YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

From the
COLLECTION OF OXFORD BOOKS
made by
FALCONER MADAN
Bodley's Librarian

RIGHT AND WRONG.

A SERMON
UPON THE QUESTION
UNDER WHAT CONDITIONS IS A SCIENCE OF
NATURAL THEOLOGY POSSIBLE ?
PREACHED BEFORE THE
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD,
MARCH 6, 1870.
BY THE
REV. WILLIAM JACKSON, M.A., F.S.A.
* <« »
FORMERLY FELLOW OF WORCESTER COLLEGE.

' Lex erat Scriptura Juris in Libro vel Animo." — yo. Buridan Quast.
super x, lid. Eth. Arist.,fol. cvt.

OXPOED and LONDON :
JAMES PARKER AND CO.
1870.

A few passages omitted for brevity's sake in preaching have
been restored, and one or two sentences added where
greater clearness seemed advisable.

rM

HPHE following Sermon is a tentative essay, written
with the view of stimulating other minds to think
upon a subject which appears to me most important.
The reason why I think it so, will plainly appear to
every reader of the ensuing pages. Had the form of
thought been other than tentative, I might in several
places have expressed myself otherwise. But to alter
this form satisfactorily would have required a consider
able volume, and this I cannot now write.
The arguments employed will certainly strike different
minds with unequal force. It is not in my power to
lessen this inequality of effect by the light and shade
derived from variety of statement and illustration, be
cause large additions of matter would thus have become
unavoidable. But I have appended what I could in
the way of notes and references, which may, I hope,
be considered by younger men sometimes interesting,
sometimes suggestive, occasionally both. If so, they
will help to promote my main object of stimulating
, thought. The whole question of Natural Theology, though
neglected of late, has unquestionably a deep and uni
versal interest. The prse-Christian philosophers were
of course the most absolutely natural theologians. No
one, however, can study the primitive Fathers without
observing the attention paid by them to such discus-

IV
sions: an attention awakened by the New Testament
as well as its adversaries, and kept up by the constant
necessity of giving to unbelievers a reason for the hope
that was in them. From their writings I would willingly
have culled more, but to my slender undertaking ex
tracts seemed less appropriate than references. These
I have tried to make readily available, and for that
purpose, as well as to save space and difficulty, I employ
for some authors the divisions and paging of certain
editions ; such are the following : —
Apostolic Fathers, &c, Cotelerius.
Aristotle, Bekker, Berlin.
Athenagoras, at the end of Justin Martyr : Morell. Paris,
1615, 1636.
Clement of Alex., Sylburg ; Paris, 1641. — His pages are
the same as on Potter's Greek margin.
Gregory Nyssen, Morell. Paris, 1638.
Irenaeus, Massuet. Paris, 17 10.
Justin Martyr, Morell. Paris, 161 5, 1636.
Origen, Delarue with Spencer's Philocalia.
Plato, paging of Stephens in margin of most editions.
Tatian, end of Justin.
Theophilus, ditto.
I wish to close this short notice by requesting my
reader to peruse these introductory quotations : —
" There are two books from whence I collect my divinity ;
besides that written one of God, another of His servant
nature, that universal and public manuscript that lies ex-
pansed unto the eyes of all : those that never saw Him in
the one, have discovered Him in the other. This was the
Scripture and Theology of the heathens : the natural motion

of the sun made them more admire him, than its superna
tural station did the children of Israel ; the ordinary effect
of nature wrought more admiration in them, than in the
other all his miracles : surely the heathens knew better how
to join and read these mystical letters than we Christians,
who cast a more careless eye on these common hiero
glyphics, and disdain to suck divinity from the flowers of
nature." — Religio Medici, i. 16.
" Hoc quidem certum est, cum hominem ad similitudinem
Dei conditum esse, etiam Ratio colligat, (unde veteres sapi-
entes, hominem divinum animal- nominarunt), in hoc aliquam
divinitatis, ut ita dicam, lucem conspici oportere. Haec quse
esse alia posset, nisi Mentis et Rationis ? Ergo est in animis
hominum expressa imago qusedam Dei. Hsec in iliis apparet,
quse Mente cognoscuntur, et Judicio perpenduntur, et Ratione
comprehenduntur. Ut autem alia omittam, quse pio studio
ol fleoAo-yoOc-res, de Animo, Ratione et Mente disseruerunt,
quibusque mysteria fidei Christianse comprehendi docuerunt :
id nunc contemplandum proponemus, quod cum instituta re
maxime videtur convenire. Id est Judicium Rationis, ap-
probans qusedam, qusedam improbans. Quorum ilia bona,
honesta, recta, laudabilia perhibentur: hsec, mala, turpia,
prava, vituperabilia. Et hsec est aeterna legis edictio, com
munis, quemadmodum ait Cicero, homini cum Deo. Si
igitur Deus qualis sit, quserimus, intueamur in illius ima
ginem, quse est in nobis." — Joach. Camerarii Proam. in
Explic. Eth. Nicom., p. 14.
'H irepi ifrnxV* aKt)8e<rTa.Tr) yvao-is irpbs iracrav (pikoorotfriav
o-vpfsaWeTai, -irpos re ttjv r)6iKr)v Xeyia Kal tt)v 6eo\oyiKr)v Kal
-rrjv <j>vo-iK7)u' irpbs p,iv odv ttjv r)6iKrjii on ahivarov rjpas ra
iavr&v KaTaKoa-fifjo-ai rjdr] ray ovvafieis Trjs TJwxrjs pr) imo-Ke-
ifrafievovs' -irpbs Se OeoXoyLav on farovpev ncpl rod vov tov
XtapioTOv tov ev qpiv, on Kal airbs dBavaros' .... o-vpfiak-

VI
Xerai Se r)piv Kai irpbs rr)v (jiva-tKrjV, ei ye <j>vo-t,Krjs pev eariv
epyov to irepl o-mpdrav Siakex6r)vai Kai rav el8£>v airav Kal t&v
Svvdpeav, tS>v Se ev a-apaa-iv el&ibv to KaXkurrov fj yjrvxq. —
Comm. Anon, in Arist. de Anima, p. io.
Tevea-Ba Sr\ irpaiTov 6eoeiSr)s Tray, Kal Kakbs was, el ueXXet
8edo-aadat 6eov re Kal KaKov' . . . Siaipav Se to i/oijto, to pev
votjtov Kiikbu, rbv rav elbav <j>r)a-ei toitov' rb S' aya6bv, to eire-
Ketva, Kat irrjyi)v Kal dpxqv tov KaXov. — Plotinus, De Pulchr.,
ed. Basil, p. 58.
" Quamvis miracula visibilium naturarum videndi assidui-
tate viluerint ; tamen cum ea sapienter intuemur, inusita-
tissimis rarissimisque majora sunt. Nam et omni mira-
culo quod fit per hominem, majus miraculum est homo." —
St. August., De Civ., x. 12.
"Natural Theology is also rightly called Divine Philo
sophy. It is defined as that knowledge, or rather rudiment
of knowledge, concerning God, which may be obtained by
the light of nature and the contemplation of His creatures ;
and it may be truly termed divine in respect of the object,
and natural in respect of the light. The bounds of this
knowledge, truly drawn, are that it suffices to refute and
convince Atheism, and to give information as to the law
of nature ; but not to establish religien. And therefore
there was never miracle wrought by God to convert an
Atheist ; because the light of nature might have led him to
confess a God." — Bacon, Advancement of Learning, iii. 2.

RIGHT AND WRONG.

Romans i. 20.

The invisible things of Him from the creation of the world
are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are
made, even His eternal power and Godhead.
Romans ii. 15.
Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts,
their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts
the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another.
n^HESE words contain the statement that, apart from
written revelation, some knowledge of Divine truth
is possible to mankind. We know that it is so possible,
because it once so existed. St. Paul, for instance, is
speaking of the Gentiles and what they knew prior to
their reception of the Scriptures. The degree of their
knowledge he describes as sufficient for responsibility.
He expressly adds that they were without excuse. As
to its kind and source, he divides this knowledge in
a twofold manner. The one species is (as we moderns
might say) a sort of physico-theology — the invisible
things of God may be, and have been, understood
by the things that are made. The other species is
the law written in their hearts, which we might call
the voice of conscience, the dictate of the moral sense,

8
the rule of Right and Wrong. Whatever name we
apply to this latter kind of knowledge, we must all
admit that it claims the obedience, even as the former
claimed the acceptance, of mankind.
St. Paul goes further. He connects the two species
he has made. He asserts that a false or lowered idea
of that invisible Godhead, to whom the visible world
bears witness, necessarily produces a degradation of
worship and of morals. Conversely, in the words of my
second text, and also in his speech at Athens, he
appeals to the law within, here as valid in morals, and
there as an instrument for feeling after and finding God.
Such being the statements of the Apostle, it seems
strange that Natural Theology, which not long ago held
a bigh rank among the sciences, has of late years sunk
into general neglect, and is by many eminent persons
looked upon as a mistake and an impossibility. That,
I for one should be sorry to believe, and my immediate
object will be to try and find an answer to the question,
"Under what conditions is a science of Natural The
ology possible ?" This I shall best do by discussing
the difficulties which have brought it into disrepute.
The common argument of Natural Theology has been
stated thus : —
A watch presupposes a watchmaker.. In like manner,
every work of art, and all products manifesting design,
imply a designer". The world is full of such mani-
* The meanings of the word ' design' should be distinguished.
They may be roughly stated thus: I. Outline, form, fashion;
2. Adaptation ; 3. Conscious adaptation to a designed end ; 4. Con-

festations of design. Therefore the world must have
a Designer. He is the Author and first Cause of all
things. You will easily perceive that this argument turns
upon two pivots. The first a general principle of
analogy between human and natural productions, so
that the design acknowledged in the former may be
inferred in the latter. This principle, therefore, pre
supposes a general idea of design.
The second pivot of the argument is an alleged point
of fact. The instances adduced by natural theologians
are real manifestations of design.
Now, to modern modes of thought, both pivots — that
is, both principle and fact — appear questionable. One
class of objections originates in what may be called
a popular-science view of the subject, and relates to
the alleged manifestations of design. The other is
a more philosophic doubt, levelled against the whole
idea of design in nature, and denying the relevancy of
any illative analogy between human and natural pro
ductions. I. i. I shall examine the popular difficulty first. De
sign used to be spoken of some years ago as if the
purposes of organization had been provided for, each
scious adaptation by a personal will (designer) working a material
into a definitely purposed result.
In arguing, men are apt to glide unconsciously from one inten
tion of the word to another. The meanings useful to the natural
theologian are 3 and 4 ; the last, we should carefully remark, is the
one suggested by the analogy of a watchmaker.

