Page:Calvinism, an address delivered at St. Andrew's, March 17, 1871.djvu/30

 credulity. Even here in Scotland, not so long ago, wretched old women were supposed to run about the country in the shape of hares. At this very hour the ablest of living natural philosophers is looking gravely to the courtships of moths and butterflies to solve the problem of the origin of man, and prove his descent from an African baboon.

There was, however, in ancient Egypt another article of faith besides nature-worship of transcendent moment—a belief which had probably descended from earlier and purer ages, and had then originated in the minds of sincere and earnest men—as a solution of the real problem of humanity. The inscriptions and paintings in the tombs near Thebes make it perfectly clear that the Egyptians looked forward to a future state—to the judgment-bar of Osiris, where they would each one day stand to give account for their actions. They believed as clearly as we do, and with a conviction of a very similar kind, that those who had done good would go to everlasting life, and those who had done evil into eternal perdition.

Such a belief, if coupled with an accurate perception of what good and evil mean-—with a distinct certainty that men will be tried by the moral law, before a perfectly just judge, and that no subterfuges will avail—cannot but exercise a most profound and most tremendous influence upon human conduct. And yet our own experience, if nothing else, proves that this belief, when moulded into traditional and conventional shapes, may lose its practical power; nay, without ceasing to be professed, and even sincerely