of my ability. But Intuitive Morals cannot teach me what are the wants of A. B., or whether I shall best relieve them by giving him alms or by providing him with employment. Experience must teach me which will most effectually benefit him, and then Intuition will teach me that whichever does so it is my duty to pursue. Experience must collect me facts to which Intuitive Science is to be applied, and a large and glorious field, a whole science of itself, is thereby opened to it. In our day there is an immensity for the Experimentalist still to do, both in the collection of facts concerning human want and sin, and in drawing deductions of their most efficacious remedies. But here let him stop! The office of Experience goes no further: its wand must break on the threshold of that Intuition which reveals to us the necessary truths of the Eternal Right. Because Experience has shown us how to obey the moral law, how to put its mandates most effectually into execution, it must not therefore be authorized to question those mandates themselves. In a word, the moment Intuition has proved an action to be Right, Experience must no longer ask whether it be also expedient; whether it be so or not, it is still the RIGHT.”

This discrimination is not always made as it should be, for it involves the very existence of right; and if, because we are ignorant at any time of the best course to be pursued in order to realize in action our consciousness of abstract right, we allow ourselves to be persuaded that ultimate duty is questionable, we confound the whole science of morals, and open the way for utter indifference and neglect of obligation. This we apprehend is constantly done, and even those who should know better lend their countenance to the pernicious doctrine of expediency, which rests as an incubus upon the spirit of reform. The remedy for this error is to be found in such reflections as these:

"We ought never to contemplate the solemn topics of virtue and religion in other than a reverential spirit, and with a remembrance of the presence of God looking on our thoughts. It is not hard to do this: by an act of the mind, readily understood, we raise and retain in the soul the idea, or rather the sense, that He, the Holy One, is at hand, while the intellect simultaneously and uninterruptedly exerts itself to define its intuitions and apply them to its duties. Now, when our ideal of the Divine Holiness is subjectively true, that is to say, when it is the very highest which our minds, at the stage they have arrived at, can apprehend, then is this religious method of studying morals

of invaluable service. If no blasphemous dogmas have deluded the filial instinct of the man, if God be to him the embodiment of all his highest conceptions of goodness, justice, truth, then does the thought of Him light up the soul like the morning sun. Every spot and stain and dusty mote, unperceived before, stands instantly revealed. Conscience starts from her dreamy rest, and bows in penitent worship as the holy light streams upon her eyes, and then the soul sallies forth to its labor of the day with the gladsome chant, 'Thou, God, seest me!"

We have devoted the more space to this second chapter, because of the intrinsic importance of the subject of which it treats, and because we desire to call attention to the fallacies with which men often delude themselves, and the confusion of thought which modifies their interest in the great principles of holy living. The third chapter treats of the proposition "that the moral law can be obeyed"; and in following out this purpose sets before us a pretty clear explication of that somewhat difficult question, the freedom of the human will. Our author is not a predestinarian, nor a fatalist. Such an inference would seem to be legitimate from the specimens we have already given of the style and spirit of the Essay. The sophistries that have perplexed many minds in reference to this point are manfully disposed of; while the limitations of human freedom are also clearly stated, both necessary and contingent, — "righteously, by God through his laws, and by our fellow-creatures claiming their equal rights; and unrighteously, by our fellow-creatures seizing more than their equal rights." Still, the consummation of the moral law eventually finds hope and encouragement in the fact, that "the truth and justice of God are both pledged to the reality of human freedom," and that " we enter on our glorious battle-field, not only with the knowledge that God wills our virtue, and will make his outward providence and his inward inspiration conspire to aid it, but also with the blessed faith that God foresees our virtue, and that sooner or later the victory must be won."

The fourth and concluding chapter of the Theory of Morals indicates "why the moral law should be obeyed," deducing from its very nature, as already explained, the motive of virtue to be "Reverence for the Moral Law as

the Law of the Eternal Right impersonated in the AllRighteous God." This is an important chapter, and essential to the completeness of the subject. For it meets the objection 'sometimes urged against the reality of the intuitions of conscience, that if they were existent, men would need no exhortation to obey their injunctions, — with the fact, that something more than knowledge of Right, even when positive and indisputable, is essential to induce to the practice and expression of it. Its excellence needs to be appreciated, its holiness needs to be revered, and an aspiration after its glorious reality needs to be awakened in the soul. In fact, this is always the great deficiency among men: if they know what is right, they feel no love in their hearts drawing them towards it. They are not attracted by the "beauty of holiness," but reveal an insensibility to its charms, while they exercise a taste and an ambition altogether foreign to an affiance with this spiritual bride.

The second part of this Essay, relating to the Practice of Morals, takes up that portion of the subject which is comprehended in Religious Duty.

