for example, what ostentation, extortion, or parsimony, are, evincing their culpability from their nature. It is evident that the moral rules laid down in Scripture presuppose a knowledge of such distinctions as these. In the comprehensive direction e. g. (Phil. iv. 8) "whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest (oepvà), whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report," the respective characters of truth, honesty, justice, purity, &c. are supposed to be already known. Who is to supply this knowledge if not the moral philosopher? The Scripture pronounces a blessing on meekness; it is for philosophy to inform us what meekness is. The Scripture severely censures all uncharitable judging; it is for philosophy to explain what sort of judging may be so described. The Scripture represents it as the end of our sanctification, that we should live soberly, righteously and godly in the present state; it is for philosophy to discriminate accurately these different excellencies from each other. But again: moral philosophy may render very valuable assistance in the interpretation of Scripture. This service it will supply in some instances by a generalising process, in others by the contrary. It scarcely needs pointing out that the phraseology of Scripture on moral subjects is less philosophical than popular-that it concerns itself more commonly with rules than with principles, descending sometimes even from rules to particular injunctions. To expound these directions safely, it is requisite that we should retrace the order thus pursued, and ascend again to principles. Positive mischief may be done to the interests of morality by too strict an adherence to the letter of a Scripture precept-if the obligation be conceived to lie in a precise act enjoined, rather than in the spirit which would prompt that act. We need not dwell, in illustration of this, on the trite examples which are in such favour with Quaker moralists, principally found in the fifth of Matthew. Let us take one or two less hackneyed instances from the Old Testament. "Thou shalt not muzzle," says the Jewish legislator, "the mouth of the ox which treadeth out the corn." Here we have the authority of the apostle Paul for rising from the particular case of parsimony rebuked to the general evil of niggardliness towards those in our service. "Doth God take care for oxen?" i. e. for oxen only or chiefly; "Or saith he it altogether for our sakes?" i.e. for our sakes also. "For our sakes, no doubt, this is written; that he that plougheth should plough in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope." 1 Cor. ix. 9, 10. "Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk." Exodus, xxiii. 19. What is the precise malpractice here denounced? We are told by some that there is an allusion to a superstitious usage among the heathen of sprinkling the productions of their fields with such a decoction, with a view to their greater fertility. We have never, however, ourselves been able to meet with unexceptionable evidence of the existence of such a usage, and it appears to us far more natural as well as philosophical to consider the prohibition as an appeal to ordinary sentiments of humanity. The dying distress of the king of birds, on finding himself transfixed by an arrow plumed by himself, as pourtrayed by one of our poets, will be fresh in the recollection of most of our readers: "Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel He nursed the pinion which impelled the steel: The Jewish lawgiver, it appears to us, in the above precept, is deprecating the infliction of a similar barbarity. To make a mother contribute to the immolation of her child may be described as a rioting in slaughter; as a wanton addition of outrage to butchery. It is, as expressed by an old expositor, to make that a condiment of the dead which had been the nutriment of the living. Of course, to two unconscious animals such an inversion of proprieties could be of no consequence; but we are to consider its influence on the conscious epicure. The unnatural association remarked on could scarcely fail, it may be assumed, to strike his mind; as far as it did so, its effect must certainly be to harden the feelings. We regard the precept accordingly as an indirect prescription of the duty of educating the feelings. If we are right, we cannot desire a better example of the relation of philosophy to Scripture. From what is eccentric in the letter of Scripture morality it will extract that which is of highest import in the spirit, and turn the ridicule of the witling on himself. Opposed to the practice of generalisation of particular truths in morals, is that of deducing particular truths from more general onesof carrying out a comprehensive maxim into its minuter applications. For some of these applications the Scripture will be dependent on the aid of moral philosophy. Perhaps we might say mental; for the Scripture often presupposes a knowledge both of our mental nature in its general outlines, and of its modifications