222 THE VERY REV. H. WAGE, D.D., ON AUTHORITY. 



of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Not merely the Church, 

 but all supernatural sanctions whatever, are repudiated by the 

 French Government, and the spectacle offered by political and 

 social life in that country seems simply that of a struggle for 

 physical supremacy between various classes and interests and 

 the Government of the hour. Italy presents a too similar 

 spectacle, partly in spite of, and partly because of, the 

 existence ■ within it of a Church which claims absolute 

 authority over all spheres of human life and thought. Amidst 

 such confusions it would seem worth while to remind ourselves 

 of what authority means — what is its source, and by what 

 methods may it best be exercised. 



If we look for the source of our idea of authority, we shall, 

 I think, find it in the experience of our conscience. The sense 

 of moral obligation, that we ought to do certain things, 

 independently of the question what those things are, is the 

 fundamental fact of moral life, and a primary instinct. The 

 art of moral education depends upon the development and 

 cultivation of this instinct. A child, indeed, soon finds that it 

 must obey its parents because they can make it obey them ; 

 but if its obedience were based solely on that sense of superior 

 force, it would acquire no sense of authority. It has been said 

 that the first step in the moral battle of life is gained or won 

 in the first conflict between the wills of mother and child. If 

 the mother resorts at once to force, if she drags the child, for 

 instance, away from the" fire, the first battle is lost, for the 

 child has learned only to yield to superior force. But if, as 

 wise mothers know how, she can restrain the child by the 

 influence of her voice or look, the child has learned to obey a 

 moral authority and the first moral skirmish is won. The 

 Scriptures go straight to the heart of human life when they 

 represent our first parents as placed under a moral obligation 

 to obey a superior command. When that moral obligation was 

 disregarded, nothing remained but to enforce it by the compul- 

 sory obligation of physical consequences, and that is the cardinal 

 reality of human life to the present day. Disregard or dispar- 

 age moral authority, and sooner or later you have, for the time, 

 to resort to physical compulsion in the general interests of 

 society, until you can work slowly backwards, as God has been 

 doing throughout human liistory, to the re-establishment of 

 moral supremacy. 



But if our conscience thus affords the experience from which 

 we derive the idea of authority, we may be led by means of it 

 to recognize the ultimate source of authority itself. It would 



