? fi * A s ** ^ ' 
 
 
 '-. n -- - 
 
 
 * " ! 
 
 ;>
 
 
 cr 
 
 <. 
 
 . 
 <:<.<: 
 
 t '<V.f 
 
 I < 5 
 
 _CC CC C ( 
 
 ' " 
 
 ~c c f c c< c 
 
 c C . < C C I 
 
 c i C C c 
 
 re r c r r 
 
 
 
 . - 
 
 c < 
 
 C< r c 
 
 ~. 
 
 S 
 
 l <^ 
 , .< 
 
 v C 
 
 * r< 
 - 
 
 C ' 
 
 <. 
 < < 
 
 V *. 
 
 #"
 
 \m^ 
 
 m 
 
 
 . cc 
 
 _<<: 
 ( f 
 
 <r<rc: 
 :crc < 
 
 -X<c 
 <-<. C 
 
 .etc c 
 
 ~Sf< XL 
 
 ;c <: 
 
 <" <; 
 ( <c<: 
 
 ^^ 
 
 c.c r. 
 
 f < 
 
 c c c< 
 
 c c cr c< 
 
 -^^ 
 
 . c d cs: 
 
 ' 
 
 ' 
 
 . 
 
 
 _^^" < 
 
 i < 
 
 c 
 c k 
 f<.( ' 
 
 , < 
 
 C'-- ^<,C 
 
 % 
 
 _ 
 
 c." <- c 
 
 c< c < . < 
 
 CiC *. 
 
 ,c*- orr^c. 
 
 << 
 
 <^ 
 
 ^r ^ f ^ 
 
 car fir

 
 SPARE MI N\OJT E SERIES. 
 
 THE MffiBF OF RIGHT, 
 
 Of WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 
 
 SELECTED BY 
 
 E- BR OWN. 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 JOHN D- LONG. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 D. LOTHROP & CO., 
 
 FRANKLIN STREET, CORNER OF HAWLEY.
 
 COPYRIGHT BY 
 
 D. LOTHROP & CO. 
 1880.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 IT was a worth-while suggestion to provide for spare 
 minutes communion with the choice utterances of an am- 
 ple mind loosed from task-work and at large in " the 
 Sabbath of that deeper sea," where its contemplations are 
 serenest. Great men are no longer of most interest for the 
 events of their lives. We rate them rather by the measure 
 and influence of their thought and speech. So the following 
 extracts are a good biography in short of Mr. Gladstone, for 
 they reveal him in something better than his political great- 
 ness they reveal him in what makes him and best makes 
 any man great the loftiness of his moral sentiment. 
 
 This book comes at an opportune moment, when the 
 whole world is on tip-toe to catch a glimpse of the foremost 
 man in England. Certainly so sympathetic toward him is
 
 iv Introduction. 
 
 the American heart that for us his return to the premiership 
 brings with it almost the warmth and exultation of a victory 
 of our own. His kindly words in our behalf, his recognition 
 of our achievements and progress, his avowed faith in the 
 elasticity and promise of our political system and in the 
 ability of our public men to maintain it, his admiration of 
 our national financial triumphs, and his whole career of lib- 
 eral statesmanship have given him a strong hold upon our 
 regard. No premier since the first Pitt has excelled him 
 in the admiration of the daughter-land. 
 
 It is only necessary to read these extracts from his pen to 
 realize how varied the culture, how outreaching the experi- 
 ence and pursuits, how vast the range of study and observa- 
 tion that have all conspired to forge the armor and temper 
 the sword of this champion of the liberals. Not the pains- 
 taking fabrications that exhaust the materials from which 
 they rise, they are rather the overflow of a capacious mind 
 fed from unfailing springs. The philosopher, the poet, the 
 teacher, the divine together, and not alone the statesman, 
 might have written them. A lover of the rarest learning of 
 the closet, he has not forgotten that education should be as 
 broadcast as the children of men : a leader of government, 
 he has not forgotten that government is for all the people : 
 guarding the interests of capital, he has been tender of the 
 rights of labor. Orator, financier, scholar, premier and 
 statesman, born in the middle and most fortunate level of 
 English social life, educated at Eton and at Oxford, in the 
 very splendor of his elevation a commoner still, versatile, 
 brilliant, a man of letters and critic of the classics, a defen- 
 der of the Christian faith, and now the head of the British
 
 Introduction. v 
 
 government, whom the Queen cannot but beg accept its 
 leadership, he typifies the fullness of the success of the 
 highest English ambition in the arena of public life, How 
 worthy of that eminence, how wide his research, how large 
 his humanity, how clear his reasoning and statement, how 
 elevated his thought, how refined his discourse, and what 
 truth, duty, liberty, Christianity, government, knowledge, 
 faith, conscience, and all the moral foundations mean to 
 such a man what expression they find upon his lips 
 and how great to him and in him is the might of right, 
 the following pages will help to show. If they do not 
 suggest the diamond flash of genius, they do suggest the 
 refined gold of consummate character and talents. 
 
 J. D. L. 
 HINGHAM, May 4th, 1880.
 
 WILLIAM Ef ART GLADSTONE, H.P.D.C. ETC. 
 
 WILLIAM Ewart Gladstone orator, financier, 
 man of letters, statesman was born in Liver- 
 pool, England, on the 2gth of December, 1809. His 
 father, John Gladstone a self-made man whose re- 
 markable career raised him, in after years, to the 
 baronetcy was the son of a corn-merchant of Leith, 
 near Edinburgh ; and it is interesting to note that the 
 original spelling of the name was Gladstanes, or Gled- 
 stanes, from the Scottish gled, meaning " a hawk," and 
 stanes, which signifies " rocks." His mother, the daugh- 
 ter of Mr. Andrew Robertson of Stornoway, is de- 
 scribed by one who knew her intimately as " a lady of 
 very great accomplishments ; of fascinating manners ; 
 of commanding presence and high intellect." Certain 
 writers upon genealogy connect the marriage of John 
 Gladstone with Miss Robertson to a royal descent
 
 viii William Ewart Gladstone. 
 
 from Henry III. of England and Robert Bruce of 
 Scotland; but the illustrious son would claim for the 
 Gladstone family no greater honor than that of having 
 risen, by energy, industry and native force of character, 
 from the ranks of the so-called middle class to the 
 highest positions of public esteem. " I know not," he 
 says, " why commerce in England should not have its 
 old families, rejoicing to be connected with commerce 
 from generation to generation. I think it a subject of 
 sorrow, and almost of scandal, when those families who 
 have either acquired or recovered station and wealth 
 through commerce, turn their backs upon it, and seem 
 to be ashamed of it. It certainly is not so with my 
 brother or with me. His sons are treading in his steps, 
 and one of my sons, I rejoice to say, is treading in the 
 steps of my father and my brother." Of his Scotch 
 descent, he says : 
 
 " If Scotland is not ashamed of her sons, her sons 
 are not ashamed of Scotland ; and the memory of the 
 parents to whom I owe my being combines with various 
 other considerations to make me glad and thankful to 
 remember that the blood which runs in my veins is 
 exclusively Scottish." 
 
 When only twelve years of age, the bright, precocious 
 boy, would discuss with his father the public questions 
 of the day ; and the great conservative leader, George 
 Canning, a frequent visitor in those days at the 
 Gladstone mansion, exerted not a little influence in the 
 formation of his early political principles. In the fall 
 of 182 1 he entered Eton, and his six years of faithful, 
 earnest study here, laid the foundation of that classical 
 knowledge for which he has since become so renowned.
 
 William Eivart Gladstone. ix 
 
 Even his boyish contributions to the Eton Miscellany 
 seemed to foretell the coining man, and it is extremely 
 interesting to trace the rapid unfolding of his mental 
 powers during these scholastic years. In 1829 he went 
 to Christ University, Oxford, where he was made a 
 student on the foundation. His University life served 
 to strengthen and confirm his conservative principles. 
 " Perhaps it was my own fault," he says, " but I did not 
 learn, when at Oxford, that which I have learned since, 
 viz., to set a due value on the imperishable and the 
 inestimable principles of human liberty. The temper 
 which I think too much prevailed at that time in 
 academic circles was, that liberty was regarded with 
 jealousy, and fear could not be wholly dispensed 
 with." 
 
 When, however, in 1831 the young collegiate gradu- 
 ated double first-class, he had won the highest honors 
 attainable at the University, and acquired a tenacity 
 of religious principle that no temptation, could un- 
 dermine. His conscientiousness was so remarkable 
 that, Kinglake says, "it was believed that if he were 
 to commit even a little sin, or to imagine an evil 
 thought, he would instantly arraign himself before 
 the dread tribunal which awaited him within his own 
 bosom ; and that, his intellect being subtle and micro- 
 scopic, and delighting in casuistry and exaggeration, he 
 would be likely to give his soul a very harsh trial, and 
 treat himself as a great criminal for faults too minute 
 to be visible to the naked eyes of a layman." 
 
 At the close of his University career he travelled 
 for a few months upon the Continent, spending the 
 greater portion of his time in Italy. This was in
 
 x William Ewart Gladstone. 
 
 ^832, a year memorable in the Parliamentary history 
 of England for the passage of the famous Reform 
 Bill : and it was upon the urgent request of the 
 Duke of Newcastle, that in September of that year, 
 young Gladstone returned from the Continent to con- 
 test the representation of Newark. He was a total 
 stranger to the electors, but it was not long before he 
 won great popularity. One who remembers him well 
 at this period describes him as a young man of most 
 attractive bearing. His broad intellectual forehead, 
 large dark eyes, and thoughtful, earnest expression 
 prepossessed every one in his favor : and his oratory 
 was at once so eloquent, so vigorous, and so strikingly 
 in contrast with his youthful appearance that his age 
 was a constant matter of doubt. He was only twenty- 
 two, at the time when he made his first election ad- 
 dress, and when, the following year, the successful 
 candidate took his seat in the House of Commons, 
 he was called by the opposite party the "boy," from 
 Newark. From the delivery of his maiden speech, 
 however, Mr. Gladstone seems to have won great favor 
 in Parliament. Whenever he spoke the other members 
 knew he had something worth the saying; and his 
 modest demeanor, eloquent words, and earnest manner 
 always commanded a hearing. 
 
 He was soon well known as the "rising hope of 
 the stern, unbending Tories," and when, in 1834, Sir 
 Robert Peel became Prime Minister the young member 
 accepted from him the office of Junior Lord of the 
 Treasury. In 1835, Mr. Gladstone was promoted to 
 the office of Under-Secretary for the Colonies, and it 
 was through him that the bill, containing so many
 
 William Ewart Gladstone. xi 
 
 humane provisions for the carriage of passengers in 
 merchant vessels, was presented to Parliament and 
 passed. 
 
 In 1839, Mr. Gladstone was married to Miss Cathe- 
 rine Glynne, daughter of Sir Stephen Richard Glynne 
 of Hawarden Castle, Flintshire. The practical philan- 
 thropy of Mrs. Gladstone has won for her a name 
 almost as widely known as that of her distinguished 
 husband. One of their four sons is at present rector 
 of Hawarden, and another is a member of the Legis- 
 lature. Of their four daughters, three are now living, 
 and the youngest bears the name of her father's sister 
 Helen. 
 
 Upon the defeat and resignation of the Peel ministry, 
 Mr. Gladstone retired with his chief; but as member 
 from Newark he still exerted a strong influence in the 
 House, and was numbered among the most able and 
 brilliant leaders of the so-called Opposition party. 
 When in 1841, Sir Robert Peel returned to power, 
 Mr. Gladstone was sworn a member of the Privy 
 Council and appointed Vice-President of the Board of 
 Trade, and Master of the Mint. Those who had 
 known Mr. Gladstone only as a brilliant orator and 
 abstruse scholar, were wholly unprepared for the finan- 
 cial talent he displayed while holding these responsible 
 offices. But Sir Robert Peel, long before the abroga- 
 tion of the Corn* Laws, had, with that keen insight of 
 character for which he was so remarkable, noted the 
 practical ability and business tact of Mr. Gladstone. 
 During the memorable decade from 1841 to 1850, there 
 was ample opportunity for the exercise of these invalu- 
 able gifts, and the Revised Tariff Scheme, as will be
 
 xii William Ewart Gladstone. 
 
 remembered, was largely the work of Mr. Gladstone. 
 True to his own convictions of right and wrong, he 
 upheld the Repeal of the Corn Laws, although by so 
 doing he showed to the world a complete reversal of 
 past policy, and severed long cherished political and 
 personal friendships. Upon the failure of the Irish 
 Question Sir Robert Peel and his constituents ten- 
 dered their resignation ; and it was not until 1847 that 
 Mr. Gladstone again appeared in the House of Com- 
 mons. His action upon the Maynooth Question, a 
 few years previous, as well as the resignation of his 
 seat for Newark in 1846, showed in a striking manner 
 the conscientiousness of the man destined to be a 
 political rather than a party leader. 
 
 During all these busy years of public life, Mr. Glad- 
 stone was diligently pursuing his Homeric studies, as 
 well as furnishing frequent contributions to the British 
 periodicals. How he could find time to accomplish 
 such a vast amount of literary work is a mystery ; but 
 as some one has remarked, " he was always an early 
 man, and arranged his affairs by strict rule and method." 
 In Gleanings of Past Years, recently compiled in seven 
 volumes, we have the bulk of Mr. Gladstone's miscella- 
 neous writings: but his Studies on Homer and the 
 Homeric Age, Church Principles and other essays of a 
 strictly controversial and classical kind are not included 
 in these volumes. 
 
 It is better to hear his speeches than to read them, 
 for his rich, full, sonorous voice, clearly interprets those 
 long periods that seem a little involved in the reading ; 
 and his intense earnestness, his copious and inexhaus- 
 tible flow of language, his wonderful argumentative
 
 William Ewart Gladstone. xiii 
 
 abilities, give him an irresistible power as a public 
 speaker and Parliamentary debater. 
 
 While representing the University of Oxford, Mr. 
 Gladstone defended the bill for the removal of the 
 disabilities of the Jews, and his eloquent speech against 
 the foreign policy of Lord Palmerston in the Don 
 Pacifico debates, produced a startling effect upon the 
 House. In the ministerial crisis of 1852, he was in- 
 "vited by Lord Derby to form one of his cabinet, but 
 declined ; in December of that year, the ministry was 
 overthrown, and Mr. Gladstone accepted the office of 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer, under the Earl of Aber- 
 deen. It was while holding this office that he intro- 
 duced into Parliament his celebrated " budget," a 
 series of addresses which were pronounced by Lord 
 Russell " to contain the ablest expositions of the true 
 principles of finance ever delivered by an English 
 statesman." When in 1855 Lord Palmerston succeeded 
 the Earl of Aberdeen as Premier, Mr. Gladstone re- 
 tained his office ; but he soon resigned in consequence 
 of Lord Palmerston's action concerning a motion of 
 inquiry into the conduct of the Crimean war. In 1858 
 during the second accession of Lord Derby to power, 
 Mr. Gladstone was again offered, and again he de- 
 clined, the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer. He 
 however accepted an appointment as Lord High Com- 
 missioner Extraordinary to the Ionian Islands ; and 
 upon. Lord Palmerston's return to office in 1859, he 
 became, for the third time, Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer. Since that period Mr. Gladstone has been 
 ranked among the advanced Liberals. At the election 
 of 1865, he was rejected by the University of Oxford,
 
 xiv William Ewart Gladstone. 
 
 but returned for South Lancashire ; and after the 
 death of Lord Palmerston, which occurred that same 
 year, he became the leader of the House of Commons. 
 Upon the defeat of the Reform Bill of 1866, Mr. Glad- 
 stone and his colleagues resigned, and a new ministry 
 was formed by Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli. In 
 December, of 1868, this ministry resigned, and Mr. 
 Gladstone was elected First Lord of the Treasury and 
 Prime Minister. The succeeding six years have been 
 called the " Golden Age of Liberalism," and among 
 the many important measures carried through Parlia- 
 ment during this period were the Disestablishment of 
 the Irish Church, in 1869 ; the Irish Land Bill in 1870 ; 
 the abolishment, by royal warrant of the purchase of 
 commissions ,in the army in 1871; the settlement of 
 difficulties with the United States by the Geneva Con- 
 ference; the abolition of confiscation in English penal 
 law, together with numerous other reforms in legal 
 administration. 
 
 In 1873, upon the defeat of the bill for the reform 
 of university education in Ireland Mr. Gladstone re- 
 signed, and the Queen called upon Mr. Disraeli to 
 form a new ministry. This, the latter declared him- 
 self unwilling if not unable to do under the existing 
 circumstances, and Mr. Gladstone with his colleagues 
 accordingly returned to their posts ; on January twenty- 
 fourth of the following year, Mr. Gladstone unexpect- 
 edly announced the dissolution of Parliament, giving as 
 his reason that the government felt its power ebbing. 
 On February seventeenth he resigned, and Mr. Disraeli 
 accepted the Premiership. 
 
 The history of the succeeding six years, the Vatican
 
 William Eivart Gladstone. xv 
 
 decrees, the Eastern question, the controversies concern- 
 ing foreign policy, are all too fresh in the minds of the 
 reading public to require a recapitulation. Recent 
 events show that the political career of Mr. Gladstone 
 is still at its zenith ; the enthusiastic gatherings through- 
 out Scotland and England have proved but an ear- 
 nest of the great Liberal victory announced by all the 
 electoral returns. Mr. Gladstone is again Prime Min- 
 ister of England and Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 the Tory Administration is a thing of the past long 
 live the Queen ! and long live the noble English 
 statesman William Exvart Gladstone. 
 
 E. E. R
 
 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 i. 
 
 Every generation of man is a laborer for that which 
 succeeds it, and makes an addition to that great sum- 
 total of achieved results, which may, in commercial 
 phrase, be called the capital of the race. Of all the 
 conditions of existence in which man differs from the 
 brutes there is not one of greater moment than this, 
 that each one of them commences life as if he were 
 the first of a species, whereas man inherits largely 
 from those who have gone before. How largely, none 
 of us can say ; but my belief is that, as years gather 
 more and more upon us, we estimate more and more 
 highly our debt to preceding ages. If on the one hand 
 
 13
 
 M THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 that debt is capable of being exaggerated or misappre- 
 hended if arguments are sometimes strangely used 
 which would imply that, because they have done much, 
 we ought to do nothing more, yet, on the other hand, 
 it is no less true that the obligation is one so vast and 
 manifold that it can never as a whole be adequately 
 measured. It is not only in possessions, available for 
 use, enjoyment and security ; it is not only in language, 
 laws, institutions, arts, religion ; it is not only in what 
 we have, but in what we are. For, as character is 
 formed by the action and reaction of the human being 
 and the circumstances in which he lives, it follows that 
 as those circumstances vary, he alters too, and he 
 transmits a modified it ought to be also an enlarged 
 and expanding nature onwards in his turn to his 
 posterity, under that mysterious law which establishes 
 between every generation and Its predecessors a moral 
 as well as a physical association. 
 
 II. 
 
 The progress of mankind is, upon the whole, a 
 chequered and intercepted progress ; and even where 
 it is full-formed, still, just as in the individual, youth 
 has charms that maturity under an inexorable law must 
 lose, so the earlier ages of the world will ever continue 
 to delight and instruct us by beauties that are exclu- 
 sively or peculiarly their own.
 
 PROGRESS. 15 
 
 Again, it would seem as though this progress (and 
 here is a chastening and a humbling thought,) were a 
 progress of mankind, and not of the individual man ; 
 for it seems to be quite clear that whatever be the com- 
 parative greatness of the race now and in its infant or 
 early stages, what maybe called the normal specimens, 
 so far as they have been made known to us, either 
 through external form or through the works of the in- 
 tellect, have tended rather to dwindle or at least to 
 diminish, than to grow in the highest elements of great- 
 ness. 
 
 But the exceptions at which these remarks have 
 glanced, neither destroy nor materially weaken the 
 profound moment of the broad and universal canon, 
 that every generation of men as they traverse the vale 
 of life are bound to accumulate, and in diverse manners 
 do accumulate new treasures for the race, and leave the 
 world richer, on their departure, for the advantage of 
 their descendants, than on their entrance they them- 
 selves had found it. 
 
 III. 
 
 The Greeks had the very largest ideas upon the 
 training of man, and produced specimens of our kind 
 with gifts that have never been surpassed. But the na- 
 ture of man, such as they knew it, was scarcely at all 
 developed ; nay, it was maimed, in its supreme capaci-
 
 16 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 ty in its relations towards God. Hence, as in the 
 visions of the prophet, so upon the roll of history, the 
 imposing fabrics of ancient civilization never have en- 
 dured. Greece has bequeathed to us her ever living 
 tongue, and the immortal productions of her intellect. 
 Rome made ready for Christendom the elements of 
 polity and law ; but the brilliant assemblage of endow- 
 ments which constitutes civilization, having no root in 
 itself, could not bear the shocks of time and vicissi- 
 tude ; it came and it went ; it was seen and it was 
 gone. 
 
 We now watch with a trembling hope, the course of 
 that later and Christian civilization which arose out of 
 the ashes of the old heathen world, and ask ourselves 
 whether, like the gospel itself, so that which the gospel 
 has wrought beyond itself in the manners, arts, laws, 
 and institutions of men, is in such manner salted with 
 perpetual life, that the gates of hell shall not prevail 
 against it ? Will the civilization, which was springing 
 upwards from the days of Charlemagne, and which 
 now over the face of Europe and America, seeking to 
 present to us in bewildering conflict the mingled signs 
 of decrepitude and of vigor, perish like its older types, 
 and like them be known thereafter only in its frag- 
 ments ; or does it bear a charmed life, and will it give 
 shade from the heat and shelter from the storm to all 
 generations of man. 
 
 In any answer to such a question, it would perhaps
 
 PROGRESS. 17 
 
 be easier to say what would not than what would be 
 involved. But some things we may observe which may 
 be among the material of a reply. 
 
 The arts of war are now so allied with those of 
 peace, that barbarism, once so terrible, is reduced to 
 physical impotence ; and what civilized man has had the 
 wit to create, he has also the strength to defend. Thus 
 one grand destructive agency is paralyzed. Time, in- 
 deed, is the great destroyer ; but his power, too, is 
 greatly neutralized by printing, by commerce which 
 lays the foundation of friendship among nations, by 
 ease of communication which binds men together, by 
 that diffusion of intelligence which multiplies the nat- 
 ural guardians of civilizations. These are perhaps not 
 merely isolated phenomena. Perhaps they are but 
 witnesses, and but a few among many witnesses, to the 
 vast change which has been wrought since the advent 
 of our Lord in the state of man. Perhaps they re- 
 echo to us the truth that apart from sound and sure 
 relations to its Maker, the fitful efforts of mankind must 
 needs be worsted in the conflict with chance and 
 change ; but that when by the dispensation of Chris- 
 tianity the order of our moral nature was restored, 
 when the rightful King had once more taken his place 
 upon his throne, then indeed, civilization might come 
 to have a meaning and a vitality such as had before 
 been denied it. Then, at length, it had obtained the 
 key to all the mysteries of the nature of man, to all
 
 1 8 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 the anomalies of its condition. Then it had obtained 
 the ground plan of that nature in all its fulness, which 
 before had been known only in remnants or in frag- 
 ments ; fragments of which, even as now in the toppling 
 remains of some ancient church or castle, the true 
 grandeur and the etherial beauty were even the more 
 conspicuous because of the surrounding ruins. But 
 fragments still, and fragments only, until, by the bring- 
 ing of life and" immortality to light the parts of our 
 nature were re-united, its harmony was reestablished, 
 the riddle of life, heretofore unsolved, was at length 
 read as a discipline, and so obtained its just interpre- 
 tation. All that had before seemed idle conflict, 
 wasted energy, barren effort, was seen to be but the 
 preparation for a glorious future ; and death itself 
 instead of extinguishing the last hopes of man, became 
 the means and the pledge of his perfection. 
 
 IV. 
 
 As when some splendid edifice is to be reared, its 
 diversified materials are brought from this quarter and 
 from that, according as nature and man favor their 
 production, so did the wisdom of God, with slow but 
 ever sure device, cause to ripen, amidst the several 
 races best adapted for the work, the several component 
 parts of the noble fabric of a Christian manhood and 
 a Christian civilization. " The kings of Tarshish and
 
 FAME. 19 
 
 the isles shall bring presents : the kings of Sheba and 
 Seba shall offer gifts." Every worker was with or 
 without his knowledge and his will, to contribute to 
 the work. 
 
 V. 
 
 We must not expect too much. We must not look 
 for miracles, but what we may reasonably look for, is 
 progress, and progress in the adoption of principles 
 which are recommended not merely by theory not 
 merely by some apparently plausible grounds of rea- 
 son, but by the surest investigations we can make, 
 and by the still sweet testimony of long experience. 
 
 VI. 
 
 The hope of an enduring fame is, without doubt, a 
 powerful incentive to virtuous action, and you may 
 suffer it to float before you as a vision of refreshment, 
 second always and second in the long interval to 
 your conscience and the will of God. For an endur- 
 ing fame is one stamped by the judgment of the future, 
 that future which dispels illusions, and smashes idols 
 into dust. Little of what is criminal, little of what is 
 idle, can endure even the first touch of the ordeal ; 
 it seems as though this purging power, following at
 
 20 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 the heels of man and trying his work, were a witness 
 and a harbinger of the great and final account. 
 
 So then the thirst of an enduring fame is near akin 
 to the love of true excellence. But the fame of the 
 moment is a dangerous possession, and a bastard 
 motive ; and he who does his acts in order that the 
 echo of them may come back as soft music in his 
 ears, plays false to his noble destiny as a Christian 
 man, places himself in continual danger of dallying 
 with wrong, and taints even his virtuous actions at 
 their source. Not the sublime words alone of the Son 
 of God and his apostles, but heathenism too, even 
 while its vision is limited to the passing scene, testi- 
 fies with an hundred tongues that the passing scene 
 itself presents to us virtue as an object, and a moral 
 law, graven deeply in our whole nature, as a guide. 
 But now, when the screens that so bounded human 
 vision have been removed, it were sad indeed, and not 
 more sad than shameful, if that being should be 
 content to live for the opinion of the moment who 
 has immortality for his inheritance. He that never 
 dies, can he not afford to wait patiently a while ? 
 And can he not let Faith, which interprets the pres- 
 ent, also guarantee the future ? Nor are there any 
 two habits of mind more distinct than that which 
 chooses success for its aim and covets after popu- 
 larity, and that, on the other hand, which values and 
 defers to the judgments of our fellow-men as helps.
 
 FAME. 21 
 
 VII. 
 
 The mountain-tops of Scotland behold on every 
 side of them the witness, and many a one of what 
 were once her morasses and her moorlands, now blos- 
 soming as the rose, carries on its face the proof, that 
 it is in man and not in his circumstances that the 
 secret of his destiny resides. Could you with the 
 bodily eye see the moments as they fly, you would 
 see them all pass by you, as the bee that has rifled 
 the heather, charged with the promise, or it may be 
 with the menace, of the future. In many things it is 
 wise to believe before experience until you may 
 know ; and believe me when I tell you that the 
 thrift of time will repay you in after life, with an 
 usury of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams, 
 and that the waste of it will make you dwindle, alike 
 in intellectual and in moral stature, beyond your 
 darkest reckonings. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Man is to be trained chiefly by studying and by 
 knowing man; and we are prepared for knowing man 
 in life by learning him first in books, much as we 
 are taught to draw from nature. But if man is to be 
 studied in books, he will best be studied in such 
 books as present him to us in the largest, strongest,
 
 22 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 simplest, in a word, the most typical forms. These 
 forms are principally found among the ancients. 
 
 Nor can the study of the ancients be dissociated 
 from the study of their languages. There is a pro- 
 found relation between thought and the investiture 
 which it chooses for itself ; and it is as a general rule, 
 most true, that we cannot know men or nations unless 
 we know their tongue. 
 
 Diversity of language was, like labor, a temporal 
 penalty inflicted on our race for sin ; but being, like 
 labor, originally penal, like labor it becomes, by the 
 ordinance of God, a fertile source of blessing to those 
 who use it aright. It is the instrument of thought, 
 but it is not a blind or dead instrument ; it is like 
 the works in metal that Daedalus and Vulcan were 
 fabled to produce ; and even as the limping deity was 
 supported in his walk by his nymphs of so-called brass, 
 in like manner language reacts upon and bears up the 
 thoughts from which it springs, and comes to take 
 rank among the most effective powers for the disci- 
 pline of the mind. 
 
 IX. 
 
 The question how far endowments for education are 
 to be desired is beset with peculiar difficulty. Where 
 they are small and remote from public observation, 
 they tend rapidly to torpor. They are admirable when
 
 EDUCATION. 23 
 
 they come in aid of a good-will already existing, but 
 where the good-will does not exist beforehand, they 
 are as likely to stifle as to stimulate its growth. They 
 make a high cultivation accessible to the youth who 
 desires it, and who could not otherwise attain his 
 worthy and noble end ; on the other hand, they remove 
 the spur by which Providence neutralizes the indo- 
 lence of man, and moves him to supply his wants. 
 If the teacher, when unendowed, may be constrained 
 to forego all high training for students, and to provide 
 only for their lower and more immediate demands, 
 on the other hand, the teacher when endowed, and in 
 so far as he is endowed, is deprived of the aid which 
 personal interest and private necessities can lend to 
 the sense of duty, and he may be tempted to neglect 
 or to minister but feebly to the culture of his pupils, 
 either in its higher or in its lower sense. 
 
 And it is never to be forgotten, that amidst all the 
 kinds of exertion incident to our human state, there 
 is none more arduous, none more exhausting, than 
 the work of teaching worthily performed. Some men, 
 indeed, possess in this department a princely gift, which 
 operates like a charm upon the young, and they follow 
 such an one as soldiers follow their leader when he 
 waves the banner of their native land before their 
 eyes. But such men are rare ; they are not less rare 
 than are great men in any other walk of life. Speak- 
 ing generally, the work of teaching is, even when
 
 24 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 pursued with the whole heart, even when felt to be 
 an absorbing work, but moderately successful; while 
 he who teaches with half his heart does not really 
 teach at all. 
 
 There are, however, considerations which tell on the 
 other side. The solidity of establishments founded 
 on old endowments supplies a basis on which there 
 are gradually formed a mass of continuous traditions, 
 always powerful and generally noble ; and the very 
 name of them, as it is handed on from generation to 
 generation, becomes a watchword at once of affection- 
 ate remembrances, and of lofty aspirations. They lay 
 hold of the young by those properties which are the 
 finest characteristics of youth ; and the boy when he 
 is enrolled as a member of one of these institutions, 
 feels that he is admitted to a share in a great inheri- 
 tance, and instinctively burns to be worthy of the 
 badge he has assumed. 
 
 Again, in a country which is both free and wealthy, 
 all endowed institutions are open to the competition 
 of the unendowed, and few establishments are so 
 amply endowed as not to leave room for the opera- 
 tion on the teacher of those ordinary motives which 
 prompt him to better his condition. 
 
 The proper work of Universities, could they but
 
 EDUCATION. 25 
 
 perform it, while they guard and cultivate all ancient 
 truth, is to keep themselves in the foremost ranks 
 of modern discovery, to harmonize continually the 
 inherited with the acquired wealth of mankind, and 
 to give a charter to freedom of discussion, while they 
 maintain the reasonable limits of the domain of tra- 
 dition and of authority. 
 
 XL 
 
 There is something noble in a jealousy of authority, 
 when the intention is to substitute for it a strong per- 
 sistent course of mental labor. Such labor involves 
 sacrifice, and sacrifice can dignify much error. But 
 unhappily the rejection of authority is too often a cover 
 for indolence as well as wantonness of mind, and the 
 rejection of solid and valuable authority is avenged by 
 lapse into the most ignoble servitude. Those who 
 think lightly of the testimony of the ages, the tradition 
 of their race, which at all events keeps them in com- 
 munion with it, are often found the slaves of Mr. A., 
 or Mr. B., of their newspaper, or of their club. In a 
 time of much mental movement, men are apt to think 
 that it must be right with them, provided only that they 
 move ; and they are slow to distinguish between prog- 
 ress and what is running to and fro. If it be a glory of 
 the age to have discovered the unsuspected width of 
 the sway of law in external nature, let it crown the
 
 26 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 exploit by cultivating a severer study than is commonly 
 in use, of the law weighty beyond all others, the law 
 which fixes, so to speak, the equation of the mind of 
 man in the orbit appointed for the consummation of 
 his destiny. 
 
 XII. 
 
 . There is no point at which we may not throw back 
 the boundary, and enlarge the sphere of direct knowl- 
 edge, and of conviction and action founded thereupon. 
 There is no point at which we ought not to so throw 
 it back, according to our means and opportunities. 
 Life should be spent in a strong, continuous effort to 
 improve the apparatus for the guidance of life, both in 
 thought and action. We must ever be trying to know 
 more and more what are the things to be believed and 
 done. 
 
 In beseeching the young to study the application to 
 their daily life of that principle of order which both en- 
 genders diligence and strength of will, and likewise so 
 greatly multiplies their power, I am well assured that 
 they will find this to be of not only an intellectual but 
 a moral exercise. 
 
 Every real and searching effort at self-improvement 
 is of itself a lesson of profound humility. For we can- 
 not move a step without learning and feeling the 
 waywardness, the weakness, the vacillation of our move-
 
 EDUCATION. 27 
 
 ments, or without desiring to be set upon the Rock 
 that is higher than ourselves. Nor, again, is it likely 
 that the self-denial and self-discipline which these 
 efforts undoubtedly involve will often be cordially under- 
 gone, except by those who elevate and extend their 
 vision beyond the narrow scope of the years be they 
 what we admit to be few, or what we think to be 
 many that are prescribed for our career on earth. 
 An untiring sense of duty, an active consciousness of 
 the perpetual presence of Him who is its author and 
 its law, and a lofty aim beyond the grave these are 
 the best and most efficient parts, in every sense, of that 
 apparatus wherewith we should be armed, when with 
 full purpose of heart we address ourselves to the life- 
 long work of self-improvement. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 The most distinguished professional men bear wit- 
 ness with an overwhelming authority, in favor of a 
 course of education in which to train the mind shall be 
 the first object, and to stock it, the second^ 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Small indeed is the number of subjects or ideas 
 which, in the sense of absolute comprehension, man- 
 kind have ever comprehended ; what is given to us, as
 
 28 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 a general rule, is comprehension in a degree com- 
 prehension by contact with a subject at certain of its 
 points, which in a manner give the outline, as the 
 naturalist constructs the creature from the bone com- 
 prehension not absolute, but relative to our state and 
 wants ; limited, and thus teaching humility, but adequate 
 to establish reasonable conclusions, and to work out 
 those laws of probable evidence which, sustained by 
 our experience of their operation, fit it to be the guide 
 of life. In this, the old Christian reading of the laws, 
 of knowledge, our intellectual discipline is everywhere 
 intwined with moral teaching, and the employments 
 farthest from the direct subject matter of religion min- 
 ister to its highest purposes, like the Queen of the 
 South bringing her choicest gifts to the elect King of 
 the people of God. 
 
 XV. 
 
 Man himself is the crowning wonder of creation ; 
 the study of his nature is the noblest study that the 
 world affords ; and to his advancement all undertak- 
 ings, all professions, all arts, all knowledge, all institu- 
 tions are subordinate, as means and instruments to 
 their end. 
 
 XVI. 
 It is not leisure, wealth, and ease which come to dis-
 
 EDUCATION. 29 
 
 port themselves as athletes in intellectual games ; it is 
 the hard hand of the worker, which his yet stronger will 
 has taught to wield the pen ; it is labor, gathering up 
 with infinite care and sacrifice the fragments of time, 
 stealing them, many a one, from rest and sleep, and 
 offering them up like so many widow's mites in the 
 honest devotion of an effort at self-improvement. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 There are those who tell us that examinations, and 
 especially that competitive examinations, are of no real 
 value, that they produce the pretence and not the 
 reality of knowledge; that they give us, not solid 
 progress, but conceit and illusion. I freely admit that 
 this modern method is likely to rear, as far as we can 
 judge, no greater prodigies of learning than did the 
 simple and spontaneous devotion of the olden time ; 
 perhaps, if we are to look only at individual cases of 
 pre-eminence, none so great. But I say that the true 
 way to imitate the wisdom of the olden time is this : 
 to watch the conditions of the age in which we live ; to 
 accept them thankfully and freely, as at once the law 
 of Providence for our guidance, and the gift for oui 
 encouragement; and when we learn by expeiience that 
 the tools with which other generations wrought are not 
 suited for the work that is given us to do, then to find 
 if we can, some other tools which are.
 
 30 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 It is not too much to say that the experience of half 
 a century, as well in the universities as elsewhere, 
 appears to have shown that the method of examina- 
 tions is the best, and perhaps the only method by 
 which, in the England of the nineteenth century, any 
 due efficiency can be imparted to the general business 
 of education. I do not indeed, deny that a certain 
 trick or craft may be practised in them ; that some may 
 think more of the manner of displaying their knowl- 
 edge to a momentary advantage, like goods in a shop- 
 window, than of laying hold upon the substance. But 
 I say that these abusive cases will be the exceptions, 
 not the rule. I say that those who so unjustly plead 
 them against the system forget that this very faculty, 
 of the ready command and easy use of our knowledge, 
 is in itself of immense value. It means clear percep- 
 tion. It means orderly arrangement and above all, 
 they forget what I take to be the specific and peculiar 
 virtue of the system of examinations, namely this, that 
 they require us to concentrate all the faculties of the 
 mind, with all their strength, upon a point. In and by 
 the efforts necessary for that concentration, the mind 
 itself, obtaining at once breadth of grasp and in- 
 creased pliability and force, becomes more able to 
 grapple with great occasions in the subsequent experi- 
 ence of life. 
 
 Therefore, again I say let us accept frankly and 
 cheerfully the conditions of the age in which our lot
 
 EDUCATION. 3I 
 
 is cast, and let us write among its titles this that as 
 it is the age of humane and liberal laws, the age of 
 extended franchises, the age of warmer loyalty and 
 more firmly established order, the age of free trade, 
 the age of steam and railways ; so it is likewise, even 
 if last and least, the age of examinations. Let me 
 add, it is the age in which this powerful instrument of 
 good, formerly the exclusive privilege of the more 
 opulent, has been extended to the people. It is a 
 system which, in thorough harmony with the whole 
 spirit of English laws and institutions, aims at ena- 
 bling every one, in every rank of the social scale, the 
 lowest like the highest, to give proof of what mettle 
 he is made, and to turn to the best account the gifts 
 with which, by the bounty of his Heavenly Father, his 
 mind has been endowed. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 The very novelty and freshness of knowledge, in 
 ages just emerging from darkness and disorder, gave 
 it a powerful charm for the imagination over and above 
 its hold upon the intellect ; it was pursued by a spon- 
 taneous movement from within, with passion as well as 
 with conviction ; and those who so pursue it do not 
 need to be goaded in their onward course ; their ser- 
 vice is a service of love, and like the love of youth for 
 maiden, it is its own incentive and its own reward.
 
 32 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 But when society has passed into what is distinct- 
 ively, and in many respects truly, termed a progressive 
 state ; when the personal rights of men are as secure 
 in the outer world as in the closet retirement ; when a 
 thousand new careers of external life are opened, and 
 its attractions in a thousand forms are indefinitely mul- 
 tiplied ; when large numbers can engage, not merely 
 in labor for subsistence, but in the pursuit of wealth ; 
 and when a desire to rise upon the social ladder takes 
 possession of whole classes, if not on their own 
 behalf, at least on behalf of their children ; then there 
 arises a compound danger. First, lest the value of 
 knowledge for its own sake should be wholly forgotten ; 
 and, secondly, lest even its utility in innumerable re- 
 spects for the comfort and advancement of life should 
 pass, in great measure, out of view. 
 
 Now, it is in such an age as this that we are living. 
 That same attraction of necessity of wages, which 
 takes the poorer child, either in town or village, from 
 school at too early a period, is but the exhibition for 
 one class of a pressure felt by all. With the wealthier 
 it is pleasure, with the needier it is gain ; but all classes 
 and all circles are alike'in this, that our youth are in dan- 
 ger of undervaluing solid mental culture, and of either 
 neglecting or shortening its pursuit by reason of the 
 increased allurements, or the more urgent calls of the 
 outer sphere of life. Although knowledge is in so 
 many ways auxilary to art and to commerce, yet this is
 
 EDUCATION. 33 
 
 a matter not so palpable to the individual that we can 
 rely on it to enable him, as it were, to speculate upon a 
 distant benefit, which concerns others as well as, or it 
 may be more than, himself ; and to forego for its sake 
 advantages which lie nearer at hand, which appertain 
 directly to his own career, and which are on the level 
 of every man's understanding. Long, accordingly, 
 after trade and manufactures had begun, one hundred 
 years ago, their upward spring, education and art 
 seemed rather to decline than to advance among us. 
 At length a day of awakening came. Christian phil- 
 anthropy, we may do well to remember, was first in the 
 field on behalf of the masses of the people ; but after 
 a while, it found itself in partnership with an enlight- 
 ened self-interest on the part of individuals, and with 
 the political prudence of the Government. Now, for a 
 long course of years, all three have prosecuted their 
 work in remarkable harmony one with another. Lone 1 
 
 J O 
 
 may their union continue, and its golden fruits teem 
 and glow over all the surface of the land ! 
 
 XIX. 
 
 There are beautiful and famous passages in ancient 
 writers where statesmen and orators describe the refresh- 
 ment with which literature had supplied them, amid the 
 cares of life and the pressure of public affairs. With- 
 out any disparagement to such representations, it is a
 
 34 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 far more touching picture to behold the laboring man, 
 shut out by no fault of his own from the occupation 
 that gives him bread, yet unconquered in spirit and 
 resource, and turning to account his vacant hours in 
 pursuits which strengthen and enlarge the faculties of 
 his mind. 
 
 XX. 
 
 Although this world embraces no more than a lim- 
 ited part of our existence, and although it is certain 
 that we ought to tread its floor with an upward and 
 not with a downward eye, yet sometimes a strong re- 
 action from the dominion of things visible and carnal 
 begets the opposite excess. A strain of language may 
 sometimes be heard among us which, if taken strictly, 
 would imply that the Almighty had abandoned the 
 earth and the creatures he had made ; or, at the least, 
 that if he retained any care at all for some portion of 
 those creatures while continuing to be inhabitants of 
 the world, it was only care how to take them out of it. 
 It is sometimes said that this world is a world only of 
 shadows and phantoms. We may safely reply that, 
 whatever it is, a world of shadows and of phantoms it 
 can never truly be ; for by shadows and phantoms we 
 mean vague existences, which neither endure nor act ; 
 creatures of the moment, which may touch the fancy, 
 but which the understanding does not recognize ; pass-
 
 EDUCATION. 35 
 
 ing illusions, without heralds before them, without 
 results or traces after them. With such a description 
 as this, I say, our human life, in whatever state or sta- 
 tion, can never correspond. It may be something 
 better than this ; it may be something worse, but this it 
 can never be. , 
 
 Our life may be food to us, or may, if we will have 
 it so, be poison ; but one or the other it must be. 
 Whichever and whatever it is, beyond all doubt it is 
 eminently real. So merely as the day and the night 
 alternately follow one another, does every day when it 
 yields to darkness, and every night when it passes into 
 dawn, bear with it its own tale of the results which it 
 has silently wrought upon each of us, for evil or for 
 good. The day of diligence, duty, and devotion leaves 
 it richer than it found us ; richer sometimes, and even 
 commonly, in our circumstances ; richer always in our- 
 selves. But the day of aimless lethargy, the day of 
 passionate and rebellous disorder, or of a merely sel- 
 fish and perverse activity as surely leaves us poorer at 
 its close than we were at its beginning. The whole 
 experience of life, in small things and in great, what is 
 it ? It is an aggregate of real forces, which are always 
 acting upon us, we also reacting upon them. It is in 
 the nature of things impossible that, in their contact 
 with our plastic and susceptible natures, they should 
 leave us as we were ; and to deny the reality of their 
 daily and continual influence, merely because we can-
 
 36 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 not register its results, as we note the changes of the 
 barometer, from hour to hour, would be just as rational 
 as to deny that the sea acts upon the beach because 
 the eye will not tell us to-morrow that it has altered 
 from what it has been to-day. If we fail to measure 
 the results that are thus hourly wrought on shingle and 
 in sand, it is not because those results are unreal, but 
 because our vision is too limited in its powers to dis- 
 cern them. When, instead of comparing day with day, 
 we compare century with century, then we may often 
 find that land has become sea, and sea has become 
 land. Even so we can perceive, at least in our neigh- 
 bors towards whom the eye is more impartial and 
 discerning than towards ourselves that under the 
 steady pressure of the experience of life, human char- 
 acters are continually being determined for good or 
 evil ; are developed, confirmed, modified, altered, or 
 undermined. It is the office of good sense, no less 
 than of faith to realize this great truth before we see 
 it, and to live under the conviction, that our life from 
 day to day is a true, powerful, and searching discipline, 
 moulding us and making us whether it be for evil or 
 for good. 
 
 Nor are these real effects wrought by unreal instru- 
 ments. Life and the world, their interests, their 
 careers, the varied gifts of our nature, the traditions of 
 our forefathers, the treasures of laws, institutions, 
 usages of languages, of literature, and of art; all the
 
 DISCIPLINE. 37 
 
 beauty, glory and delight with which the Almighty 
 Father has clothed this earth for the use and profit of 
 his children, and which evil, though it has defaced has 
 not been able utterly to destroy ; all these are not 
 merely allowable, but ordained and appointed instru- 
 ments for the training of mankind. They are instru- 
 ments true and efficient in themselves, though without 
 doubt auxiliary and subordinate to that highest instru- 
 ment of all which God has prepared to be the means 
 of our recovery and final weal, by the revelation of 
 himself. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 There are always many who even in their tender 
 years are fighting with a mature and manful courage 
 the battles of life. When they feel themselves lonely 
 amidst the crowd, when they are for a moment dis- 
 heartened by that difficulty which is the wide and rock- 
 ing cradle of every kind of excellence when they 
 are conscious of the pinch of poverty and self-denial, 
 let them be conscious, too, that a sleepless eye is 
 watching them from above, that their honest efforts 
 are assisted, their humble prayers are heard, and all 
 things are working together for their good. Is not 
 this the life of faith, which walks by your side from 
 your rising in the morning to your lying down at night 
 which lights up for you the cheerless world, and
 
 38 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 transfigures all that you encounter, whatever be its 
 outward form, with hues brought down from heaven ? 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Let it not be thought that those who are never called 
 to suffer in respect to bodily wants therefore do not 
 suffer sharply. On the contrary, it is well established, 
 not only that though the form of sorrow may be 
 changed with a change in the sphere of life, the es- 
 sence and power of it remain, but also that as that 
 sphere enlarges, the capacity of suffering deepens 
 along with it, no less than the opportunities of enjoy- 
 ment are multiplied. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 We live as men, in a labyrinth of problems, and of 
 moral problems, from which there is no escape per- 
 mitted us. The prevalence of pain and sin, the limita- 
 tions of free will, approximating sometimes to its vir- 
 tual extinction, the mysterious laws of our independ- 
 ence, the indeterminateness for most or many men of 
 the discipline of life, the cross purposes that seem at 
 so many points to traverse the dispensations of an 
 Almighty benevolence, can only be encountered by a 
 large, an almost immeasurable, suspense of judgment 
 Solution for them we have none.
 
 BEAUTY. 39 
 
 But a scheme came eighteen hundred years ago into 
 
 the world, which is an earnest and harbinger of solu- 
 
 
 
 tion : which has banished from the earth or frightened 
 into the darkness, many of the foulest monsters that 
 laid waste humanity ; which has set up the law of right 
 against the rule of force ; which has proclaimed, and 
 in many particulars enforced, the canon of mutual 
 love ; which has opened from without, sources of 
 strength for poverty and weakness, and put a bit in 
 the mouth, and a bridle on the neck, of pride. 
 
