t me commend his courage as
well as his insight. We have heard much of late of the peril to
morality involved in the decay of religious belief. What Mr. Knight
says under this head is worthy of all respect and attention. 'I
admit,' he writes, 'that were it proved that the moral faculty was
derived as well as developed, its present decisions would not be
invalidated. The child of experience has a father whose teachings are
grave, peremptory, and august; and an earthborn rule may be as
stringent as any derived from a celestial source. It does not even
follow that a belief in the material origin of spiritual existence,
accompanied by a corresponding decay of belief in immortality, must
necessarily lead to a relaxation of the moral fibre of the race.
[Footnote: Is this really certain? Instead of standing in the
relation of cause and effect, may not the 'decay' and 'relaxation' be
merely coexistent, both, perhaps, flowing from common historic
antecedents?] It is certain that it has often done so. But it is
equally certain that there have been individuals, and great historical
communities, in which the absence of the latter belief has neither
weakened moral earnestness, nor prevented devotional fervour.' I have
elsewhere stated that some of the best men of my acquaintance--men
lofty in thought and beneficent in act--belong to a class who
assiduously let the belief referred to alone. They derive from it
neither stimulus nor inspiration, while--I say it with regret--were I
in quest of persons who, in regard to the finer endowments of human
character, are to be ranked with the unendowed, I should find some
characteristic samples among the noisier defenders of the orthodox
belief. These, however, are but 'hand-specimens' on both sides; the
wider data referred to by Professor Knight constitute, therefore, a
welcome corroboration of my experience. Again, my excellent critic,
Professor Blackie, describes Buddha as being 'a great deal more than a
prophet; a rare, exceptional, and altogether transcendental
incarnation of moral perfection.' [Footnote: 'Natural History of
Atheism,' p. 136.] And yet, 'what Buddha preached was a gospel of
pure human ethics, divorced not only from Brahma and the Brahminic
Trinity, but even from the existence of God.' [Footnote: Natural
History of Atheism,' p. 125.] These civilised and gallant voices
from the North contrast pleasantly with the barbarous whoops which
sometimes come to us along t