we see to be the principles which guide
our selection? How entirely do they lie beside and
beyond the negative tests? and how little respect do we
pay to the breach of this or that commandment in comparison
with ability? So wholly impossible is it to
apply the received opinions on such matters to practice,
to treat men known to be guilty of what theology calls
deadly sins, as really guilty of them, that it would
almost seem we had fallen into a moral anarchy; that
ability alone is what we regard, without any reference
at all, except in glaring and outrageous cases, to moral
disqualifications. It is invidious to mention names of
living men; it is worse than invidious to drag out of
their graves men who have gone down into them with
honour, to make a point for an argument. But we
know, all of us, that among the best servants of our
country, there have been, and there are many, whose
lives will not stand scrutiny by the negative tests, and
who do not appear very greatly to repent, or to have
repented of their sins according to recognized methods.

Once more, among our daily or weekly confessions,
which we are supposed to repeat as if we were all of us
at all times in precisely the same moral condition, we
are made to say that we have done those things which
we ought not to have done, and to have left undone
those things which we ought to have done. An earthly
father to whom his children were day after day to
make this acknowledgment would be apt to inquire
whether they were trying to do better, whether at any
rate they were endeavouring to learn; and if he were
told that although they had made some faint attempts
to understand the negative part of their duty, yet that
of the positive part, of those things which they ought
to do, they had no notions at all, and had no idea that
they were under obligation to form any, he would come
to rather strange conclusions about them. But really
and truly, what practical notions of duty have we
beyond that of abstaining from committing sins? Not
to commit sin, we suppose, covers but a small part of
what is expected of us. Through the entire tissue of
our employments there runs a good and a bad. Bishop
Butler tells us, for instance, that even of our time there
is a portion which is ours, and a portion which is our
neighbour's; and if we spend more of it on personal
interests than our own share, we are stealing. This
sounds strange doctrine; we prefer rather making vague
acknowl