to the sources of ethics, may congratulate themselves on having so competent and distinguished a representative of their sentiments as the excellent person to whose work we have just referred but considering the weight which his name and wellmerited reputation are likely to give to his opinions, we cannot help regretting that he should, incidentally, and unintentionally, have contributed, as we think, to depreciate one important source of the internal evidence of revelation, the harmony of its utterances with the voice of man's intellectual and moral nature, as heard audibly in the midst of all the din and uproar of the passions. Some of Dr. Wardlaw's statements might lead his readers to imagine that a theory of natural ethics must necessarily be framed on the principle that the average practical morality of mankind must be made the standard of morals. This, however, is by no means the case. The various and conflicting moral phenomena of human nature are one thing, the conclusions which may be deduced from them another. Hence we find very many ethical systems, both in their principles and rules of conduct, rising far above the sensuality, the selfishness, the pride, the injustice, and the malevolence, which are too commonly to be found in the actual practice of men. Whence then comes the superiority of the esoteric doctrines and precepts, to the exoteric manifestations? Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor. Such moral systems as we speak of have existed, it will be remembered, before the date of christianity. Will it be said that they were made up of remnants of tradition, handed down from man's creation, or diffused over the earth from Judea? The supposition requires to be confirmed; and even were it proved, it would be most interesting to endeavour to gather together and contemplate these disjecta membra of man's original moral nature. But when it is considered that there were materials for the tradition of evil, as well as of good, that there have always been many evil maxims current in society, and many more evil examples, why do we find that, in the moral systems alluded to, the good has been so much selected in preference to the evil?-the very same good, to a remarkable extent, which we find in the precepts of christianity itself? Surely it was because the good, however disaffected man's will might be towards it, still found a response within him which the evil did not, an echo from his reason and his conscience, which amounts to the voice of a 'law written on the heart.'

It will hardly, we suppose. be questioned that there has always been a greater difference between men's characters than between the moral rules which they might on deliberation be brought to acknowledge. If passion and self-interest had bee

generally admitted in theory as the true guides of life, we should find it to have been one principle of natural ethics that the gratification of appetite, or the intense pursuit of every thing which centres in self, is more worthy to be followed than the pleasures of benevolence or the duties of religion. But where do we find any such doctrine pronounced to be a part of morals? Crimes may sometimes be regarded as venial through vicious custom, even in the face of the christian precepts; but there are actions and states of mind which conscience and society every where condemn. Duelling may be varnished over with the false colouring of honour, but where was murder in cold blood regarded as no crime? What conscience or sane reason ever deliberately smiled on malice prepense as a virtue? Selfishness may steel the heart and belie conviction, but which of the ancient moral systems would repudiate a regard to the rights of our neighbour, practical beneficence towards the needy, or the excellence of truth for its own sake? Covetousness may dictate the obtaining of property by whatever means, however fraudulent; (quocunque modo rem;) but where shall we find simple unmixed fraud inculcated as a social duty by any pagan writer on ethics? It has been said that at Sparta theft was not regarded as a crime, but rather as a virtue. It is true that the boys of the Homei were compelled at times to wander about the country, and to live by petty plunder as they could, being subject to punishment only when they were caught in the fact: but it should be remembered that the articles which they were allowed to take, such as cheese, fruit, and the like, were all determined by law, and the object was to harden the boys for warfare, and to prevent the Laconians from remaining secure in possession of their lands. No doubt this practice, as well as that of the crypteia, or annual military excursion, in which the Helots were the principal sufferers, was really wrong, and barbarous enough, but they may with tolerable fairness be put on a par with the colonial oppression, and the cruelty towards slaves, of which unhappily nations calling themselves christian, and with the laws of Christ in their hands, have been far from guiltless. We have no proof here that dishonesty, deceit, and bad faith or injustice between man and man, were regarded at Sparta, theoretically, as elementary principles of virtue. In the Provinciales, Pascal shews how elaborately the Jesuits of his day perverted all moral principle. This was done in the light of Christianity; sometimes under the mask of quotations from its sacred books. Here was an acknowledged law, but how sadly was it tortured into the contradiction of itself! What wonder then if the law written on the heart' has been found disregarded, or strangely distorted in heathen countries! Cer

tainly it is not in those countries alone, but in countries also where even a perfect rule of conduct is known and admitted, that we find evil perpetrated in the name of good, or even without this excuse. Ingratitude is no very rare phenomenon in society, pagan or christian; but where was it ever contended that ingratitude was a virtue? or that children ought not, as a general duty, to honour their parents? The want of a due sense of religious obligation is surely not uncommon among men; but in what community was it denied that reverence was due to acknowledged deity, believed to take cognizance of human affairs? What moralist ever condemned the principles of generous forgiveness exercised towards a personal enemy, or inculcated private revenge as a virtue? Where did benevolence and cruelty, as such, change places, or stand on an equal footing of indifference in the moral estimation of mankind?

