so often hunted, with so many packs of dogs, should die, at last, sitting quietly on his form.'

It was in this last period of his life, and especially from 1381 to 1384, that Wyclif's moral indignation betrayed him into extravagances. By his translation of the Bible and by his bold resistance to Papal usurpations he makes a strong claim to the gratitude of posterity, and the condition of the Church, against which he protested, undeniably afforded excuses for his intemperance of thought and language. Yet neither gratitude nor sympathy permit us to forget that Wyclif anticipated most of the abuses by which the extreme fanaticism of the Puritans was subsequently characterized. In the first place, he rightly insisted on the supremacy and sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures. But he held them to be supreme not only in matters of faith and revealed truth, but in political affairs and in Rites and Ceremonies. In the second place, he entirely mistook the nature of the Church. He regarded the institution as consisting only of holy persons who were predestined to salvation, and held that her Sacraments were vitiated by the imperfections of her ministers. In the third place, he recognized only the two orders of priests and deacons in the Church, and held that episcopal ordination was unnecessary for the ministry. A Predestinarian in religion, a Presbyterian in Church government, almost a Zwinglian in his latest views of the Eucharist, he was the progenitor of the extremes of the Puritans. By his onesided insistence on the supremacy of the Scriptures he fostered the unreasoning detestation of the cross in baptism or of the ring in marriage, ignored the functions of the Church to decree Rites and Ceremonies, denied the value of Apostolic tradition, and let loose upon the interpretation of the Bible the caprice of human ingenuity. By his misconception of the nature and constitution of the Church he sacrificed historical continuity, founded the principles on which the reign of the 'Saints' was established, distorted the true view of the efficacy of her Sacraments, and opened the door to the multiplication of sects.

The errors into which Wyclif fell were those to which his character was peculiarly liable. He was a man of hot, impetuous temper, impatient of contradiction, prone to argue, like a Schoolman, rather for victory than for truth. His intellectual and moral energies entirely predominated over his imaginative, emotional nature. His piety is fervent, but austere; it is incapable of lifting him out of himself, or of raising him to eloquence; only in his moral appeals does he

betray feeling. In the pursuit of truth he is fearlessly honest and devout, but his method is severely logical; he allows little place to faith, and lays his chief stress on reason. It has been already said that the Latin poets play no part in his writings, though the study of them was included in his educational curriculum. Their want of influence, when taken into consideration with his life, doctrines, and writings, is significant. Poetry, emotion, tenderness, imagination, seem to be eliminated from his composition. Even in his most devotional writings there is a vein of hardness, which in polemics becomes harsh and untempered. The Faith of the Middle Ages made no appeal to his self-confident individuality. It found few points of contact in his logical intellect or moral rigidity. Blind to its beauties, he saw only its deformities. He chafed against the fetters it imposed upon his mental independence, and was incapable of appreciating its spiritual insight, mystical ardour, religious rapture, and intense realization of the mysteries of the unseen. When once a man of this temperament was startled into opposition by the intellectual difficulties of the doctrines of the medieval Church, or by the moral shortcomings of her practice, he could not stop short at Reformation, but was irresistibly impelled to Revolution.

ART. VI. CHRISTIANITY AND MORALS.

Principles of Natural and Supernatural Morals. By the Rev. HENRY HUGHES, M.A., formerly Junior Student of Christ Church, Oxford, and sometime one of H.M. Inspectors of Schools. Vol. I. Natural Morals. Vol. II. Supernatural Morals. (London, 1890.)

WE Confess that before we had read Mr. Hughes's treatise his title afforded us matter of question. We doubted whether it would be found possible to separate natural and supernatural morals. On the one hand, is there any such thing as a system of morals into which the supernatural does not enter? Is no supernatural influence implied in the universal conscience of mankind? And even if we were to consider conscience itself, and the laws which conscience sanctions, as a growth and development, did the wonderful process take place without leaving marks of supernatural guidance? On the other hand, is there any such thing as supernatural morals in contradistinction to natural? It appears plain that the proper

meaning of supernatural morals is the morals of a supernatural being. But when you apply the term to beings who, whatever their supernatural connexions, live in nature and have natural faculties, it is inevitable that this description of their morals must be imperfect. The very statement of the case implies, what is so abundantly evident in fact, that supernatural influences upon man must ally themselves with the qualities and action of his nature, and that his morals, whether you take the word in the abstract sense of what he ought to do, or the concrete sense of what he does, must have in them as much of nature as of the supernatural.

