LECTURE VI.

CHRISTIANITY AND MORALITY:

THE PRACTICAL TEST.

Sir Harry S. Parkes, K.C.B., G.C.M.G., H.B.M.'s Minister, who presided on the occasion of the delivery of the lecture, made the following remarks:

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:

In taking the chair at this meeting, little devolves upon me in the way of remark. I have only to remind you that being the closing lecture of the series, it will bring to a practical issue and form the culminating point of all that we have hitherto heard. I have no knowledge of how our respected friend Mr. Eby will treat his subject, but the title of the lecture-" Christianity and Morality: The Practical Test "-sufficiently declares its object. I do not doubt that he will demonstrate the power of Christianity to develop the highest morality, and the claim of that religion to our attention in this respect is chiefly founded, it appears to me, upon its being a religion of love. Of love to the Creator and Ruler of the universe, not so much on account of His boundless power as because He first loved us; of love which draws man to man and therefore gives the fullest scope and best direction to life, and which, by stimulating self-restraint and self-abnegation, subdues the selfish nature of man, and furnishes the purest motives for the exercise of charity and virtue.

An eminent Japanese writer has lately well observed that morality and mental culture are as the two wheels of a cart, but

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Introductory Remarks.

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that no cart can run with only one of those wheels; and he has added that it is impossible that philanthropy, faith, fidelity, and filial piety can be satisfactorily promoted by the morality of scepticism, however much science may advance and civilisation may progress. Yes, man not only wants science and intellectual culture, but he needs religion also-a religion which will expand all the generous impulses of his heart towards his country and his fellow man, while it will also raise him above the present life and endow him with communion with his God, and with bright hopes for that eternal future, the fear of which or the trust in which is sometimes present to the minds of us all.

Surely the morality which possesses these lofty aims is the best qualification for a good citizen, and as it raises the character of the individual, so it is as certainly calculated to raise the character of a nation, and to promote its moral strength, its material welfare, and its political advancement.

THE LECTURE.

We are living in a practical age. This is no era for dreamers. Life is earnest and was never more earnest than now. Humanity must move on; the age of stagnation is doomed. Shall humanity move upwards or downwards,-grow better or worse? Science will grow inevitably,—will become clearer, profounder, broader, and open to man avenues for intellectual progress; but it is not the prerogative of science as such to form human character and regulate men's lives. Science alone cannot produce virtue or give mankind a noble ideal, with moral power to pursue it. No true scientist claims this as his function.

We have seen that all the great religions of the world aimed at moral results. Succeeded measurably for a time, succeeded so far because of the truth that was in them. But their moral power was transient. More and more religion sank into formality, superstition, folly and immorality, and ministered to the corruption, rather than the elevation of man. Weakness and political ruin followed. This failure was ever due to error, to defects, which, developed on the one hand, overlaid and hid the truth from the multitude, who were then deluded by dark superstition; or on the other hand these errors and defects, exposed and refuted by the learned, when rejected carried away with them also all the benediction of their modicum of truth; and learning, ever skillful in destroying moral sanctions, ever failing to produce moral power, accelerated, rather than retarded, public ruin.

If we glance over the history of the world, we will find that the round of experience has ever been as follows:

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Historical.

261

1. A religion which wins the confidence of the people, and holds them for a time in check, becomes the foundation of a nation's life.

2. An advance of the people in learning, arts, commerce, civilization, is accompanied by a corresponding decay in religious purity.

3. Religion loses her moral hold, and leads the multitude by superstition, priestcraft and vice.

4. The learned are estranged from the religion, and make an effort to preserve morality.

5. But this morality of the schools is above the multitude, not understood by them, not intended for them, holds them not, impels them not, and so fails of any practical fruit, beyond a few individual cases.

one.

6. Every moral revival in a people has been a religious

7. All religions in the world, with the exception of Christianity, seem to have outlived their usefulness, and to have proved themselves incapable of leading mankind to a true and satisfactory goal. This practical age must hand them over to the antiquarian and look elsewhere for a moral guide.

In tracing the history of Christianity, we are met with almost similar facts. First a moral power over men, then an overlaying of the truth with error, perversion of truth into falsehood, decay of moral power, superstition, immorality, ruin. The human tendency being ever the same, there results ever an inevitable evolution of greater moral evil, when uncontrolled by some commanding, impelling moral power. But there is this difference between Christianity and all other religions. It can revive. Its corruptions and superstitions and errors are not of its nature, do not spring from within, but are imposed from without, so that whenever the original form is brought forth, it is found not only to meet every want of the human heart, but to

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A Moral Collapse feared.

LECT.

hold before the most advanced a still unreached goal of higher good, to evince a power to control the whole man, without emasculating a single faculty, to open up before mankind ever unexplored vistas of future progress and hope. In the history of Christendom too, the habit of the learned has often been to emulate the ancient and the heathen; to ignore the facts of Christian truth while rejecting accumulations of errors, and to build up a moral system based on what was known of science and the deductions of Philosophy. But always, as before, and elsewhere, in so far as these philosophico-moral systems lacked the religious element, in so far were they simple abortions-to be speedily buried-leaving philosophical, not moral, results behind them.

It is said that one of those moral collapses, a time of moral shipwreck which follows the loss of religious faith, is now coming upon the civilized world, and as usual the philosopher hastens to prescribe a remedy. We are told that the Christian religion is worn out; that there is no religion to replace it; that there is no need for evolved mature man of such a religion; that philosophy must supply the place. We may dismiss at once, as unworthy of a moment's thought, the Jesuitical proposition of Rénan, and many another political quack, viz., to retain religion, though untrue, as a discipline for the ignorantan instrument by which the government shall control the people. The world has no place for exposed falsehood; if Christanity is a lie, let her die and be buried. Let not her corpse offend living men, nor her ghost frighten the untrained mind. Give us truth, though it increase our sorrow. But on the very face of it, such learning is branded with shame-is a step to the abyss of immorality. It boasts of having removed from morality the supposed sanctions of a true religion-makes the religion a lie; it has nothing to propose as a truth to replace it; it proposes to educate man on the basis of proved falsehood. It proclaims