by its own definite shape of arrangement. For ex
ample, flying required one form of mechanism, swim
ming another, and so on. But with the growth of
knowledge this supposition fell. Creatures of similar
habits were found to be variously organized. A single
type puts on dissimilar appearances ; the so-called fixed
types were perceived to be flexible, and it was hard,
amidst effects of habitat and circumstances, to distin
guish species from variation. Nothing appeared more
hopeless than settled definition. The theory of Hera
clitus " might seem recalled into life, and the true con-
b The Heraclitean enigmas (as Theodoras styles them) have at
tracted the regard of very different minds, e.g. Hegel, Lord Bacon,
Clement of Alexandria. I am concerned with them only in rela
tion to my subject.
Aristotle mentions (Metaph., i. 6, and xiii. 4,) that Heraclitus
viewed all objects of sense as in a ceaseless flow, and science re
specting them as an impossibility ; or, according to Plato (Cratyl.,
402), he said that all things move on like a mighty river, and into
the same river you cannot plunge twice. Cratylus (Arist., Metaph.,
iv. 5) reproached his friend and teacher for this saying ; Heraclitus
should have said "not once," so rapidly flows the great world-
stream. The consequences to a theory of knowledge are decisive. Like
is apprehended by like, therefore tctvoipevov Kivovpevip, (Arist., de
Anim., i. 2, II, 19,) and the soul, a bodiless exhalation in its
nature (cf. Plutarch, de Plexitis, iv. 3, Tertull., de Anima, 9, and
Greg. Nyss., Serm. I., de Anima, vol. ii. 90,) is, like the objective
world, in one continual flow; see also Plato on l-niaT-i)p,-r\ (Cratyl.,
412). Hence we may understand Heraclitus in his denial of the
law of contradiction, (Arist, Metaph., iv. 3, cf. Phys. Ausc., I.,
with Themist. and Simplic.,) ; and also his contempt (Sext. Emp. ,
adv. Log., ii. 286, Clem. Alex., Strom., 602, and Orig. contra Cels.,
vi. 12,) for supposed human reason and knowledge. But, when
thought is unfixed, language cannot be true. Thus Cratylus, logic-

Ception of nature bade fair to be proclaimed one vast
flow of unfixedness, or, as some said, of unreality.
ally enough, considered it safer to point with the finger than to call
any object, even stone, wood, gold, &c, by a name (Metaph., iv. 5,
with Alex. Aphrod.), all things change so fast (did he anticipate
the nineteenth century ?) that names must needs be untruthful. The
Heraclitists, amusingly described by Plato (Thest, 180), realised
in their own persons a perpetual motion so consonant with the great
flux-doctrine, that they could neither question nor reply. Similar
absurd consequences are used by Aristotle as elenchtic proofs of the
surest of all prmciples, the principle of contradiction.
For a modern estimation of the Heraclitean fragments, the his
tories may be compared with Lassalle, from whom, however,
Ueberweg in part dissents. One more side of the ancient view is
interesting to the natural theologian.
The idea of a phenomenal flux (as Aristotle saw) involves other
conceptions. There must be a something which perishes in change,
and a something which survives and issues from it. There must
be a source of whatever comes into existence, and a ground why
Becoming takes place at all. The remarkable point for us, is that
Heraclitus for some reason held this very position. We are told
in the De Casio, iii. I, that he asserted a permanent unity; "cum
omnis transmutatio debeat esse super aliquod permanens," says
Averoes, in loco ; "one sole universal uncreated ground," (Simplic,
on p. 298, b. 14, ) from which all these everflowing never-continuing
things, pfTatrxnf'iTlCeiiBai iriipvKev. How much metamorphosis
Aristotle intended, may be seen from the same expression in Plato,
De Legg., 903, where the example is a change of fire into "living"
water, held by Ast to represent the primordial creative power, and
compared with the development changes in Clem. Alex., Strom.,
599. Stallbaum conjectures another epithet, but does not alter
the text, which is supported by Ficinus (fol. 313, ed. 1491). In
Clement there appears an eternal it6atws, and a changeful and
perishing Siaic6irpii<ris ; compare Euseb., Prcep. Evang., xiv.- 14;
Plut, de Plac., i. 3 ; Simplic, on Phys. Ausc, viii. I ; and Diog.,
Laert., ix. Then, too, (Strom., 603, Stobseus, Serm. III.), Hera
clitus spoke of a unity, the wisdom lawfully ruling all things, iden-

12
2. Yet this whole mode of thought, pre-eminently ad
verse as it was to Natural Theology, involved one master
tified by Clement (599) with the Divine Word. The relation of
man to both worlds is equally marked. Birth is less desirable than
death, or rather rest ; nay, birth is death (Strom. , 432, 4 ; Plato,
Gorg., 493 ; Cratyl., 400) ; the living body is the soul's sepulchre ;
and (Sext. Emp. , Pyrrhon. Hypotyp. , iii. 230) when the body dies
the soul revives and lives. Thus, we see the outward world an
image ever eluding us, and transfigured from the true ; our present
existence is emphatically our mortal life, and only by a nihilismus
of the changeable, our soul gains reality. This mode of thought
as a whole has always possessed its fascinations ; in a variety of
forms it has struck root in every climate from India to England,
and often dying out, has re-appeared through all ages. Thus, our
own Wordsworth : —
" Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar."
Justin Martyr expressly names Heraclitus along with Socrates, as
men accounted atheists, but in truth Christians before the advent
of Christ ; enlightened by the pre-existent Word, and living con
formably to His enlightenment. To the natural theologian, Hera
clitus is interesting, because he occupies a first rank among the
pioneers of a theory now very powerful. The example of his school
as it stands recorded, shews two things, (1) that a one-sided view
of world-evolution, considered in movement only, leads, when rea
soned out, to a negation of thought and language ; (2) that, in the
case of such thinkers, there is probably a counterbalancing truth —
a polar line of thought — either unconscious or expressed. How
Heraclitus bridged the interval between the phaenomenal Many and
the Eternal One is not clear, but some sayings quoted approach the
moral stand-point. The references here given are probably suffi
cient for the reader to form his own opinion, a far better thing than
to accept the pictures of critics, who, instead of recording, construct

13
fallacy — the irparov ^eOSoy of all its reasonings. To an
untutored eye, the play and blending of prismatic colours
in the halo or the rainbow, appear indefinitely variable :
yet their law is exact, and every effect (even tlie smallest)
has its cause and measure. So, too, the multitudinous
varieties of adaptation manifest certain intelligible and
therefore intelligently evolved laws. The more complex
these laws are, the more we find the first known and
simpler sequences controlled by correlations, almost too
wide for human thought, the more sublime ought to
become our idea of whatever intelligence we conceive
to pervade the whole. Our half-informed wonder ought
to be exchanged for a profoundly rational admiration.
3. Comparing greater things with less, we may illus
trate our deeper feeling by substituting for the old ex
ample of a watch, that triumph of human ingenuity,
the calculating machine. A short account of it will
be found in the "Ninth Bridgwater Treatise." The
spectator, standing by the machine, observes that at
each revolution the number presented on a wheel is
increased exactly by one. An induction of some thou
sand instances sufficiently satisfies his mind that this
addition of unity is the true law of the contrivance.
But after one hundred million and one revolutions, the
series suddenly changes ; the next number is increased
by ten thousand, the next by thirty, the third by
the" older theories. The Philosophumena long supposed Origen's,
and Proclus on the Timseus, notice the dogmatic form of Heraclitic
thought with a dislike similar to Aristotle's. Alexandrine testimonies
in favour of Heraclitus have therefore a special value.

sixty, and the fourth by one hundred thousand, and
so on for 2,761 terms. This new sequence is in fact
a new law of the mechanism, depending on a far more
difficult principle of numbers. At the 2,762nd term
it gives place to a third series, which may be watched'
for 1,430 revolutions more, when it also yields to
a fourth. There are changes upon changes beyond ;
going on necessarily for centuries, that is as long as
the materials can hold together ; and giving rise to the
most subtle problems in analysis. But, the true marvel
of the thing, is, that no human hand interferes to pro
duce a single alteration. A weight moves the wheel-
work, and by its unassisted action each mathematical
series is set aside in turn. All these consecutive changes,
these complexities of law overruled by law, really come
about in , obedience to one law supreme ; one master
idea, impressed by the mind of the inventor upon his
machine ; the working of which might have been pre
dicted before a tool was stirred for its manufacture.
This example has been used as furnishing a very-
strong, because a very philosophic, argument from me
chanical design. I have mentioned it to-day, because
I do not know a more useful instance of the sort. The
analogy stands thus. As the human designer can im
press upon insensate matter, wood and iron, one sovereign
law which, in its self-evolving progress, shall give rise
to variations and apparent contrarieties, unexpected and
inexplicable by the spectator ; so it is not unreasonable
to suppose that an omniscient Designer of the universe,
may have fashioned His work by a law which reigns

supreme amidst all variety of adaptations, however con
tradictory their appearances. Manifestation of design
does in no way depend upon fixed types, or prevailing
forms of contrivance. In the calculating machine, whole
series of consequents were successively changed, and one
law after another (though inductively established) under
went elimination. Still, the inventor's subtle yet unde
niable explanation brings all into harmony — and, what
is more wonderful, reduces all to an absolute unity of
idea. The alterations, therefore, in organized nature,
which apparently result from climate, circumstance, or
habitude, may be instances of a preconceived law.
Greater frequency or intricacy of change may really
prove greater foresight. The aberrant forms which
have seemed to overlie, and even quite obscure, the
manifestations of design, become in this view its bright
est examples. If this view be accepted, the first or
popular difficulty receives a sufficient answer.
II. l. The second, and more philosophic doubt, is a
very different thing. It is (as I said) directed against
the idea of design, and the analogy between human
and natural productions.
This is evidently a very hard question, and if it pro
perly belonged to the province of physical inquiry, I
should shrink from hazarding any investigation of its
merits. But the question has overstepped the boundary
of such sciences, and become a branch of philosophy.
I may seem obscure in making this assertion, but you
will see its truth if you consider for a moment the limit
which divides science from philosophy. Sciences are

i6
often content to accept their principles, the lower from
the higher (as Aristotle puts the case), in an ascending
scale up to metaphysic, which, if it is anything at all,
is the philosophy of first grounds so far as they are dis
coverable. While the various kinds of inquiry assume
their several grounds as postulates, each keeps its sepa
rate and subordinate place. But, one prime impulse
of the human mind is unification j and thus in every
science there springs up a tendency to ground itself.
The moment this attempt is made, a science becomes
a philosophy, and must be tested by the ordinary cri
teria of philosophic procedure. Another and more cu
rious fact is, that many sciences, not content with being
philosophies (I might say claiming to rank as the phi
losophy), aim at becoming theologies likewise. Thus
we have seen religion made a department of several
sciences; of fine art for example, of poetry, social
science, politics, biology, psychological medicine. The
experts severally seek spiritual supremacy as their prize,
their only point of agreement being apparently the
dogma, that whatever be the final lot of religion, it has
little or nothing to do with morality. With these facts
in our minds, let us look at our question of Design : —
If we understand the word physics in the widest pos
sible sense (embracing a study of all nature and nature's
laws), it cannot be unreasonable in every physicist" to
c Aristotle (Metaph., iv. 3,) acknowledges their prerogative, be
cause they endeavour to study nature as a whole. But he holds
that objective existence is only one kind of being, and the highest
wisdom got from nature may be a, but cannot be the, philosophy.

