The difference between all human doctrines and this is as between a marble statue and a quick thing. The statue may be better, and it may be of better material; it may be of ivory, of marble, and amongst marbles known to the ancient sculptors of several different kinds the most prized; of silver gilt, of hollow gold, of massy gold, and in all degrees of skill; but still one condition applies to all--whatever the material, whoever the artist, the statue is inanimate, the breath of life is not within its nostrils. Motion, spontaneity, action and antagonist action, the subtle watch-work of the brain, the mighty laboratory of the heart, vision, sensibility, self-propagated warmth, pleasure, hope, memory, thought, liberty--not one of these divine gifts does it possess. It is cold, icy, senseless, dull, inert matter. Let Phidias have formed the statue, it is no better. Let the purest gold be its material, it is no worthier than the meanest model in clay to the valuation of the philosopher. And here, as in so many cases, the great philosopher meets with the labouring man; both meet with the little innocent child. All have the same undervaluation of the statue. And if any man values it preposterously, it will be neither a great philosopher, nor a labouring man with horny fists, nor a little innocent and natural child. It will be some crazy simpleton, who dignifies himself as a man of taste, as _elegans formarum spectator_, as one having a judicious eye for the distinctions of form. But now, suddenly, let one of the meanest of these statues begin to stir and shiver with the mystery of life, let it be announced that something 'quick' is in the form, let the creeping of life, the suffusion of sensibility, the awful sense of responsibility and accountability ripen themselves, what a shock--what a panic! What an interest--how profound--would diffuse itself in every channel. Such is the ethics of God as contrasted with the ethics of Greek philosophers. The only great thing ever done by Greece or by Greek philosophers was the ethics. Yet, after all, these were but integrations of the natural ethics implanted in each man's heart. Integrations they were, but rearrangements--redevelopments from some common source. It is remarkable that the Scriptures, valuing clearness and fencing against misunderstandings above all things, never suspend--there is no [Greek: epoche] in the scriptural style of the early books. And, therefore, when I first came to a text, 'If when,' I was thunderstruck, and I found that this belongs to the more cultivated age of Hebrew literature.