ON HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY. 45 
that we are responsible for our actions, the most momentous 
question is what is the nature of that responsibility ? If we are 
to be judged hereafter, what is the standard by which we are to 
be judged? Even in respect of that point there is, I consider, a 
deeper agreement in human nature than is sometimes supposed. 
The general principle, ‘‘ Do as you would be done by,” is one on 
which all the nations of the world are agreed, even in countries 
where paganism is not exterminated. You may take it for 
certain that in any nation of the world a man will expect you to 
treat him as you would expect him to treat you, and if that 
principle were worked out it would no doubt carry us very far 
through the whole range of morals. I have heard it said by an 
experienced missionary in respect to nations in which the greatest 
vice prevails, that, nevertheless, when the principle of the 
Christian moral law is stated to them, it has cordially commended 
itself to their conscience, 7.e., they felt that the principles of 
Christian moral law did correspond with what were the true 
relations in which they ought to exist towards one another; in 
other words, that Christianity is the re-establishment of the true 
relations of man to man, as well of man to God. Certainly, it 
would seem that nothing is more strikingly characteristic of our 
Lord’s teaching than the way in which His parables appeal to what 
I may call the unsophisticated instincts of the human heart as the 
basis of the principles He lays down. He teaches men what is their 
duty towards each other and to God by appealing to the true and 
deeper instincts of human nature; but at the same time, when 
human nature once gets corrupted by false religion, evil habits, 
and vice, nothing is more certain than that it has no power to 
recover itself, and that man needed, therefore, a superior influence 
to reveal once more the true principles of action, and to 
enforce those principles by revealing the ultimate authority to 
which we are responsible. That is what the Christian religion 
did—it stated again what was the rule by which God intended 
man to be governed, and it also stated simultaneously, with 
equal earnestness, what was the tribunal by which this rule 
would be enforced. For practical purposes therefore, Lord 
Grimthorpe’s contention in the latter part of his paper would 
seem to be unanswerable—that practical moral responsibility in 
corrupted human nature is based on religion—it is a revealed 
responsibility. Gur Lord came forward as the Legislator for 