by age, sex, or circumstances. To whom are we to look for these different points of information but to the attentive observer of this nature. The Scripture shall prescribe, say, the attainment of a given end. It is for the scientific moralist to name the means conducive to that end. If parents are not to discourage their children (Coloss. iii. 21), he is to point out the methods likely to discourage them. If masters are to accord what is equitable to their servants (iv. 1), he is to show what is equitable. If we are sometimes to be reserved and sometimes to be open, sometimes to be serious and sometimes to be sportive, sometimes to be firm and sometimes to be flexible (Eccl. iii.), he must determine the proper occasion for each of these kinds of conduct. There are numberless precepts, and important precepts, too, in Scripture, the details and minor applications of which it is left for the moralist to supply. Under his direction it is that the scattered rays shed in different places of Scripture on any point of duty must be made to converge to one centre, that any and every principle there laid down must be traced out in its various ramifications. By the combined use of the two processes which we have distinguished, the moral philosopher will often succeed in harmonising the apparent discrepancies of Scripture, and removing its difficulties. One of the ancient moralists has not unaptly remarked of virtue, although erring strangely in giving it as its definition, that it is a mean between two extremes. The exact determination of this mean is often one of the most perplexing problems in ethics. What is the latitude, for example, which may be taken in the suppression of the truth from others? No one will contend, surely, that it is incumbent on us to volunteer always the information we may be in possession of. That we are even to abstain from giving positively wrong impressions, is more easily said than demonstrated. Somewhere in Jeremiah the expression occurs (as an address to the Almighty), "Thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived." This expression might fairly have been put into the mouth of the unfortunate prophet of Bethel. (1 Kings, xiii.) Our Saviour himself did not feel restrained from resort to a sort of amphibolia. (See John ii. 19; Luke xxiv. 28.) The apostle (2 Cor. xii. 16) on one occasion even takes a certain credit to himself for dexterity in artifice. "Being crafty, I caught you with guile." Where shall the line be drawn which will divide the innocent species of such guile from the criminal? The only satisfactory solution, we apprehend, of this knot is that which resolves the obligation of veracity into the higher obligation of justice. Truth is but a branch of right. Paley was far from happy, therefore, in selecting the obligation of "keeping our word," to transcribe the homely phrase which he uses, as the type of self-evident duty. Such promises and vows as those of Herod and Jephthah (Matt. xiv. 7; Judges, xi. 30, 31), are more honoured surely in the "breach than in the observance.' As much as this, accordingly, is admitted by Paley when he comes to his chapter on "promises." We have not yet spoken of the use of moral science in authenticating Scripture. This is too important to be overlooked. "No doubt,” says the essayist quoted at the commencement of our paper, "innumerable reasonings may be advanced on moral subjects which shall be true on a foundation of their own, equally in the presence of the evangelical system and in its absence." In other words, moral philo sophy has its axioms as well as Scripture. It is possible the rigid theologian may demur to this, denying the competency of unaided reason to investigate any sound moral principles; with as little advantage, however, we fear, to the honour of the divine as of the human nature. We have the proof of the existence of such principles in the moral treatises which have come down to us from times unblessed with an oral revelation. We have the proof of their necessity in the fact of the universal accountability of men, whether so blessed or otherwise. Without means of determining right and wrong, how could any incur blame, either for neglecting the one or pursuing the other? Guilt can only attach to violation of known law; if there be no external law then, anywhere, to guide the conduct, there must be the substitute of an internal. The Author of Revelation, be it remembered, is also the Author of our mental nature; it is as competent to him to write his will on fleshly tables of the heart as on tables of stone. We have his authority for saying that he has done so. "When the Gentiles," says the apostle (Rom. ii. 14), "who have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these having not the law are a law unto themselves, who show the work of the law written on their hearts." The expositors of this interior law-the sources, in other words, of the information accessible on moral subjects—may be stated to be two, Conscience and Reason-the pair, perhaps, indicated by the