i7
use his knowledge as a means of investigating the
true cosmogony, the one sufficient ground of the uni
verse. But, considering how vast and various such an
inquiry must be, it does not seem right to speak of
a physical science objection against Natural Theology,
as if some general ultimatum had been delivered, and
war declared by way of corollary. The really fair way
is to specify and examine those several views which
have turned out most embarrassing to the natural theo
logian. First, then, it is asked, Is there any relevant analogy
between art and nature ? If the analogy be applied to
prove an author of nature, it proves too much. As
design implies a designer, so surely does it imply a
pre-existent matterd for design to work upon. But the
" The early Church perceived this point, which is indeed suffi
ciently plain. When we speak of an artist or craftsman as making
anything, we mean that he is giving a new form to something,
making something out of one or more somethings which already
exist quite independently of his will. In other words, we under
stand the material factor. Theophilus of Antioch employs the
example of a human designer, who receives the materials needful
to carry out his design, in express contrast with the work ofthe
Creator, whose power and greatness he infers from the essential
opposition (Ad Autol., p. 82). For the adjustment required in
reasoning from design, if we wish to reason conclusively, see Ap
pendix. We must not expect invariable consistency from the earlier
apologists ; Beausobre grows a little suspicious now and then. We
ought, however, to draw the widest possible distinction between
analogies used as logically conclusive arguments and as merely
illustrative comparisons. The language of the Fathers may gene
rally be defended by attention to this difference, e.g. Athenagoras,
C

i8
doctrine of pre-existent matter is philosophical Mani-
chasanism. To the ordinary Greek mind the difficulty
might not be greater than to Goethe. Matter appeared
as at once the condition and the antagonism of force.
Even as a sculptor '' tries to embody his thought in
marble, and succeeds only in part, so the Divine mind
works order in the material substratum, but not abso
lutely. Nature is full of failures, evils, struggles, im
perfections. They are evidences not merely of anti
thesis, but of an insoluble duality '. In the Timozus we
14 D, and 19 B. The easiest way of testing a real analogy is to
state it as a rule-of-three sum.
e The supposititious Theologia of Aristotle (the Greek text of
which has been lost since the time of Thomas Aquinas) attempts
reducing the duality. ' ' Receptivitas formarum est ratio per quam
ilia (materia) est ens, ita quod, si auferatur talis natura recipiendi,
non subsistet neque intelligetur. " — (iv. 2.) The theory runs thus :
That which is formless has no real existence, but matter is the mere
aptitude for receiving form, and exists only by its movement of im
pulse to receive. The truly self-subsistent, the first cause, supreme
intellect, and ultimate form of all things, produces, as the unmoved
mover, this motion of impulse ; attracts, so to speak, receptivity into
real existence. But the Peripatetic does not escape the recurrent
difficulty. Can there be a motion of nothing ? Can desire or capa
city to receive be qualities inherent in nothing ? If not, matter is
something after all.
A modern Psychology (Beneke's) seems to step into the same
charmed circle. There are stimuli from without, assimilation within,
the original faculties of mind appearing as receptive capacities. But
what is the power of receiving and assimilating ? The growing
point must still be given. And how much does this mean? A
micrometer gauges the vegetable or animal cell, but to apply mea
sures of magnitude to the mind's growing point would seem a deli
cate operation.
Of the false Aristotle's Theologia above quoted, I have found no

l9
see Plato softening down what he could not explain.
The reader of Aristotle's De Anima, and Metaphysics,
knows how he too struggled with the problem. Matter
exists as a possibility, it is neither nonentity, nor ac
tuality ; however, it does exist, and the dualism remains.
The Primitive Fathers knew the Platonism' of their own
more favourable account than that by Ravaisson (Essai ii. 553 — 5).
He gives more of the argument than I can do here. The genuine
Aristotle probably sums all he felt able to say on the case in his
De General, et Corr., i. 3, (p. 317, b. 14, seq.), and it is much the
same as my statement of his general meaning.
Athenagoras, in a passage which has not escaped censure (Legal. ,
14 D. ), speaks of the All-recipient Matter, which had neither deter
mination, shape, nor order, apart from the Divine Creator. Boethius,
De Consol. , iii. metr. 9, takes a doubtful loan from the Timcms : —
" O qui perpetua mundum ratione gubernas,
Terrarum caelique sator, qui tempus ab aevo
Ire jubes, stabilisque manens das cuncta moveri ;
Quem non externse pepulerunt fingere causae
Materia? fluitantis opus, verum insita summi
Forma boni, livore carens. "
The reader will easily see how thorny this whole question always
becomes when Form and Matter are considered as physical an
titheses. ' A knowledge not limited to Alexandria and the other centres
of learning, e.g. Augustine owed to Plato's writings (though only in
Latin) an intellectual and spiritual debt (Confess., vii. 9, and 20),
and in his greatest work Plato is highly rated as well as Plotinus,
"magnus ille Platonicus," (De Civ., x. 2). By putting together
two places ofthe Enneads (Enn., i. 6, 8, and i. 2, 3), he constructs
" illud Plotini " that beautiful passage, "Fugiendum est igitur ad
charissimam patriam, et ibi pater, et ibi omnia. Quse igitur, inquit,
classis aut fuga? Similem deo fieri." (De Civ., ix. 17.) Some
useful information is given by Alb. Jahn, in his Basilius magnus
Plotinizans. Many adversaries of Christianity saw in its precepts a borrowed

day better than Aristotle's definitions. They had scarcely
begun to philosophize, when Theophilus (Ad Autol., ii.
p. 82) denounced Plato for making matter increate
precisely as God is increate ; solely creation out of no
thing is compatible with the unity of God. In the
Eastern Church, Origen is the most curiously instruc
tive ; in the Western, Lactantius. The idea of a crea
tion out of nothing (compare the 2nd Book of Macca
bees vii. 28, and Hebrews xi. 3, with the Shepherd of
Hermas, Mand., ii. 1), this ideas brings us down to the

Platonism, see Origen, Contr. Cels., often, especially v., vi., and
vii., and compare the " Philosophiae genus," Tertull., Apol., 46.
The charge was retorted, e.g. by Clem. Alex, repeatedly, who has
also made celebrated a saying of the Neo-Platonist Numenius, that
Plato was only an Attic Moses, a tradition quite of a piece with
Numenius's quoting Genesis as the work of a prophet, (Porphyr.
de Antro Nymph., cap. x. ) Greek philosophy was thus a Promethean
theft, or (see likewise Justin) a second dispensation from heaven ;
or, again, as Athenagoras expresses it, a part-felt sympathy with
the breath of God. Many of the primitive defenders of the Church
had been attracted by the philosophical aspect of her doctrine, and
relied upon it for attracting others, e.g. Justin, who passed through
three schools before he entered the Academy, to him the vestibule of
the Gospel. By the affection of these great writers, and through
their persuasion that the olden moral teachers were taught by Him
who is the God " ofthe Gentiles also," Plato has come down to us
as (Strom., i. 290 D,) "S 0iAa\^0ijs n\iTav otov Weoipopoifieiios. "
k The passages bracketed lose force by translation. Theophilus
says plainly (Ad Autol., lib. i. 72 A,) that God made the world
«¦£ ovk iv-ruv eh rb ehai, cf. ii. 88 B, 89 A, 92 B. Justin inten
tionally contradicts the Timceus of Plato, Dial. 223. Athenagoras,
Legat, 5 B, and 23 A, and Tatian (c. Grcec, 145 C,) have
similar passages.
The Philocalia of Origen was drawn almost wholly from his writ-

Scholastic period. It produced the distinction between
a nihilum privativum and nihilum negativum, made famous

ings by Basil the Great and Gregory Nazianz., and cap. xxiv. is
entirely on matter ; if increate, but separated from the Deity, there
must be a something to separate, an eternal tertium quid. For
other examples of his way of reasoning on this subject, see De
Princip., i. 2, 3, ii. 3, 2, and 43 ; Comm. in Joann., tomus xxxii.
9. In De Princip. , iii. 5, is an argument for the existence of other
worlds before the one we inhabit, a conclusion he thinks favoured
by Ecclesiastes i. 9. It is, according to Origen, impossible to
conceive of the Deity as motionless, or unemployed in doing good.
His master, Clement, had expressed the same thing before him,
(Strom., vi. 684 C.)
Photius (Myriobibl., cix.) says that Clement in his Hypoty-
poses asserted the eternity of matter, but Photius's account of this
book is open to great suspicion. Among the remains of the Adum-
trationes which have reached us, an allusion to matter (1 Pet. i. I,
in Fell's Fragments, also in Potter, p. 1006) refers to birth, not
creation ; and there is a decisive sentence in the Cohortatio (42 A),
to the effect that God creates by a mere act of will, and then on His
will followed existence. The same turn of thought and phrase is in
Constit. Apostol., v. 7, (Cot. i. 307, 8). Irenseus says ofthe Creator,
"Deus ex his quse non erant, quemadmodum voluit, ea quse facta
sunt, ut essent, omnia fecit, sua voluntate et virtute substantia (i. e.
loco substantiae) usus," ii. 10, 2, (p. 127). In a Bodleian fragment
(p. 348, ) he argues the question so as to remind us of Theophilus :
if matter were increate it would be immutable, if immutable, it
would be incapable of receiving creative forms ; therefore the world
could never have been created. Again, (Athenag. , Leg. , 14 C, ) it is
because we Christians distinguish between the created and the in
create, nonentity and entity, the object of sense and the object of
reason, that we refuse to adore the statues. The Divinity of matter
would thoroughly justify the worship of stocks and stones, silver
and gold, and we should be impious in refusing it. Lactantius,
De Origine Erroris, 8, has several pages on this subject, partly in
answer to the Art-analogy of Cicero, whom, however, he considers

22
by Alexander ab Hales, which has re-appeared in the
post-Lutheran German Theology. Perhaps it might be
asked whether this difference is not like that between
Nothing celebrated as the "great negative" by Lord
Rochester, and Hegel's Non-being. I must just men
tion Leibnitz, because he is often referred to as a father
of modern Natural Theology. But, if we remember the
gap between his much praised, much blamed Theodicie
and his Monadology, it may seem doubtful whether he
attributed more to the Designer of the universe, than
the first establishment of a harmony, and its main
tenance by occasional intervention. Metaphysically the
elimination of all dualism has been attempted in three
ways : absolute creationism, an emanation theory, and
thorough idealism.
Enough has been said (I think) to shew that the con
troversy is of all ages, and thai it deals with a subject
beyond our scientific attainments. Our own Bishop
Butler appears aware that the question of matter would
be opened by an illatively complete analogy, and he
self-refuted. These examples sufficiently shew how clearly the blot
on the argument from art to creation was perceived and censured.
It is also plain that the severity of its censors was sharpened by
dualizing heresies from one section of the Gnostics downwards.
How hard it is for the mind to escape from its material impres
sions : — ' ' whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in,"
may be seen in a curious correspondence between Arnauld and
Descartes, cited by Hallam, Literature of Europe, 1600 — 1650,
chap. iii. 94.

