and

This law of the case makes obedience at once hopeful, practicable, progressive. It gives unity to it under all degrees of light; at all stages of advancement-individual and social-obligation is ever felt to be commensurate with our apprehension of duty. But the apprehension becomes clearer and broader, proportionately to the heartiness with which we are striving to fill and occupy the present sphere of duty.

Two effects arise out of this law, each contributing to a deeper vitality and an advancing vigour in the moral life of society. The first respects the external relations of those who are in the van of moral progress. To be far a-head of one's fellows in conscientious realisation of duty-in its scope and obligations, will bring many severe tests and trials. To act up to a high moral standard, is the more difficult the farther beneath, or divergent from it, those are to whom you sustain social or domestic relations. Virtue becomes comparatively easy when in the family, in the social circle, in the community, convictions identical with your own, are found generally to obtain. But rarely will those who have regard to a high and comprehensive moral ideal, find anywhere such facility. The true Reformer still needs to have the martyr-spirit; and, in fact, it is only by suffering for the higher and broader truth that its supreme worth and obligation can be shown.

The second result respects the inner experience of those striving after a progressive moral life. Thus it is secured that this life is never allowed to stagnate. Fresh light is ever giving a fresh stimulus to a higher activity.

The mo

This is the meeting point of the Real and Ideal,-where the progressive conversion of the one into the other goes on. The moral Ideal is ever to become the Real,-exists, or is apprehended, to no other end. ment it comes to be regarded as a mere ‘Ideal'-admired for its beauty, but deemed practically unattainable-it ceases to be moral. It becomes purely aesthetic. It elicits sentiment, but with no corresponding or responsive activity. Such an Ideal, divorced, as it is, from all practical power becomes morally mischievous. There is a fatal rent between the active and susceptive powers of our being, whose tendency is ever to widen, until all the practical influence of a high moral standard ceases. Sentiment soars and revels in a world of its own, while the active life creeps uncertainly or tortuously along on the dull, common earth!

Through this progressive realization of truth and duty-both Habit, in the individual life, and Custom in society, are kept from becoming tyrannous. Unless the moral perceptions be gradually broadened, unless besides this, they have upset and revolutionised the old methods of inquiry and have created sciences, the faintest idea of which never entered the mind of the boldest thinker antiquity produced. . . Since civilization is the product of moral and intellectual agencies, and since that product is constantly changing, it evidently cannot be regulated by the stationary agent; because, when surrounding circumstances are unchanged, a stationary agent can only produce a stationary effect."-History of Civilization in England, by Henry T. Buckle, vol. i., pp. 163, 164, 165;

F

the moral standard is seen still to rise and expand, Habit will, ultimately, carry the individual, and Custom society, back under the dominion of those natural forces, from which-operating in their subordinate function and place they had helped to deliver them. The popular adage regarding fire, that "it is a good servant but a bad master," is equally true of both. They are handmaids to virtue, and are most valuable aids and auxiliaries while kept to their proper sphere and place. But allowed the ascendancy-admitted to rule they crush out that very life, of which they ought to be the support and fence And thus may we see that the course of safety, individual and social, lies in the mean between a dogged adherence to usage and custom, on the one hand, and the elimination of every moral element from public opinion, on the other. The Conservatives would condemn us to one extreme, John Stuart Mill and his disciples would carry us over to the other, but, having this in common, that they are both alike fatal to the true and progressive moral life of society. "Extremes meet" much oftener than we dream of.

The extrusion of the moral element from public opinion-even the weakening of that element, relatively to other forces -- would be a process socially disastrous beyond any other that is possible in an age of refinement and advanced Civilization. And, the greater the exterior Civilization and refinement, only the more disastrous would this process be. Rome, during the decline of the Empire, presents us with a most impressive illustration of this. In such circumstances the moral sentiments do not formally disappear; retaining their form they gradually lose their essence. They are still recognised as matter of sentiment (have a certain social and exterior homage accorded them) after they have ceased to be felt as matter of obligation. They keep some hold on the imagination long after they have quitted the conscience. But the process-though it may be a slow one--is one of certain death. As we see in trees; first the pith dies, then the central wood; yet there will be life under the bark, and blossom on the branches, long after all within is rotten and hollow.

