EVANGELICAL,    SCIENTIFIC,    AND   CRITICAL        131

the  observance  of  what  is  right.  '  There  was  virtue
in  the  continence  of  Scipio,  in  the  self-devotion  of
Eegulus,  in  the  minds  of  Socrates  and  Plato.  In  the
present  day  there  is  a  native  sense  of  integrity  and
honour  in  many  a  human  bosom.  There  is  a  felt
obligation  in  truth.  There  are  not  merely  the  in-
stinctive, but  the  duteous  regards  of  kindred  and
companionship  maintained  by  thousands  in  society,
not  because  of  the  popularity  which  rewards  them,
but  because  of  the  principle  which  enjoins  them,  in
the  fulfilment  of  which  there  is  the  complacency  of  an
approving,  and  in  the  transgression  of  which  there
would  be  the  disquietude  of  a  self- offended  and  there-
fore, a  reclaiming  conscience.1  Then,  in  the  handling
of  the  doctrine  of  the  Imputation  of  Adam's  sin
Chalmers  urged  his  students  not  to  charge  men  with
'  the  guilt  of  a  transaction  which  took  place  thousands
of  years  ago,'  but  to  bring  home  to  them  the  guilt  of
sins  which  their  own  hands  have  committed  and  of  a
sinfulness  which  vitiates  every  affection  and  desire  of
their  own  hearts.
It  is  unnecessary  to  deal  in  detail  with  the  other
parts  of  the  Institutes.  Enough  to  say  that,  whether
expatiating  on  the  preaching  of  Christ  crucified  as  the
great  vehicle  for  the  lessons  of  a  full  and  free  gospel,
on  the  warrant  which  each  man  has  to  appropriate  the
calls  of  the  gospel  to  himself,  or  on  the  Universality
of  the  Gospel,  the  great  divine  of  the  nineteenth
century  is  intensely  practical  and  insistently  earnest

1  Institutes  of  Theology,  vol.  i.  p.  366.
