rong; that the {184} right obliges me, that I
ought to do it. . . . The law is over all, though it were never
obeyed. . . . Ethics is nothing but the response which man and man
make to the higher order of things. . . . Ecstasy is the grace heaven
sets upon the moment in which the soul weds itself to the perfect
good." [7] Let us see what is implied in these truly remarkable
statements. The real sanctions of moral conduct are not the sanctions
of expediency or force, but are derived from a higher law, an invisible
authority; the finest morality is man's free response to a higher
order. But, we ask, what is this higher order, this note of command,
but the expression of a higher Will? And how can there be a higher
Will without a Higher Personality, a God who impresses His law upon us
and makes us aspire after the ideal good? Mr. Salter explicitly denies
that the moral virtues come "from below, from prudence, from the sense
of decency, from longsighted selfishness; they who think so," he
declares, in a fine burst, "never breathed the climate of morality."
[8] But if not from below, they must come from above; and this "above"
really must be something more than an atmospheric conception. Will Mr.
Salter help us to determine its nature more clearly? He says, "The
Mighty Power, hid from our gaze by the thin screen of nature and of
nature's laws . . . is {185} with our struggles after a perfect right"
[9]; _but if this Mighty Power_, which is not so much expressed as
hidden by nature's laws--which therefore transcends nature--_is in the
highest sense moral, how can it be less than personal_? It is this
Power which, according to our author, gives us the vision of the ideal,
this Power which sets the mark of its approval upon our surrender to
its behests, this Power which manifests its character in doing justice
upon individuals and nations alike, weeding out the selfish, the
wanton, the luxurious, and preserving the pure and upright; may we not
ask what reason there is for withholding from that Power the one
adequate name of God?[10]

Let us pursue and emphasise this thought a little further. Already we
have seen that--_teste_ Mr. Salter--the highest ethics require our
belief in a mighty, transcendent and benevolent Power; that admission
means nothing less than the surrender of naturalism {186} in morals--it
is an acknowledgment that ultimately a true ethic involves and
presupposes a metaphysic. Indeed, when Mr. Sal