motives which lay beneath them, and then compare these motives with those by which Christian morality is supported.

The Epicureans boasted of a system of morality, but 'the Epicureans were virtually Atheists. Their philosophy was a system of materialism in the strictest sense of the word. In their view, the world was formed by an accidental concourse of atoms, and was not in any sense created, or even modified, by the Divinity. They did, indeed, profess a certain belief in what were called gods; but these equivocal divinities were merely phantoms-impressions on the popular mind-dreams, which had no objective reality, or at least exercised no active influence on the physical world or the business of life. The Epicurean deity, if self-existent at all, dwelt apart in serene indifference to all the affairs of the universe. The universe was a great accident, and sufficiently explained itself without any reference to a higher power. The popular mythology was derided, but the Epicureans had no positive faith in anything better. As there was no creator, so there was no moral governor. All notions of retribution and of a judgment to come were, of course, forbidden by such a creed. The principles of the atomic theory when applied to the constitution of man must have caused the resurrection to appear an absurdity. The soul was nothing without the body; or rather, the soul was itself a body, composed of finer atoms, or at best an unmeaning compromise between the material and immaterial. Both body and soul were dissolved together and dissipated into the elements; and when this occurred, all the life of man was ended. The moral result of such a creed was necessarily that which the Apostle Paul described: - If the dead rise not, let us eat and drink; for to-morrow we die.' The essential principle of the Epicurean philosopher was that there was nothing to alarm him, nothing to disturb him. His furthest reach was to do deliberately what the animals do instinctively. His highest aim was to gratify himself. With the coarser and more energetic minds this principle inevitably led to the grossest sensuality and crime; in the case of others whose temperament was more common-place, or whose taste was more pure, the system took the form of a selfishness more refined. As the Stoic sought to resist the evil which surrounded him, the Epicurean endeavoured to console himself by a tranquil and indifferent life. He avoided the more violent excitements of political and social engagements, to enjoy the seclusion of a calm contentment. But pleasure was still the end at which he aimed; and if we remove this end to its remotest distance, and understand it to mean an enjoyment which involves the most manifest self-denial; if we give Epicurus credit for taking the largest view of consequences, and if we believe that the life of his first disciples was purer than there is reason to suppose, the end remains the same. Pleasure, not duty, is the motive

of moral exertion; expediency is the test to which actions are referred, and the self-denial itself, which an enlarged view of expediency requires, will probably be found impracticable without the grace of God.'

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Will the reader gaze for a moment longer at this conglomerate of atoms known as an Epicurean. We will not select one whose 'mind is of the coarser and more energetic sort,' and who naturally, therefore, gravitates to the grossest sensuality and crime,' for the keenest eye will fail to detect anything but immorality in him; but we will pitch upon one whose temperament is more common-place, and whose tastes are more pure ---one, in fact, of the best representatives the system can boast. And where do we find him? Not in thewilderness,' wrestling with dark suggestions and darker fiends, nor on the high and dusty ways of duty working the works of Him that sent him while it is day,' but in a 'garden,'* where the trees afford a grateful shade and the flowers emit a pleasant odcur. Here, sauntering along shady avenues or reclining upon mossy banks, we espy him. Let moralists and philanthropists of another sort 'seek the lost,' the devil possessed,' the wretched ones whose dwelling is among the tombs, and whose occupation is that of cutting themselves with stones; or let them dive into alleys and courts in pursuit of dirt and drunkenness, and find, as a living philanthropic earl did the other day in a court in Whitechapel, some dozen houses in which there was neither pail nor scrubbing brush.' Our Epicurean moralist has no taste for such work. He is no Martyrus Diaboli nor Martyrus Dei; he is not earnest enough for either, and so will not soon ascend to heaven, nor 'go down quick into hell.' Pleasure is his ideal. Where, then, is his morality? It is here; he denies himself; he puts a bridle upon his passions; he is no glutton nor drunkard either; he is strictly temperate in all sensuous indulgences. But why this temperance? From what root does this so fair and goodly-seeming tree arise? Not in the least from the whisperings of conscience, nor from the voice of God; nor yet from any sense of hope or fear as regards what lies beyond the grave; but simply and solely from selfishness. He is one who takes the largest view of consequences.' All his skill and prudence is taxed to preserve his sensual tastes and appetites in a high state of vigour for as long a time as possible. What a sagacious animal have we here, doing deliberately what the animals do instinctively!' A man, in any true sense, we cannot call him. He is moral for the sake of immorality, virtuous in order that he may be the more safely vicious.

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Various causes may contribute to strengthen the motive above named, and for a while keep out of sight the darker elements in man's nature. But how feeble is such a motive, even when thus

* Epicurus taught in a garden.

supported! Not from Epicureans have the moral heroes and reformers sprung! These, finding a motive for morality in their own nature-in their sense of right and wrong, a motive linking itself by means of faith in the world to come to the very throne of God itself, have drawn themselves, and thousands of others after them, up towards that throne where alone the human spirit may rest from its strivings and find all its cravings met and fully satisfied.

Christian morality appeals not only to our sense of duty and right, but also to our capacity for feeling the obligations of affection. This capacity must, however, be produced ere it can be appealed to. This is why Christian morality so often appeals to man in vain there is no love in the heart, so no obedience is forthcoming. If ye love me keep my commandments.' Here obedience is conditioned upon love, and only expected as a result of it. The heart of man, intended to contain the 'live' coals of affection, is now either cold and empty, or else filled with a combustible which scorches instead of yielding genial warmth. The result is absence of sympathy, glow, ardour, and an all-embracing tenderness. How shall these return? Not by any terrestrial, self-kindled 'strange fire, which may often be mistaken for the real, but by fire brought down from heaven. The love of God must be 'shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost.' Then it is that we exclaim, 'We love Him because He first loved us.' It is the declaration of God's love to us in the gospel, the wonderful manifestation of that love in the Incarnation, in Gethsemane and on Calvary; the promise of pardon and help to the vilest, weakest, and wretchedest, being penitent--it is, in short, the love of God borne in upon our spirit in these ways, endearing that Great Being to us as Father and Friend, as abiding Saviour and Comforter, that creates the desire, the purpose, and the will to obey His commandments.

