re grave and solemn
when they hold language such as this to the pleasure-loving, the
light-hearted, and the indifferent. To tell a man to do his duty in
spite of all, to love the good life irrespectively of any reward here
or hereafter, may sound cold after the dithyrambics of the Apocalypse
or the Koran, but of one thing we are assured by the experience of
those who have made the trial of it themselves, that any man who "will
do the doctrine," that is, live the life, shall know at once "whether
it be of God"--that alone is the unspeakable peace, passing all
understanding.

But ethics are not alone. As I have endeavoured to point out,
religious emotion which grows out of the moral sentiment is the most
powerful stimulus towards the realisation of the good life, and I
consequently urged the supreme value of true religion, as both
satisfying the emotional side of man's nature and stimulating him
towards that sacrifice of self--that taking up of a "cross," as Jesus
put it--which in some measure is indispensably necessary for the
attainment of character.

But I in no wise concede that ethics are "cold"; I in no wise admit
they are uninspiring. The consciousness that a man possesses of being
one with the great Power of the universe in making for righteousness is
surely an overwhelming thought. If man would but think, he would come
to feel with Emerson "the sublimity of the moral laws," their awful
manifestation of the working of infinite mind and power, and of man's
nearness to, or rather oneness with, that Power, when he obeys them.
He would come to thrill with an indescribable emotion with Kant, as he
thinks of the infinite dignity to which fellowship with those
mysterious laws elevates him. He would realise the truth of the solemn
words:--

Two things fill me with ceaseless awe,
The starry heavens, and man's sense of law.

Ethics cold! Then what else is left to inspire to us? We are
bankrupt. What is there in all the Churches to help humanity if not
their ethics--ethics which are not the perquisite of any sect, no mere
provincialism of any Church or nation, but the heirloom of mankind?

What, we ask, is there to cheer the heart in the Thirty-nine Articles,
the Vatican decrees, or the Westminster Confession? What mysterious
inspiration lurks in the dogmas of the Oriental councils of 1600 years
ago, dogmas to be believed to-day under peril of perishing
everlastingly? We do not concede that the ethical C