 In a word, this scheme, by mitigating the present 
 pressure of one and all of these tremendous problems, 
 has entitled itself to be heard when it boldly assures 
 us that a day will come, in which we shall know as we 
 are known, and when their presence shall no longer 
 baffle the strong intellects and characters among us, 
 nor drive the weaker even to despair. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 Beauty is not an accident of things, it pertains to 
 their essence ; it pervades the wide range of creation ; 
 and, wherever it is impaired or banished, we have in 
 this fact the proof of the moral disorder which dis- 
 turbs the world. Reject, therefore, the false philoso- 
 phy of those who will ask what does it matter, provided 
 a thing be useful, whether it be beautiful or not : and 
 say in reply that we will take one lesson from Almighty
 
 40 I 'HE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 God, who in his works hath shown us, and in his word 
 also has told us, that "he hath made everything," not 
 one thing, or another thing, but everything, "beautiful 
 in his time." Among all the devices of creation, there 
 is not one more wonderful, whether it be the movement 
 of the heavenly bodies, or the succession of the sea- 
 sons and the years, or the adaptation of the world and 
 its phenomena to the conditions of human life, or the 
 structure of the eye, or hand, or any other part of the 
 frame of man not one of all these is more wonder- 
 ful, than the profuseness with which the mighty Maker 
 has been pleased to shed over the works of his hands 
 an endless and boundless beauty. 
 
 And to this constitution of things outward, the con- 
 stitution and mind of man, deranged although they be, 
 still answer from within. Down to the humblest con- 
 dition of life, down to the lowest and most backward 
 grade of civilization, the nature of man craves, and 
 seems as it were even to cry aloud, for something, some 
 sign or token at the least, of what is beautiful, in some 
 of the many spheres of mind or sense. This it is, 
 that makes- the Spitalfields weaver, amidst the murky 
 streets of London, train canaries and bulfinches to 
 sing to him at his work : that fills with flower-pots the 
 windows of the poor : that leads the peasant of Pem- 
 brokeshire to paint the outside of his cottage in the 
 gayest colors : that prompts, in the humbler classes of 
 women, a desire for some little personal ornament
 
 BEAUTY. m 41 
 
 certainly not without its dangers (for what sort 
 of indulgence can ever be without them?) yet some- 
 times, perhaps, too sternly repressed from the high and 
 luxurious places of society. 
 
 But indeed we trace the operation of this principle 
 yet more conspicuously in a loftier region : in that 
 instinct of natural and Christian piety, which taught 
 the early masters of the fine arts to clothe, not only 
 the most venerable characters associated with the 
 objects and history of our faith, but especially the idea 
 of the sacred person of our Lord, in the noblest forms 
 of beauty that their minds could conceive, and their 
 hands could execute. 
 
 It is, in short, difficult for human beings to harden 
 themselves at all points against the impressions and 
 the charm of beauty. Every form of life, that can be 
 called in any sense natural, will admit them. 
 
 If we look for an exception, we shall perhaps come 
 nearest to rinding one in a quarter where it would not 
 at first be expected. I know not whether there is any 
 one among the many species of human aberration 
 that renders a man so entirely callous as the lust of 
 gain in its extreme degrees. That passion, where it 
 has full dominion, excludes every other ; it shuts out 
 even what might be called redeeming infirmities ; it 
 blinds men to the sense of beauty, as surely as to the 
 perception of justice and right ; cases might perhaps 
 be named of countries, where greediness for money
 
 42 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 holds the widest sway, and where unmitigated ugliness 
 is the principal characteristic of industrial products. 
 On the other hand, I do not believe it is extravagant 
 
 7 O 
 
 to say, that the pursuit of the element of beauty, in 
 the business of production, will be found to act with a 
 genial, chastening, and refining influence on the com- 
 mercial spirit; that, up to a certain point, it is in the 
 nature of a preservative against some of the moral 
 dangers that beset trading and manufacturing enter- 
 prise ; and that we are justified in regarding it not 
 merely as that which contributes to our works an ele- 
 ment of value ; not that which merely supplies a par- 
 ticular faculty of human nature with its proper food 
 but as a liberalizing and civilizing power, and an in- 
 strument, in its own sphere, of moral and social im- 
 provement. Indeed it would be strange, if a deliberate 
 departure from what we see to be the law of nature, 
 in its outward sphere, were the road to a close con- 
 formity with its innermost and highest laws. 
 
 But now let us not conceive that, because the love 
 of beauty finds for itself a place in the general heart 
 of mankind, therefore we need never make it the 
 object of a special attention, or put in action special 
 means to promote and to uphold it. For after all, our 
 attachment to it is a matter of degree, and of degree 
 which experience has shown to be, in different places, 
 and at different times, indefinitely variable.
 
 BEAUTY. 43 
 
 We may not be able to reproduce the age of Peri- 
 cles, or even that which is known as the Cinque-cents ; 
 but yet it depends upon our own choice, whether we 
 shall or shall not have a title to claim kindred, how- 
 ever remotely, with either, aye or with both, of those 
 brilliant periods. What we are bound to do is this: 
 to take care, that everything we produce shall, in its 
 kind and class, be good as we can make it. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 When Dr. Johnson was asked by Mr. Boswell, how 
 he had attained to his extraordinary excellence in con- 
 versation, he replied, he had no other rule or system 
 than this ; that, whenever he had anything to say, he 
 tried to say it in the best manner he was able. It is 
 this perpetual striving after excellence on the one hand 
 or the want of such effort on the other, which more 
 than the original difference of gifts (certain, and great 
 as that difference may be), contributes to bring about 
 the differences we observe in the works and characters 
 of men. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 The quest of beauty leads all those who engage in it 
 to the ideal or normal man, as the summit of attain-
 
 44 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 able excellence. By no arbitrary choice, but in obedi- 
 ence to unchanging laws, the painter and the sculptor 
 must found their art upon the study of the human form, 
 and must reckon its successful reproduction as their 
 noblest and most consummate exploit. 
 
 The concern of poetry with corporal beauty is, though 
 important, yet secondary ; this art uses form as a 
 subordinate, though proper part in the delineation of 
 mind and character of which it is appointed to be 
 a visible organ. But with mind and character them- 
 selves lies the highest occupation of the muse. Homer, 
 the patriarch of poets, has founded his two immortal 
 works upon two of these ideal developments in Achilles 
 and Ulysses ; and has adorned them with others, such 
 as Penelope and Helen, Hector and Diomed, every 
 one an immortal product, though as compared with the 
 others, either less consummate or less conspicuous. 
 Though deformed by the mire of after-tradition, all 
 the great characters of Homer have become models 
 and standards, each in its own kind, for what was, or 
 was supposed to be, its distinguishing gift. 
 
 At length, after many generations, and great revo- 
 lutions of mind and of events, another age arrived, 
 like, if not equal, in creative power to that of Homer. 
 The gospel had given to the life of civilized man a 
 real resurrection, and its second birth was followed by 
 its second youth.
 
 3EAUTY. 45 
 
 Awakened to aspirations at once fresh and ancient, 
 the mind of man took hold of the venerable ideal be- 
 queathed to us by the Greeks as a precious part of 
 its inheritance, and gave them again to the light, ap- 
 propriated but also renewed. The old materials came 
 forth, but not aione ; for the types which human genius 
 had formerly conceived, were now submitted to the 
 transfiguring action of a law from on high. Nature, 
 herself prompted the effort to bring the old patterns 
 of worldly excellence and greatness or rather the 
 copies of those patterns still legible, though depraved, 
 and still rich with living suggestion into harmony 
 with that higher Pattern, once seen by the eyes and 
 handled by the hands of men, and faithfully delineated 
 in the Gospels for the profit of all generations. The 
 life of our Saviour, in its external aspect, was that of 
 a teacher. It was, in principle, a model for ail ; but 
 it left space and scope for adaptations to the lay life 
 of Christians in general, such as those by whom the 
 every-day business of the world is to be carried on. 
 It remained for man to make his best endeavor to 
 exhibit the great model on its terrestrial side, in its 
 contact with the world. Here is the true source of 
 that new and noble Cycle which the middle ages have 
 handed down to us in duality of form, but with a close 
 related substance, under the royal sceptres of Arthur 
 in England, and of Charlemagne in France.
 
 46 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 That internecine war with sin, which is of the very 
 essence of Christianity, seems to have been understood 
 by the anchorites as a war against the whole visible and 
 sensible world, against the intellectual life, against a 
 great portion of their own normal nature : and though, 
 as regarded themselves, even their exaggeration was 
 pardonable, and in many respects a noble error, yet 
 its unrestricted sway and extension would have left 
 man a maimed, a stunted, a distorted creature. And 
 it would have done more than this. By severing the 
 gospel from all else that is beautiful and glorious in 
 creation, it would have exposed the spiritual teacher 
 to a resistance not only vehement but just, and would 
 have placed the kingdom of grace in peimanent and 
 hopeless discord with the kingdoms of nature, reason, 
 truth, and beauty, kingdoms established by the very 
 same Almighty Hand. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 In the application of beauty to works of utility, the 
 reward is generally remote. A new element of labor 
 is imported into the process of production ; and that 
 element, like others, must be paid for. 
 
 The beautiful object will be dearer than one perfectly 
 bare and bald \ not because utility is curtailed or com-
 
 , BEAUTY. 47 
 
 promised for the sake of beauty, but because there 
 may be more manual labor, and there must be more 
 thought, in the original design 
 
 " Pater ipse colendi 
 Haud facilem esse viain voluit." 
 
 Therefore the manufacturer, whose daily thought it 
 must and ought to be to cheapen his productions, 
 endeavoring to dispense with all that can be spared, is 
 under such temptation to decline letting beauty stand 
 as an item to lengthen the account of the costs of 
 production. So the pressure of economical laws tells 
 severely upon the finer elements of trade. And yet 
 it may be argued that, in this as in other cases, in the 
 case for example of the durability and solidity of arti- 
 cles, that which appears cheapest at first may not be 
 cheapest in the long run. And this for two reasons. 
 In the first place, because in the long run mankind are 
 willing to pay a price for beauty. France is the second 
 commercial country of the world ; and her command 
 of foreign markets seems clearly referable, in a great 
 degree, to the real elegance of her productions, and to 
 establish in the most intelligible form the principle 
 that taste has an exchangeable value ; that it fetches 
 a price in the markets of the world. 
 
 But, furthermore, there seems to be another way by 
 which the law of nature arrives at its revenge upon 
 the short-sighted lust for cheapness.
 
 48 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 We begin, say, by finding beauty expensive. We 
 accordingly decline to pay a class of artists for produc- 
 ing it. Their employment ceases ; and the class itself 
 disappears. Presently we find by experience that works 
 reduced to utter baldness do not long satisfy. We 
 have to meet a demand for embellishment of some 
 kind. But we have now starved out the race who knew 
 the laws and modes of its production. Something, 
 however, must be done. So we substitute strength for 
 flavor, quantity for quality ; and we end by producing 
 incongruous excrescences, or even hideous malforma- 
 tions, at a greater cost than would have sufficed for 
 the nourishment among us, without a break, of chaste 
 and virgin art. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 In all physical and material objects there are two 
 things to look to, one of them is utility and the other 
 is beauty. Now, utility of course includes strength, 
 accuracy of form, convenience, and so forth. I don't 
 enter into details. I only want to remind you that, 
 besides the utility of these objects made to meet our 
 common wants of every possible description, there is 
 the important consideration of their beauty, which 
 divides itself into various branches, on which I need 
 not dwell in detail, viz., beauty of form, beauty of 
 color, beauty of proportion; but let us for a moment
 
 BEAUTY. 
 
 49 
 
 just fix our minds on this question of beauty as a 
 whole. Now the question is, " Is there any special 
 reason why we should endeavor to promote the educa- 
 tion of our people the education of our artisan 
 people in the matter of beauty ? " I hold, that there 
 is a very special reason indeed. It is quite evident 
 that we are passing into a time when, from whatever 
 causes I need not at the present moment expatiate 
 upon the causes but when, from whatever causes, 
 the commerce of England will have, at any rate for a 
 period, a severe struggle to maintain. Consequently 
 it is desirable that we should husband all our means 
 for that struggle ; that we should enlarge all our means 
 for that struggle. Now, for that reason, those who are 
 concerned in industrial productions ought to review 
 carefully the manner in which they have been working, 
 and ought to consider whether it is in all respects such 
 as it ought to be. I believe myself they will find great 
 room very general room for amendment in regard 
 to a number of branches. I am going to give an opin- 
 ion which my sense of duty impels me to give an 
 opinion which, from my long experience of public life, 
 placing me as it has done, very much in relation to the 
 great industries of England, has been long ago formed 
 in my mind, viz., this that the Englishman who is a 
 marvellous man in the business of production, when he 
 is put under pressure is apt to be relax and careless, 
 and is satisfied if he can produce things that will sell.
 
 5c THE MIGHT OF RIGHT, 
 
 He has not so much as he ought to have of the love of 
 excellence for its own sake in what he produces. 
 Many will say that it is a visionary idea, this love of 
 promoting excellence for its own sake ; still, I hold that 
 this idea, whether in relation to beauty or utility, has 
 its place in the market. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 Depend upon it that all false, all sham work, how- 
 ever it may last for a little, the effect of it is ultimately 
 to destroy reputation, to take away confidence, and to 
 act most injuriously upon those who have adopted the 
 trick. But, apart from that, I have the strongest con- 
 viction that all along English industry has been defect- 
 ive in the matter of beauty. The quality under which 
 we generally hear that described the form under 
 which we generally hear that important element de- 
 scribed is under the name of taste. Well, taste is 
 nothing in the world except the faculty which devises 
 according to the laws of beauty, which executes accord- 
 ing to the laws of beauty. In France the standard of 
 taste, taken as a whole, in French production is very 
 much higher than in the productions of England and de- 
 pend upon it, it is the taste of the French which fetches 
 the price in the market as well as the other qualities of 
 what they produce, and which has immensely contrib- 
 uted to give to France its very high place in the com-
 
 BEAUTY. 51 
 
 merce of the world because I dare say you know 
 that France is at this moment, and for some time has 
 been, the second country in the 'world as regards the 
 export of her domestic productions. Well, it is this 
 want which the schools of art in England aim at sup- 
 plying. It is a great national want, a national want 
 that has been felt at all times, and a national want 
 that is now especially felt, because of the depression 
 of British commerce and because of the increased 
 difficulties in finding a way into the markets of many 
 foreign countries. Now, it seems a very singular 
 thing that this want should exist, because it is admitted 
 that England is a country which, in the products of 
 beauty in its highest form, shows no deficiency at all. 
 If we take the very highest form in which it is given to 
 man to produce what is beautiful, probably the highest 
 form of all is that of poetry. Well, but England 
 boasts of herself, and boasts with some good reason, 
 that in comparing her poetical productions with the 
 literature of Europe she can take a place which is mod- 
 estly stated, if we only call it a place, in the first rank, 
 because there are even those who would say, and would 
 say with some color of plausibility, if not of reason 
 that English poetry stands at the head of the whole 
 modern poetry of the world. At any rate, I think 
 there is very little doubt of this that the English 
 poetry belonging to the nineteenth century has been at 
 the head of the poe/ ry of the world in this nineteenth
 
 52 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 century. I will not say we stand so high for we do 
 not stand so high, relatively in other forms of pro- 
 duction, when we come to touch upon what is material 
 I mean in painting, in sculpture, and in architecture. 
 But there is quite enough in the school of painting, of 
 sculpture, and of architecture in this country to show 
 that there is no deficiency whatever in the English 
 people in the sense of beauty ; but what there is in the 
 English people at least what there has been in the 
 English people seems to be this, (it is a fault, but a 
 remediable fault :) there seems to be some deficiency in 
 the habit which connects the sense of beauty with the 
 production of works of utility. Now, these two things 
 are quite distinct. In the old times, in the oldest times 
 of human industry, that is, among the Greeks, there 
 was no separation, no gap at all, between the idea of 
 beauty and the idea of utility. Whatever the Greek 
 produced in ancient times he made as useful as he 
 could, and at the same time he made it a cardinal law 
 with him to make it as beautiful as he could ; but that 
 has been forgotten. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 We have thought a great deal about cheap and use- 
 ful production : but until lately, at least, until fifty or 
 sixty years ago, we thought very little about beautiful 
 production. If I take, for example, the tissues of
 
 BEAUTY. 53 
 
 England ; thirty years ago all the patent patterns for 
 our cotton prints were obtained from France. Well, 
 now we take patterns from France and we send pat- 
 terns to France; and the people of Mulhausen I 
 believe now it is in Germany and not in France, but 
 that does not matter for my purpose they exchange 
 patterns, in fact, instead of simply sending patterns to 
 England. That was the state of the case when I heard 
 it last. If you will take again two other important 
 branches of production, glass and porcelain, the Eng- 
 lish glass has become extremely beautiful and also very 
 convenient. I am not speaking now of plate glass, 
 window glass and so forth I am speaking of glass 
 for services, glass for wine glasses and all portable 
 objects of that kind ; and there is no doubt at all, I 
 think, that the manufacture, as far as regards both the 
 convenience and the form and the character of the 
 material and object, has advanced to a very satisfactory 
 condition. It is in entire contrast with what it was 
 forty or fifty years ago. It was then a very great deal 
 dearer, and it was then a great deal uglier. The sense 
 of beauty of value for beauty has found its way 
 into that manufacture. If we take porcelain, a similar 
 improvement has taken place. Anybody who was 
 familiar with the tea and coffee and dinner services of 
 forty or fifty years ago supposing him to have been 
 asleep during these fifty years, and to awake to-day and 
 go down into the best shops and repositories to ob-
 
 54 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 serve the character of the goods that are on sale 
 would think that he had passed into another world, so 
 entirely different are they and so far superior to what 
 was produced in the time of one generation, and es- 
 pecially of two generations back. I am very glad to 
 see that the same spirit of improvement and the same 
 love of beauty have found their way into the produc- 
 tion of metal works ; for my opinion is that the refor- 
 mation in the art of producing metal work is a more 
 serious business, and comes slower. I don't mean to 
 say that in design of silver plate we have made as yet 
 the same advance that we have in.glass and porcelain \ 
 but the beautiful works of Messrs. Elkington for in- 
 stance, will show you that here, also, is improved work. 
 But don't suppose that because improvement is at work, 
 therefore there is no more to do. We want to carry the 
 spirit of improvement to such a condition that it shall not 
 depend upon the special spirit of enterprise in this or in 
 that master of a workshop or a factory. We want to 
 get it into the mind, and brain, and heart, and feelings 
 of the workman himself. Now, there are workmen 
 that have it already. 
 
 There are most interesting exhibitions held some- 
 times in London exhibitions where nothing is shown 
 excepting works produced by the workmen themselves 
 in their leisure hours, and it is most interesting I 
 will even say it is most touching to witness the ar- 
 duous efforts and the successful efforts which a numbei
 
 BEAUTY. 55 
 
 of those men make to produce things outside the 
 hours of their labor, which one knows though they 
 are not so heavy as they have been in former times 
 yet are quite sufficient on the whole to tax the average 
 energies of men to their utmost power. But these 
 workmen, after all, are individual exceptions. We want 
 that spirit to spread. We want the working man to 
 understand this, that if he can learn to appreciate 
 beauty in industrial productions, he is thereby doing 
 good to himself ; first, not only in the improvement of 
 his mind, in the pleasure he derives from his work, 
 but likewise and literally he is increasing his own 
 capital, which is his labor he is increasing his own 
 capital as truly and substantially as if he could add 
 to the muscles of his arms by doubling their force all 
 at once. He is going to introduce into the thing he 
 produces an element comparatively new to him; but 
 it will add to its value, add to the price it brings in 
 the market an element which will increase the com- 
 forts that he can provide for his wife and family. It 
 appears to me that I have said all that is necessary. 
 I think it a matter so plain that I am almost ashamed 
 of seeming to dwell upon it, as if it required explana- 
 tion. But we want to infuse into the minds of the 
 population, generally, an idea which as yet they have 
 not sufficiently embraced, which it is always desirable 
 they should embrace, but which it is now of a special 
 value and necessity that they should come thoroughly
 
 56 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 to understand, and that they should adapt and make 
 use of, as part of the regular apparatus of life, namely, 
 the pursuit of the beauty of those things that they 
 make, as well as the pursuit of their utility. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 The Christian thought, the Christian tradition, the 
 Christian society, are the great, the imperial thought, 
 the tradition, and society of this earth. It is from 
 Christendom outwards that power and influence radi- 
 ate, not towards it and into it that they flow. There 
 seems to be but one point at least on the surface of 
 the earth namely, among the negro races of West 
 Africa where Mahometism gains ground upon Chris- 
 tianity ; but that assuredly is not the seat of govern- 
 ment from whence will issue the fiats of the future, 
 to direct the destinies of mankind. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 The astounding fact of the manifestation of the Lord 
 of Glory, under the veil of human flesh may, and does, 
 stagger in some minds the whole faculty of belief. 
 Those minds, however, guided by equity, will admit 
 that if this great Christian postulate be sound, much 
 must follow from it. For then we must in reason ex- 
 pect to find, not only an elaborate preparation in the
 
 CHRISTIANITY. 57 
 
 outer world for an event which, by the very statement 
 of the terms, dwarfs the dimensions of every other 
 known transaction, but likewise a most careful adjust- 
 ment of the means by which, being so vast in itself, 
 it could find entrance into the human mind and heart. 
 
 The religion of Christ had to adapt itself to the least 
 as well as to the largest forms of our life and nature, 
 while its central idea was in very truth of such a large- 
 ness, in comparison to all we are or can be, as to 
 make the absolute distance between the greatest of 
 human greatness, and the smallest of human littleness, 
 sink into insignificance. 
 
 No more in the inner than in the outer sphere did 
 Christ come among us as a conqueror, making his 
 appeal to force. We were neither to be consumed by 
 the heat of the divine presence, nor were we to be 
 dazzled by its brightness. God was not in the storm, 
 nor in the fire, nor in the flood, but he was in the 
 still, small voice. 
 
 This vast treasure was not only to be conveyed to 
 us, and set down as it were at our doors ; it was to 
 enter into us, to become part of us, and to become 
 that part which should rule the rest ; it was to assimi- 
 late alike the mind and heart ot" every class and 
 description of men. 
 
 While, as a moral system, it aimed at an entire 
 dominion in the heart, this dominion was to be founded 
 upon an essential conformity to the whole of our
 
 $8 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 original and true essence. It therefore recognized 
 the freedom of man, and respected his understanding, 
 even while it absolutely required him both to learn 
 and to unlearn so largely; the whole of the new 
 lessons were founded upon principles that were based 
 in the deepest and best regions of his nature, and 
 that had the sanction of his highest faculties in their 
 moments of calm, and in circumstances of impar- 
 tiality. The work was one of restoration, of return, 
 and of enlargement, not of innovation. A space was 
 to be bridged over, and it was vast ; but a space where 
 all the piers, and every foundation-stone of the con- 
 necting structure, were to be laid in the reason and 
 common-sense, in the history and experience of man. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 Like the seed to which Christ compares the gospel, 
 all the early stages of its life were to be silent and to 
 be slow. Gradually to lay a broad basis of such evi- 
 dence as ought through all time to satisfy the reason 
 and the heart of mankind, seems to have been the 
 object with which our Saviour wrought. The general 
 if he be a good general, and has his choice, will deploy 
 his whole army on the battle-field, before any portion 
 of it begins to fight. The hot and fierce assent of a 
 few enthusiasts might doubtless have been had on easy
 
 CHRISTIANITY. 59 
 
 terms : like a fire of straw, come and gone in a moment, 
 and leaving neither light nor warmth behind. 
 
 Are any startled at the idea that our Lord's first 
 object may have been in the main limited to fixing well 
 in the minds of his hearers the belief in his divine 
 mission only ? Will they say in answer, that by his 
 reply to the confession of Nicodemus he emphatically 
 teaches the insufficiency of the belief to which that 
 ruler had therefore attained ? For the answer of 
 Christ is not a commendation or an acquiescence, but 
 a solemn monition : " Verily, verily, I say unto thee, 
 Except a' man be born again, he cannot see the king- 
 dom of God." As much as to say, "It is not enough 
 that you have examined my credentials, and that, ap- 
 proving them, you own me as a teacher carrying a 
 commission from on high. You must accept deeper 
 results of my mission than any you have yet thought 
 of, and must give your mind and spirit to be translated 
 into the region of a new and better life." 
 
 Such is, I suppose, an approximation to the sense of 
 our Lord's reply. The confession then of Nicodemus 
 was insufficient. But so is the first step of a flight of 
 stairs without those that are to carry us onward to the 
 level above ; yet the laying well and solidly the first 
 steps, without any visible sign of regard to those that 
 are to follow, may be the way, and the only way, to 
 construct a practicable and durable ascent. 
 
 There is, however, a peculiar delicacy, if this phrase
 
 6o THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 may be allowed, in this method of procedure adopted 
 by the Great Teacher. Along with that element of 
 superhuman power which was to establish a superhu- 
 man origin for his mission, there was combined a cer- 
 tain character of love, of pity, of unwearying help, of 
 tender and watchful care, which is to be read in the 
 deeds of our Lord from first to last ; the only two 
 exceptions, which may have had excellent reasons of 
 their own, being those of the fig-tree and the swine ; 
 exceptions not touching the race of man. 
 
 Now the gross and carnal temper in man is far more 
 easily caught by power than by love. To a certain 
 extent, then, the display of power, intended to show 
 that Christ had come from God to carry us back along 
 with himself to God, tended to counteract that very 
 object, if it should relatively lower in our minds the 
 force of the attraction of love ; if, of the two great 
 functions of deity exhibited in the miracles, the one 
 which was more splendid and imposing should eclipse 
 the one more modest, bnt more precious and more 
 authentic. Hence, perhaps, it is that we find a certain 
 veiling of the power that was in Christ, by these re- 
 serves and injunctions of secrecy. In the rude repeti- 
 tion of the miracles from mouth to mouth, they would 
 have fared as the picture of some great artist fares 
 when it is copied at second, third, and fourth hand : 
 the finer and deeper graces disappear \ the clothing of 
 the idea disappears, and only a coarse outline survives.
 
 CHRIS TIANI TV. 6 1 
 
 And so it really seems as if our Saviour had desired to 
 place considerable checks on the circulation of mere 
 report concerning the miracles ; and in lieu of its con- 
 fused and bewildering echoes, to trust rather to each 
 man's seeing for himself, and then calmly reflecting on 
 so much as he had seen. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 In all of the greater parables, which present their 
 subject in detail, Christ himself when they are inter- 
 preted, fills a much higher place than that simply of a 
 teacher divinely accredited. They all shadow forth a 
 dispensation, which, in all its parts, stands related to, 
 and dependent on, a central figure ; and that central 
 figure is, in every case but two, our Saviour himself. 
 
 He is the Sower of the seed, the Owner of the vine- 
 yard, the Householder in whose field of wheat the 
 enemy intermingled the tares, the Lord of the unfor- 
 giving servant, the Nobleman who went into a far 
 country and gave out the talents and said : " Occupy 
 till I come ; " lastly the Bridegroom among the virgins, 
 wise and foolish. In ever}' one of these our Saviour 
 appears in the attitude of kingship. He rules, directs, 
 and furnishes all ; he punishes and rewards. Every 
 one of these, when the sense is fully apprehended, 
 repeats, as it were, or anticipates the procession of the 
 day of Palms, and asserts his title to dominion. They
 
 62 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 must be considered, surely, as very nearly akin, if they 
 are not more than nearly akin to declarations of his 
 deity. 
 
 Two others there are which have not yet been men- 
 tioned. One is the parable of the householder, who 
 planted a vineyard and went into a far country, and 
 sent his servants to receive his share of the produce. 
 In this parable our Lord is not the master, but the 
 master's heir, the person whose the vineyard is to be, 
 and who, being sent to perform the office in which the 
 other messengers had failed, is put to death, by the 
 cruel and contumacious tenants. But this parable, if it 
 sets forth something less than his kingship, also sets 
 forth much more, and embodies the great mystery of 
 his death by wicked hands. There is also the parable 
 of a certain king, which made a marriage for his son ; 
 a relation which involves far more, than had commonly 
 been expressed in the direct teaching. 
 
 Upon the whole, then, the proposition will stand good 
 that these parables differ from, and are in advance of 
 the general instruction respecting the person of the 
 Redeemer in the three Synoptic Gospels, and place him 
 in a "rank wholly above that of a mere teacher, however 
 true and holy. They set forth that difference from 
 previous prophets and agents of the Almighty, which 
 has been noticed by the apostle to the Hebrews ; where 
 he says that " Moses verily was faithful in all his house 
 as a servant ; but Christ as a son, over his own house."
 
 CHRISTIANITY. 63 
 
 Now, we have to sum up this branch of the inquiry 
 with observing that, in that very chapter of instruction 
 where the proper dignity and weight of the Redeemer 
 in one of his high offices, namely, as a king, begin to 
 be significantly conveyed, there is a veil interposed, as 
 if to cast the scene into shadow. The truth is there ; 
 but it ceases to thrust itself upon the mind, and stands 
 rather as the reward to be obtained in after-thought by 
 a docile attention. 
 
 Upon the field, then, which we are now examining, 
 our Lord does not so much teach himself, as prepare 
 the way for the teaching of himself, and act once more, 
 though from a different point, and in a new relation, 
 the part of his own forerunner. 
 
 There is yet another portion of that field, upon 
 which we have to cast a glance. During the brief 
 course of his own ministry, our Saviour gave a com- 
 mission to his twelve apostles, and likewise one to the 
 seventy disciples. Each went forth with a separate 
 set of full and clear instructions. The commission to 
 the Twelve will be found most fully given in the tenth 
 chapter of St. Matthew; that to the Seventy in the 
 tenth of St. Luke. In conformity with what we have 
 already seen, both are silent in respect to the Person 
 of our Lord. They seem to aim at reproducing in 
 miniature his own ministry. To the apostles he says, 
 " Preach, saying, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. 
 Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast
 
 64 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 out devils." To the disciples he says, " Heal the sick 
 that are therein, and say unto them, the kingdom of 
 God is come nigh unto you." The announcement of a 
 society not then founded, but about to be founded upon 
 earth, the obligation of the hearers to believe in what 
 is announced, the exhibition of works of relief and 
 love, that love taking effect through a preternatural 
 exercise of power here is the gospel as it was 
 ordered to be preached by the followers of our Lord 
 during his lifetime, and before He had begun to open, 
 even to the Twelve, the awful picture of his coming 
 death. 
 
 Notable, indeed, is the difference, it might almost 
 be said the contrast, between these commissions, and 
 those which were given after the Resurrection, as they 
 are related in the later part of the four Gospels. In 
 these latter commissions, the Person of Christ has 
 emerged in all its grandeur, from the shadow to the 
 foreground : it is his power that is given over to them, 
 into him they are to baptize, in his name they are to 
 preach repentance and remission of sins. 
 
 To sum up, then ; there was a twilight before the 
 dawn, and a dawn before the morning, and a morning 
 before the day. The contrast between the two classes 
 of commissions, that we have just seen, receives its 
 most vivid illustration on the day of Pentecost, which 
 may perhaps not unfitly be termed the birthday of the 
 church. This contrast is really a proof, not of dis-
 
 CHRISTIANITY. 65 
 
 sonances in the divine counsels, but of an harmonious 
 and adapted progression in their development, and 
 thus of their essential and steady oneness of design. 
 During our Lord's life, the bulv/arks of the kingdom 
 of evil were being smitten again and again by constant 
 exhibitions of his command over the seen and unseen 
 worlds ; and its foundations were being sapped by the 
 winning force of his benevolence and love. Even 
 before this work approached its ripeness, he cried, in 
 prophetic anticipation of his triumph, " I beheld Satan 
 like lightning fall from heaven." When he had died, 
 and risen, and ascended, then the undermining process 
 was complete ; and the rushing noise of Pentecost was 
 like the trumpet-blast about the walls of Jeiicho, when 
 the walls fell down flat, so that the people went up 
 into the city, every man straight before him ; and they 
 took the city. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 It appears as if our Lord commonly was employed 
 in those kinds of word and deed which, repeated in 
 substance over and over again in a large number of 
 places, and before great multitudes of witnesses, were 
 to constitute the main ground of his appeal to the 
 conscience of the world, and the first basis of the gen- 
 eral belief in him ; the basis, upon which all the rest 
 was in due time to be built up. But while he thus
 
 66 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 wrought from day to day, and from place to place, he 
 was also at times employed in sowing a seed which 
 was to lie longer in the ground before the time of 
 germination. 
 
 Sometimes he set himself to sow it in capable minds 
 and willing hearts ; like those of the apostles, or like 
 that of Nicodemus ; sometimes to let it fall apart from 
 the common 'beat of the chosen people, and where it 
 could not be choked by their peculiar prejudices, as 
 with the woman of Samaria. But also in Jerusalem, 
 itself, at least by one series of discourses, he was 
 pleased to state sufficiently, in the hearing both of the 
 people and of their guides, the dignity and claims of 
 his person; so that this authentic declaration from 
 his own lips, of the truths which were after the Resur- 
 rection to be developed in apostolic teaching, might 
 accredit that teaching to minds that would otherwise 
 have stumbled at the contrast, or would have been 
 unable to fill the void between such doctrine posthu- 
 mously preached, and the common tenor of our Lord's 
 words and acts as they are given in the Synoptical 
 Gospels. In this view, certain portions of St. John's 
 Gospel may be regarded as the golden link between 
 the Sermon on the Mount, and the theology of the 
 Apostolic Epistles. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 The mighty change which Christ achieved in the
 
 CHRISTIANITY. 67 
 
 whole frame and attitude of the human mind with 
 respect to divine things, was transmitted from age to 
 age, but not by effort and agony like his, or like the 
 subordinate but kindred agency of those who were 
 chosen by him to co-operate in the great revolution. 
 Sometimes it was, indeed, both sustained and devel- 
 oped by the great powers, and by the faith and zeal 
 of individuals, and by a constancy even unto death ; 
 but in the main it passed on from age to age by tradi- 
 tional, insensible, and unconscious influences. As the 
 ages grew, and as the historic no less than the social 
 weight of Christianity rapidly accumulated, men, by no 
 unnatural process, came to rely more and more on the 
 evidence afforded by the simple prevalence of the 
 religion in the world, which, if taken with all its inci- 
 dents, was in truth a very great element of proof; 
 less and less upon the results of any original investi- 
 gation reaching upwards to the fountain-head. The 
 adhesion of the civil power, the weight of a clergy, the 
 solidity and mass of Christian institutions, the general 
 accommodation of law to principles derived from the 
 Holy Scriptures, that very flavor of at least an historic 
 Christianity which, after a long undisputed possession, 
 pervades and scents the whole atmosphere of social 
 life ; all these in ordinary times seem to the mass of 
 men to be, as proofs, so sufficient, that to seek for 
 others would be waste of time and labor. 
 
 If there be unreason in this blind reliance, there is
 
 68 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 probably not less, but much more unreason shown, 
 when the period of reaction comes, and when a credu- 
 lity carried to excess is placed in the fashion of the 
 day by an incrudulity that wanders and runs wild in 
 the furthest outbreaks of extravagance : an incredulity 
 not only which argues from the narrowest premises to 
 the broadest conclusions, but which oftentimes dis- 
 pensing with argument altogether, assumes that what- 
 ever in religion has heretofore been believed to be 
 true is therefore likely to be false, and exhibits a ludi- 
 crous contrast between the overweening confidence of 
 men in their own faculties, and their contempt for the 
 faculties of those from whom they are descended. 
 
 I do not suggest that a description so broad could 
 be applied to the present age. But it is in this direc- 
 tion that we have been lately tending ; and we have at 
 least travelled so far upon the road as this, that the 
 evidences purely traditional have lost their command 
 (among others) over those large classes of minds which, 
 in other times, before a shock was given or the tide of 
 mere fashion turned, would perhaps most steadily and 
 even blindly have received them. Their minds are 
 like what I believe is said of a cargo of corn on board 
 ship. It is stowed in bulk, and in fair weather the 
 vessel trims well enough ; but when there is a gale the 
 mass of grain strains over to the leeward side, and 
 this dead weight increases the difficulty and the danger, 
 and does it this way or that mechanically, according to
 
 CHRIS 7IANITY. 69 
 
 the point of the compass from which the wind may 
 chance to blow. 
 
 In such a time, there is a disposition either to deny 
 outright the authority which Christianity may justly 
 claim from its long historic existence, and from its hav- 
 ing borne triumphantly the strain of so many tempests 
 or else, and perhaps with more danger, silently to 
 slight them and pass them by, and to live a life de- 
 prived alike of the restraints and the consolations of a 
 strong and solid belief. Under these circumstances, 
 may it not be the duty of the scribe rightly instructed 
 in the things concerning the kingdom of God, when 
 the old weapons cease for the moment to penetrate, that 
 he should resort to other weapons which at the time 
 are new, though in reality they are the oldest of all, 
 and had only been laid aside because they were sup- 
 posed to have done their work? 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 Some have been bold enough to say that the wide 
 recognition, at the present day, of ethical doctrines 
 in practical forms is due not to Christianity, but to the 
 progress of civilization. In answer to them, I will 
 only halt for a moment, to ask the question how it 
 came that the Greek and, in its turn, the Roman civi- 
 lization, each advancing to so great a height, did not 
 similarly elevate the moral standards. And I shalj
 
 70 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 by anticipation put in a caveat against any attempt 
 to reply merely by exhibiting here and there an unit 
 picked out of the philosophic schools, or the ideal 
 pictures which may be found in the writings of a tra- 
 gedian ; pictures which have no more to do with the 
 practical life of contemporary Greece, than have the 
 representations of the Virgin and the Child, so much 
 admired in our galleries, with the lives and characters 
 of those who look on them, or in most instances of 
 those who painted them. 
 
 A comparison between Epictetus and Paley, or be- 
 ween Aristotle and Escobat, would be curious, but 
 would not touch the point. I do not inquire how low 
 some Christian may have descended, or how high 
 some heathen may have risen, in theory, any more than 
 in practice. When I speak of the morality of a re- 
 ligion, I mean the principles and practices for which 
 it has obtained the assent of the mind and heart of 
 man; which it has incorporated into the acknowledged 
 and standing code of its professors ; which it has 
 exhibited in the traditional practices, sometimes of the 
 generality, sometimes only of the best. But this is a 
 large subject, and lies apart. My present argument is 
 only with those who hold that Christianity lies within 
 the true scope of the principle of authority, but do 
 not develop the phrase Christianity into its specific 
 meanings. 
 
 To such it may be fairly put, that under this name
 
 CHRISTIANITY. l\ 
 
 of Christianity we are to understand something that 
 has some sort of claims and sanctions peculiarly its 
 own ; for it is not religion only, but Christian religion, 
 which comes to us accredited by legitimate authority. 
 Now I hope to obtain a general assent when I contend 
 that Christianity can have no exclusive or preternatural 
 claim upon us, unless that which distinguishes it as a 
 religion, has some proportionate representation in the 
 sphere of morality. In its ultimate, general, and per- 
 manent effects upon morality, largely understood, the 
 test of the value of a religion is to be found ; and if 
 mankind, in its most enlightened portions, has lent 
 the weight of its authority to Christianity, we must 
 needs understand the word to carry and include 
 some moral elements due and peculiar to the religious 
 system. 
 
 And it is not difficult to sketch in outline some at 
 least of the features which give speciality to Christian 
 morals, without disturbing their relation to the gen- 
 eral, and especially the best non-Christian morality of 
 mankind. 
 
 First and foremost, they are founded on the char- 
 acter and pattern of a Person, even more, if possible, 
 than on His words. In Him they recognize the stan- 
 dard of consummate and divine perfection. 
 
 Secondly, they draw all forms of duty, to God, to 
 men, and to ourselves, from one and the same source. 
 
 Thirdly, they are to be practised towards all men
 
 72 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 alike, independently of station or race, or even life or 
 creed. 
 
 Fourthly, they are meant and fitted for all men 
 equally to hold ; and their most profound vitality, if 
 not their largest and most varied development, is within 
 the reach of the lowly and uninstructed, in whose 
 minds and hearts it has, for the most part, fewer and 
 less formidable barriers to surmount, or " strongholds," 
 in the apostle's language, to cast down. 
 
 Fifthly, the Christian law has placed the relation of 
 man and woman, as such, in the great institution of 
 marriage upon such a footing as is nowhere else to 
 be found. I do not say that this is a restitution of a 
 primitive law : but, if so, it was one, the strain of which, 
 was found too great for those to whom it was given 
 to bear. This law, with all its restraints of kin, of 
 unity, and of perpetuity, is perhaps the subtlest, as 
 well as the most powerful, of all the social instruments 
 which the Almighty has put into use for the education 
 of the race : and it is one, I am firmly persuaded, 
 which no self-acting force, no considerations of policy, 
 will ever be able to uphold in modern societies, when 
 it shall have been severed from its authoritative 
 source. 
 
 I will not dwell in detail on the mode in which the 
 gospel treats the law of love, the law of purity, or 
 that which is perhaps most peculiar to it, the law of 
 pain; but will be content with saying, sixthly and
 
 CHRISTIANITY. 73 
 
 lastly, that Christian morals as a whole as an entire 
 system covering the whole life, nature, and experience 
 of man stand broadly distinguished by their rich, 
 complete, x and searching character from other forms 
 of moral teaching now extant in the world. 
 
 Says Abbd Martin, "The Eastern churches are al- 
 most all of them dead or dying for the last many cen- 
 turies." Dying for the last many centuries ! It is 
 told, I think of Foutenelle, that he was warned against 
 coffee as a slow poison. " A very slow one," he re- 
 plied, "I have drunk it through eighty years." Surely 
 such a statement as that of the Abbe" Martin is as 
 poor, thin, transparent, shift, which the dire necessities 
 of exhausted polemics may rather account for, than 
 excuse. 
 
 I shall attempt no reply, except to say that the 
 score of millions of those Christians, who inhabit the 
 Turkish Empire, have for almost a corresponding tale 
 of generations enjoyed the highest of all honors ; they 
 have been sufferers for their faith. They have been 
 its martyrs and its confessors. They alone have con- 
 tinuously filled that character. Many a tender maid, 
 at the threshold of her young life, has gladly met her 
 doom, when the words that accepted Islam, the act 
 that invested her with the yatchak, would have made 
 her in a moment a free and honored member of a 
 privileged, a dominant community. Ever sinco the 
 Turkish hoof began to lay waste the Levant, those
 
 74 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 twenty millions have had before them, on the one side 
 peace and freedom, on the other side the Gospel. 
 They have chosen the Gospel ; and have paid the for- 
 feit. And whatever be their faults and errors, it is 
 not for us of the West, amidst our ease and prosperity, 
 our abundant sins and scandals, to stigmatize them as 
 professors of a dead or dying Christianity, and thus 
 to disparage the most splendid and irrefragable, per- 
 haps, of all the testimonies which man can render to 
 the religion of the Cross. 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 Let us avoid the error of seeking to cherish a Chris- 
 tianity of isolation. The Christianity which is now 
 and hereafter to flourish, and through its power in the 
 inner circles of human thought, to influence, ultimately, 
 in some manner more adequate than now, the masses 
 of mankind, must be such as of old the Wisdom of 
 God was described : 
 
 " For in her is an understanding spirit, holy, one 
 only, manifold, subtile, lively, clear, undefiled, plain, not 
 subject to hurt, loving the thing that is good, quick, 
 which cannot be letted, ready to do good, kind to man, 
 steadfast, sure, free from care, having all power, over- 
 seeing all things. . . 
 
 "For she is the brightness of the everlasting light,
 
 CHRISTIANITY. 75 
 
 the unspotted mirror of the power of God, and the 
 image of his goodness." 
 
 It must be rilled full with human and genial warmth, 
 in close sympathy with every true instinct and need 
 of man, regardful of the just titles of every faculty 
 of his nature, apt to associate with and make its own 
 all, under whatever name which goes to enrich and 
 enlarge the patrimony of the race. 
 
 And therefore it is well that we should look out 
 over the field of history and see if haply its records, 
 the more they are unfolded do or do not yield us new 
 materials for the support of faith. Some at least 
 among us experience has convinced that just as fresh 
 wonder and confirmed conviction flow from examining 
 the structure of the universe, and its countless inhabi- 
 tants, and their respective adaptations to the purposes 
 of their being and to the use of man, the same results 
 will flow in yet larger measure from tracing the foot- 
 marks of the Most High in the seemingly bewildered 
 paths of human history. Everywhere, before us, behind 
 us, and around us, and above us and beneath, we shall 
 find the Power which 
 
 " Lives through all life, extends through all extent, 
 Spreads undivided, operates unspent." 
 
 And, together with the Power, we shall find the good- 
 ness and the wisdom, of which that sublime Power is 
 but a minister. Nor can that wisdom and that good, 
 ness anywhere shine forth with purer splendor, than
 
 76 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 when the divine forethought, working from afar, in 
 many places, and through many generations, so ad- 
 justs beforehand the acts and the affairs of men as 
 to let them all converge upon a single point ; namely, 
 upon that redemption of the world, by God made man, 
 in which all the rays of his glory are concentrated, and 
 from which they pour forth a flood of healing light 
 even over the darkest and saddest places of creation. 
 
 XL. 
 
 If we survey with care and candor the present wealth 
 of the world I mean its wealth intellectual, moral, 
 and spiritual we find that Christianity has not only 
 contributed to the patrimony of man its brightest and 
 most precious jewels, but has likewise been what our 
 Saviour pronounced it, the salt or preserving' principle 
 of all the residue, and has maintained its health, so far 
 as it has been maintained at all, against corrupting 
 agencies. But, the salt is one thing, the thing salted 
 is another : and, as in the world of nature, so in the 
 world of mind and of human action, there is much 
 that is outside of Christianity, that harmonizes with 
 it, that revolves, so to speak, around it, but that did 
 not and could not grow out of it. It seems to have 
 been for the filling up of this outline, for the occu- 
 pation of this broad sphere of exertion and enjoy- 
 ment, that the Greeks were, in the counsels of
 
 CHRISTIANITY. 77 
 
 Providence, ordained to labor : that so the gospel, 
 produced in the fulness of time, after the world's long 
 gestation, might have its accomplished work in rear- 
 ing mankind up to its perfection, first in the spiritual 
 life, but also, and through that spiritual life, in every 
 form of excellence, for which the varied powers and 
 capacities of the race had been created. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 Whether we refer to the Scriptures, or to the 
 collateral evidence of history and of the church, we 
 find it to be undeniable as a fact that Christianity 
 purports to be not a system of moral teaching only, 
 but in vital union therewith, a system of revealed 
 facts concerning the nature of God, and his dispen- 
 sations towards mankind. Upon these facts, which 
 centre in our Lord and Saviour, moral teaching is 
 to rest, and to these it is to be indissolubly attached. 
 Thus the part of Christianity, called doctrinal, has 
 that claim to enter into our affirmative or negative 
 decision, which belongs to a question strictly practical. 
 It is, therefore, one, to which we inevitably must 
 daily and hourly say aye or no by our actions, even 
 if we have given no speculative reply upon it. 
 
 XLII. 
 Because, through the mercy of Providence, we
 
 78 THE MIGHT CF RIGHT. 
 
 have a perfectly free access to the Holy Scriptures, 
 we are apt comfortably to assume that we are in 
 fact well acquainted with the sacred pages. And 
 with this we join another assumption, scarcely less 
 comfortable, namely, that, being thus familiar with 
 the Bible we have had and have no concern with 
 tradition, which, for us, is supposed to have no 
 existence. But we little know the breadth of mean- 
 ing that lies in the word, or the relation in which 
 we each and all stand to it. The truth is, that we 
 are all of us traditioners in a degree much greater 
 than we think. Few, indeed, are there among us 
 whose religious belief and system has actually been 
 formed either from Scripture as a whole, or even 
 from that limited but singularly precious portion of 
 it contained in the New Testament. What we sup- 
 pose to be from Scripture is really, as a general 
 rule, from the catechism, or the schoolmaster, or the 
 preacher, or the schoo. of thought, in immediate 
 contact with which we have been brought up ; or 
 perhaps, it has come from the pastor or from the 
 parent, and in some happy cases by the living and 
 affectionate contact of mind with mind. But even 
 then it has been tradition; that is to say, it is the 
 delivery by them to us of truth in a form in which 
 they possessed it, and in a form which they deemed 
 the best for us. Now suppose they were right in 
 the choice of that form, still it does not follow that
 
 THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 79 
 
 what is now the best for us, after Christianity has 
 been rooted in the v/orld for nearly two thousand 
 years, was also the best shape and the best order 
 of instruction for those to whom it was a novelty, 
 and who were to be its first propagators, as well as 
 its first receivers. 
 
