name, and the general appreciation of the service he rendered to Christianity in his work on 'The Analogy of Religion.' But, in truth, dissatisfaction at all is out of place. Butler wrote his sermons as he wrote his Analogy, in consequence of the peculiar necessity of his times. More particularly against Hobbes, denying all moral sentiments and social affections, and making a regard to personal advantage the only motive of human action, it was his business to prove that man's nature is of a very different constitution, comprehending disinterested affections, and above all the supreme element of conscience, which, had it strength as it has right, would govern the world.' He proves this, and so accomplishes his work. He had merely to do with the ideal of humanity. It did not belong to him to dwell on the actual feebleness of man to perform what is good. He might have added a few paragraphs to this effect; but it was not the character of his mind to go beyond the task which he had set himself. What is of importance to be observed here is, that he does not make the application of their common principles which Mencius does. He knows of no perfect men; he does not tell his readers that they have merely to set about following their nature, and that, without any aid from without, they will surely and easily go on to perfection.

sympathy with hu

man error.

Mencius is not to be blamed for his ignorance of what is to us the Doctrine of the Fall. He had no means of becoming acquainted Mencius's lacking with it. We have to regret, however, that his study in humility, and of human nature produced in him no deep feeling on account of men's proneness to go astray. He never betrays any consciousness of his own weakness. In this respect he is again inferior to Confucius, and is far from being, as I have said of him in another aspect of his character, 'more admirable' than he. In the former volume I have shown that we may sometimes recognise in what the sage says of himself the expressions of a genuine humility. He acknowledges that he comes short of what he knows he ought to be. We do not meet with this in Mencius. His merit is that of the speculative thinker. His glance is searching and his penetration deep; but there is wanting that moral sensibility which would draw us to him, in our best moments, as a man of like passions with ourselves. The absence of humility is naturally accompanied with a lack of sympathy. There is a hardness about his teachings. He is the professor, performing an operation in the class-room, amid a throng of pupils who are admiring his science

and dexterity, and who forgets in the triumph of his skill the suffering of the patient. The transgressors of their nature are to Mencius the tyrants of themselves,' or 'the self-abandoned.' The utmost stretch of his commiseration is a contemptuous 'Alas for them'!' The radical defect of the orthodox moral school of China, that there only needs a knowledge of duty to insure its performance, is in him exceedingly apparent. Confucius, Tsze-sze, and Mencius, most strangely never thought of calling this principle in question. It is always as in the formula of Tsze-sze :-' Given the sincerity, and there shall be the intelligence; given the intelligence, and there shall be the sincerity.'

Mencius's ideal

of human nature

does not embrace duty to God.

I said above that Mencius's doctrine of human nature was defective, inasmuch as even his ideal does not cover the whole field of duty. He says very little of what we owe to God. There is no glow of natural piety in his pages. Instead of the name God, containing in itself a recognition of the divine personality and supremacy, we hear from him more commonly, as from Confucius, of Heaven. Butler has said:-'By the love of God, I would understand all those regards, all those affections of mind, which are due immediately to Him from such a creature as man, and which rest in Him as their end. Of such affections Mencius knows nothing. In one place he speaks of 'delighting in Heaven"," but he is speaking, when he does so, of the sovereign who with a great State serves a small one, and the delight is seen in certain condescensions to the weak and unworthy. Never once, where he is treating of the nature of man, does he make mention of any exercise of the mind as due directly to God. The services of religion come in China under the principle of propriety, and are only a cold formalism; but even here, other things come with Mencius before them. We are told:-The richest fruit of love is this,--the service of one's parents; the richest fruit of righteousness is this,--the obeying one's elder brothers; the richest fruit of wisdom is this, the knowing those two things, and not departing from them; the richest fruit of propriety is this,-the ordering and adorning those two things.' How different is this from the

1 Bk. IV. Pt. I. x.

* First Sermon Upon the Love of God.

Bk. I. Pt. II. ii. 3.

↑ Bk. IV. Pt. I. xxvii. My friend, the Rev. Mr. Moule, (now Bishop) of Ningpo, has supplied me with the following interesting coincidence with the sentiments of Mencius in this passage, from one of the letters of Charles Lamb to Coleridge, dated November 14, 1796 :-'Oh, my friend, cultivate the filial feelings; and let no one think himself relieved from the kind charities of

reiterated declaration of the Scriptures, that 'the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom!' The first and great commandment, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart and soul and mind and strength,' was never thought of, much less delivered, by any Chinese philosopher or sage. Had Mencius apprehended this, and seen how all our duties to our fellow-men are to be performed as to God, he could not have thought so highly as he did of man's powers; a suspicion might have grown up that there is a shadow on the light which he has in himself.

