IV.]

Man's function is Service.

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know of no hospitals that have not been founded by pious men, or those who would imitate the pious; the idea of Christian service to God is essentially wrapt up in them. To waste money on invalids and incurables must seem to the atheist mind, as no doubt it seemed even to the higher spirits of Greece and Rome, like the cultivation of barren fig-trees. We know how Pliny's friend, the noble Thrasea, reasoned, when a painful disease had fastened on him and left him no hope of recovery; he quietly resolved to cut short a miserable and useless existence.

There are two professions which specially call for a high motive if they are to be successfully followed,-the nursing of the sick and the education of young children. The ordinary conditions of work and payment fail here by the testimony of the best authorities. Nurses in hospitals who are not animated by the spirit of piety are unequal to their profession; so also are the teachers of young children, if the higher life be to them as nothing. The only reward that in any way repays the labour is one which the world cannot give. Otherwise children become 'brats' to the latter, and sick people to the former as useless lumber.' But the Christian teacher and nurse remember that 'it is not the will of the Father that one of these little ones should perish.'

A priori we are almost forced to the conclusion that man being a creature, as much as the engine upon the railroad is a creation of man, must find his highest function in service. This conclusion will be found good in actual experience. No lesson is more clearly taught in history than that men who are too proud to call themselves slaves of a creator and master are a lower and not a higher development of the human species.

A prophet has recently appeared in America-and his name, I believe, is not unknown in Japan,-who ridicules the sovereignty of God, and scorns the idea of man being a slave to a divine master. His lectures have attracted crowds, and his arguments have undoubtedly been convincing to many.

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Ingersoll's view of

[LECT.

Dr. Russell in his Hesperothen, an account of a tour made with the Duke of Sutherland in America during the spring and summer of 1881, tells how an opportunity was given him of seeing this famous lecturer on religion. In journeying from California to Colorado the train containing the ducal party halted at Lamy, while the passengers of another train were breakfasting. A citizen approached the doctor as he stood on the platform, and said in an impressive and mysterious voice, 'If you look in there, sir, you will see Bob Ingersoll.' Dr Russell asked if there was anything remarkable in the fact. 'Well, sir,' was the reply, he is Colonel Ingersoll of whom you have heard. He is the most remarkable infidel in the United States, and I really think he believes what he preaches. A good man to look at, too, and, they say, first-rate in his family.' The 'believer in unbelief,' a fine looking man, was making a very hearty meal, and seemed to enjoy the evident interest which his presence excited.

I have been reading Col. Ingersoll's lectures, and what has struck me most in them is the very shallow view he takes of history. He has no more appreciation of the real meaning of history than a man of the eighteenth century had of a Gothic cathedral. You all know with what pride-almost worship-we of this age look upon a magnificent Gothic structure of the past like Lincoln, or Salisbury, or Durham Cathedral, poems in stone, miracles of beauty. And yet Smollett, a writer of romance and a man of imagination, confesses1 that the external appearance of an old cathedral cannot but be displeasing to a person who has any idea of propriety and proportion! Col. Ingersoll in one of his lectures makes an equally astounding statement:

1In his Humphrey Clinker, published 1771. Smollett's name has a local interest from the fact that he published in 1796 a political treatise, The Adventures of an Atom,' in which the characters bear Japanese names.

IV.]

History a distorted one.