And thus we may see a reason, why the nations in which God is carrying on a great process of moral education-fostering and developing a moral life—should never be permitted to be long at rest. A settled state of quiescence and security would neutralise this process. We see how the long reign of Custom—a state of intellectual, social, and political fixity-has extinguished almost every spark of moral life in the Chinese. The civil war, which has now for many years been going on, spreading over the empire, and, contemporaneously with it, those repeated conflicts with the western and progressive nations, may be the initiatory process-harsh but indispensable-towards once more awakening a moral life in that vast, and long dormant, community. So, too, may we not believe, that our conquest of India, and the fearful conflicts with its peoples which our presence and rule there have induced, are the first rude shocks towards a great intellectual and moral awakening?

And thus are we permitted to draw hope for the world from those terrible events which have burst forth-at so many points, and so unexpectedly-in these recent years. They are indications that the reign of moral torpor and intellectual stagnation is near its close. But these conflicts are the issues, as well as the signs and harbingers, of moral life. Indeed, wherever there is agitation the stimulus is moral, directly, or in the way of reaction. Wherever there is agitation, it is either from Good struggling for the mastery over Evil, or from Evil having reached the point beyond which it cannot, by reason of the very constitution of things, go on any longer-the point at which its self-destructive forces are brought into play.

But, without earnest and advancing moral convictions, good men would not have heart or courage, either to resist or assail-they would "jouk and let the ja' gae o'er." More than this, in the absence of fresh and earnest moral convictions--under the conduct which must, in that case, inevitably follow-everything entitled to the name of goodness would soon perish. Passivity,-neutrality,-does not consist with moral life in a world where evil abounds,—" He that is not for the right is against it." The warfare of Good with Evil grounds on so profound a necessity that, in this relation, even the Prince of Peace Himself, came "Not to send peace on earth, but a sword."

And if we would trace this moral earnestness-this felt and expressed necessity of advance, of conquest, of war with evil, this intolerance of stagnation, to their source, we shall find that source to be the Christian faith. For, as a matter of fact, do not whatever of intellectual activity, of energy, of advanced and progressive civilization is found among men, cluster around Christianity. Have not all these been now, for many centuries, more and more concentrating where Christianity most exerts a direct or derivative influence. Mohammedanism is spent, as we know to our cost, by the blood and treasure we have expended to prolong the feeble, waning life of the "sick man." Braminism is effete, Buddhism has ceased to be an energising power. How,-if Christianity is only a phase of naturalism,--how does it happen that it alone, of all religions that have arisen among men, has power, either effectually, to conserve the gains of the Past, or to stimulate in a still advancing progress? All other religions have become impotent for any purpose we can recognise as a social good; and whatever force is now operating in the world, towards bettering the condition of man, as well as all agencies and institutions having this as their end or object, are traceable to Christianity— derive from it their vitality and vigour.

That spiritual and moral truths are, in the most pregnant and practical sense, progressive, is a fact "writ large" in the history of Modern Civilization. It is a great mistake-but one into which our sceptics are very apt to fall--to limit the influence of the Christian doctrine and morality, either to the "religious world," or to that sphere of human

activity which embraces religious agency and observance. Christianity exerts its most direct and potent inflnence on those in whom it becomes the germ of a new life. But it exerts a secondary, derivative influence, widely beyond. Its power is like that of the sun, and many who remain dark within, unpenetrated by its fervid beam, yet shine in beauty in its reflected light. It is the "river" in the vision of the prophet, wherever it comes, causing everything to LIVE. Scepticism, while denying its claims, has, notwithstanding, drawn from Christianity much, both of its scope, and its power of denial. Science, that, as respects religion, now bears itself so arrogantly, resembles the youth that raises his hand against his foster-mother.

