ward similar to that of the philanthropist. The "joy," to which he looked, was not his, but that which was to "be unto all people.'

That the internal joy of Jesus, as he beheld in prophetic vision the immeasurable good he was procuring the human race, was great, we do not deny. The internal joy of the good man, on seeing literally, or by the eye of faith, others benefited by his exertions, although he be expiring on the cross for having made those exertions, is unspeakable, and unimagined by him who has not within himself the moral power to be a martyr to the cause of humanity. But why is it so great? Simply because it was no matter of calculation, was not proposed as an end, was not anticipated, and is no subject of distinct consciousness. His soul is full of joy because he thinks only of the joy of others, and because it does not occur to him to ask himself whether he be happy or miserable. He who could turn away from the happiness of others, and say to himself, "How happy I am! how richly am I rewarded for the sacrifices I have made!" would prove that he could not be happy by suffering to make others happy. Where there is this return upon self, there is not the disposition to be delighted with others' joy.

The mistake of the Utilitarian on this point is, not that benevolence does not insure a reward, or that duty does not prove itself man's interest, but that he does not distinguish between deeds of benevolence done for the sake of others, and done for the sake of ourselves; between duty performed as duty, and duty performed as interest; between the right pursued as an end, and the right pursued as a means. And yet here is a very obvious and a very important distinction. It is not easy to mistake the difference between one, who pursues duty because he believes it to be duty, and one who pursues it merely because he believes it for his interest. The two men are governed by very different, not to say wholly opposite, principles. One of them is governed by a principle that bids him do his duty at all times, under all circumstances, and at all hazards; the other by a principle that, in case duty demanded a sacrifice, would bid him abandon it, desert his post whenever it became dangerous, and prove himself a coward on the approach of the enemy. He, who is governed by this principle, will never be a martyr.

To confound these two, is to confound the idea of the useful with that of the just, a thing which nobody in his senses is likely to do, unless compelled by a theory. A steamengine may be useful, but who thinks of calling it just? A man is just or unjust, according to the principles by which he is governed, without reference to the utility or inutility of his life. There is a marked difference between the emotion one has on viewing a steam-engine, however useful it may be, and that which he has on reading the Life of Howard; between the one excited in us by contemplating the assassin, and the one excited by contemplating his dagger. The difference between these two emotions shows the difference between the idea of the useful and the harmful, and that of the just and the unjust.

The Utilitarian, as his name imports, is one who is governed solely by the idea of the useful. The just, the true, the beautiful enter for nothing into the considerations which influence his conduct. It is nothing to him that his course violates what he terms "abstract right," if he be satisfied that it is useful. He sees no men around him, no moral beings, with duties not to be neglected, with rights to be consulted and never abridged; but simply human machines, concerning which he has only to inquire what is the most advantageous manner in which he can employ them. Whatever is difficult, whatever demands a sacrifice, if it have nothing but its justice to recommend it, is abandoned as inexpedient. He may see his neighbour's house on fire and his family in peril, but before running to assist in extinguishing the flames or in rescuing the family, he must ascertain the bearing the assistance he might lend, would have upon the useful. His brother may be sinking in the wave; but if, upon a full and impartial discussion of the matter, he be convinced that his brother's death will be more useful than his life, he leaves him to drown. Murder, robbery, theft, and all those acts which the world has agreed to call crimes, are very good things in his estimation, if they promote, what he believes is general utility. He would have recommended the Athenians to follow the advice of Themistocles, which Aristides declared useful, but unjust.

Doubtless the Utilitarian would recoil with horror from these conclusions; but they belong to his system, and he reasons inconsequently when he rejects them. In refusing

to admit them he goes out of his system, and declares it "too strait" for him to dwell in. He, indeed, talks of the sentiments, the emotions, the affections, of the pleasure to be derived from diffusing love and joy among mankind; but, whenever he does this, he is away from his Utilitarianism, in a different order of ideas, where, instead of restricting himself to the useful, he appeals to the right, the benevolent, and the humane. We do not censure him for this inconsequence, which proves him better than his system; for it is inevitable. No one can pay the least attention to what is passing within him, without being conscious of ideas and wants that are for ever carrying him beyond the narrow circle, and away from the mechanical life, of the merely useful.

