I said that our own soul thus becomes to us more wonderful than all the known universe besides. I might have said more mysterious; so truly _sui generis_ and different from all things not ensouled, as to be inexplicable by human sciences, an enigma to itself, dwelling alone in its own awful isolation. Do but think what _cause_ is--nothing less than originating power; what then must it be in stern and sad reality for a soul to originate a sin! Yet we cannot deny the fact. We confess it every day, not only in our hearts and deeper utterances, but in the commonest though most tremendous of words, the word responsibility. If a man were in no true sense the cause of his own actions, he could never be held responsible either by God or Man. But as long as Justice maintains her seat, each criminal will be so held, so judged, so recompensed. And the only principle under which Justice can justify her judgments is the reality of moral causation. If, then, this law be established, we have proved our point. Just as we recognize a material world by mechanical law--and indeed our knowledge of matter itself is only a knowledge of its laws--so in like manner, and _pari passu_, we recognize a moral world by its distinctive law. We live, therefore, not in one world, but in two: "Man is one world, and hath Another to attend him." The point is of surpassing importance! Upon it turns the whole issue. "Can mechanism--or, as it is vaguely called, materialism--be or be not accepted, with its attendant theories, as the truth; that is, _our_ whole truth, all we have to live by and to die by?" Infinitely important issue! having much to do at this very moment with the happiness and real good of millions amongst our fellow-creatures and fellow-countrymen. It is for this reason we must not spare pains to demonstrate our moral law, for this reason also we will give some passing sentences to show how worthless in argument is the sophism most commonly circulated against it. Men speak of a "law of motives," with complete assurance, and without seeming to be aware of the twofold fallacy underlying it. Writers on the subject furnish statistics of suicide, murder, and the like; and then ask how the freedom of moral cause can be compatible with so visible a law? But what sort of a law is this? Clearly not a law upon which the results are conditioned, as sunrise on the earth's rotation; but a mere generalization, like the laws of average before mentioned. Such a law does not govern the acts, but the acts the law, or, in plain words, they _are_ the law. It is an epitomized result, inferring no more consequence to our free moral causation, than a life assurance infers to the contingency of our individual life or death. The sophism would be readily detected if it were not for that unfortunate word "motive." People forget that a motive is not a power that compels us, but an object which we choose to seek. "Will," we are seriously told, "must be determined by the