cally a sacrifice, a painful act; and
that this act is redeemed, and far more than redeemed, by a fair
reciprocity of benevolence. Only such an admission can keep us out of a
mesh of contradictions. Like justice in itself, Benevolence in itself is
painful; any virtue is pain in the first instance, although, when
equally responded to, it brings a surplus of pleasure. There may be acts
of a beneficent tendency that cost the performer nothing, or that even
may chance to be agreeable; but these examples must not be given as the
rule, or the type. It is the essence of virtuous acts, the prevailing
character of the class, to tax the agent, to deprive him of some
satisfaction to himself; this is what we must start from; we are then in
a position to explain how and when, and under what circumstances, and
with what limitations, the virtuous man, whether his virtue be justice
or benevolence, is from that cause a happy man.

* * * * *

It is a fallacy of the suppressed relative to describe virtue as
determined by the _moral nature_ of God, as opposed to his arbitrary
will. The essence of Morality is obedience to a superior, to a Law;
where there is no superior there is nothing either moral or immoral. The
supreme power is incapable of an immoral act. Parliament may do what is
injurious, it cannot do what is illegal. So the Deity may be beneficent
or maleficent, he cannot be moral or immoral.

* * * * *

Among the various ways, proposed in the seventeenth century, of solving
the difficulty of the mutual action of the heterogeneous agencies--matter
and mind--one was a mode of Divine interference, called the "Theory of
Occasional Causes". According to this view, the Deity exerted himself by
a _perpetual miracle_ to bring about the mental changes corresponding to
the physical agents operating on our senses--light, sound, &c. Now in
the mode of action suggested there is nothing self-contradictory; but in
the use of the word "miracle" there is a mistake of relativity. The
meaning of a miracle is an exceptional interference; it supposes an
habitual state of things, from which it is a deviation. The very idea of
miracle is abolished if every act is to be alike miraculous.

* * * * *

[MYSTERY CORRELATES WITH THE INTELLIGIBLE.]

We shall devote the remainder of this exposition to a still more notable
class of mistakes due to the suppression