23
uses this kind of argument rather to rebut objections
and raise probabilities. With Paley it is otherwise, and
this flaw in his clever book taints it with an insufficiency
felt by almost everybody.
2. Thus much, then, for the objection against design
as necessarily involving a material factor. A more subtle
as well as more exciting line of thought substitutes for
every mechanical view of the universe the celebrated
theory of Development.
But here, again, there is no summary principle agreed
upon by the leaders of Physical Science. We must
therefore select as well as we can, and I will first state
the extreme position ascribed to physicists, because it
is the one most antagonistic to Natural Theology. After
that we shall better estimate a more balanced opinion
on the subject.
2. a. For the first : — Why, it is asked by the most
hostile questioners, why may not design be inherent
in the developing forces themselves ? The old cosmo
gonies looked at the world as the orderly habitation,
the many-coloured garment of its Maker. So the spirit
said to Faust, —
' ' I weave the living vesture that God is mantled in. "
But Development makes the garment native, the in-
dweller and his habitation one. The design is also the
designer ; — God, identical with the universe.
This, of course, is Pantheism. Considering what we
know of the universe, it asserts the practical omni
potence of an impersonal First ground. Undoubtedly

24
a most curious question follows — where then are we to
look for a true personality, a will? Is it anywhere ex
cept in man ? If there be such a will beside his, it is
clear that inorganic nature and impersonal intelligence
are not all that must exist outside us. We ought to
erect an altar to the Unknown God.
But, if this seems absurd, and will and personality can
reside nowhere except in man, then we must believe
a thing which some have not scrupled to say : — He is
what Kehama strove to become, what certain self-de
graded emperors were proclaimed to be; and even as
a maddened city cried out for the space of two hours,
"Great is Diana;" so might all the world exclaim,
"Great is the Man-God!" Yet is it not hard for one
who knows human nature, its limitations, weakness,
follies, passions, — is it not hard indeed to bow down
before so pitiable a Deaster h ! One conclusion or the
other is the result to a thinking Pantheist — an un-
b When Lord Bacon wrote of man being a God to man, he had
in view, " quantum intersit inter hominum vitam in excultissima qua-
piam Europse provincia, et in regione aliqua Novse Indise maxime
fera et barbara," (Nov. Org., pars 2, Aph. 129). The philo
sopher may thus seem divine to the savage, but we all know that
the ordinary man is a Deaster only to his dog. We know, too,
what ensues when the case is reversed, and the dog and his fellow-
brutes become the gods of men ; man loses his human prerogative,
the distinctive sense of right and wrong, and is given over to "a re
probate mind" to do those things which suit only the brute side of
humanity, things over which our higher self must blush and weep.
The nineteenth century has inaugurated afresh worship of humanity;
and judging from certain doctrines of this creed in works of fiction
and elsewhere, there are even now worshippers who draw their

25
known God to be ignorantly worshipped, or a Man-
God whom we cannot reverence? Which is the least
incredible ?
2. b. Next, to speak of Pantheism as synonymous with
Development, is a mistake, and something worse, — it is
an aspersion. Mechanism means the formation of the
universe ab extra, Development asserts it ab intra.
Allow the hypothesis of a world-force endued with
some kind of spontaneity, and all consequent metamor
phosis becomes conceivable. Plato propounded that
ancient enigma which had shaped itself into the problem
of the One and the Many, not only as a law to be ac
knowledged, but as a fruitful idea, and a principle of
discovery '. So the actual operative calculating-machine
is a matter-of-fact instance of the Many developed out
of the One, and so likewise to us always the universal
force becomes apparent, not in its simplicity, but its
manifoldness. Its phenomena partly observed, partly
inferred, are successive chains of conditioned antece
dents through uncounted ages, time seemingly immea
surable. But no metaphysic is needed to prove that
every such conception results in the following dilemma :
moral ideal from those frightful propensities which the moral sense
was given us to restrain. We may hope that the deastrification
of man will fall by its own weakness, the idol may be broken
when the passions of the dog are openly preached as the guides
of human life.
1 For a valuation of the principle in this point of view, see
Whewell, Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, vol. ii. bk. xii.
ch. ii. ; Philosophy of Discovery, chs. ii. and iii. ; and Supplement
to History, ch. ii.

26
— Is this world-force, this unity in multeity, the first
mover, or was it put in motion ? If it moved itself, and
there was no prior cause of movement in the order of
time, or of thought,— then we have found the ultimate
physical characteristic of the Deity. His other attri
butes remain to be discussed by the moralist and the
theologian, and no reason can be assigned for keeping
the ultimate ideas apart. Take the other side of the
dilemma — affirm a prior cause of movement, and the
prime mover of the universe k may from the very first
be conceived as a will and a personality.
It would be presumptuous in me to attempt solving
problems on which we may yet learn something from
the philosophy of the physical sciences. Neither can
I foretell how much additional light is likely to be ob
tained. But, up to this time, the problem of problems
k In Metaph., xii. io, Aristotle proposes, something in this way,
the important question — Where are we to look for the supreme Good ?
Is that desire of all things, that ground of motion to the physical
universe, immanent in the harmony of the world (law, force, prin
ciple, intelligence) ; or is not the cause of universal order separate
from the order effected ? We see an army in movement, it is the
very type of organization ; where, then, is the order ? Is it diffused
through the grand mechanism, itself unseen ; or is it not rather
seen in the person of the General (perhaps Aristotle thought of
Alexander); or, again, (the only remaining supposition,) does.it
not really inhere in both ? We should say in both, but rather in
the General, since the order of the host exists by him, not he by the
order. Even so, we may be sure, it is with the universe. All things
have in fact an orderly relation tending towards one finality. The
.world is not like a spasmodic work of art, full of incoherences. It
exists as a well-ordered state, free from confusion. So, Aristotle
concludes with Homer's monarchic line.

27
is (so far as those sciences go,) unsolved, and really
seems insoluble. Nature neither affirms her world-force
to be self-moved, nor explains who or what first put it
in motion. Her phenomena require the hypothesis of
some sort of intelligence, but they reveal no more. In
other words, Development does not itself disclose any
first ground of development.
We gain a great deal, however, by the conviction that
nothing is ever likely to result from interrogating the
conditional links of antecedent and consequent. Every
change manifestly requires a prior and sufficient ground
of change. It is by reason of this cosmical law, that
we are assured the sun will rise to-morrow ; not because
of continued observation, as theorists have sometimes
said. Upon the same cosmical law rests the utility of
this, and all other observation, the validity of the whole
inductive philosophy ; since, except in the case of logi
cal entities, who ever was able to make an exhaustive
induction of anything? Processes of contrivance or of
change, in obedience to this law, may be inferred through
time beyond our means of computation. Centuries may
be superseded in our reckoning by cycles of years, — by
periods more and more remote, but the first ground of
all things is not thus discovered. Nature preserves
her secret, and the philosopher turns elsewhere for in
formation upon the most serious and interesting of all
subjects, — the immortal continuance and progressive
changes of his own noble spirit.
And can it in reason be otherwise? The natural
world is to the uninstructed eye a kaleidoscope of phe-

28 ¦
nomena, to the philosopher a series of relations, but not
things in themselves. Nowhere do we find absolutely
first principles of force and movement. For this reason
we attach no blame to the action of physical antecedent
and consequent. We do not accuse the axe of the
executioner when the head of the righteous falls ; we
do not revile the bullet in its course— no, nor even the
sleuth-hound that tracks the innocent blood. None of
these are first principles or personalities; in the eye of
the lawgiver, they are things instrumental. We may
call them noxious things, but we cannot speak of them
as immoral.
III. i. This last word, "immoral," suggests another
sphere of inquiry. Has it not been generally forgotten
amongst Natural Theologians, that he who stops short
with physics, physiology, and the allied sciences, takes
an incomplete view of nature ? A rational cosmogony,
or science of the world's formation, ought surely to be
based on a cosmology, or science of the world as it does
exist. And is not man a most evident part of the
existing world? Cosmology cannot dispense with an
investigation of human nature, and, above all, of human
nature in its peculiarly distinctive essentials. And such
was in fact the Natural Theology of St. Paul. Through
out his address to the Athenian philosophers, you will
be struck by a comprehensiveness which I can note only
in outline. He argues that neither inorganic nor organic
nature reflect the full idea of God. They confute cer
tain falsehoods, and establish certain truths, respecting
Him, but beyond this, neither nature nor art can go.

29
We may carve silver into the star of Remphan ; we may
represent, in any way we like, the forms of animals or
the corruptible bodies of men. Most perfect statues
were near him when he spoke, but none of them could
suggest the true image of Him who made all things.
God has stamped that image on the souls of us, who
are His offspring, and He is not far from every one of
us. We may feel after — the very phrase of Aristotle in
a passage which every one ought to read ' — we may feel
1 Metaph., xii. 7> over the grandest part of which Schwegler
rises into enthusiasm, ' ' Nun folgt die fast in hymnischen Tone
gehaltene Beschreibung des Wesens Gottes und seines seligen Le-
bens." (Die Metaphysik des Aristoteies, iv. p. 265.) Aristotle does
not fly, like Plato, to a myth, — one of those beautiful imaginations,
hard to interpret into matter-of-fact meaning, dark from the inten
sity of their own poetic splendour. On the contrary, he slowly
collects the several lights gained from his very various researches,
and blends them into a nature-painted picture made solemn by the
calm realism of its sublimity.
This chapter has frequent references to his other writings, e.g.
the Phys. Ausc, De Ccelo, and De Anima. The interest to us,
centres of course upon its containing a plain prose summary of re
sults in thoroughly Natural Theology, the conclusions of a scien
tific speculation characterized by criticism and strong common
sense. Whatever may be the theological deficiencies of Aristotle,
this one circumstance is, for our purpose, a redeeming qualifi
cation : —
Deity is described by Aristotle as the —
First ground of movement.
True end of thought and rational choice.
Supreme good.
Highest ideal of excellence, (moral beauty).
Essential activity.
Absolute intellect.
Identity of subject and object, (thought and being).

3°
after and find the Lord. So, too, in writing to the
Romans, the Apostle passes from visible things without,
to the law within us. Had this law been loyally ob
served, animal propensities and sensual art would not
have obliterated God from the souls of men. What was
kept, witnessed for Him, with a witness which mere
outward things could never articulate. For God is
a Spirit, and all spiritual truth, even the very existence
of spirit, must be spiritually discerned.
Whether St. Paul was trained in philosophy or no is
often a point in dispute ; but he has with him here
three of the greatest thinkers mankind ever saw : two
departed before he spoke and wrote — the third in recent
times passed away from our modern Teutonic race. In
the moral world, Socrates found the truth of universals
— Aristotle a (pia-et StKaiovm — and Kant his sole insight
Life eternal.
Perfect happiness.
He adds the following characters of the Divine :—
Separate from the world of sense.
Without extension, (body).
Without parts.
Without passions, in meaning of our Church's Article.
Indivisible. Unchangeable.Of unlimited duration.
Incomprehensible, in meaning of Athanasian Creed.
Compare the condensed sentence in the De Ccelo, ii. 3 (p. 286, a. 9).
9eov 5* ivepyeia aOaiiatrla- tovto 5' i(n\ f«^ aiStos.
- Justin Martyr is fond of such phrases as ipiirei Ka\a, (pvcnual
evvoiat, ai&via Sixaia, &c. , and puts what is thus universal in oppo
sition to the local and particular. Instances occur, pp. 246, 263,.
4, 6, 292 and 320. There is a strong passage in Athenag. De

3i
into that reality of all realities, the unconditioned and
the absolute. May it not be to this world of moral
truth that the physical philosopher must look for his
answer, and may not the question with which we started
be here answered likewise ? If so, the conditions under
which Natural Theology becomes scientifically possible,
are found when it supplements Natural Science by
a science of Right and Wrong.
And why has not the Natural Theologian endeavoured
to fulfil these conditions? There are obvious reasons,
but I omit them, because I am desirous of shewing as
clearly as I can in a short time, why for the future
Natural Theology ought to follow this path and no
other — unless it wishes to commit suicide. Let me
now ask your attention to a pair of contrasted pictures.
One, I will try to draw of what the outward world ap
pears to reflective minds, when man stands as it were
apart from Nature. The other — what the world be
comes, taking man as a real part of it, and viewing the
rest under a light borrowed from his moral and spiri
tual being.
2. Let it be remembered, in painting our first pic
ture, that every man (whatever be his purpose or his
point of view) when he looks upon Nature, sees her with
a human eye". How simple this proposition sounds,
Resurr. Mort., 54, where reasoning Ik ttjs koivijs ko.1 tpvo-acris iv-
voias is pronounced irrefragable. See further on.
" "The world was made to be inhabited by beasts ; but studied
and contempla'ted by man : 'tis the debt of our reason we owe unto
God, and the homage we pay for not being beasts." — Religio Me
dici, p. 28.

