142 REV. PREBENDARY WACE, D.D., ON ETHICS AND RELIGION. 
obligations towards that being which He undertakes. There 
are obligations which that being owes to the Divine Creator. 
I think, therefore, the sense in which the whole moral law 
and the Ten Commandments may be regarded is embodied 
in every nature—either in the nature of relationship to our 
Creator, or in the nature of our relationship to each other. 
When the Creator creates more than one being He establishes 
certain relationships between those two or more beings as the 
case may be, and therefore there are reciprocal duties and 
obligations resting on them. I should like also to recall 
the fact that it is impossible for us to go back to any period 
in human history where the moral law has not been sustained 
by religion and religious beliefs. Thousands of years before 
the giving of the moral law on Sinai ail the principles of those 
Ten Commandments were known. It is very important, therefore, 
tu bear in mind that there is no way of discovering a period 
in human history when morality and religion were absolutely 
separated. I understand that one of the objects of the Ethical 
Society is to discover some separation. It behoves all who are con- 
cerned in the future of our own country, as well as religious beliefs, 
to insist, with all the power we possess, on the absolute futility 
of maintaining anything like an efficient system of morals 
divorced from religion, and especially the highest religion 
known to man—the religion of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
Mr. Martin L, Rovuse.—I was much struck with the closing 
illustration given by Dr. Wace in his paper that slavery as well 
as polygamy and the ill-treatment of women flourished so under 
Mahommedanism and does not under Christianity. 
I don’t know whether it has ever struck you that it is only in 
Christian states that practically free governments have existed 
and Christianity, though after many years of struggle (perhaps 
not working up to its light), finally abolished slavery. 
In regard to polygamy, though it was common in the days of 
old, yet the teaching of even the Old Testament is against it, as 
shown by the sad example of the ruin of Solomon. 
Again, where is it, outside Christianity, that we get the con- 
demnation of suicide P We have certainly the most enlightened 
people on this side of the world, who show a tremendous aptitude 
for {adopting all forms of Western civilization, and until lately it 
was a most common practice amongst them for a man, who had 
