of the kind which I shall attempt to consider-What is the relation of all this to Christianity? Has not the humanitarianism of which you think so ill a close connection, both historically and theoretically, with the Sermon on the Mount and the Parables?

To this I reply: The truth of Christianity, considered as a divine revelation, depends upon questions of fact which I certainly shall not at present discuss. Who can add much to what has been said by Grotius, Jeremy Taylor, Lardner, Paley, and their successors, on the one side, or by a variety of writers from Celsus to Strauss on the other? Securus judicabit orbis.' The witnesses have been examined, the counsel have made their speeches, and the jury are considering their verdict. Whatever that verdict may be, one thing is quite clear. Almost any theological system and almost any moral system is consistent with the Sermon on the Mount and the Parables. They, as has been observed a thousand times, are obviously not philosophical discourses. They are essentially popular, and no one, with a few unimportant exceptions, has ever attempted to treat them as a system of moral philosophy would be treated. No doubt they express the charitable sentiment in its most earnest and passionate form, but both the theory and the practice of mankind show clearly that this has been, as no doubt it will continue to be, understood by those who believe in the supernatural authority of Christ as a pathetic overstatement of duties which every one would acknowledge to be

duties, and to be peculiarly likely to be neglected. Every one would admit that good men ought to love many at least of their neighbours considerably more than most men actually do, and that they are not likely to be led into the error of loving them too much by the Sermon on the Mount, or by any other sermon.

It must also be borne in mind that, though Christianity expresses the tender and charitable sentiments with passionate ardour, it has also a terrible side. Christian love is only for a time and on condition. It stops short at the gates of hell, and hell is an essential part of the whole Christian scheme.* Whether we look at the formal doctrines or at the substance of that scheme, the tenderness and the terrors mutually imply each other. There would be some

* In a curious article in the Contemporary Review for January 1874, called 'Dogmatic Extremes,' Principal Tulloch refers to this passage with disapproval. He does not deny its truth. Two short extracts from his article will be enough to show the value of his opinion 'True religious thought is always and in its nature indefinite. "Haze," if you choose to use the expression, is of its very nature.' Again he observes, 'Imperfection or partial error is of the very essence of Christian dogma.' According to this Augustine, Calvin, Knox, Bossuet, Bellarmine, Wesley, Whitefield, Fénélon and others had no religious thought except when they were obscure, and the authors of the New Testament not much. 'Hazy' would be an odd word to apply to the Sermon on the Mount and the Parables. Religious thought began it would seem when Englishmen and Scotchmen took to the hopeful task of sitting on two stools and trying to put new philosophy into old dogmas. The great truth that error is of the essence of Christian dogma is a new and surprising discovery of Principal Tulloch's own, and will no doubt add greatly to the value of dogma.

thing excessive in such an outpouring of sympathy and sorrow about mere transitory sufferings, which do not appear after all to have been specially acute or specially unrelieved with happiness in Judæa in the first century. The horrors of the doctrine of hell would have been too great for human endurance if the immediate manifestations of the religion had not been tender and compassionate.

Christianity must thus be considered rather as supplying varied and powerful sanctions (love, hope, and fear in various proportions and degrees) for that view of morality which particular people may be led to on other grounds than as imposing upon them any particular moral system. There have been Christian Stoics; there have been Christian Epicureans; and immense numbers of people are, or imagine themselves to be, in love with Christian charity, although they never heard of and could not understand any ethical system whatever. Christianity, in a word, in relation to morals, is a means whereby morality may be made transcendental-that is to say, by which an infinitely greater importance may be and is attached to the distinction between right and wrong (understand it as you will) than reasonable men would attach to it if they simply calculated the specific ascertainable effects of right and wrong actions, on the supposition that this present world is the whole of life. The weakest part of modern philanthropy is that, while calling itself specially Christian, it has completely set

aside and practically denied the existence of that part of Christianity which it does not like. If of a system which is essentially an appeal to a variety of emotions you adopt that part only which appeals to the tender emotions, you misrepresent the whole.

As a matter of historical fact, no really considerable body of men either is, ever has been, or ever has professed to be Christian in the sense of taking the philanthropic passages of the four Gospels as the sole, exclusive, and complete guide of their lives. If they did, they would in sober earnest turn the world upside down. They would be a set of passionate Communists, breaking down every approved maxim of conduct and every human institution. In one word, if Christianity really is what much of the language which we often hear used implies, it is false and mischievous. Nothing can be more monstrous than a sweeping condemnation of mankind for not conforming their conduct to an ideal which they do not really acknowledge. When, for instance, we are told that it is dreadful to think that a nation pretending to believe the Sermon on the Mount should employ so many millions sterling per annum on military expenditure, the answer is that no sane nation ever did or ever will pretend to believe the Sermon on the Mount in any sense which is inconsistent with the maintenance to the very utmost by force of arms of the national independence, honour, and interest. If the Sermon on the Mount

Ꮓ

really means to forbid this, it ought to be disregarded.

I have now tried to perform the task which I originally undertook, which was to examine the doctrines hinted at rather than expressed by the phrase 'Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity,' and to assert with respect to them these two propositions: First, that in the present day even those who use those words most rationally-that is to say, as the names of elements of social life which, like others, have their advantages and disadvantages according to time, place, and circumstance-have a great disposition to exaggerate their advantages and to deny the existence, or at any rate to underrate the importance, of their disadvantages. Next, that whatever signification be attached to them, these words are illadapted to be the creed of a religion, that the things which they denote are not ends in themselves, and that when used collectively the words do not typify, however vaguely, any state of society which a reasonable man ought to regard with enthusiasm or selfdevotion.