32
but how strangely it is forgotten ! We have no con
ception what creatures of another mould, with sight
microscopic, telescopic, — other thoughts, other feelings,
— might discern, or might think they discerned, in this
world of ours; yet every day fanciful writers give us
for human truth imaginary prospects, unlike anything
man ever beheld, and reminding us of a landscape seen
through pieces of coloured glass. Gaze as we will, if
we use our own eyes, we must look with human thoughts
in our heads, and human emotions in our hearts.
William Wordsworth wrote : —
" Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys and fears :
To me the meanest flower that blows, can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."
In truth, it is the depth and intensity of our English
feelings which makes Englishmen such lowers of all
scenery from the most peaceful to the most sublime.
And no man can love nature deeply without desiring '
to see his joys and sorrows reflected from her face.
In that fine stanza of " Childe Harold" which describes
the march of our army through Ardennes to the field
of Waterloo, the dew upon the forest-leaves is likened
to the tear-drops of nature : —
" Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves,
Over the unreturning brave. "
An "if" such as this may be allowed to a sensitive
imagination. But, calm reason beholds things other
wise. It is exactly in our deepest movements of soul,

33
that we confess how far we are apart, sundered as by
an icy sea, from the fair world of our admiring affection.
Nature's loveliness seems to our sorrow cold and hard,
she receives and returns no sympathy. The pain of
this thought has been seldom expressed in poetry more
vividly than by some well-known lines of Burns ; seldom
more truthfully in prose than in the charming letters of
Wilhelm von Humboldt. Few of us (probably) have
lived without the feeling altogether. Grief and death
seem so lonely in a world where all is bright and
blooming. The leaf, the insect, the bird, continue
beautiful in our decay. We grow old, our hopes die
before us, while Spring renews his youth. Friend after
friend drops from our side, but roses do not wither
a day before their time. Mr. Wilberforce, returning
from his sister's grave, wrote, " How affecting it is to
leave the person we have known all our lives, on whom
we should have been afraid to let the wind blow too
roughly, to leave her in the cold ground alone." All
of us here know that, when our own bodies are so left,
and their warm movement becomes a kneaded clod,
it will be only in a figure that churchyard shrubs weep
over us, — no long-remembered tree will really droop,
no star dear to our childhood will dim its splendour.
Nature cannot feel for us, — we are truly apart from
nature. But, further, — the natural world we greet as a friend,
is it not oftentimes our enemy? A consideration of
the hostile forces arrayed against us stirs and depresses
our human heart, almost beyond endurance. They seem
D

34
like evil angels, armed to crush and consume. The
earthquake at Lisbon occurred when Goethe was a boy.
It raised the whole question of the Tower of Siloam ;
it might be, it probably was, a turning-point for the
boy's whole after-life. In many ways we all feel this :
the storm at sea regards no parent's tears; the avalanche,
the simoom, the volcano, respect no persons of them we
revere or love. If we look at nature, and nature alone,
notwithstanding her exceeding beauty, we see in her a
hopeless antagonism : hence the adoration of an evil prin
ciple, which is still found where nature-worship prevails.
The truth is, nature preserves her secret as from her
philosopher, so too from her worshipper.
3. This is one picture. Let me now draw the other.
It must be designed in the belief that man is the com
pletion and glory of the world ; that when he came
into existence, nature put on her crown. And even as
a crown is made of the most precious materials earth
affords, with an intentional contrast to every baser
metal, and to the common stones of which the fabric of
the globe is built ; so, in man we expect and actually
find a something of more sovereign worth and dignity
than all that went before. Other things and creatures
furnish the conditions of his existence, but his essential
being reflects light upon each of them. A part of
nature, he is not of nature's ordinary mould ; and the
double relation — a contrast and an alliance — cannot
but be inseparable from his position. To a specu
lative eye, man completes the world so far as it can
be called complete, by explaining all the rest. By

35
way of illustration, let me suppose a spiritual crea
ture limited in knowledge, that had been permitted
to see only a tract of earth's surface varied in mineral
composition, but where as yet herbage never grew.
Suppose this spirit wafted away to a land of meadows
and groves ; he beholds something which he will call
higher, because the new realm of organic life, while
adorning the soil it feeds upon, shews him a nobler
purpose in the still uninhabited waste, than he could
previously imagine. But suppose, further, that the
meadows become covered with grazing flocks, and the
groves resonant with songs of birds, each plant and
leafy tree instinct with animal life and enjoyment.
How far more beautiful, far more perfect, all now ap
pears 1 The utility and excellence of our earth's varied
composition first rose into clearness before him when
he looked upon vegetable life; he learned to explain,
if I may so speak, the former by the. latter; but how
evidently more excellent are both when he perceives
motion, feeling, intelligence !. He at once places vege
table irritability underneath animal sensation, and pro
nounces these combined contrasts of nature both " very
good." Conceive, then, the addition made to the visi
ble goodness of the whole, the enlarged field of ex
planation opened up by the existence of our common
humanity °-
There is, we said, a marvellous beauty in this world of
0 " For the whole world works together in the service of man ;
and there is nothing from which he does not derive use and fruit.
.... Plants and animals' of all kinds are made to furnish him either

36
ours, — landscape, mountains, the sea; the glacier, rest and
motion, all are very beautiful. Complexity of structure
and the mystery of life add a higher charm to the flower,
insect, bird, and every living creature ; a charm that grows
upon us the more we observe and examine them. Mani
festations of intelligence attract us still more ; the habits
of animals, their desires, and their contrivances, excite
interests of a more kindred sort, though still far inferior
to that purely human enjoyment which results from the
exercise of our own higher intelligence — the solution
of a mathematical problem, for example, the passage of
a train of reasoning through the mind, our discovery of
a new truth, an insight into some profound universal
thought. But all inanimate forms and phenomena, — every
marvel of structure, adaptation, movement, life, — every
pleasure of imagination or of pure intellect— in a word,
every other object that charms us, is disregarded and
sinks almost into nothingness compared with the un
utterable beauty of a good and noble action. The
history of a virtuous man struggling with adversity,
maintaining his uprightness — though tempted, like Job,
to blaspheme and die — thrills us with emotions to which
no gratification of sight, sense, or understanding, offers
any parallel — perhaps not in degree, certainly not in
kind. Thousands of years may have passed away, but
the feeling remains fresh, and warm, and strong. And
with dwelling and shelter, or clothing, or food, or medicine, or to
lighten his labour, or to give him pleasure and comfort ; insomuch
that all things seem to be going about man's business and not their
own." — Bacon, Sap. Vet., 26, Prometheus.

37
the true secret of our delight is this, — we are looking
at the likeness of God in the spirit of man, we are at
last standing face to face with the Divine.
This is a strong assertion. I meant it to be very
strong. If it is true, we have all we wanted to com
plete the circle of Nature's witness for the Being and
attributes of God. In order to shew its truth, I must
fill-in some details.
3. a. What, then, are the elements of beauty ? or, as
a painter might say, the motives in our present picture ?
They are two. First, something is done from love and
devotion to that which is right, true, noble, good ; next,
it is the deed of one who could have acted otherwise,
if he had so determined. This last condition, so far
forth as freely done, shews that delight in a moral
action is really delight in moral agency — the inten
tional causation of something we morally approve. With
still more strict exactitude, we must on further analysis
determine our feeling to be delight in a moral agent,
because it is in point of fact no external result, but an
inward and conscious movement of mind which we ad
mire. When the outward effect fails through force of
circumstances, or when personal activity is restrained or
paralysed — if only the moral choice p, however thwarted
t According to the Schoolmen, the "actus elicitus seu essen-
tialis ipsius voluntatis est ille, qui producitur immediate ab ipsa
voluntate et manet in ea." — Castan., Synop. Distinct, p. 7. This
freedom of choice not all the physical force of the universe can
crush or hinder. To actus elicitus is opposed "imperatus, seu ad
usum voluntatis ;" the command of the instruments of choice,

38
or suppressed, can become known to us, it still calls
forth our honest admiration. Nay, every instance of
tenacity of life maintained by a purpose which survives
all obstruction, is greeted as the truest heroism q. But
a power of doing what we choose, obviously quite another thing.
It seems hardly necessary to remark that the turning-point of our
argument is again altogether distinct from the properly theological
question of freedom (liberum arbitrium), a question attaching itself
to certain pre-existent subjective conditions of insight and choice, the
difficulties of which concern the most awful and inscrutable of all
mysteries, and, as matters of fact, ought to enhance our estimation of
every good man. We consider the will here only under one aspect ;
namely, as constituent of personality. The present Bishop of Win
chester has a sermon on this subject, preached in 1843, from which
I extract the following powerful passage : "The will is that which
constrains into unity all our powers. In it is the mystery and
the wonder of our being. In it we have that which no power ex
ternal to ourselves can by any violence alter, which the highest
angels cannot overpower, nay, which can even resist the Almighty
Himself. For herein is the greatest of all mysteries ; that there
can be, as there is, one Almighty Will, and yet that there can be
inferior wills which can even resist Him. Yet so it is. " — (p. 93,
ed. 1845). The thought is further developed in the Bishop's ser
mon on " the Will of God," (p. 241). " There could be no true
creation of reasonable beings besides the One, unless upon them
was bestowed this fearful mystery of the power of choice. Without
this there could not be one reasonable being separate from Him
self; they would be but the shadows of His hand. And therefore
doubtless was it that He made us as we are, fearful and wonderful
beings, able to choose life or death."
' This passive martyrdom sheds one ray of manhood upon that
ep^v\ov ipyavov, 'the slave.' Voluntary action is thus described
in Thomist language: " Voluntarium recte definitur, cujus princi-
pium est ab intrinseco cum cognitione finis;" and again, "agen-
tia libera . . . sibi finem agendi praestituunt, in quem sese ut li-
buerit dirigunt." The cell-building bee, therefore, is rather a vo
luntary agent than a slave. Roman jurists, with consistently

39
contrariwise, prove that a man who did some virtuous
deed was compelled to do it, or was in any way not
master of his action, and we cease to feel pleasure ; what
we thought to be living is lifeless — there is no moral
beauty in any kind of whited sepulchre.
If we want to throw this part of our picture into
stronger relief, it is easily brought out by the dark con
trast of our own doings, and the sorrow they cause us.
Time, which turns the edge of most griefs, cannot soften
the pain of remorse. Let a man, under the light of his
moral being, once fairly look in the face an evil thing,
which he did years ago, and his conscience will ask
only one question, — " Was he forced, in spite of him
self, to do the wrong?" If he did it willingly, the pain
continues. Thus, both good and evil lead us to appre
ciate a saying of Kant's — " There is but one good thing
in all the world, — and that is a good will r."
Observe, now, the other condition or element of
inexorable logic, pronounced slavery to be quasi-death (Harmenop.,
Procheir. i. t. 14, 6), and this, notwithstanding all the mitigations
mentioned by Champagny in his Antonins. The wretch who makes
a slave, transforms a person into a thing, that is, he destroys a
man ; hence St. Paul (1 Tim. i. 9, 10,) classes the man-stealer with
murderers of fathers, murderers of mothers, and every worst crimi
nal against whose sins God's law was given.
' Only good because only a first ground. When we will we may
be said to create, even though our work be limited to the pro
duction of a new state within that indefeasible empire the adminis
tration of which is our vast responsibility, the empire of our Self.
In this sense, Aristotle calls man an apx-fi, and our Lord speaks of
God Who is a spirit demanding the spirit's worship. Will is with
out parallel in the whole world of nature ; every attempt to explain

40
moral beauty. It is that the agent direct his thought
to something, in itself right, good, noble, true, or by
whatever name we choose to call the immutable first
principle, — the law written in our hearts. That this
law is a first principle, no one will deny who studies the
nature and attestation of his own convictions. For, no
man in his senses can conceive a corner in this vast
universe, where the moral contradictory is annulled, —
where Right shall be wrong, and Wrong be right; — any
more than, that in the same country two logical contra
dictories shall both at once be true, and parallel lines
prolonged to infinity shall meet. The instant the moral
law of contradiction is so stated as to be understood,
it by analogy must be untenable, and leads to confusion. It is an
essence sui generis, indemonstrable, inexplicable, indefinable, but
present to our human consciousness in every good or evil act, word,
or intention, so that he who denies it must deny himself. Compare
Bishop Wilberforce on " Personality" (as before quoted), and also
p. 95. "To have a will is in truth to live. What are all things
without this but mere machines, which must do the orders of the
one will which acts through them ? What are they but mere
shadowy figures of being, cast forth from the One Being ?" The
Bishop proceeds to shew forcibly the theological contradiction
which follows if this truth be denied, but on his higher territory
I must not trespass.
The Cosmos without us displays an intelligence far reaching as
the farthest fixed star, but this infinite power the physicist hesitates
(cf. p. 51) to pronounce a personality. That Microcosmos— our
moral nature — displays undoubted personality, and unless the intel
ligence which forms and transforms the whole universe, is a some
thing infinitely less than man, we have found the true God. How
grave, then, the mistake of the Natural Theologian who omits
from a survey of nature the one real Being placed within his
observation.

