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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



union against the old. What was it, as I asked be- 

 fore, which stimulated Luther to his gigantic en- 

 terprise ? Not the doubtful guess that buried 

 generations had transmitted to him the glimpse 

 of a reform which would transfigure society, but 

 the belief that he could honestly use the language 

 of that psalm that he so much delighted to ap- 

 propriate to himself : " They came about me like 

 bees, and are extinct even as the fire among the 

 thorns, for in the name of the Lord I will destroy 

 them." Whether the belief in " our Father 

 Man " and in a tentative Providence which does 

 not foresee, but only accommodates the individual 

 to his " environment," as the only guides of our 

 moral life, be wild or sober, this, I think, is clear, 

 that it does not provide the martyr or the re- 

 former with the stimulating power of a faith ; 

 that it can give no confidence like that in an in- 

 spiration of far wider grasp and far deeper pur- 

 pose than any which the reformer himself com- 

 mands ; that it leaves him a mere pioneer amid 

 dangers and difficulties to which it may turn out 

 that both he and his race are quite unequal, in- 

 stead of a humble follower obeying the beckon- 

 ing of one who holds both past and future in his 

 hand. 



And now as to my second point — that the 

 very element which gives so beneficial a charac- 

 ter to the belief that conscience is the inspiration 

 of God — the very element which makes it a use- 

 ful and practically stimulating belief, and not, 

 as Prof. Clifford calls it, a mere source of " re- 

 fined and elevated pleasure " — is also a note of 

 its truth. I hold this to be so because the very 

 experience which produces the trust is an experi- 

 ence of life, and of life morally higher than one's 

 self. Surely, if we are competent, as we are, to 

 say when our friends and our favorite books 

 tempt us, and when they raise us above tempta- 

 tion, we are also competent to say when thoughts 

 that strike with a living power upon the heart 

 come from a higher and when they come from a 

 lower source than that of our own habitual prin- 

 ciples of action — when they come with promise 

 and command, and when they come with dis- 

 cordant sneers, discouragement, and enervation. 

 When we grasp dimly at a great moral princi- 

 ple which is full, to use Prof. Tyndall's language, 

 of " the promise and potency " of all forms of 

 life — when the more we consider it, the less we 

 see where it is leading us, and yet only feel the 

 more confidence in it on that account — when we 

 recognize a clew and a guide without recognizing 

 where that clew and that guide are pointing to — 

 when we know that it is our duty to defy the 



world in the name of a principle of which we 

 cannot gauge the full meaning, or measure even 

 the immediate effects (and this is, as I maintain, 

 the true phenomenon visible in all great moral, 

 as in all great intellectual, origination) — then it 

 does seem to me to be a sober and wholesome 

 conviction that that which we do not know, there 

 is one who puts the clew into our hands, who 

 does know ; that what we cannot foresee, there 

 is one who does foresee ; that we are grasping 

 the hand of a Power which knows the way before 

 as well as behind ; that we are following the 

 glimmer of a ray which will lead us on to the day- 

 spring from which it descended. I cannot but 

 believe that we have as secure a faculty to dis- 

 criminate the superiority of the life in which a 

 moral impression originates as we have to dis- 

 criminate its Tightness itself — that it is one and 

 the same act of discrimination which says, " This 

 is obligatory," and which says, " This is instinct 

 with divine life and promise." To suppose that 

 a dead ancestry are flashing through us these 

 commands which at once repudiate their prin- 

 ciples and nerve us against the wrath of their 

 descendants, seems to me, I confess, a degrading 

 superstition. If " we boast to be better than our 

 fathers," it must be some one better than our 

 fathers who is giving us our watchword. This is 

 why I hold that to lose the faith in God would be 

 to lose a great inheritance of moral order and 

 moral progress, and also to lose at the same mo- 

 ment a truth in comparison with which all other 

 truths are as dim and isolated sparks beside a 

 pillar of fire that can guide us through a wilder- 

 ness that we have never even explored. 



Sir JAMES STEPHEN.— The paper which 

 began this discussion was entitled " The In- 

 fluence upon Morality of a Decline in Religious 

 Belief." The Dean of St. Paul's remarks : " It 

 seems to me difficult to discuss this question till 

 it is settled, at least generally, what morality is 

 influenced, and what religious belief is declining." 

 The Duke of Argyll observes that these papers 

 " deal with a question very abstract and ill- 

 defined." Dr. Ward says that " the wording of 

 our question is unfortunately ambiguous, and I 

 think that this fact has made the discussion in 

 several respects less pointed and less otherwise 

 interesting than it might have been." 



To these criticisms I reply that the title of 

 my paper contains no question at all, and was 

 not intended to do so. It is simply an indication, 

 in the most general terms, of the subject to which 

 the paper of which it is the title relates. Any 

 one who will take the trouble to read the paper 



