0 8. Moral developments are not properly matter for controversy, but are natural and personal, substituting what is congruous, desirable, pious, decorous, generous, for strictly logical inference. Bishop Butler supplies us with a remarkable instance in the beginning of the Second Part of his "Analogy." As principles imply applications, and general propositions include particulars, so, he tells us, do certain relations imply correlative duties, and certain objects demand certain acts and feelings. He observes that, even though we were not enjoined to pay divine honours to the Second and Third Persons of the Holy Trinity, what is predicated of Them in Scripture would be an abundant warrant, an indirect command, nay, a logical reason, to do so. "Does

not," he asks, "the duty of religious regards to both these Divine Persons as immediately arise, to the view of reason, out of the very nature of these offices and relations, as the inward good-will and kind intention which we owe to our fellow-creatures arises out of the common relations between us and them?" He proceeds to say that he is speaking of the inward religious regards of reverence, honour, love, trust, gratitude, fear, hope. "In what external manner this inward worship is to be expressed, is a matter of pure revealed command; but the worship, the internal worship itself, to the Son and Holy Ghost, is no further matter of pure revealed command than as the relations they stand in to us are matter of pure revelation; for, the relations being known, the obligations to such internal worship are obligations of reason, arising out of those relations themselves." Here is a development of doctrine into worship: in like manner the doctrine of the beatification of the Saints has been developed into their Cultus; of the OEOTÓKOS, or Mother of God, into hyperdulia; and of the Real Presence into Adoration of the Host.

A development, converse to that which Butler speaks of, must next be mentioned. As objects

demand feelings, so do feelings imply acts and objects. Thus conscience, the existence of which we cannot deny, is a proof of the doctrine of a Moral Governor, which alone gives it a meaning and a scope; that is, the doctrine of a Judgment to come is a development of the phenomenon of conscience. Again, it is plain that passions and affections are in action in our minds before the presence of their proper objects; and their activity would of course be an antecedent argument of extreme cogency in behalf of the real existence of those objects, supposing them unknown. And so again, the social principle, which is innate in us, gives a divine sanction to society and government. And the doctrine of post-baptismal sin and the usage of prayers for the faithful departed have developed into the doctrine of Purgatory. And rites and ceremonies are natural means through which the mind relieves itself of devotional and penitential emotions. And sometimes the cultivation of awe and love towards what is great, high, and unseen, has led a man to the abandonment of his sect for some more Catholic form of Christianity.

Aristotle furnishes us with an instance of this kind of development in his account of the happy man. After showing that his definition of happiness includes in itself the pleasurable, which is the most obvious and popular idea of happiness, he goes on to say that still external goods are necessary to it, about which the definition said nothing; that is, a certain prosperity is by moral fitness, not by logical necessity, attached to the happy man. "For it is impossible," he observes, "or not easy, to practise high virtue without abundant means. Many deeds are done by the instrumentality of friends, wealth and political power; and of some things the absence is a cloud upon happiness, as of noble birth, of hopeful children, and of personal appearance: for a person utterly deformed, or lowborn, or bereaved and childless, cannot quite be

happy and still less if he have very worthless children or friends, or they were good and died."1

This process of development has been well delineated by a living French writer, in his Lectures on European Civilization, who shall be quoted at some length. "If we reduce religion," he says, "to a purely religious sentiment it appears evident that it must and ought to remain a purely personal concern. But I am either strangely mistaken, or this religious sentiment is not the complete expression of the religious nature of man. Religion is, I believe, very different from this, and o much more extended. There are problems in human nature, in human destinies, which cannot be solved in this life, which depend on an order of things unconnected with the visible world, but which unceasingly agitate the human mind with a desire to comprehend them. The solution of these problems is the origin of all religion; her primary object is to discover the creeds and doctrines which contain, or are supposed to contain it.

"Another cause also impels mankind to embrace religion From whence do morals originate? whither do they lead? is this self-existing obligation to do good, an isolated fact, without an author, without an end? does it not conceal, or rather does it not reveal to man, an origin, a destiny, beyond this world? The science of morals, by these spontaneous and inevitable questions, conducts man to the threshold of religion, and displays to him a sphere from whence he has not derived it. Thus the certain and never-failing sources of religion are, on the one hand, the problems of our nature; on the other, the necessity of seeking for morals a sanction, an origin, and an aim. It, therefore, assumes many other forms beside that of a pure sentiment; it appears a union of doctrines, of precepts, of promises. This is what truly constitutes religion;

1 Eth. Nic. i. 8.

this is its fundamental character; it is not merely a form of sensibility, an impulse of the imagination, a variety of poetry.

"When thus brought back to its true elements, to its essential nature, religion appears no longer a purely personal concern, but a powerful and fruitful principle of association. It is considered in the light of a system of belief, a system of dogmas? Truth is not the heritage of any individual, it is absolute and universal; mankind ought to seek and profess it in common. Is it considered with reference to the precepts that are associated with its doctrines? A law which is obligatory on a simple individual, is so on all; it ought to be promulgated, and it is our duty to endeavour to bring all mankind under its dominion. It is the same with respect to the promises that religion makes, in the name of its creeds and precepts; they ought to be diffused; all men should be incited to partake of their benefits. A religious society, therefore, naturally results from the essential elements of religion, and is such a necessary consequence of it that the term which expresses the most energetic social sentiment, the most intense desire to propagate ideas and extend society, is the word proselytism, a term which is especially applied to religious belief, and in fact consecrated to it.

No

"When a religious society has ever been formed, when a certain number of men are united by a common religious creed, are governed by the same religious precepts, and enjoy the same religious hopes, some form of government is necessary. society can endure a week, nay, more, no society can endure a single hour, without a government. The moment, indeed, a society is formed, by the very fact of its formation, it calls forth a government, a government which shall proclaim the common truth which is the bond of the society, and promulgate and maintain the precepts that

this truth ought to produce. The necessity of a superior power, of a form of government, is involved in the fact of the existence of a religious, as it is in that of any other society.

"And not only is a government necessary, but it naturally forms itself. . When events are suffered to follow their natural laws, when force does not interfere, power falls into the hands of the most able, the most worthy, those who are most capable of carrying out the principles on which the society was founded. Is a warlike expedition in agitation? The bravest take the command. Is the object of the association learned research, or a scientific undertaking? The best informed will be the leader.

The inequality of faculties and influence, which is the foundation of power in civil life, has the same effect in a religious society. ... Religion has no sooner arisen in the human mind than a religious society appears; and immediately a religious society is formed, it produces its government."1

9. It remains to allude to what, unless the word were often so vaguely and carelessly used, I should be led to call metaphysical developments; I mean such as are a mere analysis of the idea contemplated, and terminate in its exact and complete delineation. Thus Aristotle draws the character of a magnanimous or of a munificent man; thus Shakspeare might conceive and bring out his Hamlet or Ariel; and thus, in the sacred province of theology, the mind may be employed in developing the solemn > ideas which it has hitherto held implicitly, and without subjecting them to its reflecting and reasoning

powers.

I have already treated of this subject at length in a former work, from which it will be sufficient here to quote some sentences in explanation:

"The mind which is habituated to the thought of God, of Christ, of the Holy Spirit, naturally turns 1 Guizot Europ. Civil. Lect. v. Beckwith's Translation.