done, or all the world will go after the new lights. Well, we too are profoundly convinced that something must be done. We have, on the one hand, ministers of religion and doctors of divinity denouncing modern science as godless; we have, on the other hand, men of science showing by their practice, if not by words, how little weight they attach to clerical objurgations. The priests proclaim that the dominant scientific philosophy destroys the sense of moral obligation; nay, more, destroys the ground of moral obligation. The scientists reply, in effect, that their philosophy is true, and that moral obligation must take care of itself. The situation is dangerous. It is a dangerous thing to tether moral obligation to outworn creeds; and it is an almost equally dangerous thing to formulate new principles of scientific inquiry, without clearly and frequently exhibiting the provision they make for the regulation of conduct. On the part of the theological world, there has been too much of frowning opposition to inevitable change; on the part of the scientific world too much gayety of heart in setting out for new destinations. The theologians have, for the most part, repulsed as a foe what they should have hailed as a friend; and the scientists have not shown quite enough consideration for the weaker brethren to whose convictions their new speculations were giving a shock.
We think, therefore, that there has been error on both sides, and that it is now high time the whole matter should be considered, as it were, in joint committee. The word has gone forth: morality must stand on a basis of natural law, or it can not stand at all. God can not make morality. He has to be moral Himself first before He can even sanction it; and, if we know God as moral, we know morality apart from the idea of God. The problem of the day, therefore, is the formulation and enforcement of a natural morality—a morality resulting from the nature of man and the conditions of his existence. We have to look the Universe in the face and question of it what it would have us do; that is to say, on what terms the harmony and happiness of human life are to be won. Heretofore men have trusted to names—to Moses and Manu, to Jesus and Buddha, and have received, at the hands of these, laws that were in reality the embodiment of human experience; but the time is coming, yea, now is, when law must take on an impersonal character and be obeyed as law. There is no uncertainty as to the fundamental principles of morals; but we have weakly allowed ourselves to think that the authority of all moral teaching is bound up with certain traditional doctrines. That is the cardinal error which earnest men should strive with all their power to banish. If there are signs among us of a relaxation of moral discipline, they can be accounted for, we think, by the fact that moral instruction has been becoming, for some time past, less and less a domestic matter, and more and more the function of a professional class. It was not through any professional class that Moses proposed to provide for the moral educa-
