Page:Calvinism, an address delivered at St. Andrew's, March 17, 1871.djvu/64

 for the wildest madness. But the elementary principles of morality are not forms of madness. No one pretends that it is uncertain whether truth is better than falsehood, or justice than injustice. Speculation can eat away the sanction, superstition can erect rival duties, but neither one nor the other pretends to touch the fact that these principles exist, and the very essence and life of all great religious movements is the recognition of them as of authority and as part of the eternal framework of things.

There is, however, it must be allowed, something in what these objectors say. The power of Calvinism has waned. The discipline which it once aspired to maintain has fallen slack. Desire for ease and self-indulgence drag for ever in quiet times at the heel of noble aspirations, while the shadow struggles to remain and preserve its outline when the substance is passing away. The argumentative and logical side of Calvin's mind has created once more a fatal opportunity for a separation between opinion and morality. We have learnt, as we say, to make the best of both worlds, to take political economy for the rule of our conduct, and to relegate religion into the profession of orthodox doctrines. Systems have been invented to explain the inexplicable. Metaphors have been translated into formulas, and paradoxes intelligible to emotion have been thrust upon the acceptance of the reason; while duty, the loftiest of all sensations which we are permitted to experience, has been resolved into the acceptance of scheme of salvation for the individual human soul. Was it not written long ago,