many years ago among such impossibilities." ("System of Logic," Vol. II. pp. 167, 169.)

Now the miracles of the Gospel clearly fall under Mr Mill's description. They are facts concerning a person wholly unique, who cannot be classed with ordinary men, nor even adequately with human prophets; who is essentially the God-man, “Emmanuel,” “the man Christ Jesus," "God manifested in the flesh." Mr Mill admits that the prophet of Nazareth, “even in the estimation of those who have no belief in his inspiration," is a unique man.

"there is in his life and sayings a stamp of personal originality combined with profundity of insight, ... which must place him in the very first rank of men of sublime genius. ... When this pre-eminent genius is combined with the qualities of probably the greatest moral reformer, and martyr to his mission, who ever existed on earth, religion cannot be said to have made a bad choice in pitching on this man as the ideal representative and guide of humanity." ("Three Essays," p. 254.)

Thus this person is a KIND or species to himself. The miracles of Christ, His sayings, the fulfilments of prophecy in His life, the angelic messages which heralded His birth, His birth itself, His rejection by His own. people, His death as the true Paschal Lamb, His lifting up from the earth, like the brazen serpent, to be a centre of moral attraction to all mankind through successive ages, His resurrection the third day from the dead, His appearance to chosen witnesses for forty days after His resurrection, His ascension into heaven in the view of those same witnesses, and the promise of His return in the clouds of heaven to be the Judge of all mankind; these are not separate and independent facts out of relation to each other, contradicting that experience by which individuals gain their knowledge of the characters and properties of the individual objects which

come within the range of the separate experience of each one. They are supernatural facts only in this sense, that they are manifestations of a PERSON never manifested before, whose birth is the great central fact in the whole scheme of universal providence. It is in reality the fulfilment of a prophecy which completes and fills up the long series of the messages of God to man in the Old Testament Scriptures, flowing onward through four thousand years from the opening sentence, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," in an ever-widening stream of Divine truth, till it issues in the long-predicted rising of "the Sun of Righteousness with healing in his wings," to give light to those who were "sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death," and by His own resurrection to "bring life and immortality to light."

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE LAW OF GOD, AND THE CREATED UNIVERSE.

THE laws of nature are a favourite topic with modern sceptical philosophers. But the phrase in their lips is extremely vague, obscure, and indefinite. The laws are without a Lawgiver, or at least he is removed to an infinite distance. They are not really laws at all, but vain attempts to classify ever changing phenomena, when the great Creator, all created minds, and all things, or material bodies, have alike been consigned to the common gulf of the UNKNOWABLE.

The laws of God include: (1) first, a great law of the sub-moral universe. This is the Newtonian law, commonly styled the law of universal attraction, but more correctly named a law of universal appetency. It applies to all matter, living or lifeless, except so far as it is modified by other laws yet undetermined, of special affinity, or of repulsive self-preservation. It coexists with, and its effects are modified by, higher laws of life in plants and animals, and by a still higher law of right, wrong, duty, and spontaneous choice of good or evil, in all moral and responsible creatures. (2) A second Law, higher than the self-attraction or mutual appetency of all material masses, is the law of selfpreservation. The instinct of life in every plant or animal is to shrink from everything that pains, and to seek everything that pleases, or tends to perfect and

expand its own conscious life, so far as the momentary consciousness extends. This instinct is the first germ of rational self-love. It passes into it only when momentary sensation is exchanged for a rational apprehension, on the part of each creature, of the true law and attainable limits of its own being. Then the instinctive shrinking from momentary pain, and pursuit of momentary pleasure, is succeeded by that rational selflove by which each recognizes the true law of its own being, and aims to realize and fulfil that ideal law.

(3) Higher than this law or instinct of self-preservation, is the great moral law, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." This is a Divine law of duty expressly revealed, of eternal and irreversible obligation. The duty depends on two conditions only, the possession of a power of choice and faculty of reason by the individual, and the co-existence of a moral universe of creatures similarly endowed, susceptible of having their welfare increased or diminished by the actings of their fellowcreatures. This Divine law constitutes the one sound element in Benthamite Utilitarianism, or the greatest happiness principle, but its truth and Divine authority are there neutralized by transferring it from the heart, as a law prescribing a right state of inward feeling and desire, and turning it into a law of calculation alone. What is the calculation thus enjoined? Supposing three alternatives open in any case, then three positive totals or sums of pleasure would have to be calculated for the whole universe of being through a coming eternity, and as many negative totals of pain. Of the three differences A-D, B-E, C-F, the moral rule prescribed is, to adopt that alternative which makes the excess of pleasure above pain the largest. Each of the six sums is composed of terms not only doubly infinite, but incommensurable, and

incapable of being accurately measured by any common standard. Each sum also involves an infinite number of undetermined quantities, depending on the volitions of an almost countless number of free agents. Such a calculation could never be performed without Omniscience. Even when performed, it could have no binding authority, either from spontaneous instinct or reason, to enforce its fulfilment. The only effect of

such a rule must be to throw back the individual on the instinct of self-preservation, or the avoidance of the pain, and the pursuit of the pleasure, of the moment. Still the mere attempt to perform this impossible calculation might remind of the double truth that life is not the present moment, and that we are surrounded by fellow-creatures towards whom we ought to cherish feelings of good-will and not of ill-will. The Divine law applies itself directly to the spring of action, the desires of the heart, "Thou shalt LOVE thy neighbour as thyself." It does not, like its human parody, recommend a choice to be made on arithmetical grounds, after a wholly impossible calculation. The altruism alone is true, being borrowed from the Divine law, and exempts the Benthamite maxim from a charge of total error.

The Divine law includes two elements; the first is altruism in contrast to egoism; that self is to be loved not as self, but "counting as one," on the same ground that every other also is to be loved, for his capacity of happiness. The second element is the law of neighbourhood, that is moral or physical nearness; the law does not command us to love every one alike, but each according to the degree of nearness, that is, our opportunity to do good and impart a blessing. It is so

expounded by two apostles: "as we have opportunity

let us do good unto all men,

are of the household of faith."

especially to them who

"To him that knoweth