 
 sponsible .^ and do we not seem at one breath both 
 to impugn the justice of God, and to contradict his 
 written word ? But with the persons here con- 
 sidered, it is in vain to argue. They may, however, 
 be open to an appeal of another kind. They may 
 see in many christian writings (for example, in the 
 works of Dr Chalmers and the late Robert Hall*) 
 
 * In mentioning the name of Hall, I may, I hope, be permitted to 
 state that on reading (now many years since) some of his wonderful 
 discourses, I first learned to doubt the truth of that system which re- 
 gards utility as the test of moral right. At a time when this doctrine 
 generally prevailed in England, he set himself against it, with a power 
 of moral reasoning — with a subtilty and fervid eloquence, which placed 
 his works at once among the highest productions of the human mind. 
 While this discourse was printing, it was not my wish to look out for 
 
 authorities ; 
 
APPENDIX. 1 25 
 
 how possible it is for man to feel a deep conviction 
 of the natural depravity of his heart, at the time 
 that he has sublime and philosophic views of those 
 moral and intellectual capacities he derives from 
 God. 
 
 In conclusion, I may briefly notice an hypo- 
 thesis, put forth, perhaps, in the hope of reconciling 
 conflicting; notions*. It assumes that we have no 
 knowledge of God or his attributes from the light 
 of nature : but when this knowledge has been given 
 by revelation, it presumes that we can the^i begin 
 to reason from natural phenomena, and confirm the 
 truths of religion by almost irresistible arguments^ 
 which may be deduced from every object around us. 
 Now this hypothesis labours, if I mistake not, under 
 three insuperable difficulties. It has to explain 
 away some of the clearest passages in the New 
 Testament — it has to fight for a most untenable 
 position : namely, that the heathen world knew 
 nothing of God, except what first came through a 
 corrupted tradition — And, lastly, it puts man in a 
 new logical condition unsupported by any rational 
 analogy. The inductions of natural religion are of 
 a positive nature, and must be either true or false. 
 If they be false, they cannot confirm what is true — 
 If they be irresistibly true, then must their truth 
 
 authorities ; as ttiat would have been but a vain and false affectation 
 of research. But it would have been well to have fortified my feeble 
 argument with some passages from the immortal works of Hall : and 
 I cannot do better now, than refer the academic reader to them — espe- 
 cially to his two discourses entitled Modern Infidelity considered^ and 
 Sentiments proper to the present Crisis. In them both there is some- 
 thing of an academic cast ; and for moral grandeur, for christian truth, 
 and for sublimity, we may doubt whether they have their match in 
 the sacred oratory of any age or country. 
 
 * See the Boijle Lecture, \'ol. ii. % the Lord Bishop of Durham. 
 
126 APPENDIX. 
 
 depend on their own proper evidence, and not on 
 an extrinsic authority. 
 
 Note (E), p. 81. 
 
 My object in this note is to bring forward, as 
 briefly and distinctly as I can, though at the risk 
 of repeating what has been stated before, some spe- 
 cific objections to Paley''s Principles of Moral and 
 Political Philosophy. 
 
 1. The first objection is to the title of the 
 work. If we reject the moral sense, and overlook 
 all the inherent capacities and active principles 
 whereby man becomes a responsible being ; we de- 
 prive moral speculation of all the essentials of phi- 
 losophy. It may however be said, that the objec- 
 tion is of small moment, provided Paley's ethical 
 rules be true, and of general application. 
 
 2. He first examines the rules of life by which 
 men are ordinarily governed — the Law of Honour 
 — the Law of the Land — and the Scriptures. 
 
 His account of the Law of Honour is both 
 meagre and unphilosophical. It may be said, that 
 he has a right to limit the meaning of his words as 
 he thinks fit : but his definition partakes of the 
 fault that taints all his system — It gives a rule, but 
 overlooks the principle. The Law of Honour is 
 not confined to rules of fashionable life. It is deep 
 rooted in human nature — is felt by all beings from 
 the savage to the monarch — and its power is im- 
 plied in the very instinct which leads men to con- 
 gregate in societies. Were man cut off from all 
 
APPENDIX. 127 
 
 regard to the opinion of those around him ; he 
 would be deprived of a principle, planted in his 
 breast, by the hand of God, as a safeguard against 
 what is base, and an incentive to what is great and 
 good — The principle of honour may have been 
 abused — may have led to much evil. But in that 
 respect it shares but the common fate of all the 
 principles of our wayward nature. All of them 
 have been abused — Religion roots not out the 
 elements of human nature, which are part of God's 
 work : but she brings them under the law of obe- 
 dience, and restores them to that place and office for 
 which they were destined by the Author of our 
 being. 
 
 In considering the Law of the Land, Paley 
 points out, with great skill, some of its defects as 
 a moral rule, but he overlooks a most important 
 distinction. Laws are but expedients for the well 
 governing of particular states. They are founded 
 in utility, and limited in their application. But 
 moral rules are not so limited, neither have they 
 the same foundation. This distinction seems both 
 certain and obvious. We may further remark, that 
 the expediency of a law must ever be held subor- 
 dinate to moral rules : otherwise we only raise our 
 social fabric, by dragging away the stones from its 
 foundations. 
 
 Of the Scriptures he remarks, that in them 
 Morality is taught by general rules, occasionally il- 
 lustrated by fictitious examples or by such instances 
 as actually presented themselves. All this is true. 
 The Bible is unquestionably not a formal book of 
 casuistry : neither does it by any means supersede 
 the importance of rules, founded in general expe- 
 diency, for determining questions of social right 
 
128 APPENDIX. 
 
 between man and man. Many of our duties in so- 
 ciety are artificial, and can only be ascertained by 
 usage or positive enactment. But on questions of 
 moral right, not only are the Scriptures the su- 
 preme authority in all cases where they contain 
 specific declarations ; but their maxims are ever 
 directed through the affections to the moral sense : 
 and I believe that any man who has studied them, 
 and honestly acts upon their principles, is a thou- 
 sand times more likely to determine rightly on any 
 difficult moral point, than one who interrupts all 
 the movements of his moral sense, and resolves not 
 to decide till he has calculated the chances of 
 utility. 
 
 3. Having already considered the argument 
 by which Paley rejects the moral sense, I need not 
 repeat what is stated in the preceding discourse, 
 (p. 58, &c.) His conclusion is, I think, false ; and 
 his reasoning is of no weight, except for the intent 
 of shewing the feeble sanction of mere moral rule. 
 
