and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?" (Exodus 3: 11.)

It was evident to Moses, who well knew the power of Egypt and the weakness of his own people, that their deliverance could not be accomplished.

In a physical sense, and also in a moral sense, there was a course of nature, and a law of nature, that forbade the attempt. Physically the Egyptians were strong; morally the Israelites were weak from the abnormal condition of servitude.

We know that when an organization-the body, for instance becomes diseased, it sometimes may be cured by a renovating process of nature, and often a diseased limb must be cut off; but in the case of moral disease, we cannot prove that there is ever power in the moral nature to renovate itself, for from the effect of our transgression “the whole head is sick and the heart faint."

This was true as to Moses, till the Lord supernaturally, or by a manifestation of the Divine presence and help, infused into him wisdom and courage.

This is the only reasonable explanation of Moses' subsequent alacrity in going forward in the work of the deliverance of his people.

This chapter in Israel's history, though a noted one, is but a single instance and example of Providential care over the course of nature; and specially over the moral and religious nature, not only in the individual, but including the sympathetic and social, which tend to the formation of family, social, civil, political, national and international relations.

10. THE SUPREME-CAUSE.-As to the physical world, reason tells us that there is a relation of cause, and we are free to speculate as to whether the Supreme-cause acted once for all' on the content of nature, or whether his action is continued in a line parallel to nature.

As to the religious and moral realm, its very existence argues in like manner a causal relation; and the abnormal condition of its existence-the religious nature being chilled, and the moral nature being perverted by sin and transgression-necessarily calls for a renovating power outside of itself; and thus again we see that it is natural as well as necessary for the supernatural to intervene.

Thus do we find the supernatural in the natural, and in science, physical, intellectual, moral and religious.

And all science-especially these—are of interest to the people individually and collectively, and are proper subjects of study.

And now to briefly discuss the other relation, that of the supernatural in the spiritual. Wide ground for science is not claimed, namely, that which is universal or is self-evident to every man's consciousness. Christianity differs from the religion of nature, as enunciated in the decalogue, in this: that it contemplates and provides for a new or for a supernaturally quickened spiritual nature in man, by the power of the Holy Spirit, and by the gracious offices of a Redeemer.

The supernatural, as first said, working through the good nature bestowed upon us by the Creator—

good though now lapsed and fallen, as every man consciously knows, into an abnormal state-is a necessary factor and co-worker with us; in the attainment of the right, and of a normal happy life; hence the Divine utterance in the decalogue, and this is what man is under obligation to aim at.

But the supernatural, in its reference to and attainment of a higher spiritual state for man now and hereafter, is a different matter, and has interest for the individual affected thereby, singly and in spiritual assemblies.

Herein is the work of the individual and of church organizations, namely, the work of the conversion of the world and of the perfection of the saints by spiritual means.

This work is beyond and outside that of the educational work of the public, as a community or as a state, through and upon the naturally religious and moral nature of man; and the superspiritual work lies entirely within the province of the individual, and that of the spiritual congregations.

This marks a clear line of separation between a science of religion and morals natural and logically supernatural, and the supernaturally spiritual; the former would include the evidence of Christianity, the latter regards the applied spiritual truths.

It marks a line of distinction between the duty of the state in the education of the citizen, and individual and ecclesiastic duties in reference to the soul's spiritual welfare.

It is the unity of the moral nature that holds men together, and this unity is manifest when the moral

nature or constitution of man is formulated in the true moral law-the decalogue.

Its first introductory clause, "I am the Lord," gives unity and authority to all that follows; assures men that they have in the two tables a true statement of the requirements of their own nature.

When the Lord speaks, truth is uttered; duty is made known; nor is it possible for us to look for the universal brotherhood of man, on any other basis than this à priori scientific basis that exists in the moral constitution of man.

Set up that there is no Lord, or that Baal is God, and we abstract from the moral nature of man the force and the power of its highest, deepest elementary principle--that of obedience to itself; that of a soul without guile in the harmony of the Will with the moral sense, under the power of an active, living conscience, which is surely blunted, hardened, silenced when the Creator of this moral nature-when the Author of man's constitution, unwritten and written-when God himself is lost sight of.

Hence the impossibility of solidarity in a people of diverse and strange gods—like the Jew or Christian and the Pagan.

Hence, too, the necessity in and among a nominally Christian people for cultivation and education in morals and piety, or natural religion-those universals that must underlie Christianity in all its varied forms.

And hence the suicidal policy of an education that would overlook and exclude morals and reli

gion; and not less suicidal, that policy that would build up sectarian schools on the ruins of public common schools, for the sure tendency of sectarian education is to the disintegration of a people.

And no man can be accounted a wise citizen who, on the one hand, is possessed of the unnatural, irrational, and pernicious notion that morals and religion must be excluded from our public schools; or who, on the other hand, holds to the no less pernicious notion that we should have no public schools, because either irreligion or sectarian opinions would be taught in them; blind to the fact that there is a natural, logical view, and a science of morals and religion in man's nature-best made known in holy writ-that includes only the true, and necessarily excludes what is mere sectarian, and all that is false.

II. THE SUM OF THE ARGUMENT.-The sum of the argument in these introductory or general principles is that Ancient philosophy, and largely Modern, by looking to final ends, can find no certain basis or ground-principle for a science of morals; but when we look to the inner man-to the Godgiven endowments of the moral nature-love for "the truth and the right"—the "good-will" which Kant makes the central figure in the grouping of the moral consciousness-we find obedience to the teaching, to the logic thereof and to the imperative therein, to be a self-evident truth and duty, and so fit for a basis of science.

This does not ignore the valuable contributions of empiric philosophy in discovery and experience.