OF THE ANIMATED CREATION. 269 



give to our own conscientiousness and benevolence. On the 

 other hand, when we endeavour to promote the efforts of our 

 fellow-creatures to attain happiness, we produce a re-action 

 of the contrary kind, the tendency of which is towards our 

 own benefit. The one course of action tends to the injury, 

 the other to the benefit of ourselves and others. By the one 

 course, the general design of the Creator towards his creatures 

 is thwarted ; by the other, it is favoured. And thus we can 

 readily see the most substantial grounds for regarding all 

 moral emotions and doings as divine in their nature, and as a 

 means of rising to and communing with God. Obedience is 

 not selfishness, which it would otherwise be it is worship. 

 The merest barbarians have a glimmering sense of this 

 philosophy, and it continually shines out more and more 

 clearly as men advance in intelligence. Nor are individuals 

 alone concerned here. The same rule applies as between one 

 great body or class of men and another, and also between 

 nations. Thus, if one set of men keep others in the condition 

 of slaves this being a gross injustice to the subjected party, 

 the mental manifestations of that party to the masters will be 

 such as to mar the comfort of their lives ; the minds of the 

 masters themselves will be degraded by the association with 

 beings so degraded ; and thus, with some immediate or appa- 

 rent benefit from keeping slaves, there will be in a far greater 

 degree an experience of evil. So also, if one portion of a 

 nation, engaged in a particular department of industry, grasp 

 at some advantages injurious to the other sections of the 

 people, the first effect will be an injury to those other portions 

 of the nation, and the second a re-active injury to the 

 injurers, making their guilt their punishment. And so when 

 one nation commits an aggression upon the property or rights 

 of another, or even pursues towards it a sordid or ungracious 

 policy, the effects are sure to be redoubled evil from the 

 offended party. All of these things are under laws which 

 make the effects, on a large range, absolutely certain ; and an 

 individual, a party, a people, can no more act unjustly with 

 safety, than I could with safety place my leg in the track of a 

 coming wain, or attempt to fast thirty days. We have been 



