strongest motive, it might yet be contended that the will could intensify any motive it chose, and that thus motives really were only tools in its hands. But this does but postpone the difficulty, not solve it. What is this free-will when it comes to use its tools? It is a something, we shall find, that our minds cannot give harbor to. It is a thing contrary to every analogy of nature. It is a thing which is forever causing, but which is in itself uncaused.

To escape from this difficulty is altogether hopeless. Age after age has tried to do so, but tried in vain. There have been always metaphysical experts ready to engage to make free-will a something intellectually conceivable. But they all either leave the question where they found it, or else they only seem to explain it, by denying covertly the fact that really wants explaining.

Such is free-will when examined by the natural reason a thing that melts away inevitably first to haze, and then to utter nothingness. And for a time we feel convinced that it really is nothing. Let us, however, again retire from it to the common distance, and the phantom we thought exorcised is again back in an instant. There is the sphinx once more, distinct and clear as ever, holding in its hand the scales of good and evil, and demanding a curse or a blessing for every human action. We are once more certain-more certain of this than anything-that we are, as we always

thought we were, free agents, free to choose, and free to refuse; and that in virtue of this freedom, and in virtue of this alone, we are responsible for what we do and are.

Let us consider this point well. Let us consider first how free-will is a moral necessity; next how it is an intellectual impossibility; and lastly how, though it be impossible, we yet, in defiance of intellect, continue, as moral beings, to believe in it. Let us but once realise that we do this, that all mankind universally do this and have done-and the difficulties offered us by theism will no longer stagger us. We shall be prepared for them, prepared not to drive them away, but to endure their presence. If in spite of my reason I can believe that my will is free, in spite of my reason I can believe that God is good. The latter belief is not nearly so hard as the former. The greatest stumbling-block in the moral world lies in the threshold by which to enter it.

Such then are the moral difficulties, properly so called, that beset theism; but there are certain others of a vaguer nature, that we must glance at likewise. It is somewhat hard to know how to classify these; but it will be correct enough to say that whereas those we have just dealt with appeal to the moral intellect, the ones we are to deal with now appeal to the moral imagination. The facts that these depend on, and which are practically new discoveries for the modern world,

are the insignificance of the earth, when compared with the universe, of which it is visibly and demonstrably an integral but insignificant fragment; the enormous period of his existence for which man has had no religious history, and has been, so far as we can tell, not a religious being at all; and the vast majority of the race that are still stagnant and semi-barbarous. Is it possible, we ask, that a God, with so many stars to attend to, should busy himself with this paltry earth, and make it the scene of events more stupendous than the courses of countless systems? Is it possible that of the swarms, vicious and aimless, that breed upon it, each individual-Bushman, › Chinaman, or Negro-is a precious immortal being, with a birthright in infinity and eternity? The effect of these considerations is sometimes overwhelming. Astronomy oppresses us with the gulfs of space; geology with the gulfs of time; history and travel with a babel of vain existence. And here, as in the former case, our perplexities cannot be explained away. We can only meet them by seeing that if they have any power at all, they are all-powerful, and that they will not destroy religion only, but the entire moral conception of man also. Religious belief, and moral belief likewise, involve both of them some vast mystery; and reason can do nothing but focalise, not solve it.

All, then, that I am trying to make evident is

this and this must be sufficient for us-not that theism, with its attendant doctrines, presents us with no difficulties, necessitates no baffling contradictions in terms, and confronts us with no terrible and piteous spectacles, but that all this is not peculiar to theism. It is not the price we pay for rising from morality to religion. It is the price we pay for rising from the natural to the supernatural. Once double the sum of things by adding this second world to it, and it swells to such a size that our reason can no longer encircle it. We are torn this way and that by convictions, each of which is equally necessary, but each of which excludes the others. When we try to grasp them all at once, our mind is like a man tied to wild horses; or like Phaeton in the Sun's chariot, bewildered and powerless over the intractable and the terrible team. We can only recover our strength by a full confession of our weakness. We can only lay hold on the beliefs that we see to be needful, by asking faith to join hands with If we refuse to do this, there is but one alternative. Without faith we can perhaps explain things if we will; but we must first make them not worth explaining. We can only think them out entirely by regarding them as something not worth thinking out at all.

reason.

CHAPTER XI.

THE HUMAN RACE AND REVELATION.

"The scandal of the pious Christian, and the fallacious triumph of the infidel, should cease as soon as they recollect not only by whom, but likewise to whom, the Divine Revelation was given.” -GIBBON.*

AND now let us suppose ourselves convinced,

at least for the sake of argument, that man will always believe in himself as a moral being, and that he will, under no compulsion, let this belief go. Granting this, from what we have just seen, thus much will be plain to us, that theism, should it ever tend to re-assert itself, can have no check to fear at the hands of positive thought. Let us, therefore, suppose further, that such a revival of faith is imminent, and that the enlightened world, with its eyes wide open, is about to turn once again to religious desires and aims. This brings us face to face with the second question, that we have not as yet touched upon: will the religion thus turned to be a natural religion only, or is it possible that some exclusive dogmatism may be recognised as a supernatural re-statement of it?

* It is curious to reflect that what Gibbon said as a sarcasm, is really a serious and profound truth, and leads to conclusions exactly opposite to those drawn from it in that witty and most fascinating chapter from which the above words are quoted.