LECT. I.

tion before

legislation.

It was the highest wisdom thus to speak; it Redemp- is one more proof that the God of Moses is the God of science of moral philosophy, that He so clothed His moral law. How else could He have ennobled a race of slaves? Whence could the impulse to be moral have come to them in their degradation if He had not redeemed them in love before He legislated for them in wisdom?

What men

need is motive power.

Deep, practical wisdom, I say; yes, and for us too of this nineteenth century. The great question in morals is not what is right, but how to do what is right. It is not so much knowledge as motive power which is needed. There may be even the will to do, and yet not the ability to perform. "When I would do good," says one, "evil is present with me." What men want is a regenerative principle which acts on the affections in the direction of morals. They need that living fire in the heart which communicates energy to the will, which causes truth to be loved because it is identified with a living loved one. Confine he motive power of moral life to the higher intuitions of the mind, and only the few can be influenced, and they only remotely, as by a far-off voice. Utilitarianism, it is true, gives a motive in self-love which is near, but it is not strong enough to uphold the highest self against the lower. To

the true spirit also utilitarianism must ever seem poor and low, and if it becomes more elevated and humanitarian in idea it loses strength in proportion as it gains breadth. No; men need a power to energize them which is felt to be from the living God, and which comes clothed in love. Morals as a science are of the head, but morals as life and power are of the heart.

duction

into Christ

and con

love.

Read that thought into this introduction and it The introbecomes practical moral philosophy. By-and-by, develops as we gaze upon it and think of its inner spiritual Crucified meaning and force for these Israelites, we see straining in it the germ of the grandest truth of all ages. It is the germ of Christian faith. Christ Crucified, who ransomed the world, the power of God and the wisdom of God, is its full development. In Him the evolution of moral motive power is perfected. "The love of Christ constraineth us, that henceforth we should live no longer unto ourselves, but unto Him who died for us, and rose again."

II.

THE FIRST WORD.

LECT. II.

The signifi

cance of

as the

Divine

name.

THE ONE JEHOVAH.

I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.—EXODUS xx. 2, 3.

THE THE one Jehovah! Read the first words thus, it is the true reading, "I am Jehovah, thy "Jehovah" God," and you at once perceive that here is something more than the doctrine of the Divine unity. The expression is not metaphysical, but historical. God gives Himself a name, and reveals Himself to a nation. He came to man personally, that is historically, in the development of human life.

The great

history is

'Jehovah."

It requires but little thought to perceive that est fact of such a fact must be the greatest of human knowledge. No other discovery can equal this. All other lights "pale their ineffectual fires " before this light of the Almighty Invisible One as it breaks out through the history of Israel. Whatever theory may be held as to the evolution of

existing religions, as to the development of LECT. II. Hinduism and Buddhism, the story of Israel

stands foremost, and remains of supreme interest because of Jehovah.

The idea of God has indeed been the most The

thought

always a

with man

powerful factor in human history. Even without of God revelation man has been haunted by the thought power of Deity. There have been but few Atheists in any century, so few that, as Professor Blackie in a recent work suggests, Atheists may be scientifically considered abnormal developments, mental Few paradoxes, rational monomaniacs, men at war through perversion of reason with their own human instincts.

Atheists.

the natural

man.

What we find apart from revelation every- Polytheism where and in every age is polytheism, or the bent of belief in many gods. In every age there have been faith and worship, but faith including many divinities, worship ranging from the wretched fetish of the savage to the sensuous devotions of the Greek Temple, splendid with artistic beauty and creations of the imagination.

The mystery of

existence, the origin He of theo

It may indeed be taken as an axiom almost that man will worship. If he has no revealed Jehovah, he must have a deity of his own. feels that he is but a part of all things, and all things are but an outcome of Invisible Being. That Being lying at the back of creation dominates

logy.

LECT. II. his imagination and haunts his consci cause indeed it is in himself; himself

terious portion of it. In this fact are the metaphysics as well as the histor Polytheism versal worship. Hence also the worshi gods, that is, the effort of the imag

attempting compass an idea of the Invisible. Beca imperfection of the human mind that is, so to speak, broken into fragments fragment becomes a god. Left to conceive of God, man does so throu or the passions of his heart, or the f conscience.

We need not wonder therefore that multiplied. The tendency indeed been ever to greater multiplication. telligence and more culture only ind power of the tendency in devotional as man developed in the knowledge nomena of nature, and in the feel complexity and mystery of his own ever perceived fresh ideas which m bodied in artistic forms and poet Hence in Athens, the seat of le mistress of philosophy, and the u the world, it came to be a saying, " in Athens to find a god than a m

matter of fact the number of gods