288 THE REY. H. J. CLARKE ON 
Picture to yourselves, then, human beings who, by reason 
of original coustitution and circumstances, have not as yet 
experience of any thought or wish which deviates at all from 
their idea of rectitude. They have potentially, of course, a 
human sense of duty. How is it to be evolved, that is, as a 
sense of duty pure and simple, and apart from any such pro- 
vision as would be inconsistent with an equilibrium between 
their yet terrestrial, but unsophisticated, sentiments regarding 
what is right and fitting, and their constitution in respect to 
appetency? Assume it uow to be experienced in the 
discovery, no matter how, that the Almighty Being, on 
whose providence and bounty they depend, has laid upon 
them just one obligation, which affects them in no other way 
than as it presupposes a privation, such as will be but ideal, 
should they feel it, yet cannot be so much as felt, unless mis- 
givings take the place of thankful, unsuspecting trust in 
Him. In their perception of a line which He has drawn, 
invisible, impalpable, and one that may be passed with 
perfect ease, but which to step across is to transgress, they 
have precisely what was requisite that their experiences might 
be enlarged by the addition of the simplest and the purest 
human sense of duty, and that they might so conceive of 
Good and Evil as to see at once what constitutes their 
fundamental difference. 
Now, if they keep the sacred precept, it may be presumed 
that the relation, which by their obedience they maintain 
between the Sovereign Will and theirs, allows free room for 
healthy intellectual growth, and such increase of moral 
strength as piety, if it becomes established in the way of 
habit, presupposes. Elevation, therefore, in the scale of 
being, thus facilitated, is conceivable. But since the Hand 
that made them has begur to lift them up, they needs must 
fall, if, in the exercise of moral freedom, they release them- 
selves from its safe-guarding hold: they then will forfeit 
innocence. ‘This, on the supposition that their proper sense 
of duty had been suffered to continue dormant, would have 
been impossible ; for, unless the deed, in its relation to the 
doer, presupposes that there has been awakened in him an 
ability to take cognizance of its moral character in the 
exercise of conscience, it is as plainly innocent as any of the 
actions of the lower animals. It may cause mischief in one 
way or another, but it cannot render him a sinner. 
Relatively to my argument, this rough sketch of the 
conditions under which we must presume man’s conscience 
to have been evolved I freely leave to be accounted nothing 
