3i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



for our guidance as matters of fact, to offer warrant and condonation 

 for the greatest crimes, or to sink to the level of the most palpable 

 absurdities.* 



In this, as in all other theological discussions, it is interesting to 

 note how character colors religious feeling and conduct. The recep- 

 tion into Christ's kingdom has been emphatically described as being 

 born again. A certain likeness of feature among Christians ought, 

 one would think, to result from a common spiritual parentage. But 

 the likeness is not observed. Christian communities embrace some of 

 the loftiest and many of the lowest of mankind. It may be urged that 

 the lofty ones only are truly religious. To this it is to be replied that 

 the others are often as religious as their natures permit them to be. 

 Character is here the overmastering force. That religion should influ- 

 ence life in a high way implies the preexistence of natural dignity. 

 This is the mordant which fixes the religious dye. He who is capable 

 of feeling the finer glow of religion would possess a substratuni avail- 

 able for all the relations of life, even if his religion were taken away. 

 Religion, on the other hand, does not charm away malice, or make 

 good defects of character. I have already spoken of persecution in 

 its meaner f oi'ms. On the lower levels of theological warfare sitch are 

 commonly resorted to. If you reject a dogma on intellectual grounds, 

 it is because there is a screw loose in your morality ; some personal 

 sin besets and blinds you ; the intellect is captive to a corrupt heart. 

 Thus good men have been often calumniated by others who were not 

 good ; thus frequently have the noble become a target for the wicked 

 and the mean. With the advance of public intelligence the day of 

 such assailants is happily drawing to a close. 



These reflections, which connect themselves with reminiscences out- 

 side the Sabbath controversy, have been more immediately prompted 

 by the aspersions cast by certain Sabbatarians upon those who differ 

 from them. Mr. Cox notices and reproves gome of these. According 

 to the Scottish Sabbath Alliance, for example, all who say that the 

 Sabbath was an exclusively Jewish institution, including, be it noted, 

 such men as Jeremy Taylor and Milton, " clearly prove either their 

 dishonesty or ignorance, or inability to comprehend a very plain and 

 simple subject." This becomes real humor when we compare the sjjeak- 

 ers with the persons spoken of. A distinguished English dissenter, who 

 deals in a lustrous but rather cloudy logic, declares that whoever asks 

 demonstration of the divine appointment of the Christian Sabbath "is 



* Melanchthon writes finely thus : " Wherefore our decision is this : that those precepts 

 which learned men have committed to writing, transcribing them from the common reason 

 and common feelings of human nature, are to be accounted as no less divine than those 

 contained in the tables of Moses." (Dugald Stewart's translation.) Hengstenberg quotes 

 from the same reformer as follows : " The law of Moses is not binding upon us, though 

 some things which the law contains are binding, because they coincide with the law of 

 nature." (See Cox, vol. i, p. 389.) The Catechism of the Council of Trent expresses a 

 similar view. There are, then, " data of ethics " over and above the revealed ones. 



