84 ASSAYS SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL. 



among the latter we find the great names of 

 Professor T. H. Green and Dr. Martineau. 



Of course, we do not mean to assert that, with 

 these writers, their ethical system is a mere de- 

 pendance of their theology, or that their theology 

 is that of the Catholic Church. It is their great- 

 ness that they have vindicated for moral science 

 its rightful basis in human life, even when that life 

 is lived apart from the revelation of Jesus Christ ; 

 and have nevertheless seen that its full explanation 

 and justification lies in that which is superhuman. 



It is their weakness, if we may say so, that their 

 implied theology, the doctrine of an eternal Con- 

 sciousness in the one case, and of a God Who is 

 personal and moral, and yet an undifferentiated 

 Unit in the other, involves intellectual difficulties 

 greater far than those which beset the doctrine of 

 the Trinity. Yet, for all this, the present genera- 

 tion will owe it to Professor Green and Dr. Marti- 

 neau that moral philosophy has been raised to a 

 position, in which it awaits its transformation, and, 

 at the same time, its true development, in the light 

 of the Incarnation. 



In the main controversies of morals, then, 

 Christianity claims and welcomes the work of such 

 men. John Stuart Mill, no doubt, by a noble 

 inconsistency did much to undermine the founda- 

 tions on which his own theory rested. But it still 

 remained for men like Professor Green and Dr. 