Nor this only; for loving God we love our brother also. Obligations to brotherly love, to neighbourly affection, ought, indeed, to be felt and discharged on the ground of a oneness of nature, a mutual liability to calamity, sickness, helplessness, want. But they are not; on the contrary, no theme is more hackneyed nor capable of more copious illustration than that of 'man's inhumanity to man.' Only that man who, in spirit, dwells in God, and therefore in love, can feel a pure and genuine affection for his fellow.

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But felt love reveals itself in suitable words and actions, else it benefits no one, except him in whom it exists, and not even him for long. So soon as the Samaritan saw the wounded man weltering in his blood, it is said he had compassion for him; so, perhaps, had the priest and Levite. But observe, no mention is made of that; no account is kept of it any more than we keep account of the blossoms in the orchard that come to nothing-are

beautiful, but nipped by late frosts or blown away by winds, never turn to fruit.' If the priest and Levite really felt any compassion for their wounded brother it must have been of the feeblestsimply a restraining principle. Men without any compassion, with ferocity instead of compassion, might not have let him alone as they did-might have finished the work of murder begun by others. Those men wrought no ill to their neighbour, inflicted no positive injury upon him, and are thereby differenced from those who did; but, on the other hand, they helped him not, and so are differenced from the Samaritan. Now, it is this bold, brave, fearless love of the Samaritan to his helpless neighbour that commends itself to both God and man; not the timid, cold, calculating prudence, the miserable let-one-another-alone philosophy so prevalent at the present time.

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From the time that the story of the Good Samaritan' was told, that central figure in the story has been a type, and ever will remain such, of what man should be to man. Where else can you find such a type? The heathens could not even conceive of such a one, else surely they would have portrayed it. But what a difference, not to say contrast, exists between the Samaritan and the Stoic! The Stoic was a moralist, the best, perhaps, that Paganism produced. There is much about the Stoic that you can admire and respect. You cannot despise him as you can the Epicurean. There was some grandeur of character about the best of the Stoics, just as there is a grandeur about Mont Blanc, whose hoary head has braved unflinchingly the storms of many thousand years. But with much to admire in the Stoic there is little to love; and this is because there is so little of the truly human and divine either in his creed or character. The Stoics were Pantheists, and therefore, theologically, very far from the gospel of Christ. Nor was their moral system less hostile to the truth as it is in Jesus.' The proud ideal which was set before the disciple of Zeno was a magnanimous self-denial, an austere apathy, untouched by human passion, unmoved by change of circumstance. To the wise man all outward things were alike. Pleasure was no good. Pain was no evil. All actions conformable to reason were equally good; all actions contrary to reason were equally evil. The wise man lives according to reason, and, living thus, he is perfect and self-sufficing. He reigns supreme as a king; he is justified in boasting as a God. Nothing can well be imagined more contrary to the spirit of Christianity. Christianity is the school of humility; Stoicism was the education of pride. Christianity is a discipline of life; Stoicism was nothing better than an apprenticeship for death; and fearfully were the fruits of its principles illustrated both in its earlier and later disciples. Its two first leaders * died by their own hands, like the two Romans † whose † Cato and Seneca.

* Zeno and Cleanthes.

names first rise to the memory when the school of the Stoics is mentioned.

Such was the Stoic-proud, cold, supercilious, unloving and boastful. Needed we to have hesitated to speak of his character as presenting a perfect contrast to that of the good Samaritan, or rather of Jesus Christ? In the character of Jesus Christ we discern whatever of good is found in the stoical one; but we also perceive what is entirely absent from that. In the moral ideal of Christianity you perceive a lofty brow and dignified mien, indicating the presence of high moral principle-a broad back with shoulders slightly stooping, as if designed to bear the infirmities of the weak;' an eye at once bright and tender; a heart overflowing with compassion for the unfortunate and distressed; a hand open as the heavens and bountiful as the clouds; a foot never weary of seeking the lost;-the whole assemblage of features evincing a life of selfsacrifice, a ministry of love. J. W.

IT

ART. IV.-NON-THEISTIC PHILOSOPHY OF THE

UNIVERSE.

T were easy to collate a considerable number of anti-Theistic theories, ancient and modern, to account for the origin of the world. In many of these, however, we may discover that their chief principles, though variously represented and applied, are similar, if not identical. Two or three of the ancient, with as many of the modern, may be briefly stated, in order that we may lay hold of fundamental principles, and so find a basis for present discussion.

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The Egyptians, so far as we can gather from the obscure accounts of their philosophy which have come down to us, regarded matter as the first principle of all things. Chaos, or the material principle, the ancient Egyptians appear to have worshipped under the name of Athor-a word which, in the Coptic language, signifies might. Aristotle informs us that chaos and might were one and the same, and denoted the first principie from which, in the ancient cosmogonies, all things were derived. Besides the material principle, we have the authority of Plutarch for asserting that the Egyptians admitted an active or intelligent principle, eternally united with the chaotic mass, by whose energy the elements were separated and bodies were formed.' Akin to this is that theory, a fragment of which was preserved by Eusebius, which contains a cosmogony, or supposed origin of the universe, according to which all things have been produced by the unceasing energy of an eternal principle, active, but without intelligence, upon an eternal chaotic mass. This is supposed to have been taught by the ancient Phoenician philoso