 In the ordinary course of life, men act through 
 passion, affection, or habit. A good system of 
 moral philosophy ought to analyze the active prin- 
 ciples of our nature, and then shew their bearing 
 on moral duties, and their subordination to the 
 faculty whereby men know right from wrong. 
 It may deal in general rules : but its rules are 
 worse than nothing if not constructed with im- 
 mediate reference to our moral capacities — in one 
 word, if they do not ultimately rest on the su- 
 premacy of conscience. A system that defines 
 moral right by the standard of worldly utility, 
 not merely leaves out of account the best active 
 principles of our nature ; but makes them worse 
 
APPENDIX. 129 
 
 than nothing — a set of perturbations interfering 
 with the calm results of a dispassionate calculation. 
 Such a system has no fitness for man's nature. 
 
 4. Virtue is the doing good to mankind^ in 
 obedience to the will of God and for the sake of 
 everlasting happiness. This is the definition a- 
 dopted by Paley ; and it is, I think, open to many 
 grave objections. 
 
 In the first place, without straining its meaning 
 beyond what the words can well bear, it does not 
 include many important christian virtues ; such as 
 self-denial, resignation to the will of God, and 
 voluntary suffering for the sake of conscience. It 
 may be said that these virtues indirectly benefit 
 mankind : but the good of mankind is not, at least, 
 their immediate object. — Again, a man may act 
 well from habit or affection, without ever thinking 
 of reward, either here or hereafter. Surely such 
 actions cease not to be virtuous ; yet they come 
 not within the words of Paley's definition — Lastly, 
 if such be our definition of virtue, what becomes 
 of the virtues of the heathen world — of men who 
 knew nothing certain of a future state, and perhaps 
 seldom thought of it ? We know that they pos- 
 sessed a moral nature — that they reasoned correctly 
 and beautifully on moral questions — that many of 
 them acknowledged the supremacy of conscience — 
 and that they sometimes performed heroic deeds 
 of self-denial. Are we then (for the sake of a mere 
 moral definition) to blot out the recorded sentiments 
 and actions of mankind — to destroy the distinction 
 between good and evil — and to denounce all the 
 deeds of the heathen world as violations of the law 
 of nature, and moral wrongs, because performed 
 by men, who, having no clear revelation of a future 
 
 I 
 
130 APPENDIX. 
 
 state, could not erect their rule of life upon its 
 sanctions ? In answering this question by a decided 
 negative, I wish to fence myself against an objection 
 which may rise in the minds of some religious men. 
 I consider these as questions of morality and not of 
 religion. If it be from revelation only that we have 
 any certain knowledge of a future state and of the 
 conditions of our future acceptance ; it must be 
 from the records of revelation only that we can 
 learn what are the qualities of the soul which are 
 to fit it for the future presence of God. 
 
 Bishop Butler commences his Dissertation on 
 the Nature of Virtue, with the following assertion. 
 That which renders beings capable of moral go- 
 vernment is their having a moral nature, and 
 moral faculties of perception and of action. He 
 soon after adds. That however much men may have 
 disputed about the nature of virtue, and whatever 
 ground for doubt there may be about particulars ; 
 yet that in general, there is an universally ac- 
 knowledged standard of it. It is that which all 
 ages and all countries have made a profession of 
 in public : it is that which every man you meet, 
 puts on the shew of: it is that which the primary 
 and fundamental laws of all civil constitutions, 
 over the face of the earth, make it their business 
 and endeavour to enforce the practice of upon 
 mankind : namely justice, veracity, and regard 
 to the common good. Here every thing remains 
 indefinite : yet all the successive propositions have 
 their meaning. The author knew well that the 
 things he had to deal with were indefinite, and that 
 he could not fetter them in the language of a formal 
 definition, without violating their nature. But 
 how small has been the number of moral writers 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 131 
 
 who have understood the real value of this for- 
 bearance ! 
 
 One great injury done to moral reasoning has 
 arisen from an attempt to assimilate it too closely 
 to the method of the exact sciences. By confounding 
 moral with physical causation, and by considering 
 moral motives as the necessary precursors of un- 
 deviating moral consequences, men have contrived 
 to reach the most revolting and unnatural con- 
 clusions. They have denied to man all freedom 
 of will, and liberty of action ; and bound him up, 
 physically and morally, in the fetters of an un- 
 relenting fatalism. We know nothing of the inner 
 movement of the soul except by consciousness — 
 by reflecting on what passes within ourselves. In 
 this way we learn that, within certain limits de- 
 fined by the condition of our being, we have 
 freedom of will and liberty of action ; and our 
 moral sense falls in with this belief, and teaches 
 us that we are responsible for our choice between 
 good and evil. Practically at least, we know that 
 we are free, and the sophistry of man can never 
 make us part with this knowledge*. To pretend, 
 by any subtilties of inductive proof, to reach a 
 psychological conclusion that interferes with those 
 first elements which we know by internal conscious- 
 ness, is not one atom less absurd, than it would be 
 for a mechanical philosopher to mock us with the 
 pretended proof of some physical law, while the 
 law itself was falsified by the evidence of direct 
 experiment. 
 
 Another great injury done to moral inquiries, 
 
 * Connected with this question the Reader is requested to consult 
 Butler's Analogy, Chap. vi. Of the opinion of Necessity, co?isidered 
 as in flu end nil Practice. 
 
 I 2 
 
132 APPENDIX. 
 
 has been the affectation not only of logical defi- 
 nitions, but of deductive proofs. Paley's system 
 of morals is included in this remark. The subject 
 has been hinted at above, and is so important that 
 I may be permitted to return to it again*. There 
 is in the human mind a passion for general truths, 
 and a restless desire of deducing conclusions from 
 first principles. This passion, while under control, 
 is a most valuable attribute of our intellectual 
 nature : but it has sometimes done much mischief. 
 In physical questions it has led men to grasp at 
 generalizations beyond their reach, and to entrench 
 themselves among hypotheses, while they ought to 
 have been moving onwards among the foundations 
 of knowledge, by the light of experiment. In 
 moral questions, this passion has led men to false 
 definitions and false opinions on the nature of 
 virtue. An excellent but most paradoxical writer 
 — not excluding (as Paley does) the moral sense 
 in his estimate of right and wrong, but seeking 
 for a definition to comprehend every act of moral 
 obligation — ended by regarding virtue as a mere 
 passion for the general good ; or, in his own lan- 
 guage, as, benevolence to being in general "f. But 
 what, on such a definition as this, is to become of 
 the private affections? They lead us to seek the 
 happiness of certain individuals far more than that 
 of other men ; and therefore they militate against 
 this rule of virtue. In severe science a rule which 
 is found not to comprehend every particular case, 
 is at once either limited or rejected. In like man- 
 ner, unless we wish to surrender all the social af- 
 
 * See above p. 79 : and the end of Note (A), p. 104. 
 f See A Dissertation on the Nature of true Virtue^ in the works 
 of President Edwards, Vol. ii. 
 
