128 REV. PREBENDARY WACE, D.D., ON ETHICS AND RELIGION. 
taken, he started him forward on the road ‘ut their feet. In 
the same way, human nature, in pursuing the happiness 
which it is its instinct to seek, has always been exposed to 
the danger of taking a wrong road. For the most part, 
lookmg at the world at large, it has taken roads which, 
according to our deepest convictions—according to the 
convictions, for instance, represented by these Ethical 
Societies—have led it inte customs and rules of life which 
are fatal to its true welfare. Every man at the outset of 
life is exposed to a similar peril, and the passions often 
create illusions by which men and women are exposed to the 
greatest dangers. Alike at the outset of the human race in 
the path of civilization, and in the ever fresh experience of 
individuals, an authoritative warning against certain courses 
of action is indispensable to moral security. How much our 
English morality owes to that reiteration, which is peculiar 
to our public worship, Sunday by Sunday, in every village 
in the country, of certain “ Thou shalt nots,” is perhaps far 
beyond our appreciation. But their virtue lies, in the main, 
in their authority. Once begin to speculate about one or two 
of them, and human nature is soon entangled in a dangerous 
labyrinth. But let those roads be regarded as authoritatively 
barred, and its speculation and its experience may range 
freely over the vast garden of pleasure and knowledge 
opened before it. In other words, morality cannot, for 
practical purposes, be left to rest on scientific experience. 
Human beings had to act, and still have to act, before the 
experience can be gained. Few among us will doubt that 
the experience of the Christian centuries has practically 
demonstrated the supreme excellence and necessity of the 
Christian laws of marriage and family life. But the demons- 
tration has only been rendered possible by action having 
been taken in accordance with them, before they were 
demonstrated, in obedience to an authority believed to be 
divine. When our Lord said in reference to the existing 
marniage laws of the Jews, “ From the beginning it was not 
so,” He seems to imply that human nature, or at least that 
portion of it which was under a revealed dispensation, 
started under a similarly authoritative law, from which, how- 
ever, it broke away. Similarly, it is too familiar to us that 
individuals are continually subject to the temptation of 
making their own experience for themselves. If they do so, 
it’ is often at a grievous, sometimes at a fatal, cost, and it 
is thus essential, in practice, to the welfare of individuals 