Awful as are the perversions of elementary moral principle and the examples of degeneracy which are to be found in the moral history of our race, it would not, perhaps, be a difficult task, in all cases of moral agency, to detect an original element, often deeply disguised, and strangely warped from its destined purpose, but still in itself good, or at least not evil. A convex mirror grotesquely distorts and caricatures the features, but we can still discern the traces of nature. Appetites and passions, and self-interest, may, we know, outrage all morality: but this does not prove that appetites and passions, and a rational selflove, are not original parts of the human constitution; or that there is no inward principle whose proper office it is to testisfy against crime and to reward virtue. It only proves that, by some disorder and derangement in the action of the moral powers, the inferior impulses have gained the ascendancy, which we are too aware may take place even where reason and conscience are informed by revelation-where christianity is perpetually pointing to duty, and lifting her voice against evil. The dormant testimony of the inner man to virtue, is often revived even in the most unfavourable circumstances. We learn from

christian missionaries that even pagans may be induced, by reasoning with them, to admit the evil of the most flagrant disorders of appetite and passion, and of the more deliberate courses of conduct which, in the form of superstition, are opposed to objective morality. Before we deny that there remain in man the elementary principles of a natural morality, we must take into the account the morbid growth of these organic elements, besides the revolt of the will against reason and conscience. If the Hindoo mother sacrifices her infant to the god of the Ganges, what do we here see but a melancholy perversion of the sentiment of religion? We have an example in the

Mosaic history of a divine command overcoming the parental instinct, and all previous moral considerations, in the case of Abraham, who in consequence prepared to sacrifice his son; and we shall not be misunderstood to palliate infanticide in admitting the fact that superstition may produce the same outward action as a genuine call of religious, duty, intended as a trial of faith. Locke speaks of a practice, in some countries, of putting to death children who have lost their mothers, or who are pronounced by the astrologer to have unhappy stars :' but may we not discern in cases of this kind a sentiment, however spurious, of benevolence? If we are compelled, in some of the examples adduced by the above distinguished writer, granting their authenticity, to admit the operation of a gross selfishness, as in the case of the neglect of aged and infirm parents; we may again remark that it will hardly be denied that examples of intense selfishness, amounting almost to the extinction of natural affection, might be found where the written law of christianity is known. That a theoretical agreement among mankind as to the prime elements of morality may be detected in a final analysis of the principles on which men everywhere admit they ought to govern their conduct, we have no doubt, however passion, self-interest, evil custom, superstition, or the like, may often give a wrong direction to these elements, overpower their force, or even appear to destroy them. The existing low moral condition of pagans, is no more incompatible with a moral constitution in man which, if properly heeded, would lead to virtue, than the existing moral evils in christian countries are incompatible with a knowledge of the letter of the Christian law of duty; and that they are not incompatible with such knowledge is only too evident a fact.

It may further be remarked that the 'law written on the heart' is the criterion by which we judge of one most important portion of the general evidences of christianity, namely the internal. For why do we feel that the precepts of the New Testament, its laws of supreme love to God, love to our neighbour as ourselves, doing to others as, we would they should do to us, the forgiveness of injuries, benevolence to all, and the like, recommend themselves to our consciences, but because they harmonize with this very law there written-because, however conscience may be benumbed, perverted, or enchained, the utterances of pure moral truth and beauty are no sooner made decidedly to arrest the attention of the mind, than conscience is felt to give them a distinct echo and response from her inmost and apparently most obstructed recesses? If we could for a moment suppose that our sacred books inculcated, as duties, what we now regard as breaches of morality, or declared that the Deity

was a being whose moral attributes were injustice, falsehood, impurity, and malignity, instead of justice, truth, holiness, and benevolence, no reflective person could receive the testimony, any more than the most thoughtful men of classic antiquity really believed all the legends of the gods. The very constitution of our nature would as effectually prevent our recognizing such a communication as worthy of respect and belief, as though it contained a geometry which set out with a denial of those axioms, or primary and common notions, which are presupposed in all demonstration; or as though it propounded a sceptical metaphysics which should deny the objective reality of theme,' or our conviction of the universality and necessity of causation wherever there is change in the natural world.

As, then, there is a constitution of the human frame which is the foundation of physiology, or the doctrine of the normal functions, animal and organic, notwithstanding all the morbid changes and deviations which take place in disease; so there is a constitution of man's moral nature which is the foundation of a natural ethics, or the doctrine of the normal functions of that nature, notwithstanding man's departure from the line of rectitude. That the cases are not strictly parallel we admit. Ill health may be only temporary to the individual, and is always partial in the race; while the fact of man's departure from the rule of right has been universal, in all ages and nations. Reason and conscience are always liable to be more or less blinded and perverted by the morbid condition of the will, in the abnormal exercise of which lies the essence of moral obliquity: and besides; there are duties dependent on revelation which reason never could discover in detail. We are not, however, contending that nature is, or can be, a complete and perfect guide. But to deny that the general elements of true ethical science may be gathered from the mind and the relations of man-the elements of a theory much superior to the average practical morality of mankind, is to overlook the fact that Socrates ever taught, or that Plato, and Aristotle, and Confucius, and Cicero, ever wrote. On the other hand, the abuse of natural ethics, wherever christianity is known, is to treat it as a complete and final science, instead of regarding it merely as a fragment of a great whole, corroborative, so far as it extends, of christianity, which adds authority to the voice within the breast, and alone can solve the still higher problems relating to man's destiny-those problems on which natural ethics, and natural theism, have either been dumb, or sceptical, or fabulous. Then only is an inductive philosophy of ethics legitimate, when it professes to be what it is, or what it ought to be; namely, an attempt to ascertain how far a system of moral principles and