APPENDIX. 133 
 
 fections — unless we wish to look on maternal love 
 and all the train of blessed consequences following 
 after it, as moral evils — we must reject this de- 
 finition of virtue, and along with it the moral 
 system of which it forms a part. 
 
 The domestic and private affections are the very 
 channels through which the God of nature ordained 
 man's benevolence first to flow. His happiness and 
 social dignity are wound up in them ; and deprived 
 of them he becomes at once devoid of moral strength. 
 To reject them, is to mutilate and not to elevate his 
 moral nature ; and is not a jot more wise than it 
 would be for a philosopher to pluck out his eyes 
 in the hopes of speculating with the greater clear- 
 ness on the general properties of light. The general 
 good of man is inconlestably a noble object ; but it 
 can be promoted by those means only which God 
 has given us. And those men have ever been found 
 to follow this noble object most steadily and wisely, 
 who have obeyed the laws of their moral nature, 
 and fortified themselves by the practice of the 
 humbler virtues first placed within their reach. 
 
 The author to whom I have just alluded, saw 
 not the obvious effects of his own principles. But 
 bold and irreligious men were glad to follow them 
 out, and to abide by their basest consequences. In 
 their scheme all virtue merged into universal phi- 
 lanthropy — the private affections were but drains, 
 carrying the waters of life away from their proper 
 channel — marriage was a monopoly — patriotism a 
 prejudice — and the common bonds of social life but 
 the fetters of ignorance and intolerance. 
 
 This is a most remarkable instance of the mis- 
 chief of general definitions and deductive reasoning 
 in moral questions. It was suggested by some 
 
134 ArPE>:Dix. 
 
 striking passages in HalFs discourse on Modern 
 Infidelity^ to which the reader is referred. Those 
 who are interested in the inquiry would do well to 
 consult also the Dissertation on the Nature of true 
 Virtue^ and the notes in which the Editor endea- 
 vours to vindicate the definition above quoted. The 
 attempt, however, is to no purpose. In bad hands 
 the definition has led to base consequences : and in 
 no hands can it lead to any good, as it is not fitted 
 to the nature of man. It is in vain to tell us that 
 the love of our neighbour and our country, if de- 
 tached from a tendency of affection to universal 
 being, is not truly virtuous — That attachment to 
 an object, not founded on the comparative value of 
 that object, belongs not to the nature of true virtue 
 — That a heart enlarged to the love of being in 
 general, includes all particular objects ; and is then 
 only capable of virtuous love, when the attachment 
 to each object is /or the sake of the whole system of 
 being. There is, I repeat, neither truth nor prac- 
 tical wisdom in all this. The particular affections 
 are virtuous, because they are manifestly in accord- 
 ance with the will of God. By their exercise our 
 higher capacities are matured; without their exer- 
 cise, no moral virtue could ever germinate. Suppose 
 a man to reach a high grade of moral virtue; is he 
 then called on to throw down the very scaffolding by 
 which he mounted — to strip himself of all the feel- 
 ings which have manifested themselves in his heart 
 from the first dawnings of his moral nature ? He is 
 called on to make no such sacrifice : and were he 
 called on, the sacrifice would be impossible*. High 
 
 * Many other examples of the evil effects of a priori reasoning on 
 moral questions might be found in the works of Jonathan Edwards. 
 He was an acute, honest, and pious man, and a most intrepid rea- 
 
 soner : 
 
APPENDIX. 135 
 
 principle directs and controls the capacities and 
 affections of our moral nature, but compels us not 
 to root them out. 
 
 5. Under the preceding heads, 1 have consi- 
 dered the principles laid down in the first book of 
 Paley's Moral Philosophy. The fundamental pro- 
 positions of his system are drawn out in the second 
 book : but they have been examined in so much de- 
 tail in the preceding discourse, that it is unnecessary 
 to go over the same ground again. Some one may, 
 however, ask, how the principle of utility can be 
 rejected, if such a well-digested moral system can be 
 built upon it. We may reply as follows, to such a 
 question : 
 
 First. That in moral, as in physical philosophy, 
 there has been no end to plausible hypotheses ; and 
 that the ingenuity of man has never wanted plau- 
 sible arguments to support a system. 
 
 Secondly. That many parts of Paley^s system 
 relate to questions of (what may be called) legal 
 ethics, having no other basis than the general good. 
 
 Thirdly. That it calls in the aid of Scripture 
 rules — though these rules are not derived from prin- 
 ciples in common with itself. 
 
 Fourthly. That God is a moral Governor of 
 the world — Or in other words, that the rules of con- 
 duct derived from man's moral nature, and from the 
 declarations of the word of God, have a general ten- 
 dency to secure our worldly happiness. But we 
 have no right, on this account, to invert the order of 
 our moral reasoning — to put consequence in the 
 
 soner : fearlessly accepting the conclusions (no matter how startling) 
 to which he was carried by deductive reasoning from the principles he 
 accepted. For an instance of this kind 1 may refer the Reader to the 
 new edition of his works. Vol. vii. p. 480. London 1817. 
 
13() 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 place of cause — to look only to the worldly effects 
 of actions, and overlook their principles. Such a 
 system places us in a false position, supposes us 
 gifted with a power of tracing consequences which 
 belongs not to our nature, blunts our perceptions of 
 moral truth, and leads many men to make a wreck 
 both of common principle and common sense. In 
 natural history and natural philosophy, we see 
 beautiful examples of contrivance and adaptation. 
 But who would ever think of making contrivance 
 the first principle of arrangement in natural history ; 
 or adaptation, the foundation of physical science ? In 
 these sciences, at least, all men have acknowledged 
 the necessity of separating primary cause from se- 
 condary consequence. And why should they not be 
 bound by the same principles in moral reasoning ? 
 
 6. In despite of a bad system, Paley was saved, 
 by the rules he derived from Scripture (as well as 
 by extraordinary good sense, and the kind fes-lings 
 of his moral nature), from many great mistakes in 
 the application of his principles. Sometimes, how- 
 ever, his system led him to play into the hands of 
 bad men; and to take low grounds of reasoning, but 
 ill suited to the high tone of a christian moralist. I 
 will not dwell at any length on examples of this 
 kind : but it is important for my present object to 
 point out some of them. 
 
 (1) The first example of the base conclusions 
 of a utilitarian system of morals, occurs among the 
 practical observations in the chapter on Virtue. It 
 is only necessary in this place to request the reader 
 to reperuse the remarks at p. 67 of this Discourse, 
 as well as the note affixed to it. 
 
