scheme of ethics, we shall find, as in other instances, that the peculiar character of the ethical fruit depends on the root of religion by which the plant is nourished, and the theological soil in which it was planted. For surely it requires very little thought to perceive that the root of all that surpassing love of the human brotherhood lies in the well-known opening words of the most catholic of prayers--“_Our_ FATHER _which art in Heaven;_” the aspect also of sin as a contumacy and a rebellion, and a guilt drawing down a curse, necessarily led to a more aggressive philanthropy, with the view {223} of achieving deliverance from that curse; but, above all, the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and the terrible consequences necessarily involved in the idea of an eternal banishment from the sunshine of the Divine presence, has created an amount of social benevolence and missionary zeal which under any less potent stimulus would have been impossible. The miseries of the more neglected and outcast part of humanity present an entirely different aspect to the calm Epicurean and to the zealous Christian. To the Christian the soul of the meanest savage and of the most degraded criminal is still an immortal soul. As when a conflagration bursts out in a high turret, where a little child is sleeping within the near enswathment of the flames, some adventurous fireman boldly climbs the ladder, and rushing through the suffocating smoke, snatches the little innocent from the embrace of destruction; so the Christian apostle flings himself into the eager host of idolatrous worshippers, and rejoices with exceeding joy when he saves if it were but one poor soul from the jaws of the destroying Siva to whom he was sold. But, as men’s actions are the offspring of their convictions, the Epicurean will find no spur strong enough to shake him out of his easy-chair at such a spectacle of human degradation. Let the poor sinner be worshipping Siva on the banks of the Ganges, or committing slow suicide by what, in the language of the Celtic islands, is strangely called the water of life,[223.1] your easy sensuous philosopher needs not vex himself about the matter. _Poor idiot! poor sot! poor devil! with his little feeble flame of smoky light which he calls life, let him flicker on another moment, or let him be_ {224} _snuffed out, it matters not; another bubble has burst on the surface of the waters, and the mighty ocean of cosmic vitality flows on as full and as free and as fathomless as before!_