 Even within the compass of the New Testament we 
 see the Christian system presented in various stages of 
 development, by its various books, to those for whom 
 they were originally intended. One of these, the 
 earliest stage, is exhibited to us by the three first, 
 or, as they are now commonly and conveniently termed, 
 the Synoptical Gospels. Another by the Acts of the 
 Apostles a book in which we find our religion ad- 
 vanced to the stage of corporate or collective action. 
 We find here the first form of that great society, the 
 church, which, under the name of the kingdom of 
 heaven, our Lord had himself, not established, but 
 predicted. The two remaining stages are represented 
 by the Gospel of St. John and apostolical epistles 
 respectively. The one may be regarded as crowning 
 the Synoptical Gospels, and the other the acts of the 
 apostles. For the apostolic epistles, together with the 
 apocalypse, both exhibit in detail the nature and work- 
 ings of the Christian society, and supply the most com- 
 prehensive model of that practical instruction which 
 was given by the earlisst and greatest fathers of the 
 church.
 
 8o THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 The Gospel of St. John, on the other hand, supplies 
 a fourth biography of our Lord. It was certainly 
 given to the church, according to the general judgment 
 of Christendom, after the three other Gospels ; and it 
 also presents the teaching of our Saviour under a new 
 aspect, much more doctrinal and also more abstract, 
 than that which it bears in the works of the Synoptical 
 writers, to whose compositions it adds little in matters 
 of fact, unless when special teaching was connected 
 with them, or, when as in the two closing chapters the 
 evangelist had to record circumstances immediately 
 connected with the foundation of the church. 
 
 But why should it be incredible, or even strange, 
 that of any teaching whatever, much more than of 
 such marvellous teaching as our Lord's, some ele- 
 ments should pass more easily into some minds, and 
 others into other minds of a different complexion 
 or affinity? The disciple "whom Jesus loved," has 
 given us the fullest and deepest picture of his love ; 
 and, together with his love, of his person. But it 
 has been justly remarked by Dean Alford, that there 
 are scattered over the pages of the Synoptics a certain 
 number of passages, which are in precise correspond- 
 ence with the general strain of St. John. 
 
 And it cannot be too carefully borne in mind, that 
 while St. John discloses to us a more inward aspect 
 of the doctrine of our Lord, and supplies many propo- 
 sitions that we could not directly gather from his pre-
 
 THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 81 
 
 decessors, the moral and practical bearings of the Four 
 Evangelists are in close and thorough correspondence. 
 They have the very same ethical basis, and they go to 
 produce the very same frame of mind and course of 
 action, and by this very fact, the case of the Gospels 
 is forever separated from any true analogy with the 
 rival representations of Socrates in the works of Plato, 
 and of Xenophon respectively, where the ethical bear- 
 ings of the two systems appear to be widely different, 
 if not altogether irreconcilable. 
 
 The communication of our Lord's life, discourses, 
 and actions to believers, by means of the Four Gospels 
 was so arranged, in the order of God's providence, that 
 they should be first supplied with biographies of him 
 which have for their staple his miracles and his ethical 
 teaching, while the mere doctrinal and abstract portion 
 of his instructions was a later addition to the patri- 
 mony of the Christian Church. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 A leading feature in almost all the parables of our 
 Lord is the social and collective aspect of Christianity, 
 incorporated with what the Gospels ordinarily call the 
 kingdom of heaven. The parables are so contrived 
 that without explaining in detail the constitution of 
 that kingdom, they familiarly impress the mind with 
 its idea ; witk the image of some scheme or system into
 
 82 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 which men were to be brought, so that they should 
 habitually live in it, and that they should ultimately be 
 judged by the laws appointed for its government. The 
 kingdom as well as the kingship, the appointment of a 
 new dispensation of brotherhood among men, as well 
 as the supremacy of our Lord in that brotherhood, 
 were thus, as it were, things sown and stored in the 
 mind of the apostles to abide their time ; like the spark 
 laid up in ashes to await the moment when it should 
 be kindled into flame. 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 No poetry, no philosophy, no- art of Greece, ever 
 embraced, in its most soaring and widest conceptions, 
 that simple law of love towards God and towards our 
 neighbor on which " two commandments hang all the 
 law and the prophets," and which supplied the basis 
 of the new dispensation. 
 
 There is one history, and that the most touching and 
 most profound of all, for which we should search in 
 vain through all the pages of the classics I mean 
 the history of the human soul in its relations with its 
 Maker ; the history of its sin, and grief, and death, and 
 of the way of its recovery to hope and life, and to 
 enduring joy. For the exercises of strength and skill, 
 for the achievements and for the enchantments of 
 wit, of eloquence, of art, of genius, for the imperial
 
 THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 83 
 
 games of politics and war let us seek them on the 
 shores of Greece. But if the first among the problems 
 of life be how to establish the peace, and restore the 
 balance of our inward being ; if the highest of all con- 
 ditions in the existence of the creature be his aspect 
 towards the God to whom he owes his being, and in 
 whose great hand he stands ; then let us make our 
 search elsewhere. All the wonders of the Greek civi- 
 lization heaped together are less wonderful than is 
 the single Book of Psalms. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 Divine truth, as it is contained in the gospel, is 
 addressed to the wants and uses of a nature not simple 
 but manifold ; and is manifold itself. Though depend- 
 ent upon one principle, it consists of many parts ; and 
 in order to preserve reciprocally the due place and 
 balance of those parts, means that we call human are 
 available, as well as means more obviously divine ; 
 and secular forms, and social influences, all adjusted 
 by one and the same governor of the world, are made 
 to serve the purposes, that have their highest expres- 
 sion in the Kingdom of Grace. 
 
 XLVI. 
 Precious truths, and laws of relative right and the
 
 84 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 brotherhood of man, such as the wisdom of heathen- 
 ism scarcely dreamed of and could never firmly grasp, 
 the gospel has made to be part of our common inheri- 
 tance, common as the sunlight that warms us, and as 
 the air we breathe. Sharp though our divisions in 
 belief maybe, they have not cut so deep as to prevent, 
 or as perceptibly to impair, the recognition of these 
 great outlines and fences of moral action. It is far 
 better for us to trust to the operations of these our 
 common principles and feelings, and to serve our 
 Master together in that wherein we are as one, rather 
 than in aiming at a standard theoretically higher, to 
 set out with a breach of the great commandment, 
 which forms the groundwork of all relative duties, and 
 to refuse to do as we would be done by. 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 The history of one country may afford useful lessons 
 to the authorities of another. In the annals of the 
 reign of Charles I. of England, we have an instance 
 of an ancient throne occupied by a monarch of rare 
 personal endowments. He was devout, chaste, affec- 
 tionate, humane, generous, refined ; a patron of letters 
 and of art, without the slightest tinge of cruelty, though 
 his ideas were those of a " pure monarchy ; " frank and 
 sincere, too, in his personal character, but unhappily 
 believing that, under the pressure of State necessity
 
 SINCERITY, 85 
 
 such as he might judge it, his pledges to his people 
 need not be kept. That king (upon whose refined figure 
 and lineaments, more happily immortalized for us by 
 Vandyke than those of any other of our sovereigns, 
 to this day few Englishmen can look without emotion) 
 saw his cause ruined, in despite of a loyalty and enthu- 
 siasm sustaining him, such as now is a pure vision of 
 the past. It was not ruined by the strength of the 
 anti-monarchical or puritanical factions, nor even by 
 his predilections for absolutism ; but by that one sad 
 and miserable feature of insincerity, which prevented 
 the general rally of his well-disposed and sober- 
 minded subjects round him. till the time had passed, 
 the commonwealth had been launched down the slide 
 of revolution, and those violent and reckless fanatics 
 had gained the upper hand, who left the foul stain of 
 his blood on the good name of England. 
 
 And why should I not advert to a lesson in our own 
 times ? King Ernest of Hanover is gathered to his 
 fathers. When he went from England in 1837 to as- 
 sume the German crown, he was the butt and by-word 
 of liberalism in all its grades ; and among the profes- 
 sors of the conservative opinions, which he maintained 
 in their sharpest form, few, indeed, were those hardy 
 enough to own that prince as politically their kin; 
 while Hanover, misled as it afterwards appeared, by 
 the freedom of English criticisms, received him with 
 more dread than affection. Fourteen years elapse.
 
 86 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 He passes unshaken through the tempest of a revolu- 
 tion, that rocks or shatters loftier thrones than his. 
 He dies amidst the universal respect, and the general 
 confidence, and attachment, of his subjects. He leaves 
 to his son a well-established government and an hon- 
 ored name ; and in England itself, the very organs of 
 democratic feeling and opinion, are seen strewing the 
 flowers of their honest panegyric on his tomb. And 
 why ? The answer is brief, but emphatic because he 
 said what he meant, and did what he said. Doubtless 
 his political education had been better than men 
 thought, and had left deeper traces upon him ; but his 
 unostentatious sincerity was his treasure ; it was " the 
 barrel of meal that wasted not, the cruise of oil that 
 did not fail." 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 The maxim that Christianity is a matter not ab- 
 stract, but referable throughout to human action, is 
 not only an important, but a vital part of the demon- 
 stration, that we are bound by the laws of our nature, 
 to give a hearing to its claims. We shall therefore do 
 well to substantiate it to our consciousness by some 
 further mention of its particulars. Let us then recol- 
 lect that we have not merely the general principle of 
 doing all to the glory of God, declared by it in genera] 
 terms : but this is illustrated by reference to the com-
 
 DUTY. 87 
 
 mon actions of eating and drinking. "Whether we 
 eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do," thus the passage 
 runs, " do all to the glory of God." 
 
 Now, surely, one should have said, if any acts what- 
 ever could have been exempt from the demands of this 
 comprehensive law, they should have been those func- 
 tions of animal life, respecting which, as to their sub- 
 stance, we have no free choice, since they are among 
 the absolute conditions of our physical existence. And 
 by the unbeliever it might consistently be argued that 
 inasmuch as food and drink are thus necessary, it is 
 impossible to conceive that any question relating to 
 the different kinds of them (unless connected with 
 their several aptitudes for maintaining life and health, 
 which is not at all in the apostle's view) can be of 
 any moral moment. But the allegation of Scripture is 
 directly to a contrary effect ; and apprises us that 
 iiven such a matter as eating or refraining from meat, 
 has a spiritual character. " He that eateth, eateth to 
 the Lord, for he giveth God thanks; and he that 
 eateth not to the Lord, he eateth not and giveth God 
 thanks. For none of us liveth to himself, and no man 
 dieth to himself." 
 
 Not ouly (as the entire passage seems to mean) 
 where a special scruple may be raised by the facts of 
 idol worship ; not only in the avoidance of pampered 
 tastes and gross excesses, but in the simple act of 
 taking food, the religious sense has a place. The
 
 88 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 maintainance of life, though it is a necessity, is also a 
 duty and a blessing. And to the same effect is the 
 declaration of our Lord : " But I say unto you that 
 eveuy idle word, that men shall speak, they shall give 
 account thereof in the day of judgment." The " idle 
 word " is perhaps the very slightest and earliest form 
 of voluntary action. Consider the fertility of the 
 mind, and the rapidity of its movements : how many 
 thoughts pass over it without or against the will ; how 
 easily they find their way into the idle, that is, not 
 the mischievous or ill-intended, but merely the uncon- 
 sidered word. So lightly and easily is it born, that 
 the very forms of ancient speech seem to designate 
 it as if it were self-created, and not the offspring of 
 a mental act, and as we say, such and such an expres- 
 sion " escaped him." Thus then it appears that, at 
 the very first and lowest stage of scarcely voluntary 
 action, the almighty God puts in his claim. In this 
 way he acquaints us that everything, in which our 
 faculties can consciously be made ministers of good 
 or evil, shall become a subject of reckoning, doubtless 
 of just and fatherly reckoning, in the great account 
 of the day of judgment. 
 
 Further, it appeared that there are many acts, of 
 which the external form must be the same, whether 
 they are done by Christians, or by others j as for in- 
 stance those very acts of satisfying hunger and thirst,
 
 DUTY. 89 
 
 of which we have spoken. If these, then, are capable, 
 as has been shown, of being brought under the law 
 of duty, a different character must attach to them in 
 consequence ; they must be influenced: if not intrin- 
 sically, yet at least in their relation to something else, 
 by their being referred to that standard. The form of 
 the deed, the thing done, is, perhaps, as we have seen, 
 the same ; but the action, the exercise of the mind in 
 ordering or doing it is different. It differs, for exam- 
 ple, in the motive of obedience ; in the end, which is 
 the glory of God ; in the temper, which is that of 
 trust, humility and thankfulness. Accordingly it ap- 
 pears that Christianity aims not only at adjusting our 
 acts, but also our way of acting, to a certain standard ; 
 that it reduces the whole to a certain mental habit, 
 and imbues and pervades the whole with a certain 
 temper. 
 
 There is no breathing man, to whom the alternatives 
 of right and wrong are not continually present. To 
 one they are less, perhaps infinitely less, complicated 
 than to another ; but they pervade the whole tissue o( 
 every human life. In order to meet these we must be 
 supplied with certain practical judgments. It matters 
 not that there may have existed particular persons, 
 as children, for instance, who have never entertained
 
 90 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 these judgments in the abstract at all ; nor that many 
 act blindly, and at hap-bazard, which is simply a con- 
 tempt of duty; nor that there may be another class 
 into whose compositions by long use some of them 
 are so ingrained, that they operate with the rapidity 
 and certainity of instinct. Setting these aside, it re- 
 mains true of- all persons of developed understanding 
 that there are many questions bearing on practice, 
 with regard to which, in order to discharge their duty 
 rightly, they must have conclusions, and these not 
 necessarily numerous in every case, but in every case 
 of essential importance, so that they may be termed 
 " a savor of life unto life, or a savor of death unto 
 death." 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 Obligation may be qualified or suspended in the 
 pursuit of abstract truth ; so much so, that even the 
 contravention of it need not involve a breach of moral 
 duty. But the case is very different when we deal 
 with those portions of truth that supply the conditions 
 of conduct. To avoid all detail, such as may dissi- 
 pate the force of the main considerations, is material. 
 Let it, therefore be observed that there is one propo- 
 sition in which the whole matter, as it is revelant to 
 human duty, may be summed up : that all our works 
 alike, inward and outward, great and small, ought to
 
 DUTY. 91 
 
 be done in obedience to God. Now this is a proposi- 
 tion manifestly tendered to us by that system of reli- 
 gion which is called Christianity, and which purports 
 to be a revelation of the divine will. It is the first 
 and great commandment of the Gospel, that we shall 
 love God with the whole heart, and mind, and soul, 
 and strength ; and whatsoever we do, we are to do all 
 to the glory of God. 
 
 A solemn and overpowering sense of duty, and that 
 mixture of profound humility with manly resolution, 
 which such a sense best engenders and sustains ; these 
 are, we believe, the instruments, by which the divine 
 grace develops in the conduct, even amidst the most 
 difficult passages of life, the principles of unchangeable 
 justice. 
 
 LI. 
 
 It is not because a brother does many things which 
 we may think wrong, or which may in themselves de- 
 serve the heaviest punishment, that he is to be dis- 
 owned and renounced : the obligation to treat him as a 
 brother uninterruptedly subsists, it is limited only by 
 our power to render kindly offices, and his capacity to 
 receive them ; and the active exercise of its functions
 
 9 2 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 can never be suspended, except only when and in so 
 far as he refuses to accept them, or is incapable of 
 profiting by them. 
 
 LII. 
 
 If we see the promise of greater joy where the finger 
 of God points us not, either that promise is a phantom 
 of magical illusion, or if it be true joy, it is ours, with- 
 held from us for a time, in order that, by wanting it, we 
 may acquire the dispositions necessary for its full 
 appreciation ; and, in due season it will be ministered 
 abundantly to those who are better pleased to await the 
 accomplishment of the divine operations, than to en- 
 deavor to precipitate their determined issues. The 
 same lesson which is applied to the repression of fleshly 
 appetites, must also be brought to bear against appe- 
 tite in its higher forms, and must teach those who crave 
 for spiritual luxuries, that they are not living here for 
 enjoyment, but for exercise ; not for the prize, but for 
 the battle : that whatsoever winged moments and glances, 
 whatsoever crumbs and morsels, and merciful foretastes 
 of bliss, may be imparted to the pilgrims through the 
 wilderness, are only given to stimulate them in their 
 work ; that they are poison, in so far as they have any 
 other effect than to quicken and invigorate its perform- 
 ance ; and that that work necessarily is, to walk in the 
 path which God has hounded for us on this side and on
 
 DUTY. 93 
 
 that, and to quell every rising murmur and the dispo- 
 sition to repine. 
 
 LIU. 
 
 Moral action is conversant almost wholly with evi- 
 dence, which in itself is only probable. So that a right 
 understanding of the proper modes of dealing with it 
 is the foundation of all ethical studies. Without this, 
 it must either be dry and barren dogmatism, or else a 
 mass of floating quicksands. Duty may indeed be 
 done, without having been studied in the abstract ; but. 
 if it is to be studied, it must be studied under its true 
 laws and conditions as a science. Now, probability is 
 the nearly universal form or condition, under which 
 these laws are applied : and therefore a sound view 
 of it is not indeed ethical knowledge itself, but it 
 is the organon, by means of which that knowledge 
 ii to be rightly handled. He who, by his reason- 
 ings, at once teaches and inures men to the methods 
 of handling probable or imperfect evidence, gives 
 them exercise, and by exercise strength in the most 
 important of all those rules of daily life, which are 
 connected with the intellectual habits. 
 
 There are persons, certainly not among the well- 
 trained and well-informed, who would attach a sus- 
 picion of dishonesty to any doctrine, which should 
 give a warrant to acts of moral choice upon evidence
 
 94 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 admitted to be less than certain. Their disposition 
 is deserving of respect, when it takes its rise from 
 that simple unsuspecting confidence in the strength 
 and clearness of truth, which habitual obedience 
 engenders. It is less so when we see in it a tim- 
 idity of mind, which shrinks from measuring the 
 whole extent of the charge that it has pleased God 
 to lay upon us as moral agents, and will not tread 
 even in the path of duty, upon any ground that 
 yields beneath the pressure of the foot. The desire 
 for certainty, in this form, enervates and unmans 
 the character. Persons so affected can scarcely either 
 search with effect for duties to be done, or accept 
 them when offered, and almost forced upon their 
 notice. 
 
 LIV. 
 
 Duty, or the deon, is that which binds. Surely, if 
 there is one idea more pointedly expressive than 
 another of the character of the ethical teaching of 
 Christianity, if there is one lesson more pointedly 
 derivable than another from the contemplation of 
 its model in our blessed Lord, it is the idea and 
 the lesson that we are to deny the claim of mere 
 human will to be a serious ground of moral action, 
 and to reduce it to its proper function, that of 
 freely uniting itself with the will of God.
 
 TRUTH. 95 
 
 This function is one of subordination : one which 
 manifestly it never can perform, so long as it is to 
 be recognized as something entitled to operate in 
 determining moral choice, and yet extrinsic and addi- 
 tional to, and therefore separate from, His commands. 
 
 Again, what can be more unnatural, not to say 
 more revolting, than to set up any system of rights 
 or privileges in moral action, apart from duties ? 
 How can we, without departing from our integrity 
 before God, allege the right of our natural freedom 
 as sufficing to counterbalance any, even the smallest 
 likelihood that his will for us lies in a particular 
 direction ? Scripture, surely, gives no warrant for 
 such a theory; nor the sense of Christian tradition. 
 Is it not hard to reconcile the bare statement of it 
 with the common sense of duty and of honesty, as 
 it belongs to our race at large? 
 
 LV. 
 
 That which is the truth teaches the doctrine of 
 love to all persons, but by virtue of that love it 
 teaches also to hate the errors which mislead, and 
 the delusions which blind them. The truth therefore 
 is necessarily exclusive of its opposite ; and to pro- 
 pose a peace between them is simply a disguised 
 mode of proposing to truth suicide, and obtaining 
 for falsehood victory. For truth itself, when not held
 
 96 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 as truth, but as a mere prize in the lottery of opin- 
 ions, loses its virtue ; that, namely, of uniting us to its 
 fountain; since it is not by any mere abstractions, 
 whether false or true, that we are to be healed, but 
 by being placed in vital union, through the joint 
 medium of His truth and his grace, with the source 
 of healing. 
 
 LVI. 
 
 It is only by feeling censure to be painful, that 
 he who delivers it, can neutralize its inward perils 
 to himself ; it is only by persevering with his work 
 in despite of that pain, that he can acquit his obli- 
 gations to truth which demand of us that we shall 
 prize her integrity beyond all things else ; and that he 
 can with a safe conscience proceed to note those excel- 
 lences, which might themselves have become to others 
 very snares and pitfalls, had he not faithfully declared 
 the fatal companionship in which they stand. 
 
 LVI I. 
 
 We are bound to avoid occasions of anger ; and yet, 
 for the vindication of truth, it may be a duty to enter 
 into debates, which we know from experience will stir 
 our passions more or less. If we look merely at the 
 likelihood of that excitement, we ought to refrain : but
 
 TRUTH. 97 
 
 if we look onwards to the purpose in view, it makes 
 the other scale descend. 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 We live in times when the whole nature of our re- 
 lation to the unseen world is widely, eagerly and assid- 
 uously questioned. Sometimes we are told of general 
 laws, so concerned as to be practically independent 
 either of a lawgiver or a judge. Sometimes of a 
 necessity working all things to uniform results, but 
 seeming to crush and to bury under them the ruins of 
 our will, our freedom, our personal responsibility. 
 Sometimes of a private judgment, which we are to hold 
 upon the hard condition of taking nothing upon trust 
 of passing by, at the outset of our mental life, the 
 whole preceding education of the world, of owning no 
 debt to those who have gone before without a regular 
 process of proof, in a word of beginning anew, each 
 man for himself : a privilege which I had thought was 
 restricted to the lower orders of creation. Such are 
 the fancies which go abroad. Such are the clouds 
 which career in heaven, and pass between us and the 
 sun ; and make men idly think, that what they see 
 not, is not ; and blot the prospects of what is, in so 
 many and such true respects, a happy and a hopeful 
 age. 
 
 It is I think an observation of St. Augustine, that
 
 98 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 those periods are critical and formidable, when the 
 power of putting questions runs greatly in advance of 
 the pains to answer them. Such appears to be, in 
 regard to the province of the unseen, the period in 
 which we live. And all among us, who are called in 
 any manner to move in the world of thought, may well 
 ask, who is sufficient for these things ? Who can with 
 just and firm hand sever the transitory from the durable, 
 and the accidental from the essential, in old opinions ? 
 Who can combine, in the measures which reason would 
 prescribe, reverence and gratitude to the past with a 
 sense of the new claims, new means, new duties of the 
 present ? Who can be stout and earnest to do battle 
 for the truth, and yet hold sacred, as he ought, the 
 freedom of inquiry, and cherish, as he ought, a chiv- 
 alry of controversy like the ancient chivalry of arms ? 
 
 LIX. 
 
 The doctrine that we are bound by the laws of our 
 nature to follow probable truth, rests upon the most 
 secure of all grounds for practical purposes, if indeed 
 the consent which accepts it is in fact so widely spread 
 in the usual doings of mankind, that it may well be 
 termed universal. The very circumstance that there 
 are exceptions confirms the rule, provided it may be 
 maintained that the exceptions are of a certain kind. 
 For conversely, if there be a practice invariably fol-
 
 TRUTH. 99 
 
 lowed by those who are known to be wise in kindred 
 subject-matter, it is often doubtful whether this can be 
 said to derive any positive confirmation from the con- 
 current course of persons who are known to be of an 
 opposite character. Again, if there be an universal 
 agreement concerning any proposition among those 
 who have no sinister bias, the fact that others who are 
 known to have such a bias differ from them, does not 
 impair their authority, but may even appear rather to 
 constitute an additional evidence of their being in 
 the right. Now this is exactly the kind of consent, 
 which may justly be said to obtain among men with 
 regard to the following of probable truth. For every 
 one acts upon affirmative evidence, however inferior 
 to certainty, unless he be either extremely deficient in 
 common understanding, or so biased the other way by 
 his desires as to be incapable of an upright view of the 
 case before him. 
 
 LX. 
 
 The " word of truth " should be " rightly divided." 
 The several parts of religion ought to be exhibited 
 in their due proportions ; the severance of its limbs is 
 fatal to its vitality; the license to teach half-truths 
 is all that falsehood can desire ; and, in point of fact, 
 all the havoc made by error has been effected by the 
 use of this very method. The teaching of half-truths
 
 ioo THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 is indefensible and mischievous when they are taught 
 as whole truths. But there is an order and succession 
 in the process of instruction : and that which is not 
 good as a resting-place may be most excellent and 
 most necessary as a stage in an onward journey. It 
 was not at the commencement of his career, but it was 
 on the very evening of his passion, that our Lord him- 
 self was pleased to say to his disciples, " I have many 
 things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now." 
 Indeed, the negation of this principle would throw 
 every established method of acquiring knowledge into 
 confusion ; and, if enforced and persevered in, would 
 condemn the human understanding to a hopeless and 
 imbecile sterility. For the doctrine, that the whole of 
 a subject must be presented at once, can only be re- 
 duced to practice by excluding from view all that is 
 really elevated and advanced, by dwelling perpetually 
 in the circle of the merest rudiments, and perhaps by 
 presenting these rudiments in forms which are at once 
 extravagant and stunted. 
 
 LXI. 
 
 I surmise that sensible men, upon surveying the field 
 of religious action during the last half-century, will 
 consider, each from his own point of view, that the 
 cause of truth and right has had both its victories to 
 record, and its defeats to mourn over. It is a blessed
 
 LIBERTY. lor 
 
 thing to think that behind the blurred aspect of that 
 cause, which we see as in a glass darkly, there is the 
 eye of One to whom all is light, and who subdues to 
 his own high and comprehensive, and perhaps for that 
 reason remote purposes all the partial and transitory 
 phenomena, with which we are so sorely perplexed. 
 The systems or forms, under which we conceive the 
 truth, may each present its several colors, hereafter to 
 be blended into a perfect ray. It will not then be the 
 most boastful or the most aggressive among them that 
 will be found to be the least refracted from the lines 
 of the perfect truth. It will be the one which shall 
 best have performed the work of love, and shall have 
 effected the largest dimunition in the mass of sin and 
 sorrow that deface a world which came so fair from 
 the hand of its Maker. Here, there is opened to us 
 a noble competition, wherein, each adhering firmly to 
 what he has embraced humbly, we may all co-operate 
 for the glory of God with a common aim ; and, every 
 one according what he asks, and according it as freely 
 as he asks it, all may strive to cultivate the unity of the 
 spirit in the bond of peace. 
 
 LXII. 
 
 Regularity, combination, and order, especially when 
 joined with publicity, have of themselves a marvellous 
 virtue ; they tend to subordinate the individual to the
 
 102 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 mass, they enlarge by healthy exercise the better and 
 nobler parts of our nature, and depress the poorer and 
 meaner ; they make man more a creature of habits, and 
 less of mere impulse ; they weaken the relative influ- 
 ence of the present, by strengthening his hold upon 
 the future and the past, and their hold upon him. By 
 gathering, too, into organized forms the various influ- 
 ences that bear sway in a mixed community, and leav- 
 ing them to work within prescribed channels, those 
 which are good acquire the multiplied strength of 
 union, while the bad neutralize one another by recipro- 
 cal elimination. It is a great and noble secret, that of 
 constitutional freedom, which has given to England the 
 largest liberties, with the steadiest throne, and the most 
 vigorous executive, in Christendom. I confess to my 
 strong faith in the virtue of this principle. I have 
 lived now for many years in the midst of the hot- 
 test and noisiest of its work-shops, and have seen 
 that amidst the clatter and the din a ceaseless la- 
 bor is going on ; stubborn matter is reduced to 
 obedience, and the brute powers of society, like the 
 fire, air, water, and mineral of nature, are with clamor 
 indeed, but also with might, educated and shaped into 
 the most refined and regular forms of usefulness for 
 man. I am deeply convinced that among us all sys- 
 tems, whether religious or political, which rest on a 
 principle of absolutism, must of necessity be, not 
 indeed tyrannical, but feeble and ineffective systems ;
 
 LIBERTY. 103 
 
 and that methodically to enlist the members of a com- 
 munity, with due regard to their several capacities, in 
 the performance of its public duties, is the way to make 
 that community powerful and healthful, to give a firm 
 seat to its rulers, and to engender a warm and intelli- 
 gent devotion in those beneath their sway. 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 As with property, so with religious freedom: the 
 rights of each man are the rights of his neighbor ; he 
 that defends one is the defender of all ; and he that 
 trespasses on one assails all. And in these matters 
 the mass of the community will judge fairly, when 
 once the facts are fairly before them, however they 
 may require time to clear their view of the case, or 
 however they may occasionally tread awry. Given, I 
 say, these two conditions first, the principle of civil 
 equality before the law, and secondly, the general 
 desire in each man for his own religious freedom ; 
 and then the ultimate recognition of such freedom 
 for all is as secure, as the maintenance of such equality. 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 The free expression of opinion, as our experience 
 has taught us, is the safety-valve of passion. That 
 noise of the rushing steam, when it escapes, alarms the
 
 ic4 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 timid; but it is the sign that we are safe. The con- 
 cession of reasonable privilege anticipates the growth 
 of furious appetite. 
 
 LXV. 
 
 We cannot change the profound and resistless ten- 
 dencies of the age towards religious liberty. It is our 
 business to guide and control their application. Do 
 this you may. But to endeavor to turn them back- 
 wards is the sport of chilclren, done by the hands of 
 men ; and every effort you may make in that direction 
 will recoil upon you in disaster and disgrace. 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 The hydra of revolution is not really to be crushed 
 by the attempt to crush, or even by momentary success 
 in crushing, under the name of revolution, a mixed 
 and heterogeneous mass of influences, feelings, and 
 opinions, bound together absolutely by nothing except 
 repugnance to the prevailing rigor and corruptions. 
 Viewed as mere matter of policy, this is simply to 
 undertake the service of enlistment for the army of the 
 foe. It is a certain proposition that, when a govern- 
 ment thus treats enmity to abuse as identical with pur- 
 pose of subversion, it, according to the laws of our 
 mixed nature, partially amalgamates the two, and ful-
 
 LIBERTY. 105 
 
 fils at length its own miserable predictions in its own 
 more miserable ruin. 
 
 Surely, however, there is another mode of procedure. 
 It is to examine the elements of which the aggregate 
 force apparently hostile to a government is composed, 
 and carefully to appreciate their differences ; to meet 
 or at least to give an earnest of honest intention to 
 meet the objections of the moderate and just, by the 
 removal of what causes them ; to have some tenderness 
 even for the scruples of the weak ; to take human 
 nature on its better side instead of perpetually galling 
 its wounds and sores ; to remember that violence itself 
 has its moments of remission and its mollia fandi tcm- 
 pora, its opportunities of honorable access ; and thus 
 to draw out from the opposite array a large part of its 
 numbers and its energy, a far larger part of its virtue, 
 its truth, and all the elements of permanent vitality. 
 It may then be found that no other means are left ; 
 but it may also then be found that the compass of the 
 evil is so reduced by the preliminary processes, that it 
 is wiser and better to carry it in patience, than to irri- 
 tate the system by a sharp excision. If unhappily the 
 risk must at last be run, and anti-social crime visited 
 with the punishment which is its due, at least the what 
 and the why will then be plain, and we shall talk some- 
 thing better than pestilent imposture when we proclaim 
 the intention to crush the hydra of revolution, or vaunt 
 of having crushed it. Nor is this a parade of human-
 
 io6 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT, 
 
 ity ; it is surely rather the practical rule of government, 
 which common sense dictates, and the experience of 
 the world sustains. 
 
 LXVII. 
 
 Something that may be called religionism, rather 
 than religion, has led us for the most part, not indeed 
 to deny in terms that God has been and is the God 
 and Father and Governor of the whole human race, as 
 well as of Jews and Christians, yet to think and act 
 as if his providential eye and care had been confined 
 in ancient times to the narrow valley of Jerusalem, and 
 since the Advent to the Christian pale ; or even to 
 something at our own arbitrary will, we think fit so to 
 call. But surely he, who cared for the six-score thou- 
 sand persons in ancient Nineveh, that could not dis- 
 tinguish between their right hand and their left, he 
 without whon\ not a sparrow falls, he that shapes, 
 in its minutest detail, even the inanimate world, and 
 clothes the lily of the field with its beauty and its 
 grace, he never forgot those sheep of his in the 
 wilderness; but as, on the one hand, he solicited 
 them, and bore witness to them of himself, by never- 
 ceasing bounty and by the law written in their hearts 
 so on the other hand in unseen modes he used them, 
 as he is always using us, for either the willing, or if
 
 PRO VIDENCE. 107 
 
 not to be willing, then the unconscious or unwilling, 
 furtherance and accomplishment of his designs. 
 
 LXVIII. 
 
 In the providential government there are diversities 
 of operations. In this great house, there are vessels 
 of gold and silver, vessels of wood and earth. In the 
 sphere of common experience, we see some human 
 beings live and die, and furnish by their life no special 
 lessons visible to man, but only that general teaching, 
 in elementary and simple forms, which is derivable 
 from every particle of human history. Others there 
 have been who, from the time when their young lives 
 first, as it were, peeped over the horizon, seemed at 
 once to 
 
 " Flame in the forehead of the morning sky ; " 
 
 whose lengthening years have been but one growing 
 splendor, and at the last who 
 
 " Leave a lofty name, 
 A light, a landmark, on the cliffs of fame." 
 
 Now, it is not in the general, the ordinary, the ele- 
 mentary way, but it is in a high and special sense, that 
 I claim for ancient Greece a marked, appropriated, dis- 
 tinctive place in the providential order of the world. 
 .... Palestine was weak and despised, always ob- 
 scure, oftentimes, and long trodden down beneath the
 
 io8 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 feet of imperious masters. On the other hand, Greece 
 for a thousand years, 
 
 " Confident from foreign purposes," 
 
 repelled every invader from her shores. Fostering her 
 strength in the keen air of freedom, she defied and at 
 length overthrew, the mightiest of existing empires; 
 and when finally she felt the resistless grasp of the 
 masters of all the world, them too, at the very moment 
 of her subjugation, she herself subdued to her litera- 
 ture, language, arts, and manners. Palestine in a 
 word, had no share of the glories of our race ; while 
 they blaze on every page of the history of Greece 
 with an overpowering splendor. Greece had valor, 
 policy, renown, genius, wisdom, wit, she had all, in a 
 word, that this world could give her j but the flowers 
 of Paradise, which blossom at the best but thinly, blos- 
 somed in Palestine alone. 
 
 And yet, as the lower parts of our bodily organiza- 
 tion are not less material than the higher to the 
 safety and well-being of the whole, so Christianity 
 itself was not ordained to a solitary existence in man, 
 but to find helps meet for itself in the legitimate use 
 of every faculty, and in the gradually accumulated 
 treasures of the genius, sagacity and industry of the 
 human family. Besides the loftiest part of the work 
 of Providence, entrusted to the Hebrew race, there was 
 other work to do, and it was done elsewhere. It was 
 requisite to make ready the materials not only of a
 
 HUMANI7 Y. 109 
 
 divine renewal and of a moral harmony for the world, 
 but also for a thorough and searching culture of every 
 power and gift of man in all his relations to the 
 world and to his kind ; so as to lift up his universal 
 nature to the level, upon which his relation as a crea- 
 ture to his Creator, and as a child to his father was 
 about to be established. 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 Christianity has sealed and stamped the title of our 
 race, as the crown and flower of the visible creation ; 
 and with this irreversible sentence in their favor, the 
 studies, well called studies of humanity, should not 
 resent nor fear, but should favor and encourage all 
 other noble research having tor its object the globe 
 on which we live, the tribes with which it is peopled 
 in land, air and sea, the powers drawn forth from na- 
 ture or yet latent in her unexplored recesses, or the 
 spaces of that vast system 
 
 " Ultra flammantia maenia mundi," 
 to which our earth belongs. 
 
 LXX. 
 
 A system of religion, however absolutely perfect for 
 its purpose, however divine in its conception and ex- 
 pression, yet of necessity becomes human too, from
 
 no THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 the first moment of its contact with humanity ; from 
 the very time, that is to say, when it begins to do its 
 proper work by laying hold upon the hearts and minds 
 of men, mingling, as the leaven in the dough, with all 
 that they contain, and unfolding and applying itself 
 in the life and conduct of the individual, and in the 
 laws, institutions, and usages of society. In the build- 
 ing up of the human temple, the several portions of 
 the work, while sustaining and strengthening each 
 other also, like the stones of a wall, hold them to 
 their proper place and office in the fabric. 
 
 LXXI. 
 
 All the powers and capacities of man, being the 
 work of God, must have their proper place in his de- 
 signs ; and the evil in the world arises not from their 
 use, but from their misuse, not from their active work- 
 iug, each according to its place in the providential 
 order, but from their having gone astray, as the planets 
 would go astray if the centripetal force, that controls 
 their action, were withdrawn. 
 
 LXXII. 
 
 No doubt conscience is supreme in all matters of 
 moral conduct, including the search for truth ; so that 
 even the statement is a truism. But this does not
 
 CONSCIENCE. in 
 
 exclude argument and the legitimate use of the un- 
 derstanding upon questions of conduct ; and it is no 
 sufficient answer to reasoning drawn from Scripture, 
 reason, or authority, on a question of conduct, to say 
 " my conscience teaches me so, and there is an end 
 of it." We must submit to have matters of conscience 
 handled by reasoning or by authority, and though we 
 are to protest against sentences of the understanding 
 on matters beyond its province, as, for example, upon 
 absolute dogma, yet even there we must not decline 
 to allow the examination of secondary proofs. Con- 
 science may be the ultimate judge of argument, but 
 this affords no plea for declining to hear it ; and to 
 admit such a plea is not to honor conscience, but 
 to allow fancy, humor, obstinate licentious will, and 
 Satanic temptations, to enthrone themselves in its 
 place. 
 
 LXXIII. 
 
 To say the individual conscience is the criterion of 
 truth, is not only to set up the principle of private 
 judgment, but to surmount it with new and impreg- 
 nable outworks, because this theory not only permits 
 and authorizes, but certainly encourages, and perhaps 
 compels, each person to disclaim all reference to the 
 judgment of others, to refuse the helps which an erring 
 creature derives from the scrutiny of others for the
 
 M2 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 correction of his errors, to shroud from examination 
 his inward persuasions, and to find in the fact of their 
 existence the charter of their legitimacy. 
 
 It is obvious, indeed, to say that the theory supposes 
 each man to be humble, earnest, self-denying, and full 
 of prayer ; and that according to it holiness, not the 
 pretence of holiness, is the only ground of belief that 
 can acquit a man of his responsibility before God for 
 believing right. But stii! we are met by the most 
 serious difficulties. Men who are not holy, will believe 
 themselves in many cases to be holy; and men who 
 are holy, will in many cases believe themselves to be 
 not holy. The first proves that the theory will not 
 work in certain instances ; the second seems to go 
 further, and to indicate a radical fault in it, for it 
 appears to teach that our belief in the mystery of the 
 Incarnation, for example, is to depend upon our having 
 already realized that truth by the corresponding pro- 
 cess to it appointed for us, and having become, in the 
 language of St. Peter, partakers of the divine nature. 
 But when it is considered how long, and arduous, and 
 doubtful, is very frequently the struggle between sin 
 and grace in the mind of the Christian what stages 
 of conflict, nay, frequently, what reverses, are to be 
 passed through, before the soul is finally established 
 in the consistent practice even of an elementary right 
 eousness is it not perilous to hold out to mankind, 
 as the true theory of religious faith, that they are
 
 CONSCIENCE. 113 
 
 only entitled to believe in proportion as they have 
 realized what they have carried into something of the 
 nature of consistent and permanent practice ? 
 
 LXXIV. 
 
 Mr. Wordsworth has told us 
 
 '' But, above all, the victory is most sure, 
 For him who seeking faith by virtue, strives 
 To yield entire submission to the law 
 Of conscience." 
 
 We, however, discover here no supplanting of the 
 function of faith by that of practice no recognition 
 of the supremacy of the private conscience ; but on 
 the contrary, an assumption of the homage of obedi- 
 ence as such to belief as such, and the very highest 
 exercise of faith conveyed by obedience as a medium. 
 And for this reason ; that the seeking dogmatic faith 
 through virtue is a process founded upon moral faith, 
 upon the firmest belief first, in the divine constitu- 
 tion of human nature, which God has ordained to be 
 built up by habits, and not by impulses ; secondly and 
 chiefly, in the character of God himself, as of a God 
 who will lead in safety and aright those that when 
 their eyes are too weak to discern spiritual objects 
 nevertheless trust themselves in blindness to the 
 guidance of his hand. They know that in so doing 
 they are expressly refusing to bring down his lofty
 
 H4 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 truth to the standard of their inward meanness, and 
 are resting rather on that conviction of his goodness 
 which is a result reached by the combined and har- 
 monious operation of our rational, moral and spiritual 
 faculties. 
 
 LXXV. 
 
 The mass even of conscientious Christians, it will 
 be admitted, have but little of the gift of spiritual 
 wisdom, which appertains rather to them that are 
 perfect (I. Cor. ii. 6) ; to a very advanced stage of 
 sanctity. It may readily be understood that where this 
 wisdom, in the sense of St. Paul, exists, there the con- 
 science is not only the main support of belief in the 
 individual mind, but likewise an authority in its degree 
 even to others. But of the generality, even of religious 
 men, little more can be said than that their will is set 
 upon the whole towards the observance of the laws of 
 God : and there are ten thousand degrees of acuteness 
 and comprehensiveness in their vision of intensity 
 and fervor in their desire. Are each of these men to 
 apply spiritual truths to their own internal state and 
 to make that state their touchstone ? 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 He that wills to do " His will shall know of the doc-
 
 POETRY. 115 
 
 trine whether it be of God." But the promises, which 
 belong to each instrument when all are duly used, can- 
 not be claimed in favor of one among them when it 
 is made exclusive. The true doctrine is, we conceive, 
 " Act upon Christian principle, and you will come to 
 believe it : act upon what is true in itseif, and it will 
 come to be also apparent or true to you." 
 
 LXXVII. 
 
 The Greek religion was eminently poetical ; for it 
 fulfilled in the most striking manner that condition 
 which poetry above all requires, harmony in the rela- 
 tion between the worlds of soul and sense. Every 
 river, fountain, grove and hill, was associated with the 
 heart and imagination of the Greek ; subject, however, 
 always to the condition that they should appear as 
 ruled by a presiding spirit, and that that spirit should 
 be impersonated in the human shape. A poetical 
 religion must, it seems, be favorable to art. The 
 beauty of form, which so much abounded in the coun- 
 try, was also favorable to art. The Athenians, how- 
 ever, are stated not to have been beautiful ; and at 
 Sparta, where art was neglected, beauty was immensely 
 prized. And, indeed, the personal beauty of a race 
 is by no means usually found sufficient to produce the 
 development of the fine arts. Again, as to the poetry 
 of religion, and its bearing upon art, while a general
 
 n6 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 connection may be admitted, it is very difficult to 
 define the manner and degree. 
 
 LXXVIII. 
 
 Poetry, the. mirror of the world, cannot deal with its 
 attractions only, but must present some of its repul- 
 sions also, and avail herself of the powerful assistance 
 of its contrasts. The example of Homer, who allows 
 Thersires to thrust himself upon the scene, in the 
 debate of heroes, gives a sanction to what reason and 
 all experience teach, namely, the actual force of nega- 
 tives in heightening effect ; and the gentle and noble 
 characters, and beautiful combinations, which largely 
 predominate in Tennyson's " Ideals of the King," 
 stand in far clearer and bolder relief when we perceive 
 the dark and baleful shadow of Vivien lowering from 
 them. 
 
 LXXIX. 
 
 The true poet has a delicate insight into beauty, a 
 refined perception of harmony, a faculty of suggestion, 
 an eye both in the physical and moral world for mo- 
 tion, light, and color, a sympathetic and close observa- 
 tion of nature, a dominance of the constructive faculty, 
 and that rare gift the thorough mastery and loving 
 use of his native tougne. Many of us, the common
 
 POETRY. 117 
 
 crowd, made of the common clay, may be lovers of 
 nature. But it does not follow that we possess the 
 privilege that the poet enjoys. For him nature has a 
 voice of the most finished articulation ; all her images 
 to him are clear and definite, and he translates them 
 for us into that language of suggestion, emphasis, and 
 refined analogy, which links the manifold to the simple, 
 and the Infinite to the finite. 
 
 LXXX. 
 
 The sense of beauty enters into the highest philos- 
 ophy, as in Plato. The highest poet must be a phi- 
 losopher, accomplished, like Dante', or intuitive, like 
 Shakspeare. But neither the one nor the other can 
 now exist in separation from that conception of the 
 relations between God and man, that new standard and 
 pattern of humanity, which Christianity has supplied. 
 It is true, indeed, that much of what it has indelibly 
 impressed upon the imagination and understanding, 
 the heart and life of man, may be traceable and even 
 prominent in those who individually disown it. The 
 splendor of these disappropriated gifts in particular 
 cases may be among the very greatest of the signs 
 and wonders appointed for the trial of faith. Yet there 
 is always something in them to show that they have 
 with them no source of positive and permanent vitality ;
 
 ii8 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 that the branch has been torn from the tree, and that 
 its life is on the wane. 
 
 LXXXI. 
 
 It is by the perceptive, or rather by the strictly crea- 
 tive powers that the poet projects his work from him- 
 self, stands as it were completely detached from it, 
 and becomes in his own personality invisible. Thus 
 did Homer and Shakspeare perhaps beyond all other 
 men : thus did Goethe, subjective as he truly is : thus 
 did Dante* when he pleased, although his individuality 
 is the local and material, not the formal, centre, to so 
 speak, of his whole poem. Air this is only to say in 
 other words that by this gift the poet throws his entire 
 strength into his work, and identifies himself with it; 
 that he not only does, but 'for the time being is, his 
 work ; and that then, when the work is done, he passes 
 away and leaves it. It is perfect in its own kind, and 
 bears no stamp or trace of him that is of what in 
 him pertains to the individual as such, and does not 
 come under the general laws of truth and beauty. 
 Thus all high pictorial poetry is composed : thus every 
 great character, in the drama or romance, is conceived 
 and executed. 
 
 It is the gift of imagination in its highest form and 
 intensity which effects these wonderful transmutations,
 
 POETRY. 119 
 
 and places the poet of the first order in a rank, nearer 
 to that of creative energies than anything else we 
 know. 
 
 LXXXII. 
 
 We do not believe that a Milton or, in other 
 words, the writer of a " Paradise Lost " could ever 
 be so great as a Shakspeare or a Homer, because (set- 
 ting aside all other questions) his chief characters are 
 neither human, nor can they be legitimately founded 
 upon humanity ; and, moreover, what he has to repre- 
 sent of man is, by the very law of its being, limited in 
 scale and development. Here at least the saying is 
 a true one in its full scope ; " Antiquitas sceculi, juventus 
 mundi;" rendered by our laureate in "The Day- 
 dream," 
 
 " For we are ancients of the earth, 
 And in the morning of the times." 
 
 The Adam and Eve of Paradise exhibit to us the 
 first inception of our race ; and neither then, nor after 
 their first sad lesson, could they furnish those materials 
 for representations, which their descendants have accu- 
 mulated in the school of their incessant and many- 
 colored, but on the whole too gloomy experience. To 
 the long chapters of that experience, every generation 
 of man makes its own addition.
 
 120 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 LXXXIII. 
 
 The substitution of law for force has indeed altered 
 the relations of the strong and the weak ; the harden- 
 ing or cooling down of political institutions and social 
 traditions, the fixed and legal track instead of the open 
 pathless field, have removed or neutralized many of 
 those occasions and passages of life, which were for- 
 merly the schools of individual character. The genius 
 of mechanism has vied in the arts both of peace and 
 war, with the strong hand, and has well-nigh robbed 
 it of its place. But let us not be deceived by that 
 smoothness of superficies, which the social prospect 
 offers to the distant eye. Nearness dispels the illu- 
 sion ; life is still as full of deep, of varied, of ecstatic, 
 of harrowing interests as it ever was. The heart of 
 man still beats and bounds, exults and suffers from 
 causes which are only less salient and conspicuous, 
 because they are more mixed and diversified. It still 
 undergoes every phase of emotion, and even, as seems 
 probable, with a susceptibility which has increased and 
 is increasing, and which has its index and outer form 
 in the growing delicacy and complexities of the nervous 
 system. Does any one believe that ever at any time 
 there was a greater number of deaths referable to 
 that comprehensive cause, a broken heart ? Let none 
 fear that this age, or any coming one, will extirpate 
 the material of poetry. The more reasonable appre-
 
 POETRY. 121 
 
 hension might be, lest it should sap the vital force 
 necessary to handle that material, and mould it into 
 appropriate forms. 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 Storms, deaths, other calamities are distasteful ; but 
 the poets are full of them. In the tears, agitation, 
 shuddering, caused by the perusal of poetry, there is 
 real and keen delight, which springs from the vivid 
 imitation and representation of nature, as it brings 
 before us, and fills with life, what is distant or dead, or 
 purely imaginary. The law of the beautiful admits in 
 poetry, for the mind, many things that it excludes from 
 painting, for the eye. 
 
