Page:Calvinism, an address delivered at St. Andrew's, March 17, 1871.djvu/21

 of the foundations. The persons who should have suffered, according to our notion of distributive justice, were the ignorant architects or masons who had done their work amiss. But the guilty had perhaps long been turned to dust. And the law of gravity brought the tower down at its own time, indifferent to the persons who might be under it.

Now the feature which distinguishes man from other animals is that he is able to observe and discover these laws which are of such mighty moment to him, and direct his conduct in conformity with them. The more subtle may be revealed only by complicated experience. The plainer and more obvious—among those especially which are called moral—have been apprehended among the higher races easily and readily. I shall not ask how the knowledge of them has been obtained, whether by external revelation, or by natural insight, or by some other influence working through human faculties. The fact is all that we are concerned with, that from the earliest times of which we have historical knowledge there have always been men who have recognised the distinction between the nobler and baser parts of their being. They have perceived that if they would be men and not beasts, they must control their animal passions, prefer truth to falsehood, courage to cowardice, justice to violence, and compassion to cruelty. These are the elementary principles of morality, on the recognition of which the welfare and improvement of mankind depend, and human history has been little more than a record of the