Our difficulties about the title are not removed by the perusal of the work. It gives tokens of much ability and thoughtfulness and the highest aims, and it is impossible to read it without instruction. But we find it impossible in our thoughts-but not more impossible than the author finds it in his writing-to keep his divisions of the subject distinct. The purpose of the book is, as the preface informs us, to establish the thesis that there are not one but three sciences of morals: first, the science of the motives and ends of conduct that belong to man regarded as a part of the world of nature; secondly, the science which, while including the former, takes also account of the phenomena arising from man being brought into conscious connexion with God, as the Jews were; thirdly, the science which embraces in its scope the moral life of to-day, as well the Jewish as the Christian.

But the author does not explain to us what it is that constitutes a distinct science. Is the astronomy of to-day a different science from that of the age of Ptolemy? In one sense it certainly is; for the books which are read and the principles which are accepted in the study of it are different. But the general usage distinguishes sciences one from another according to their subject-matter. And as the Ptolemaic and the Copernican astronomy have the same heavenly bodies for their subject, we treat them, not as different sciences, but as rudimentary and advanced stages of the same science. And such a method of regarding Pagan, Jewish, and Christian morals seems to us the method which is adopted by the Founder of Christianity and His first preachers themselves.

However striking the moral contrast between Paganism and Judaism, it is the contrast which arises from the solution, in the one condition, of questions which in the other were insoluble but not unknown, and from the accomplishment in the one of objects attempted in the other, though unattained or most imperfectly realized. And the same description

applies still more strongly to the relations of Christianity to Judaism. The connexion between Paganism and Judaism is such as to permit St. Paul to say when the Gentiles which have not the law do by nature the things contained in the law, these having not the law are a law unto themselves; while of the transition from Moses to Christ he says: 'What the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.' Language like this is applicable, not to different sciences, but to different stages of the same science. In the earlier stages methods are used which are afterwards given up as useless; and in the later, discoveries are made which enlarge the field of the science, and makes its study fruitful instead of barren. But it remains the same science; and its earlier study, though ignorantly conducted and full of wrong results, yet is by no means wasted or lost, but forms an indispensable introduction to the better knowledge that is

to come.

If the history of morals through the various steps of revelation were not to a considerable degree similar to this, how could its earlier portions bear that character of preparation for the coming advance which is so plainly marked in the Bible? Could the Old Testament hold the place for those who have learnt the Gospel which we find assigned to it in the records of early Christianity if it were but the record of a superseded science? And is the place which the Psalms have held in the moral life of Christianity consistent with the supposition that their science of ethics is different from

ours?

Mr. Hughes is a candid writer, and we find many tokens in his work that these facts have pressed upon his mind. although they have not induced him to recognize the link of continuity which forces us to regard the history of morals as the history of a single science. Thus 'the existence of a consciousness of constraint imposed on us by nature to make ourselves happy in such degree as we plainly can, may be taken as the first fundamental fact of natural morals' (i. 3). Now, is it not plain that the consciousness of a permission, and even a command, revealed in nature to make ourselves as happy as we can, is simply the first step in the revelation of something in nature which is above nature-that is to say, of the supernatural? Nature, if we are to be strict in our language, recognizes merely the desire for happiness on the part of the

creature. By that she works. To systematize and refine the methods by which happiness can be sought is natural. And to the same category may belong the resolution to abstain from some pleasures in order to increase our enjoyment of others. But a constraint of happiness as distinguished from the suggestions of desire implies some higher power which constrains, and therefore raises us beyond nature to the supernatural.

But there is another constraint laid on us-the' constraint of order.' We may speak of 'conduct voluntarily adopted in obedience to the constraint of order as moral conduct, since it is conduct adopted in more or less conscious obedience to the behest of nature' (p. 90). But when we think of nature not merely as arranging and imposing an order, but also as issuing a behest, we find ourselves again in contact with beliefs which have no existence whatever in purely natural systems. In these the order of nature means merely that arrangement which results, and must result as a fact, from the work of the various forces of the universe. The forces which act upon a stone tumbling down a hill must settle it among themselves which is to prevail, and how far. And such, in the merely natural view, is the case with reference to the more complicated action of the forces which bear upon human life. Their order is such as results from the nature of things. But the idea of order exercises, in the merely natural sphere, no constraint. The contending forces must settle their own order by the simple balance of their relative strength. It is our business only to obey that which most strongly asserts itself. We are, in the natural sphere, only privates bound to obey, and the order of battle is no concern of ours. If you are going to bid us take an interest in the order of battle and listen to the behests of nature, you must bid us recognize a commander at our head with an intellect and a will in harmony with our own. And we find Him not in nature but in the supernatural.

And Mr. Hughes goes so far in recognizing this distinction that he actually believes it to disprove the theory of evolution as a complete account of the production of man's moral qualities. In which opinion he is right. For, though we can well conceive human morality evolved out of natural desires by an intelligent moral being directing and guiding the process, we cannot conceive such an evolution through the natural action of the desires themselves.

'The difference between desires and constraints is too marked to be satisfactorily accounted for by any theory of a modification which