27 



Neither these duties nor those motives coald possibly have 

 place in the morality of an unbeliever. In these respects, 

 therefore, morality must be a loser by the extinction of belief 

 in God, unless indeed it could be shown that duty to God 

 forms no part of it, and that love to God and unwillingness to 

 incur His displeasure have no influence on those who believe 

 in Him. To prove that duty to God forms no part of morality, 

 would require that it should be first proved that there is no 

 God in the believer^s sense of the word; and this, I venture to 

 say, never has been, or can be, done. That the love and fear 

 of God have little or no influence on those who acknowledge 

 Him, Miss Bevington attempts to show, but in my mind she 

 entirely fails to do so. She brings forward a number of 

 motives by which the generality of mankind are influenced as 

 much, or more, than they are by religion ; and asserts that 

 " a man who is capable of making difficult exertion, restraining 

 a furious passion, or patiently enduring a painful experience, 

 for the sake of a loved and ideal God, or a vague and distant 

 heavenly reward, is equally capable of doing so for the sake 

 of a fellow creature, or for the reward he receives through the 

 exertion of his sympathetic afiections.''' This is quite true, 

 but no argument. The man who can endure pain and restrain 

 a furious passion for the sake of a loved God and a heavenly 

 reward (I omit Miss B.^s disparaging epithets, as not being to 

 the purpose, and put and instead of or before '' a heavenly 

 reward, ■'■' because Christianity holds out both motives) is, 

 according to Christian belief, under the influence of Divine 

 grace, which will certainly prove no hindrance to the exercise 

 of sympathy and benevolence towards his fellow creatures, but 

 rather increase it. Thus religion aids morality by supplying 

 additional motives and good dispositions. I do not say it 

 creates morality. I have already stated my belief that morality 

 would exist if there were no religion, though it would stand a 

 much worse chance of being practised. But the question is not 

 between religious motives alone and ordinary motives alone. It 

 is between ordinary motives alone and ordinary motives 'plus 

 religious motives. It is, therefore, only a source of confusion 

 and fallacy to discuss the question whether religious or ordinary 

 motives are the more efficacious. With the generality of 

 mankind, it is too true that the visible affects them more than 

 the invisible — the things seen, which are temporal, more than 

 the things unseen, which are eternal. But our position is, 

 that whether this be so or no, religion is calculated to come to 

 the aid of morality by supplying motives and principles which 

 morality alone does not supply. If morality rests on motives 

 connected with what is visible, religion does not discard these, 