 LXXXV. 
 
 Some ores yield too low a percentage of metal to be 
 worth the smelting, whereas had the mass been purer, 
 it had been extracted and preserved. Posterity will 
 have to smelt largely the product of the mines of 
 modern literature ; and will too often find the reward 
 in less than due proportion to the task. So much for 
 quantity. But quality itself is not homogeneous ; it 
 is made up of positives and negatives. Merits and 
 demerits are subtly and variously combined ; and it
 
 122 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 is hard to say what will be the effect in certain cases 
 of the absence of faults as compared with the presence 
 of excellences, towards averting or commuting that 
 sentence of capital punishment which, estimate as we 
 may the humanity of the time, must and will be carried 
 into wholesale execution. Again, men look for differ- 
 ent excellences in works of different classes. We do 
 not hold an "^Eneid J " or a "Paradise Lost" bound 
 to the veracity of an annalist. We do not look to 
 Burke or Sheridan for an accurate and balanced rep- 
 resentation of the acts of Warren Hastings. The sub- 
 tle gifts of rhetoric, the magic work of poetry, are 
 loved for their own sake ; and they are not severely 
 cross-examined upon the possession of historic attri- 
 butes to which they do not pretend. 
 
 LXXXVI. 
 
 Personal existence is beset with dangers in infancy 
 and again in age. But authorship, if it survive the 
 first, has little to fear from the after-peril. If it subsist 
 for a few generations (and generations are for books 
 what years are for their writers), it is not likely to sink 
 in many. For works of the mind really great there is 
 no old age, no decrepitude. It is inconceivable that 
 a time should come when Homer, Dante', Shakspeare, 
 shall not ring in the ears of civilized man.
 
 AUTHORSHIP. 123 
 
 LXXXVII. 
 
 Among the topics of literary speculation, there is 
 none more legitimate or more interesting than to con- 
 sider who, among the writers of a given age, are elected 
 to live ; to be enrolled among the band of the immor- 
 tals ; to make a permanent addition to the mental 
 patrimony of the human race. There is also none 
 more difficult. Not that there is any difficulty at all iu 
 what is technically called purging the roll : in supply- 
 ing any number of names which are to sink (if they 
 have not yet sunk) like lead in the mighty waters, or 
 which, by a slower descent, perhaps like the zigzag 
 from an Alpine summit, are to find their way into the 
 repose of an undisturbed oblivion. Sad as it may 
 seem, the heroes of the pen are in the main but as 
 " fools " lighted by the passing day on the road to dusty 
 death. But it is when the list has been reduced, say to 
 a hundreth part of the writers, and to a tenth ot the 
 few prominent and well-known writers of the day, that 
 the pinch, so to call it, of the task begins. We now 
 stumble onwards with undefined and partial aids. Bulk 
 will surely kill its thousands : that, which stood the 
 ancient warrior in such good stead, will be fatal to 
 many a modern author, who, but for it, might have 
 lived. And money will as surely have killed its tens 
 of thousands beforehand, by touching them as with 
 palsy. It was one of the glories of Macaulay that he
 
 124 . THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 never wrote for money ; it was the chief calamity of a 
 yet greater, and much greater, man, to wit of Scott, 
 that iron necessities in later life, happily not until his 
 place had long been secure, set that yoke upon his lofty 
 crest. And few are they who, either in trade or letters, 
 take it for their aim to supply the market, not with the 
 worst they can sell, but with the best they can produce. 
 In the train of this desire, or need, for money, comes 
 haste with its long train of evils, summed up in the 
 general scampering of work ; crude conception, slip 
 shod execution, the mean stint of labor, suppression of 
 the inconvenient, blazoning of the insignificant, neglect 
 of causes, loss of proportion in the presentation of 
 results. We write of the moment; may it not be of 
 the age. 
 
 Survival, we venture to suggest, will probably depend 
 not so much on a single quality, as upon a general or 
 composite result. The chance of it will vary directly 
 as quality, and inversely as quantity. 
 
 LXXXVIII. 
 
 A peculiar faculty, and one approaching to the dra- 
 matic order, belongs to the successful painter of histor- 
 ical portraits, and belongs also to the true biographer. 
 It is that of representing personality. In the picture, 
 what we want is not merely a collection of unexcep- 
 tionable lines and colors so presented as readily to
 
 AUTHORSHIP. 125 
 
 identify their original. Such a work is not the man, 
 but is only a duly attested certificate of the man. 
 What we require, however, is the man and not merely 
 the certificate. In the same way, what we want in a 
 biography, and what, despite the etymology of the title, 
 we very seldom find, is life. The very best transcript 
 is a failure, if it be a transcript only. To fulfil its 
 idea, it must have in it the essential quality of 
 movement ; must realize the lofty fiction of the divine 
 shield of Achilles, where the upturning earth, though 
 wrought in metal, darkened as the plough went on ; 
 and thfe figures of the battle-piece dealt their strokes 
 and parried them, and dragged out from the turmoil 
 the bodies of their dead. 
 
 LXXXIX. 
 
 Biographies, like painted portraits, range over an 
 immense scale of value : the brightest stand at a very 
 elevated point indeed ; and the lowest, in which this age 
 has been beyond all others fertile, descend far below 
 zero. Human nature is in itself a thing so wonderful, 
 so greatly paramount among all the objects offered to 
 our knowledge, that there are few pieces or speci- 
 mens of it which do not deserve and reward obser- 
 vation. But then they must be true, and must 
 breathe the breath of life ; they must give us, not 
 the mere clothes, or grave-clothes, of die man, but the
 
 126 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 man himself. For this reason it is that autobiogra- 
 phies (unless when a distinguished man is unfortu- 
 nately tempted, as appears to have been the case 
 with Lord Brougham, to write his own life from old 
 newspapers) are commonly of real interest ; for every 
 man does his best to make his own portrait a 
 likeness. 
 
 And for this reason also it may be that, in so many 
 cases, the personal memoirs of men of religious celeb- 
 rity are fiat, stale, and unprofitable to a degree, because 
 they are, beyond all others, unreal and got up. Some- 
 times, with a good deal of excuse, feelings of natural 
 piety, and sometimes, with no excuse at all, the sup- 
 posed interest of sect or clique, withhold altogether 
 from view the faults, errors, or inequalities, through 
 some or all of which it was that the man was indeed a 
 man, a being of mixed character, to be remembered 
 usefully for warning, and for caution, as well as for 
 imitation, or for pious unreasoning wonder. 
 
 XC. 
 
 A tentative work can ill afford to be judged by the 
 rules applicable to one which is didactic. The didactic 
 writer is in possession, when he begins, of all the 
 knowledge with which he ends ; the tentative writer 
 gathers as he goes. The first is bound by the same 
 rules all along the other enlarges the scope of his
 
 AUTHORSHIP. 127 
 
 vision at each step he makes, and may naturally and 
 justifiably have employed language and assumed a tone, 
 when he commenced his labors, which would be unbe- 
 coming from the more advanced position that he occu- 
 pies at the close. Nor ought he of necessity to go 
 back upon and recast his diction, so as to give himself 
 one color and one attitude from first to last. For if he 
 did so, he would be likely to efface from his composi- 
 tion those lineaments of truth and nature on which its 
 effect as a whole might in great measure depend. For 
 in such a work, which is essentially a work of self edu- 
 cation, that which, above all things, the reader ought to 
 see is the progression of effect, which the study of the 
 subject, exhibited in the actual tissue of the book, has 
 had upon the mind of the writer. He should be placed 
 in a position to measure with some accuracy the dis- 
 tance between his author's point of departure and 
 point of arrival ; and, in order that he may do this, he 
 must know the actual whereabout of the one as well as 
 of the other. 
 
 XCI. 
 
 The early Christian writers, not being the narrow- 
 minded men that many take them for, did not deny or 
 disparage the intellectual prodigies of the great hea- 
 then races, of those marvellous philosophers as Euse- 
 bius often calls them, of that Plato so eminently
 
 128 MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 commended by his intellectual debtor the great Saint 
 Augustine : nor did they make light of the voice of 
 nature in the soul of man ; nor of the divine govern- 
 ment over the whole world at every period of its exist- 
 ence ; nor of the truths to be found in ancient writers. 
 But the defiled and putrescent system of religion which 
 they found confronting them, formdable as it was from 
 antiquity, wide extension, general consent, from the 
 strength of habit, and from the tenacious grasp of 
 powerful interests upon temporal possessions and 
 advantages, this evil system they hunted down in 
 argument without mercy, and did not admit to be an 
 historical and traditional derivation from a primeval 
 truth, which the common ancestry of the Semitic and 
 the European races had once in common enjoyed. 
 
 It can hardly be said that there was intentional 
 unfairness in this proceeding. The Christian writers 
 labored under the same defect of critical knowledge 
 and practice with their adversaries. They took the 
 lives, deeds, and genealogies of the heathen deities, 
 just as they found them in the popular creed, for the 
 starting-point of their argument. Their immediate 
 business was to confute a false religion, and to sweep 
 from the face of the world a crying and incurable moral 
 evil : not to construct an universal philosophy of the 
 religious history of man ; for which the time had not 
 then, and perhaps has not yet, arrived. But we have 
 new sources of knowledge, new means of detecting
 
 AUTHORSHIP. 129 
 
 error and guiding inquiry, new points of view set open 
 to us : and the more freely and faithfully we use them 
 the more we shall find cause to own, with reverence 
 and thankfulness, the depth, and heights, and breadth 
 of the wisdom and goodness of God. 
 
 XCII. 
 
 "Prove all things: hold fast that which is good," 
 is a precept which England has fearlessly accepted, 
 and from the universal application of which she has 
 not shrunk ; alive to the serious dangers of her course, 
 but bent upon reaping its transcendent and inestimable 
 advantages. It is, we believe, to this cause that we 
 may refer the unquestionable fact that classical studies 
 in England are not found to have any sceptical ten- 
 dency, and that the University of Oxford finds in 
 Aristotle one of her most powerful engines of ethical, 
 and indirectly of Christian, teaching. But then there 
 must be real and vital activity of the mind upon the 
 subject matter of religion, as there is upon the subject 
 matter of pagan learning. Greece and Rome present 
 to us great and masculine developments of our com- 
 mon nature, and wonderful triumphs achieved by them 
 in every department both of mental and of practical 
 effort. The mind cannot embrace them, cannot reap 
 its reward in the appreciation of them, without the 
 exertion of its powers at their topmost bent.
 
 130 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 XCIII. 
 
 Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous, com- 
 monly fatal, to the poet : but among even the success- 
 ful writers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it 
 are the very rarest exceptions. The tests of excel- 
 lence in prose are as much less palpable, as the public 
 appetite is less fastidious. Moreover, we are moving 
 downwards in this respect. The proportion of mid- 
 dling to good writing constantly and rapidly increases. 
 With the average of performance, the standard of 
 judgment progressively declines. 
 
 XCIV. 
 
 To the literary success of Macaulay, it would be 
 difficult to find a parallel in the history of recent 
 authorship. For this, and probably for all future cen- 
 turies, we are to regard the public as the patron of 
 literary men ; and as a patron abler than any that 
 went before to heap both fame and fortune on its 
 favorites. Setting aside works of which the primary 
 purpose was entertainment, Tennyson alone among the 
 writers of our age, in point of public favor, and of 
 emolument following upon it, comes near to Macaulay, 
 But Tennyson was laboriously cultivating his gifts for 
 many years, before he acquired a position in the eye 
 of the nation. Macaulay, fresh from college, in 1825,
 
 AUTHORSHIP, 131 
 
 astonished the world by his brilliant and most impos- 
 ing essay on Milton. Full-orbed he was seen above 
 the horizon ; and full-orbed, after thirty-five years of 
 constantly-emitted splendor, he sank beneath it. 
 
 His gains from literature were extraordinary. The 
 cheque for twenty thousand pounds is known to all. 
 But his accumulation was reduced by his bounty ; and 
 his profits would, it is evident, have been far larger 
 still, had he dealt with the products of his mind on 
 the principles of economic science (which, however, 
 he heartily professed), and sold his wares in the dear- 
 est market, as he undoubtedly acquired them in the 
 cheapest. No one can measure the elevation of Ma- 
 caulay's character above the mercenary level, without 
 bearing in mind, that for ten years after 1825 he was 
 a poor and a contented man, though ministering to 
 the wants of a father and a family reduced in circum- 
 stances ; though in the blaze of literary and political 
 success; and though he must have been conscious 
 from the first of the possession of a gift which, by a 
 less congenial and more compulsory use, would have 
 rapidly led him to opulence. Yet of the comforts and 
 advantages, both social and physical, from which he 
 thus forbore, it is so plain that he at all times formed 
 no misanthropic or ascetic, but on the contrary a very 
 liberal and genial estimate. It is truly touching to find 
 that never, except as a minister, until 1851, when he 
 had already lived fifty years of his fifty-nine, did this
 
 132 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 favorite of fortune, this idol of society, allow himself 
 the luxury of a carriage. 
 
 XCV. 
 
 However true it may be that Macaulay was a far 
 more consummate workman in the manner than in 
 the matter of his works, we do not doubt that the 
 works contain, in multitudes, passages of high emotion 
 and ennobling sentiments, just awards of praise and 
 blame, and solid expositions of principle, social, moral, 
 and constitutional. They are pervaded by a generous 
 love of liberty ; and their atmosphere is pure and 
 bracing, their general aim and basis morally sound. 
 Of the style of the works we can speak with little 
 qualification. We da not, indeed, venture to assert 
 that his style ought to be imitated. Yet this is not 
 because it was vicious, but because it was individual 
 and incommunicable. It was one of those gifts, of 
 which, when it had been conferred, nature broke the 
 mould. That it is the head of all literary styles, we 
 do not allege j but it is different from them all, and 
 perhaps more different from them all than they are 
 usually different from one another. We speak only of 
 natural styles, of styles where the manner waits upon 
 the matter, and not where an artificial structure has 
 been reared either to hide or to make up for poverty 
 of substance.
 
 AUTHORSHIP. 
 
 '33 
 
 It is paramount in the union of ease in movement 
 with perspicuty of matter, of both ^yith real splendor, 
 and of all with immense rapidity and striking force. 
 From any other pen such masses of ornament would 
 be tawdry ; with him they are only rich. As a model 
 of art, concealing art, the finest cabinet pictures of 
 Holland are almost his only rivals. Like Pascal, he 
 makes the heaviest subject light ; like Burke, he em- 
 bellishes the barrenest. When he walks over arid 
 plains, the springs of milk and honey, as in a march 
 of Bacchus, seem to rise beneath his tread. The repast 
 he serves is always sumptuous, but it seems to create 
 an appetite proportioned to its abundance ; for who 
 has ever heard of the reader that was cloyed with 
 Macaulay ? In none, perhaps, of our prose writers 
 are lessons, such as he gives, of truth and beauty, 
 of virtue and of freedom, so vividly associated with 
 delight. Could some magician but do for the career 
 of life what he has done for the arm-chair and the 
 study, what a change would pass on the face (at least) 
 of the world we live in : what an accession of recruits 
 would there be to the professing followers of virtue. 
 
 As the serious flaw in Macaulay's mind was want 
 of depth, so the central defect, with which his pro- 
 ductions appear to be chargeable, is a pervading strain 
 of more or less exaggeration. He belonged to that 
 class of minds, whose views of single objects are 
 singularly and almost preternaturally luminous. But
 
 134 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 
 
 nature sows her bounty wide ; and those, who possess 
 this precious and fascinating gift as to things in them- 
 selves, are very commonly deficient beyond ordinary 
 men in discerning and measuring their relations to 
 one another. For them all things are either absolutely 
 transparent, or else unapproachable from dense and 
 utter darkness. Hence, amidst a blaze of glory, there 
 is a want of perspective, of balance, and of breadth. 
 Themselves knowing nothing of difficulty, or of obscur- 
 ity, or of mental struggle to work out of it, they are 
 liable to be intolerant of other men who stumble at 
 the impediments they have overleapt ; and even the 
 kindest hearts may be led not merely by the abun- 
 dance, but by the peculiarities, of their powers, into the 
 most precipitate and partial judgments. From this 
 result Macaulay has not been preserved ; and we are 
 
 convinced that the charges against him would have 
 i 
 
 been multiplied tenfold, had not the exuberant kind- 
 ness of his disposition oftentimes done for him the 
 office of a cautious and self-denying intellect. 
 
 Minds of the class to which we refer, are like the 
 bodies in the outer world, fashioned without gaps or 
 flaws or angles ; the whole outline of their formation 
 is continuous, the whole surface is smooth. They are, 
 in this sense, complete men, and they do not readily 
 comprehend those who are incomplete. They do not 
 readily understand either the inferiority, or the superi- 
 ority, of opponents; the inferiority of their slower
 
 AUTHORSHIP. 135 
 
 sight, or the superiority of their deeper insight ; their 
 at once seeing less, and seeing more. In Macaulay's 
 case this defect could not but be enhanced by his 
 living habitually with men of congenial mind, and his 
 comparatively limited acquaintance with that conten- 
 tious world of practical politics which, like the heaviest 
 wrestling-match for the body, exhibits the unlimited 
 diversities in the attitudes of the human mind, and 
 helps to show how subtle and manifold a thing is the 
 nature that we bear. 
 
 XCVI. 
 
 
 
 The very common association between seeing clearly 
 and seeing narrowly is a law or a fraility of our nature 
 not sufficiently understood. Paley was perhaps the 
 most notable instance of it among our writers. Among 
 living politicians, it would be easy to point to very con- 
 spicuous instances. This habit of mind is extremely 
 attractive, in that it makes incisive speakers and pellu- 
 cid writers, who respectively save their hearers and 
 their readers trouble. Its natural tendency, however, 
 is towards hopeless intolerance ; it makes all hesitation, 
 all misgiving, all suspense, an infirmity, or a treachery 
 to truth ; it generates an appetite for intellectual 
 butchery.
 
 136 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 XCVII. 
 
 Macaulay was, perhaps, not strong in his reflective 
 faculties ; certainly he gave them little chance of devel- 
 opment by exercise. He was eminently objective, 
 eminently realistic ; resembling in this the father of all 
 poets, whom none of his children have surpassed, and 
 who never converts into an object of conscious contem- 
 plation the noble powers which he keeps in such ver- 
 satile and vigorous use. 
 
 In Macaulay all history is scenic ; and philosophy he 
 scarcely seems to touch, except on the outer side, where 
 it opens into action. Not only does he habitually pre- 
 sent facts in the forms of beauty, but \he fashioning of 
 the form predominates over, and is injurious to, the 
 absolute and balanced presentation of the subject. 
 Macaulay was a master in execution, rather than in 
 what painting or music terms expression. He did not 
 fetch from the depths, nor soar to the heights ; but his 
 power upon the surface was rare and marvellous, and it 
 is upon the surface that an ordinary life is passed, and 
 that its imagery is found. He mingled, then, like 
 Homer, the functions of the poet and the chronicler ; 
 but what Homer did was due to his time, what Macau- 
 lay did, to his temperament. Commonly sound in his 
 classical appreciations, he was an enthusiastic admirer 
 of Thucydides ; but there can hardly be a sharper con- 
 trast than between the history of Thucydide?, and the
 
 AUTHORSHIP. 137 
 
 history of Macaulay. Ease, brilliancy, pellucid clear- 
 ness, commanding fascination, the effective marshalling 
 of all facts belonging to the external world as if on 
 parade ; all these gifts Macaulay has, and Thucydides 
 has not. But weight, breadth, proportion, deep dis- 
 cernment, habitual contemplation of the springs of 
 character and conduct, and the power to hold the scales 
 of human action with firm and even hand, these must 
 be sought in Thucydides, and are rarely observable in 
 Macaulay. 
 
 But how few are the writers whom it would be any- 
 thing else than ridiculous to place in comparison with 
 Thucydides ! The history of Macaulay, whatever else 
 it may be, is the work not of a journeyman but of a 
 great artist, and a great artist who lavishly bestowed 
 upon it all his powers. Such a work, once committed 
 to the press, can hardly die. It is not because it has 
 been translated into a crowd of languages, nor because 
 it has been sold in hundreds of thousands, that we 
 believe it will live, but because, however open it may 
 be to criticism, it has in it the character of a true and 
 very high work of art. 
 
 XCVIII. 
 
 It is only by a license of speech that the term knowl- 
 edge can be applied to any of our human perceptions. 
 For as nothing can, in the nature of things, properly
 
 138 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 speaking, be known, except that which exists, or known 
 in any manner other than that exact manner in which 
 it exists, it follows that knowledge can properly be 
 predicated only by those who infallibly know them to 
 be true. In strictness, therefore, knowledge is not 
 predicable by us of any one of our own perceptions ; 
 whatever number of them may be true, we do not infal- 
 libly know of any one of them, that it is true. Of all 
 the steps in the operations of our mental faculties, 
 there is not one, at which it is abstractedly impossible 
 that error should intervene ; and as this is not impos- 
 sible, knowledge, the certain and precise correspond- 
 ence of the percipient and the thing perceived, cannot 
 be categorically asserted. If, therefore, without knowl- 
 edge in its scientific sense there can be no legitimate 
 belief, this wide universe is a blank, and nothing can 
 be believed ; nothing theological, nothing moral, noth- 
 ing social, nothing physical. In a word, abstract 
 certainty, in this dispensation, we scarcely can possess, 
 though we may come indefinitely near it : and knowl- 
 edge and certainty and all similar expressions as 
 practical terms must be understood not absolutely but 
 relatively. 
 
 XCIX. 
 
 Next to this abstract certainty, comes that kind of 
 assent to propositions which, according to the constitu-
 
 DOUBT. 139 
 
 tion of our minds, is such as to exclude all doubt. 
 Human language applies the denomination of knowl- 
 edge to such assent, in cases where this exclusion is 
 entire and peremptory in the highest degree. Between 
 that point, and the point at which a proposition be- 
 comes improbable, and a just understanding inclines 
 to its rejection, an infinity of shades of likelihood inter- 
 vene. For example : where the exclusion of doubt is 
 after consideration entire, but yet not peremptory and 
 immediate ; where it depends upon the comprehensive 
 and continuous view of many particulars; where it 
 rests upon the recollection of a demonstration, of 
 which the detail has escaped from the memory : where 
 it proceeds from some strong original instinct, inca- 
 pable of analysis in the last resort : these are all cases 
 in which doubt might be entirely banished, but yet we 
 should scarcely know whether to say our assent was 
 founded on knowledge or upon belief, since the shades 
 of the two, as they are commonly understood, pass 
 into one another. Generally, however, this distinction 
 would be taken between them ; that we should call 
 knowledge what does not to our perceptions admit of 
 degree, and what does admit of it we should call 
 belief, although we might in the particular case pos- 
 sess it in the highest degree, so that it should have 
 all the certainty of knowledge; just as we can readily 
 conceive two stations, the one at the head of a pillar,
 
 140 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 and the other at the head of a stair, yet the two of 
 equal altitude. 
 
 C. 
 
 The fundamental proposition on which we rest, and 
 for the proof of which we appeal, without fear of a 
 disputed reply, to the universal practice of mankind, is 
 this : that the whole system of our moral conduct, and 
 much also of our conduct that is not directly moral, 
 rests upon belief as contradistinguished from knowl- 
 edge, and not always upon belief in the very highest 
 degree which utterly extinguishes doubt, but in every 
 diversity of degree so long as any appreciable portion 
 of comparative likelihood remains, although many of 
 these degrees may be hampered with very considerable 
 doubt as they actually subsist in the mind, and many 
 more cases would be open to serious doubts if they 
 were subjected to speculative examination. And fur- 
 ther, that this which is indisputable in point of fact, is 
 not less irrefragable in point of reason ; and that any 
 other rule for fhe guidance of human life would be not 
 irreligious, but irrational in the extreme. 
 
 We take first a case of the highest practical certainty. 
 How do we know that the persons who purport to be 
 our parents, brothers and sisters, really are what they 
 pass for. It is manifest that the positive evidence pro- 
 ducible in each case often falls far short of a demon-
 
 DOUBT. 141 
 
 ducible in each case often falls far short of a demon- 
 strative character ; nay more, it is perfectly well known 
 that in many cases these relations have been pretended 
 where they did not exist, and the delusion has been 
 long or even permanently maintained. And yet every 
 man carries in his mind a conviction upon the subject, 
 as it regards himself, utterly exclusive of doubt. And 
 those who should raise doubts upon it, in consequence 
 of the want of mathematical certainty, would be deemed 
 fitter for Bedlam than for the pursuit of philosophical 
 inquiries. 
 
 CI. 
 
 There are numberless instances in which a very great 
 practical uncertainty prevails, and yet where we must 
 act just as we should if there were no doubt at all. 
 A man with many children will prepare them all for 
 after life, though probably one or more will die before 
 attaining maturity. A tells B that his house is on fire ; 
 A may have motives for deceiving him, but B, if he be 
 a rational man, quits the most interesting occupation, 
 and goes to see. But there is no end to the multiplica- 
 tion of instances ; let any man examine his own daily 
 experience, and he will find that its whole tissue is 
 made up of them ; or, in the words of Bishop Butler 
 " to us probability is the very guide of life."
 
 142 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 CII. 
 
 The law of credibility, upon which our common and 
 indeed universal practice is founded, has no more 
 dependence upon the magnitude of the objects to 
 which it is applied than have the numbers of the 
 arithmetical scale, which, with exactly the same pro- 
 priety, embrace motes and mountains. It is not the 
 greatness or minuteness of the proposition, but the 
 balance between likelihood and unlikelihood, which 
 we have to regard whenever we are called to determine 
 upon assent or rejection. It is true, indeed, that when 
 the matter is very small, the evil of acting against 
 probability will be small also. But this shows that, in 
 a practical view, the obligation of the law becomes not 
 less but more stringent, as the rank of the subject in 
 question rises ; because the best and most rational 
 method of avoiding a very great evil, or of realizing a 
 very great good, has a higher degree of claim upon 
 our consideration and acceptance, in proportion to the 
 degree of greatness belonging to the object in view. 
 
 cm. 
 
 The stages of mental assent and dissent are almost 
 innumerable ; but the alternatives of action proposed 
 by the Christian faith are two only. There is a nar- 
 row way and a broad one ; in the one or the other of
 
 DOUBT. 143 
 
 these every man, according to his testimony must walk. 
 It will not do to say, I see this difficulty about the 
 Christian theory, so I cannot adopt it ; and that diffi- 
 culty about the anti-Christian theory, so I cannot 
 embrace that ; I will wait and attach myself to neither. 
 Could our whole being, except the sheer intellect, be 
 laid in abeyance, such a notion would at least be intel- 
 ligible ; but in the meantime, life and its acts proceed : 
 
 " E mangia e bee, e clorme, e veste panni ; " 
 and not only as to these functions, but also our moral 
 habits are in the course of formation or destruction ; 
 character receives its bias ; there are appetites to be 
 governed, powers to be employed ; and these matters 
 cannot be wholly, not at all, adjourned. The discharge 
 of the daily duties of our position must (more or less 
 perfectly) be adapted beyond question either to the 
 supposition that we have a Creator and a Redeemer, 
 or to the supposition that we have not. There is no 
 intermediate verdict of '' not proven," which leaves 
 the question open : the question to us is, Is there such 
 proof as to demand obedience ? and there are no 
 possible replies in act, whatever there may be in word, 
 except aye and no. The lines of conduct are but two ; 
 and our liberty is limited to the choice between them. 
 
 CIV. 
 On a subject purely abstract, or not entailing moral
 
 144 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 responsibilities, upon the generation of the present 
 structure of the world by fire or water, upon the theory 
 of vibrations in optics, upon the system of Copernicus 
 or of Descartes, we might have taken refuge in a 
 philosophical suspense, while the evidence fell short 
 of demonstration j and even after the proof has been 
 completed, the error of withholding assent is not a 
 fatal one ; but the belief which Christianity enforces, 
 ft enforces as the foundation of daily conduct, as the 
 framework into which all acts, all thoughts, all hopes, 
 affections, and desires, are to be cast, and by which 
 they must be moulded. Whatever it teaches, for ex- 
 ample, concerning the work and the person of our 
 Lord, it teaches not in the abstract, but as holding 
 forth him whose steps we are to follow, in whom our 
 whole trust is to be reposed, with whom we are to be 
 vitally incorporated, and whom accordingly we must 
 needs know even though " in a glass darkly ; " for how 
 can we imitate, or how love, without some kind of 
 vision, and how can definite vision be transmitted 
 from man to man without language ? 
 
 CV. 
 
 In discussing the reception or rejection of Chris- 
 tianity, according to its credibility or incredibility, we 
 must remember that it purports to be a system of 
 belief and action inseparably combined ; and therefore
 
 ART. 145 
 
 that, if it be credible, it entails the obligation not of 
 a speculation but of a practical question, of a question 
 to be decided here and now, which cannot be relegated 
 to the region of indifference, but which, even if our 
 understanding refuse to act, our conduct must either 
 recognize as true, or else repudiate as false. 
 
 We contend that Christianity does not require the 
 highest degree of intellectual certainty in order to be 
 honestly and obediently received ; and that the very 
 same principles which govern action in common life, 
 cognizable by common sense, are those which, fortified 
 (we should hold) through God's mercy with a singular 
 accumulation and diversity of evidence, demand recep- 
 tion of the word, and implicit obedience to it; and 
 that we cannot refuse this demand upon the plea that 
 the evidence is only probable and not demonstrative, 
 without rebellion against the fundamental laws of our 
 earthly state, as they are established, by a truly Cath- 
 olic consent, in the perpetual and universal practice 
 of mankind. 
 
 CVI. 
 
 The climax of all art, it seems to be agreed, is the 
 rendering of the human form. What, then, could be so 
 calculated to raise this representation to the acme of 
 its excellence, as the belief that the human form was 
 not only the tabernacle, but the original and proper
 
 146 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 shape, the inseparable attribute, of Deity itself? In 
 the quaint language of George Herbert : 
 
 " He that aims the moon shoots higher much, than he that 
 means a tree." 
 
 And again as Tennyson has sung : 
 
 "It was my duty to have loved the highest. 
 
 We needs must love the highest when we see it, 
 Not Lancelot, nor another." 
 
 It was this perpetual presentation of the highest to 
 the mind of the Greek artist, that cheered him, and 
 yet, while it cheered him and rewarded him, still ever 
 spurred him on in his pursuit. Whatever he had done, 
 more remained to do. 
 
 " Nil actum reputans dum quid superesset agendum*' 
 
 The desire, that marks an unbounded ambition, had 
 been granted ; he had always more worlds to conquer. 
 The divine was made familiar to him, by correspon- 
 dence of shape : but on the other side, its elements, 
 which it was his business to draw forth and indicate to 
 men, reached far away into the infinite. And I know 
 not what true definition there is for any age or people 
 of the highest excellence in any kind, unless it be per- 
 petual effort upwards in pursuit of an object higher than 
 ourselves, higher than our works, higher even than our 
 hopes, yet beckoning us on from hour to hour, and 
 always permitting us to apprehend in part. 
 
 I venture, then, to propound at least for considera-
 
 JUSTICE. 147 
 
 tion the opinion, that the fundamental cause of the 
 transcendent excellence of the Greek artist lay in his 
 being, by birth and the tradition of his people, as well 
 as with every favoring accessory, both in idea and in 
 form, and in such a sense as no other artist was, a 
 worker upon Deity, conceived as residing, invariably, if 
 not essentially, in the human form. It is hardly neces- 
 sary to observe how the rich and many-sicled composi- 
 tion of the Greek mythology favored the artist in his. 
 work, by answering to the many-sided development of 
 the mind and life of man. 
 
 Unconsciously then to himself, and in a sphere of 
 almost parochial narrowness, the Greek not only earned 
 himself an immortal fame, but was equipping from age to 
 age a great School of Art, to furnish principles and 
 models made ready to the hand of that purer and higher 
 civilization which was to be ; and over the preparation 
 of which, all the while, Divine Providence was brood- 
 ing, like the Spirit on the face of the waters, till the 
 fulness of time should come. 
 
 CVII. 
 
 Never let it be forgotten that there is scarcely a sin- 
 gle moral action of a single man of which other men 
 can have such knowledge, in its ultimate grounds, its 
 surrounding incidents, and the real determining causes
 
 148 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 of its merits, as to warrant their pronouncing a conclu- 
 sive judgment upon it. 
 
 When St. Peter, after the prophecy of his own mar- 
 tyrdom, asked our Lord, with a natural curiosity, what 
 should happen to St. John, our Lord replied, " If I will 
 that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee ? Follow 
 thou me." So let us not be inquisitive or solicitous to 
 know the judgment to be pronounced upon our breth- 
 ren, or to solve the enigmas of their destiny, but take 
 heed to our own ; and take particular heed that we do 
 it no prejudice by proud or harsh feelings entertained 
 towards them. 
 
 CVIII. 
 
 With a sigh for what we have not, we must be thank- 
 ful for what we have, and leave to One, wiser, than our- 
 selves, the deeper problems of the human soul and of 
 its discipline. 
 
 CIX. 
 
 Hapless is he on whose head the world discharges 
 the vials of its angry virtue ; and such is commonly 
 the case with the last and detected usufructuary of a 
 golden abuse which has outlived its time. In such 
 cases, posterity may safely exercise its royal preroga- 
 tive of mercy.
 
 WAR. 149 
 
 ex. 
 
 The contemporary mind may in rare cases be taken 
 by storm ; but posterity never. The tribunal of the 
 present is accessible to influence ; that of the future 
 is incorrupt. 
 
 CXI. 
 
 It is indeed true that peace has its moral perils and 
 temptations for degenerate man, as has every other 
 blessing without exception, that he can receive from 
 the hand of God. It is moreover not less true that 
 amidst the clash of arms, the noblest forms of char- 
 acter may be reared, and the highest acts of duty 
 done ; that these great and precious results may be 
 due to war as their cause ; and that one high form of 
 sentiment in particular, the love of country, receives 
 a powerful and general stimulus from the bloody strife. 
 But this is as the furious cruelty of Pharaoh made 
 place for the benign virtue of his daughter; as the 
 butchering sentence of Herod raised without doubt 
 many a mother's love into heroic sublimity ; as plague, 
 as famine, as fire, as flood, as every curse and every 
 scourge, that is wielded by an angry Providence for 
 the chastisement of man, is an appointed instrument 
 for tempering human souls in the seven-times heated
 
 150 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 furnace of affliction, up to the standard of angelic and 
 archangelic virtue. 
 
 CXII. 
 
 War, indeed, has the property of exciting much gen- 
 erous and noble feeling on a large scale ; but with 
 this special recommendation it has, in its modern 
 forms especially, peculiar and unequalled evils. As it 
 has a wider sweep of desolating power than the rest, 
 so it has the peculiar quality that it is more suscepti- 
 ble of being decked in gaudy trappings, and of fasci- 
 nating the imagination of those whose proud and* angry 
 passions it inflames. But it is, on this very account, 
 a perilous delusion to teach that war is a cure for 
 moral evil, in any other sense than as the sister tribu- 
 lations are. 
 
 CXIII. 
 
 One inevitable characteristic of modern war is, that 
 it is associated throughout, in all its particulars, with 
 a vast and most irregular formation of commercial 
 enterprise. There is no incentive to mammon-worship 
 so remarkable as that which it affords. The political 
 economy of war is now one of its most commanding 
 aspects. Every farthing, with the smallest exceptions
 
 THE PULPIT. I 51 
 
 conceivable, of the scores or hundreds of millions 
 which a war may cost, goes directly, and very violently 
 to stimulate production, though it is intended ulti- 
 mately for waste or for destruction. Even apart from 
 the fact that war suspends, ipso facto, every rule of 
 public thrift, and tends to sap honesty itself in the 
 use of the public treasure for which it makes such 
 unbounded calls, it therefore is the greatest feeder of 
 that lust of gold which we are told is the essence of 
 commerce, though we had hoped it was only its occa- 
 sional besetting sin. 
 
 CXIV. 
 
 In the innumerable combinations of the political 
 chess-board, there is none more difficult for an upright 
 man than to discern the exact path of duty, when he 
 has shared in bringing his country into war, and when, 
 in the midst of that war, he finds, or believes himself 
 to find, that it is being waged for purposes in excess 
 of those which he had approved. 
 
 CXV. 
 
 Many a clergyman will think that, if he has embod- 
 ied in his sermon a piece of good divinity, the deed is 
 done, the end of preaching is attained. But the busi- 
 ness of a sermon is to move as well as teach ; and if
 
 152 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 he teaches only without moving, may it not almost be 
 said that he sows by the wayside ? It is often said, 
 censoriously, to be a great advantage possessed by the 
 clergy, that no one can answer them. To a bad clergy- 
 man this may be an advantage, in respect that it allows 
 him to remain bad, and to grow worse with impunity. 
 But to the true preacher or speaker, it surely is far 
 otherwise. It relaxes that healthy tension, that bra- 
 cing sense of responsibility, under which we must habit- 
 uate ourselves to act, if we are ever to do anything 
 that is worth the doing. It is, then, no advantage, but 
 rather a temptation and a snare. 
 
 CXVI. 
 
 The sermons of Dr. Macleod were, it appears, to 
 a great extent, written but not read. The sermons 
 of Dr. Chalmers were certainly in some cases, if 
 not in all, both written and read. But the Scotch 
 ministers of any note who read their sermons take, 
 or used to take, good care to read as if read- 
 ing not. To a great extent Scottish sermons were 
 delivered without book, having been committed to 
 memory. When notes were used, they were sometimes, 
 as much as might be, concealed on a small shelf within 
 the pulpit, for the people had a prejudice, almost 
 a superstition against "the papers," and could not 
 reconcile them with the action of the Holy Ghost in
 
 THE PULPIT. 153 
 
 in the preaching of the gospel. Reading, pure and 
 simple, was very rare. Apart from the rare ques- 
 tion of the merit of this or that form in the abstract, 
 there was a traditional and almost universal idea of 
 preaching, as a kind of spiritual wrestling with a con- 
 gregation ; and the better professors of the art entered 
 into it as athletes, and strove habitually and through- 
 out to get a good "grip" of the hearer, as truly and 
 as much as a Cumbrian wrestler struggles, with per- 
 sistent and varied movements to get a good grip of 
 his antagonist. 
 
 CXVII. 
 
 \ 
 
 To give effect to this idea, in preaching or in other 
 speaking, the hearers must be regarded in some sense 
 as one. All fear of the individual must be discarded. 
 Respect for the body may be maintained, and may be 
 exhibited by pleading, by expostulating, by beseech- 
 ing ; but always with a reserve and under-thought of 
 authority, of a title to exhort, rebuke, convince. It is 
 really the constitution of a direct and intimate personal 
 relation, for the moment, between preacher and hearers, 
 which lies at the root of the matter ; such a relation 
 as establishes itself spontaneously between two per- 
 sons, who are engaged in an earnest practical conver- 
 sation to decide whether some given thing shall or 
 shall not be done ; and for this reason it is that we
 
 154 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 suggest that the mass of living humanity gathered in 
 a congregation should be dealt with both as human, 
 and as one ; that unless in exceptional junctures, the 
 preacher might find a pathway of power, as the singer, 
 the instrumentalist, or the actor does, in treating a 
 crowd as an unity. 
 
 What has now been said, is said tentatively, and so 
 to speak provocatively, not to offer the solution of a 
 great problem, but at any rate to set others upon 
 solving it. 
 
 For a great problem it is ; and a solution is required. 
 The problem is how, in the face of the press, the 
 tribune, the exchange, the club, the multiplied solici- 
 tations of modern life, to awaken in full the dormant 
 powers of the pulpit, which, though it has lost its 
 exclusive privileges, has not in the least degree abated 
 the grandeur of its function, and is as able as it ever 
 was manfully to compete for, and largely to share in, 
 the command of the human spirit, and of the life it 
 rules. 
 
 CXVIII. 
 
 We should remember that our religion itself did not 
 take its earliest root, or find its primitive home in the 
 minds of kings, philosophers, and statesmen. Not 
 many rich, not many noble were called. The wisdom 
 and the culture were mostly plotting against our Lord,
 
 RICH AND POOR. 155 
 
 while the common people heard him gladly. But the 
 regenerating forces of the gospel made their way from 
 the base to the summit of society ; and the highest 
 thought and intellect of man, won with time to the 
 noble service, hired as it were at the sixth, ninth, and 
 eleventh hour, wrought hard and with effect to develop, 
 defend, and consolidate the truth. Paradox it may 
 seem to be, but fact it is, that the immense advantages 
 which leisure and learning have conferred are largely 
 neutralized, and in some cases utterly outweighed, by 
 the blinding influences of a subtler, deeper, and more 
 comprehensive selfishness. 
 
 CXIX. 
 
 Moral elements of character are as true, and often 
 as powerful a factor, in framing judgments upon mat- 
 ters of human interest and action as intellectual forces. 
 But there is another element in the question not less 
 vital : the character of the surroundings, the contigu- 
 ous objects of attraction and repulsion, the beguiling 
 and tempting agencies in the midst of which we live. 
 Those who have but a sufficiency for life set a less 
 value perhaps upon it, and certainly upon its incidental 
 advantages, than persons who live in the midst of 
 superfluities varying from a few to a multitude almost 
 numberless. These superfluities are like the threads 
 that bound down Gulliver to the soil ; and they form
 
 I 5 6 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 habits of mind which at length pass into our fixed 
 mental and moral constitution, and cease to form ob- 
 jects of distinct consciousness. If it be true that 
 wealth and ease bring with them in a majority of cases 
 an increased growth in the hardening crust of egotism 
 and selfishness, the deduction thereby made from the 
 capacity of right judgment in large and most import- 
 ant questions, may be greater than the addition which 
 leisure, money, and opportunity have allowed. 
 
 I touch here upon deep mines of truth, never yet 
 explored, nor within the power of human inteliigence 
 to explore fully, though we are taught to believe in 
 an Eye that has observed, and a Mind that has accu- 
 rately registered the whole. Even in the present twi- 
 light of our practical and moral knowledge, we may 
 perceive, by every form of instance, how often the 
 wisdom of love, goodness and simplicity wins, even in 
 the races of this world, against the wisdom of crafty 
 and astute self-seeking. Even more is this true in the 
 fields of open thought than in the direct and sharp 
 competitions of lite. In questions to which his bud- 
 cling knowledge reaches, even the child has often a 
 more serene and effective sense of justice than a 
 grown man ; and a partial analogy obtains between the 
 relations of age and those of class. History affords, 
 I think, a grand and powerful illustration of the argu- 
 ment in the case of the acceptance of Christianity ; 
 which acceptance will be admitted, I presume, to have
 
 RICH AND POOR. 157 
 
 been a great advance upon the road of truth and of 
 human we fare. Was it the wealthy and the learned 
 who, with their vast advantages, and their supposed 
 exemption from special sources of error, outstripped 
 their humbler fellow-creatures in bowing their heads 
 to the authority of the gospel ? Did Scribes and 
 Pharisees, or did shepherds and fishermen, yield the 
 first, most and readiest converts to the Saviour and 
 the company of his apostles ? It was not an arbitrary 
 act, for there is no such act of the Almighty, which 
 " hid these things from the wise and prudent and 
 revealed them unto babes." The whole code of our 
 Saviour's teaching on the condition of rich and poor 
 with reference to the acceptance of moral truth is not 
 the rhetoric of an enthusiast, nor the straightened 
 philosophy of a local notable, who mistook the acci- 
 dents of one time and place for principles of universal 
 knowledge. They were the utterances of the Wisdom 
 that 
 
 " Lives through all life, extends through all extent, 
 Spreads undivided, operates unspent," 
 
 cxx. 
 
 As the barbarian, with his undeveloped organs, sees 
 and hears at distances which the senses of the cultured 
 state cannot overpass, and yet is utterly deficient as 
 to fine details of sound and color, even so it seems
 
 158 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 that, in judging of the great questions of policy which 
 appeal to the primal truths and laws of our nature, 
 those classes may excel who if they lack the opportu- 
 nities, yet escape the subtle perils of the wealthy state. 
 True, they receive much of their instruction from 
 persons of the classes above them, from the " minority 
 of the minority ;" but this in no way mends the argu- 
 ment on behalf of the majority of the minority, who 
 habitually reject, as it passes by their doors, that teach- 
 ing which the men of the highways and the hedges as 
 commonly are eager, or leady, to receive. 
 
 CXXI. 
 
 A life that is to be active ought to find refreshment 
 in the midst of labors, nay, to draw refreshment from 
 them. But this it cannot do, unless the man can take 
 up the varied employments of the world with some- 
 thing of a child-like freshness. It is that especial light 
 of Heaven, described by Wordsworth in his immortal 
 
 " Ode on the Recollections of Childhood," that light 
 "Which lies about us in our infancy," 
 
 which attends the youth upon his way, but at length 
 " The man perceives it die away 
 And fade into the light of common day." 
 
 Its radiance still plays only about those few who 
 strive earnestly to keep themselves unspotted from 
 the world, and are victors in the strife.
 
 GO VERNMEN T. 1 59 
 
 CXXII. 
 
 The promises and purposes of the Creator are not 
 for an age but for the ages, and not for a tribe but 
 for mankind. 
 
 CXXIII. 
 
 The three highest titles that can be given a man 
 are those of martyr, hero, saint. 
 
 CXXIV. 
 
 The greatest, apparently, of all the difficulties in 
 establishing true popular government is the difficulty 
 it should, perhaps, be said the impossibility of 
 keeping the national pulse in a state of habitual and 
 healthy animation. At certain junctures it may be 
 raised even to a feverish heat. But these accesses 
 are. in all countries, short and rare ; they come and 
 go like the passing wave. The movement is below par 
 a hundred times that it is above. The conditions of 
 life bear lightly upon the few, but hard upon the 
 many. To the many, politics of an operative quality 
 are in ordinary times an impossibility, in the most 
 favorable times a burden ; but to the few, with their 
 wealth and leisure, they are an easy and healthful 
 exercise, nay, often an entertainment and even a luxury
 
 160 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 and a seasoning of life. At unexciting seasons, the 
 member of the upper or middle class will usually 
 cleave to his party. But I apprehend that the ties of 
 party, as distinct from those of sympathy, opinion, 
 and personal confidence in leaders, are less felt among 
 the masses than among those in superior circum- 
 stances. The present weighs more heavily upon them ; 
 and they must have as a rule other circumstances being 
 equal, less energy available either for the anticipation 
 of the future, or the retention of the past. 
 
 The liberties of our fellow subjects form a theme of 
 too high a nature to be determined by the interests 
 of party. They ought to be extended, irrespective of 
 their effects on party, to the furthest points compat- 
 ible with the well-being of the Constitution, with the 
 established public order under which they live. They 
 are a gift so good in themselves, so full of educating 
 power, so apt to enhance and multiply the aggregate 
 of the nation's energies, that nothing can equitably 
 be placed in competition with them, unless it be the 
 security of that public order. 
 
 cxxv. 
 
 Augmentation of vital power in the State is what 
 every wise and good citizen should desire. The more 
 closely, and the more largely, the power of human will, 
 affections and understanding can be placed in associa
 
 GOVERNMENT. 161 
 
 tion with the mainsprings of the State, the greater will 
 be that augmentation. 
 
 % 
 
 CXXVI. 
 
 Every trade has its secrets. The baker and the 
 brewer, the carpenter and the mason, all the fraternity 
 of handicraft and production, have, where they under- 
 stand their business, certain nice minutiiz of action, 
 neither intelligible to nor seen by the observer from 
 without, but upon which niceties the whole efficiency 
 of their work, and the just balance of its parts, depend. 
 There is nowhere a more subtle machinery than that 
 of the British Cabinet. It has no laws. It has no 
 records. Of the few who pass within the magic circle, 
 and belong to it, many never examine the mechanism 
 which they help to work. Only the most vague con- 
 ceptions respecting its structure and operations are 
 afloat in the public mind. These things may be pretty 
 safely asserted : that it is not a thing made to order 
 but a growth ; and that no subject of equal importance 
 has been so little studied. We need not wonder if 
 even to the most intelligent foreigner, who gets it 
 up as a lesson from a school-book, it is an unsolved 
 riddle. 
 
