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or nothing to those moral forces which call into practical action the higher 
qualities of mankind. It reminds me of the celebrated and oft-quoted 
remark of the Latin poet : — - 
i “ Videor meliora proboque, 
Deteriora sequor.” 
Mr. Row has properly drawn attention to this in his paper. What does 
Christianity do in contrast with old heathen philosophy ? It not only 
restates all that is good, morally and spiritually, with even more perfectness 
than the heathen philosophers stated it, but it supplies mankind with moral 
forces by which all the good can be made to operate so as to perfect mankind. 
(Hear, hear.) And it has this great advantage, that whereas the heathen 
philosophy only operated upon a select circle of minds, the pure cream of 
the intellectual life of the period, and could do nothing amongst the poor 
ignorant and degraded, but rather looked upon them with contempt ; 
Christianity reverses the process, and, beginning with the lower stratum of 
mankind— with the poorest, the humblest, and most ignorant— achieves a 
grander triumph, passes by philosophy, and supplies, by faith in the 
living Christ, the moral power to do the good which philosophy could only 
point out, but could not do. This paper is very valuable in dealing with 
this point, which is, as I have already said, its first pivot, and the conclusion 
of the writer is one with which we shall all agree, that philosophy must bow 
her head to Christianity, and say “ You have really beaten us in the con- 
troversy.” Christianity has done that which philosophy was confessedly 
unable to do. It might say, with Julian the Emperor, “ 0 Nazarene, thou 
hast conquered ! ” for philosophy is conquered by Christianity in that re- 
spect. (Hear, hear.) The other pivot of the paper (contained in the latter 
part of it) is, that as philosophy was not intended to provide a complete code 
of human duties, but simply to deal with the moral forces which govern 
them, so Christianity must not be expected to produce any practical, and 
pre-arranged and scientifically formed code of moral duties, but simply to 
supply the principles on which they rest, and by which they shall be 
governed and directed ; and there I think we have what I may call a strict 
analogy with nature ; and in that respect nature and revelation go together. 
You do not see botany arranged scientifically in any of the fields or woods 
of any part of the world. You do not see any arrangement of flowers and 
trees according to botanical plans, in classes and subdivisions. All that is 
left to man to do. So with Christianity ; the grand principles of action are 
provided or set forth, and it is left to man to subdivide, to arrange, and to 
evolve for himself out of the principles laid down in the revelation of the 
gospel, all that code of human action which our various wants, weaknesses, 
temptations, and duties may require. If it had been evolved and arranged 
scientifically in revelation, that would have gone far to prove it of human and 
not of divine construction ; for we may expect the law of revelation to be in 
harmony with the law of nature. This has reference to that part of the 
paper which Mr. Row did not read, having reference to the objections made 
