the fervid wheels of passion there lies in the Aristotelian philosophy, at least for a certain class of noble minds, a driving power of the most approved efficiency. That driving power is simply the love of perfection. “_Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect_.” To live in the most excellent way, according {185} to the true excellence of man, is the constant ideal of an Aristotelian philosopher. And so long as the lofty consciousness of this ideal bears him up, he requires neither whip nor spur to incite him to continue in a virtuous career. He acts in the true spirit of the poet when he says-- “I would do all that best beseems a man; Who would do less is none.” Or, as Burns has it in the well-known lines,-- “The fear o’ hell’s the hangman’s whip To haud the wretch in order; But whaur you feel your honour grip, Let that aye be your border.” This is not a bad driving power by any means in the world, as things go. True, it may not make a man a missionary, but it will keep him out of the mire, and teach him sooner to die than to do a base action. Certainly it will not confine him to the performance of virtues of mere prudential calculation. So far well. But there is another view which, if we honestly take, we shall find it impossible to acquit the Aristotelian morals of a very serious defect. This defect is the want of the religious element. In saying this I do not mean to assert that God--or rather the gods--are not mentioned from beginning to end of his famous book; they are alluded to in several places, but merely in the form of a passing remark, as a pedestrian with a long day’s journey before him may pick up a primrose from a moist bank, or a fragrant orchis from a dry brae, and fling it away. Now, there is nothing more nobly characteristic of Christianity than this, that piety is identical {186} with morality; that faith and works--not ritual, or ceremonial, or externally imposed works at all, of course, but genuine works of moral fervour and moral firmness--are one; stand to one another, at least, as the root does to the flower, or the fruit of a wholesome plant, of which not the root but the fruit is the valuable part. That this is the only true and philosophical relation of the two great moral potencies no thinker will deny. Or, to take another simile, which will suit equally well: Every arch must have its keystone; and the keystone of every solid doctrine of ethics, as of every close compacted system of speculative philosophy, is God. That there is a great defect here in the Aristotelian ethics is plain. A man might as well write a treatise on the Affections without mention of reverence, as set forth a system of morals without mention of God. As the discipline of a well-ordered family implies the recognition of the father as the great source from which the family flows--as the prime power by which it is regulated--so a treatise on human ethics implies