 CXXVII. 
 The nicest of all the adjustments involved in the
 
 1 62 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 working of the British Government is that which deter- 
 mines, without formally defining, the internal relations 
 of the Cabinet. On the one hand, while each minister 
 is an adviser of the Crown, the Cabinet is a unity, and 
 none of its members can advise as an individual, with- 
 out, or in opposition actual or presumed to, his col 
 leagues. On the other hand, the business of the State 
 is a hundred-fold too great in volume to allow of the 
 actual passing of the whole under the view of the 
 collected Ministry. It is therefore a prime office of 
 discretion for each minister to settle what are the 
 departmental acts in which he can presume the con- 
 currence of his colleagues, and in what more delicate, 
 or weighty, or peculiar cases, he must positively ascer- 
 tain it. So much for the relation of each minister to 
 the Cabinet; but here we touch the point which 
 involves another relation, perhaps the least known of 
 all, his relation to its head. 
 
 The head of the British Government is not a Grand 
 Vizier. He has no powers, properly so called, over 
 colleagues : on the rare occasions, when a Cabinet de- 
 termines its course by the votes of its members, his 
 vote counts only as theirs. But they are appointed 
 and dismissed by the Sovereign on his advice. In a 
 perfectly organized administration, such for example 
 as was that of Sir Robert Peel in 1841-6, nothing of 
 great importance is matured, or would even be pro- 
 jected in any department without his personal cogni-
 
 GOVERNMENT. 163 
 
 sance ; and any weighty business would commonly go 
 to him before being submitted to the Cabinet. He 
 reports to the Sovereign his proceedings, and he also 
 has many audiences of the august occupant of the 
 throne. He is bound, in these reports and audiences, 
 not to counterwork the Cabinet ; not to divide it ; not 
 to undermine the position of any of his colleagues 
 in the Royal favor. If he departs in any degree 
 from strict adherence to these rules, and uses his 
 great opportunities to increase his own influence, 
 or pursue aims not shared by his colleagues, then, 
 unless he is prepared to advise their dismissal, 
 he not only departs from rule, but commits an act 
 of treachery and baseness. As the Cabinet stands 
 between the Sovereign and the Parliament, and is 
 bound to be loyal to both, so he stands between his 
 colleagues and the Sovereign, and is bound to be loyal 
 to both. 
 
 CXXVIII. 
 
 In the ordinary administration of the government, 
 the Sovereign personally is, so to speak, behind the 
 scenes ; performing indeed, many personal acts by the 
 Sign-manual, or otherwise, but, in each and all of 
 them, covered by the counter-signature or advice 
 of ministers, who stand between the august Personage 
 and the people. There is, accordingly, no more power, 
 under the form of the British Constitution, to assail a
 
 1 64 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 Monarch in his personal capacity, or to assail through 
 him, the line of succession to the Crown, than there 
 is at chess to put the king in check. In truth, a good 
 deal, though by no means the whole, of the philosophy 
 of the British Constitution is represented in this 
 central point of the wonderful game, against which the 
 only reproach the reproach of Lord Bacon is that 
 it is hardly a relaxation, but rather a serious tax upon 
 the brain. 
 
 The Sovereign in England is the symbol of the 
 nation's unity, and the apex of the social structure ; 
 the maker (with advice) of the laws ; the supreme 
 governor of the Church ; the fountain of justice ; the 
 sole source of honor ; the person to whom all military, 
 all naval, all civil service is rendered. The Sovereign 
 owns very large properties ; receives and holds, in law, 
 the entire revenue of the State ; appoints and dis- 
 misses ministers ; makes treaties, pardons crime, or 
 abates its punishment ; wages war or concludes peace ; 
 summons and dissolves the Parliament ; exercises these 
 vast powers for the most part without any specified 
 restraint of law ; and yet enjoys, in regard to these 
 and every other function, an absolute immunity from 
 consequences. There is no provision in the law of the 
 United Empire, or in the machinery of the Constitu- 
 tion, for calling the Sovereign to account ; and only 
 in one solitary and improbable, but perfectly defined 
 case that of his submitting to the jurisdiction of the
 
 GO VERNMEX T. 165 
 
 Pope is he deprived by statute of the throne. Set- 
 ting aside that peculiar exception, the offspring of a 
 necessity still freshly felt when it was made, the Con- 
 stitution might seem to be founded on the belief of 
 a real infallibility in its head. Less, at any rate, cannot 
 be said than this. Regal right has, since the Revolu- 
 tion of 1688, been expressly founded upon contract; 
 and the breach of that contract destroys the title to 
 the allegiance of the subject. But no provision, other 
 than the general rule of hereditary succession, is made 
 to meet either this case, or any other form of political 
 miscarriage or misdeed. It seems as though the genius 
 of the nation would not stain its lips by so much as 
 the mere utterance of such a word ; nor can we put 
 this state of facts into language more justly than by 
 saying that the Constitution would regard the default 
 of the monarch with his heirs, as the chaos of the 
 State, and would simply trust to the inherent energies 
 of the several orders of society for its legal recon- 
 struction. 
 
 CXXIX. 
 
 Of old, the Icing had all his splendors and all his 
 enjoyments weighted by the heavy cares, and very 
 real and rude responsibilities, of government ; and 
 " uneasy lay the head that wore a crown. " It was a 
 truth as old as the time of Troy, when other gods and
 
 166 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 warriors slept, Zeus alone was wakeful. Thus it was 
 that power, and luxury, and, what is far more insid- 
 ious, flattery, were then compensated and left in 
 check. In the British Monarchy, the lodgment of the 
 various parts of this great whole, making up a King's 
 condition, is changed, and their moral equilibrium put 
 in jeopardy. There are still gathered the splendors, 
 the enjoyments, all the notes of homage, all the eager 
 obedience, the anticipation of wishes, the surrender 
 of adverse opinions, the true and loyal defence, and 
 the deference which is factitious and conventional. 
 To be served by all is dangerous ; to be contradicted 
 by none is worse. Taking into view the immense in- 
 crease in the appliances of material ease and luxury, 
 the general result is, that in the private and domestic 
 sphere a Royal will enjoys at this epoch, more nearly 
 than in any past generation, the privileges of a kind 
 of omnipotence. At the same time, the principal' 
 burden of care, and all responsibility for acts of ad- 
 ministration, and for the state of the country, is trans- 
 ferred to the heads of others, and even the voice of 
 the lightest criticism is rarely heard. In these circum- 
 stances it remains singularly true, that the duties of a 
 Court entail in their full scope a serious and irksome 
 task, and that there must be much self-denial, and 
 much merit, in their due discharge. But it is also in 
 other duties, principally remote from the public eye, 
 that the largest scope is afforded for the patient and
 
 GOVERNMENT. 167 
 
 watchful labor in public affairs which, balancing effec- 
 tually mere splendor and enjoyment, secures the true 
 nobleness of kingship against the subtle inroads of 
 selfishness, and raises to their maximum at once the 
 toil, the usefulness, and the influence of the British 
 Throne. Never, probably, under any circumstances, 
 be they favorable as they may, can these reach a higher 
 point of elevation than they had attained by the joint 
 efforts, and during the married life, of Queen Victoria 
 and the Prince Consort. Nor can we well overvalue 
 that addition of masculine energy to female tact and 
 truth which brought the working of British Royalty 
 so neai the standard of ideal excellence. 
 
 cxxx. 
 
 Little are they who gaze from without upon long 
 trains of splendid equipages rolling towards a palace, 
 conscious of the meaning and the force that live in 
 the forms of a Monarchy, probably the most ancient, 
 and certainly the most solid and the most revered, in 
 all Europe. The acts, the wishes, the example, of the 
 sovereign of England are a real power. An immense 
 reverence and a tender affection await upon the person 
 of the one permanent and ever faithful guardian of 
 the fundamental conditions of the Constitution. She 
 is the symbol of law ; she is by law, and setting apart 
 the metaphysics, and the abnormal incidents, of rev-
 
 168 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 olution, the source of power. Parliament and Minis- 
 tries pass, but she abides in life-long duty ; and she 
 is to them as the oak in the forest is to the annual 
 harvest in the field. When the august functions of the 
 Crown are irradiated by intelligence and virtue they 
 are transformed into a higher dignity than words can 
 convey, or Acts of Parliament can confer ; and tradi- 
 tional loyalty, with a generous people, acquires the 
 force (as Mr. Burke says) of a passion and the warmth 
 of personal attachment. 
 
 CXXXI. 
 
 Some men would draw disparaging comparisons 
 between the mediaeval and the modern King. In the 
 person of the first was normally embodied the force 
 paramount over all others in the country, and on him 
 was laid a weight of responsibility and toil so tremen- 
 dous, that his function seemed always to border upon 
 the superhuman ; that his life commonly wore out 
 before the natural term ; and that an indescribable 
 majesty, dignity, and interest surround him in his 
 misfortunes, nay, almost in his degradation ; as for 
 instance, amidst 
 
 " The shrieks of death through Berkeley's roof that 
 
 ring, 
 Shrieks of an agonizing King." 
 
 For this concentration of powe - toil, and liability
 
 GO VERNMEN T. \ 69 
 
 milder realities have now been substituted; and min- 
 isterial responsibility comes between the monarch and 
 every public trial and necessity, like armor between 
 flesh and the spear that would seek to pierce it ; only 
 this is an armor itself also fleshly, at once living and 
 impregnable. It may be said, by an adverse critic, 
 that the Constitutional Monarch is only a depository of 
 power, as an armory is a depository of arms ; but that 
 those who wield the arms, and those alone, constitute 
 the true governing authority. And no doubt this is so 
 far true, that the scheme aims at associating in the 
 work of government with the head of the State the 
 persons best adapted to meet the wants and wishes of 
 the people, under the conditions that the several 
 aspects of supreme power shall be severally allotted ; 
 dignity and visible authority shall lie wholly with the 
 wearer of the crown, but labor mainly, and responsi- 
 bility wholly, with its sen-ants. From hence, without 
 doubt, it follows that should differences arise, it is the 
 will of those in whose minds the work of government 
 is elaborated, that in the last resort must prevail. 
 From mere labor, power may be severed ; but not from 
 labor joined with responsibility. This capital and vital 
 consequence flows out of the principle that the political 
 action of the Monarch shall everywhere be mediate and 
 conditional upon the concurrence of confidential ad- 
 visers. It is impossible to reconcile any, even the 
 smallest abatement of this doctrine, with the peifect
 
 i/o THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 absolute immunity of the Sovereign from consequences. 
 There can be in England no disloyalty more gross, as 
 to its effects, than the superstition which affects to 
 assign to the Sovereign a separate, and, so far as 
 separate, transcendental sphere of political action. 
 Anonymous servility has, indeed in these last days, 
 limited such a doctrine ; but it is no more practicable 
 to make it thrive in England, than to rear the jungles 
 of Bengal on Salisbury Plain. 
 
 CXXXII. 
 
 The British Cabinet is essentially the regulator of 
 the relations between Kings, Lords, and Commons; 
 exercising functionally the powers of the first, and 
 incorporated, in the persons of its members, with the 
 second and the third. It is, therefore, itself a great 
 power. But let no one suppose it is the greatest. In 
 a balance nicely poised, a small weight may turn the 
 scale ; and the helm that directs the ship is not stronger 
 than the ship. It is a cardinal maxim of the modern 
 British Constitution, that the House of Commons is 
 the greatest of the powers of the State. It might, by 
 a base subserviency fling itself at the feet of a Monarch 
 or a Minister ; it might, in a season of exhaustion 
 allow the slow persistence of the Lords, ever eyeing it 
 as Lancelot was eyed by Modred, to invade its just 
 province by baffling its action at some time propitious
 
 GOVERNMENT. 17 1 
 
 for the purpose. But no Constitution can anywhere 
 keep either Sovereign, or Assembly, or nation, true to 
 its trust and to itself. All that can be done has been 
 done. The Commons are armed with ample powers 
 of self-defence. If they use their powers properly, 
 they can only be mastered by a recurrence to the 
 people, and the way in which the appeal can succeed 
 is by the choice of another House of Commons more 
 agreeable to the national temper. Thus the sole ap- 
 peal from the verdict of the House is a rightful appeal 
 to those from whom it received its commission. 
 
 CXXXIII. 
 
 The British Cabinet and all the present relations of 
 the Constitutional powers of England, have grown into 
 their present dimensions, and settled into their present 
 places, not as the fruit of a philosophy, not in the 
 effort to give effect to an abstract .principle ; but by 
 the silent action of forces, invisible and insensible, the 
 structure has come up into the view of all the world. 
 
 When men repeat the proverb which teaches us that 
 " marriages are made in heaven," what they mean 
 is that, in the most fundamental of all social opera- 
 tions, the building up of the family, the issues involved 
 in the nuptial contract, lie beyond the best exercise of 
 human thoughts, and the unseen forces of providential 
 government make good the defect in our imperfect
 
 172 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 capacity. Even so would it seem to have been in that 
 curious marriage of competing influences and powers, 
 which brings about the composite harmony of the 
 British Constitution. More, it must be admitted, than 
 any other, it leaves open doors which lead into blind 
 alleys for it presumes, more boldly than any other, the 
 good sense and good faith of those who work it. If 
 unhappily, these personages meet together, on the 
 great arena of a nation's fortunes, as jockeys meet 
 upon a race-course, each to urge to the uttermost, 
 as against the others, the power of the animal he 
 rides, gr as counsel in a court, each to procure the 
 victory of his client, without respect to any other inter- 
 est or right, then this boasted Constitution is neither 
 more nor less than a heap of absurdities. The un- 
 doubted competency of each reaches even to the 
 paralysis or destruction of the rest. The House of 
 Commons is entitled to refuse every shilling of the 
 supplies. That House, and also the House of Lords, 
 is entitled to refuse its assent to every bill presented 
 to it. The Crown is entitled to make a thousand 
 Peers to-day and as many to-morrows ; it may dissolve 
 all and every Parliament before it proceeds to busi- 
 ness ; may pardon the most atrocious crimes ; may 
 declare war against all the world ; may conclude 
 treaties involving unlimited responsibilities and even 
 vast expenditure, without the consent, nay, without the 
 knowledge of Parliament, and this not merely in sup-
 
 GOVERNMENT. 173 
 
 port or in development, but in reversal, of policy 
 already known to and sanctioned by the nation. But 
 the assumption is that the depositories of power will 
 all respect one another; will evince a consciousness 
 that they are working in a common interest for a 
 common end ; that they will be possessed, together 
 with not less than an average intelligence, of not less 
 than an average sense of equity and of the public 
 interest and rights. When these reasonable expecta- 
 tions fail, then, it must be admitted, the British Con- 
 stitution will be in danger. Apart from such contin- 
 gencies, the offspring only of folly or of crime, this 
 Constitution is peculiarly liable to subtle change. Not 
 only in the long run, as man changes between youth 
 and age, but also, like the human body, with a quoti- 
 dian life, a periodical recurrence of ebbing and flowing 
 tides. Its old particles daily run to waste, and give 
 place to new. What is hoped among us is, that which 
 has usually been found, that evils will become palpable 
 before they have grown to be intolerable. 
 
 CXXXIV. 
 
 The modern English character reflects the English 
 Constitution in this, that it abounds in paradox; that 
 it possesses every strength, but holds it tainted with 
 every weakness ; that it seems alternately both to rise 
 above and to fall below the standard of average hu-
 
 174 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 manity; that there is no allegation of praise or blame 
 which, in some one of the aspects of its many-sided 
 formation, it does not deserve ; that only in the midst 
 of much default, and much transgression, the people 
 of this United Kingdom either have heretofore estab- 
 lished, or will hereafter establish, their title to be 
 reckoned among the children of men, for the eldest 
 born of an imperial race. 
 
 cxxxv. 
 
 The students of the future, in the department of 
 political philosophy, will have much to say in the way 
 of comparison between American and British institu- 
 tions. The relationship between these two is unique 
 in history. It is always interesting to trace and to 
 compare Constitutions, as it is to compare languages : 
 especially in such instances as those of the Greek 
 States and the Italian Republics, or the diversified 
 forms of the feudal system in the different countries of 
 Europe. But there is no parallel in all the records of 
 the world to the case of that prolific British mother, 
 who has sent forth her innumerable children over all the 
 earth to be the founders of half-a-dozen empires. She, 
 with her progeny, may almost claim to constitute a 
 kind of universal church in polities. But among 
 these children, there is one whose place in the world's 
 eye and in history is superlative : it is the American
 
 GO VERNMENT. 
 
 '75 
 
 Republic. She is the eldest born. She has, taking 
 the capacity of rfer hand into view as well as its mere 
 measurement, a natural base for the greatest con- 
 tinuous empire ever established by man. And it may 
 be well here to mention what has not always been 
 sufficiently observed, that the distinction between con- 
 tinuous empire and empire severed and dispersed over 
 sea, is vital. The development which the republic has 
 effected, has been unexampled in its rapidity and force. 
 While other countries have doubled, or at most trebled, 
 their population, she has risen, during one simple cen- 
 tury of freedom, in round numbers from two millions 
 to forty-five. As to riches, it is reasonable to establish 
 from the decennial stages of the progress thus far 
 achieved, a series for the future ; and, reckoning upon 
 this basis, I suppose that the very next census, in the 
 year 1880, will exhibit her to the world as certainly the 
 wealthiest of all the nations. The huge figure of a 
 thousand millions sterling, which may be taken roundly 
 as the annual income of the United Kingdom, has been 
 reached at a surprising rate ; a rate which may perhaps 
 be best expressed by saying that, if we could have 
 started forty or fifty years ago from zero, at the rate of 
 our recent annual increment, we should now have 
 reached our present position. But while we have been 
 advancing with this portentous rapidity, America is 
 passing by as if in a canter. Yet even now the work 
 of searching the soil and the bowels of the territory,
 
 176 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 and opening out her enterprise throughout its vast ex- 
 panse, is in its infancy. The England and the America 
 of the present are probably the two strongest nations 
 of the world. But there can hardly be a doubt, as 
 between the America and the England of the future, 
 that the daughter, at some no very distant time, will, 
 whether fairer or less fair, be unquestionably yet 
 stronger than the mother. 
 
 " O matre forti filia fortior." 
 
 But all this pompous detail of material triumphs, 
 whether for the one or for the other, is worse than 
 idle, unless the men of the two countries shall remain, 
 or shall become, greater than the mere things that 
 they produce, and shall know how to regard those 
 things simply as tools and materials for the at- 
 tainments of the highest purposes of their being. 
 Ascending, then, from the ground floor of material 
 industry towards the regions in which these purposes 
 are to be wrought out, it is for each nation to consider 
 how far its institutions have reached a state, in which 
 they can contribute their maximum to the store of 
 human happiness and excellence. 
 
 And for the political student all over the world it 
 will be beyond anything curious as well as useful, to 
 examine with what diversities, as well as what resem- 
 blances of apparatus, the two greater branches of a 
 race born to command have been minded or induced, 
 or constrained to work out, in their sea-severed seats,
 
 GO VERNMEN T. 177 
 
 their political destinies according to the respective 
 laws appointed for them. 
 
 CXXXVI. 
 
 In many and the most fundamental respects, Eng- 
 land and America still carry in undiminished, perhaps 
 in increasing, clearness, the notes of resemblance that 
 beseem a parent and a child. Both wish for self-gov- 
 ernment ; and however grave the drawbacks under 
 which in one or both it exists, the two have, among 
 the great nations of the world, made the most effectual 
 advances towards the true aim of rational politics. 
 
 They are similarly associated in their fixed idea that 
 the force, in which all government takes effect, is to 
 be constantly backed, and, as it were, illuminated, by 
 thought in speech and writing. The ruler of St. Paul's 
 time "bare the sword." Bare it, as the apostle says, 
 with a mission to do right ; but he says nothing of 
 any duty, or any custom, to show by reason that he 
 was doing right. Our two governments, whatsoever 
 they do, have to give reasons for it ; not reasons which 
 will convince the unreasonable, but reasons which on 
 the whole will convince the average mind, and carry 
 it unitedly forwards in a course of action, often, though 
 not always wise, and carrying within itself provisions, 
 where it is unwise, for the correction of its own unwis-
 
 1 78 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 dom before it grow into an intolerable rank ness. They 
 are governments, not of force only, but of persuasion. 
 Many more are the concords, and not less vital than 
 these of the two nations, as expressed in their institu- 
 tions. They alike prefer the practical to the abstract. 
 They tolerate opinion, with only a reserve on behalf 
 of decency ; and they desire to confine coercion to the 
 province of action, and to leave thought, as such, 
 entirely free. They set a high value on liberty for its 
 own sake. They desire to give full scope to the prin- 
 ciples of self-reliance in the people, and they deem 
 self help to be immeasureably superior to help in any 
 other form ; to be the only help, in short, which ought 
 not to be continually, or periodically, put upon its 
 trial, and required to make good its title. They mis- 
 trust and mislike the centralization of power; and 
 they cherish municipal, local, even parochial liberties, 
 as nursery grounds, not only for the production here 
 and there of able men, but for the general training 
 of public virtue and independent spirit. They regard 
 publicity as % the vital air of politics, through which 
 alone, in its freest circulation, opinions can be thrown 
 into common stock for the good of all and the balance 
 of relative rights and claims can be habitually and 
 peaceably adjusted. It would be difficult, in the case 
 of any other pair of nations, to present an assemblage 
 of traits at once so common and so distinctive, as has 
 been given in this probably imperfect enumeration.
 
 GO VERNMEN T. 179 
 
 There were, however, the strongest reasons why 
 America could not grow into a reflection or repetition 
 of England. Passing from a narrow island to a conti- 
 nent almost without bounds, the colonists at once and 
 vitally altered their conditions of thought, as well as 
 of existence, in relation to the most important and 
 most operative of all social facts, the possession of the 
 soil. In England inequality lies imbedded in the very 
 base of the social structure ; in America it is a late, 
 incidental, unrecognized product, not of tradition, but 
 of industry and wealth, as they advance with various 
 and, of necessity, unequal steps. Heredity, seated as 
 an idea in the heart's core of Englishmen, and sus- 
 taining far more than it is sustained by. those of our 
 institutions which express it, was as truly absent from 
 the intellectual and moral store, with which the colo- 
 nists traversed the Atlantic, as if it had been some 
 forgotten article in the bills of lading that made up 
 their cargoes. Equality, combined with liberty, and 
 renewable at each descent from one generation to 
 another, like a lease with stipulated breaks, was the 
 groundwork of their social creed. 
 
 CXXXVII. 
 
 If there be those in England who think that Amer- 
 ican democracy means public levity and intemperance, 
 or a lack of skill and sagacity in politics, or the ab-
 
 i8o THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 sence of self-command and self-denial, let them bear 
 in mind a few of the most salient and recent facts 
 of history which may profitably be recommended to 
 their reflections. We emancipated a million of negroes 
 by peaceful legislation ; America liberated four or 
 five millions by a bloody civil war; yet the industry 
 and exports of the Southern States are maintained, 
 while those of our negro colonies have dwindled ; the 
 South enjoys all its franchises, but we have, proh 
 pudor ! found no better method of providing for peace 
 and order in Jamaica, the chief of our islands, than 
 by the hard and vulgar, even where needful, expedient 
 of abolishing entirely its representative institutions. 
 
 The Civil War compelled the States, both North and 
 South, to train and embody a million and a half of 
 men, and to present to view the greatest, instead of 
 the smallest, armed forces in the world. Here, there 
 was supposed to arise a double danger. First, that 
 on a sudden cessation of the war, military life and 
 habits could not be shaken off, and, having become 
 rudely and widely predominant, would bias the country 
 towards an aggressive policy, or, still worse, would find 
 vent in predatory or revolutionary operations. Sec- 
 ondly, that a military caste would grow up with its 
 habits of exclusiveness and command, and would influ- 
 ence the tone of politics in a direction adverse to 
 republican freedom. But both apprehensions proved 
 to be wholly imaginary. The innumerable soldiery
 
 GO VERNMEN T. 1 8 1 
 
 was at once dissolved. Cincinnatus, no longer an 
 unique example, became the commonplace of every 
 day, the type and mould of a nation. The whole 
 enormous mass quietly resumed the habits of social 
 life. The generals of yesterday were the editors, the 
 secretaries, and the solicitors of to-day. The just 
 jealousy of the State gave life to the now forgotten 
 maxim of Judge Blackstone, who denounced as peri- 
 lous the erection of a separate profession of arms in 
 a free country. The standing army, expanded by the 
 heat of civil contest to gigantic dimensions, settled 
 down again into the framework of a miniature with the 
 returning temperature of civil life, and became a power 
 well nigh invisible, from its minuteness, amidst the 
 powers which sway the movements of a society, ex- 
 ceeding forty millions. 
 
 More remarkable still was the financial sequel to 
 the great conflict. The internal taxation for Federal 
 purposes, which before its commencement had been 
 unknown, was raised, in obedience to an exigency of 
 life and death, so as to exceed every present and every 
 past example. It pursued and worried all the trans- 
 actions of life. The interest of the American debt grew 
 to be the highest in the world, and the capital touched 
 five hundred and sixty millions sterling. Here was 
 provided for the faith and patience of the people a 
 touchstone of extreme severity. 
 
 In England, at the close of the great French war,
 
 182 ' THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 the propertied classes who were supreme in Parlia- 
 ment, at once rebelled against the Tory Government, 
 and refused to prolong the Income Tax even for a 
 single year. We talked big, both then and now, about 
 the payment of our National Debt ; but sixty-three 
 years have since elapsed, all of them except two, called 
 years of peace, and we have reduced the huge total 
 by about one-ninth ; that is to say, by little over one 
 hundred millions, or scarcely more than one million 
 and a half a year. This is the conduct of a State 
 elaborately digested into orders and degrees, famed 
 for wisdom and forethought, and consolidated by a long 
 experience. But America continued not long to bear, 
 on her unaccustomed and still smarting shoulders, the 
 burden of the war taxation. In twelve years she has 
 reduced her debt by one hundred and fifty-eight mil- 
 lions sterling, or at the rate of thirteen millions for 
 every year. In each twelve months she had done 
 what we did in eight years ; her self-command, self- 
 denial, and wise forethought for the future have been, 
 to say the least, eight-fold ours. These are facts which 
 redound greatly to her honor ; and the historian will 
 record with surprise that an enfranchised nation toler- 
 ated burdens which in England a selected class, pos- 
 sessed of the representation, did not dare to face, and 
 that the most unmitigated democracy known to the 
 annals of the world resolutely reduced at its own cost 
 prospective liabilities of the State, which the aristo-
 
 BELIEF. 183 
 
 cratic, and plutocratic, and monarchical government 
 of the United Kingdom has been contented ignobly 
 to hand over to posterity. And such facts should be 
 told out. It is our fashion so to tell them, against as 
 well as for ourselves ; 'and the record of them may 
 some day be among the means of stirring us up 
 to a policy more worthy of the name and fame of 
 England. 
 
 CXXXVIII. 
 
 As in wines, it is one question what mode of compo- 
 sition will produce a commodity drinkable in the 
 country of origin, and what further provision may be 
 requisite in order that the product, may bear a sea 
 voyage without turning into vinegar so, in the matter of 
 belief, select individuals may subsist on a poor, thin, 
 sodden and attenuated diet, which would simply be 
 death to the multitude. Theories, then, may suffice for 
 the moral wants of a few intellectual and cultivated 
 men, which cannot be propagated, and cannot be trans- 
 mitted ; which cannot bear the wear and tear of constant 
 re-delivery; which cannot meet the countless and ever- 
 shifting exigencies of our nature taken at large ; which 
 cannot do the rough work of the world. The colors, 
 that will endure through the term of a butterfly's exis- 
 tence, would not avail to carry the works of Titian 
 down from generation to generation and century to 
 century. Think of twelve agnostics, or twelve pan the-
 
 1 84 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 ists, or twelve materialists setting out from modern 
 Jerusalem to do the work of the twelve apostles! 
 
 Let it not be supposed that principles and opinions 
 always go together, any more than sons are always 
 like their parents. Principles are indeed, the fathers 
 of opinions ; and they will ultimately be able to assert 
 the lineaments of the descendants. Men, individually 
 and in series, commonly know their own opinions, but 
 are often ignorant of their own principles. Yet in the 
 long run it is the principles that govern ; and the 
 opinions must go to the wall. 
 
 But this is a work of time ; in many cases of much 
 time. With some men, nothing less than life suffices 
 . for it; and with some, life itself is not sufficient. 
 
 CXXXIX. 
 
 Inquiry is a road to truth, and authority is a road 
 to truth. Identical in aim, diverse in means and in 
 effect, but both resting on the same basis. Inquiry is 
 the more normal, the more excellent way; but penury 
 of time and faculty absolutely precludes the human 
 being from obtaining, by this truly royal road, a suffi- 
 cient stock of knowledge for the necessary action of 
 life ; and authority is the humble but useful substitute.
 
 BELIEF. 185 
 
 Nor is the distinction between them in any sense one 
 of antagonism ; on the contrary, there is, besides the 
 oneness of their ultimate sanction, this notable affinity 
 betwixt them : the knowledge, referable to action, which 
 we obtain by inquiry, as altogether or commonly proba- 
 ble knowledge ; and authority is probable knowledge 
 too. Of course both the authority and the inquiry 
 must be regulated by the laws that belong to their 
 respective kinds. The rule for us, in whatever case, 
 is one : to make the best practicable use of the best 
 available means for thinking truly and acting rightly, 
 using inquiry where we can, accepting authority where 
 we cannot effectually use inquiry. 
 
 CXL. 
 
 Belief in God surely implies much more than that he 
 is superhuman and imperceptible. It seems to involve, 
 as a general rule, the following particulars : 
 
 First, that he is conceived of as possessing in him- 
 self all attributes whatsoever which conduce to excel- 
 lence, and these in a degree indefinitely beyond the 
 power of the human mind to measure. 
 
 Second, that over and above what he is in himself, 
 he is conceived of as standing in certain relations to 
 us ; as carrying on a moral government of the world. 
 He is held to prescribe and favor what is right ; to 
 forbid and regard with displeasure what is wrong ; and
 
 i86 THE MIGHT OF EIGHT. 
 
 to dispose the course of events in such a way that, in 
 general, and upon the whole, there is a tendency of 
 virtue to bring satisfaction and happiness, and of vice 
 to entail the reverse of these, even when appearances, 
 and external advantages, might not convey such an 
 indication. 
 
 Third, the same wide consent of mankind, which 
 sustains belief in a God, and invests him with a cer- 
 tain character, has everywhere perceptibly, though 
 variably and sometimes with a great vagueness of out- 
 line, carried the sphere of the moral government which 
 it assigns to him beyond the limits of the visible world. 
 In that larger region, though it lie beyond the scope 
 of our present narrow view, the belief of mankind has 
 been, that the laws of this moral government would 
 be more clearly developed, and the normal relation 
 between good and evil, and between their respective 
 consequences, fully established. 
 
 Fourth, therefore, along with belief in a God, we 
 have to register the acknowledgment of another truth, 
 the doctrine of a future state of man, which has had 
 a not less ample acceptance in all the quarters from 
 whence the elements of authority can be drawn ; and 
 has indeed, in the darkest periods and places of re- 
 ligion, been found difficult to eradicate, even when the 
 Divine Idea had been so broken up and degraded, as 
 to seem divested of all its most splendid attributes.
 
 BELIEF. 13; 
 
 CXLI. 
 
 The servant in the parable who wrapped his talent 
 in a napkin, and thus (as it were) gave it away from 
 his own use, exercised his private judgment just as 
 much as the fellow-servant who employed it constantly 
 and steadily, and obtained large increase from it. He 
 used his private judgment as much, only he used it in 
 a wrong direction ; just as if a free citizen of England 
 were to repair to a country where slavery prevails, and 
 there to sell himself into bondage. 
 
 CXLI I. 
 
 Believers in Christ, casting anchor, so to speak, in 
 an older dispensation, have uniformly acknowledged 
 that God had" at sundry times and in divers manners " 
 made himself known to the rational mind of man by 
 a special communication or inspiration, over and above 
 that knowledge of himself which he had imparted by 
 the books of nature and of life or experience. And 
 this finally in the gospel. They therefore have held 
 themselves to be in possession of a special treasure 
 of divine knowledge, communicated in a manner which 
 carried with it a peculiar certainty ; and such a belief, 
 called the belief in inspiration, and pervading the 
 whole of Christendom from the very first, is of itself
 
 i88 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 a material amplification of the idea conveyed by the 
 mere name of Christianity. 
 
 CLXIII. 
 
 The human mind is accustomed to play tricks with 
 itself in every form ; and one of the forms in which 
 it most frequently resorts to this operation, is when it 
 attenuates the labor of thought, and evades the respon- 
 sibility of definite decision, by the adoption of a gen- 
 eral word that we purposely keep undefined to our 
 own consciousness. So men admire the British Con- 
 stitution without knowing or inquiring what it is, and 
 profess Christianity but decline to say or think what 
 it means. In such cases the general word, instead 
 of indicating, like the title of an author's works, a 
 multitude of particulars, becomes a blind, which, on the 
 one hand, excludes knowledge, and, on the other, 
 leaves us imbued with the notion that we possess it. 
 
 And my contention is that whatever be the momen- 
 tary fashion of the day in which we live, that same 
 tradition and testimony of the ages, which commends 
 Christianity to us, has not been a chimera or a cha- 
 meleon, but has had from the first, up to a certain 
 point, of development, one substantially definite mean- 
 ing for the word, a meaning of mental as well as moral 
 significance ; and has, as a matter of history, expressed 
 this meaning in the creeds. This Christianity has
 
 CONSISTENCY. 189 
 
 shed off from it, on this side and on that, after debate 
 and scrutiny, and furthermore after doubt and even 
 sometimes convulsion, all the conceptions irreconcil- 
 ably hostile to its own essence, by a standing provision 
 as normal as are the reparatory processes of material 
 nature ; and has been handed on continuously in 
 uniformity of life, though not, it may be, in uniformity 
 of health. So that reason requires us, when we speak 
 of Christianity, to expound the phrase agreeably to 
 history, if we mean to claim on its behalf, the authority 
 of civilized man, since it is to the expounded phrase, 
 and not the bare shell, that that authority attaches. 
 It is in this sense what the visible church also 
 claims to be, a city set on a .hill ; not, indeed, a city 
 within walls that can neither grow nor dwindle, but 
 yet a city widely spread, with a fixed heart and centre, 
 if with a fluctuating outline ; a mass alike unchange- 
 able ; perceptible, and also determinate, not absolutely 
 or mathematically ; but in a degree sufficient for its 
 providential purpose in the education of mankind. 
 
 CXLIV. 
 
 Who is to judge between the man that is consistent 
 in developing error, and the man whose inconsistency 
 preserves to him fragments of truth, which by more of 
 logical precision and boldness he would lose.
 
 ipo THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 CXLV. 
 
 When the Austrians and Montenegrins were fighting 
 against the Turks, allies of the French, on a certain 
 occasion a handful of men had to fly for their lives. 
 Two Austrians were among them, of whom one had 
 the misfortune to be what is called stout. When the 
 
 
 
 party had run some way, he showed signs of extreme 
 distress, and said he would throw himself on the 
 ground and take his chance. 
 
 "Very well," said the fellow fugitive, who was a 
 Mt ntenegrin, " do not lose any time, say your prayers, 
 make the sign of the cross, and I will then cut off your 
 head for you." 
 
 As might he expected, this was not at all the view of 
 the Austrian in his proposal ; and the friendly offer had 
 such an effect upon him, that he resumed the race, and 
 reached a place of safety. 
 
 CXLVI. 
 
 Is there not among civilized men a solid and 
 established (though it may be limited) concurrence 
 of judgment upon many questions for (example, 
 of human character; upon the characters say, of 
 Phocion, of Catiline, of Saint Louis, of Washington, 
 of Wellington, of Mrs. Fry ? Is that argument worth- 
 less or visionary ? No ; yet is there any one of us
 
 KNOWLEDGE. 191 
 
 so presumptuous, so irrational, as to say that he has 
 ever really comprehended any single human character? 
 Can we deal with its subtle ingredients as the scales 
 of Zeus weighed the contending fates of Hector and 
 Achilles, and determine what shall descend and what 
 shall kick the beam ? I will go farther and say, can 
 we completely judge any simple human action ? Nay, 
 passing into the region of nature with its boasted 
 certainty, do we comprehend the growth of a single 
 blade of grass in a single field on the surface of the 
 earth ? 
 
 Yet one step further. The mathematician has a for- 
 mula which asserts that nothing divided by nothing, 
 or rather which has zero for numerator and zero for 
 denominator () is equal to anything. He abides by 
 this formula : he finds it verified by results. But may 
 it not be permitted us to doubt whether, in the strict 
 sense of the term, he " comprehends " it : whether it does 
 not descend into the region of the infinitesimal farther 
 than human wit can follow it ? The truth is, as far 
 as experience and reflection have enabled me to grasp 
 it, that small indeed is the number of subjects or 
 ideas which, in the sense of absolute comprehension, 
 mankind have ever comprehended ; that what is given 
 to us, as a general rule, is comprehension in degree 
 comprehension by contact with a subject at certain 
 of its points, which in a manner give the outline, as 
 the naturalist constructs the creature from the bone
 
 1 92 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 comprehension not absolute, but relative to our state 
 and wants ; limited and thus teaching humility, but 
 adequate to establish reasonable conclusions, and to 
 work out those laws of probable evidence which, sus- 
 tained by our experience of their operation, fit it to 
 be the guide of life. In this, the old Christian reading 
 of the laws of knowledge, our intellectual discipline is 
 everywhere intertwined with moral teaching, and the 
 employments farthest from the direct subject-matter 
 of religion minister to its highest purposes, like the 
 Queen of the South bringing her choicest gifts to the 
 elect King of the people of God. 
 
 CXLVII. 
 
 There are sciences in which light is entirely with the 
 few whom we call experts ; for example, pure mathe- 
 matics, and I am disposed to add, philology. There 
 are sciences in which a little light is given to all, by 
 all, meaning always all such as are not without good 
 sense : as such in the material order, I might name 
 medicine ; still more, when we pass out of the material 
 order, in the three great branches of politics, morals 
 and religion. In these branches of knowledge it is 
 not possible to lay down a fast and clear line between 
 experts and non-experts, more than between day and 
 night. With mathematicians or philologists we are 
 slow to interfere, but with those who teach in politics,
 
 KNO W LEDGE. 193 
 
 in morals, or in religion, we interfere very freely. In 
 these departments especially it is that ignorant self- 
 assertion prevails, but in these also, it is that the most 
 fatal dangers attend upon an invasion of just liberty; 
 and, as is common in human affairs, that which is in 
 itself an excess counteracts or neutralizes another and 
 opposite excess, yet more injurious. 
 
 CXLVIII. 
 
 The non-expert of average qualities in modern Chris- 
 tendom, has a general knowledge of the subject-matter 
 in politics, morals and religion, not in the scientific 
 forms, but yet in the elementary notions which those 
 scientific forms are intended to methodize, conserve, 
 develop, and apply. 
 
 And woe were it to him, if he were not thus far at 
 least equipped. For he has come into a world where 
 he finds his life conditioned by the family and the 
 State, by the Bible and the Christian Church ; which 
 touch him at a thousand points, and take a large share 
 in the government of his life. As food and liquids 
 are a necessity for all, nature provides all with some 
 knowledge how to eat and drink. As society, personal 
 duty, and religion make urgent demands on him, some 
 of which cannot be rejected, while the rest are not 
 always easy to reject, nature does not leave him 
 wholly destitute of the primary instruments for hand-
 
 194 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 ling these subjects in the practical forms suited to his 
 condition, and he is thus placed in more or less of 
 possible relation to their more developed aspects. 
 Such knowledge as he has of his own disposes and 
 helps him to recognize authority, to recognize an 
 authority that proceeds both from experts and from 
 the race ; for few will assert that St. Augustine wrote 
 nonsense when he wrote the remarkable though inde- 
 terminate words : securus judicat orbis terrarum. 
 
 CXLIX. 
 
 He who argues against the Hedonist, that there is 
 such a thing discerned or discernible by men as good 
 apart from pleasure, asserts nothing for himself which 
 he does not assert for humanity at large. All or most 
 faculties may indeed enlarge, multiply, and vary their 
 powers by vigorous and judicious exercise ; or may 
 stunt and finally lose them by disuse. But the starting- 
 point is the same, if the goal is not, and the race is 
 run along level ground on even terms. By intuition 
 I only mean mental sight, the faculty common to us 
 all. I do not ask how far it is an original power, or 
 how far it is one trained or reached by the exercise 
 of other powers. How we know God, this is hardly 
 the place to inquire. But it may be the place to say 
 I cannot assert any method of knowing him otherwise 
 than by operations in strict conformity with the general
 
 KNOWLEDGE. 195 
 
 laws of our nature. I agree with the deceased Mr. 
 Dalgairus, "that my knowledge of God is as real 
 as my knowledge of man ; " and bold, or more than 
 bold is he who affirms that his knowledge of man is 
 limited to what his senses can discern in man. 
 
 CL. 
 
 In every religious body without exception, there 
 forms itself a stalactite, so to speak, of special tradi- 
 tion j an atmosphere, in which its members habitually 
 live and breathe, and according to which all their 
 ideas arrange and shape themselves. In every case 
 this tradition lapses and slides far away from the 
 truth of history For it is not formed upon facts alone, 
 but upon passions, sympathies, prepossessions : it is 
 the offspring of man's promiscuous nature, and not 
 only of the faculties given him for searching out the 
 truth ; and it is matter of much difficulty, even where 
 no authoritative inhibition intervenes, to get out of 
 the mist and the dusk which this tradition sheds 
 around us, and to look at the face of the things 
 as they are in themselves, and ' after they have been 
 stripped of their spurious integument 
 
 CLI. 
 
 There is excess as well as defect in the use of
 
 1 96 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 authority ; and of this excess we are guilty when we 
 suffer the love of knowledge to grow cold, when we 
 cease to court the genial warmth imparted by a real 
 basking in the sun of truth, and when we are satisfied 
 with a lazy, servile acquiescence in the opinions of 
 other men. The proper function of authority is to 
 
 * 
 
 enlarge, not to contract, our horizon. It is the func- 
 tion of a telescope, which enables us to see what we 
 could not see at all ; but what, if we could see it 
 with the naked eye, we should, I suppose, see better. 
 
 CLII. 
 
 Authority is not an ideal or normal, but a practical 
 or working, standard. It may be thought, in the case 
 of a being whose nature is based on intelligence and 
 freedom, to present an anomaly ; it certainly presents 
 a limitation. But not (in mathematical phrase) a con- 
 stant limitation. There is no point, at which we may 
 not throw back the boundary, and enlarge the sphere 
 of direct knowledge, and of conviction and action 
 founded thereupon. There is no point, at which we 
 ought not to so throw it back, according to our means 
 and opportunities. Life should be spent in a strong 
 continuous effort to improve the apparatus for the 
 guidance of life, both in thought and action. We must 
 ever be trying to know more and more what are the 
 things to be believed and done. In pursuing the end,
 
 KNOWLEDGE. 197 
 
 the exercise of free intelligent thought may, indeed, 
 greatly enlarge the sphere of authority. For example, 
 in learning facts of physical science, as when we in- 
 quire about the results obtained by the " Challenger ; " 
 or in becoming more largely acquainted with the laws 
 of health from the mouth of a judicious physician. 
 This duty, however," is covered and overlapped by 
 another duty : the duty of constantly endeavoring, 
 within the limit of our means, to corroborate or test 
 authority by inquiry, which finally means to supplant 
 trust by knowledge. And this duty is supreme. But 
 it is insidiously dogged by the danger of mistaking the 
 limit of our means, and thus supplanting trust, not by 
 our knowledge, but by our ignorance dressed out in 
 the garb of knowledge. 
 
 CLIII. 
 
 The human mind is capable of taking a more close 
 and accurate survey of a limited and homogeneous 
 subject-matter than when it embraces at once a vast 
 circumference, a magazine of omne scibile. 
 
 CLIV. 
 
 In the contact between the mind of man and such 
 a subject as the being of God, the best men are not 
 like the poppies in Herodotus, towering far above the
 
 198 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 grain ; they are but as blades of grass, of which no 
 one is greatly taller than his nearest fellows. The dif- 
 ferent elements of competency, are, in different subjects, 
 differently combined ; and their distribution often- 
 times corroborates their force. There is here, too, a 
 competency of the race as well as of the individual : 
 the greatest can know but little, the smallest may know 
 something, and perhaps in a different way. 
 
 CLV. 
 
 If two men meet in argument, one of them desirous 
 to measure fully and accurately the points of strength 
 and weakness on both sides, but especially the points 
 of weakness on his own, and the other with an equal 
 honesty of intention, but with a mental habit formed 
 and hardened under influences which forbid not only 
 any condemnation but even any critical scrutiny of 
 the system he belongs to, they can have no common 
 measure of truth, no means of comprehending one 
 another. They are like men, neither of whom under- 
 stands the language spoken by his adversary. 
 
 CLVI. 
 
 A general revolt against authority, even in matters 
 of opinion, is a childish or anile superstition, not to 
 be excused by the pretext that it is only due to the
 
 KNO W 'LEDGE. 199 
 
 love of freedom cherished in excess. The love of 
 freedom is an essential principle of healthy human 
 action, but is only one of its essential principles. Such 
 a superstition, due only to excess in the love of free- 
 dom, may remind us that we should be burned to 
 cinders were the earth capable of imitating its way- 
 ward denizens, and indulging itself only in an excess 
 of the centripetal force. We may indeed allow that, 
 when personal inquiry has been thorough, unbiased, 
 and entire, it seems a violation of natural law to say 
 that the inquirer should put it aside in deference to 
 others, even of presumably superior qualification. Here 
 there enters into the case a kind of sacred right of 
 insurrection, essential as a condition of human prog- 
 ress. But the number of the cases in which a man 
 can be sure that his own inquiry fulfills these condi- 
 tions is comparatively insignificant. Whenever it falls 
 short of fulfilling them, what may be called the sub- 
 jective speciality of duty disappears ; there remains 
 only the paramount law of allegiance to objective 
 truth, and that law, commonly dealing with probable 
 evidence, binds us to take not that evidence with 
 which we ourselves have most to do, but that which, 
 whether our own or not, offers the smallest among 
 the several likelihoods of error. The common cases 
 of opposition lie not between authority and reasonable 
 conviction, but between authority and fancy ; authority 
 and lame, or weak, or hasty, or shallow, processes oE
 
 200 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 the mind ; authority and sheer self-conceit, or head 
 strong or indolent self-love. 
 
 cLvn. 
 
 Materialism finds in matter the base and source of 
 all that is. Perhaps this is properly and strictly a 
 doctrine of philosophy rather than one touching reli- 
 gion. I am too slightly possessed of the real laws and 
 limits of the conception to speak with, confidence ; but 
 I do not at present see the answer to the following 
 proposition. In our actual world we have presented 
 to us objects and powers including what is wholly differ- 
 ent in fashion and operation from matter. If, then, 
 upon a materialistic basis, we can have " Hamlet " 
 and "Macbeth," the works of Aristotle, the Divina 
 Commedia, the Imitation of Christ, the Gospels and 
 Epistles, there may in the unseen world possibly 
 be reared, on this same basis, all that theology has 
 taught us. And thus materialism would join hands 
 with orthodoxy. Such may be the scheme from one 
 point of view. In common use, and in what is perhaps 
 the most consistent use, I am afraid the phrase is 
 appropriated by those who desire to express, in a 
 form the most crude and crass, the exclusion of deity 
 from the world and the mind of man, and from the 
 government of his life ; and the eventual descent into 
 matter of all that now idly seems to our eyes to be
 
 PATRIOTISM. 201 
 
 above it. Such a materialism is the special danger 
 of comfortable and money-making times. The multi- 
 plication of the appliances of material and worldly 
 life, and the increased command of them through the 
 ever-mounting aggregate of wealth in the favored sec- 
 tions of society, silently but steadily tend to enfeeble 
 in our minds the sense of dependence, and to efface 
 the kindred sense of sin. On the other hand they 
 are as steadily increasing the avenues of desire, and 
 enhancing the absorbing effect of enjoyment. With 
 this comes the deadening of the higher conception 
 of existence, and the disposition to accept the lower, 
 nay, the lowest, one. 
 
 CLVIII. 
 
 Of the whole sum of human life, no small part is 
 that which consists of a man's relations to his country, 
 and his feelings concerning it. 
 
 CLIX. 
 
 The great problem which day and night, in its 
 innumerable forms, must haunt the reflections of every 
 statesman both in England and elsewhere, is how to 
 harmonize the old with the new conditions of society, 
 and to mitigate the increasing stress of time and
 
 202 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 change upon what remains of the ancient and vener- 
 able fabric of the traditional civilization of Europe. 
 
