is our guide in determining our duty, and the
test of universality perpetually comes in to correct the commands of
this sentiment and to clear and so to refine the sentiment itself.

As is the case in a certain degree with every other kind of knowledge or
belief, so in a very special degree the Moral Law finds its place even
in minds that have very little of thought or of cultivation. The most
untutored is not insensible to the claim made on our respect by acts of
courage, self-sacrifice, generosity, truth; or to the call upon us for
reprobation at the sight of acts of falsehood, of meanness, of cruelty,
of profligacy. Even in the most untutored there is a sense that these
sentiments of respect and reprobation are quite different in kind from
the other sentiments which stir the soul. And this is even more clear
in condemnation than in approval. However perverted the conscience (the
seat of these sentiments) may be, yet the pain of remorse, which is
self-reprobation for having broken the moral law, is always, as has been
well said, 'quite unlike any other pain we know,' and is felt in some
form and measure by every soul that lives. And as the sentiment thus
holds a special place in the most untutored, so too does the sense of
universality by which we instinctively and invariably correct or defend
that sentiment if it be challenged. The moment we are perplexed in
regard to what we ought to do or what judgment we ought to pass on
something already done, we instinctively, almost involuntarily,
endeavour to disentangle the act from all attendant circumstances and to
see whether our sentiment of approval or disapproval would still hold
good in quite other surroundings. We try to get, at the principle
involved and to ascertain whether that principle possesses the
universality which is the sure characteristic of the Moral Law.

It will be matter of consideration in a future Lecture how our knowledge
of the Eternal Law of the holy, the just, the good, and the right, is
thus purified in the individual and in the race. At present it will be
enough to have indicated the general principle of what may be called the
evolution of the knowledge of morals.

But I now go on from the Moral Law as a duty to the Moral Law as a
faith. For the inner voice is not content with commanding a course of
conduct and requiring obedience of that kind. This is its first
utterance, and the man who hears and obeys unquestionably has within him
the true