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very much indebted to him for it. He has shown us most completely that 
however high philosophical thoughts may have been among the ancient 
philosophers not under the Jewish dispensation — for the ancient philosophers 
of Greece were not under the old Jewish dispensation— the ancient philo- 
sophy was utterly unpractical, and could be nothing else. It might have 
influenced the thoughts of a few scholars above the general mass of the people, 
but was utterly incapable of doing anything for the masses of mankind 
themselves. Mr. Row, I think, has rather led our thoughts up to a con- 
sideration of what was done under the old dispensation. Under the old 
dispensation the Jew was a man whose morality might compare very 
favourably with the Christian’s, and under the dispensation of those who 
enjoyed a direct revelation from Heaven we find that morality had the 
practical effect with religion of raising man to the highest pitch of excellence 
that his fallen nature was capable of attaining. This is important when men 
construct philosophical systems not from the power of philosophical thought 
simply, but with the advantage of the light of revelation, and then refuse to 
allow the influence of that light to have its due weight in their minds, saying : 
“ We have something far better than Christianity to show.” What has been 
the practical effect of Christianity ? Why its practical effect has been to do 
for all the great mass of mankind what philosophy could only do for a few 
select students ; and not only that, but, as Mr. Row has pointed out, 
Christianity does its work for the most degraded and lost among the masses 
of mankind. (Hear, hear.) But I will not take up your time at this hour 
by any further observations of my own, but will simply call upon Mr. Row 
to reply to the observations which have been made. 
Mr. Row. — I must own that I heard Mr. Reddie’s remarks upon my paper 
with uncommon amazement, because I thought he would argue better and 
not indulge in such a mass of sophistries. I read to-day an article in the 
Edinburgh Review on Calvin, in which it says that he was so fond of finding 
fault with everything at school that he got the name of “ the accusative 
case.” At Oxford I knew another man of a similar tone of mind, and he 
obtained the name of “ the walking tWrcrcnc,” which means “ objection : ” — 
in other words, he was “the walking objection.” I think Mr. Reddie would 
have thoroughly deserved that name. For example, he proceeded to deal 
with my observations on Judaism. Now it is really incredible to me that 
any one should have thought I was running a parallel between Christianity 
and Judaism. I would recommend Mr. Reddie to read the paper carefully 
again, and, if he does, he will find that it is not open to any of his remarks 
on that point. I have spoken of the narrow morality of the Jew, and is not 
that a plain fact in history ? I do not speak of the Old Testament teaching, 
but of what the J ew was practically. The very precept I myself quote is 
taken out of the Old Testament Scriptures. Then we come to another 
point where Mr. Reddie puts in an objection to my remark that, “if it 
can be established that Christianity contains no new discovery in morals, 
I admit that it is fatal to its pretensions as a revelation.” Surely if 
there is no new discovery in morals in the New Testament it is worth- 
