RATIONAL LIFE 317 



conduct and character. The demand upon every 

 man is for righteousness : his ultimate destiny, under 

 Divine guidance and favour, as illustrated in the 

 present order, is a perfect righteousness. The religion 

 of Jesus Christ meets the demands of ethical life, and 

 the deepest longings of the soul. Progress is the law 

 of the universe; moral progress the law of human 

 life. Advance is ever the rule, even while the two 

 orders of laws, under which human life acts, are 

 altogether different in nature. Physical law differs 

 from ethical. Thus all men are placed under common 

 obligations, in view of the one grand ideal of a moral 

 life. But when the difference of start is considered 

 when the consequences of heredity are included with 

 in our survey how different must be the history of 

 moral progress on the earth ; how different the judg 

 ments of its varying phases ! The moral life is 

 rationally required to work towards realisation of its 

 own ideal ; but this can be done only in facing con 

 ditions of existence, under which each life-history must 

 be distinct. In the eyes of the Moral Governor of us 

 all, a small advance in the battle against an evil in 

 heritance, seeming to us even more of failure than of 

 advance, may count for more in the sphere of effort, 

 than an intrinsically better activity in the life of one 

 for whom moral progress seems natural and easy, or 

 comes to be so. When our Lord said, It shall be 

 more tolerable for the heathen in the day of judgment, 

 than for you, He implied that future judgment shall 

 be rigidly according to the conditions of each life, with 

 all its difficulties full in view. As the struggle of the 

 battle-field is the key to an army s victorious march ; 

 the turning-point in human life, is the battle for moral 



