once since he came to the throne he had attempted to discriminate between good and bad, and apportion reward to merit, and dares him to mention one such instance. Some there were, so Tacitus says, who tried to believe that the popular notions of good and evil might be mistaken; that men might suffer and yet be happy, and prosperous and yet be miserable. But this was paradox. No real conviction could be based on obscure possibilities; and the great Roman world went upon its way back into vice, back into madness and atheism, till the dead shell fell off, and a living Christian Church, grown to imperial stature, was found standing on the ruins of the constitution of the Cæsars.

Why was it well with the wicked? The theology of paganism could give no answer, for the wealth' of paganism was the wealth' of the modern Englishmanmoney and broad lands and health to enjoy them--and the most pious disposition to believe could not blind itself to the principles on which wealth of this kind was distributed. Paganism had allotted as the special dominion of the Gods the natural forces which were beyond man's control. In the operation of these forces there was no trace of a moral Governor, and men who refused to lie looked the truth in the face and acknowledged it. Moral government, which openly and visibly rewarded merit and punished vice and crime, extended precisely so far as the authority of man extended and no further. The oracles, the legendary tales, the devout imaginations of what the Gods had done in the old times, the prophecies of what the Gods would do in the future, these would no longer satisfy. res mortalium et necessitate immutabili an forte volvantur. Quippe sapientissimos veterum, quique sectam eorum æmulantur, diversos reperies, ac multis insitam opinionem non initia nostri, non finem, non denique homines Diis curæ; ideo creberrime tristia in bonos, læta apud deteriores esse.'-Tac. Annals, vi., 22.

The facts of experience were too stern to be trifled with. The struggling conscience had demanded reality, and had built temples to Divus Cæsar. This, too, had not availed. A society constructed like that of the Cæsars, on the policeman and economic laws, is a body without life; and by an everlasting law of nature, which men may quarrel with, may deny to exist, yet from which they can no more escape than they can escape from their own dissolution, such a society, such a kingdom of this world, will become a kingdom of the Devil.

What was the truth, then? What was this inexorable sphinx which sat by the highway of humanity, propounding its enigma and devouring every one who could not divine the answer? In the most despised of the Roman provinces, among groups of peasants and fishermen, on the shores of a Galilean lake, the answer had been given, and there, in that remote and humble region, a new life had begun for mankind. They had looked for a union of God with man. They thought that they had found it in Cæsar. Divided from Cæsar by the whole diameter of society, they found it at last in the Carpenter of Nazareth. The kingdom of Cæsar was a kingdom over the world; the kingdom of Christ was a kingdom in the heart of man.

I am a King, he said (if it be permitted to paraphrase his words). I bid you follow me and be my servants; but my kingdom is not such a kingdom as you look for. It is the kingdom of God. The philosophers of the world say there is no kingdom of God, because no justice can be found in the apportionment of good and evil. What the world calls good is not the fit reward of human virtue. What the world calls evil is not the punishment of sin. The Galileans, whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices, were not sinners above other Gali

leans. Suffering, you say, if it is just, must be a punishment of sin, and you ask where the sin lay when a man was born blind? Does this perplex you? Do you say God is indifferent? I bid you find rather in this indifference an example for yourselves to imitate. Your Father in heaven makes his rain to fall on the just and the unjust, and is good to the unthankful and the evil. Be you like Him. The kingdom of God is within you. If you would enter it, put away your false measure of good and evil; the road into that kingdom is through the Cross. I will not make you great. I will not give you honours, and lands, and gold and jewels. I will promise you no immunity from disease, or suffering, or death. To these things the Gentiles look, and when they are not awarded, on principles which they call just, they doubt if there is any God in heaven. These are not the wages which you will earn in my service. Come to me and I will make you good men. I will make you rulers over your own selfishness, your own appetites and lusts. I will set you free from sin. Make this your object, to be free from sin, to lead pure and true and honourable lives. I will then be with you. I will dwell in you. I will give you a peace of mind of which the world knows nothing. I will be a well of water in you, springing up into everlasting life. You wish for prosperity, you wish for pleasure, you wish for the world's good things. But prosperity will be no help to you in the conquest of yourselves. It may rather be a hindrance. Sorrow and suffering are not evils. They are the school in which you may learn self-command. The empire to which I bid you aspire is higher than the Cæsars'. It is the empire over your own hearts, The reward I offer you is greater than the purple. It is the redemption of your own character. This is the Providence of God, for which you looked and failed to find it. And it is just to the smallest fibre of it.

External things obey the laws assigned to them. The moral Ruler whom you desire to know is not to be found by looking at these. He is here; he is in the heart of man. He is in me who now speak to you. He will be in you if you struggle to obey him and to do his will. To be happy is not the purpose for which you are placed in this world. Examine your own hearts. Ask your conscience and it will answer you. Were the choice offered you, whether you would be prosperous and wicked, or whether your life should be a life of prolonged misfortune, and you should rise out of it purified and ennobled, every one of you knows the answer which he ought to give. Therefore your complaint, that it is well with the wicked, and that the good are afflicted, is confuted out of your own lips. You would not change conditions with the wicked, however prosperous they may seem, unless you are yourself wicked. To that man life has been most kind whose character it has trained most nearly to perfection.

Desire, first, to be good men-true in word, just in action, pure in spirit. Seek these, whatever else befall you. So you will know God, whom you have sought and could not find. So out of men who have life in them shall grow a society that has life, and the kingdom of the world shall be made in truth a kingdom of God.

ON THE USES OF A LANDED GENTRY.1

BEFORE I proceed with the address which I have undertaken to deliver this evening, I ought to explain why I have chosen a subject which lies outside the usual lines. Your institution is philosophical not political, and these lectures are properly confined to subjects on which, if we cannot all agree, we ought to be able to agree to differ.

I might say that the question of the Uses to the Community of a Landed Gentry is in this country purely a philosophical one. It is certainly not a practical question. It is no question of practical politics. No reasonable man that I know of seriously wishes for an agrarian law, or for a forcible division of landed property, or for an interference with the right of making settlements, or with our right to make our own wills in whatever way may seem good to us.

There are persons, perhaps, who do not like the way in which the land is apportioned-who would wish it was more evenly shared among the people. But they wish it only as they might wish that we had a drier or a milder climate. There are others who are well satisfied with things as they are; who have no objection to the large estates, who do not quarrel with primogeniture, who are well satisfied with entails, particularly if they have the happiness of benefiting by them. But they do not like

1 Address delivered at the Philosophical Institution at Edinburgh, November 6, 1876.