4*
it receives a like strength of assent with its logical an
titype ". St. Paul appeals to the law of right in chil
dren ; yet we know it required a Socrates to question
mathematics out of the mind of a slave, and even thus
the faculty of common reason, which is the common pro
perty of man, may be so "cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd, bound
in" by unwholesome circumstances — so dwarfed, lamed,
deformed, never cultivated, never grown up, — that
logical, mathematical, and what is more to our purpose,
moral truth, shall be found only in a rudimentary con
dition. This makes no difficulty to our case ; the blind
man is no judge of colours, nor the deaf man of har
mony ; the colour-blind cannot tell green from red ; in
many ways we see human beings deficient in one or
* See the very instructive chapter of Aristotle, Metaph., iv. 4.
The law of contradiction is indemonstrable. To attempt direct
proof of a first principle is mere kiraiSeviria, it can only be shewn
true from the absurd consequences resulting from its denial. If
a man affirms that he can say anything validly significant, he admits
the logical law.
Exactly so, the man who asserts that he can do any real good or
evil, or can undergo anything which it is really wrong in any one to
inflict upon him, allows the moral law.
There is the same parallel consequence between thinking reason
ably and willing morally. Hence, any one who denies Right and
Wrong, renounces the testimony of a good conscience, and with it
his self-respect ; it may be, even the presage of a blessed immor
tality. Add, that the whole business of the world turns upon these two
contradictories, and that they are both parts of our common heri
tage of Reason. The most uninstructed person feels the moral law
when he passes in thought from an animal to a man. How much
more, then, when we accuse or else excuse one another.

42
more human faculties every day we live ; but no such
imperfections lower the standard of humanity. A citizen
who is void of rational or moral insight, may have got,
and may retain, the formal rights of citizenship, till
he does something to forfeit them ; yet nothing can
entitle him to our reasonable reverence, nothing can
make him a man.
3. b. What we have said contains (when put into tech
nical language), an assertion of independent morality, as
being a. first truth % of our common nature evidenced for
' The words "independent morality, "like most other words, have
been used in several senses, therefore I must crave attention to what
follows above, as an explanation of the meaning intended here.
A "first truth" is, as we have noted, indemonstrable. But, be
sides the indirect way of proof mentioned before, almost every mind
apprehends this first principle in some light, i.e. the light which
suits its own vision. Hence a need of varied illustration, which
like the diagrams of geometry carry conviction beyond their powers
of expression, since they appeal in fact to an intuitive faculty which
grasps truths wider than the visible universe. And Right and Wrong
are most truly described when spoken of as intuitions of the moral
eye ; but if perchance some individual eye be dim, our appeal will
lie to the general eyesight of mankind, the mankind of different
times and places.
A collection of authorities on the moral first truth would be in
teresting, particularly if selected from periods and- countries un-
visited by revelation. A single example must suffice here.
Cicero did not live in an age of heroes. Not being a hero him
self, he is usually set on a pedestal to be shot at with faint praise, or
else pilloried downright by high-minded moderns. Let us see
what his inward light shewed him on the question of independent
morality. In De Legg., i. 8 — 12, are passages much to this effect.
The rule of Right is a supreme law of Reason eternally prior to
written law and human polity, a reason dominant and godlike, the
bond of union between earth and heaven, a common citizenship

43
each of us by our individual claim to be treated not as
things, but as persons, and by our inly-felt sense of inali
enable responsibility. Implicitly, also, it asserts the claim
to unconditional supremacy, involved in the idea of Right
and Wrong ; a claim impressed (as Butler truly remarks)
upon our moral consciousness. Right and Wrong (be
it observed) admit of no compromise. The doctrine
of correlatives applies to the inner, as well as the out
side world ; just as heat is resolvable into motion, and
motion generates heat, so virtue contains in itself hap
piness ; and true happiness cannot exist without virtue.
Yet, so absolute is the rule of Right and Wrong, so
jealous with a holy jealousy over the sacredness of our
spiritual well-being, that (to quote a living Oxford
moralist) he who pursues virtue for the sake of hap
piness, can never know either ; for he will never attain
virtue. 3. c. How unspeakably important in themselves are
these truths ! They are also most important,, because
their acceptance necessitates further conclusions. In this
wide as the universe, belonging alike to the Human and the Divine ;
reason is given by nature, given to all, and reason is right and true.
The law of nature is right reason in its commands and its prohibi
tions, and from it is derived the common law of men.
As to the practical side of Right and Wrong, Cicero's idea of
honourable dealing between man and man forbade the making
worldly gain by reticence. If an owner sells a house, he ought to
declare its various faults to the purchaser beforehand. (De Off., iii.
11 — 14.) We in this nineteenth century shall feel positive that
such rules sprang from within, not from without, the contempla
tive brain of Cicero.

44
world, Right is not in fact supreme. Nor do we see
any system of providential intervention which shields
the heart of the righteous from being made sad, or
denies prosperity to the wicked. On the contrary, if
this world be our only world, then one event happens
to the wise man and to the fool ; " all is vanity and
vexation of spirit, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow
we die." Unless our nature be a lie or a madness,
there must exist a world where morality is in fact, as
well as in claim, supreme ; a world where virtue and
happiness are acknowledged convertible terms, and
purity of spirit an undisturbed joy. Could we in our
hearts believe this to be altogether untrue, the sky
above us would grow lowering, black, and impenetrable ;
the earth of our daily walk become a fiery desert, in
tolerable as a floor of burning brass. For we should
know that all which makes us human has been made in
vain, that our happiness as distinguished from brute
pleasure can never be realized ; and that our reasonable
hope, the striving of our race, its prophetic insight, the
desire which this life cannot satisfy, the very soul of
our soul, is only a delusion and a dream.
Surely it may fairly be asked, is there any known
example of the native instinct or dominant impulse of
a whole tribe or kind of creatures proving a false and
misleading star ? We know
" When summer birds from far shall cross the sea ;"
and their crossing brings them to the home where they
should be, and surrounds them with the means of en-

45
joyment. We observe throughout the animal kingdom
many ruling impulses which concern times still future,
events as yet discernible only by the influences which
are cast, like shadows, before them. There is, for in
stance, the laying up food for the winter, preparing
the abode and nutriment of progeny, the laboriously
spun habitation of the caterpillar, the place of his wait
ing repose. And these are all verified in their issues : —
one, when the cold comes ; another, as the young ap
pears ; the third and most wonderful, when the crawl
ing insect soars upwards a sun-lighted imago. And why
should man alone possess — or to speak truly, be pos
sessed by — an inborn movement which he cannot re
press, directed to a future which leads him on, and yet
can never be ? Why should his desire, unlike the desire
of all other creatures, remain unsatisfied, his distinctive
faculties as well as his heart be left void, without their
proper home and a life adequate to their real meaning " ?
If so, the glorious creature whose being bears witness
that he is made for a spiritual as well as a merely gross
material world, may — nay, must, if he will exercise fore
sight — eschew the moral and cleave to the utilitarian ;
bid farewell to the enduring, and live only for the
" " We must all know, if we will pause and think, that no outer
thing did ever truly and sufficiently satisfy our needs ; that we have
never yet known any worldly joy which we should be content to
keep, without change or addition, as our portion for eternity ; that
is, none ever did satisfy us, and none ever can. For we have capa
cities and powers to which they cannot reach ; for we are too great
to be satisfied with these little things. " — (Bishop Wilberforce's Ser
mons, before quoted, p. 27.)

46
changes of his own brief and stormy day ; since to do
more is to struggle and be thwarted, to suffer without
remedy, to lie down at last and perish hopelessly and
for ever.
3. d. Yet, again, the supreme rule of Right cannot validly
exist as law unless it is also a supreme rule of retribu
tion. For these ideas are correlatives. If Right demands
that I perform a duty, it demands also that the due to
me, the " ought to be," shall be duly rendered. And by
this just rule, the hardships, contumelies, oppressions,
tyrannies, persecutions, cruelties, tortures, martyrdoms,
undergone by them of whom the world is not worthy,
must needs be compensated,- — otherwise right fails of
its final supremacy ; the law is slacked, and judgment
doth never go forth. And be it observed the justice
meant is that which takes count of individuals. A man
eats the bread of banishment, or fades away in a dun
geon, or is done to death amidst burning faggots. Such
an one may possibly die rejoicing, or he may pine away
in bitterness of soul, a living death, crushed, dishonoured,
solitary, despairing — and can this be his all? Is there
no future in store for them who slew him? It makes
nothing to the point if we say that from martyr ashes
a phoenix-happiness springs up, to become the life of
bettered generations ; or that human sacrifice is de
manded by the race, and victims must be paid to the
altar of progress. Such answers ignore the question —
the claim is of a stronger, sterner kind, it requires cog
nizance of a debt criminally incurred, undeniable, special,
individual; and if perchance some benevolent sage tries

47
to bury its individuality beneath maxims of the general
good, shall we not reply that true good never came,
nor ever can come, from substantial wrong and injustice ?
Or, if the selfishly sceptical might prefer to annihilate
both claim and claimant eternally, must not this be the
annihilation of justice also? Retribution stands out in
the nature of things as searching, strict, inexorable,
otherwise we may blindfold the scrutiny of conscience ;
we may laugh to scorn those eternal laws which Socrates
died to meet in a spirit of obedience to their just
supremacy. 3. e. One step further. We have seen that right doing
is a good will, the rightness, that is, of a living person.
Moral truth and moral law come home to us the same
way, we know them only as constituting personality.
Right and Wrong, apart from personal existence, or it
apart from them, are suppositions to us inconceivable.
By the very terms of their definitions, the differentia
between person and thing is made by will and conse
quent responsibility. But if the moral makes the per
sonal, then, in asserting (as we could not but assert)
the necessary supremacy of right, we have in fact as
serted a supreme personality. Now there is nothing
in the whole world of nature to contravene this convic
tion, but everything to confirm it For example, we
explain the inorganic by the organized, the plant by
the animal, the animal by man ; or in other words, we
perceive that as to feel is a higher thing than not to
feel, so to know Right and Wrong is greater, better, and
more supreme than not to reason, and to have no moral

48
intuitions. Thus, whether we ascend the actual grada
tions of the world, and conceive the supreme from them,
or whether we go direct from our own human insight,
the moral and the highest coincide in a will and a per
sonality. Therefore, the supremacy of right and justice,
is both ways the supremacy of a will, and our acknow
ledgment of a supreme moral law is the acknowledg
ment of a supreme personality. Whether we desire it
or no, we are placed in the presence-chamber of a sove
reign who can exercise judgment, redress the wrongs
of martyrs, and wipe away all tears from all eyes.
3. f. Do we ask for a more ringing echo of His
existence? Theophilus and Tertullian long ago told
the heathen how fully — apart from Christianity, thus
much at least might be found in the untutored witness
of the human soul — they might hear this witness in the
language of every-day life ; and language proceeds from
the central depths of man \ They might find it in the
x Similarly said Wilhelm von Humboldt : " Man is man only
by means of speech, but in order to invent speech he must be already
man." Speech beyond doubt flows from our introvertive nature,
on which also are conditioned the phenomena of our morality.
Man is neither object only, nor subject only, but his subjective
states are objectively contemplated by himself. Hence the power
of forming universals, and also the necessity of feeling self-approval
or self-reproach.
It has often been debated whether there exist any languages
without forms of expression for moral and religious thoughts. At
present, the weight of authority inclines to the side that thorough
analysis has found these ideas in every known tongue. I may just
add, that the whole of Tertullian's De Testimonio Animo; well
deserves perusal.