 (2) A most offensive instance of sacrificing 
 common honesty and common sense, to nothing 
 
ATPENDIX. 137 
 
 better than utilitarian special pleading, may be seen 
 in Book in. Chap. xxii. on Subscription to Articles 
 of Religion. These Articles may be true or may 
 be false — to demand our subscription to them may 
 be wise or unwise — these are not the questions. 
 But shall a man seek the emoluments of a sacred 
 office, and pledge himself before God to perform the 
 duties of it in conformity with the word and spirit 
 of these Articles ; and then forget them altogether, 
 or try to blind his conscience by poring over the 
 inky blots and rotten parchment bonds that are piled 
 among the archives of our parliament ? An act of 
 parliament may give the legal sanction to these 
 Articles ; but it gives them not their meaning ; 
 which can be found only in the vulgar way of honest 
 interpretation. The preceding instances are taken 
 from the moral part of Paley's work — The follow- 
 ing are derived from the political part ; where the 
 principle of utility may (for obvious reasons) be 
 applied with much more safety, and sometimes with 
 great advantage. 
 
 (3) Why is it our duty to obey the civil 
 government ? Paley replies, because it is the will of 
 
 God as collected from expediency so long as 
 
 the established government cannot be resisted or 
 changed without public inconveniency, it is the ivill 
 of God that the established goveriiment be obeyed — 
 and no longer. This principle being admitted, the 
 justice of every particular case of resistance is re- 
 duced to a computation of the qicaiitity of danger 
 and grievance on one side, and of the probability 
 and expense of redressing it on the other. But 
 who shall judge of this 9 We ansiver, every man 
 for himself^. A more loose and mischievous doc- 
 
 * floral and Political Philosophy, Book vi. Chap. iii. 
 
138 APPENDIX. 
 
 trine — one more certain to be turned to base pur- 
 poses by bad men — was never, I believe, upheld by 
 any christian moralist. In times of excitement, men 
 are too much blinded by passion ever to enter fairly 
 on a computation of civil grievance: and as foi 
 danger — brave men of sanguine tempers are not 
 restrained by it, but on the contrary, are urged by 
 it into action. On Paley's principles, civil obedience 
 cannot continue to be regarded as a duty : and if 
 civil order be retained at all, it can only be through 
 selfishness and fear on the one hand, and by cor- 
 ruption and brute force on the other. Such a state 
 of things can only lead to ruin and confusion, or the 
 establishment of a despotic executive. 
 
 An unbeliever may ground his duty of obedience 
 in expediency : but a Christian finds, in the word of 
 God, a ready answer to the question we started with. 
 Obedience to the civil government is a duty, because 
 the word of God solemnly and repeatedly enjoins it. 
 But does this doctrine lead us to the slavish maxims 
 of non-resistance and passive obedience ? Undoubt- 
 edly not. The Apostles of our religion gave us an 
 example and a rule for the resistance of a Christian. 
 They resisted not the powers of the world by bodily 
 force ; but by persuasion, by patient endurance_, and 
 by heroic self-devotion : and the moral and civil 
 revolutions, which they and their followers effected, 
 were incomparably the most astonishing that are 
 recorded in the history of man. 
 
 Should it, however, be said, that ordinary men, 
 not having the powers given to the inspired 
 Apostles, must, on that account, adopt less exalted 
 maxims as their rules of life : we may state in gene- 
 ral terms (without loading this discussion with 
 extreme cases which lead to no practical good in 
 
A PI' END IX. 139 
 
 moral speculation), that where the christian religion 
 prevails in its purity, it is impossible there should 
 ever exist an unmitigated despotism : and where the 
 power of the executive is limited (in however small 
 a degree) there will always be found within the con- 
 stitution some place where the encroachments of bad 
 and despotic men may be met by a moral and legal 
 resistance. Rebellion is proscribed by human law, 
 and is forbidden by the law of God. But a moral 
 opposition to the executive, conducted on constitu- 
 tional grounds, is proscribed by no law, either of 
 God or man : and if it be wisely and virtuously car- 
 ried on, it has in its own nature the elements of 
 increasing strength, and must at length be irresistible. 
 If, however, during the progress of a state, the con- 
 stituted authorities be in open warfare with each 
 other ; a good man may at length be compelled to 
 take a side, and reluctantly to draw his sword in de- 
 fence of the best inheritance of his country. Such 
 an appeal, to be just, must be made on principle; and 
 after all other honest means have been tried in vain. 
 Unfortunately, the opposition to the encroach- 
 ments of arbitrary power, has too often been com- 
 menced by selfish men for base purposes. Instead 
 of taking their stand in a moral and constitutional 
 resistance — instead of trying, by every human means, 
 to concentrate all the might of virtue and high prin- 
 ciple on their side, they have broken the laws of 
 their country, dipped their hands in blood, and need- 
 lessly brought ruin on themselves and their party. 
 The vices of the subject are not only the despot's 
 plea, but the despot's strength. Where the virtuous 
 elements of social order are wanting in the state, 
 whether men be willing slaves or not, they are unfit 
 for freedom. 
 
140 APPENDIX. 
 
 (4) In the Chapter On the British Consti- 
 tution^ we may I think find some examples of mere 
 utilitarian reasoning, where the author ought (in 
 part at least) to have taken the higher ground of 
 a moral philosopher. It is impossible to deny that 
 there is in this chapter much good sense and sound 
 reasoning. Reviewing the popular part of our con- 
 stitution, he points out the vast advantages we have 
 derived from it, and the contingent evils of any ma- 
 terial change in the system of popular representation. 
 But, the corruption — the perjury — the baseness 
 connected with the system — the mean shifts to which 
 great men were compelled by it to stoop — the chance 
 that the very fountains of law and honour might 
 become polluted by it — the never-failing topics of 
 offence it held out to discontented and designing 
 men — these things are all passed over, though in the 
 eyes of some they seemed to form a deadly canker in 
 the state. Had he considered these flagrant evils ; 
 and then shewn that, while men continue what they 
 are — little better than the slaves of their bad 
 passions — any other system might bring along with 
 it, as great, or perhaps greater, moral evils, he had 
 done well. His conclusions might have been right 
 or wrong ; but his argument would have been, not 
 only more complete, but placed on higher and truer 
 grounds. — I am offering no opinion on any subject 
 discussed in this chapter ; the attempt would be en- 
 tirely out of place in this note. My object is, not 
 to examine the weight of Paley''s arguments, but his 
 tone of arguing. 
 
 (5) Near the end of the Chapter On Crimes 
 and Punishments^ is the following sentence-}-. 
 
 * Moral and Political Philosophy, Book vi. Chap. vii. 
 -f- Ibid. Book vi. Chap. ix. 
 
