do not bring us, unless prayer itself be included among general laws, the experience of all who have sincerely asked them, or, in equivalent terms, the experience of all who have truly prayed testifies, are never withheld. In asking for these blessings, which are the main objects of prayer, we can ask unconditionally and absolutely, directly and definitely, not even needing, as it were, to say, Thy will be done, since we already assuredly know that God's will is to grant them to whoever truly asks them, while He will not, yea cannot, grant them to those who do not ask. Other blessings, however seemingly desirable, reasonable and pious men seek only in subordination to spiritual blessings. They never ask for them except conditionally. They are conscious that what they think best may be really bad, and that what mere nature shrinks from most may be for their highest good. They ask, therefore, for apparent temporal good only in so far as it may be agreeable to God to give it, and with the added supplication that He will give or withhold according to His pleasure, since His pleasure is ever in His children's welfare. All true prayer for temporal things is essentially prayer that God's will in regard to these things may become our will, through our will being elevated and conformed to His; it certainly never is prayer that His will, whether hid in His eternal counsels or expressed in His gen

eral laws, should yield and give place to a will so blind and arbitrary as ours. There is no evidence that a single true prayer has been unanswered. There is the evidence of every truly prayerful man's experience that prayer is daily answered, and that it brings light, and strength, and blessing where science is utterly powerless and useless.

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Science is admirable, and we grudge it no praise to which it is entitled; but we must deny that it can be a substitute for providence. It is at the utmost an indication of some of the rules delineation of part of the plan—of providence. It has no existence in itself, no power of its own. is but a name for a kind of human knowledge, which must be appropriated and applied by a human mind before it can be of any avail. only be of use to us if we make use of it. either make a good or a bad use of it. stantly see it employed to injure men as well as to benefit them. There is as much science displayed on the battle-field as in the hospital or the factory. The possession of it is no guarantee whatever that it will be honourably and beneficially employed. To use science worthily and well we must not only be conversant with it, but we must be good men. How are men to be good, however-how are they to have right affections and aims-without dependence on God, without prayer, without Divine grace? This is a problem

which secularism must consider far more seriously than it has done. Science does not make men good; and where men are bad, science will be perverted to the service of evil. But surely nothing which is merely instrumental, and especially nothing which can be perverted, is properly designated providence.

The third fundamental principle of secularism is, that man has an adequate rule of life independently of belief in God, immortality, or revelation. Morality and not religion, it maintains, is our business. The former is not based on the latter, nor inseparable from it, nor even advantageously associated with it. We can and ought to disjoin them. Abandoning religion, we should cultivate a purely natural and human morality. An adequate standard of such morality, secularists generally believe, may be found in utility. Secularism has practically adopted utilitarianism as its ethical doctrine, and maintains that it supplies a guide of conduct which is independent of religion.

Now I do not oppose secularism at this point by arguing that morality is founded on religion. It is, on the whole, more correct to say that religion is founded on morality than that morality is founded on religion. We cannot know God as a moral Being to whom we stand in moral relations, if we have no moral notions until we know God, if we are unconscious of moral relationship

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until conscious of Divine relationship. A man, we admit, may endeavour to regulate, and may so far actually regulate, his life, from a regard to what is due to humanity, without any reference to God. He may attend to what reason and conscience tell him should be his conduct to his fellow-men, the lower animals, and himself, and put away every idea of duty to the Divine Being, of regard to the Divine will. But clearly this morality is most defective unless it can justify itself by proof that there is no God, or that nothing is due to God. If there be a God, and especially if God be the very author of our moral nature and the moral law, to pay no moral regard to Him must be most. wicked behaviour. If there be a God, morality must be as incomplete when religious duties are neglected as it would be were no attention given to personal or social duties.

Further, the morality which ignores religion is inherently weak because inherently self-contradictory. There is in the very nature of the moral law a reference to God which cannot be denied without disrespect to its whole authority. The law bids man sacrifice pleasure, property, reputation, life itself, everything, if need be, to duty. But can this moral law be a righteous and rational law on any other supposition than that the sacrifice. will not be in vain, and that the power which, through conscience, demands the sacrifice, will

justify the demand by the final issue of things, the eventual victory of the right over pleasure and expediency? I cannot see how it can. The notion of a law demanding that a man should sacrifice not merely apparent to real good, or a lower to, a higher good, but his real and highest good-that he should lose life and soul without hope of finding them again—is the notion of a moral law which is profoundly immoral. Conscience in enjoining such a law must be at hopeless variance with reason and with itself. If a man say, "I will not obey such a law," conscience will condemn him, and yet it must also acquit him and condemn itself. In other words, conscience and moral law require, in order to be self-consistent and reasonable, to be supplemented by the notion of a moral government and a moral Governor. The demands of duty necessarily imply that both humanity and nature are under the rule of a God of righteousness and are moving onwards to a moral goal-the triumph of goodness. "It is not enough to know," says Ullmann, "that the good has a certain authority and supreme right given it by man. No; we must possess a much higher assurance; we must be convinced that the final triumph of goodness is a part of the grand world-plan; that the great design of creation, the reason for which the world. exists, is, that goodness may come to its full realisation. And this certainly can be gained only