"It is designed as a contribution towards the development of Theism as a Religion for the Life, no less than a Philosophy for the Intellect. Hitherto the latter task has necessarily engaged chief attention; but now that Free Thought has sufficiently vindicated itself, it would seem that the time has arrived when Free Feeling also may begin to trace out fresh channels into which a wider and purer faith will henceforth cause it to flow. No pretension can be made in this book to accomplish such a purpose in any way adequately, far less exhaustively. It will be the endless, happy work of better minds, better ages, better worlds than the present, to follow out to its consequences the doctrine of the Absolute Goodness of God, and demonstrate all which that creed demands from us of love and veneration, all it sanctions for us of trust and joy. These pages contain only such simple results of the great truth as the writer yet perceives. At best, they may show a few paces of the path of Right immediately before us, a faint gleam of that paradise ever descried through the strait vista of duty."

In treating of Practical Morals there are three great departments of duty, to be treated separately; and for each of these a canon will be sought, from whence the subordinate propositions of that branch of morals will be deduced.

"As a creature of God, man has Religious Duties, whose canon is, - 'THOU SHALT LOVE THE LORD THY GOD WITH ALL THINE HEART.' As a social being, as the fellow-creature of sentient beings whose happiness he may produce, and of moral beings towards whose virtue he may conduce, man has social duties. Their canon is,·

'THOU SHALT LOVE THY NEIGHBOR AS THYSELF.'

"As a free rational personality, as a being self-legislative of the Eternal Law, bound in his very nature to do the Right, and capable of virtue, i. e. of the Finite Impersonation of Righteousness, man has Personal Duties. Their canon is, 'BE PERFECT, EVEN AS THY FATHER WHO IS IN HEAVEN IS PERFECT.'"

Now no one of these duties can be omitted.

"Ascetics have deemed that all virtue dwells in Religious and Personal Duties. They have consequently attempted to ascend alone into heaven, leaving their brethren unaided below. Utilitarian moralists, on the other hand, have reserved Religious and Social Duties, but omitted Personal Duties, merging Truth and Purity into matters of social convenience. And if their systems were ever logically carried out, the result would be the destruction of the virtue of each in the pursuit of the happiness of all. Secularists, again, retain Personal and Social Duties, rejecting the Religious. Thus all virtues are left acephalous."

Practical Ethics, then, must include the definition of Personal, of Social, and of Religious Duties. And these are sufficiently distinct to admit of their being treated separately.

"In each case," says the author, "I shall begin by endeavoring to prove what is the right sentiment or action, and then show the relative guilt of all offences and faults, measured by their defalcation from the right. Establishing in each case the fundamental affirmative canons, I shall mark all sins simply as greater or less delinquencies from these standards of duty. To obey these canons is right, and all disobedience of them is wrong. Disobedience, however, has two very distinct characters, of which too little notice has been commonly taken. In Social Duty, for instance, it is obvious how different will be the principles and actions of two men who both disobey the law of benevolence, but of whom one is simply indifferent to the welfare of his neighbor, and does him neither harm nor good; and the other hates him, and does him all the hurt in his power. In Personal Duty, likewise, while regardless of the law of perfecting our natures, it is possible either merely to neglect self-improvement, or actually to pollute or destroy ourselves by unchastity or suicide. And in

Religious Duty, between the negative faults of thanklessness and worldly-mindedness, and the positive offences of blasphemy and perjury, there lies an immense variation in the scale of guilt.

"A distinction so radical as this ought to find a prominent place in a practical treatise on Morals; and I shall, therefore, in all cases, adopt an arrangement suitable to its full exhibition."

The plan of the present book is arranged accordingly, after ascertaining the canon of Religious Duty, in the following order:

"Offences, which oppose the Law (sins of commission).

“Faults, which neglect the Law (sins of omission).

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Obligations, whose observance is the fulfilment of the Law (vir

tues)."

Having given the method of argument pursued in this work, it is not essential that we should pursue our analysis any further. The first chapter establishes the canon of Religious Duty upon "the sense of absolute dependence united with the sense of absolute moral allegiance." And then follows a chapter upon Religious Offences, or sins of commission against the canon, divided into eleven sections, which treat successively of Blasphemy, Apostasy, Hypocrisy, Perjury, Sacrilege, Persecution, Atheism, Pantheism, Polytheism, Idolatry, Demonolatry. Chapter third treats of Religious Faults, or sins of omission, namely, Thanklessness, Irreverence, Prayerlessness, Impenitence, Scepticism, Worldliness. Chapter fourth, which concludes the volume, treats of Religious Obligations, or virtues which constitute the fulfilment of the Law, to wit, Thanksgiving, Adoration, Prayer, Repentance, Faith, Self-Consecration.

The successive chapters are well worthy of attentive perusal, though they will excite unequal interest, of course, from the very nature of the subjects they discuss. It is evident enough, throughout the volume, that the author has felt the weight of that religious despotism which has ruled for so long time in ecclesiastical and social relations, in both the Old and the New World. Some of those who read these successive volumes may think undue prominence is given to the exposition and deprecation of offences that are amongst us generally abjured. We believe, however, that the time is