REV. PREBENDARY WACE, D.D., ON ETHICS AND RELIGION. 127 
instincts on the subject is necessarily ineffectual, for he has 
a rooted conviction that his own system is most in harmony 
with those instincts. It may well be doubted whether, if 
you have no other argument to press upon him, than that it 
1s worth his while to make the experiment of a new system, 
you have any right to disturb his allegiance to his existing 
social order. If, however, you can press upon him an 
authoritative command and revelation, you are then in a 
justifiable position, and you are offering him an adequate 
guarantee that he will be right in deserting the law of his 
race, and of his ancestors. Ks a matter of ee nothing less 
than that conviction established the Christian law on the 
subject, and nothing less can be expected to maintain it, In 
conflict with the passions of human nature. There are some 
moral laws, such as the golden rule, on which, as Hooker 
says, all nations of the mond are agreed. But the true law 
of the relation of the sexes is not one of them. Take the 
world as a whole, and it does not prevail except under the 
authority of the Christian revelation. By that authoritative 
revelation it was established, and on that law its effective 
force must always to a great extent depend. 
We may observe that on this vital subject—a subject of 
the most intimate importance to the weltare of human 
nature—we find ourselves exactly in the position im which 
human nature is depicted in the earliest of our sacred books. 
Human nature is laid under a certain prohibition, by an 
authoritative declaration, and is left to develop its life and 
its capacities with perfect freedom, subject only to that 
restrictiou. “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest 
freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and 
evil, thou shalt not eat of it.” It has often been objected 
against such a command, and against the form of the Ten 
Commandments, that they are of a negative and restrictive 
character; but in point of fact this negative form is really 
the best fitted to eive human nature as much freedom of 
action as possible. It may be illustrated by an adventure 
which befel a friend of mine in Ireland. He alighted at a 
country railway station, and asked the way to a friend’s 
house. The porter indicated to him a _ Mill in the 
distance, with a road on its left side, and asked, “ Do 
you see that road? Well,” he said, “you are not to go 
that way.” Then he pointed out another road, saying, 
«And you are not to go that way,” and having thus 
barred several wrong directions which my friend mght have 
