A nation ought not

to be suspicious;

an Empire

must be.

citizens, or which establish merely artificial maxims of precedence. But it seems to me eminently desirablegreatly for the interests of Morality-that those whose profession is to defend a Nation should be more valued than those who merely contribute to increase the wealth of its particular members. Let the mercantile sailor have all the honour that can be given him but his honour will be greatest if there is a class doing in a great measure the same work with him, whose lives are devoted to the common weal. They vindicate for him the right to say: 'I too am the servant of the 'whole land; these goods which I exchange concern

not only him who sells or him who buys; they are 'the signs and pledges of the intercourse between my 'people and the other peoples of the earth.' Then look at the results of the opposite policy-the one which some would urge upon us, Our navy waits upon our commerce.' Exactly, and therefore all the private grudges of commercial men, all the jealousies of merchants whose language and habits are unlike their own, become causes of national quarrels ; the guns of England must be always ready to avenge injuries real or imaginary done to her traffic. There has been too much, I apprehend, of this subjection to the mercantile marine by the navy already; if we wish for peace we shall diminish rather than increase it.

The doctrine Si vis pacem para bellum is not the one which I have maintained in this Lecture, though in some of my statements I may have appeared to justify it. I do not ask England to be augmenting its armaments through suspicion of its neighbours. Such suspicion is almost inevitable in Empires-even in Empires whose motto is peace; the defence of a nation

should have another ground. Every nation should be an armed nation, not because it regards any other with hostility, not because it imagines that any other has an interest in assaulting it, but because its own soil, its own language, its own laws, its own government are given to it, and are beyond all measure precious to it. Any contempt of foreigners, any notion that we are better than they, is so much deduction from our strength, so much waste in braggadocio of the valour which is needed for the day of battle. Reverence for the rights and freedom of every Nation is what we should earnestly cherish if we would be true defenders of our own. On the other hand, I cannot set much store by a man's profession of interest in the well-being of strangers who is indifferent about the land of his fathers.

mand for

Valour.

Courage or Valour has been deemed in old times The dethe characteristic of a man. I cannot hold that opinion to be obsolete, nor can I think that there will be valour in us if we are indifferent about the defence of our nation. That is a duty which devolves upon us all in our respective positions. There have been times and countries when the professors and students of a University have heard the call to join an army which was to drive foreigners from their soil; when they have obeyed it with as much alacrity as any who had been trained to the service. But at all times and in every land the call in some way to fight for the nation is addressed to old and young, to rich and poor, to man and woman. We may all by grovelling habits, by low thoughts, by vanity and insolence, be working for its downfall; each one struggling with these in himself, strengthening his neighbour against them, may be as much as any soldier or sailor its champion.

LECTURE XII.

NATIONAL WORSHIP.

Reference In the last Lecture of my course on Domestic Morality to Domes. I spoke of Family Worship. I was not unwilling that

tic Wor

ship.

The Domesticand National conceptions of

Divinity

you should give that phrase its most modern sense; I wish to remind you always that we are members of families as much as Jews or Greeks or Romans were in the days of old. But I spoke especially of them. In opposition to the theory that Worship is primarily suggested by the wish to account for natural phænomena or to produce some change in them, I urged you to notice the most obvious characteristics of the Homeric mythology. Wherever the Gods dwelt, whatever regions they governed, they were husbands, brothers, fathers; they were the founders of families in Greece or Asia; they formed a family above. When you assume that men in an early stage of cultivation were busy about the causes of the appearances in the earth or sea or sky, you are bound to explain how such curiosity was awakened; to introduce a 'law of Nature' is a clumsy expedient, which breaks down when you need its help most. If men are reminded continually by the facts of their own existence that they have some origin and some relations, may we not admit the Homeric evidence as to worship without gainsaying? May we

strife with

not suppose that it was more difficult to explain whence often at the hero derived the qualities which enabled him to each establish a house or do brave deeds without referring other. to some divine parent, than to account for the rain or an earthquake?

I observed that in the Homeric mythology, though it had this primary domestic element, there were abundant traces of a national condition. I did not dwell upon these; closely as they were blended with the others, it was possible to overlook them. It will occur to you that there is often a positive tendency in these two portions of the legends to break loose from each other. Zeus the Lawgiver seems another being from Zeus the Husband and Father. The two characters modify each other. His justice is perverted by his affections; they must be cast aside when he gives the nod. Evidently the conceptions were hard to reconcile. In the traditions of an older Society which Zeus overthrew and for which he substituted a fixed iron rule, the contrast becomes direct and palpable.

Which was to be preferred? There was the dream of a golden age hovering over the first. The gods. were benevolent, tolerant, in sympathy with men. There was the sense of Order and Government about the latter. Wrong was forbidden and repressed; there was a demand for submission and dread; a throne above. Caprice was not excluded from this throne; he The old who occupied it might be vindictive. Still Right must be the ground of it. There must be a God of Right; Govern. there must be a supreme Justice. It was not only Justice the philosopher who repudiated any conceptions of the asserting Godhead which were inconsistent with Justice; the above

and the

new

ment.

itself

and

favourit.

ism.

fondness practical lawgiver, if he could not put them aside, if he was compelled to bear with them, was yet impressed with the conviction and sought to impress it upon his countrymen that there was a Judgment-seat not swayed by any of the motives which affected visible Judges; that there was one, whatever might be his name, before whom they must tremble, by whom their acts would be reviewed.

Physical Observations.

not ban.

ished but

The mixture of observations and experiences respecting the outward physical world with those which concerned human Society introduced much perplexity into the national as into the domestic Worship. But as the belief in Law and Government became stronger, the view of natural phænomena became much changed. Those who had acquired the habit of recognising an Order in their daily transactions with each other were compelled to suspect an Order, and therefore some person or persons who administered it, in Worship day and night, in summer and winter; therefore to suspect also some meaning and motive where they developed could discern no succession, where all appeared anomaby politi- lous and incoherent. Thus we can understand a circumstance which our modern interpreters of ancient beliefs find very puzzling; that the thoughts about divine powers do not, as they would desire, appear most conspicuous in barbarous periods, do not diminish as men entered into civil Societies, but grow with the growth and development of these Societies; become complicated with their complications. It must be so if the demand for such thoughts is inseparable from the law, the language, the government, the conflicts of a people; if they are most earnest when a people has most feeling that it is a people-most sense how

cal life.