apostle in his remark (Titus i. 16), "Whose mind and conscience," he says, "is defiled." Notwithstanding the order in which these parts of our nature are placed by the apostle, little hesitation will be felt, we apprehend, in assigning the priority, in point of importance, to the latter. The office of conscience may be described to be introspective-that of reason prospective. It is for conscience to announce principles; it is for reason to develope them. Conscience is the sole authority to which appeal can be safely made; but reason is useful in preparing cases for such authority, and in afterwards working out its decisions. The relation of conscience to conduct has been well expressed by the familiar metaphors of a moral sense and a moral instinct; the latter expressing the promptitude of its decisions, the former their independence of voluntary effort. We cannot refrain from quoting, as strikingly applicable to this portion of our argument, the lines of the celebrated essayist on Man, distinguishing between instinct and reason :— "Say, where full instinct is the unerring guide, Cares not for service, or but serves when pressed: Stays till we call, nor then is always near, But honest instinct comes a volunteer, Sure by quick nature happily to gain What heavier reason labours at in vain. This too serves always: reason never long, One must go right, the other may go wrong- Considerable allowance must, of course, be made in these lines for the exaggeration of what is called poetic licence, and we would be far from saying, in applying them to our moral instincts, that these must be invariably right: the celerity of action, however, noticed in them, is a point worth recalling the attention to. It is a common adage, that in matters of conscience, first thoughts are best; the ingenuity of reason is as often, perhaps, seen in devising excuses for neglect of duty, as in detecting them. Place any virtue or vice whatever in intelligible contact with the conscience, and forthwith a sentiment of approbation or disapprobation arises. "The ear trieth words," says the sacred writer, "as the mouth tasteth meat." (Job xxxiv. 3). We may add, with equal truth, the conscience trieth actions. Not more visible are the impulses of attraction or repulsion on the approach of different substances in the excited electrical ball, than are the analogous states of consciousness after the commission of different actions. These feelings, it may be said, are, after all, matters of private sentiment, and without power therefore to bind the public will; they can authorise, it is said, no one's conduct but our own; but consciences are fashioned after one model, and face does not answer to face more exactly than does one mind, in this respect, to another. The approbation which we feel, accordingly, in any instance, we can express and solidify into a maxim; it is the collective body of such maxims which constitutes what we term moral philosophy. By the advocates of expediency, we are aware, the uniformity of these maxims has been called in question, and a formidable list of apparent discrepancies cited from the recorded morals of different nations. But are not these discrepancies as perplexing and ominous to the one theory as to the other? As a foundation of morals, expediency has, of course, its primary axioms not less than instinctive consciousness. Its leading lessons are supposed to be obvious and intelligible to all. Whence, then, we may retort the question, the anomalies and eccentricities which the utilitarian notices? These moral blots on the human history are as much deviations from the real law of the "useful" as of the "right." It is equally a problem to the utilitarian to account for them. The difficulty, on his showing, is transferred to the intellectual part of our nature from the moral; but it remains, and must remain, equally a difficulty. It will readily appear, we think, on reflection, that the irregularities in question are greatly exaggerated, and that very serious fallacies are involved in the whole reasoning. The first enormous fallacy is that of expounding the opinions, whether of individuals or communities, by their practices, and arguing from the one to the other. "Good my brother," says Othello, "Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, The contrariety here alleged between principles and practice is not more common to pastors than to their flocks. Except a few in the last extreme of depravity, there are none who would not exclaim against the injustice of inferring the one from the other. Paley notices, as proving a want of uniformity in the moral sentiments of the human family, the prevalence of infanticide in the ancient world. This practice, doubtless, was most unnatural, and, to a superficial eye, might appear to indicate the occasional absence of the parental instincts; but let us pause before we draw this inference. These instincts have probably, in the majority of cases, been forcibly overborne. We all know the tyrant power of fashion and custom. From the defer |