This absence from Mencius's ideal of our nature of the recognition of man's highest obligations is itself a striking illustration of man's estrangement from God. His usage of the term Heaven has combined with the similar practice of his Master to prepare the way for the grosser conceptions of the modern literati, who would often seem to deny the divine personality altogether, and substitute for both God and Heaven a mere principle of order or fitness of things. It has done more: it has left the people in the mass to become an easy prey to the idolatrous fooleries of Buddhism. Yea, the unreligiousness of the teachers has helped to deprave still more the religion of the nation, such as it is, and has made of its services a miserable pageant of irreverent forms.

my

It is time to have done with this portion of theme. It may be thought that I have done Mencius more than justice in the first part of my remarks, and less than justice at the last; but I hope it is not so. A very important use is to be made both of what he succeeds in, and where he fails, in his discoursing upon human nature. His principles may be, and, I conceive, ought to be, turned against himself. They should be pressed to produce the conviction of sin. There is enough in them, if the conscience be but quickened by the Spirit of God, to make the haughtiest scholar cry out, 'O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from this body of death?' Then may it be said to him with effect, Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world!' Then may Christ, as a new and true exemplar of all that man should be, be displayed, 'altogether lovely,' to the trembling mind! Then may a new heart be received from Him, that shall thrill in the acknowledgment of the claims both of men and God, and girding up the loins of the mind, address itself to walk in all His commandments and ordinances relationship: these shall give him peace at the last; these are the best foundation for every species of benevolence.'

blameless! One thing should be plain. In Mencius's lessons on human duty there is no hope for his countrymen. If they serve as a schoolmaster to bring them to Christ, they will have done their part; but it is from Christ alone that the help of the Chinese can

come.

6. Besides giving more explicit expression to the doctrine of the goodness of man's nature than had been done before him, Mencius has the credit also of calling attention to the nourishment of the passion-nature. It may be questioned whether I translate his language exactly by this phrase. What I render the passion-nature, Julien renders by 'vitalis spiritus.' The philosopher says himself that it is difficult to describe what he intends. Attempting such a description, he says:-'This is it:-It is exceedingly great and exceedingly strong. Being nourished by rectitude, and sustaining no injury, it fills up all between heaven and earth. This is it:-It is the mate and assistant of righteousness and reason. Without it man is in a state of starvation. It is produced by the accumulation of righteous deeds; it is not to be taken, as by surprise, by incidental acts of righteousness. If the mind does not feel complacency in the conduct, this is starved'.' From such predicates we may be sure that it is not anything merely or entirely physical of which he is speaking. The righteous,' said Solomon, are bold as a lion.' The Hebrew saying is very much in Mencius's style. That boldness is the result of the nourishment for which he thought he had a peculiar aptitude. Strong in it and in a knowledge of words, a faculty of discovering the moral aberrations of others from their forms of speech, he was able to boast of possessing 'an unperturbed mind;' he could sit in the centre' of his being, and enjoy bright day, whatever clouds and storms gathered around him.

The nourishment, therefore, of the passion-nature,' 'the vital spirit,' or whatever name we choose to give to the subject, is only an effect of general good-doing. This is the practical lesson from all Mencius's high-sounding words. He has illustrated it amusingly: -There was a man of Sung, who was grieved that his growing corn was not longer, and pulled it up. Having done this, he returned home, looking very wearied, and said to his people, “I am tired to-day. I have been helping the corn to grow long." His son ran to look at it, and found the corn all withered. There are few in the

'Bk. II. Pt. I. ii. 13-15.

world, who do not assist the corn of their passion-nature to grow long. Some consider it of no benefit to them, and let it alone:—they do not weed their corn. Those who assist it to grow long, pull out What they do is not only of no benefit to the nature, but it also injures it1.'

their corn.

This portion of Mencius's teaching need not detain us. He has put a simple truth in a striking way. That is his merit. It hardly seems of sufficient importance to justify the use which has been made of it in vindicating for him a place among the sages of his country.

7. I said I should end the discussion of Mencius's opinions by pointing out what I conceive to be his chief defects as a moral and political teacher. His defects, however, in the former respect have been already not lightly touched on. So far as they were the consequence of his ignorance, without the light which Revelation sheds on the whole field of human duty, and the sanctions which it discloses of a future state of retribution, I do not advance any charge against his character. That he never indicates any wish to penetrate futurity, and ascertain what comes after death; that he never indicates any consciousness of human weakness, nor moves his mind Godward, longing for more light:-these are things which exhibit strongly the contrast between the mind of the East and the West. His self-sufficiency is his great fault. To know ourselves is commonly supposed to be an important step to humility; but it is not so with him. He has spoken remarkably about the effects of calamity and difficulties. He says:- When Heaven is about to confer a great office on a man, it first exercises his mind with suffering, and his sinews and bones with toil; it exposes his body to hunger, and subjects him to extreme poverty; it confounds his undertakings. By all these methods it stimulates his mind, hardens his nature, and supplies his incompetencies. Such have been the effects of Heaven's exercising some men with calamities; but if the issue has been a fitting for the highest offices, there has been a softening of the nature rather than a hardening of it. Mencius was a stranger to the humbling of the lofty looks of man, and the bowing down of his haughtiness, that the Lord alone may be exalted.

His faults as a political teacher are substantially the same as those of Confucius. More than was the case with his sayings of