APPENDIX. 141 
 
 Another ma, vim which deserves examinaHo7i, is 
 this : — " That it is better that ten guitty persons 
 escape^ than that one innocent man should suffer.'''' 
 If by sayijig it is better, be meant that it is more 
 for the public advantage, the proposition, I think, 
 cannot be maintained. It would, I believe, be an 
 easy task to prove that this conclusion is wrong on 
 Paley's own principles. We are, at least, certain 
 that it contradicts the moral feelings of mankind, 
 and this is quite enough to condemn it. 
 
 No man perhaps ever used the disjunctive form 
 of reasoning with more advantage than Paley. It 
 sometimes however led him into error. The worst 
 example of this kind has been considered in a for- 
 mer page of this discourse* : another occurs in the 
 chapter just quoted. There are (he observes) two 
 methods of administering penal justice — The first 
 method assigns capital punishments to few offences, 
 and infiicts it invariably — The second method as- 
 signs capital punishments to ma?iy kinds of offences, 
 but infiicts it only upon a few examples of each 
 kind. All this is true — But when he argues as if 
 there never had been, or could be, any other me- 
 thods besides these two ; his conclusions (whether 
 true or false) are not derived from any rules of 
 sound logic, and are open to a charge of sophistry. 
 This last remark is not however of much import- 
 ance, and bears not directly on my present object. 
 
 From all that has been stated above, we may 
 conclude, that Paley was wrong in overlooking the 
 innate moral capacities of our nature — that the prin- 
 ciple of utility is derived from false reasoning — that 
 it places man in a false position — lowers his standard 
 of right and wrong — and inevitably leads him, 
 * See above, p. 02. 
 
142 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 whether in speculation or practice, into false and 
 unhallowed consequences. In accepting these con- 
 clusions, we merely assume, that man has a moral 
 nature; and that, in almost every act of his life, 
 his perception of right and wrong is incomparably 
 clearer, than his knowledge of the general conse- 
 quences that may follow from the act itself. 
 
 Note (F), p. 95. 
 
 In the preceding discourse, as well as in the 
 notes affixed to it, my object has been to teach, as 
 far as I am able, the junior Members of the Uni- 
 versity to think correctly on the more important 
 branches of academic study. The mere building 
 up of knowledge is labour ill bestowed, if not fol- 
 lowed by improved habits of thought. But no 
 man is passive during the acquisition of such habits. 
 They exist only where the best powers of the mind 
 have been steadily employed in their formation. 
 This is a law affecting every human being. Per- 
 fection (in the limited sense in which the word can 
 be used in speaking of the feeble powers of man) 
 comes only by continued and well-applied labour : 
 and the remark bears on our moral condition as well 
 as our intellectual. 
 
 The studies of mankind have sometimes been 
 divided into natural, moral, and religious. Each 
 branch requires its appropriate training, and yields 
 its own peculiar fruit. A study of the natural 
 world teaches not the truths of revealed religion, 
 nor do the truths of religion inform us of the in- 
 
APPENDIX. 143 
 
 ductions of physical science. Hence it is that men, 
 whose studies are too much confined to one branch 
 of knowledge, often learn to overrate themselves, 
 and so become narrow-minded. Bigotry is a be- 
 settinor sin of our nature. Too often it has been 
 the attendant of religious zeal : but it is perhaps 
 most bitter and unsparing when found with the 
 irreligious. A philosopher, understanding not one 
 atom of their spirit, will sometimes scoff at the la- 
 bours of religious men ; and one who calls himself 
 religious will perhaps return a like harsh judgment, 
 and thank God that he is not as the philosophers — 
 forgetting all the while, that man can ascend to no 
 knowledge, except by faculties given to him by his 
 Creator's hand, and that all natural knowledge is 
 but a reflexion of the will of God. In harsh judg- 
 ments such as these, there is not only much folly, 
 but much sin. True wisdom consists in seeing how 
 all the faculties of the mind and all parts of know- 
 ledge bear upon each other, so as to work together 
 to a common end ; ministering at once to the hap- 
 piness of man and his Maker's glory. 
 
 Again, a man may be skilled in many branches 
 of knowledge ; and yet his affections may be wrong- 
 placed and his bad passions unsubdued. Our con- 
 duct in each instance in which we are called on to 
 act, is mainly determined by the feelings and 
 thoughts excited by the things around us. One 
 man pursues natural knowledge, but soars not in 
 imagination beyond material phenomena. Another 
 sees the indications of design, and perhaps goes on 
 to mark the wise adaptation of the various parts of 
 the material w^orld. A third, while contemplating 
 the world around, thinks nothing of these things ; 
 but his imagination takes wing, and his soul is 
 
144 APPENDIX. 
 
 borne away in poetical emotion. A fourth feels 
 with greater or less power what all the others feel, 
 but adds to it a movement of thankfulness to the 
 Giver of all good ; and this new feeling, when 
 joined to a firm belief in the word of God, blends 
 itself in the animating principle of christian love. 
 Contrasts such as these in the emotions of our inner 
 nature while we are under the same external con- 
 ditions (and every hour's experience shews us ex- 
 amples of them in some form or other), arise from 
 different habils of the soul, whether we regard them 
 as moral, intellectual, or religious. But such 
 habits, I repeat, have been gained only by appro- 
 priate training. If they be intellectual, they have 
 been gained by intellectual toil : if religious, they 
 have come only by well-directed religious studies 
 and religious exercises. 
 
 After every new combination, the properties of 
 matter are essentially changed, and present a new 
 set of phenomena. It is not, perhaps, too much to 
 say, that, in like manner, after every new act or 
 voluntary thought, the soul is put in a new psycho- 
 logical condition. Its powers of doing or forbear- 
 ing are changed : for things are ever after present 
 to it in the memory, and brought out by the asso- 
 ciating principle, in new intellectual combinations. 
 We know the inveteracy of habits ; and it is mainly 
 through the associating principle that they gain 
 their strength. By every fresh commission of sin, 
 we lose both the power and the inclination to escape 
 from the bondage of bad passion : for the storehouse 
 of the memory becomes tenanted by images of 
 darkness, mingling themselves with the recollections 
 of past good, and tempting us on in the way of evil. 
 Acts of forbearance done on principle give us, on 
 
APPENDIX. 145 
 
 the other hand, new inclinations and new capacities 
 for virtue. The mind becomes stored with remem- 
 brance of moral victories ; the associating principle 
 is then the source of happy recollections and good 
 resolves ; and above all, the soul is taught to seek 
 for strength where it is to be found — in the foun- 
 tain of all goodness. And thus a good man learns, 
 at length, to do without effort, and with inward joy, 
 what another, were he to give the whole world for 
 the power, has no possibility of performing. 
 