XIV.—MR. BUCKLE'S PHYSICAL FATALISM.

In our eleventh paper we said "This much is clear, Nature is not against man, but for him. The constitution of the world is not chargeable with being in defect, or in antagonism towards him; or, in either, no farther than is necessary, and best adapted to make him MANto evoke, develope, strengthen, and mature all his distinctive powers and capabilities." Now, as respects the largest and most productive portions of the world, Mr. Buckle has arrived at a conclusion diametrically the opposite of this, and based, as he assumes, on generalisations more profound and comprehensive than any hitherto attempted. “The evidence," says he, "that I have collected, seems to establish two leading facts, which, unless they can be impugned, are the necessary basis of universal history. The first fact is, that in the civilizations out of Europe, the powers of nature have been far greater than in those in Europe. The second fact is, that those powers have worked immense mischief; and that while one division of them, [viz., the extreme fecundity of nature in tropical climates] has caused an unequal distribution of wealth, another division of them [the grandeur and imposing character of the scenery and phenomena] has caused an unequal distribution of thought, by concentrating the attention upon subjects which influence the imagination. So far as the experience of the past can guide us, we may say, that in all the extra-European Civilizations, these obstacles were insuperable; certainly no nation has ever yet overcome them.”*

Mr. Buckle denounces the adherents of Calvinism, because "they require us to believe that the Author of Creation, whose beneficence they at the same time willingly allow, has, notwithstanding his Supreme Goodness, made an arbritary distinction between the elect and nonHistory of Civilization in England, by Henry Thomas Buckle. Vol. I. p. 138.

*

elect; that He has from all eternity doomed to perdition millions of creatures yet unborn, and whom His Act alone can call into existence; and that He has done this, not in virtue of any principle of justice, but by a mere stretch of despotic power." Mr. Buckle says that this doctrine owes its authority among Protestants to the dark, though powerful mind of Calvin; and that Augustine, who systematised it for the early Church, appears to have borrowed it from the Manicheans, yet Mr. Buckle is himself the zealous propounder and advocate of a theory of physical fatalism, at least as rigid and relentless as the theological dogma which evokes, on his part, such indignation and contempt. The wide processes of induction which he pursues in his chapter on the Influence of Physical Laws, are all towards supplying proof" of the extraordinary, and, indeed, irresistible force, with which the powers of nature have controlled the fortunes of man." (p. 86). His generalisations (with some significant exceptions), range over the fields occupied by the ancient civilizations, including those of the aboriginal Americans. We select one or two of his most prominent examples. Of the people of India, he says, that— "condemned to poverty by the physical laws of their climate, they have fallen into a degradation from which they have never been able to escape," (p. 71). "In India, slavery, abject, eternal slavery, was the natural condition of the great body of the people; it was the state to which they were doomed by physical laws, utterly impossible to resist. The energy of those laws, is in truth, so invincible, that wherever they have come into play, they have kept the productive classes in perpetual subjection."

In Northern Asia man is kept to a state of hopeless barbarism, by the severity of the climate and the sterility of nature; but the opposite conditions are equally, if not more fatal. In Brazil, “amid the pomp and splendour of Nature, no place is left for man. He is reduced to insignificance by the majesty with which he is surrounded. The forces that oppose him are so formidable, that he has never been able to make head against them, never been able to rally against their accumulated pressure." There has, indeed, been introduced a certain amount of European civilization, but it occupies a mere strip along the coast. In the interior, the old state of things continues to obtain. "The people, ignorant, and therefore brutal, practising no restraint, and recognising no law, continue to live on in their old inveterate barbarism. In their country, the physical causes are so active, and do their work on a scale of such unrivalled magnitude, that it has hitherto been found impossible to escape from the effects of their united action. The progress of agriculture has been stopped by impassable forests, and the harvests are destroyed by innumerable insects. The mountains are too high to scale, the rivers are too wide to bridge, everything is contrived to keep back the human mind." (p. p. 95--96). We could go on, ad libitum, with quotations to the same purport, but we suppose these may suffice to