 CLX. 
 
 The principle of conservation and the principle of 
 progress are both sound in themselves ; they have ever 
 existed and must ever exist together in European 
 society, in qualified opposition, but in vital harmony 
 and concurrence ; and for each of those principles it is 
 a matter of deep and essential concern, that iniquities 
 committed under the shelter of its name should be 
 stripped of that shelter. Most of all is this the case 
 where iniquity, towering on high, usurps the name and 
 authority of that heaven to which it lifts its head, and 
 wears the double mask of Order and of Religion. 
 
 CLXI. 
 
 As we follow the course of history, we find that un- 
 wise concession has been the parent of many evils. 
 But unwise resistance is answerable for many more ; 
 nay, it is too frequently the primary source of the 
 mischief ostensibly arising from the opposite policy, 
 because it is commonly unwise resistance which so 
 dams up the stream and accumulates the waters that 
 when the day of their bursting comes, they are abso- 
 lutely ungovernable.
 
 PATRIOTISM. 203 
 
 CLXII. 
 
 The publicist is one, i we rightly comprehend the 
 phrase, who treats of public events and interests, not 
 as isolated facts, but according to the principles they 
 involve and the sources from which they spring, their 
 true place in history, and their office and share in 
 working out their greater problems of the destiny of 
 our race. 
 
 CLXIII. 
 
 Even the sense of duty to one's country cannot have 
 that moral completeness which is necessary for the 
 entire development of human energies, unless the 
 country, which commands the services of her children, 
 has herself obeyed the higher laws of public right 
 
 CLXIV. 
 
 Nothing can compensate a people for the loss of 
 what we may term civic individuality. Without it, the 
 European type becomes politically debased to the 
 Mahometan and Oriental model. 
 
 CLXV. 
 
 It is a fatal condition for a people, when its rulers 
 descend from their high position to influence its pas-
 
 204 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 sions and to trade upon its besetting and traditional 
 infirmities; and when in the dynastic controversies 
 which sway the land, the aim of each party seems to be 
 to stir the national vain-glory to fever heat. Of this 
 mischief the Franco-German war afforded a painful 
 and egregious instance. 
 
 CLXVI. 
 
 It is certain that a new law of nations is gradually 
 taking hold of the mind, and coming to sway the 
 practice, of the world; a law which recognizes indepen- 
 dence, which frowns upon aggression, which favors the 
 pacific, not the bloody settlement of disputes, which 
 aims at permanent and not temporary adjustments ; 
 above all, which recognizes, as a tribunal of paramount 
 authority, the general judgment of civilized mankind. 
 It is hard for all nations to go astray. Their ecumen- 
 ical council sits above the partial passions of those who 
 are misled by interest, and disturbed by quarrel. The 
 greatest triumph of our time, a triumph in a region 
 loftier than that of electricity and steam, will be the 
 enthronement of this idea of Public Right, as the 
 governing idea of European policy; as the common 
 and precious inheritance of all lands, but superior to 
 the passing opinion of any. The foremost among the 
 nations will be that one, which by its conduct shall
 
 PATRlOTISHf. 205 
 
 gradually engender in the mind of the others a fixed 
 belief that it is just. 
 
 CLXVII. 
 
 Finlay says with truth, that the Revolution of Greece 
 was the people's revolution. They exhibited a tenacity 
 and valor, not less than that of the American colonists 
 in their famous revolt, which some despotic sovereigns 
 showed themselves very ready to assist. We need not 
 resent that assistance. It brought to a sharper and 
 speedier crisis a war, which would otherwise have been 
 interminable, between the two most tenacious and self- 
 reliant nations in the world. The same service was 
 done to Turkey by the Three Powers ; and from higher 
 nations. Their abstinence would not have replaced 
 the Sultan in a real sovereignty. Fortresses taken, 
 armies discomfited, would have seemed to be, but 
 would not have been the end. The hill, the forest, and 
 the blue sea would have given refuge to their hardy 
 children ; and the contest would have been dispersedly 
 but resolutely maintained by a race, to whom as yet 
 except in the Black Mountains, no equals in valor have 
 appeared among the enslaved populations of the East. 
 
 But if this was a notable resemblance, there was 
 another yet more notable contrast, between the cases of 
 America and Greece. The populations directly inter-
 
 206 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 ested were not very different in number. Of quick and 
 shrewd intellect there certainly was no lack in either, 
 But the solid statesmen, the upright and noble leaders, 
 who sprang forth in abundance to meet the need in 
 the one case, were sadly wanting in the other. The 
 colonists of America had been reared under a system 
 essentially free; and they rose in resentment against 
 an invasion of freedom but partial, and comparatively 
 slight. The revolted Hellenic population had for four 
 centuries been crushed and ground down under a 
 system, far from uniform in a thousand points, yet 
 uniform only in this, that it was fatal to the growth 
 of the highest excellence. It is in and by freedom 
 only, that adequate preparation for fuller freedom can 
 be made. 
 
 CLXVIII. 
 
 England was an early recipient of the Greek studies 
 in her two Universities ; and the close connection of 
 her rising literature with Italy, ensured her sharing 
 largely in all the impulses which had convulsed or 
 touched the mother-country of our civilization. The 
 marks not only of Italy, but of Boccaccio, are stamped 
 upon English letters from Chaucer onwards. But 
 Chaucer exhibits neither the moral foulness, nor that 
 deep underlying of the pagan spirit, which marks the
 
 LITERATURE. 207 
 
 great Italian novelist. His " goodman of religion," is 
 purely and strongly Christian : 
 
 " But Criste's lore and his apostles twelve, 
 He taught ; but first he followed it himselve." 
 
 One of the very sweetest and most perfect of Chris- 
 tian poems is " The Merle and the Nightingale," by 
 Dunbar. If it be said that this difference was national 
 and not religious, it has also to be replied that England 
 was distinguished from Italy between the thirteenth 
 and the sixteenth centuries, first by a doctrinal reaction 
 among a portion of the people, which found vent in 
 Wiclif and in Lollardism ; secondly, by that strong and 
 truly national reaction against the court and see of 
 Rome, which touched its climax in the proceedings of 
 the reign of Henry VIII. 
 
 CLXIX. 
 
 Shakespeare undoubtedly exhibits a strong reaction 
 against the transcendental spiritualism of the middle 
 ages. It is hard to measure the distance between his 
 mental attitude and that of Thomas a Kempis, or even 
 that of Dante", who was, outwardly at least, a man of 
 the world, a practical politician and partizan. The 
 mediaeval church, or rather that part of it which aimed 
 at fidelity to its mission, in its anxiety to keep religion 
 pure and lofty, had set a gulf between it and the rude
 
 2o8 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 common life. Its idea was lofty ; but it was not the 
 idea of training the human being in every faculty and 
 for every function of the present existence as the nor- 
 mal means of preparing him for a remoter future. 
 Mary it followed ; but Martha, who of necessity must 
 be more typical of the mass of Christians, it rather 
 proscribed. The conditions of earthly existence were 
 renounced, rather than sanctified, in the religious 
 ideal. 
 
 In order to the eventual re-establishment of the 
 balance between the worlds, there required to be a 
 strong reassertion, not only of the reality of this world 
 and of life in it, but of their legitimacy. They, and 
 not the cloister, were the school, in which the Almighty 
 had appointed his children to be taught and reared. 
 Hence came, as the grand characteristic of the Eliza- 
 bethian age, what Mr. Dowden in his " Mind and Art 
 of Shakespeare," calls " devotion to the fact," " at- 
 tainment of the fact," " rich feeling for positive con- 
 crete fact." In this reaching out with one arm, so to 
 speak, of our nature over the whole terrestrial domain, 
 there was a real widening of the scope of life ; and if 
 we look back impartially to the history of that great 
 period, it seems difficult to deny that there was also a 
 great accession of new human energy to the pre-existing 
 stock. It was the office of the other arm to embrace 
 the unseen life ; and probably this grasp was weakened 
 for the time. It could hardly be but that, as in ail
 
 LIT ERA TURE. 209 
 
 human reactions, the function restored should tres- 
 pass on the province of the function previously in too 
 exclusive possession. 
 
 We need not then be surprised that the works of 
 Shakespeare, as a whole, bear a somewhat worldly 
 aspect ; that in their exhibition of human nature, en- 
 tirely unrivalled in all literature for largeness and 
 variety, with depth, so small a portion should be seen 
 on the side lying heavenward ; that saintship, where 
 it appears in Henry VI., is emasculated and inco- 
 herent ; that not only in his early plays, such as 
 " Romeo and Juliet," but in the later and greater 
 works, "Macbeth," "Othello," "Hamlet," "Lear," 
 the deep problems of our life and duty are handled 
 upon a basis which is but negatively Christian. This 
 is the more noteworthy, because a multitude of pas- 
 sages exhibit Shakespeare as an undoubting believer. 
 But religion had been wrenched away from life ; and 
 life, in its recoil, busied with the gathering of all its 
 energies, had not recovered the key to its own har- 
 mony with religion. 
 
 I have endeavored here not to understate the charge, 
 which a Beatrice might be warranted in making against 
 our Elizabethian age. But when we compare the 
 English " Paganism," as exhibited in Shakespeare, with 
 the Italian Paganism, hardened into an Epicurean 
 creed, and sanctioned by the Roman court, or teach- 
 ing with the very same pen, as in the " divine "
 
 2io THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 Aretino, the vilest profligacy and the most orthodox 
 theology, or even as it is exhibited in the splendid 
 poetry of Bojardo and Ariosto, I cannot but think that, 
 in fidelity to history and the fact, we must allow that 
 the comparison is favorable, as far as it goes, to Eng- 
 land and to the Reformation. 
 
 CLXX. 
 
 With great judgment four names have bean chosen 
 by Mr. Dowden as being together typical of the Eliza- 
 bethian age in letters : Shakespeare, Bacon, Spenser, 
 Hooker. The magnificent intellect of Bacon is held 
 by Mr. Dowden to have been profoundly indifferent 
 to religion. Is this truly so ? I do not presume to 
 deny that in Bacon's character "the world that now 
 is," weighed far more than " that which is to come." 
 But I would appeal with some confidence to his ac- 
 count, for example of the fall of man, as a proof that 
 he rendered a solid faith and fealty to the Christian 
 dogma. As for Spenser, it is surely notable that, 
 forming himself as he did upon the poets of the 
 Italian romance, he utterly renounced their unclean- 
 ness, and, as it were, " passed by on the other side." 
 More still it is to be noted that, while far from being 
 the most robust of the band, Spenser is the one who 
 seems to have taken the best aim at the literary res- 
 toration of a true theory of life. All virtue, all duty,
 
 LITERATURE. 211 
 
 all activeness of the human character, are set out by 
 him, under the forms of chivalry, for our instruction : 
 but his ideal knight is Christian to the core. 
 
 " And on his breast a bloody Cross he bore, 
 The dear remembrance of his dying Lord, 
 For whose sweet sake that glorious badge he wore, 
 And dead as living, ever him adored." 
 
 Nor was Hooker less a restorer than his great com- 
 peers. For was it not given to him to recall our 
 theology from the hungry region of mere polemics to 
 that of positive and fruitful truth, and to become the 
 father of a long line of divines, reared undoubtedly 
 in the mere Anglican paddocks, yet not without name 
 and honor in the wide pastures of the Christian world. 
 
 CLXXI. 
 
 Undoubtedly the chief work of Tasso rests upon a 
 basis of Christian facts : yet it may be doubted whether 
 the Christianity of Milton, as exhibited in his works, 
 with all its errors or offences, had not in it far more 
 of the character of a living operative power, holding 
 the allegiance of heart and will. Again, while in the 
 last century, the Yoltairian torrent carried away the 
 mind of France, the three most prominent contem- 
 porary names in English literature, those of Johnson, 
 Burke, and Richardson, were eminently Christian. At
 
 212 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 a later period we can point to at least four great 
 contemporary poets, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey; 
 and Scott, none of them professional or theological, 
 but all markedly Christian. It might be difficult to 
 find a parallel within the Roman pale. Men such as 
 these, it must be remembered, are fountainheads of 
 thought, moulders and makers of the generations yet 
 to come, 
 
 " Poets, whose thoughts enrich the blood o' the world." 
 
 At the present moment, indeed, belief in the revela 
 tion of the unseen, is undergoing, here as elsewhere, 
 a shock which is without parallel, at least in the his- 
 tory of England, for the activity of its manifestations ; 
 and is suffering a sharp retribution for all the errors 
 of all its professors. But it remains to be seen whether 
 what we witness is a structural change, like those 
 which fill the record of geological time, or whether it 
 is the wave of a cyclone, which wastes and submerges, 
 and is then re-absorbed. So it was with the unbelief 
 which Bishop Butler described ; so it may be again. 
 It is, however, even now, my persuasion that so far 
 as men of mature life are concerned, there is exag- 
 geration abroad, if not as to the world of physical 
 science which has not yet become the " mother and 
 mistress of all the sciences" yet as to the world 
 of literature ; still more as to the sphere of those 
 professions, which are mainly conversant with human
 
 LITERATURE. 213 
 
 life and action, and which, as I cannot but think, must 
 best prepare men to judge of any scheme, which has 
 for its object the training of mankind. 
 
 CLXXII. 
 
 In the middle ages we find two great systems of 
 Romance, one of which has Lancelot, the other Orlando 
 for its culminating point ; these heroes being exhibited 
 as the respective specimens in whose characters the 
 fullest development of man, such as he was then con- 
 ceived, was to be recognized. The one put forward 
 Arthur for the visible head of Christendom, signifying 
 and asserting its social unity; the other had Charle- 
 magne. Each arrays, round about the Sovereign, a 
 fellowship of knights. In them, Valor is the servant 
 of Honor ; in an age, in which violence is the besetting 
 danger the protection of the weak is elevated into a 
 first principle of action , and they betoken an order of 
 things in which Force should be only known as allied 
 with virtue, while they historically foreshadow the 
 magnificent aristocracy of mediaeval Europe. The one 
 had Guinevere for the earliest gem of beauty, the other 
 had Angelica. Each of them contained figures of 
 approximation to the knightly model, and in each these 
 figures, though on the whole secondary, yet in certain 
 aspects surpassed it : such were Sir Tristram, Sir Galahad 
 Sir Lamoracke, Sir Gawain, Sir Geraint, in the Arthur-
 
 214 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 ian cycle ; Rinaldo and Ruggiero, with others in the 
 Carlovingian. 
 
 The two were not twin systems, but were rather twin 
 investitures of the same scheme of ideas and feelings. 
 Their consanguinity to the primitive Homeric types is 
 proved by a multitude of analogies of character, and by 
 the commanding place which they assign to Hector as 
 the flower of human excellence. Without doubt, this 
 preference was founded on his supposed moral supe- 
 riority to all his fellows in Homer ; and the secondary 
 prizes of strength, valor, and the like, were naturally 
 allowed to group themselves around what, under the 
 Christian scheme, had become the primary ornament 
 of man. The near relation of the two Cycles one to 
 the other may be sufficiently seen in the leading 
 references we have made ; and it runs into a multitude 
 of details both great and small, of which we can only 
 note a few. In both the chief hero passes through a 
 prolonged term of madness. Judas, in the College of 
 Apostles, is represented under Charlemagne in Gano 
 di Magawza and his house ; who appear, without any 
 development in action, in the Arthurian romances as 
 " the traitours of Magouns," and who are likewise 
 reflected in Sir Modred, Sir Agravain, and others ; 
 while the Mahometan element, which has a natural 
 place ready made for it in a history that acknowledges 
 Charlemagne and France for its centres, finds its way 
 sympathetically into one which is bounded for the
 
 LITERATURE. 215 
 
 most part by the shores of Albion. Both schemes 
 cling to the tradition of the unity of the Empire, as 
 well as of Christendom ; and accordingly, what was 
 historical in Charlemagne is represented, in the case 
 of Arthur, by an imaginary conquest reaching as far 
 as Rome, the capital of the West. Even the sword 
 Durindana has its counterpart in the sword Excalibur. 
 
 CLXXIII. 
 
 We of the nineteenth century read the Carlovingian 
 romance in the pages of Ariosto and Bojardo, who gave 
 to their materials the color of their times, and of a 
 civilization rank in some respects, while still unripe in 
 some others. The genius of poetry was not at the 
 same period applying its transmuting force to the Ro- 
 mance of the Round Table. The date of Sir Thomas 
 Mallory, who lived under Edward IV., is something 
 earlier than that of the great Italian romances ; Eng- 
 land was younger in its political development ; he 
 appears, too, to have been on the whole content with 
 the humble offices of a compiler and a chronicler, and 
 we may conceive that his spirit and diction are still 
 older than his date. The consequence is, that we are 
 brought into more immediate and fresher contact with 
 the original forms of this romance. So that, as they 
 present themselves to us, the Carlovingian cycle is the
 
 216 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 child of the latest middle age, while the Arthurian 
 represents the earlier. 
 
 Much might be said on the specific differences which 
 have thus arisen, and on those which may be due to 
 a more northern and a more southern extraction re- 
 spectively. Suffice it to say that the Romance of the 
 Round Table, far less vivid and brilliant, far ruder as 
 a work of skill and art, has more of the innocence, the 
 emotion, the transparency, the inconsistency of child- 
 hood. Its political action is less specifically Christian 
 than that of the rival scheme, its individual portraits 
 more so. It is more directly and seriously aimed at 
 the perfection of man. It is more free from gloss and 
 varnish; it tells its own tale with more entire sim- 
 plicity. The ascetic element is more strongly, and at 
 the same time more quaintly, developed. It has a 
 higher conception of the nature of woman ; and, like 
 the Homeric poems, it appears to eschew exhibiting 
 her perfections in alliance with warlike force and ex- 
 ploits. So also love, while largely infused into the 
 story, is more subordinate to the exhibition of other 
 qualities. Again the Romance of the Round Table 
 bears witness to a more distinct and keener sense of 
 sin ; and on the whole, a deeper, broader, and more 
 manly view of human character, life, and duty. It is, 
 in effect, more like what the Carlovingian cycle might 
 have be^n, had Dante' moulded it. It hardly needs to 
 be added that it is more mythical; inasmuch as Arthur
 
 LITERATURE. 
 
 217 
 
 of the Round Table is a personage, we fear, wholly 
 doubtful, though not impossible ; while the broad back 
 of the historic Charlemagne, like another Atlas, may 
 well sustain a world of legendary accretions. This 
 slight comparison, be it remarked, refers exclusively 
 to what may be termed the latest " redactions " of the 
 two cycles of romance. 
 
 CLXXIV. 
 
 The Arthurian Romance has every recommendation 
 that should win its way to the homage of a great 
 poet. It is national : it is Christian. It is also human 
 in the largest and deepest sense ; and therefore, though 
 highly national, it is universal ; for it rests upon those 
 depths and breadths of our nature, to which all its 
 truly great developments, in all nations, are alike 
 essentially and closely related. The distance is enough 
 for atmosphere, not too much for sympathy, A poet 
 of the nineteenth century, the Laureate in " Idylls of 
 the King," has in the main appropriated and adapted 
 characters, incidents, and even language, instead of 
 attempting to project them, on a basis of his own, in 
 the region illimitable fancy. But he has done much 
 more than this. Evidently by reading and by deep 
 meditation, as well as by sheer force of genius, he has 
 penetrated himself, down to the very core of his being 
 with all that is deepest and best in the spirit of the
 
 218 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 time, or in the representation with which he deals ; 
 and as others, using old materials, have been free to 
 alter them in the sense of vulgarity or license, so he 
 has claimed and used the right to sever and recom- 
 bine, to enlarge, retrench, and modify, for the purposes 
 at once of a more powerful and elaborate art than his 
 original presents, and of a yet more elevated, or at 
 least ofc a far more sustained, ethical and Christian 
 strain. 
 
 CLXXV. 
 
 Every translation of a great work, to be good, must 
 have great original qualities. We must not confound 
 the subject by assimilating the work of the translator 
 to that of the copyist in painting. In that case the 
 problem is to construct an image of the picture, given 
 the very same materials. But, in the case of pure 
 mental products, the material form is the language, 
 and the very condition of the work is that this be 
 changed, as the workman must reproduce in another 
 tongue. In proportion as the original to be rendered 
 is a great one, the union between the thought of the 
 writer and his language is more intimate. At every 
 step as the translator proceeds, he feels that he is 
 tearing asunder soul and body, life and its vehicle ; so 
 that in order to succeed in his task, he must within 
 certain limits, create new.
 
 LITERATURE. 219 
 
 CLXXVI. 
 
 It was said of Socrates that he called down philoso- 
 phy from heaven, that the enterprise of certain en- 
 lightened publishers has taught them to work for the 
 million, and that is a very important fact. When I 
 was a boy I used to be fond of looking into a book- 
 seller's shop, but there was nothing to be seen there 
 that was accessible to the working man of that day. 
 Take a Shakespeare, for example. I remember very 
 well that I gave two pounds sixteen shillings for my 
 first copy ; but now you can get an admirable copy 
 for three shillings. Those books are accessible now 
 which formerly were quite inaccessible. Multitudes of 
 books now are constantly being prepared and placed 
 within reach of the population at large, for the most 
 part executed by writers of a high stamp, having sub- 
 jects of the greatest interest, and which enables one at 
 a moderate price, not to get a cheap literature which 
 is secondary in its quality, but to go straight into the 
 very heart, if I may so say, into the sanctuary of the 
 temple of literature and become acquainted with 
 the greatest and best works that have been produced. 
 Some effort should be made by men of all classes, and 
 perhaps none more than by the laboring class, to lift 
 ourselves above the level of what is purely frivolous, 
 and to endeavor to find our amusement in making our-
 
 220 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 selves acquainted with things of real interest and 
 beauty. 
 
 CLXXVII. 
 
 It is too commonly assumed that provided only we 
 repair to our church or our chapel, as the case may 
 be, the performance of the work of adoration, is a 
 thing which may be taken for granted. But so it is, 
 in the absence of unequivocal signs to the contrary, 
 as between man and man. But not as between the 
 individual man and his own conscience in the hour 
 of self-review. If he knows anything of himself, and 
 unless he be a person of singularly favored gifts, he 
 will know that the work of Divine Worship, so far 
 from being a thing of course even among those who 
 outwardly address themselves to its performance, is 
 one of the most arduous which the human spirit can 
 possibly set about. 
 
 The processes of simple self-knowledge are difficult 
 enough. All these, when a man worships, should be 
 fresh in his consciousness ; and this is the first indis- 
 pensable condition for a right attitude of the soul 
 before the footstool of the Eternal. The next is a 
 frame of the affections adjusted on the one hand to 
 this self-knowledge, and on the other to the attributes 
 and the more nearly felt presence, of the Being before 
 whom we stand. And the third is the sustained mental 
 effort necessary to complete the act, wherein every
 
 WORSHIP. 221 
 
 Christian is a priest ; to carry our whole selves, as it 
 were with our own hands, into that nearer Presence, 
 and, uniting the humble and unworthy prosphora with 
 the one full perfect and sufficient Sacrifice, to offer it 
 upon the altar of the heart : putting aside every dis- 
 traction of the outward sense, and endeavoring to 
 complete the individual act as fully, as when in loneli- 
 ness, after departing out of the flesh, we shall see 
 eternal things no longer through, but without, a veil. 
 
 CLXXVIII. 
 
 Now, considering how we live, and must live, our 
 common life in and by the senses, how all sustained 
 mental abstraction is an effort, how the exercise of 
 sympathy itself, which is such a power in Christian 
 worship, is also a kind of bond to the visible ; and then 
 last of all, with what feebleness and fluctuation, not to 
 say with what wayward duplicity, of intention we 
 undertake the work, is it not too clear that in such a 
 work we shall instinctively be too apt to remit our 
 energies, and to slide unawares into mere perfunctory 
 performance? And where and in proportion as the 
 service of the body is more careful, and the exterior 
 decency and solemnity of the public assembling more 
 unimpeachable, these things themselves may contribute 
 to form important elements of that inward self-com- 
 placency which makes it so easy for us, whenever we
 
 222 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 ourselves are judge and jury as well as " prisoner at the 
 bar," to obtain a verdict of acquittal. 
 
 In other words, the very things, which find their only 
 sufficient warrant in their capacity and fitness to assist 
 the work of inward worship, are particularly apt to be 
 accepted by the individual himself as a substitute for 
 inward worship, on account of that very capacity and 
 fitness, of their inherent beauty and solemnity, of their 
 peculiar and unworldly type. So that ritual, because 
 it is full of use, is also full of clangers. Though it is 
 clear that men increase responsibility by augmenting 
 it, they do not escape from danger by its diminution ; 
 nothing can make ritual safe except the strict obser- 
 vance of its purpose, namely, that it shall supply wings 
 to the human soul in its callow efforts at upward flight. 
 And such being the meaning of true ritual, the first 
 measure of it is to be found in the degree in which 
 it furnishes that assistance to the individual Christian. 
 
 CLXXIX. 
 
 It is difficult, I think, to fix a maximum of ritual for 
 all times and persons, and to predicate that all beyond 
 the line must be harmful ; but it is impossible to fix a 
 minimum, and then to say, up to that point we are safe. 
 No ritual is too much, provided it is subsidiary to the 
 inner work of worship ; and all ritual is too much 
 unless it ministers to that purpose.
 
 WORSHIP. 223 
 
 CLXXX. 
 
 If we study, by appropriate or by rich embellishment, 
 to make the church more like the ideal of the house 
 of God, and the services in it more impressive, by 
 outward signs oi his greatness and goodness, and of 
 our littleness and meanness, all these are so many 
 voices addressing us, voices audible and intelligible, 
 though inarticulate ; and to let them sound in our ears 
 unheeded, is an offence against his majesty. If we are 
 not the better for more ritual we are the worse for 
 it. A general augmentation of ritual, such as we see 
 on every side around us, if it be without any cor- 
 responding enhancement of devotion, means more light 
 but not more love. 
 
 Indeed, it is even conceivable, nay far from improb- 
 able, that augmentation of ritual may import not 
 increase but even diminution of fervor. Such must 
 be the result in every case where the imagery of the 
 eye and ear, actively multiplied, is allowed to draw off 
 the energy, which ought to have its centre in the heart. 
 There cannot be a doubt that the beauty of the 
 edifice, the furniture, and the service, though their 
 purpose be to carry the mind forward, may induce 
 it to rest upon those objects themselves. Wherever 
 the growth and progress of ritual, though that ritual be 
 in itself suitable and proper, is accepted, whether con- 
 sciously or unconsciously, and whether in whole or in
 
 224 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 part by the individual, as standing in the stead of his 
 own concentration and travail of spirit in devotion, there 
 the ritual, though good in itself, becomes for him so 
 much formality, that is so much deadness. 
 
 Now there are multitudes of people who will accede 
 at once to this proposition, who will even hold it to 
 be no more than a truism, but with a complacent 
 conviction, in the background of their minds, that it 
 does not touch their case at all. They may be Pres- 
 byterians or Nonconformists; or they may be Church- 
 men whose clergyman preaches against Popery open 
 or concealed, or who have themselves subscribed lib- 
 erally to prosecute the Rev. this or the Rev. that 
 for Ritualism. No matter. They, and their clergyman 
 too, may nevertheless be flagrant Ritualists. For the 
 barest minimum of ritual may be a screen hiding from 
 the worshipper the Object of his worship : nay, will 
 be such a screen, unless the worshipper bestirs himself 
 to use it as a help, and to see that it is not a snare. 
 
 CLXXXI. 
 
 In the word Ritualism, there is involved much more 
 than the popular mind seems to suppose. The present 
 movement in favor of ritual is not confined to ritualists, 
 neither' is it confined even to churchmen. It has been, 
 when all things are considered, quite as remarkable 
 among Nonconformists and Presbyterians ; not because
 
 WORSHIP. 225 
 
 they have as much of it, but because they formerly 
 had none, and because their system appeared to have 
 been devised and adjusted in order to prevent its 
 introduction, and to fire upon it even in litnine the 
 aspect of a flagrant departure from first principles. 
 Crosses on the outside of chapels; rich pointed 
 architecture; that flagrant piece of symbolism, the 
 steeple ; windows filled with subjects in stained glass ; 
 elaborate chanting; the use of the Lord's prayer 
 which is not more than the thin end of the wedge 
 that is to introduce fixed forms ; and the partial move- 
 ments in favor of such forms already developed ; 
 these are among the signs which, taken all together, 
 form a group of phenomena evidently referable to 
 some cause far more deep and wide-working than 
 mere servile imitation, or the fashion of the day. 
 
 CLXXXII. 
 
 If we survey the Christian world, we shall have oc- 
 casion to observe that ritual does not bear an unvary- 
 ing relation to doctrine. The most notable proof of 
 this assertion is to be found in the Lutheran commu- 
 nion. It is strongly and except where opinion has 
 deviated in the direction of rationalism, uniformly 
 Protestant. But in portions of the considerable area 
 over which it stretches, as for example in Denmark, in 
 Sweden and Norway, even on the inhospitable shores
 
 226 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 of Iceland, altars, vestments, lights (if not even incense) 
 are retained : the clergyman is called the priest, and 
 the Communion Office is termed the Mass. But there 
 is no distinction of doctrine whatever between Swedish 
 or Danish, and German Lutherans : nor, according to 
 the best authorities, has the chain of the Episcopal 
 succession been maintained in those countries. Even 
 in England, there are some of those clergy who are 
 called Broadchurchmen, nay some who have a marked 
 indifference to doctrine, and what might almost be 
 called a hatred of dogma, yet who also are inclined to 
 musical ornament, and other paraphernalia of divine 
 service. 
 
 CLXXXIII. 
 
 When we see the extraordinary progress of ritual 
 observance during the last generation, who is there 
 that can be so sanguine as to suppose that there has 
 been a corresponding growth of inward fervor, and of 
 mental intelligence, in our general congregations ? 
 There is indeed a rule of simple decency to which, 
 under all circumstances, we should strive to rise for 
 indecency in public worship is acted profanity, and is 
 grossly irreligious in its effects. But, when the stand- 
 ard of decency has once been attained, ought not the 
 further steps to be vigilantly watched, I do not say 
 by law, but by conscience ?
 
 WORSHIP. 227 
 
 There are influences at work among us, far from 
 spiritual, which may work in the direction of formalism 
 through the medium of ritual. The vast amount of 
 new-made wealth in England does not indeed lead to 
 a display as profuse in the embellishment of the house 
 of God, as in mansions, equipages, or dresses. Yet 
 the wealthy, as such, have a preference for churches 
 and for services with a certain amount of ornament : 
 and it is quite possible that no small part of what we 
 call the improvements in fabrics and in worship may 
 be due simply to the demand of the richer man for a 
 more costly article, and this may represent not the 
 spiritual growth but the materializing tendencies of the 
 age. Again, there is a wider diffusion of taste among 
 the many, though the faculty itself may not, with the 
 few, have gained a finer edge ; and, with this, the sense 
 of the incongruous, and the grotesque, cannot but 
 make some way. Here is another agency, adapted to 
 improving the face and form of our religious services, 
 without that which, as I would contend, is the indis- 
 pensable condition of all real and durable improve- 
 ment ; namely, a corresponding growth in the appre- 
 ciation of the inward work of devotion. 
 
 But a third and very important cause, working in 
 the same direction, has been this. The standard of 
 life and of devotion has risen among the clergy far 
 more generally, and doubtless also more rapidly, than 
 among the laity. It is more than possible that, in
 
 228 THE MIGHT^OF RIGHT. 
 
 many instances, their own enlarged and elevated con- 
 ception of what divine sendee ought to be in order 
 to answer the genuine demands of their own inward 
 life, may have induced them to raise it in their several 
 churches beyond any real capacity of their congrega- 
 tions to appreciate and turn it to account. 
 
 
 
 CLXXXIV. 
 
 Doubtless it is conceivable, that divine service may 
 be rendered by careful ritual more suitable to the 
 dignity of its purpose. But let us take, on the other 
 hand, a church where a ritual thus improved has been 
 forced upon a congregation to whom its provisions 
 were like an unknown tongue, and whom it has there- 
 fore banished from the walls of the sanctuary. Is it 
 conceivable that such a spectacle can be a pleasing 
 one in the sight of the Most High ? Did Christianity 
 itself come down into the world in abstract perfec- 
 tion and in full development ? or was it not rather 
 opened on the world with nice regard to the contracted 
 pupil of the human eye, which it was gradually to 
 enlarge, unfolding itself from day to day, in successive 
 lessons of doctrine and event, here a little and there 
 a little ? The jewels in the crown of the Bride are the 
 flocks within the walls of the temple ; and men ever 
 so hard of hearing are better than an empty bench.
 
 WORSHIP. 229 
 
 CLXXXV. 
 
 In the fourteenth chapter of St. Paul's First Epistle 
 to the Corinthians, may be found, what I would call 
 the code of the New Testament upon ritual. The rules 
 laid down by the apostle to determine the comparative 
 value of the gifts then so common in the Church, will 
 be found to contain the principles applicable to the 
 regulation of divine service; and it is touching to 
 observe that they are immediately subjoined to that 
 wonderful effusion describing " Charity," with which 
 no ethical eloquence of Greece or Rome can suitably 
 compare. 
 
 CLXXXVI. 
 
 The best touchstone for dividing what is wrong and 
 defining what is right in the exterior apparel of divine 
 service will be found in the holy desire and authorita- 
 tive demand of the apostle, "that the Church may 
 receive edifying," rather than an abstract imagery of 
 perfection on the one hand, or any form of narrow 
 traditional prejudice on the other. 
 
 CLXXXVII. 
 
 There are surely enough real occasions for conten- 
 tion in the world to satisfy the most greedy appetite,
 
 230 THE MIGHT* OF RIGHT. 
 
 without adding to them those which are conventional, 
 that is to say, those where the contention is not upon 
 the things themselves, but upon the constructions 
 which prejudice or passion may attach to them. 
 
 Surely if a Zuinglian could persuade himself that 
 the English Communion Office was founded upon the 
 basis of Zuinglian ideas, he would act weakly and in- 
 consistently should he renounce the ministry of the 
 Church because he was ordered to face eastward 
 during the prayer of consecration ; and at least as 
 surely would one believing in the Catholic and primi- 
 tive character of the office, be open to similar blame 
 if he in like manner repudiated his function as a priest 
 upon being required to take his place on the North. 
 Preferences for the one or the other position it is easy 
 to conceive. To varying ideas of worship and in 
 these later times the idea of worship does materially 
 vary the one or the other may seem, or may even 
 be, more thoroughly conformable ; but strange indeed, 
 in my view, must be the composition of the mind 
 which can deliberately judge that the position at the 
 North end is in itself irreverent, or that facing towards 
 the East is in itself superstitious. Both cannot be 
 right in a dispute, but both may be wrong ; and one 
 of the many ways in which this comes about is when 
 the thing contended for is, by a common consent in 
 error, needlessly lifted out of the region of things
 
 WORSHIP. 231 
 
 indifferent into that of things essential, and a distinc- 
 tion, founded originally on the phantasy of man, be 
 comes the articulus stantis aut cadentis concordia. 
 
 CLXXXVIII. 
 
 They who are powerfully impressed with the belief 
 of direct spiritual influence, are apt to mistake for it 
 mere inward excitement of a human, or sometimes a 
 yet more questionable kind, if they look for it alone, 
 and self-attested to the individual mind, and not as 
 appended to divinely-appointed and general ordinances. 
 They render themselves the sole witness of their own 
 accuracy ; a course which is surely not according to 
 the mind of Him who disclaimed reliance on his own 
 testimony though it was infallible. And they refer 
 the determination of the question most vital to our 
 spiritual well-being, to the most delusive of our facul- 
 ties. Suppose that they pray for divine illumination 
 yet their very prayers may be attended with so much 
 of habitual and wilful self-deceit, that they may serve 
 only to afford a new plea to that illusion to which 
 they thus may serve to perpetuate. Great indeed, inex- 
 pressibly great, is the value of that kind of intercourse 
 with God, which is directly between him and the 
 individual mind : but, in truth, its value is heightened 
 from the circumstance that it is checked, and guarded
 
 232 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 against abuse, by a more independent witness of another 
 kind : and they who most love private prayer should 
 of all men, be most thankful that God has also at- 
 tached grace to palpable ordinances, whereof others 
 too are witnesses, which cannot be forgotten, and which 
 are not subject to be frustrated by our inward fluctua- 
 tions and our inflated estimate of self. 
 
 But there is another side to this view of the Sacra- 
 ments. As they are helps against fanaticism, which 
 gives too much credence to insufficient marks of spirit- 
 ual influence, so are they powerful obstructions to the 
 ingress of that equally dangerous despondency, often 
 tending towards unbelief, which admits doubts of the 
 faithfulness of God's promises into the individual 
 mind, and thus comes to let slip the hope of the gos- 
 pel. But when such moods are upon men (and they 
 are not among the least formidable of the temptations 
 of the Evil One) when a mist arises from their internal 
 perturbation, and intercepts the remembrance, or, at 
 all events, the practical sense, of those unnumbered 
 marks of care and love wherewith God attends the 
 Christian along his daily path is it then no small 
 comfort to be enabled to fall back on these facts, pal- 
 pable as facts, and not less pregnant than palpable, 
 for they surely speak in terms not to be mistaken of 
 the favor of God towards our souls ? Thus they are 
 in this sense like the light-house to the seaman, visible
 
 WORSHIP. 233 
 
 when all other objects are eclipsed, though little heeded 
 in the abundant splendor of the day. 
 
 CLXXXIX. 
 
 Why should we not suffer the whole mind of God 
 to take effect among us ? He has, it seems, given us 
 certain ordinances as means of grace, which, operating 
 through the active faculties, go to insure the wakeful- 
 ness of the intellect, and to carry it along in the work 
 of religion. On the other hand, to preclude its en- 
 croachments, to repress pride, to sustain weakness, to 
 refer us constantly and primarily to the state of the 
 affections, to associate and bind us together in Christ, 
 to manifest our entire dependence upon him, and our 
 high privilege in being so dependent, he has instituted 
 other means of grace in which we are not at all, 
 strictly speaking, co-operators, but mere receivers, 
 though with certain preconditions. Thus his mercy 
 provides for the entire nature of man : and supplies us 
 with safe-guards, if we will but use them, against the 
 opposite dangers that beset either theory of half-truth 
 that which refers all grace to the human understanding 
 as its channel, and that which, ascribing little or no 
 spiritual advantage, as respects the mass of Christians, 
 to its agency, deals with it insidiously, as with a hated 
 foe, lulls it into religious torpor, and thereby prepares 
 it to become the ready instrument of unbelief.
 
 234 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 cxc. 
 
 Whatever we are, or have, or do, is important, at 
 least is beneficially important, only in connexion with 
 the religious bearing of our lives. Every gift and orna- 
 ment of the human character is either pernicious, or 
 useless, or at best fragile and unenduring, unless it be 
 sanctified and stamped with permanence by a vital 
 union with the spirit of religion. Every form of loveli- 
 ness, which belongs to this world alone, must pass 
 away with it ; and the beautiful and graceful things 
 we idolize are but like the fillets that once bound the 
 temples of the sacrificial victim, unless we obtain for 
 them a passport to the better world, by applying to 
 them that perpetuating power of religion, which, blend- 
 ing these lighter with the higher and holier qualities, 
 rescues them from abuse ; and, removing them from 
 their dedication to the purposes of pride and selfish- 
 ness, appoints them to serve God each according to 
 its capacity. 
 
 Thus from being mischievous, do temporal gifts and 
 talents become valuable. They are estimated indeed 
 only at their proper worth, but in that measure they 
 are blessed by God, and acceptable to him. The com- 
 mon tenor of daily life affords not to the philosophical 
 and sagacious mind alone, but to any man who will 
 look for them, continual occasions for the exercise of 
 duty, though often upon a subject matter apparently un-
 
 RELIGION. 235 
 
 connected with it : purity, integrity, courage, patience, 
 diligence, self-command, may be fed and strengthened 
 amid the humblest labors of each succeeding hour, 
 though of course it is in the acts of direct- duty or 
 worship that the mental powers and affections have 
 their highest honor and reward ; and so the whole 
 circle of human experience is chiefly to be viewed 
 with reference to its religious results. Our relations 
 toward God are those which should occupy the largest 
 share in our attention, as they will exercise the most 
 determining influence on our destiny. 
 
 CXCI. 
 
 Secular history explains to us much of what con- 
 cerns the bodily and temporal interests of man ; his 
 social position and the results upon character arising out 
 of it, much of his experimental life in the senses, in 
 the imagination, in the understanding, and even in the 
 affections. It ought to go, and in right hands it does 
 go, much farther. The true historian interprets and 
 combines its separate phenomena, by constant reference 
 to the central influence which controls all the move- 
 ments of human nature ; the principle of religion. Yet, 
 for a long time, and until very recently, the mind of 
 England has been fed with its knowledge of the past, 
 from works which are altogether defective on this vital 
 subject ; and it will probably be long before our habits
 
 236 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 are so reformed as that we shall read history only in 
 the light of revelation. But what aspect of the charac- 
 ter of the creature is entitled to compete for a moment 
 with that in which he is viewed by the Creator ? To 
 the rescued child of Adam what so vital as the great 
 subject of his redemption ? To the human being, who, 
 if he is to live permanently, must live by a new life, 
 what matter the concerns and the history of the 
 former state, except in an instrumental and subordinate 
 capacity ? We ought indeed to be on our guard 
 against that morbid teaching, which inculcates an uni- 
 versal recoil from earthly objects as the true law of 
 general morality; which treats this life on earth as if 
 it were a mere accident of our being: and perceives 
 nothing but empty vision in all its impressive and 
 pregnant experience. On the contrary it is an ordained 
 and necessary part of the development of man ; and 
 when its regulation is committed to right laws, it is in 
 harmony much more than in opposition to the future 
 and untroubled existence, which awaits the faithful 
 members of Christ. But still it remains true, that, 
 great as is the importance of our civil and social 
 life, it is not an essential but an instrumental import- 
 ance ; it is important for that which it yields and 
 generates, not for that which it is ; and all its influ- 
 ences are real and of weight, only when we take 
 into calculation something that lies without it and 
 beyond it.
 
 RELIGION. 237 
 
 CXCII. 
 
 Shall we wonder if the soul which dreads religion 
 and would flee from it, which has not yet thoroughly 
 suborned its natural witnesses within the breast but 
 yet has imposed upon them a partial silence, and 
 lulled them into a temporary slumber, if such a soul, 
 feeling that its peace depends on the prolongation of 
 that lethargy, should shun with watchfulness those 
 sounds by which it might be dissipated ? In this sad 
 position, a position occupied, alas ! by how many 
 myriads, every moment of inaction is a step towards 
 the consummation of the triumph of Satan. God has 
 a claim to our whole, existence. Every act which is 
 performed in a state of mind not recognizing that 
 claim, is in truth an act of rebellion against the 
 Almighty, and assuredly goes to form the habit of 
 alienation within us : as every year during which 
 an usurper continues to occupy his throne, diminishes 
 the probability of the restoration of the legitimate 
 possessor. Give therefore time to the Evil One, and 
 you give him all he requires. 
 
 CXCIII. 
 
 We are not to dwell upon the mental processes which 
 composed the proof, upon the argumentative part of 
 religion : but upon the things proved : and to carry
 
 238 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 away the eye from self to the Redeemer, accepting all as 
 his gift ; desiring to concentrate the whole soul in the 
 contemplation of him, and in an offering to him ; and 
 not feeling that we in our feebleness have any powers 
 to spare for a distinct self-regard. Then we, as it were, 
 receive back from him the soul which we have offered 
 to him, to be instrumentally the appointed object of 
 our care and culture ; but he remains the source and 
 the end even of all that labor which we bestow upon 
 our own selves, as the portion of the vineyard primarily 
 allotted to our charge. 
 
 CXCIV. 
 
 It is true even of every purely inward principle of 
 human nature, (as love, pity,) that it struggles for an 
 outward development and the more strongly in 
 proportion to its own proper strength. It is the law 
 of the growth of man that the acts which he does shall 
 themselves react upon, expand, confirm, and accomplish 
 that constitution from which they proceeded. There- 
 fore his internal principles expand themselves in acts, 
 by no vague, arbitrary movement, but in order to their 
 own increase and perfection. 
 
 This effort for external manifestation begins perhaps 
 in strictness, whenever the principle comes to be placed 
 objectively before the conscience. And the interne 1 
 principle is not a loser by that which, it seems to spend
 
 RELIGION. 239 
 
 in external operation, but positively gains by it. The 
 religious life is the highest form of the rational and 
 moral life, and therefore, if it be healthy, strives with 
 the greatest force for external expression, in order, 
 through the medium of acts to accomplish and con- 
 summate itself in the resulting habits, and thus in the 
 general structure of the character. 
 
 Each inward principle of human nature seeks for 
 expression in an outward, active existence, not only for 
 its own consummation, but also in order that it may be 
 expansive, communicative. We are to bear one an- 
 other's burdens. Each of us is to care not only for his 
 own concerns, but for those also of his brethren. The 
 principle of this care is the same, whether it be applied 
 to ourselves or to others "Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbor as thyself : " though the degree may be 
 different. The subjective basis of this duty is indicated 
 by the common and established doctrine that our 
 nature is social and sympathetic. 
 
 External development is the necessary result of this 
 social and sympathetic law the essential condition of 
 its fullfilment. 
 
 cxcv. 
 
 Together with the experimental fact that there have 
 been in each particular age particular modifications in 
 the features of Christian creed and practice, we may
 
 240 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 perhaps be warranted in assuming that the age in which 
 we live is peculiarly marked as a religious crisis. It is 
 distinguished by a spirit of inquiry, not laborious but 
 superficial, not friendly to its subject, but sceptical. 
 This is its prominent character for evil ; but, upon the 
 other hand, it has also its tokens for good. From 
 the same combination of circumstances, which has 
 engendered that spirit of jealous and querulous curi- 
 osity, has arisen a counteracting temper of earnest zeal 
 against precipitate innovation. We succeed a series of 
 generations through which the most valuable institu- 
 tions were allowed to slumber and decay. We belong 
 to a generation apt to censure its predecessors, perhaps 
 for the very reason that we are suffering from the 
 absence of that moral training which we ought to have 
 received from a due and prudent use of those institu- 
 tions ; we are awakened by exciting events to a keener 
 sense of the faculties within us while a right diet for 
 those faculties and the sobering influences of habit and 
 of inheritance are wanting : we are almost unanimous 
 in calling for something more than the more tranquil 
 times and habits of our immediate ancestors required ; 
 but while some seek to supply their need out of the 
 resources which the human understanding commands, 
 others look rather to a traditional than to an ideal 
 type, and are deeply impressed with the conviction that 
 in the oldest way of faith alone are truth and peace to 
 be found ; with the. anxiety to keep their fellow men
 
 RELIGION. 241 
 
 within those sacred limits which have been marked and 
 blessed by God himself, and with the desire so to 
 adjust the instruments of their labor as may best 
 subserve this final purpose. 
 
 Thus while the men of this age are divided principally 
 into two great classes which divaricate widely in the 
 direction of their desires ; they nevertheless have for 
 the most part one characteristic in common. They who 
 think that in ancient Christianity is to be found the 
 great and only conservative principle for modern 
 society, are likewise of the belief, that in order to find 
 it we must look not to the common and customary 
 opinion of the generation or generations immediately 
 preceding us, but to the results of a larger experience : 
 and especially to a period of clearer and better knowl- 
 edge, all whose fundamental principles are happily 
 transmitted to us in the treasures of Scripture, as they 
 have been attested by the witness of the church. 
 
 They agree therefore with their antagonists in think- 
 ing, that the stores of the last age are not enough to 
 meet the wants of the present. The great question 
 depending is, whether we are to revert in matters of 
 religion to older positions than those which were 
 recently fashionable, or whether we are free to con- 
 struct at our discretion some scheme founded upon 
 novel principles. But upon either hypothesis we have 
 a great transition to make. They who, with what is 
 strictly termed the spirit of the age, wage war against
 
 242 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 religious doctrine in general, and they who wish to 
 infuse into the prevailing religious tone of the last age 
 a vitality which must be fetched from a greater dis- 
 tance, are each of them undertaking a great labor, are 
 each of them experimenting on a large scale, though 
 with very different guarantees and most opposite 
 anticipations, for the one class expects felicity from 
 securing to human will an uncontrolled domination, 
 while the other considers that it is only to be found 
 in a patient and submissive spirit, assuming the line 
 of an ancient and positive revelation as the only com- 
 petent guide of its future progress. 
 
 CXCVI. 
 