 If such be the conditions of our being, and such 
 the relations of our thoughts to the things around us, 
 a good training and the commencement of good 
 habits in early life must be matters of inexpressible 
 moment. This is equally true whether, according 
 to the bent of our minds, the question be considered 
 in a metaphysical or a religious point of view. The 
 remark is by no means confined to our intellectual 
 capacities — It applies with fuller meaning to our 
 moral and religious sentiments — to all those feelings 
 of the soul which call our moral powers into visible 
 activity. A philosopher may be cold-hearted and 
 irreligious — a moralist may be without benevolence 
 — and a theologian may be wanting in the common 
 charities of life. All this shews that knowledge is 
 not enough, unless feelings and habits go along with 
 it, to give it its meaning, and to carry it into practi- 
 cal effect. Religion reaches the fountain-head of all 
 these evils ; and she alone gives us an antagonist 
 principle whereby we may effectually resist them. 
 
 In natural knowledge ^ve may mount from phe- 
 nomena to laws ; but in doing this we are held by 
 fetters we cannot break — we cannot alter one link in 
 the chain of natural causes — we can only mark the 
 traces of an unvarying power, external to ourselves, 
 
 K 
 
146 ■ A 1* FEND IX. 
 
 and to which we are ourselves in bondage. If this 
 be our condition in acquiring natural knowledge, 
 what right have we to think, that in gaining religious 
 knowledge we are permitted to be more free ? — That 
 in regard to our spiritual relation to God and a 
 future state we may indulge in any fantastical 
 notions we think fit ; while we shut our eyes to the 
 light that he has given us, and despise the law that 
 he has set before us ? Madness and folly like this, 
 in any one professing to be a Christian (and to 
 Christians only is this Discourse addressed), would 
 be utterly incredible, did we not see it every moment 
 before us, and did we not find all its elements 
 lurking within our own bosoms. 
 
 But if the Bible be a rule of life and faith — a 
 record of our moral destinies — it is not (I repeat), 
 nor does it pretend to be, a revelation of natural 
 science. The credibility of our religion depends on 
 evidence, internal and external. Its internal evi- 
 dence is seen in the coherence of its design from its 
 first dawning to the fulness of its glorious light — in 
 its purity and moral dignity — in its exalted motives 
 fitted to call forth man's highest moral and intellec- 
 tual energies — in its suitableness to his wants and 
 weakness — in its laying bare the inner movements of 
 his heart — in its declarations of the reality of a fu- 
 ture state, and of other truths most important for him 
 to know, yet of which he has but a faint and insuf- 
 ficient knowledge from the light of nature. Its 
 external evidence mingles itself in a thousand ways 
 with the internal ; but finally resolves itself into the 
 strength of human testimony, proving that God has 
 at many times made a visible manifestation of his 
 power on earth ; promulgating among mankind a 
 rule of life, enforcing it by the terror of penal sane- 
 
APPENDIX. 1 47 
 
 tions, and confirming it by miracles publicly wrought 
 in attestation of its truth. Physical science, on the 
 contrary, derives no support from internal evidence 
 or external testimony : but it is based on experiment 
 alone, is perfected by induction, and is drawn out 
 into propositions by a rational logic of its own. To 
 confound the groundworks of philosophy and reli- 
 gion is to ruin the superstructure of both : for the 
 bases on which they stand, as well as their design, 
 are absolutely separate ; and we may assume it as an 
 incontrovertible truth, that the inductions of philo- 
 sophy can be no more proved by the words of reve- 
 lation, than the doctrines of Christianity can be 
 established by the investigations of natural science. 
 
 Should some one ask how men can overlook 
 truths like these after they have been once enun- 
 ciated : we may reply, that men have often been led 
 into such folly by vanity and arrogance — the one 
 shutting from their senses the narrow bounds of 
 their own ignorance — the other teaching them to 
 contemn what they do not comprehend. Another 
 source of error, on physical questions, has been a 
 mistake respecting the import of certain scripture 
 phrases. These writings deal not in logical distinc- 
 tions or rigid definitions. They were addressed to 
 the heart and understanding, in popular forms of 
 speech such as men could readily comprehend. 
 When they describe the Almighty as a being capa- 
 ble of jealousy, love, anger, repentance, and other 
 like passions, they use a language accommodated to 
 our wants and capacities, and God is put before us 
 in the semblance of humanity. They tell however 
 what it is essential for us to know — our relations 
 and our duties to him, and the penalties of disobedi- 
 ence : and were it possible for them to make even an 
 
 k2 
 
14-8 APPENDIX. 
 
 approach to the perfections of his glory, no man 
 could by looking on them comprehend their mean- 
 ing ; and they would be at once unfitted to be the 
 vehicle either of religious truth or moral rule. If 
 this principle of interpretation be adopted in num- 
 berless parts of scripture describing the moral attri- 
 butes of God ; we may surely extend it to other 
 passages (unconnected with any religious doctrine, 
 and therefore of comparatively small importance) in 
 which the fabric of the material world is the subject 
 of some passing allusion or figurative illustration. 
 
 A philosopher may smile at the fulminations of 
 the Vatican against those who, with Copernicus, 
 maintained the motion of the Earth : but he ought 
 to sigh when he finds that the heart of man is no 
 better than it was of old, and that his arrogance 
 and folly are still the same — that bigotry and igno- 
 rance still go hand in hand, and are ever ready to 
 entrench themselves in any lurking-place, whence 
 they may assail with maledictions and words of evil 
 omen all those who are enjoying a light of truth 
 their eyes cannot bear to look upon. There are 
 still found some who dare to affirm that the pursuits 
 of natural science are hostile to religion. An asser- 
 tion more false in itself, and more dishonourable to 
 true religion, has not been conceived in the mind of 
 man. Of other sciences I am not called on to 
 speak ; but having, in the former pages of this 
 Discourse, described some of the general truths 
 brought to light by Geology, I may be permit- 
 ted to add a few words in its vindication. 
 
 The Bible instructs us that man, and other 
 living things, have been placed but a few years 
 upon the earth; and the physical monuments of 
 the world bear witness to the same truth. If 
 
APPENDIX. 149 
 
 the astronomer tells us of myriads of worlds not 
 spoken of in the sacred records ; the geologist in 
 like manner proves (not by arguments from analogy, 
 but by the incontrovertible evidence of physical 
 phenomena) that there were former conditions of 
 our planet, separated from each other by vast in- 
 tervals of time, during which man, and the other 
 creatures of his own date, had not been called into 
 being. Periods such as these belong not, therefore, 
 to the moral history of our race ; and come neither 
 within the letter nor the spirit of revelation. Be- 
 tween the first creation of the earth and that day 
 in which it pleased God to place man upon it, who 
 shall dare to define the interval ? On this question 
 scripture is silent : but that silence destroys not the 
 meaning of those physical monuments of his power 
 that God has put before our eyes; giving us at the 
 same time faculties whereby we may interpret them 
 and comprehend their meaning. 
 
