deny Mind and Design to the Creator, if any one say (what I have read from an eccentric and unhappy genius) that God created the world without designing to do so, or knowing exactly what He was about, but was led on to it by a sort of necessary instinct -I account such a one to be a believer in Blind Fate, not in God; nevertheless I understand him clearly enough, and I do not impute fraud to him. But if anyone pretends to adore the Godhead as wise and good, yet reproves us for maintaining Divine personality, he either absurdly misunderstands what we mean by a Person, or with like absurdity contradicts himself. A Person does not mean a body nor a limited form, as is most falsely pretended. We do not call a horse or a dog a Person; nay, nor an infant in arms. Rational Mind is the cardinal thought involved. Whether we entitle God a Spirit or a Person, is in itself quite indifferent; but we dare not renounce the word Person as applied to God, plainly because by all who understand good English we shall inevitably be supposed to renounce the doctrine that God is a Spirit, and has rational purpose in His actions. The bitter and contemptuous attacks made upon Personal Deity by some arrogant writers savour to me of despicable fraud. They do not wish plainly to avow Atheism; they cling to a sham Theism, while their pretended God has less of purpose or wisdom than a dog or a beaver. In the ancient Greek language no word existed which corresponds to our popular phrase "Person;" hence no waste of words and no game of hide-and-seek was possible concerning it. We must admit that neither Aristotle, nor after him Zeno, founder of the Stoic sect, can be claimed by us as a believer in God in the same sense as we say that Hillel and Gamaliel, James and Paul believed in God. The Greek sages certainly discerned God as a wise and provident Creator, and regarded it as a duty to man to pay honour to Him; but I am not aware that they avowed any fixed belief that God or the gods deign to notice our conduct or listen to our addresses. Aristotle believed moral virtue to be necessary indeed to human perfection, but impossible to God, because God (says he) has no field for its exercise; nor indeed does he appear to regard vice or crime, however deep, as in any possible sense a sin against God. I suppose the Stoics in general to have been of one mind with him.

So much I have said, to show due respect to this class of reasoners, as well as to discriminate sharply and expound clearly these two schools of thought, the Agnostics and the Greek Theists. Now, as to the Agnostics, who say that it is hopeless to arrive

at any trustworthy judgments concerning Divine existence, I cannot but think that the nobler minds among them are unduly biassed by the bitter controversies and bigotries of religious men in the past. Do they justly weigh the important fact, that Religion has never been allowed fair play? Other Sciences and even moral controversies have been left to free discussion; but scarcely anywhere has this course been pursued towards Religion. It is taught dogmatically to us from childhood upwards. Deviation from the national creed is inculcated as the greatest of sins, which God will visit with the direst punishment; and as if this were not enough, each State in turn has employed penalties, disabilities, fines, imprisonments, and still greater cruelties, in the effort to sustain its own orthodoxy. Dethronement of princes, civil and foreign war, have been systematically practised and justified in the maintenance of creeds. One sure consequence was intense bigotry on opposite sides; another is, that many minds shrink from all efforts to hold opinions of their own. No other result could follow than what we see, even when fierce persecution is no longer possible,-namely, untractable contrasts of opinion. But if it be wise in us on that account to despair of ever learning truth in religion, it was equally wise in Socrates to despair of truth in astronomy and other physics. But, we now know, this was a weakness in him, though a venial weakness; less venial in us it is, in our present stage, to imitate his error. Those who despair of knowledge will never attain to it, and it is a shabby sort of philosophy to shrink from inquiring into a topic which has always deeply exercised the human mind, especially when proneness to discern spiritual power is apparently one characteristic discriminating man and beast. So strong is man's propensity to religious thought, that notions most superficial are apt to fascinate and dazzle him. Indeed, it may almost be held as a certain and established fact that only truth in Religion can save mankind from becoming the victims of base and evil superstition. Agnostics are effective allies of pretentious Sacerdotalism. So much is my reply here to the know-nothing School.