 When a nation is returning from one form of relig- 
 ious temper to another it is not like laying down some- 
 thing from the hand and taking another something into 
 the hand, but it is parting with that which has become 
 a portion of its very self, and seeking to acquire in its 
 stead what is in turn to be so moulded and assimilated 
 as to become a portion of its very self. The agent is 
 too much mixed up with the act to allow of that 
 perfect self-possession which is necessary for wise 
 exactitude and for immediate and entire success. Com- 
 ing back to a more vital and energetic religion, it 
 either comes while yet under a portion of the sinister 
 influences attending the degenerate form from which
 
 RELIGION. 243 
 
 it has emerged, or if by some violent and almost pre- 
 ternatural effort it has thrown them off, then the mere 
 violence of that effort produces a derangement in 
 temper and habit of another kind, so that in all cases 
 of great mental change we must expect to find more 
 or less of perturbation and consequent weakness. 
 
 CXCVII. 
 
 You will hear much to the effect that the divisions 
 among Christians render it impossible to say what 
 Christianity is, and so destroy the certainty of religion. 
 But if the divisions among Christians are remarkable, 
 not less so is their unity in the great doctrines which 
 they hold. Well nigh fifteen hundred years years 
 of a more sustained activity than the world has ever 
 before seen have passed away since the great con- 
 troversies respecting the Deity and the Person of the 
 Redeemer were, after a long agony determined. As 
 before that time in a manner less defined but adequate 
 for their day, so ever since, amid all chance and 
 change, more, aye, many more than ninety-nine in 
 every hundred Christians have with one will confessed 
 the deity and incarnation of our Lord as the cardinal 
 and central truths of our religion. Surely there is 
 some comfort here, some sense of brotherhood, some 
 glory in the past, some hope for the times that are to 
 come.
 
 244 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 It is the opinion and boast of some that man is 
 not responsible for his belief. Lord Brougham was at 
 one time stated to have given utterance to this opinion, 
 whether truly I know not. But this I know, it was 
 my privilege to hear from his own lips the needful 
 and due limitation of that proposition. " Man," he 
 said, is not responsible to man for his belief." But 
 as before God one and the same law applies to opin- 
 ions and to acts, or rather to inward and outer acts, 
 for opinions are inward acts. Many a wrong opinion 
 may be guiltless, because formed in ignorance, and 
 because that ignorance may not be our fault ; but who 
 shall presume to say there is no mercy for wrong 
 actions also, when they, too, have been due to igno- 
 rance, and that ignorance has not been guilty ? The 
 question is not whether judgment and actions are in 
 the same degree influenced by the condition of the 
 moral motives. If it is undeniable that self-love and 
 passion have an influence upon both, then, so far as 
 that influence goes, for both, we must be prepared to 
 answer. Should we, in common life, ask a body of 
 swindlers for an opinion upon swindling, or of gam- 
 blers for an opinion upon gambling, or of misers upon 
 bounty ? And if in matters of religion we allow pride 
 and perverseness to raise a cloud between us and the 
 truth, so that we see it not, the false opinion that we 
 form is but the index of that perverseness and that 
 pride, and both for them, and for it as their offspring
 
 RELIGION. 245 
 
 we shall be justly held responsible. Who they are 
 upon whom this responsibility will fall it is not ours 
 to judge. These laws are given to us, not to apply 
 presumptuously to others, but fo enforce honestly 
 against ourselves. 
 
 Be slow to stir inquiries which you do not mean 
 particularly to pursue to their proper end. Be not 
 afraid to suspend your judgment, or feel and admit 
 to yourselves how narrow are the bounds of knowl- 
 edge. Do not too readily assume that to us have 
 been opened royal roads to truth, which were hereto- 
 fore hidden from the whole family of man : for the 
 opening of such roads would not be so much favor as 
 caprice. If it is bad to yield a blind submission to 
 authority, it is not less an error to deny to it its rea- 
 sonable weight. Eschewing a servile adherence to the 
 past, regard it with reverence and gratitude, and accept 
 its accumulations in inward as well as outward things 
 as the patrimony which it is your part in life both to 
 preserve and to improve. 
 
 CXCVIII. 
 
 It was a strong expression of a certain writer, that 
 the soil of the Christian Church had more vigor at 
 the time when it was capable of throwing up such 
 plants as the minds of Luther and Melancthon than 
 warms it at this moment. And so I would say of the
 
 246 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 darker periods of the thirteenth century. Look at the 
 minds of the men, for example at the mind of Dantd, 
 which it moulded. Regard the comprehensive grasp 
 with which he seized the seen and the unseen world, 
 the entire range of ideas and facts, even the possible 
 or imaginary forms of our future existence ; and while 
 interweaving typically with his bold creations the great 
 events and interests of his time, exhibked along with 
 a richness of fancy and a depth of passion in which 
 he had few poets for his rivals, an understanding edged 
 for analysis like Aristotle, a spirit of childlike and 
 ecstatic devotion like Augustine or Thomas a Kempis, 
 and a strength of sublime intuition, that highest of 
 human faculties, in which he seems to stand alone. 
 Shall we, can we see again any such form and fashion 
 of a man ? Are there the materials for feeling and 
 for training such a spirit ? Among our footprints will 
 there be found by posterity 
 
 " Una simile 
 Orma di pie mortale? " 
 
 His works are like the huge spears and swords that 
 are shown in some of our old baronial castles, which 
 none can wield ; and if the gigantic physical stature 
 of ancient times be fabulous, is it equally untrue that 
 the higher ranges of intellect, according to the predic- 
 tion of Lord Bacon, have been reduced, and that our 
 modern pride must begin to suspect and qualify some 
 of its claims to superior excellence ? It may not im-
 
 RELIGION. 247 
 
 probably be the case that so far as respects religion, 
 we are actually progressing in some particulars white 
 we retrogade in others. The church may be engaged 
 in developing the ideas which she possesses, and in 
 bringing the bud to flower ; or she may be, on the 
 other hand, condensing what has been too much rari- 
 fied in a heated atmosphere, directing its power to a 
 definite and palpable object, and seeking, through 
 compression, to attain a more energetic action. 
 
 CXCIX. 
 
 The truths of religion being certain and unchange- 
 able, they afford as unexceptionably true a ground of 
 unity to those who know most as to those who know 
 least, and -it is the evil nature alone within us which 
 has multiplied heresies upon the earth under pretence 
 of knowledge. 
 
 CC. 
 
 Mankind have by nature a sense of the power of 
 God combined with an alienation of the will from him. 
 Had they the first alone, they would of course receive 
 his word as he gave it ; had they the second alone, 
 they would of course and avowedly reject it. But 
 under the existing combination of these reciprocally 
 counter-working sentiments, they are for the most part
 
 248 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 disinclined either heartily to accept or boldly to re- 
 nounce it ; and they are apt accordingly to receive it 
 in form for the satisfaction of their fears, but to evade 
 and neutralize it in substance to avoid the Sacrifice 
 of their individual wills. Now this evasion and neu- 
 tralization can best be effected by the method of 
 misinterpreting the sacred text and thereby misrepre- 
 senting its commands, and thus getting rid of what- 
 ever in them is mortifying to human pride and desire, 
 or inventing compensations which revelation has not 
 really allowed. Here, therefore, we have in our view 
 a cause not only of the most malignant, but of the 
 most unceasing operation. As permanent as the force 
 of human inclination, is also the bias towards heresy, 
 towards the putting glosses upon the Word of God, 
 and reducing it to the measure of our own discretion. 
 It seems to follow that an equally permanent corrective 
 is required to uphold everywhere the faith in its integ- 
 rity and unity against the multiplying and fluctuating 
 forms of error. 
 
 CCI. 
 
 Sympathy is a principle which for the most part 
 gives increased energy to action. When the electric 
 chain pervades the hearts of many, it seems to render all 
 their combined force available for each individual, as 
 the momentum of a material body composed of many
 
 RELIGION. 249 
 
 parts would carry every one of them, with much greater 
 rapidity and power than they would have possessed if 
 they had been put in motion apart from one another. 
 And thus we may see how eloquence works its effects 
 on crowds much more powerfully than on individuals ; 
 and how the most indifferent wit is sufficient to 
 convulse a popular assembly with laughter, which if 
 obtruded on any one of its component members in 
 private, would either pass unnoticed or excite contempt. 
 In this strength of sympathy is a part of the rationale, 
 so to speak, of public prayer ; it husbands and multi- 
 plies individual energies ; and the higher our concep- 
 tion of the church, the better we shall be prepared to 
 estimate and to profit by this great function. 
 
 ecu. 
 
 A religious creed presented to the mind for its 
 acceptance may be excluded from the heart if so 
 be that the imagination, unduly predominating over 
 the mind of the man, interposes, and anticipating the 
 torpid action of the affections, meets that creed, views 
 it artistically, as it is termed, in the manner, that is to 
 say, in which a workman would view a block of marble 
 which he is about to reduce to shape ; estimates it 
 with reference not to its appointed ends, but to the 
 law of beauty and its correspondence therewith, or 
 discrepancy therefrom.
 
 250 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 But the imagination is not the only interceptor oi 
 affections divinely destined to the purposes of action. 
 The understanding may be excited simultaneously, and 
 when set to work in reasoning upon the relations 
 of any given phenomena, or upon reducing them into 
 a system, it may thus, with speculative truth for its 
 end, be so delighted with its own energies as to lead 
 us into forgetfulness of action. Thus it absorbs in 
 intellectual exercise the strength that ought to have 
 been spent in practical exertion ; and while it seems to 
 be doing the work of the affections it diverts them 
 from their own end, employing all the mental powers 
 in the verification of terms instead of the execution of 
 acts, and then applying them to its own work of classi- 
 fying, comparing, concluding, or otherwise as the case 
 may be. Thus again, when a religious creed is pre- 
 sented, say to a disputatious and subtle mind, in which 
 the action of the critical faculty overbears and absorbs 
 all other energies, that faculty regards the creed pro- 
 posed polemically, considers it with reference to logical 
 and technical precision, and not in respect to its moral 
 characteristics and tendencies, and wastes upon this 
 theoretic han/lling of sacred themes all the sedulity 
 which ought to be employed in seeking to give effect 
 to the proffered means of spiritual amelioration. 
 
 If the understanding is neither able to dispense with 
 the aid of the affections, nor in itself sufficient to stim- 
 ulate them for the purposes of practice if it be so
 
 RELIGION. 251 
 
 far from this that it may, on the contrary, often 
 become their hinderer then we cannot fail to see 
 the religious importance of having some avenues to 
 the affections otherwise than through argumentative 
 methods, and with an intervention of intellectual powers 
 as slight as can possibly be, in order that of several 
 fallible processes, each one may help to supply the 
 defects or retrieve the errors of the others. 
 
 CCIII. 
 
 Your wish is to lead a Me that is manful, modest, 
 truthful, active, diligent, generous, humble : take for 
 your motto these wonderful words of the apostle 
 where he says, " Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever 
 things are honest, whatsoever things are pure, what- 
 soever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good 
 report " everything that is good is to be within your 
 view, and nothing that is not good. I am certain that 
 if you cherish those virtues you will never forget the 
 basis of them, you will never forget where lies their 
 root. I do not mean that you are continually to be 
 parading your religious feelings and convictions. These 
 are very deep and solemn subjects, and will grow in the 
 shade rather than in the sunlight. Let them ever be in 
 your minds, as they are indigenous to the root of every 
 excellence. Whatever you aspire to, aspire above all 
 to be Christians and to Christian perfection.
 
 252 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 CCIV. 
 
 The grand and ruling influences through which we 
 are capable of being led towards religion, are the fear of 
 punishment, the desire of enjoyment, the love of good- 
 ness. Let us consider how far each of these influences 
 is made effective through the sole action of the under- 
 standing, and how far by the supply of impressions 
 from the affections which are human, and how far 
 through those which are themselves derivable only from 
 a divine influence. 
 
 Now the fear of punishment, in the gross or in the 
 detail, may doubtless be made operative through our 
 human affections, which recoil from pain as such, and 
 with a consciousness of its general nature; aided by 
 the understanding, which supplies the notion of power 
 on the part of the Deity to make that punishment 
 sensible and effective ; but this fear of punishment is 
 no genuine religion it is no more than a still distant 
 stage on the road to it; and as it may be felt without 
 spiritual influence, so we have further to remember that 
 it may be entirely overborne and nullified by the force 
 of the temptations which it attempts to resist. There 
 remains therefore a lack that requires to be supplied. 
 But even for this partial influence the understanding 
 alone is insufficient: it depends, in part, upon that 
 apprehension of punishment which our natural suscepti- 
 bilities, and not the proper energies of the understand-
 
 RELIGION. 253 
 
 ing, supply : and therefore an argument may be drawn 
 from this quarter, not perhaps strictly for the necessity 
 of spiritual grace, but at all events against the suf- 
 ficiency and so the sole jurisdiction of the under- 
 standing. 
 
 The desire of enjoyment, in the gross, may be im- 
 pressed through the same human means : the first, of 
 affection and understanding at work jointly ; the sec- 
 ond, of understanding alone. But as we go into detail, 
 and come to inquire after any intimation of the nature 
 of proposed enjoyment which the gospel offers, our 
 human faculties fail us because we infer as far as we 
 can infer at all that it is such as our human faculties 
 cannot receive or appreciate, but would even be inclined 
 of themselves to reject. We therefore need, in order 
 to feel the full force of a view of heaven offered to us, 
 to have an affection towards God of veneration, love, 
 and trust, which our corruption has absorbed. This 
 then is from a divine source : so that we now need not 
 only the understanding and the affections, but likewise 
 renewed affections to initiate the truly religious prin- 
 ciple ; and we accordingly see with much more strength 
 and clearness the need of a divine operation other than 
 that which the understanding carries, in order to set 
 the understanding itself in motion towards God. 
 
 Thirdly, as regards the love of goodness for its own 
 sake. For this we must be able to recognize the divine 
 will as good in itself, and as determining what is good
 
 254 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 in itself, and as determining what is good for us, inde- 
 pently of, or in opposition to, any estimate of our own. 
 It is clear that this love, fixed on goodness as an end, 
 and viewing goodness as embodied in, and as measured 
 and tested by the will of God, is the adoption of an 
 entirely new standard, of which our fallen state sup- 
 plies none of the elements ; and the primary concep- 
 tion of the object, as it is an object of affection, must 
 be in the affections, antecedent to any action of the 
 understanding which acts only upon what is already 
 conceived. It must therefore, in its earliest begin- 
 nings, under the strictest necessity, come from a divine 
 influence, and not through the understanding. 
 
 ccv. 
 
 The ship retains her anchorage yet drifts with a 
 certain range, subject to the wind and tide. So we 
 have for an anchorage the cardinal truths of the gospel. 
 The progress of truth through the character is slow, 
 and requires time for its full establishment, long after 
 it has been sincerely and vitally received. It is a 
 task of common interest, to learn better the lesson we 
 must all feel that we have so imperfectly acquired 
 namely, that which shows how we may least inade- 
 quately fulfil all the conditions of that blessed and 
 glorious life which we have in Jesus Christ, and how
 
 RELIGION. 255 
 
 most effectually oppose its powers to the powers of 
 the fallen and evil life that belongs to our own 
 selves. 
 
 CCVI. 
 
 To remove from the face of the truth whatever 
 may have sullied or obscured it, to repel assaults upon 
 its purity and integrity, to illustrate and make it 
 known, and to adapt and prepare the minds of men, 
 by the means which itself supplies for its reception, 
 these are objects of religious reform ; and when, in- 
 stead of imagining to ourselves a modern revelation of 
 which we are the favored subjects, we desire simply a 
 recurrence to the old truth of the gospel in the old 
 spirit of the gospel, we check the exorbitance of selfish 
 pride by placing between ourselves and the divinity 
 an instrumental agency independent of ourselves ; 
 while it still remains true, that for the very percep- 
 tion of the existing defects, and of any means for their 
 removal, we must refer entirely and alone to God. 
 
 CCVII. 
 
 We need not fear that an ample discharge of one 
 branch of duty should encroach upon another. 
 
 Each of our natural members has offices to per- 
 form for itself, has contrivances for feeding itself, 
 besides being evidently fitted and intended to dis-
 
 256 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT, 
 
 charge certain functions on behalf of the body. Now, 
 its exercise in those functions, within the limits of 
 nature, does not hinder but promotes its own particular 
 health and growth. The leg, for example, of a man 
 who walks much, the arm of one who labors with the 
 spade, draw an increase of strength to themselves 
 from performing offices not undertaken on their own 
 account, but wherein they serve as the instruments of 
 the entire body, while it is a central principle that 
 carries into outward and physical effect the resolutions 
 of the mind. And surely so it is with our spiritual 
 position in the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. Surely 
 here, as in the natural form, the operations of a man 
 are intended to be performed, not in the contemplation 
 of his own narrow self as an end, but of an end 
 which is extrinsic to him and of far larger scope. 
 Just so we see that every act of benevolence loses 
 the flower of its purity when reflection on any benefit 
 that may result to the agent is intermixed with its 
 composition and execution 
 
 " It is the battle, not the prize, 
 That fills the hero's breast, with joy." 
 
 It is the mercy, not the ensuing and rewarding peace, 
 which animates the heart of the merciful. And yet 
 the benefit, though uncontemplated, will come if the 
 act be done aright it is not sacrificed by being put 
 out of view.
 
 RELIGION. 257 
 
 CCVIII. 
 
 The whole scheme of Christianity is pervaded and 
 distinguished from every other religion, including even 
 its revealed forerunners, the patriarchal and Jewish 
 dispensations, by that mystical character, that combi- 
 nation of a body with a soul, of the outward sign 
 with the inward grace, which brings it into such per- 
 fect and comprehensive harmony with the mixed nature 
 of man as both a material and an immaterial being. 
 It is the living and life-giving energy of the Spirit of 
 God, which animates the whole body of the Redeemer, 
 and moves it according to his will, in all the forms 
 prescribed for its exercise and development. Nothing 
 can be more profoundly solemn than the belief, still 
 shared, thanks be to God, by nearly all who bear the 
 name of Christ, that the motions of this Divine Spirit 
 wait in some special sense on certain functions of 
 religion, discharged by man at his own discretion, like 
 other acts of his common life. 
 
 CCIX. 
 
 The war of faith with scepticism becomes continu- 
 ally hotter and fiercer ; the complaint of things trans- 
 itory against things durable waxes louder, and the 
 testimony of things durable to the fixed polar truths 
 on which they at once rest and act, grows clearer and
 
 258 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 steadier from day to day. If all the bonds of human 
 obediences are in progressive relaxation, yet the prin- 
 ciple of divine obedience gains in vigor and in influ- 
 ence. If the time be more crooked and perverse than 
 ever, yet we are manifestly on the way to simplicity. 
 We are as when a company that has halted for refresh- 
 ment prepares to march ; the eater and the sleeper 
 rise from their easy couch upon the sward, and amidst 
 the general hum and stir no law or tendency to order 
 can be discerned ; but after a little, each will fall into 
 place, and the whole will be prepared for regular and 
 simultaneous movement. Thus it is with society in 
 this our day. Many a seed has sunk into the soil and 
 lain inorganic for a time, waiting the shower and the 
 sun. But at some instant, under some combination 
 of causes too subtle and too comprehensive for human 
 analysis, the dormant instincts begin to move ; and 
 though at first blindly groping their way underground, 
 they gather themselves by degrees into masses, and 
 these masses again unite in a larger mass, until at 
 length they are such that in their collision they shall 
 shake the world. Happy indeed is he who shall be 
 found prepared in that day, and happy the humblest 
 of men, who, with sincere intent, shall have con- 
 tributed in the very least degree towards such prep- 
 aration. 
 
 And if, however encumbered with unconscious preju- 
 dice, we keep the beacon-light steadily in our view, we
 
 RELIGION. 259 
 
 may always take 'comfort in the midst of our labor. 
 We may remember first how much of the misappre- 
 hension which gives occasion to wrath may fairly 
 be ascribed to ourselves, and next that all collisions, 
 whether in speculation or in practical life, are actually 
 and effectively working together for the ultimate and 
 permanent establishment of truth : of truth, in whose 
 train unity and peace are inevitably found ; of truth, 
 whose prevalence we ought first and most of all to 
 desire, not in the aspect which she wears to us, 
 not in this or that specific dress which receives its 
 color or figure from the contemplating fancy, but for 
 her own sake as such, and in her own substance as 
 such. And we are bound to love that substance which 
 as yet we see but variably, dimly, and remotely, that 
 as yet undeveloped substance, with an affection higher 
 and more absolute than we yield to any of our own 
 subjective impressions received from the everlasting 
 seal ; as when sailors, weary of the main, are hastening 
 together towards a common home, which they know to 
 be a home, and to be common, and one may with 
 straining eyes conceive that he beholds it at one point 
 of the compass, and another dreams that elsewhere he 
 sees it breaking the even line of the horizon ; but the 
 love and the desire of each are fastened not upon the 
 image scarce conjectured, but upon the reality which 
 that image is taken to denote. So that, wherever we 
 can enjoy the full and firm conviction that others with
 
 260 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 whom we are in apparent conflict are truly searching 
 for the same object as that to which we have given 
 ourselves, their labors, although in their first direction 
 adverse to our own, ought to be, and in a true though 
 a restricted sense may be, even here and now, a bond 
 of inward union between us. 
 
 ccx. 
 
 * 
 
 That which we familiarly call the history of men, is 
 not their history. It is a part indeed of their history, 
 but not the' most important and essential part. We 
 should think it strange, and might be tempted to com- 
 plain of it as either a gross error or a fraud, if an 
 account of some of the less important classes of mate- 
 rial objects should monopolize or even assume the 
 title of natural history. It is not less at variance with 
 the true nature of things, though more in conformity 
 with our habitual but erroneous conceptions, that rela- 
 tions, which are only secondary with respect to the 
 most momentous interests of man, and the highest parts 
 of his nature, should, by a semblance of common con- 
 sent, be considered the history of man. There is fraud 
 in this case, but the fraud is in ourselves, in each of 
 us, in the deprivation of the inward eye, which misrep- 
 resents the comparative magnitude of objects, and 
 gives to the things which are seen, a greater import- 
 ance than to those which are not seen.
 
 HISTORY. 261 
 
 CCXI. 
 
 As secular history will in the natural course of things 
 be g ithered from contemporary observations, first re- 
 corded with the advantages of proximity, and then 
 reduced into order with those of comprehensive 
 and impartial contemplation : so, in the history of re- 
 ligion, we ought to consider not only the records of 
 the past, with which our concern is comparatively 
 remote, but also those peculiarities and variations 
 which are actually beneath our eye, which belong to 
 the circumstances and persons of our own time, and 
 by which perhaps in more than trifling particulars the 
 forms of our own belief, and thus of our own char- 
 acter, are determined. And the habit of observation 
 which should arrest and embody some of the religious 
 characteristics of the period as they rise or ripen, or 
 decline, and the pen which should record them with 
 fidelity, might be found to render useful service to 
 truth. 
 
 CCXII. 
 
 We all know how much has been done in the 
 researches of our time by applying the principle of 
 comparison comparison, for example, of the struc- 
 ture of living bodies as the basis of modern biology, 
 the comparison of the structures of languages as the 
 basis of philology. Depend upon it, then, that the
 
 262 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 observation and analogy which natural history is con- 
 tinually suggesting, as it is valuable for the purposes 
 of science, so it has a lighter but a most graceful and 
 civilizing use in supplying those analogies taken from 
 the seen world and applicable to the unseen, assisting 
 in giving to every work of the mind that grace and 
 beauty, which is just as appropriate and desirable, 
 though it may not be so indispensable to it, as are 
 the higher qualities of solidity and truth. 
 
 CCXIII. 
 
 Religious truth is the basis and groundwork of 
 charity. The apostle did not preach to the heathen, 
 as first in order, that they should love one another, 
 but that they should repent towards God, and believe 
 in Christ. Why? We may with reverence reply, 
 because the heart of man is in great part averse to 
 the law of mutual love ; because proclamation of that 
 law, without the specific means for procuring obedi- 
 ence to it, would be a mockery, a cruel and dangerous 
 delusion ; because by this men would then have 
 seemed, as they now too often seem, to themselves, to 
 be as it were fulfilling by anticipation the law of Christ, 
 through a way which is shorter as well as more excel- 
 lent ; for the beautiful lessons of charity come smoothly 
 from the tongue, and melodiously to the ear, even 
 when they are employed as words alone, or as coverts
 
 CHARITY. 263 
 
 to facilitate the prosecution of irreligious designs ; and 
 men thus arraying themselves in borrowed splendors 
 grow persuaded that they are their own ; they talk of 
 charity until they come to believe that it has really 
 pervaded their souls, and has become their ruling 
 sentiment, although that sentiment has taught them to 
 depreciate the doctrines of the faith which is the 
 ground of all charity. Great is the error of those 
 who depreciate love, the end of the commandment : 
 but what avails the recognition of the end, if we wil- 
 fully set aside the faith, the divinely ordained and the 
 exclusively effectual means ? 
 
 CCXIV. 
 
 To encourage a brotherly feeling towards those with 
 whom we differ, we must remember that we may be 
 inwardly united while we are outwardly in conflict ; 
 and on the other hand, to exclude the poison of indif- 
 ferentism, we must remember that for the purposes of 
 duty, the partial truth we possess, imposes upon us 
 as real and valid obligations, as the universal truth 
 we hope one day to enjoy. In the harmony of these 
 two principles lies the secret of the peace of mankind, 
 and in a certain, even if a distant, future is folded up 
 the day when that secret shall be fully and universally 
 revealed.
 
 264 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 ccxv. 
 
 Charity, if it be real, forbids us to divide ourselves 
 from our brethren upon matters of private or equivocal 
 opinion, or to confound such matter with matter of 
 faith, and utterly forbids the needless multiplication 
 of conditions of communion \ but she does not forbid 
 no, she urges and commands a diligent search for 
 the faith of Christ in its completeness, and for the 
 Church of Christ in its essential inherent conditions ; 
 and this for the very purpose of insuring and perpetua- 
 ting obedience to the law of brotherly love, which then 
 only can become acceptable to the human heart when 
 it is possessed with the doctrines of Christ and the 
 influences of his spirit, because they alone so modify 
 the human heart, as to bring it into intrinsic accordance 
 with that law. 
 
 CCXVI. 
 
 We hear much ot the decay of Christian liberality 
 since the period of the Reformation and in England it 
 has been grievious. It has been stated in Parliament, 
 though I have not been able to learn on what authority, 
 that there were in England three hundred years ago, 
 between Parish churches and minor edifices, not less 
 than ninety-seven thousand places of worship. At 
 least we know there were churches enough, and
 
 CHARITY. 265 
 
 more than barely enough for the Christian flocks, while 
 hundreds of thousands now are as sheep wandering 
 on the hills, and without a shepherd. But let us 
 inquire whether there has not been an at least 
 corresponding decay of pious munificence in Roman 
 Catholic countries. The stream of religious endow- 
 ment has not lately flowed, I apprehend, in France 
 or Italy, in Austria or the Peninsula, as it did during 
 the middle ages. On the contrary, we may look long 
 and almost in vain for the benefactions of the last 
 three hundred years. The unfinished churches in Italy 
 in particular, seem to show almost throughout that 
 peninsula that the spirit of munificence and faith in 
 which many great works were begun, decayed so rap- 
 idly as to prevent their completion. At least it is very 
 safe to challenge a comparison between England and 
 any of the continental countries on this score. 
 
 The Reformation did not in England freeze or check 
 the generosity of the children of the church, whatever 
 scope it gave to the rapacious avarice of the great. 
 Nearly the whole of the professorships in the Uni- 
 versities both of Oxford and Cambridge have been 
 founded since the Reformation ; and in Cambridge it 
 appears that not one-fourth of the entire endowments 
 are held in right of any Roman Catholic benefaction : 
 nor is there any reason to suppose that the proportion 
 is materially different at Oxford ; while Dublin derives 
 its entire possessions from the same period. It is true
 
 266 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 indeed that the channel of pious and thankful bounty 
 was altered, and with sufficient reason. The provision 
 for public worship and the maintenance of a clergy was 
 already redundant ; while that for the education of the 
 young in such a knowledge of Christianity as befitted 
 their rational faculties, was extremely in arrear. Ac- 
 cordingly that which had been nobly done by William 
 of Wykham, by Henry the Sixth, by Dean Colet, was 
 imitated, not only by Edward the Sixth and by Eliza- 
 beth, but by their subjects in immense numbers ; and 
 the splendid endowments of the grammar-schools of 
 England attest the liberality of the children of the 
 church during the latter part of the sixteenth and the 
 whole of the seventeenth century. Besides these, 
 there were immense endowments for the relief of the 
 poor, by foundations of hospitals and almshouses, 
 which may also be employed in illustration of this 
 argument. Of the present there is indeed little to be 
 said, except that it has afforded some brilliant ex- 
 amples, and gives hope for the future. Has Christian 
 charity, however, been more lively; upon the whole, 
 during this period, among our continental neighbors ? 
 
 CCXVII. 
 
 It is not in the nature of things, alas ! that all truths 
 should be felt alike by all persons and at all times. 
 Now, even suppose a man assumes, and it is the
 
 CHARITY. 267 
 
 greatest assumption any man has a right to make, that 
 he is in advance of some among his brethren in his 
 apprehension of some particular truths, and that see- 
 ing their outlines and their complexion more clearly, 
 and himself more satisfactorily, he is desirous of leading 
 others to partake the benefit : it is quite manifest that 
 such a conception is not the introduction of new but 
 the development of old and perhaps suppressed prin- 
 ciples ; and that he draws them from a fountain-head 
 common to his brethren with himself; his object there- 
 fore, must be to induce them to draw the same comfort 
 from the same source ; but if, instead of that, he 
 either wilfully attempts or acts consciously in such a 
 manner as to drive them to another communion, then, 
 indeed, he must raise a suspicion of his temper if not 
 his motives ; and he proceeds in a mode not less out 
 of conformity with logical consistency, than with the 
 spirit of Christian brotherhood. 
 
 CCXVIII. 
 
 Unity of opinion upon the numerous and continu- 
 ally multiplying points that are opened by an inspec- 
 tion of Christian doctrine, though good and desirable, 
 is very hard, considering the differences of our mental 
 constitutions, to maintain ; and further, so that the 
 opinion be not contumacious, nor touch the declared 
 foundation of religion, we know not that it is abso-
 
 268 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 lutely requisite. But yet it is desirable to be always 
 approximating to it, or rather it is desirable to set in 
 action some countervailing power, which may neutral- 
 ize the perpetual tendency to creation of new differ- 
 ences from the new combinations into which human 
 thought is. perpetually thrown. In short, varieties of 
 theological opinion, though tolerable within certain 
 limits, are false beyond those limits, and are always 
 dangerous on account of their tendency to overstep the 
 boundary ; and as they have a self-multiplying and self- 
 extending principle in themselves, so they absolutely 
 call for strong moral checks upon this tendency by 
 way of security. 
 
 CCXIX. 
 
 Amidst the divisions of Christendom it has rarely 
 happened, that titles, in themselves, conveying a re- 
 proach or slur, have been fastened upon any partic- 
 ular section. Human malevolence finds a sufficient 
 scope in the invidious and oblique application of 
 appellatives good in their first intention. And any- 
 thing that tends to the introduction of the practice of 
 calling names, and especially of embodying vitupera- 
 tion in popular phrases meant for popular use, should 
 be discountenanced, as we think, by sober-minded and 
 Christian-minded men.
 
 CHARITY. 269 
 
 ccxx. 
 
 The only way to cure mistrust is by showing that 
 trust, if given, would not be misplaced, would not be 
 betrayed. By its own nature it is spontaneous, and 
 not subject to brute force ; in order to be enjoyed, it 
 must be soothed, and won. 
 
 CCXXI. 
 
 Differences of judgment do not always impair moral 
 and religious harmony. It is when the conflicting prop- 
 ositions are each held as matters of divine authority 
 and essential importance, or as what is termed by theo- 
 logians, in a solemn and peculiar sense, matter of 
 faith. But, on the other hand, it is most desirable 
 for the sake of Christian brotherhood and peace, that 
 nothing should be so held except what, according to 
 such evidence as our human condition requires, really 
 is so : because every one of the mere -opinions which 
 heat, rashness, or ignorance would add to the canon 
 of faith, becomes a new cause of needless wrath, and 
 needless wrath is not pain only, but also sin. Since, 
 therefore, such fatal evils result from confounding the 
 province of proper belief with that of opinion, from 
 the encroachment of the second on the first shipwreck 
 of that faith, and from the encroachment of the first 
 on the second breach of charity, how can we exa^er-
 
 270 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 ate the moral value in this point of view, of a system 
 which should afford us an adequate criterion to distin- 
 guish the one from the other. 
 
 CCXXII. 
 
 What is more a bond of union among- Christians 
 than belief in the Holy Trinity? And yet how small 
 is our knowledge of the essence of that doctrine ! 
 Many properties indeed we are authorized to predicate 
 concerning it, and there is much that we are likewise 
 enjoined to deny; but of its full meaning, how small 
 a portion, so far as we are qualified to discern the 
 limits of our knowledge, has been placed within the 
 scope of our knowledge ! Believing, however, in that 
 which is revealed, we likewise know that however 
 much may remain unrevealed, yet if the day come 
 when there shall be a further illumination in a better 
 world, those who may attain thither will be led and 
 bound to accept all that additional knowledge of which 
 they are as yet unconscious ; and even here, as know- 
 ing the immutability of truth, and as taking the future 
 cheerfully upon trust from the benignant providence 
 of God, they feel themselves united by anticipation 
 in that which they know not, because it is truly and 
 inseparably attached to that which they know. We 
 stand, then, as it seems, in the way of God's ordinances 
 as regards this matter ; obeying what we clearly see,
 
 SLAVERY. 271 
 
 waiting and laboring that he may realize, in his wis- 
 dom, all that yet lacks to our full and intelligent 
 harmony in point of truth, as well as to our perfect 
 holiness in point of practice ; and finding alike in our 
 present position and our past history, admonitions not 
 only to love one another, but to love as brethren. 
 
 
 
 CCXXIII. 
 
 As freedom can never be effectually established by 
 the adversaries of that gospel which has first made it a 
 reality for all orders and degrees of men, so the gospel 
 never can be effectually defended by a policy which 
 declines to acknowledge the high place assigned to 
 liberty in the counsels of Providence, and which, upon 
 the pretext of the abuse that like every other good she 
 suffers, expels her from its system. Among the many 
 noble thoughts of Homer, there is not one more noble 
 or more penetrating than his judgment upon slavery. 
 
 " On the day," he says : 
 
 " That makes a bondman of the free, 
 Wide seeing Zeus takes half the man away." 
 
 He thus judges not because the slavery of his time 
 was cruel for evidently it was not but because it 
 was slavery. What he said against servitude in the 
 social order, we may plead against Vaticanism in the 
 spiritual sphere ; and no cloud of incense which zeal
 
 272 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 or flattery, or even love, can raise, should hide the 
 disastrous truth from the vision of mankind. 
 
 CCXXIV. 
 
 The oppression of a majority is detestable and 
 odious the oppression of a minority is only by one 
 degree less detestable and less odious. The face of 
 justice is like the face of the god Janus. It is like the 
 face of those lions, the work of Landseer, which keep 
 watch and ward around the record of our country's 
 greatness. She presents the tranquil and majestic 
 countenance towards every point of the compass and 
 every quarter of the globe. That rare, that noble, that 
 imperial virtue has this above all other qualities, that 
 she is not respector of persons, and she will not take 
 advantage of a favorable moment to oppress the wealthy 
 for the sake of flattering the poor, any more than she 
 will condescend to oppress the poor for the sake of 
 pampering the luxuries of the rich. 
 
 ccxxv. 
 
 If we be just men, we shall go forward in the name 
 of truth and right, bearing this in mind that, when 
 the case is proved, and the hour is come, justice 
 delayed is justice denied.
 
 LABOR. 273 
 
 CCXXVI. 
 
 How, in a country like England, where wealth ac- 
 cumulates with such vast rapidity, are we to check the 
 growth of luxury and selfishness by a sound and healthy 
 opinion ? How are we to secure to labor its due honor 
 I mean not only to the labor of the hands, but to 
 the labor of the man with any and all the faculties 
 which God has given him ? How are we to make 
 ourselves believe, and how are we to bring the country 
 to believe, that in the sight of God and man labor is 
 honorable and idleness is contemptible ? Depend upon 
 it, I do but speak the serious and solemn truth when I 
 say that beneath the political questions which are 
 found on the surface lie those deeper and more search- 
 ing questions that enter the breast and strike home 
 to the conscience and mind of every man ; and it is 
 upon the solution of those questions that the well-being 
 of England must depend. In the words of a popular 
 poet, I give vent to this sentiment of hope, with which 
 for one I venture to look forward for the future of 
 England : 
 
 " The ancient virtue is not dead and long may it endure, 
 May wealth in England " 
 
 and I am sure he means by wealth that higher sense 
 of it prosperity, and sound prosperity 
 
 " May wealth in England never fail, nor pity for the poor.''
 
 274 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 May strength and the means of material prosperity 
 never be wanting to us ; but it is far more important 
 that there shall not be wanting the disposition to use 
 those means aright. 
 
 CCXXVII. 
 
 What I would always desire in trades unions, and 
 what I look upon as essential to their full utility, is 
 that those who enter into such combinations shall fully 
 and absolutely respect the liberty of those who do not 
 wish to enter them, and further, that they shall, 
 although it is a difficult lesson for them, adopt large 
 and liberal principles with regard to all the points that 
 touch them in the exercise of their profession. Ques- 
 tions such as the employment of women, the employ- 
 ment of boys and young men, piecework, etc. on 
 the whole of these questions they should get rid of 
 narrow and selfish views, and should adopt sound 
 ones. I am bound to say that I think they are often 
 lectured upon these narrow and selfish views by other 
 people in higher stations who are very apt to act 
 upon narrow and selfish views themselves when they 
 can. But that is not the question. 
 
 Is it the best for themselves ? I am convinced that 
 they should be large and liberal in all their views with 
 regard to the employment of labor, because, after all, 
 when men choose to put unnatural and unnecessary
 
 LABOR. 275 
 
 restrictions on the labor of women and children, what 
 is that but putting it on the members of their own 
 family, for these women and children are persons in 
 intimate associations with them. 
 
 CCXXVIII. 
 
 Those who are least able to take care of themselves 
 should be most regarded by others. Particularly is it 
 a duty to endeavor by every means, that labor may 
 receive adequate remuneration. Whatever measures there- 
 fore whether by correction of the poor laws, al- 
 lotment of cottage grounds, or otherwise tend to 
 promote this object, I deem entitled to the warmest 
 support; with all such as are calculated to secure sound 
 moral conduct in any class of society. 
 
 CCXXIX. 
 
 An agitation by the working classes is not like an 
 agitation by the classes above them having leisure. 
 The agitation of the classes having leisure is easily 
 conducted. Every hour of their time has not a money 
 value; their wives and children are not dependent on 
 application of those hours of labor. When a working 
 man finds himself in such a condition that he must 
 abandon that daily labor on which he is strictly depend-
 
 276 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 ent for his daily bread, it is only because then, in rail- 
 way language, the danger signal is turned on, and 
 because he feels a strong necessity for action, and 
 a distrust of the rulers who have driven him to that 
 necessity. 
 
 ccxxx. 
 
 We cannot consent to look upon a large addition, 
 considerable although it may be, to the political power 
 of the working classes of England, as if it were an 
 addition fraught with mischief and with danger. We 
 cannot look, and we hope no man will look upon it as 
 some Trojan horse approaching the walls of the sacred 
 city, and filled with armed men, bent upon ruin, plun- 
 der, and conflagration. We cannot join in comparing it 
 with that monstrum infelix we cannot say 
 
 " Scandit fatalis machina muros, 
 Fceta armis : mediasque minans illabitur urbi." 
 
 By giving to the working classes new interests in the 
 constitution, you shall, by the beneficent processes of 
 the law of nature and of providence, beget in them new 
 attachment ; and the attachment of the people to the 
 institutions and the laws under which they live is, after 
 all, more than gold and silver, or more than fleets and 
 armies, at once the strength, the glory, and the safety 
 of the land.
 
 SIN. 277 
 
 ccxxxr. 
 
 As among individuals nemo repente fuit turpissimus, 
 so in States the most terrible developments of lawless- 
 ness and crime are indicators of some disease which, 
 however deep, yet in a community is, if taken in time, 
 never fatal. And it will be a mistake scarcely less ruin- 
 ous in its extent than the iniquity, if the feelings which 
 that iniquity excites are allowed to exhaust themselves 
 in indignation, or in retribution, and if they do not 
 accept as the one paramount lesson from the catastro- 
 phe the absolute necessity of careful study, and of 
 appropriate remedies. 
 
 CCXXXII. 
 
 Avoidance of sin, comprehensive as is the meaning 
 of the phrase, is still an inadequate and partial ex- 
 pression of a Christian's law of duty ; and, in like 
 manner, simple recoil from a false religion would leave 
 us but imperfectly possessed with those positive quali- 
 ties of truth, without which mere negations, however 
 accurate, are utterly unfruitful. 
 
 CCXXXIII. 
 
 External success cannot always silence the monitor 
 that lies within. You all know the noble tragedy of
 
 278 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 our great Shakespeare in which Lady Macbeth, after 
 having achieved the utmost external success, after hav- 
 ing waded through blood to a crown, and that crown 
 at the moment seemingly undisputed, yet is so troubled 
 with the silent action of conscience residing within 
 the breast that reason itself is shaken in its seat, and 
 she appears at night wandering through the chambers 
 of her castle. What does she say ? There she had 
 nothing to warn her from without, nothing to alarm her. 
 Her success had been complete. She had reached the 
 top of what some think to be human felicity, and what 
 all admit to be human authority. What does she say 
 in that condition ? 
 
 " Here's the smell of the blood still ; all the perfumes of 
 Arabia will not sweeten this little hand." 
 
 And the physician appointed to wait on her, in the few 
 simple pregnant words of the poet says 
 
 " This disease is beyond my practice." 
 
 Yes ; the disease of an evil conscience is beyond the 
 practice of all the physicians of all the countries in 
 the world. The penalty may linger ; but if it lingers, 
 it only lingers to drive one on further into guilt, and 
 to make retribution when it comes more severe and 
 more disastrous. It is written in the eternal laws of 
 the universe of God that sin shall be followed by 
 suffering.
 
 SIN. 279 
 
 CCXXXIV. 
 
 The spiritual and the carnal principle have not com- 
 mon grounds in religion, sufficient to move man. 
 True, there is in both a sense of pleasure and of 
 pain; but of the objects within the range of our expe- 
 rience those which to the apprehension of the one are 
 pleasurable, are painful in the view of the other, 
 and vice versa. Here, therefore, their range of contact 
 determines. Both again have a conception of duty; 
 but these conceptions are essentially distinct in respect 
 of the supreme law to which duty is referred, and also 
 of the rules and measures by which it is ascertained 
 in human practice. Reasoning therefore may proceed 
 to a certain point, situated somewhere between religion 
 and irreligion ; and we may undoubtedly derive aid 
 from those relics and fragments of better views which 
 are yet to be found amidst the ruins of the spiritual 
 nature of man. But the analysis of moral action must 
 have its limits ; we may resolve questions into their 
 elements, and these again we may divide into .their 
 constituent parts ; but when we have fallen back upon 
 the simple ideas themselves, which are the original 
 grounds of the argument, we shall find that the law of 
 our actual nature and the law of Divine Revelation are 
 fatally at variance upon those simple ideas, whose 
 grounds (by the hypothesis) argument cannot explain ; 
 and here accordingly we see, that there must be a
 
 280 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 spiritual process rectifying these simple ideas and 
 their root within us, in order that reasoning may take 
 its due effect by setting out from right premises. Until 
 we have the same primary conceptions of good and 
 evil, of the sources of pleasure and pain, which the 
 gospel embodies, it is of no avail that we consent to 
 employ in argument the phraseology which Scripture 
 supplies, or that the steps of our reasonings are logi- 
 cally accurate. 
 
 ccxxxv. 
 
 The Scripture sets forth to us the fulfilment of the 
 will of God as the best and paramount object of 
 desire. But that will of God refuses to the natural 
 man the very things that he chiefly loves. What natu- 
 ral instinct prompts as desirable, the will of God says 
 is the reverse. Here, therefore, our affection is at 
 variance with the divine command, which command 
 undoubtedly is in its terms perceivable by the under- 
 standing. They are opposed to one another as affir- 
 mative and negative. Nor is the difficulty removed 
 by the promise of heaven or the threat of hell. For 
 the natural man does not find in his view of the 
 heavenly life that character of desirableness which the 
 Word of God asserts to belong to it ; again, they are 
 at issue upon the very rudiments which constitute the 
 essence of happiness, and contradict one another. Or
 
 SIN. 281 
 
 if he be tempted by the promise of happiness in the 
 gross, and terrified by the prospect of pains, which are 
 undoubtedly described in terms that he can appreciate 
 still the energy of our affections is much more power- 
 fully incited by proximate objects, as a general rule, 
 than by distant ones, especially when they are also 
 more thoroughly in affinity with our disposition ; and 
 will therefore, unless they be touched from within by 
 a divine influence, incline much more to present en- 
 joyments than to the negative idea of the avoidance 
 of future pains, and the remote and feeble idea of the 
 acquisition of joy in heaven. 
 
 In fine, to perceive in the will of God those qualities 
 of goodness and desirableness without which we can- 
 not love it, our affections must have been first 
 detached from their present objects, which are such 
 as they themselves have grasped by their natural im- 
 pulses, arising out of their actual and depraved com- 
 position. No reasoning can effect this change more 
 than it can prove an object to be white which the 
 eye testifies to be black. For as the eye conveys the 
 impression of blackness, so the affection conveys the 
 impression of desirableness. It attaches that quality 
 to the dictates oi our own will ; that is to say, in 
 effect, of itself. It does not see it belonging to the 
 objects indicated by the will of God. Surely then it 
 is indisputable, that as the sense, if depraved requires 
 a physical operation (whether of nature or art) to rec-
 
 282 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 tify it : so the affection being depraved requires a 
 spiritual impression, and that since the subject-matter 
 of the Christian religion has for its office to present 
 food to the affections, that food can only be available 
 as such by an aptitude in these to receive it, instead 
 of the existing contrariety; in other words, belief 
 depends upon assimilation : quod sumus scimus : and 
 the understanding alone cannot cure the affections, 
 more than it can heal a wound or set a limit. 
 
 CCXXXVI. 
 
 A depraved theory does not bring with it the same 
 degree of pleasure as a depraved practice : conse- 
 quently the temptation to a depraved theory is less 
 powerful than the inducement to a depraved act upon 
 the same subject-matter. In the case of the act the 
 pleasure is immediate, and helps to blink or hide the 
 sin. In the case when the evil is to be conceived and 
 to be entertained in the distinct form of a principle 
 before it issues into practice, the pleasure is contingent 
 and remote, and less able to raise a tempest of passion 
 in its behalf ; so that frequently the same degree of 
 strength will enable us to repudiate a mischievous prin- 
 ciple, which will not enable us, when the occasion is 
 immediate, to refuse an action such as can only be 
 justified, and therefore such as can only with consis- 
 tency L>e performed, upon that principle. And hence
 
 SIN. 283 
 
 St. Paul describes as an aggravated guilt that of 
 those, who not only do evil, but have pleasure in those 
 that do it : /. <?., who begin to regard evil as a kind 
 of law to their nature, as a principle authoritative in 
 itself, and a bond, consequently, of union and sympa- 
 thy : they are supposed to have reached such hardness 
 as that they deliberately contemplate it in their belief, 
 and are not merely surprised into it by negligence or 
 passion, or want of self-government. With this idea 
 it is that Milton, in describing Belial as the extreme 
 of base wickedness, has placed him at the close of 
 the infernal procession, and writes : 
 
 " Belial came last : than whom a spirit more lewd 
 Fell not from heaven, or more gross to love 
 Vice for itself," 
 
 CCXXXVII. 
 
 It is the intermixture of evil with good in all the 
 subjective forms of religion which gives a dangerous 
 and fearful scope to uncharitableness in theological 
 controversy ; and it is the presence of good amidst the 
 evil which may indeed open in an opposite direction 
 the danger of confounding true and false by equating 
 them all, but which if that peril be escaped, presents 
 in the task of their careful discrimination at once an 
 exercise of faith and a labor of love.
 
 284 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 CCXXXVIII. 
 
