But there are forms of religious emotion which do not thus undermine the conscience. Far be it from me to under-value the help and strength which many of the bravest of our brethren have drawn from the thought of an unseen helper of men. He who, wearied or stricken in the fight with the powers of darkness, asks himself in a solitary place, 'Is it all for nothing? shall we indeed be overthrown?'--he does find something which may justify that thought. In such a moment of utter sincerity, when a man has bared his own soul before the immensities and the eternities, a presence in which his own poor personality is shriveled into nothingness arises within him, and says, as plainly as words can say, 'I am with thee, and I am greater than thou.' Many names of Gods, of many shapes, have men given to this presence; seeking by names and pictures to know more clearly and to remember more continually the guide and the helper of men. No such comradeship with the Great Companion shall have anything but reverence from me, who have known the divine gentleness of Denison Maurice, the strong and healthy practical instinct of Charles Kingsley, and who now revere with all my heart the teaching of James Martineau. They seem to me, one and all, to be reaching forward with loving anticipation to a clearer vision which is yet to come--tendentesque manus ripæ ulterioris amore. For, after all, such a helper of men, outside of humanity, the truth will not allow us to see. The dim and shadowy outlines of the superhuman deity fade slowly away from before us; and as the mist of his presence floats aside, we perceive with greater and greater clearness the shape of a yet grander and nobler figure--of Him who made all Gods and shall unmake them. From the dim dawn of history, and from the inmost depth of every soul, the face of our father Man looks out upon us with the fire of eternal youth in his eyes, and says, 'Before Jehovah was, I am!' CONTENTS. PAGE I. The Scientific Basis of Morals 1 II. Right and Wrong 7 III. The Ethics of Belief 25 IV. The Ethics of Religion 36 NOTES [1] Sunday Lecture Society, November 7, 1875. [2] Treatise Baba Bathra, 59 b. [3] Compare these passages from Merivale ('Romans under the Empire,' vi.), to whom 'it seems a duty to protest against the common tendency of Christian moralists to dwell only on the dark side of Pagan society, in order to heighten by contrast the blessings of the Gospel':--