PRINCIPLES OF NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL MORALS. BY THE REV. HENRY HUGHES, M.A., FORMERLY JUNIOR STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD; AND SOMETIME VOL. II.-SUPERNATURAL MORALS. LONDON: KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER, & CO., LT THE main purpose of the book, of which this is the second. of two volumes, is to establish the thesis, that there are, not one, but three sciences of morals. There appears to be, first, a science of the motives and ends of conduct that belong to pagan or non-religious man, to man regarded simply as a voluntary agent forming part of the world of nature. There appears to be, secondly, a science which, while it includes the former, takes account also of other phenomena arising from man being brought into conscious relations with God. Of the whole body of phenomena with which this science has to do, Jewish morality may be taken as the type. And there appears to be, thirdly, a science which embraces within its scope all the phenomena of the moral life of the present day, those which are at the same time Jewish together with others which are distinctively Christian. To account on natural grounds alone for the whole of the phenomena of moral life in a Christian country appears to be impossible. And it appears to be no less impossible truly to refer them all to religious influences. In order to arrive at anything like a correct understanding of moral processes in the present day, it seems necessary to discriminate carefully between those that have their origin in the constitution of man's ordinary nature, and those that are dependent upon his being brought into personal relations with God... And it seems necessary to distinguish further between the obligations of persons who know God only in some such manner as He is known by Jews, and the obligations of persons who enter into communion with Him as members of the Christian Church. In the first volume an attempt was made to exhibit a system of natural morals complete in respect of all essential points, a system generally applicable to the case of dwellers in pagan lands. Man being regarded as a part of the world |