Let it not, however, be inferred, that we condemn the useful. The useful is a real element of our nature, and in its place it is as proper and as important as any other. We merely object to making it comprise man's whole nature, and to regarding it as the rule and ineasure of morality. We do not make it the basis of morality, for we do not find that it necessarily involves any moral consideration. We base morality on the moral sense, and what we term the idea of the just, or of the right. The idea of the just is common to all moral beings. He, who has it not, is no more accountable for what he does, than the assassin's dagger, for the act of assassination. This is not a derivative, but a primitive idea, a constituent element in human nature itself, whose destruction would involve our annihilation. It reveals to us that law of eternal justice, anterior to all other laws, on which all other laws depend for their authority, and which, as Marcus Antoninus says, "binds both Gods and men." He who has the sentiment of this law, is moral; he who has it not, is out of the pale of moral beings. He who obeys this sentiment is virtuous; he who 'disobeys it is guilty. We know no objection that can be brought against this, for it recognises a law which is known to all moral beings, and which is immutable, eternal, and universal, the same in all nations and in all ages.

If we are asked, why we are bound to obey this law, we send the interrogator to his own conscience and consciousness for an answer. But no man was ever yet, by his own wants, induced to make the inquiry. Theori is my have attempted to find a reason why we should obey the

right, as geometricians have attempted to define a straight line, but it has been labor lost. Convince a man that what you propose is right, and he will hardly ask you to prove that it is obligatory. No man ever yet doubted that he was bound to do right. Indeed, there is no real difference between the idea of right, and that of obligation. To say that a thing is right, is the same as to say that it is obligatory.

Moralists have thought differently, and have therefore attempted to show why we ought to obey the right. They have usually alleged authority, or utility. But authority, that is, the command or the will of the Deity, cannot create the obligation. Nobody is bound to obey an unjust command. It is not the command, but its justice that constitutes its obligation. The commands of God do not make the obligation, they merely declare it. Even the will of the Deity does not constitute the obligation, for it does not make the right. A thing is not right because God wills it; he wills it because it is right, because it is in accordance with the decisions of his wisdom, of his own infinite and unerring reason. Nor can the obligation be derived from the idea of the useful. Grant the right always involves the useful, the very moment you assign that as the ground of its obligation, you transfer the obligation from the right to the useful; and prove, so far as you prove any thing, that the right is not obligatory, and that we are bound to consult only utility. And why are we bound to consult utility? Is not the evidence on which it rests, precisely that on which rests the obligation of the right?

But in basing morality on our inherent idea of right, on the moral sense, we would guard against misapprehension. This moral sense is not a perception, but a sentiment of the right. It is that which constitutes us moral beings, but is not itself a code of ethics. It craves, but it does not see, the right; it makes us feel that there is a right, that it is obligatory, but it does not give us clear perceptions of what the right is, much less of all its bearings, of all its specific duties. This is done only by the aid of the understanding. Nature, or rather God in nature, has laid the foundation of a moral edifice, but its erection depends on us, and the just proportions of its parts, its beauty and strength, depend on the harmonious developement of all our faculties, intellectual as well as moral.

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There must, then, always be a difference between the morality of the cultivated and that of the uncultivated man. The savage has the same nature, the same elemental wants, as the civilized man; he is carried away towards the right by the same inward sentiment; but the right which he is able to body forth as his ideal of excellence, falls far below the ideal of him whose mind and heart are well cultivated. Not that nature decides differently in one case from what she does in another, or, that she ever pronounces that right which is not right; but the one sees only a little of the right, while the other takes broader and more comprehensive views of it, and, consequently, is able to form to himself a less defective morality. In the case of the savage, the faculties, not having been exercised, are weak, and therefore able to take in but a little of the right, to see it only under one of its aspects; the faculties of the civilized man having been strengthened by exercise, he is able to see the right under several aspects, and to take in vastly more of it. This same remark is applicable to Christian morality. Jesus Christ did not give us a body of morals, he merely gave us the law of morality. This law is the law of love, of love to our neighbour, which is merely the realization of the idea of the right, the moral sense clothed with a practical form. But this love varies, according to the mental and moral progress of him who harbours it. To him of narrow views and uncultivated soul, love to our neighbour will have a low and narrow meaning. It will, indeed, mean the greatest good he can conceive, but it will not be the less low and narrow on that account. The Western Indian's ideal of good, is the happy islands where his fathers have gone, where no bad Indian intrudes, where there is plenty of game and the hunter is never weary or hungry. Yet in wishing his neighbour a reception into those happy islands, he is as sincere, is as obedient to his sense of right, follows the dictates of as pure a love, according to the measure of his light, as the Christian who would raise a fellow being to his sublimer and more spiritual heaven. Give the Indian the Christian's cultivation, the Christian's spiritual growth, and his simple heaven "behind the cloud-topt hill," will no longer be the measure of good his love would bestow upon the object beloved. But without that cultivation, that spiritual growth, although he might adopt the Christian's