364 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



think twice before venturing on a repetition of your 

 crime. Observe, finally, the consistency of our conduct. 

 You offend, you say, because you cannot help offending, 

 to the public detriment. We punish, is our reply, be- 

 cause we cannot help punishing, for the public good. 

 Practically, then, as Bishop Butler predicted, we act as 

 the world acted when it supposed the evil deeds of its 

 criminals to be the products of free-will.' * 



'What,' I have heard it argued, 'is the use of 

 preaching about duty, if a man's predetermined posi- 

 tion in the moral world renders him incapable of pro- 

 fiting by advice?' Who knows that he is incapable? 

 The preacher's last word is a factor in the man's conduct, 

 and it may be a most important factor, unlocking moral 

 energies which might otherwise remain imprisoned and 

 unused. If the preacher thoroughly feel that words of 

 enlightenment, courage, and admonition enter into the 

 list of forces employed by Nature herself for man's 

 amelioration, since she gifted man with speech, he will 

 suffer no paralysis to fall upon his tongue. Dung the 

 fig-tree hopefully, and not until its barrenness has been 

 demonstrated beyond a doubt let the sentence go forth, 

 ' Cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground? ' 



I remember when a youth in the town of Halifax, 

 some two-and-thirty years ago, attending a lecture given 

 by a young man to a small but select audience. The 

 aspect of the lecturer was earnest and practical, and 

 his voice soon rivetted attention. He spoke of duty, 

 defining it as a debt owed, and there was a kindling 

 vigour in his words which must have strengthened the 

 sense of duty in the minds of those who heard him. No 

 speculations regarding the freedom of the will could 



* An eminent Church dignitary describes all this, not un- 

 kindly, as 'truculent logic.' I think it worthy of his Grace's 

 graver consideration. 