 There is something that indicates a feeble tone of 
 mind, a dependence on secondary circumstances, and a 
 want of genuine and ardent thirst in the soul for 
 truth, whenever in momentous controversies men leave 
 the great issue of true or false unexamined, and pre- 
 maturely grasp at some consequence, which, following 
 according to their judgment from the establishment of 
 the contested proposition, is also as they think, likely 
 to raise a prejudice against it. Or when, instead of 
 inquiring into that main issue, they inquire into the 
 manner in which it may affect themselves, and the. 
 uncomfortable sentiments which it has aroused and 
 may arouse in them : as if their own feelings were to 
 govern and determine the essence of divine truth, in- 
 stead of being submitted to and determined by it. 
 
 CCXXXIX. 
 
 It has been observed as a circumstance full of 
 meaning, that no man knows the names of the architects 
 of our cathedrals. They left no record of their names 
 upon the . fabrics, as if they would have nothing there 
 that could suggest any other idea than the glory of that 
 God to whom the edifices were devoted for perpetual 
 and solemn worship ; nothing to mingle meaner associa- 
 tion with the profound sense of his presence ; or as if
 
 ECO TISM. 285 
 
 in the joy of having built him a house, there was 
 no want left unfulfilled, nor room for the question 
 whether it is good for a man to live in posthumous 
 renown. But come to the mean and petty reconstruc- 
 tions of the interiors of our parochial churches, which 
 have been effected within the last hundred years, and 
 we find that they are bedaubed, even if the achievement 
 be no more than the building of a gallery, with the 
 names at length, and often in a position of most in- 
 decent prominence, of those, not whose imaginations 
 devised the work, not whose hands fashioned it, not 
 whose offerings bore the cost, but such as have held 
 some temporary parochial office, as have been, for the 
 unsightly work, some Fidenarum Gabiorumque potestas, 
 and thus have been enabled to gratify their vanity in 
 the temple of God. 
 
 CCXL. 
 
 It is not a visionary notion, it is a sober and solid 
 Christian truth, that even'- high-minded man will carry 
 on the work of self-discipline itself, not so much with 
 his own individual benefit and happiness habitually 
 before his eyes as with the glory of God, filling, and 
 delighting, and enlarging his vision, and enabling, him 
 to discharge that work more joyfully and more ef- 
 fectually than if his thoughts and hopes ran only the 
 narrow round of his own insulated being. Beside^
 
 286 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 there is generally implanted in our natural constitution, 
 an ample security for at least a sufficient amount of 
 desire and inclination towards our own particular 
 benefit ; so that for one error of defect there will al- 
 ways be a thousand excesses in this direction. Sound 
 ethics would surely require of us not to look only at 
 the one, but also to make some provision against the 
 thousand cases. There is no fear of any extensive 
 deficiency in the regard of the individual to his own 
 welfare, so far as quantity is concerned ; the great 
 difficulty is to induce us to adopt the true way of 
 attaining it, namely, by looking at that higher end 
 which we are bidden and bounden to contemplate, 
 and leaving the result in God's hand. All the reflex 
 action and care of the conscientions mind upon itself 
 will in this \v;iy be preserved ; but it will be kept 
 more free from the taint of selfishness, while it will 
 also securely realize the objects at which that hateful 
 spirit grasps in vain. 
 
 CCXLI. 
 
 Whatever may or has been said, and by persons of 
 great authority, respecting self-love as a part of our 
 constitutions, may it not well be questioned whether 
 self was ever intended to form an object of separate 
 contemplation on any distinct principle of preference, 
 whether in short the whole amount of our dealings
 
 EGOTISM. 287 
 
 with self, though they may constitute the greater part 
 of ou mental life, be not subject to exactly the same 
 laws as the ordinarily less amount of our dealings with 
 others ; whether a preference to self as such be ever 
 justified in a Christian view : and further, whether at 
 all events, and on the shewing even .of those who would 
 here support an opposite doctrine, the idea of self as 
 an authority, and of the mere doctrine of self as a 
 motive, whether to belief or to practice, and whether 
 in things human or in things divine, be not by a reat 
 deal too prominent in almost every mind? Then 
 coalescence with our brethren is advantageous. For 
 united action will be incompatible with an arbitrary or 
 capricious independence of judgment: it will discourage 
 self-reliance in the adoption of conclusions : it will bring 
 before us in the processes of reflection, the sentiments 
 of others, their claims to respect, and other comparative 
 probabilities of correctness. 
 
 CCXLII. 
 
 Every Christian, of whatever distinctive name, in 
 proportion as he is really influenced by the truths of 
 Christianity, will find, when he looks abroad upon the 
 heathen world, no cause of exultation from the compar- 
 ison between his less favored brethren and himself ; but 
 on the contrary his first and paramount impression 
 will be that of the greater disproportion between means
 
 288 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 and performances in his case than in theirs that of 
 his deserving many stripes while they deserve few. 
 
 CCXLIII. 
 
 I believe that jealous self-scrutiny, both in individuals 
 and communities, free and ample confession and sharp 
 censure of our own delinquencies, are not only most 
 befitting our human infirmity and sin, but are the best 
 criterion of a real strength, the most hopeful signs of 
 capacity to attain to truth by undergoing her discipline. 
 
 CCXLIV. 
 
 It is extremely painful to see on every hand, in 
 almost every church, monumental inscriptions recording 
 social respectability, domestic affection, professional 
 talent, scientific acquirement, martial valor, even in 
 one instance which has met my eye distinction in 
 freemasonry, without any accompanying notice of the 
 Christian hopes of the deceased ; and of that char- 
 acter by virtue of which alone their human qualities 
 can justly claim either permanence or praise. What 
 respect has the stern sceptre of death for these earthly 
 shows ? What title have they to be commemorated 
 amidst the solemnity of the Christian temple, unless 
 they be under the seal of Christ ? Gladdening it is 
 in the long galleries of the Vatican, walled with the
 
 EGOTISM. 289 
 
 sepulchral inscriptions of antiquity, to pass from these 
 cheerless memorials of the dead, which alone paganism 
 could supply, to the emphatic phrases and the not less 
 eloquent symbols, which marked the tombstones of 
 the early Christians, and told of their present peace 
 and joyful anticipations of the future ; but how sad 
 that we should now recoil from the use of our free 
 privileges, and speak, as is so often the case, of the 
 dead in Christ, as though immortality was not yet 
 brought to light 1 
 
 CCXLV. 
 
 r 
 
 It is the general truth, that even in carrying out the 
 principle of holiness into the details of charity or self- 
 discipline, we are continually beset by the danger of 
 imbibing some tinge of belief that our acts are merito- 
 rious ; of mistaking what is done in us, for what is 
 done by us; and of imagining that anything done 
 either in us or by us, could establish a claim of desert, 
 properly so called. 
 
 But are we on account of this danger to suffer the 
 principle to lie barren ? Are we to refrain from acts 
 of benevolence, because we may inflate ourselves upon 
 them with our insane pride ? Why then should we not 
 refrain from acts of self-government, self-restraint, self- 
 discipline, because we may be guilty of the same wick- 
 edness to which in every act of duty, be it what it
 
 290 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 may, we are perpetually liable ? From this we can 
 only be preserved in discharging any of them, by the 
 power of divine grace : but that power is alike suf- 
 ficient to preserve us in them all ; and in fact we may 
 fear that the carnal mind sometimes shelters itself 
 under this plausible objection, in order to avoid the 
 sacrifice of its appetites, because whenever the argu- 
 ment is tested by application to one of the other 
 departments of Christian obligation, we at once see 
 that, while most useful as a warning, it is utterly futile 
 in argument and mischievous in practice, if it be 
 opposed to acts good in themselves and in their 
 circumstances. 
 
 CCXLVI. 
 
 It has been said that the world does not know its 
 greatest men ; neither, I will add, is it aware of the 
 power and might carried by the words and by the acts 
 of those among its greatest men whom it does know. 
 
 CCXLVII. 
 
 No wave on the great ocean of time, when once it 
 has floated past us, can be .recalled. All we can do 
 is to watch the new form and motion of the next, and 
 launch upon it to try, in the manner our best judgment 
 may suggest, our strength and skill.
 
 TRUE GREATNESS. 291 
 
 CCXLVIII. 
 
 Take a human soul profoundly conscious of the taint 
 and power of sin ; one given to the contemplation of 
 the character of Christ, and shocked at its own im- 
 measurable distance from the glorious image of the 
 Master ; one pained not only with the positive forms of 
 corruption, but with the pervading grief of general 
 imperfection and unworthiness, and with the sense how 
 the choicest portions of the life strangely run to waste, 
 how the best designs are spoiled by faulty actuation, 
 how there are tears (in the touching language of Bishop 
 Beveridge) that want washing, and repentance that 
 needs to be repented of. Such an one feels himself 
 engaged in a double warfare, against evil without and 
 against evil within ; and finds the last even fiercer than 
 the first. To deprive one so minded of any fraction of 
 what are termed the doctrines of grace, of such lights 
 as shone upon the souls of St. Paul, St. Augustine, 
 and St. Bernard, is to drain away the life's blood of the 
 spirit, and lay him helpless at the feet of inexorable 
 foes. For a nature such as this, religion is not only a 
 portion or department of conduct, but, by a stringent 
 necessity, the great, standing, solemn drama of life ; 
 that in which all mental powers, and all emotions of the 
 heart, are most constantly and intensely exercised ; and 
 the yearnings, efforts, and conflicts which belong to the
 
 292 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 external order are as nothing compared with those 
 which are to God wards. 
 
 CCXLIX. 
 
 In the sphere of personal life, most men are misled 
 through the medium of the dominant faculty of their 
 nature. It is round that dominant faculty that folly 
 and flattery are wont to-buzz. They play upon vain 
 glory by exaggerating and commending what it does, 
 and by piquing it on what it sees cause to forbear from 
 doing. It is so with nations. For all of them the 
 supreme* want really is, to be warned against the indul- 
 gence of the dominant passion. 
 
 CCL. 
 
 It is easy to enumerate many characteristics of the 
 greatness of Sir Robert Peel. It is easy to speak of 
 his ability, of his sagacity, of his indefatigable indus- 
 try ; but great as were the intellectual powers of Sir 
 Robert Peel, if you will allow me, as one who may call 
 myself his pupil and his follower in politics, to bear 
 my witness, this I must say, that there was something 
 greater still in Sir Robert Peel something yet more 
 admirable than the immense intellectual endowments 
 with which it had pleased the Almighty to gift him, 
 and that was, his sense of public virtue, it was his
 
 TR UE GREA TNESS. 293 
 
 purity of conscience, it was his determination to fol- 
 low the public good, it was that disposition in him 
 which, when he had to choose between personal ease 
 and enjoyment, or again, on the other hand, between 
 political power and distinction, and what he knew to be 
 the welfare of the nation, his choice was made at once, 
 and when his choice was once made, no man ever saw 
 him hesitate no man ever saw him hold back from 
 that which was necessary to give it effect. 
 
 May God grant that through his example, many may 
 have awakened within their breasts the noble and hon- 
 orable desire to tread, each for himself, in his own 
 sphere, be it wide or be it narrow, the path of duty and 
 of virtue ; and in discharging those truths which apper- 
 tain to us as citizens, to discharge them in the spirit of 
 that great man, the spirit and determination to allow 
 no difficulty, no obstacle, to stand between him and 
 the performance of his duty, relying upon it that 
 duty is the road to enduring fame, that if public men 
 do not reap their rewards, as in barbarous times they 
 may have sought it from immense and extensive pos- 
 sessions, measured upon the surface of the earth, they 
 reap it in a form far more precious, when, like Sir 
 Robert Peel, they bequeath a name which is the prop- 
 erty not only of their family, not only of their own de- 
 scendants, but of every man who calls himself an 
 Englishman a part of our commonwealth some- 
 thing that helps to endear us to our own country a
 
 294 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 country that has a great and beneficial part to play in 
 the designs of providence for the advancement and 
 improvement of mankind. 
 
 CCLI. 
 
 Neither pretentious orations nor ambitious dis- 
 patches, which are but " tales of sound and fury, signi- 
 fying nothing," add anything to our greatness. Neither 
 an individual nor a state can heap upon itself offices of 
 supererogation, without displacing primary duties ; just 
 as every weed that we suffer to grow in our gardens 
 occupies the place which ought to be filled by some 
 vegetable good for food. 
 
 CCLII. 
 
 While many of the actions of the Duke of Welling- 
 ton, while many of the qualities he possessed are unat- 
 tainable by others, there are lessons that we may all 
 derive from the life and actions of that illustrious man. 
 It may never be given to another subject of the British 
 Crown to perform services so brilliant as he performed ; 
 it may never be given to another man to hold the sword 
 which was to gain the independence of Europe, to rally 
 the nations around it, and while England saved herself 
 by her constancy, to save Europe by her example ; it 
 may never be given to another man, after having at
 
 TR UE GREA TNESS. 295 
 
 tained such eminence, after such an unexampled series 
 of victories, to show equal moderation in peace as he 
 showed greatness in war, and to devote the remainder 
 of his life to the cause of internal and external peace 
 for that country which he had so served : it may never 
 be given to another man to have equal authority both 
 with the sovereign he served, and with the Senate of 
 which he was to the end a venerated member ; it may 
 never be given to another man after such a career to 
 preserve, even to the last, the full possession of those 
 great faculties with which he was endowed, and to carry 
 on the services of one of the most important depart- 
 ments of the State with unexampled regularity and 
 success, even to the latest day of his life. These are 
 circumstances, these are qualities which may never 
 occur again in history. But there are qualities which 
 the Duke of Wellington displayed, of which we may 
 all act in humble imitation : that sincere and unceas- 
 ing devotion to his country ; that honest and upright 
 determination to act for the benefit of the country on 
 every occasion ; that devotedness in the constant per- 
 formance of duty ; that temperance of his life, which 
 enabled him at all times to give his mind and his fac- 
 ulties to tTie services which he was called on to per- 
 form ; that regular, consistent, unceasing piety by which 
 he was distinguished at all times in his life, these 
 are qualities that are attainable by others, and these 
 are qualities which should not be lost as an example.
 
 296 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 CCLIII. 
 
 A long experience impresses me with the belief that 
 selfishness does not grow in intensity as we move 
 downwards in society from class to class. I rather 
 believe if a distinction is to be drawn in this respect, 
 it must be drawn in favor of, and not against, the 
 classes (if such they should be called) which are lower, 
 larger, less opulent, and, after allowing fully for trades 
 unions, less organized. 
 
 CCLIV. 
 
 The spirit of our religion, truly popular as it is, has 
 effaced from the English Constitution, the very name 
 and idea of the slave ; but what if the selfishness of 
 class, inhering in our politics,, has prevented us from 
 giving to the idea of freedom that which is its con- 
 summation, and to the character of the citizen, in the 
 humbler orders, the amplitude of which it is sus- 
 ceptible ? 
 
 CCLV. 
 
 
 What for the happiness of mankind, requires to be 
 
 exercised, is that spirit of inconsiderate selfishness 
 which, and which almost alone, makes this smiling world 
 into a world of woe. It is the excessive regard for 
 one's own welfare that, involving as it always in-
 
 HABIT. 297 
 
 volves its misdirection, has marred through all genera- 
 tions the fairest prospects of humanity. 
 
 CCLVI. 
 
 It must be borne in mind that our intellectual as well 
 as our moral nature is ever liable to be powerfully 
 affected by habits previously formed. We know, for 
 instance, that a statesman, a divine, and a lawyer, each 
 fairly representing his class, will usually take different 
 views of a subject even where they agree in their 
 conclusion : because they approach it with distinct 
 predispositions. These predispositions are the results 
 of their several employments, which propose to them 
 the several ends of policy, law, and divine truth ; and 
 modify their common mental acts accordingly. 
 
 ccLvn. 
 
 The age in which we live claims, and in some 
 respects, deserves, the praise of being active, prudent 
 and practical : active in the endeavor to detect evils, 
 prudent in being content with limited remedies, and 
 
 f 
 
 practical in choosing them according to effectiveness 
 rather than to the canons of ideology. But if an eu- 
 logist, contemplating the cause of events from one point 
 of view, may hold this language without fear of con- 
 futation, a censor may, from his opposite standing-
 
 298 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 ground, launch his rebukes with equal confidence and 
 equal justice. He may urge that we are, at least in 
 the sphere of public affairs, restless, violent, and feeble : 
 restless in our impatience of evils which belong to our 
 human state, and in attempting the removal of which 
 we can hope nothing better than to exchange them for 
 others far more grievous ; violent, in laying irreverent 
 hands upon good laws and institutions on account of 
 some imperfection which attaches in them, or it may 
 be only to our use of them ; lastly, and most of all, 
 feeble in our partial and narrow modes of handling 
 emergencies, our inability to solve problems with which 
 other times and men have not feared to grapple. Nay, 
 he may accuse us of incapacity even to measure the 
 scope of our own arguments ; or to learn, at the very 
 time when we are setting forth under their guidance 
 how far they are likely to lead us, and on what kind of 
 ground they will permit or enable us to rest. 
 
 In general, it may be said that the censor and the 
 eulogist of the age are not, when thus speaking eacli 
 for himself, absolutely in conflict. They find respec- 
 tively their subject-matter in different fields of legisla- 
 tion. Where the work to be done is mechanical and 
 external, the eulogist may be justified. Where it 
 touches the more inward and subtle forces which 
 operate upon the relations of man, the censor is in the 
 right. Appreciating complaints by their louclness, and 
 remedies by the hardihood of the promises their
 
 RE VOL U TIONS. 299 
 
 projectors offer; choosing subjects according to the 
 immediate profit or popularity they will yield and not 
 for real urgency; thinking more of the present than the 
 past, and of the future less than either; we forswear 
 the qualities, and invest the habits of mind, necessary 
 for an occupation where men should dig deep for their 
 foundations, and learn to be content with slow, and for 
 a long time perhaps invisible, results. 
 
 CCLVIII. 
 
 Men are apt to mistake the strength of their feeling 
 for the strength of their argument. The heated mind 
 resents the chill touch and relentless scrutiny of logic. 
 
 CCLIX. 
 
 I have no dreams of a golden age ; there will always 
 be more than enough to deplore, more than enough to 
 mend. But let us at least thrust aside .the needless 
 difficulty of wanton crimination; and let us labor, in 
 patience and good-will towards all, to handle and direct 
 for the best the movements of our time. 
 
 CCLX. 
 
 We believe that if one could construct a system 
 which should present to mankind all branches of
 
 300 THE MIGHT OF RIGHT. 
 
 knowledge save the one that is essential, it would 
 only be building up a Tower of Babel, which, when 
 completed, would be the more signal in its fall, and 
 which would bury those who had raised it in its ruins. 
 We believe that if you can take a human being in his 
 youth, and if you can make him an accomplished man 
 in natural philosophy, in mathematics, or in the knowl- 
 edge necessary for the profession of a merchant, a law- 
 yer, or a physician ; that if in any, or all, of these 
 endowments, you could form his mind yes, if you 
 could endow him with the science and power of a 
 Newton, and send him forth and if you had con- 
 cealed from him, or, rather, had not given him a knowl- 
 edge and love of the Christian faith he would go 
 
 o o 
 
 forth into the world, able indeed with reference to 
 those purposes of science, successful with the accumu- 
 lation of wealth for the multiplication of more, but 
 " poor, and miserable, and blind, and naked," with ref- 
 erence to everything that constitutes the true and 
 sovereign purposes of our existence'.
 
 INDEX- 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ART '" 
 
 
 
 AUTHORSHIP 
 
 . Ixxxvi xcvii 
 
 122 
 
 BEAUTY 
 
 xxiv xx\i 
 
 39 
 
 BELIEF 
 
 . cxxxviii cxliii 
 
 . . . 183 
 
 CHARITY 
 
 ccxiii ccxxii 
 
 262 
 
 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 xxxii xli . 
 
 . . . 56 
 
 CONSCIENCE 
 
 Ixxii Ixxvi 
 
 no 
 
 CONSISTENCY 
 
 cxliv cxlv 
 
 . . . 189 
 
 DISCIPLINE . 
 
 xxi xxiil . 
 
 37 
 
 DOUBT 
 
 xcviii cv . 
 
 137 
 
 DUTY . 
 
 xlviii liv . 
 
 86 
 
 EDUCATION . 
 
 
 
 EGOTISM 
 
 ccxxxviii ccxlv 
 
 284 
 
 FAME . 
 
 . vi vii . 
 
 in 
 
 GREATNESS, TRUE 
 
 . ccxlvi cclv . 
 
 290 
 
 GOVERNMENT 
 
 cxiriv cxxxviii . 
 
 159 
 
 HABIT . 
 
 
 
 HISTORY 
 
 ccx ccxii 
 
 260 
 
 HUMANITY . 
 
 Ixix Ixxi . 
 
 109 
 
 JUSTICE 
 
 cvii ex . 
 
 147 
 
 KNOWLEDGE 
 
 cxlvi clvii . 
 
 190 
 
 LADOR 
 
 . ccxxvi ccxxx 
 
 273 
 
 LIBERTY 
 
 Ixii Ixvi 
 
 101 
 
 LITERATURE 
 
 clxviii clxxvi 
 
 206 
 
 PATRIOTISM 
 
 cl .'iii clxvii 
 
 201 
 
 ccci 
 

 
 CCC11 
 
 Index. 
 
 POETRY . . . Ixxvii lxx.\v 
 PROGRESS . . . . i v . 
 PROVIDENCE . . . Ixvii 
 PULPIT, THE . . . cxv 
 RELIC.ION .... cxc 
 REVOLUTIONS . . cclvii 
 RICH AND POOR . cxviii 
 ScRirruRES, THE HOLY . xlii 
 SIN .... ccxxxi - 
 
 SlNCKRlTY . . . xlvii 
 
 SLAVERY . . . ccxxiii ccxxv 
 TRUTH . . . Iv Ixi . 
 
 WAR .... cxi cxiv 
 WORSHIP . . . clxxvii clxxxix 
 
 Ixviii 
 
 cxvii 
 
 ccix 
 
 cclx 
 
 cxxiii 
 
 xlvi 
 
 ccxxxvii
 
 NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 THE LIFE AND EXPLORATIONS OF DAVID LIVIXGSTOXE, 
 LL. D. By John S. Roberts. Including Extracts from Dr. 
 Livingstone's Last Journal. By Rev. E. A. Manning, with 
 Portrait on steel and illustrations. Boston: D. Lothrop & 
 Co. Price $1.50. So long as there exists in the humau 
 mind an admiration for heroism in a good cause, for cour- 
 age under extraordinary difficulties, for inflexible persever- 
 ance in the face of obstacles seemingly insurmountable, and 
 for faith remaining unshaken amidst disheartening sur- 
 roundings, so long will the memory of David Livingstone 
 be held in respect and reverence. The simple and un- 
 adorned story of the wanderings and sufferings of the mis- 
 sionary explorer in the wilds of Africa possesses a stronger 
 fascination than the most skilfully-devised romance. More 
 than thirty of the most active years of the life of Living- 
 stone were spent in Africa. Going to that country at the 
 early age of twenty-seven to engage in missionary work, for 
 nine years he mingled with the native tribes, acquiring 
 their language, teaching, and making such explorations as 
 were incidental to his labors. At the end of that time, 
 fired with the desire of opening up the mysteries of that 
 almost unknown country, he set out upon a journey of 
 exploration, the particular aim being the discovery of Lake 
 Ngami. He succeeded, and collected, besides, a vast 
 amount of scientific and geographical information which 
 was antirely new. In 1&52, having sent his family to Eng- 
 land, he started on another journey of exploration, being 
 absent four years, and traversing in that time over eleven 
 thousand miles. On his return he published his first book, 
 in which he detailed his discoveries. He paid a short visit 
 to England, where he was received with open arms by 
 scholars and scientific men, and every honor was accorded 
 him. In 1858 he began his third voyage of exploration, ac- 
 companied by his wife, who died on the way. He returned 
 in 1868, but immediately set out with a more extended plan 
 in view. For more than four years nothing was heard from 
 him except in the way of rumors. Then letters came, long 
 delayed, detailing his plans, followed by a silence of two 
 years. In 1871 he was found at Ujiji, alive and well, by 
 Henry M. Stanley, who had been sent in search of htm by 
 the New York Herald. He joined Stanley, who had been 
 given a carte blanche for explorations, and was with him 
 until he died, May 1, ISTo, at Ilala, in Central Africa. The 
 present volume is an intensely interesting account of these 
 several journeys compiled from the most authentic sources, 
 the chief being Livingstone's own. descriptions and journals.
 
 NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 SINNEK AND SAINT : A story of the Woman's Crusade : 
 by A. A. Hopkins, author of "John Bremm: His Prison 
 Bars," etc. Boston : D, Lothrop & Co. Trice $1.25. This 
 is a notable addition to temperance literature and combines, 
 in style and treatment, some of the strongest charac- 
 teristics of that unique temperance narrative, with 
 salient features peculiar to itself. It Is both a live, 
 progressive, radical reform story, quite abreast with 
 the temperance thought of to-day, and an intense, 
 absorbing record of heart experiences, reading as if 
 they were all real. limits delineation of scenes and inci- 
 dents in the Woman's Crusade, it traverses a field rich in 
 suggestion, in feeling and in fact, and hitherto ignored by 
 the novelist. The Crusade marked an epoch in temperance 
 activities, and Sinner and Saint vividly reflects the wonder- 
 ful spirit of that movement, while as vividly portraying the 
 strange methods and the remarkable faith that gave it suc- 
 cess. This is a broader, more comprehensive story than its 
 predecessor from the same pen, more abundant in charac- 
 ters, and stronger in the love elements which these contrib- 
 ute. The religious tone of it also, is more decidedly 
 pronounced. Baylan (N"ew York?), Worrom, Ohio, and a 
 llocky mountain mining camp, form the locali. Of all 
 these Mr. Hopkins writes like one familiar with his ground, 
 as he is confessedly familiar with the different phases of 
 temperance endeavor and need. " To the women who work 
 and pray, for love's dear sake and home's, that fallen 
 manhood may come to its own .again," he dedicates his 
 Avork. It should win the early perusal of all that noble 
 army, and of a wide circle besides of all, indeed, who 
 sympathize with human weakness and admire womanly 
 strength. 
 
 KINGS, QUEENS AND BARBARIANS; or, Talks about 
 Seven Historic Ages. By Arthur Gilman, M.A. New Edi- 
 tion, enlarged. 111. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price $1.00. 
 This handsome little volume, prepared for young readers, is 
 a pleasant condensation of the main facts in the world's his- 
 tory from the time of the Golden Age of Greece, which 
 dates back to five hundred years before Christ, down to the 
 Golden Age of England, or the time of the Puritans. The 
 information is conveyed in the form of a family dialogue, in 
 which the father entertains his children evening after eve- 
 ning, in a series of talks, taking up in a natural way one 
 subject after another, giving just enough of each to create 
 an appetite among the young listeners to know more about 
 them and to bring the various volumes of history in the fam- 
 ily library into active demand. Young readers will find it 
 a delightful volume.
 
 NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 Egypt* occupied the geographical centre of the ancient 
 world. It was fertile and attractive. Its inhabitants were 
 polished, cultivated, and warlike. Its great cities were cen- 
 tres of wealth and civilization, .and from the most distant 
 countries came scholars and travellers to learn wisdom under 
 Egyptian masters and study the arts, sciences and govern- 
 mental policy of the country. While surrounding nations 
 were sunk in primitive barbarism Egypt shone as the patron 
 of arts and acquirements. With a natural thirst for con- 
 quest she introduced a system of military tactics which 
 made her armies almost invincible. Her wisdom was a 
 proverb among the surrounding nations. "If a philoso- 
 pher," says Wilkinson, "sought knowledge, Egypt was the 
 school; if a prince required a physician it was to Egypt that 
 he applied: if any material point perplexed the decision of 
 Kings or councils, to Egypt it was referred, and the arms of 
 a Pharaoh were the hope and frequently the protection, even 
 at a late period, of a less powerful ally. It would surprise 
 many readers to know ho\v much in customs, social and 
 religious, has come down to us from this ancient people. 
 Placing the ring on the bride's finger at marriage is an in- 
 stance. The Egyptian gold pieces were in the form of rings, 
 and the husband placed one on the finger of his wife as "an 
 emblem of the fact that, he entrusted her henceforth with 
 all his property. The celebration of Twelfth Day and Cand- 
 lemas are Egvptian festivals under different names. The 
 Catholic priest shaves his head because the Egyptian priests 
 did the same ages before; the English clergyman reads the 
 liturgy in a linen dress because linen was the dress of the 
 Egyptians, and more than two thousand years before the 
 bishop of the Church of Rome pretended to hold the keys 
 of heaven and hell there was a priest in Egypt whose title 
 was the Appointed Keeper of the Two Doors of Heaven. 
 
 It is not strange that the story of this people and country 
 should be so fascinating. There is an element of the mys- 
 terious in it which attracts even the reader who does not 
 care for historical reading in general. In the preparation 
 of her work Mrs. Clement lias not only had the advantage 
 of extensive reading upon the subject, but of personal travel 
 and knowledge. She has skilfully condensed the vast 
 amount of material at her command, and presents to the 
 reading public a volume which needs only to be examined 
 to become a standard. 
 
 * Kgypt. By Mrs. Clara Krskine Clement. Lothrop's Library of Enter- 
 ainin/ History. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price $1.50.
 
 NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 THE LIFE, TRAVELS AND LITEKARY CAREER OF BAY- 
 ARD TAYLOR. By Russell H. Comvell. Boston: D. Loth- 
 rop & Co. Price $1.50. The author of this work says truly 
 that "the direct and unavoidable appeal of a noble life, 
 which closed with honor and deserved renown, is far more 
 patent and permanent in the culture and reformation of the 
 world than all other forms of mental and moral quicken- 
 ing." Bayard Taylor is conspicuous among the many in 
 our country who have risen from humble conditions by per- 
 sonal, honorable effort, to high places, not only for his suc- 
 cess, but for the quality of that success. Although not the 
 greatest of American poets, he was one of the truest. His 
 harp never rang false; he never praised things evil or lent 
 his pen to a bad cause. He was a lover of humanity and of 
 truth. Although in one sense a man of the world, he never 
 lost the pure instincts of his childhood, and though he had 
 the common faults of humanity they weighed lightly when 
 compared with his virtues. Col. Conwell has told the story 
 of his life, his struggles and his final success with loving 
 care, and has supplemented it with an account of his death 
 and the wide-spread sorrow it occasioned. He gives a report 
 of the great memorial meeting held at Tremont Temple, and 
 quotes freely and largely from the expressions of condolence 
 and ^flection made by those present and received from those 
 of tho dead poet's friends who were unable to be present. 
 The vo.ume is issued in handsome form and contains a por- 
 trait of ii'v. Taylor. 
 
 THE Lrr^E FOLKS' READER. Illustrated. Boston : D. 
 Lothrop & Co. Price $1.00. No one who has not seen it 
 can realize. tliA beauty of this little quarto, or the care with 
 which .its contents have been prepared for young readers. 
 It is intended tor the use of little beginners in the art of 
 reading, and all possible means have been taken to make it 
 as attractive as possible. The stories are such as will inter- 
 est young children, and are profusely illustrated by the best 
 American draughtsmen. As much pains and expense have 
 been bestowed upon it as upon some of the costly holiday 
 volumes. It has a beautiful prize cover designed by George 
 F. Barnes.
 
 NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 CHIPS FROM THE WHITE HOUSE. 12 uio. 486 pp. $1.50 
 Wliat the press says of it: 
 
 In this handsome volume of five hundred pages have been 
 brought together some of the most important utterances of 
 our twenty presidents, carefully selected from speeches and 
 addresses, public documents and private correspondence, 
 : id touching upon a large variety of subjects. Golden. 
 Rule, Boston. 
 
 Most of the extracts are dated and accompanied by brief 
 explanations of the circumstances under which they were 
 written, and the volume, therefore, if judiciously read, will 
 give a clearer idea of the character of the men than can be 
 gathered elsewhere by reading a small library through. 
 New York Graphic. 
 
 The selections are made with judgment and taste, and 
 represent not only the political status of the distinguished 
 writers, but also their social and domestic characteristics. 
 The book is interesting in itself, and specially valuable as 
 a convenient book of reference for students of American 
 history. Its mechanical presentation is all that can be 
 asked. Providence Journal. 
 
 Each chapter is prefaced by a brief synoposis of the life 
 and services of its subject, and most of the extracts are dated, 
 with brief explanations of the circumstances under which 
 they were written. The work, in fact, is a handbook. It 
 is convenient for reference of American history. It is 
 printed in clear, large type, is tastefully and strongly bound, 
 and is supplemented by a very full index. Woman's Jour- 
 nal, Boston. 
 
 The book is thoroughly good ; none better could be 
 placed in the hands of young persons. By the light of 
 these they can see the reflection of the character of the 
 grand men who have been called to rule over the Nation 
 during its existence. No other nation ever had such a 
 succsssion of rulers, where so few have proved failures. 
 Liter Occar . Cfiicario.
 
 BOOKS FOR CLERGYMEN. 
 
 The list of D. Lotlirop & Go's more important books is 
 especially rich in works prepared to meet the wauls of 
 clergymen, Sunday-school superintendents and teacheis. 
 Among them are collections of sermons by eminent preach- 
 ers, full of thought, and abounding in practical suggestions; 
 essays upon doctrinal points; discussions of various methods 
 of preaching and teaching; church history and biography; 
 books of scriptural reference and exegesis, and collections of 
 poetry of a devotional character. They are invaluable as 
 working tools for carrying on the p)-actical work of the 
 church. Some of thorn have heen before the public for 
 years and have gained a high and secure place in the esti- 
 mation of the clergy and teachers alike; others, not less im- 
 portant or helpful in character, are new, and result from 
 later needs in the church and Sunday-school. 
 
 How t^> Conduct Prayer Meetings, by Rev. Lewis O 
 Thompson, comes prominently under this list, a volume 
 which has attained a wide, popularity. Dr. Thompson's 
 theory of what a prayer-meeting should be is based upon the 
 fact, that it is, in the main, a gathering of professing Chris- 
 tians for conference and edification, and not a revival ser- 
 vice for the conversion of the impenitent. The inquiry 
 meeting has taken the place of the former revival prayer- 
 rieotings to a great extent, and has been found far more 
 elilcacious in producing results. A brief introduction is 
 furnished by the Rev. J. IT. Vincent, D. D., in which the 
 work is warmly commended to the notice of all Christian 
 workers, for its sound, practical sense, and deep relisrions 
 purpose. Nor will Dr. Vincent be alone in his estimate of 
 its worth. It should be. read by every pastor, by every 
 class leader, by every chnrHi member. It will serve to elear 
 away many false impressions, inspire fresh ardor and en- 
 thusiasm among lukewarm church goers, and will be aa 
 efficient ;iiil in the promotion of Christian feeling and 
 Christian work.
 
 SWITZERLAND. 
 
 Switzerland ha-i had many historians, but of all the books 
 written and printed upon that wonderful little republic we 
 cannot call to mind one which can be classed as a popular 
 history. Some of them are too elaborate in detail, others 
 are too strongly interlarded with political dissertations and 
 others still are partial or imperfect in their treatment. Want 
 lias been needed is a bright, well written story of the coun- 
 try, not too wide in scope or diffuse in treatment; a work 
 which should give an idea not only of the various and suc- 
 ceeding stages of historic developement through which it 
 has passed, but a fair account of its present condition. For 
 the past fifty years Switzerland has been overrun in the 
 travelling season by visitors, a large number of whom are 
 Americans, and the letters which are written home find 
 place in hundreds of American newspapers, descriptive of 
 its scenery, climate and people have made all these familiar 
 lo those who have been obliged to remain all their lives on 
 this side the water. But Switzerland h:is something more to 
 recommend it to those who read than its mere physical fea- 
 tures, its waterfalls and lakes, its mountains and glaciers. 
 There is as great a charm in its political independence, and 
 in the history of the causes which led to it. As has been re- 
 marked, Switzerland may be considered an epitome of civ- 
 ilized Europe; all the parties, the theories, the expectations 
 and the pretentious which agitate larger States may be seen 
 here, making it a country as remarkable among the States 
 of the Old World for its moral as well as iis physical pecu- 
 liarities. Miss Mackenzie has been a clnse student of the 
 history of the country, and her volume deserves a prominent 
 place in our literature. It is very fully illustrated, and 
 handsomely bound. 
 
 Switzerland. By Harriet S'idffl'-Mr.c'cet-zic Lo hrm's Library of En- 
 ttr.ar.img History. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Prica 1.50.
 
 NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 THE TEMPTER BKHIXD. By the Author of " Israel Mort, 
 Overman." Boston: D. Lothrop A Co. Price $1.25. Most 
 readers of fiction will remember " Israel Mort, Overman," a 
 book which created several years ago a profound sensation 
 both in this country and in England. It was a work of in- 
 tense strength and showed such promise on the part of the 
 anonymous author that a succeeding work from the same 
 hand has ever since been anxiously looked for, in the belief 
 that, should it be written, it would make a yet more decided 
 impression. " The Tempter Behind," now just brought out 
 in this country, shows that the estimate of the public as to 
 the ability of the author was not too high. It is in every 
 way a higher and stronger work, and one that cannot but 
 have a marked effect wherever it is read. It is not merely an 
 intensely interesting story; something more earnest than 
 the mere excitement of incident underlies the book. It is 
 the record of the struggles of a young and ambitious student 
 against the demon of drink. TTe is an orphan the ward of 
 a rich uncle who proposes to settle his entire property upon 
 him in case he conforms to his wishes. It is the desire of 
 the uncle that he shall become a clergyman, a profession for 
 which the young man has a strong and natural preference. 
 Unknown to his uncle, he has formed the habit of social 
 drinking at college from which he cannot extricate himself. 
 The terrible thirst for intoxicants paralyses his will, and 
 renders him a slave to the cup. Every effort lie makes is 
 unsuccessful. He loses rank at college, and is afterward 
 dismissed from his post as private secretary to an official of 
 the government, on account of the neglect of his studies mid 
 duties, but without exposure. His uncle knows his failures, 
 but not their caine, and demands that he either enter the 
 ministerial profession for which he has prepared himself, or 
 leave the shelter of his roof. The young man, who has too 
 much principle to assume a position which he fears he may 
 disgrace, does not confide iu his uncle, and secretly departs 
 from the house, leaving behind him a letter of farewell, de- 
 termined to make one more trial by himself, and among 
 strangers, to break the chains which bi:id him so closely. 
 The story of his experience*, trials and temptations are viv- 
 idly and almost painfully told, with thoir result*. The book 
 needs no commendation. Through the enterprise of the 
 publishers, it make* its first appearance in America, and 
 will be brought out in London after its issue here.
 
 ENTERTAINMENTS. 
 
 EXTERTAINMEXTS ; Comprising Directions for Holiday 
 Merrymakings, New Programmes for Amateur Perform- 
 ances, and Many Novel Sunday-school Exercises. Collect- 
 ed and Edited by Lizzie W. Champney. Boston : D. Lo- 
 throp & Co. Price $1.00. Mrs. Champney is known as a 
 popular magazine writer, a poet of no mean ability. 
 The volume before us is a specimen of lier skill in another 
 direction that of selection and compilation; a work requir- 
 ing rare judgment and almost as much ability as would 
 be necessary to produce an original work. The table of con- 
 tents includes exercises for Temperance gatherings, Fourth 
 of July, Missionary concerts, Decoration day, Thanksgiving 
 and Christinas. Principally, however, they are intended for 
 use at Sunday-school exhibitions and concerts. The ele- 
 ment of entertainment, says the author, must enter even in- 
 to religion, if it is to be dear to the popular heart. Enter- 
 tainments, at any rate, the multitude willK-vve; it only re- 
 mains for Christians to decide whether they shall make this 
 mighty power a Christian force, or leave all the merry and 
 bright things of this life to the service of Satan. Sunday- 
 school literature is very defective in dialogues and recita- 
 tions of an attractive character, and the preparation of a 
 programme for such occasions is a malterof supreme diffi- 
 culty. To make it easier, and to provide a source from 
 which material may be drawn for almost any occasion, the 
 present work has been prepared. Most of the matter is new, 
 and is contributed by persons of experience iu musical mat- 
 ters and entertainments of all kinds. 
 
 A chapter on " Accessories, Decorations, Scenery," etc., 
 furnishes full information upon those subjects, and a num- 
 ber of patterns for evergreen decorations for Christmas en- 
 tertainments are given. Taken altogether, the book exactly 
 fills the place for which it was designed, and will be warmly 
 welcomed not only by schools and societies, but in every fam- 
 ily where there are children to be amused and instructed.
 
 CHEERFUL WOHDS. 
 
 In the whole range of English literature we can call to 
 mind the works of no single author to which the title, 
 "Cheerful Words," can more properly apply than to those of 
 George Macdonald. It exactly expresses the element which 
 permeates everything from his pen, whether sermon, essay, 
 story or poem an element which strengthens while it 
 cheers, which instills new light and life into the douhtingor 
 discouraged soul, and incites it to fresh effort. 
 
 In the volume before us the editor has hrought together, 
 with a careful and judicious hand, some of the choicest pas- 
 sages from Macdonald's works, written in various keys and 
 upon various subjects, but all marked by healthy sentiment 
 and sunshiny feeling. In quoting what a late critic has said 
 of the "electrical consciousness" which characterizes his 
 writings, the editor remarks: "The breadth and manliness 
 of tone and sentiment, the deep perceptions of human 
 nature, the originality, fancy and pathos, the fresh, out-of- 
 door atmosphere everywhere apparent; above all, the earnest, 
 wholesome, but always unobtrusive religious teaching that 
 underlies all his writings, give to the works of George Mac- 
 donald a certain magnetic power that is indescribable." 
 And in the selections here made that power is singularly ap- 
 parent. By turns they touch the heart, fire the imagination, 
 moisten the eyes, arouse the sympathies, and bring into 
 active exercise the better feelings and instincts of mind and 
 heart. 
 
 The introduction to the volume is from the pen of James 
 T. Fields, a persona/ friend and ardent admirer of the au- 
 thor. He regards Macdonald as a master of his art, and 
 believes in holding up for admiration those like him, who 
 have borne witness to the eternal beauty and cheerful capa- 
 bilities of the universe around us, and who are lovingly 
 reminding us, whenever they write, of the " holiness of help- 
 fulness." 
 
 Cheerful Words. By George Macdonald. Introduction bv James T. 
 Fields, and Biography by Emma E. Brown. Spare Minute Series. Boston .- 
 L>. Lothrop & Co. Price ji.oo.
 
 Six LITTLE REBELS. By Kate 2\innatt Woods. 
 25 crayon drawings by Boz. Price, 150. Boston: 
 D. Lothrop & Co. 
 
 Six LITTLE REBELS, is a charming story of five 
 southern children, brought to one of our quiet New 
 England towns during the civil war. If the south has 
 many such families, a great future lies before it, for a 
 finer group of children it would be hard to reproduce 
 in any part of the world. The characters are finely 
 drawn, fresh and natural as a June morning. They 
 accomodate themselves to New England life as if to 
 the manor born ; and their adventures, and sporting 
 humor, and loving ways make up a delightful book. 
 
 Their temperary home was well chosen. Dr. War- 
 rington is a genuine New Englander, with shrewd in- 
 sight, quiet ways, and a perfect self-mastery, which 
 assures him great influence over others. His daugh- 
 ter Dolly is a jewel, modest, self-distrustful, but gifted 
 with Yankee faculty, equal to all emergencies ; Axy, too, 
 the maid of alFwork, and Aunt Lucinda are admirable 
 specimens ofNew England character. The book is 
 certain to be a favorite with children, who will have 
 no end of laughter over the pranks, of Lex, the mis- 
 chievous colored imp, and as much enjoyment over 
 the sweet prattle of baby Bertie. We can't have too 
 much of such literature.
 
 RECENT BOOKS. 
 
 TEXSIE WALTON. By Mrs. S. II. Graham Clark. Bos- 
 ton: D. . Lotlirop & Co. $1.50. Of the many good books 
 which the Messrs. Lotlirop have prepared for the shelves of 
 Sunday-school libraries, " Ycnsie Walton" is one of the 
 best. It is a sweet, pure story of girl life, quiet as the flow 
 of a brook, and yet of sufficieiit interest to hold the attention 
 of the most careless reader. Yensie is an orphan, who has 
 found a home with an uncle, a farmer, some distance from 
 the city. Her aunt, a coarse, vulgar woman, and a tyrant 
 in the household, does her best to humiliate her by making 
 her a domestic drudge, taking away her good clothing and 
 exchanging it for coarse, ill-fitting garments, and scolding 
 her from morning till night. This treatment develops a 
 spirit of resistance; the mild and affectionate little girl be- 
 comes passionate and disobedient, and the house is the 
 scene of continual quarrels. Fortunately, her uncle insists 
 upon her attending school, and in the teacher, Miss Gray, 
 she finds her first real friend. In making her acquaintance 
 a new life begins for her. She is brought in contact with 
 new and better influences, and profiting by them becomes in 
 time a sunbeam in her uncle's house, and the means of 
 softening the heart and quieting the tongue of the aunt who 
 was once her terror and dread. Mrs. Clark has a very pleas- 
 ing style, and is especially skilful in the construction of her 
 stories. 
 
 "Yensie Walton" is a story of great power, by a new 
 author. It aims to show that God uses a stern discipline to 
 form the noblest characters, and that the greatest trials of 
 life often prove the greatest blessings. The story is subor- 
 dinate to this moral aim, and the earnestness of the author 
 breaks out into occasional preaching. But the story is full 
 of striking incident and scenes of great pathos, with occa- 
 sional gleams of humor and fun by way of relief to the more 
 tragic parts of the narrative. The characters are strongly 
 drawn, and, in general, are thoroughly human, not gifted 
 with impossible perfections but having those infirmities of 
 the flesh which make us all akin.
 
 THE "PANSY" BOOKS. 
 
 TTu Chautatffua Girls Library. Each Volume $i.;o. 
 
 Fouit GIRLS AT CHAUTAUQUA. RUTH ERSKINE'S CROSSES. 
 
 CHAUTAUQUA GIRLS AT HOME. LINKS IN REBECCA'S LIFE. 
 
 FROM DIFFERENT STANDPOINTS. 
 
 Ester Reid Library. Each volume $1.50. 
 
 ESTF.U REID. JULIA REID. THREE PEOPLE. 
 
 THE KING'S DAUGHTER. WISE AND OTHERWISE. 
 
 Household Library. Each Volume $1.50. 
 
 HOUSEHOLD PUZZLES. ECHOING AND RE-ECHOING. THOSE BOYS. 
 MODERN PROPHETS. THE RANDOLPHS. 
 
 Tip Lewis Library. Each Volume $1.50. 
 
 TIP LEWIS AND HIS LAMP. SIDNEY MARTIN'S CHRISTMAS. 
 
 A NEW GRAFT ON THE FAMILY TREE. DIVERS WOMEN. 
 
 Cunning Workmen Library. Each Volume $1.25. 
 
 CUNNING WORKMEN. Miss PRISCILLA HUNTER AND 
 GRANDPA'S DARLINGS. MY DAUGHTER SUSAN. 
 
 MRS. DEANE'S WAY. WHAT SHE SAID AND 
 DR. DEANE'S WAY. WHAT SHE MEANT. 
 
 Young Heroine's Library. Each Volume \2rno, $1.00. 
 
 SOME YOUNG HEROINES. MRS. HARRY HARPER'S AWAKENING. 
 
 EUGENE COOPER. PANSY'S SCRAP BOOK. (Former title, 
 
 NEXT THINGS. The Teachers' Helper.) 
 
 Getting Ahead Library. Each Volume $0.75. 
 
 GETTING AHEAD. Six LITTLE GIRLS. Two BOYS. 
 
 MARY BURTOX ABROAD. PANSIES. THAT BOY BOB. 
 
 The Pansy Series. Each Volume $0.75. 
 
 JESSIE WELLS. HELEN LESTER. DOCIAS' JOURNAL. 
 
 BERNIE'S WHITE CHICKEN. 
 
 The " Little Pansy Series," 10 volumes. Boards, $3.00. Cloth, $4.0x3. 
 
 Just Published. Each Volume $1.50. 
 POCKET MEASURE (The). HALL u? THE GROVE (The).

 
 
 -, > > 
 - > . 
 , > 
 
 . > 
 
 >22J 
 
 -* **"^ 
 
 VJ* 
 ^ 
 
 :
 
 
 . > 
 
 > 
 ^ > ^> 
 
 >> 
 
 ^ 
 
 >, > 
 
 " 
 
 ^ > " 
 
 
 
 >
 
 ^i^K0^f^ 
 
 
 
 
 ...,,,, 
 ^ 
 
 A