234 ESSA YS SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL. 



other sense, is nothing if it be not authoritative, if 

 it cannot command reverence, and challenge the 

 obedience of the enlightened conscience. Here, 

 then, again we have a strange mark of kinship 

 between Theology and Law. 



(iii.) But we have not even yet touched the most 

 remarkable point of agreement between the two, 

 wherein both are distinguished from the science of 

 external nature. There is another point, which, in 

 our day, is of especial importance. If there is one 

 fact which the science of nature, as we now under- 

 stand it, is powerless to explain, and is sometimes 

 anxious to explain away, it is the fact of PERSON- 

 ALITY ; that which distinguishes the self-conscious 

 moral being from the beasts that perish. Trace 

 out, if you will, the marvellous sympathies of 

 nature ; prove, if you will, that man is a microcosm 

 of creation ; follow, step by step, the minutest 

 changes of embryological structure and develop- 

 ment ; and yet before the citadel of Personality 

 every effort is in vain ; and the besiegers, like the 

 Syrians who came against the Prophet, are blinded 

 and led captive by the very power that they 

 opposed. And Law guards Personality, as nothing 

 but Religion and Morality can. In that highly- 

 developed system of Law under w.hich we live, we 

 have in "Person" and " Property" a true dichotomy. 

 The terms exclude one another. No person can 

 possess a person. The sharp line is drawn, not 



