' This is a truth which we are persuaded a profound
philosophy will understand the better the more deeply it is revolved;
and only those legislative pedants will refuse weight to it, who would
venturously propose to give New Zealanders and Hottentots, in the
starkness of their savage ignorance, the complex forms of the British
constitution. In similar manner, many of the old objections of our
deistical writers have ceased to be heard of in our day, unless it be
from the lips of the veriest sciolism; the objections, for instance,
of that truly pedantic philosophy which once argued that ethical and
religious truth are not given in the Scripture in a system such as a
schoolman might have digested it into; as if the brief iteration and
varied illustration of pregnant truth, intermingled with narrative,
parable, and example, were not infinitely better adapted to the
condition of the human intellect in general! For similar reasons, the
old objection, that statements of Christian morality are given without
the requisite limitations, and cannot be literally acted upon, has
been long since abandoned as an absurdity. It is granted that a hundred
folios could not contain the hundredth part of all the limitations of
human actions, and all the possible cases of a contentious casuistry;
and it is also granted that human nature is not so inept as to be
incapable of interpreting and limiting for itself such rules as
'Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.
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