 In the present condition of our knowledge, a 
 statement like this is surely enough to satisfy the 
 reasonable scruples of a religious man. But let us, 
 for a moment, suppose that there are some religious 
 difficulties in the conclusions of Geology. How then 
 are we to solve them ? Not by making a world 
 after a pattern of our own — not by shifting and 
 shuffling the solid strata of the earth, and then 
 dealing them out in such a way as to play the 
 game of an ignorant or dishonest hypothesis — ^not 
 by shutting our eyes to facts, or denying the evi- 
 dence of our senses : but by patient investigation, 
 carried on in the sincere love of truth, and by 
 learning to reject every consequence not warranted 
 by direct physical evidence. Pursued in this spirit, 
 Geology can neither lead to any false conclusions, 
 
150 APPENDIX. 
 
 nor offend against any religious truth. And tliis 
 is the spirit with which many men have of late 
 years followed this delightful science — devoting the 
 best labours of their lives to its cultivation — turn- 
 ing over the successive leaves of nature"*s book, and 
 interpreting her language, which they know to be 
 a physical revelation of God's will — patiently work- 
 ing their way through investigations requiring much 
 toil both of mind and body — accepting hypotheses 
 only as a means of connecting disjointed phenomena, 
 and rejecting them when they become unfitted for 
 that office, so as in the end to build only upon facts 
 and true natural causes — All this they have done, 
 and are still doing; so that however unfinished may 
 be the fabric they have attempted to rear, its foun- 
 dations are laid upon a rock ; and cannot be shaken, 
 except by the arm of that Being who created the 
 heaven and the earth — who gave laws to the ma- 
 terial world, and still ordains them to continue what 
 they are. 
 
 But there is another class of men who pursue 
 Geology by a nearer road, and are guided by a 
 different light. Well-intentioned they may be, but 
 they have betrayed no small self-sufficiency, along 
 with a shameful want of knowledge of the fun- 
 damental facts they presume to write about : 
 hence they have dishonoured the literature of this 
 country by Mosaic Geology, Scripture Geology, 
 and other works of cosmogony with kindred titles, 
 wherein they have overlooked the aim and end 
 of revelation, tortured the book of life out of its 
 proper meaning, and wantonly contrived to bring 
 about a collision between natural phenomena and 
 the word of God. The Buggs and the Penns — 
 the Nolans and the Formans — and some others of 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 161 
 
 the same class, have committed the folly and the 
 sin of dogmatizing on matters they have not per- 
 sonally examined, and, at the utmost, know only at 
 second hand— of pretending to teach mankind on 
 points where they themselves are uninstructed. 
 Authors such as these ought to have first con- 
 sidered, that book learning (in whatsoever degree 
 they may be gifted with it) is but a pitiful excuse 
 for writing mischievous nonsense: and that to a 
 divine or a man of letters, ignorance of the laws of 
 nature and of material phenomena is then only 
 disgraceful, when he quits his own ground and 
 pretends to teach philosophy. Their learning (if 
 perchance they possess it) has been but ill employed 
 in following out the idle dreams of an irrational 
 cosmogony : and they would be labouring at a task 
 better fitted for their capacity, were they studying 
 the simple and affecting lessons of Christianity, and 
 trying to make its maxims of charity their rule of 
 life. A Brahmin crushed with a stone the micro- 
 scope that first shewed him living things among the 
 vegetables of his daily food. The spirit of the 
 Brahmin lives in Christendom. The bad princi- 
 ples of our nature are not bounded by caste or 
 climate ; and men are still to be found, who, if not 
 restrained by the wise and humane laws of their 
 country, would try to stifle by personal violence, 
 and crush by brute force, every truth not hatched 
 among their own conceits, and confined within the 
 narrow fences of their own ignorance. 
 
 We are told by the wise man not to answer 
 a fool according to his folly; and it would indeed 
 be a vain and idle task to engage in controversy 
 with this school of false philosophy— to waste our 
 breath in the forms of exact reasoning unfitted to 
 
152 APPENDIX. 
 
 the comprehension of our antagonists — to draw our 
 weapons in a combat where victory could give no 
 honor. Before a Geologist can condescend to rea- 
 son with such men, they must first learn Geology. 
 It is too much to call upon us to scatter our seed on 
 a soil at once both barren and unreclaimed — it is 
 folly to think, that we can in the same hour be 
 stubbing up the thorns and reaping the harvest. 
 All the writers of this school have not indeed sin- 
 ned against plain sense to the same degree. With 
 some of them, there is perhaps a perception of the 
 light of natural truth which may lead them after a 
 time to follow it in the right road : but the case of 
 others is beyond all hope from the powers of rational 
 argument. Their position is impregnable while 
 they remain within the fences of their ignorance, 
 which is to them as a wall of brass : for (as was well 
 said, if I remember right, by Bishop Warburton, 
 of some bustling fanatics of his own day) there is 
 no weak side of common sense whereat we may 
 attack them. If cases like these yield at all, it 
 must be to some treatment which suits the invete- 
 racy of their nature, and not to the weapons of 
 reason. As psychological phenomena they are how- 
 ever well deserving of our study ; teaching us, 
 among other things, how prone man is to turn his 
 best faculties to evil purposes — and how, at the 
 suggestions of vanity and other bad principles of 
 his heart, he can become so far deluded, as to 
 fancy that he is doing honor to religion, while 
 he is sacrificing the common charities of life, and 
 arraigning the very workmanship of God. 
 
 The recent attacks on physical science, and the 
 gross misapprehension of its moral tendency, have 
 been singularly wanton and ill-timed. The living 
 
APPENDIX. 153 
 
 philosophers of this country are a set of sober-minded 
 men, who have betrayed no hostility to revealed 
 truth. An exclusive devotion to one subject in- 
 evitably makes a man narrow-minded ; and a suc- 
 cessful career of intellectual toil may make a man 
 proud and full of self, and so take from him the 
 best graces of a Christian character. But failings 
 like these belong to the infirmities of our nature, 
 and are not confined to any one profession or pur- 
 suit : they may be seen in the characters of saga- 
 cious lawyers or learned divines, as well as of labo- 
 rious philosophers. It would, indeed, be ridiculous 
 to say, that all living philosophers are religious 
 men. * Like their neighbours, they have their be- 
 setting sins : but many of them are men of pure 
 lives and firm believers in revelation ; and among 
 them may be found some who shine forth as illus- 
 trious patterns of Christian holiness. 
 