Although I fear I may have spoken at too great length, I crave a few words yet concerning Greek Theism. The eminent Greek philosophers seldom were acquainted with foreign languages, much less with foreign religious history. They were shut up nearly into little Greece itself, and had scarcely an idea of any close connection between religion and the cultivation of virtue. Religion was regarded as only an external system of public

honour to the gods which it was comely and necessary for the State to dictate, loyal and patriotic in every citizen to promote in its national forms. Prayer, if offered at all, was to be offered for outward bounties of God, as for a good harvest, or healthy and handsome children, or against famine and pestilence and foreign enemies. We, who inherit the traditions of Jewish and Christian saints, and have experience both of the human mind and the outer world far beyond that of ancient sages-we claim as our privilege to pray for inward and spiritual strength to fulfil difficult duty, to bear affliction rightly, to be forbearing and kind to opponents, and acquit ourselves as soldiers of truth and righteousness; but of such prayer nothing appears in Greek literature, except a few words in the hymn of Cleanthes to Jupiter. In short, with these men, eminent as they were in moral thought, religious thought was barely in embryo. The only idea that the ascription of righteousness to God brought to the mind of Aristotle was, that the gods did not cheat one another in buying and selling— an idea which he naturally held to be ludicrous. But surely, we may reply, in creating sensitive and rational beings, God established for Himself and (so to say) against Himself, a duty of being equitable to those beings; so that it is no fiction to say, 'He is bound to be just.' And if it be admitted that God deliberately and with design created this world, it is unreasonable to doubt that He had good ends in view. In everyone who is wise, action implies purpose. When He gave us a nature capable of virtue, and an intelligence which pronounces that virtue is our highest and best possession, it is just to infer that God approves of virtue, and disapproves of every kind of wickedness; in short, to use Hebrew phraseology, The Righteous Lord loveth Righteousness. It is not philosophic wisdom, but it is an arbitrary paradox, to suppose that the Creator is careless and unconcerned, whether the work which he has set going is a success or a failure. If the Most High made us all, whatever his process, by the very fact He calls upon each of his creatures to attain the perfection of its own nature; nay, if God ordained for man Virtue as man's highest state, God cannot be indifferent and inobservant of human conduct. To imagine that to attend to us would give to the Infinite Supreme too much trouble, is a mean puerility, worthy of none but an Epicurean. We have a right to infer that where Man is God's highest work, Man's virtue is the fruit of God's work in which God most delights; and that His Spirit, which has with us joint consciousness of our inward emotions, is ever

in action within us, ready to animate us to every good word and deed. To enter at all into these lofty and purifying thoughts, our religion must be, not a philosophical speculation, but a life of aspiration after higher virtue. In the spirit of the 119th Psalm of the Hebrews we must thirst after the knowledge of God's law, and desire that His wise and holy purposes may be more and more fulfilled in us. This doctrine of religion, and this only -the sympathy of God with the virtue of man-has valid connection with human conduct; and what was said to the Agnostics may be repeated here. No philosophy which does not touch the heart and quicken the conscience will subdue the fanciful and hereditary errors which have so often made a hell on earth. And, as to me appears, the doctrine that the Creator is careless and inobservant whether we fulfil or counteract the purposes of our creation, is as unplausible and as devoid of reasonable support, as it is helpless to do us good. I do not at all fear, that virtuous men and women, before whom the rich fruit of Hebrew Theism is set, will prefer the dry husks to which alone, as it seems, Greek philosophy attained. On the contrary the axiom that God is righteous and watches over our strivings to fulfil His holy purposes, will more and more be declared worthy of all acceptance.

ON PLEASURE AND JOY.

[1880.]

"Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."

PLEASURE is the name which we give to the highest enjoy

ment of the mere animal. The world is full of pleasure, even when the follies and crimes of men import into it needless and cruel pain. By affording pleasure to gentle animals we train them to tameness, to obedience, and even to affection: naturally too, the human child, in whom the animal for years predominates, is allured and rewarded by pleasure various in kind. Pleasure bears a large part in the training of the habits, in which consists the earliest education. On this account it was impossible for those who first systematized morals to overlook its value and uses. Do not suppose that in any word which I am about to utter I shall deprecate or disparage Pleasure. Some of those who hear me are likely to be aware, that in ancient Greece one school, superficial and plausible, set up the doctrine that Pleasure not only is the chief good, but is the only good. It was even maintained that Knowledge and Virtue are good, only because they are pleasant, and so far as they are pleasant. Epicurus was not the inventor of this tenet, but he became by far the most famous teacher of it; and was made a sort of half-deified Christ by the devotion and admiration of his disciples. Though he was himself very temperate, and no vulgar man, he inevitably taught Selfishness, when he set up Pleasure, however interpreted, as our chief good and the direct object of all our effort. With most who learnt in his school, Selfishness ere long gravitated into Luxurious Indulgence, whence our English notion of an Epicure. The pious Congregationalist minister Doddridge has a fine epigram on the subject. He wrote as follows:

Live while you live," the Epicure would say, "And snatch the pleasures of the passing day." "Live while you live," the sacred preacher cries, "And give to God each moment as it flies."

Lord! in my views let both united be;

I live to pleasure, while I live to thee.

This epigram I call noble: I admire it. Yet on the one hand