145 
here in the midst of suffering ; that it contributes to that feeling, when every 
other system of man’s invention has been found to be utterly and entirely 
faulty? (Hear, hear.) How, upon such a principle of morals as Utili- 
tarianism, could you go among the heathen or the neglected outcasts of our 
own population, and bring happiness home to them ? Where, upon such a 
principle as this, could you find the men who have devoted their lives, not 
doing that which they conceived conduced to their own happiness, but for 
the benefit and the good of their fellow-Christians, altogether irrespective of 
any Utilitarian doctrine of happiness for themselves ? (Hear, hear.) It 
is true that Christianity shows that all that it inculcates will ultimately 
conduce to happiness, but it teaches man that that happiness is only to be 
arrived at through suffering. I think we should test Utilitarianism— for 
I think the fairest test of any system of morals is to bring it in contact with 
the history of the human race— by asking what it has effected for the human 
race ? and why it is to be substituted for Christianity,— why Christianity is 
now to be taken away from men, as a thing unsuited for the philosophical age 
in which we live, and another system made a substitute for it, which is to be 
essentially atheistical in its character, and, according to its own showing, is 
only by a species of slow development to lead man up to anything like that 
amount of happiness which Christianity has already afforded him ? 
Mr. Redbie. — I am almost sorry that the unanimity prevailing this 
evening has left me little to do except to thank you for the very kind — I am 
sure much too kind — manner in which you have received my paper. I 
should have been glad if another paper had been read this evening, as you 
know ; and I should really have been better pleased now, if this paper had 
been criticised. We miss some of our usual members this evening, or, 
perhaps, it might have had the benefit of some adverse criticism ; for I feel 
sure there must be some weak points in the paper which it would have been 
desirable to have had pointed out to the author. There is, however, one 
consolation I feel, and that is derived from having elicited the remarks of 
Dr. Thornton and yourself upon this subject. I would make one remark 
with reference to the observation of Mr. Browne. I do not think that 
Dr. Thornton’s use of the text of Scripture he employed has been quite as 
clearly advocated as I should like it to be. Dr. Thornton argued that you 
could only arrive at a proper appreciation of the beauty of goodness by the 
cultivation of the moral taste ; and in saying this he was arguing in a 
perfectly philosophical manner and from human experience ; but he also took 
the words of Scripture to show that there was in Scripture an anticipation of 
our philosophy as to this, an appreciation and enunciation of that same 
principle, not put forward philosophically — because nothing is put forward 
“philosophically” in the Scripture — but yet a previous knowledge and 
recognition of that very principle which we arrive at only by slow degrees— 
and that it is to be found in those texts the language of which he made use 
of to express his own philosophical conclusion. I think the argument of 
Captain Fishbourne was also a very pertinent one. Mr. Mill tells us that, in 
order to complete the theory of Utilitarianism, many Stoical (or, I think we 
VOL. II. L 
