morals with the "Summa" of Aquinas, we see that the method is not that of the Angelic Doctor, but that it is that of Grotius. We will on a comparison see and feel at once the likeness. Students of Moral Philosophy to-day, if they look into the "De Jure Belli et Pacis," may be surprised to see that their views are there, and that they are expressed and illustrated in a manner more perspicuously and forcibly than they could have anticipated.

Now, Grotius did not study and reproduce the writings on casuistry. His great work was not a book of questions, but a book of principles. The doctrines rested on a different ground from the decisions of previous writers. He commences with definitions and the statement of principles, on which he erects his superstructure; but he follows a method which was older than that of the writers on casuistry. Grotius had studied the Roman law, and had saturated his mind with its principles and its doctrines. It is the natural law for which he seeks; and, finding it, he applies it to the subject which he has in hand. The Roman law had entered very little into the writings of the casuists. Possibly they looked upon it as somewhat profane, or, at least, out of the province which belonged to them. Grotius, in looking for the Jus Naturale, or the Jus Gentium, was looking for that which comes from nature. What does nature teach? Why is this law? Out of what principle does it come?

What is the reason that there is such a side of civil life as the Roman law sets forth? The Roman law was, as has been said in the seventh Lecture, one thousand years in forming, from the Twelve Tables to the Code of Justinian. It was laboring to express the rights which appertain to persons and to things, and the obligations and duties which arise out of those rights. Grotius began where the "Institutes " of Justinian began. He began with the notion of right conferred by nature, which arose out of the nature of man. This is what was ever agitating the mind of the Romans, and it was this that was developing and embodying itself in the Fus Civile.

The duties were no longer merely a command, or an exposition of the recognized virtues and graces, but it was now an inquiry into the nature of man, and a searching for the laws and virtues which came out of this nature.

This was the beginning of our new and modern method. For two hundred years the world has been supplied with moral philosophy, while moral theology has almost faded from the view of those who adhere to the Reformation. Even Whewell, when he accepted the professorship of casuistry at Cambridge, interpreted it to mean the philosophy of morals; and at Oxford, when the study had fallen into contempt from the manner in which it had been treated, Dr. Hampden for a time revived it by his able lectures

on "A Course of Study of Moral Philosophy." But the whole tendency, in our day, has been to make it simply a study of moral science.

Sir James Mackintosh has truly said that philosophy confined itself to two questions; viz., the criterion of virtue, and the principle or faculty by which we perceive virtue, which is, of course, the conscience; though Paley, being professedly a moral philosopher of the utilitarian school, did not believe in a conscience. Of course, a system confined to such narrow principles cannot well give the information that is asked, or rouse the mind to the contemplation of those relations which the moral man ought to study, and, above all, to the contemplation of that divine power which is to give ability to the human mind in the performance of duty. The bare study of these two questions has not been as prolific as was expected. Its advocates have generally appeared to be satisfied when they have shown the weakness of the utilitarian principle, and the great superiority, the loftiness, the divinity, of the intuitive principles of morals.

Bishop Butler, in his day, did a great service, which may not be entirely appreciated. There is the constant attempt to enlist him on the side of some school. It appears to me that Butler had only one principle in view, which was, to investigate the nature of man. He questioned that nature, and he found the principles which operated in man, and put him in

motion as man. He questioned him, he appealed to his consciousness, and asked him the meaning of the words which he used, and what state of mind they indicated. He thus found a multitude of principles, such as prudence and conscience, a reflex sentiment, and anger and resentment and benevolence; and he brought out into view these principles and actions of the human soul. This was a new line of thought, and a real benefit. He was exhibiting man as he was, and was inquiring for the life and actions which were proportionate to such a being Of course the two questions, viz., the criterion of virtue and the function of conscience, are found in Butler.

But it is very manifest that there is much more demanded than the answer to these two questions. Human nature must be brought into connection with Christian redemption and Christian grace, and it must be shown what are the means and the power by which the duties of life can be performed. Moral Philosophy leaves man standing outside of the covenant, unaided and unbefriended. But he must be brought within the covenant. He must be aided. He must have light and power. It is grace from the fulness of Christ which alone will enable him to live the life of virtue which Moral Philosophy delivers to him, and of which it gives him the criterion; and to perform the functions of conscience which Moral Philosophy has only described to him.

The want of this power, which Moral Philosophy is incompetent to supply, is recognized by such writers as Principal Shairp. In his article on the "Moral Motive Power," he asks, "Why is ethical science, as pursued in this country of late years, even to reflecting men so little attractive and so little. edifying?" And the answer is simple. It is because philosophy, the science of the moral nature, can really only investigate the two questions which have been stated. It is plain that we want a great deal more. We want to know the whole operation of man's nature, and the relations into which it may be brought to Christian redemption and Christian grace. It is somewhat amusing and somewhat discouraging to look into our treatises on moral science. It may be a utilitarian one, like that of Paley's, that we take up, and we find a few of the first pages devoted to the theory of morals—to an inquiry into the nature of moral obligation, why, for instance, we are obliged to keep our word; which being briefly disposed of, we are presented with a system of morals which accords with that which is generally received. Or we may take up what was once a very acceptable book on this subject, the "Moral Science" of Dr. Wayland, and we find that we may keep our word on very different grounds from those which Paley gave us, that the obligation arises from the perception of the relations of our nature to other persons; and