195

'Why,' says he, 'the world was not worth living in until fifty years ago!' He would evidently date the new era from about the time of the invention of the steam locomotive, a notable event, but surely not worthy of such distinction. The telegraph, whose poles he prefers to the cross, steam engines, printingpresses, and the magnificent apparatus of modern civilization are all very good in their way, and it is right to be proud of them. But they are nothing compared with the heart of man, which has beat with health and joyousness throughout the ages. It is a dim and distorted vision that sees only the crimes and sorrows of the past. Christians are naturally optimistic and believe that each generation is a little better than the last; that the world as a whole is making for righteousness; but we are far removed from an outrageous optimism that would behold in our forefathers an unhappy and down-trodden race in a world blighted by tyranny. For the past is very beautiful. Since the time of Nestor old people have looked upon the former days as best, and we have but thought it natural, for without a special education and adaptation for the present world its repulsiveness might often overcome us. Factories are hideous structures, where the freshness of manhood and womanhood is sapped in an unhealthy atmosphere; our cities are joyless places where no birds sing, where lean and overworked animals toil till they drop down dead in the harness, where children are old before their time. Read Kingsley's Alton Locke or Dickens's Hard Times, and you will form a more sober estimate of our boasted civilization than does Col. Ingersoll. The past was God's world as well as is the present, and the men of every age amid much misery have tasted life and found it pleasant. We of this age cannot go back if we would, and few would if they could; but in the past we sometimes feel we have lost almost as much as we gain from the present. The past is not a gloomy prison-house, echoing with the wails of the

196

Liberty not

[LECT.

tortured; on the contrary, it is stored with what is pleasant and fascinating and instructive. Colonel Ingersoll ridicules Eusebius and the monkish historians of what are known as the dark ages, but his own conception of history is almost as narrow and absurd as theirs, if he only knew it.

The premises then upon which he builds his argument against religion are insufficient and erroneous. Having a box of colours before him, he chooses perversely to use only those that are dull and black, and then assures the world that no other painting is possible with such materials.

There is no doubt, as Col. Ingersoll says, that history is pointing more clearly every year to the development of society on the basis of individual judgment. We and our forefathers have been witnessing a gradual but sure change in the direction of social equality. But so far from viewing the change like Col. Ingersoll with unlimited and boyish delight, we should be filled with grave anxiety lest the liberty of our modern world, being untempered by a higher law, work ruin. A change that would turn the family into a democracy is a fatal change. 'I believe,' says Col. Ingersoll, 'in allowing the children to think for themselves. I believe in the democracy of the family. If in this world there is any thing splendid, it is a home where all are equals.'

This is the ne plus ultra, the very fanaticism of irreverence and lawlessness. Paternal authority is a foundation upon which human society has ever rested for its primary stability. In so far as paternal authority has been repudiated in the past, in the same degree has society been unstable. Submission to law is the great lesson that all must learn; and liberty means, not a negation of law, but a freedom to obey a higher law. Until a certain age, children are not entitled to think for themselves; they must obey the laws laid down by their father. The family can never be a democracy; its basis is law, as the basis of the

IV.]

a negation of law.

197

world's economy is law. Col. Ingersoll is leading us on to a quicksand, where we would all sink. Is a ship's crew a democracy, or an army a democracy, or a school a democracy? Neither is a family a democracy.

To talk of liberty as the goal of all human endeavour, is to elevate a negation into the place that should be occupied by a law. Men are not corrupted by the exercise of a power, or debased by the habit of obedience; but by the exercise of a power which they believe to be illegal, and by obedience to a rule which they consider to be usurped and oppressive.' It is not necessary that we should have had a voice in the framing of a law in order that we may consent to it and obey it as good and righteous; this is a mere human and temporary provision, suited to a certain condition of society. Expediency is the only principle that justifies the claim on the part of the governed, that before they obey a law they must first sanction it with their approval. Col. Ingersoll, in common with many other shallow thinkers of modern times, elevates this principle, which is pleaded justly and rightly in certain cases, to the rank of a universal law. Such it is not; society is not founded on this basis, but only certain forms or phases of political society. The The citizen may assert this privilege rightfully, but not the child, nor the sailor, nor the soldier. And the child, the sailor, and the soldier are noble and worthy according to the perfection of their obedience. Man finds his highest function not in perfect liberty, but in perfect obedience to the law suited to him, however framed. To take an example from the page of history. The lot of the negro slave as he formerly existed in America was placed on the extreme limit of servitude, while that of his neighbour the Indian lay on the uttermost verge of liberty; and slavery did not produce more fatal effects upon the first than independence upon the second. The negro had lost all property in his own person, and could not dispose