 A sceptic may, indeed, think that the whole sys- 
 tem of things, moral and physical, has no principle 
 of continued rest — that it has only been jostled into 
 a condition of unstable equilibrium, which may be 
 destroyed by the first movement of any of the com- 
 ponent elements. Such a one may reasonably fear 
 the progress of discovery ; for his system wants the 
 essential principles of cohesion. But a sincere be- 
 liever in the word of God has no fear of this kind : 
 for he knows that all the parts of the natural world 
 are wisely fitted together — that the Lord of all 
 nature is a being without variableness or shadoiv 
 of turning — and that truth, of whatever kind, as 
 seen in the mind of man, is but a perception of his 
 Maker's will. 
 
 A man of deep thought and great practical 
 wisdom — one whose piety and benevolence have for 
 
154 APPENDIX. 
 
 many years been shining before the world, and of 
 whose sincerity no scoffer (of whatever school) will 
 dare to start a doubt — recorded his opinion in the 
 great assembly of the men of science, who during 
 the past year were gathered from every corner of 
 the Empire within the walls of this University, 
 that Christianity had every thing to hope and 
 nothing to fear from the advancement of philo- 
 sophy^. These are golden words, and full of 
 meaning to those who have wisdom to understand 
 them. But there are some to whom this great 
 Assembly has been a topic of offence. They be- 
 long to a psychological class of their own ; gifted 
 indeed with very humble powers in following out 
 true consequences, either moral or physical ; but 
 compensated, in return, with gifts of another kind. 
 Like birds of bad omen they can croak of coming 
 ills and smell corruption from afar ; and by the 
 powers of a new analysis — a perverted moral 
 alchemy — they can extract evil out of good and 
 dross out of gold. 
 
 Another indiscretion (far different however from 
 the egregious follies I have just noticed) has been 
 committed by some excellent christian writers on 
 the subject of Geology. They have not denied the 
 facts established by this science, nor have they con- 
 founded the nature of physical and moral evidence : 
 but they have prematurely (and therefore, without 
 an adequate knowledge of all the facts essential to 
 the argument) endeavoured to bring the natural 
 history of the Earth into a literal accordance with 
 the book of Genesis — first, by greatly extending the 
 periods of time implied by the six days of creation 
 
 * Speech of Dr Chalmers at the meetmg of the British Associa- 
 rion for the Advancement of Science. June, 1833. 
 
APPENDIX. 155 
 
 (and whether this may be rightly done is a question 
 only of criticism and not of philosophy) — and 
 secondly, by endeavouring to shew, that, under 
 this new interpretation of its words, the narrative 
 of Moses may be supposed to comprehend, and to 
 describe in order, the successive epochs of Geology. 
 It is to be feared that truth may, in this way, re- 
 ceive a double injury ; and I am certain that the 
 argument, just alluded to, has been unsuccessful. 
 The impossibility of the task was however (as I know 
 by my own experience) a lesson hard to learn : but 
 it is not likely again to be attempted by any good 
 Geologist. The only way to escape from all diffi- 
 culties pressing on the question of cosmogony has 
 been already pointed out. We must consider the 
 old strata of the earth as monuments of a date 
 long anterior to the existence of man, and to the 
 times contemplated in the moral records of his cre- 
 ation. In this view there is no collision between 
 physical and moral truth. The Bible is left to 
 rest on its appropriate evidences, and its interpre- 
 tation is committed to the learning and good sense 
 of the critic and the commentator : while Geology 
 is allowed to stand on its own basis, and the philo- 
 sopher to follow the investigations of physical truth, 
 wherever they may lead him, without any dread of 
 evil consequences ; and with the sure conviction 
 that natural science, when pursued with a right 
 spirit, will foster the reasoning powers, and teach 
 us knowledge fitted, at once, to impress the ima- 
 gination, to bear on the business of life, and to 
 give us exalted views of the universal presence and 
 unceasing power of God. 
 
 The subjects discussed in this note are of great 
 importance; and I am anxious to take away any 
 
156 APPENDIX. 
 
 wrong impressions which may have been produced 
 by the writings of a false and unphilosophical 
 school. In the furtherance of this object (though 
 at the risk of being taxed with the fault of egotism 
 and useless repetition) I will add one more passage, 
 taken from an anniversary address to the Geological 
 Society, especially as it appears in the pages of a 
 periodical work not perhaps accessible to all the 
 readers of this Discourse. 
 
 " There have issued from the English press, 
 within a few years, such dreams of cosmogony as 
 I believe find no parallel in the recent literature of 
 continental Europe. It would be in vain to point 
 out to such authors the nature of our data, or the 
 method of our inductions ; for they have a safer 
 and a readier road to their own conclusions. It 
 would be in vain to tell them that the records of 
 mankind offer no single instance of any great phy- 
 sical truth anticipated by mere guesses and conjec- 
 tures — that philosophic wisdom consists in com- 
 prehending the last generalizations derived from 
 facts each of which is only known by experiment 
 and observation ; and in advancing, by such means, 
 to those general laws by which all things are bound 
 together. They seem not to know that inventive 
 power in physics, unlike inventive power in works 
 of art or of imagination, finds no employment in 
 ideal creations, and only means the faculty by which 
 the mind clearly apprehends the relations and ana- 
 logies of things already known ; and is thereby 
 directed and urged on to the discovery of new 
 facts, by the help of new comparisons — that the 
 history of all ages (and I might add, the written 
 law of our being, where it is declared that by the 
 sweat of our brow shall we gather up our harvest) 
 
APPENDIX. 157 
 
 has proved this way of slow and toilsome induction 
 to be the only path which leads to physical truth. 
 
 " Laws for the government of intellectual beings, 
 and laws by which material things are held together, 
 have not one common element to connect them. And 
 to seek for an exposition of the phenomena of the 
 natural world among the records of the moral des- 
 tinies of mankind, would be as unwise as to look 
 for rules of moral government among the laws of 
 chemical combination. From the unnatural union 
 of things so utterly incongruous, there has from 
 time to time sprung up in this country a deformed 
 progeny of heretical and fantastical conclusions, by 
 which sober philosophy has been put to open shame, 
 and sometimes even the charities of life have been 
 exposed to violation. 
 
 '' No opinion can be heretical but that which is 
 not true. Conflicting falsehoods we can compre- 
 hend ; but truths can never war against each other. 
 I aflirm, therefore, that we have nothing to fear 
 from the results of our enquiries, provided they 
 be followed in the laborious but secure road of 
 honest induction. In this way we may rest assured 
 fhat we shall never arrive at conclusions opposed to 
 any truth, either physical or moral, from whatsoever 
 source that truth may be derived : nay rather (as in 
 all truth there is a common essence), that new dis- 
 coveries will ever lend support and illustration to 
 things which are already known, by giving us a 
 larger insight into the universal harmonies of 
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