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insoluble enigma. In a moral point of view, I could not con- 
ceive of a more un philosophical system of ethical dry-bones 
than that which Mr. Mill offers with such a sublime in- 
difference to revelation and its teaching. 
Of course he has a fling at the bitter sectarian feeling among 
professedly Christian people ; there is no danger, we are told, 
of any man being seduced in these days into making that old 
statement, “ See how these Christians love one another.” And 
if the spirit of persecution and want of charity did not seem 
to be laid to the charge of Christianity or the New Testament 
itself, I should have been very willing here to pass it over. 
But Mr. Mill says : — • 
“ Orthodox Christians, who are tempted to think that those who stoned to 
death the first martyrs must have been worse men than they themselves are, 
ought to remember that one of those persecutors was St. Paul.” 
We say it was Saul, not St. Paul ; an unconverted Jew, not 
a Christian. But if Mr. Mill would scorn to own any difference 
which conversion made in the character of Saul, common 
honesty, one would think, ought to put into the account the 
fact that St. Paul never ceased all his life long to bewail the 
sinfulness of the act which is here so disingenuously set down 
to his account. 
The very basis itself, as well as the objects of Christianity, 
is sublimely ethical. “Herein is love ! not that we loved God, 
but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation 
for our sins.” “ Greater love hath no man than this, that a 
man lay down his life for his friends.” St. Paul, therefore, 
was ethically correct when he concluded “ love worketh no ill 
to his neighbour; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” 
And if it be said that virtue should have its reward, but 
hereby gets it not, it may be replied that the Gospel places 
that reward where alone it can be expected, — in the world to 
come. In this world, the Christian does not receive less than 
other men ; but virtue here has never been crowned with com- 
plete success. Christ's kingdom is a brotherhood of the 
purest ethical character, founded in the most disinterested 
virtue, and holding out to its members a full reward in the 
world to come. It therefore demands of necessity faith in 
its members. And it is worthy of remark, that when faith has, 
upon earth, done its work, and when the future arrives, the 
decision as to character on the part of the Judge, is de- 
scribed in the New Testament as proceeding upon strictly 
ethical principles. He takes the type of perfect humanity, the 
“ Son of man,” and tests the actions of each according as they 
have acted up to that type, and towards others as if towards 