49
irrepressible desire to worship, the fears of an evil
conscience, the necessity of loving somewhat higher
and better than our self — the word, the thought, the
fear, the adoration, all meeting together in the idea of
the great and good God. Without Him, our brightest,
happiest faculties would be barren, and wither for lack
of an Object7; they would have no heaven towards
which to grow, no sun to warm and cherish them.
t Bishop Wilberforce explains the truly deep and scriptural
idea that God made man as a necessary fruit of His perfection.
Natural Theology seizes the fact of what man is, and raises its
ladder of inference upward to the Supreme. " He wills, that we
should truly be ; that we should not be mere machines through
which He works, but reasonable beings — beings who can choose ;
who can love Him ; who can return love for love. Our creation
as such beings seems to be, in truth, if we may venture to say so,
a necessary fruit of His perfection, which must cast itself forth
into a reasonable creation, whom He could love and who could
love Him.'' Sermons, p. 241.
It is equally true to say these endowments are found in man,
therefore his being, if not purposeless, presupposes the being of
God. It is also true that naturalists, as well as divines and moralists,
assert the actual existence of these human endowments. M. Quatre-
fages writes, in his work on the Unity of, the Human Species,
that "it is by something completely foreign to the mere animal,
and belonging exclusively to man, that we must establish a sepa
rate kingdom for him," (p. 21). "These distinguishing characters,"
he goes on to say (p. 23), "are the abstract notion of good and
evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, or the moral faculty, and
a belief in a world beyond ours, and in certain mysterious beings,
or a Being of a higher nature than ours, whom we ought, to fear
or revere; in other words, the religfous faculty." Sir C. LVell, to
whose Antiquity of Man (p. 496) I owe this quotation, enume
rates the properly human characteristics as an improvable reason,
a capacity of being bettered by trial or moral discipline, and
E

5°
The most ordinary man has this witness in himself: —
a perseverance in well-doing and a conscience void of
offence give him confidence towards God ; self-devotion,
prayer, trust, the fear and love of God, cause his face to
shine, and make him bold with a 'holy boldness. Yet,
think what this witness has survived ! Sophistical giants
have hurled mountains to overwhelm it — blood has
flowed in torrents to wash it out from the life of us all.
It has lived through times of terror such as the French
Revolution, the decaying days of Imperial Rome, with
all her foul,' I will not say, immoralities, call them rather
abominations — black things that shun the light of day.
More deathful still were the periods of corruption
from decaying Greece and impure Eastern despotisms
down to the reign of our second Charles and the ages
lost to truth and decency in continental Europe. Add
the treasons of the speculative mind — materialism, scep
ticism, atheism, French encyclopaedias, systems of reason
falsely so-called, philosophies negative, positive, utili
tarian, communistic; and, worse than all, the selfish
coldness, carelessness, and stupor engendered by visible
checks and retrograde movements of the human race,
invariably tending to base existence, low ends, and
animal sensuality. Yet, the witness for God has sur-
faith in a hereafter. " To man alone " (he adds, p. 498) " is given
this belief, so consonant to his reason, and so congenial to the
religious sentiments implanted by nature in his soul, a doctrine
which tends to raise him morally and intellectually in the scale of
being, and the fruits of which are, therefore, most opposite in Cha
racter to those which grow out of error and delusion. "

5i
vived all these things — it lives on, undestroyed and
apparently indestructible.
3. g. Such, then, is the picture Ve paint, when man
is made the central figure of the natural world, and its
noblest truth read in the light of his being. The great
master of the art of verification lays down no stronger
assurance *than the confirmation given by a harmony
of truth with truth. In this case, we might produce
many harmonies, but one is for our present purpose
worth all. It makes harmonious the science of Natural
Theology. It was not without some diffidence, that I set out by
stating the doubts thrown upon proof under the older
method of Natural Theologians. I hope I stated them
fairly — it is certain I had no motive for diminishing
their force, because I never felt any apprehension of
their consequences. There is, I am quite sure, no
danger in following truth any-whither. We have thus
followed on to the strongest of all evidence, the evi
dence which grows while it converges. Nature tells us
of an intelligence — special as the most microscopic of
minute organisms — inconceivably vast as the universe
which shone out when our greatest of modern dis
coverers broke through the barriers of the sky; and pene
trated stellar systems floating in immeasurable space.
Dare we call this intelligence, so great, so all-pervading,
God? The physicist hesitates to read from his open
book the words — causation, will, personality. Yet the
majesty of knowledge and power, beyond human thought
or imagination, presses us on every side. The awful
reality of law and force seems worthy to be called Di-

52
vine. But why do men ask the question at all ? Why
do we think of an intelligence as an Intelligent, and,
unsatisfied by long chains of sequency — by a world
pendent upon nothing- — moving no-whence, no-whither,
and for no reason ; why do we — 'incredulous as to these
airy nothings — seek after a First Cause, an Author,
a Creator, and refuse to relinquish our quest? It is
because we find the fact of causation within our own
minds. Will is cause, and we are directly conscious
of our own will, and feel the responsibility of what it
effects upon ourselves, upon our fellows — of the present
and the future it produces. We know, too, that without
this mystery of creation, this first ground of movement
which constitutes our inward self, there would be no
true Right and Wrong, no worth in praise or blame,
no essential good or evil. We should sink from persons
into puppets pulled by wires — things without duties,
rights, virtue, happiness. Thus, where the physicist
hesitates, the psychologist steps in. Our moral nature
utters what is voiceless in irrational nature, and pro
nounces that will, sovereign over all it creates, is the
one known, the only conceivable First ground. Finally,
with this affirmative, the testimonium animce, the impulse
of our whole being, coincides. For, so far is the soul
naturally a Christian that it spontaneously adores with
world-wide confession a Higher than itself, a Highest in
the universe — to us a lawgiver, a ruler, and a judge.
Such is our evidence, which grows while it converges;
Nature, Right and Wrong, the language of our upward
striving human soul — a threefold cord which cannot be
quickly broken.

53
IV. I have left the decision of physical questions to
the physicist, therefore, no one will, I hope, be offended
with my expressing a strong private conviction, that let
physical science doubt as it chooses, the common feel
ing of mankind will at all times construe the order and
beauty of the outward world as a witness to the exist
ence of a personal First Cause, and that common sense
will fill up the balanced scale of the argument. Whether
St. Paul, in writing the words of my former text, cer
tainly meant to say that the things seen, the pheno
menal world, if isolated and viewed apart from all other
kinds of reality, gives a clear testimony to its Maker in
the sense just mentioned, is more than I will venture
to pronounce. The passage has been so interpreted,
and the thought (as I observed before) agrees with the
common feeling of mankind. But the Apostle's object
did not oblige him to put his reasoning in full at once —
and it is not unusual with him to imply as a premiss
what is elsewhere affirmed in his discourse. Another
way of construing the argument is to suppose that he
intentionally allotted it into two trains of thought, and
looked upon the outer world as witnessing to the super
human character, the inner to the essential personality
of God. If God is not like a man, a fortiori He is not
like anything below man — His divine power forbids the
thought, as we read in the first chapter. But neither is
the Invisible an impersonality, for He is the Lawgiver of
our consciences, the Writer of the law within each of us.
The conclusions, then, lie evenly against the Pantheism
which worships all visible nature, and that other Pan-

54
theism which dissolves the Creator into an impersonal
fdrce. The former of these was the gross Anthropo
morphic (not to say revived Egyptian) tendency of the
period; the latter was the peril involved in its anti
thesis, a subtle and sceptical philosophy. However this
may be, we cannot doubt, that, taking the whole line
of thought together, St. Paul did mean that nature, in
cluding the law written on the highest nature, does bear
an unmistakeable witness to the being and the attributes
of God. And since, following the Apostle, we have not
travelled beyond the natural reason and condition of
man, there is no cause why this method should not be
called a Natural Theology.
Thus understood, it is, I venture to think, a subject
worthy of honourable rank among the pursuits of this
great University. The business of Oxford is to teach
the teachers of men ; and can any teaching be imagined
more useful, because more world-wide, and more adapted
to the peculiar circumstances of our own day and gene
ration ?
It is world-wide. The great masters still reverenced
here, Plato and Aristotle, taught not the disunion, but
the unity of all philosophy. Who can really under
stand that noble book, Aristotle's Ethics, without some
knowledge of his Metaphysics, Organon, de Anima, and
other scientific treatises ? The Schoolmen took an
equally extensive sweep; with them theology and the
" omne scibile" were twin sisters. But in our time,
is it not the fact that morals and logic are specialties,
physics looked upon as an outgrowth? Theology divorced

55
from metaphysics, though her terminology was shaped
on the metaphysical anvil, lies alone like a stranded
lifeboat. And the tendency to specialize and isolate,
particularly in the race of honour, increases every year.
I confess that, loving Oxford as I do, these signs of the
times strike me as involving, I will not say a culpability,
but a responsibility, to all who favour the mania of
the day — a zeal for intensified competition. Ought we
to encourage a culture which trains the mind only in
single directions ? for, is not the man of width and
comprehension greater and more useful because more
humanly sympathetic than the man of finely-pointed
understanding ?
The subject is also adapted to our social position.
No one who reads and converses, can help seeing that
one of the perplexities with which England will soon
have to contend, is a growing apathy to the highest
interests of man. Oh the exact causes of this mischief
our country's physicians, as usual, disagree. But in
one fact, opposite minds of all ranks and opinions seem
to coincide, namely, that the disease shews itself in
a lowered tone of morality. One antidote, therefore,
may well be the sort of Natural Theology I have de
scribed. It has at least the merit of calling men home
to that higher region of their souls, the entrance of which
is shut against an obtuse moral consciousness. And
surely we cannot commune too often with our own
hearts on those truths of life, and death, and life to
come, which underlie our inappeasable need of Him-
Whom they who know themselves, and acknowledge

56
their poverty apart from God, are encouraged to seek,
to feel after and to find.
For the student of moral science, the gain must be
real. There is no stimulant to genuine work like see
ing the products of our higher insight in contact with
the actual business, the failures, the hopes, and the
possible progress of our race. It prevents our philo
sophy from becoming overlaid by an erudition we fail
to assimilate; or from degenerating into an unlovely
array of cold and cynical criticisms. Better that the
moralist should make small theoretical mistakes, than
be little altogether; than not think and feel with honest
warmth of heart and brain. The early Church, in its
expansive sympathy for a world divinely visited almost
within men's living memory, reasoned out its human
philosophy vigorously ; and gave an emphatic answer
to the question put to his own age by the learned
Bishop Kaye, " Does not the light of nature emanate
from the Author of nature ? from Him who is the foun
tain of light ?" Let me support myself by the strength
of that good Bishop's authority, and refer my hearers
to his strictures on the unjust depreciation of Natural
Theology ", a mischief he saw and deplored among the
less learned clergy of our Church.
There is one further advantage in the pursuit of
a Natural Theology. We may safely predict that the
epidemic last mentioned will have its hot as well as
its cold fit ; and judging by Hooker's rule, its next
stage will be some form of fanaticism. There are evil
2 Kaye's Tertullian, chap. iii.

