is a clear and certain truth of revelation? But how many of us who do not hold that have ever said a word to tell men that we thought they might be Christians, and yet keep a hope for the souls of all God's children?"
Dr. Brooks remarks still further: "There must be no lines of orthodoxy inside the lines of truth. Men find that you are playing with them and will not believe you even when you come in earnest. I know what may be said in answer. I know the old talk about holding the outworks as long as we can, and then retreating to the citadel, and perhaps there has hardly been a more mischievous metaphor than this. It is the mere illusion of a metaphor. The minister who tries to make people believe that which he questions, in order to keep them from questioning that which he believes, knows very little about the certain workings of the human heart, and has no real faith in truth itself. I think that a great many teachers and parents now are just in this condition. They remember that they started with a great deal more belief than they have now. They have lost much, and still have much to live by. They think that their children, too, must start believing so much that they can afford to lose a great deal and still have something left, and so they teach these children what they have themselves long ceased to believe. It is a most dangerous experiment."
We have quoted these frank and impressive passages because they will have weight as coming from a distinguished religious teacher. They reveal no secret, and state nothing that observing persons did not know before; but they bring out clearly the degree to which religious dogmas are already discredited and secretly abandoned, and they painfully illustrate the insincerity and duplicity that have resulted.
But what we have here to note is simply the acknowledgment of the extent to which theology is losing its hold upon the general mind, and untenable articles of religious faith are being abandoned. It is this crumbling theological system that has been hitherto offered us as the foundation of morals. Religion and morality, as we have said, are held to be bound up in a common fate, and to the great majority of people religion means orthodox theology. These will therefore naturally think that, when their articles of faith are discredited, morality must be discredited also. We are thus forced by the critical exigencies of thought to meet the question, Is morality to fall with the decaying authority of supernaturalism, or does it really rest upon another and more immutable foundation? In fact, the broad issue is, Does morality belong to the domain of theology or to the domain of science, and is it to be treated by theological methods or by the methods of science? Answers to these questions are now imperatively demanded.
It may be objected that this is an empty requirement, as we already have a distinctly recognized ethical science cultivated by rational methods—the utilitarian system, based upon experience, and rejecting all theological implications. It is true that there is a strong tendency of thought in this direction, but it is neither the prevailing mode of viewing the subject, nor does it make any claim to be based upon the results of modern science. Mr. Sidgwick's recent book, "Methods in Ethics," in which he undertakes to examine and criticise the grounds of ethical systems, does not deal with the relations of modern science to the subject, and in this respect it was disappointing to many. Those familiar with the drifts of recent inquiry perceive that the course it has taken and the results it has attained must profoundly affect the philosophy of morals, if indeed they do not give us a "New Ethics"; but Mr. Sidgwick seems but little more conscious of any such movement than were Bentham and Mill. He is not of course to be blamed, as he deals with past systems, but his work is proof that no close relation between
