MORAL RESPONSIBILITY AND PHYSICAL LAW.

"Let no man say, when he is tempted, I am tempted of God; for God can not be tempted, neither tempteth he any man; but every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed."-ST. JAMES 2 : 13, 14.

Ir is the reasonable faith of Christian men, my friends, that while the world of nature and mind is open to our searching, there are truths essential to our duty, which are planted by our Maker in the conscience of all, and can not be shaken by the speculative strifes of the time. Science may pry into its nebulous fields, but the fixed stars give their unchanging light. In that conviction, I have chosen this old question of moral responsibility, as it bears on certain theories of natural law, which are to-day put forth as the newest fruit of our research. I honor science, so long as it is what the master of experimental philosophy claimed, the interpreter of nature, and I gladly accept all it has revealed of the secrets of life; but when it so treads beyond its own sphere as to deny any reality above nature, and to

change man into the slave of physical forces, it is wise for us to learn a nobler knowledge than can be gained by the dissecting-knife or the microscope. If there be any whom I can thus help toward the study of their own consciences, and that Christian faith which is linked most closely with this moral truth, I shall be glad indeed.

In this view, I offer you a sentence from the epistle of James, which gives us the guiding line of all Christian teaching on this subject. These words may have been written for Jewish converts, who clung to the Pharisaic dogma that suffering was the penalty of inherited sin; or as a rebuke to some who excused their apostasy on the plea of irresistible temptation. But our apostle answers with plain logic that to call sin fatality is to call God its author, and to belie our own self-knowledge. Here, then, we have set before us the one only method in which we can study aright the problem of moral evil. It is in the fact of responsibility as revealed in our own consciences. And it is, when any class of thinkers has lost sight of this personal truth, and reasoned from purely theoretical views of the nature of God or of human life, that the system of necessity has arisen. There are two results, to one of which such a theory has always led. The theolog

ical view has traced the ground of evil to the eternal decrees of God, and has made man its necessary inheritor, while it has contradicted itself by calling him responsible. The philosophic school, from the same starting-point, has more logically affirmed that there is no moral evil at all. That falsehood has appeared sometimes in an ideal pantheism like that of Spinoza; sometimes in the guise of physical law. I do not linger on the more abstract systems. It is enough if I show you their common ground. Let men lose the moral fact of accountability, and whatever their religious faith, they must end in one shape or another of fatalism. Nor do I hesitate to say that the revolting doctrine so often taught from Christian pulpits has gone far toward the growth of the modern materialism. It was the saying of Plutarch, the devoutest of heathen, that he would rather believe in no God than in a Saturn, who ate his own children; and it is not strange, when men have been called the victims of a hopeless and helpless destiny, that they should deny any responsibility at all. Yet as we are in little danger to-day of that harsh creed, and much more of the plausible fatalism which wears the name of science, I shall turn directly to the field of modern inquiry.

I state, then, at once the line of our argument. It is my purpose to show from experience that

our responsibility for our actions is an acknowledged fact; and that in this fact there is given us the assurance of a moral law, and of our power of choice. We meet here, at the threshold, our champions of necessity. They claim that throughout the universe, in every form of inorganic or organic life, in crystal or plant, in the instinct of the brute, or the mechanism of our own bodies, there is a sure, irresistible law; and thus in the soul of man, if we may use so old-fashioned and unscientific a word, is found the same unvarying order. Our minds are but a function of the gray matter of the brain; "without phosphorus no thought," in the phrase of a modern sage; and what our shallow morality has dreamed of as will is nothing but a passive obedience to our desires. Such is the claim I would examine by the clearest test. Our positive science is wont to boast that it rests on fact, and turns away with impatient scorn from speculative reasoning. I do not doubt that the rebuke is sometimes just; and if there be a truth I wish most to urge, it is that we are not to spin cobwebs here out of the bowels of theology, but to deal with realities. I accept the challenge, and shall leave it to you to judge whether the Christian moralist or these practical sages are the theorists. What, then, is the character of these facts which

we are to examine? I beg your special attention to this point, for it involves the whole inquiry. It is the method of our champions of physical necessity to reason from the cases of natural weakness, or of social disorder, where the question of responsibility becomes obscure, to the conclusion that there is no freedom. Yet that is to take for granted the whole question. Hereafter, we are to consider these darker sides of the subject; but at the outset, we are not talking of idiots, or insane, or diseased, or undeveloped minds, but of a knowledge within the reach of every intelligent man. We turn, then, to this evidence of the social conscience. There are certain laws of action, not notions of your mind or mine, but recognized by all in daily life. We use the words merit, demerit, approbation, shame, remorse, in our common speech, and they stand for a reality as clear, as undoubted, as when we speak of a metal or an earth. It is by these we judge of the character of men, and are judged in turn. Take any out of a thousand examples. What is merit? A man has risked his life for the protection of a fellow-man in the midst of a plague, while thousands sought their own safety; and the verdict of all pronounces it an act of unselfish nobleness. You have sacrificed your chances of wealth or office in the