57
presages, already ; such, for example, as supposed com
munications with departed spirits, and other tokens of
magical superstition. Now, few things are more sober
ing to the mind than a habit of seeing God, the world,
and our own responsibilities, through our reason as
well as our emotions. To be governed by mere feel
ing is, we know, adverse to earthly happiness — it is
equally adverse to a manly spirituality, to uprightness,
justice, and truth. Few among us, probably, can dis
pense with the safeguard and discipline of frequently
beholding in Him Whose mercies we delight to mag
nify, the Maker, the Monarch, the Lawgiver, and the
Judge of all.

I have only to add that time could not permit my
carrying this fruitful subject beyond its obscure and dry
first principles. There is a brighter district of thought,
an upland territory, as it were, rising towards our highest
inheritance ; a border country where Natural Theology
melts into Spiritual Religion, and where the true offspring
of God learn the lineaments of their Father's divine love.
I turn with regret from this land of living light.

APPENDIX.

TV! ATURAL Theology attempts to demonstrate the exist-
-L ' ence ofa personal First Cause, supreme Reason, and
Will. The relations of mankind towards such a Being, are
called natural religion.
The argument from design has been applied to prove His
existence, as well as His attributes. Intelligence creating
complicated structures for final -purposes, is reason. Intelli
gence creating for useful and beneficent purposes, is good
ness. Most treatises on design are supposed to illustrate
the power, wisdom, and goodness of God in the creation
of the world. The art-workmanship analogy, usually em
ployed for this purpose, has the same flaw on both sides
in its comparison of art with nature. On the one side, pro
ductive art is not creation, but a transformation of material.
On the other, the natural productions instanced, are, like
those of art, simply examples of re-arrangement.
As to the first flaw ; — the whole art- view of nature arose
in ages when matter was conceived eternal. The primitive
Church, familiar with both Greek and Oriental dualisms,
laid a finger upon the blot ; but it has often been over
looked in later times.
Our Regius Professor of Medicine suggests an ingenious
amendment on this side of the ratio. He proposes to under
stand art in a purely subjective sense — as the creation of
ideas within the human mind. He thus introduces into this
argument, the consideration of man's nature, apart from
and above outward nature, a most important, or rather an
essential element, I venture to believe, in Natural Theology.
Dr. Acland criticizes the coarseness of the watch illustra-

59
tion ; but for these points, and an interesting extract from
B. Nieuwentyt, who seems to have been Paley's importer
of watches into this discussion, see the Harveian Oration
for 1865, pp. 13, 14, and Appendix.
As to the second. There are speculations in the phi
losophy of natural science, which tend to meet one great
metaphysical aim — the reduction, that is, of the antithesis
between form and matter. But the art-analogy treatises can
deal only with examples from the world of matter, in its
ordinary sense. A solid globe may be traced back to pri
maeval vapour, but we do not thereby escape the material
circle. Within this circle the illustrations of intelligently-
worked change are most wonderful, — a single stone becomes
a sermon, or a philosophy. But the mind ranges vainly
round the imprisoning circumference : —
" ^Estuat infelix angusto limite mundi."
Moreover, physical science refuses to say positively whether
the transforming intelligence works consciously or uncon
sciously. The subject of intelligential activity without con
sciousness, was much discussed some years ago by the
younger Fichte and other German thinkers, as well as by
many medical psychologists in this country. Nutrition,
certain other phenomena of automatism, and unconscious
cerebration, as facts, deserve careful consideration, but they
may be explained in more than one way. Theories of
a Development, (evolution) bearing marks of intelligence,
yet pronounced certainly unconscious, since they are un
proved, must be treated as hypotheses.
Such being the apparent indecision attaching to this
purely physical aspect of the case, the problem of Natural
Theology is, to find on the physical side of the comparison
a good instance of conscious purpose and true causation.
I have therefore attempted on this second side, something
like what Dr. Acland did for the first, and I regret that
his idea was unknown to me when my sermon was preached.

6o
I should certainly have felt glad to see my endeavour
thus far sanctioned, by one who has so distinctly touched
a real difficulty in the common analogical argument. My
plan has been to accept the results of this analogy on
their lowest terms, without at all .prejudging the inquiry of
how much it really does shew. Whatever proof or pre
sumption of proof it produces over and above, lucro appo-
nendum est; but I quite believe that my case will stand
alone. While law courts and madhouses continue, most
people will maintain that all sane persons are truly causative
of their own acts, will hold them criminal when convicted of
outrages against property or life, and will reject every meta
physical refinement which annuls the convict's responsibili
ties. As for the speculation which makes court, criminal,
and verdict a phantasmagoria, the mechanism of necessity ;
solvitur ambulando ! The sentence and its execution are
sad and sobering realities ; a murderer at the gallows will
probably think how different his lot might have been had
he chosen to live differently.
Any theory of morals which allows causation, furnishes
what is mainly required for Natural Theology. The case is,
however, strengthened by an acceptance of independent as
opposed to conventional or derivative morality. With many
theories which have clustered round the word " independent,"
I have nothing to do. What seems essential is a protest
against subjecting our moral first truth to "analysis," i.e.
resolving it into something else, the greater good of the
greater number, the social instinct, &c. Every resolution of
the antithesis of Right and Wrong is its certain dissolution.
How many a man has believed that his luxury and extra
vagance could not be wrong because they fed numbers, and
that he who is only his own enemy stands to society in the
relation of a friend. By what brilliant arguments of social
good are not slavery, revolution, communism, sometimes de
fended ! Morality, if real, must in its own nature be prior
to and supreme over our social instincts, otherwise man is

6i
little better than a gregarious brute. Society is founded upon
justice, not justice upon society ; and what is legally just,
ought to be morally right, good, and true. An appeal
lies from the written laws of social polity to the unwritten
law of nature ; and this appeal has been the case of the
martyr in all ages, it is a principle of progress because
a principle of life within us.
Moral rightness exists also apart from society. If a man
be cast upon a desert island, he no more loses his morality
than his reason. Not to speak of his relations to the Deity,
there are duties towards himself the performance of which is
real virtue ; the more real we might think, since they are done
in solitude without the possibility of approbation and self-
display. Generally, however, solitude lessens virtue, because
these same duties are often in opposition to the demands of
society, and we are constantly called to choose whether we
will follow a multitude to do evil by compliances which
undermine our self-respect. Happy the hero who can
breast the social wave, for every man's first earthly duty is
to his own soul ; if he sins against himself, the light within
him is turned into darkness, and then how great is that
darkness ! To this supreme duty even the better claims of
the world must often give way. Benevolence may be set in
opposition to right and justice, reckonings of expediency and
the greater good, however honestly made, commonly are so ;
and in such cases the safe practical rule is to suspect our
impulses as well as our calculations. But we may always
be more reasonably hopeful than fearful for ourselves if only
we hold fast the irreconcileable antithesis between Right and
Wrong, as a first truth of morality distinct in itself from every
other intuition. For no laws of nature are empty forms,
they are all prolific principles. Let any given relation of
life be placed under the supreme moral law as its ideal, and
an honest mind will easily arrive at the particular maxim
required for moral action. Thus, given the relation between
parent and child, obedience and disobedience are obviously

62
the possible opposites ; equally so are Right and Wrong ;
let the two pairs of antitheses be placed over against each
other, and (all supposable exceptions notwithstanding) the
rightness of filial duty will receive no limited nor qualified
assent. So, when St. Paul says, " children, obey your pa
rents in the Lord, for this is right," every one feels the clear
emphasis of these three last words. Or, place truth and
falsehood in a like position, none will doubt to which side
of the antithesis each pertains ; and the wrong of compro
mise with lying becomes manifest. Thus, Aristotle pro
nounces a lie in itself essentially base and blameworthy ;
and, remembering the "ceconomies" of one age — and the
" reticence" of another, we feel this contrast wholesome.
Questionless, it would be better for the history of their own
times if men could leave (as Sir Hugh Evans advises) their
"pribbles and prabbles," and, instead of compounding for
sins they are inclined to, aim at simplifying and upholding
the plain polar opposition of undeniable Right and Wrong.
If, moreover, independent morality be accepted honestly
within the soul of any man, his next step will not be hard,
and it will be immediate, to the firm acknowledgment of
a future personal existence, a belief in our time shaken
amongst men to its lowest root fibres. Perhaps I have
scarcely said enough upon the manner in which this belief
acquires a confirmation stronger than any maxim we daily
act upon, by a reasonable estimate of the onward and up
ward tendency of our race, considered as an organic whole.
The world we live in is so full of hindrances to duty, so
inadequate to our best faculties, hopes, and affections, that
he who speaks of this life as our All, virtually confesses that
man, unlike the rest of creatures, is finally objectless — alone
in the uselessness of inappropriate impulse — his poorer na
ture too visibly marked among the happy things which
surround him : —
" A frown upon the atmosphere
That hath no business to appear."

(>z
If the sole rational being of our world be thus a disappoint
ment, let it be written upon every grave, upon every human
door, and upon every cradle,
" Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch' entrate."
Respecting the moral argument, which persuades us more
powerfully perhaps than any other that there really exists
a supreme Personality, the First and the Last, I can add
little more. The point important for Natural Theology, is
that, His essential Being once admitted, the phenomenal
world and its relations throw a flood of light upon His work
ing and His attributes. An invisible power and Godhead
surrounds us on every side. We can understand how the
heathen, when made to feel this, looked with contempt upon
the immoral Zeus, man-shaped, gigantic but limited, a gross
unlovely shadow at the best. How could that figment stand
before Him who giveth to all, life, and breath, and all things ?
We look upon the starry heavens and say, as man creates
within his own soul, and gives to airy nothing a thought,
a name, a purpose, and a reality, so Almighty God created
the Divine poem of this universal frame ; His will is its sub
stance, His majestic thought and purpose shine out in its
adornment, and we — we are hidden in the hollow of His
hand. Every marvel of the visible raises our sense of the
infinite variety and beauty of the invisible, until, attracted by
Him Who is the first mover of the outward and the inward
alike, we make of this wonderful orb we tread upon a solid
ground of support from which to mount, to fly to God and
be at rest.
At rest with Him where (to quote from one amongst the
blessed) the longing desire of all that are athirst here shall
be changed into the sweet contentment of them who there
taste and are satisfied.

Those who have not seen accounts of the investigations
by MM. Lartet and Christy in Perigord and elsewhere,

64
will thank me for mentioning them. Art instinct and a be
lief in a future state would seem to be inherent in primitive
man, judging from the relics he has left behind him. The
former point is noticed by Professor Ruskin, the latter by
several authorities.

Add to note, p. 48. — That the metaphysical analysis ofthe human
faculty of language is not altered by the observation of a part of
brain assigned by physiologists to speech as its probable localized
nerve-centre.

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