ETHERIDGE
319
ETHICS
leading to the inference that it was once an extensive town (Robinson, Researches, iii, 10).
Etheridge, John Wesley, Ph.D., a Methodist minister and eminent scholar, was born at Grange- woods, Isle of Wight, February 24, 1804, and died at Camborne May 24, 18G6. His parents were Methodists, and he was brought up with religious care. In 1827 he entered the ministrj' of the Wesleyan Methodist Church, and was appointed to the Hull Circuit. In 1838 his health failed, and he became " supernumer- ary." In 1846 he was able to return to the itinerant ministry, in which service he remained until his death. "He was an eminently holy man. Whether in the pulpit or in the social circle, he appeared clothed with humility, and radiant with Christian benevolence. Constrained by the love of Christ, he lived onlj'to pro- mote the interests of the Church. He was ' a burn- ing and shining light,' and consumed himself in the service of his Lord and Saviour" (^Minutes, 1867).
Dr. Etheridge's devotion to letters, amid the en- grossing labors of the IMethodist ministry, was verj- re- markable. Earh' in life he showed extraordinary apt- itude for languages, and by continued study he learn- ed to read and write Hebrew and Syriac with facility. Ill the literature of these two languages he became pre-eminent before his death. His published writings include The Syrian Churches, their early History, Lit- urgies, and Literature (London, 1846, 12mo : this work contains a translation, also, of the four Gospels from the Peschito) : — The Apostolical Acts and EjustleSj/rom the Peschito, with the rerna'minr/ Epistles and the Ri rela- tion, after a later Syrian Text (London, 1849, 12mo) : — IIo7-re Aramaicce (London, 1843, 12mo: a useful series of E.ssaA's on the Shemitic, Aramaic, and Syriac lan- guages and literature) : — Jeiiisakm and Tiberias, a Survey of the reliyivus and scholastic I^earning cf the Jews, designed as an Lntrodiiclion to Hebrew Literatvri (London, 1856, 12mo) : — The Targvms of Onlelos and Jonathan ben-Uzziel, etc. (London, 1862, li'mo). Be- sides these, he published Misericordia, or Contempla- ticms on the Mercy of God (Loud. 1842):— T/if LJfe of Dr. Adam Clarle (London, 1858 ; N. Y. I860) -.—The Life of Dr. Thomas Coke (Lond. 1860) :— TAe Life of the Rev. John Fh-tcher. — Minutes of Conferences (Eng- lish) for 1867 ; Christian Examiner, Ixiv, 346.
Ethics, from >/6nr, originally the Ionic form of t9or, in Germ. Siitenlehre, in English 7norcd philosophy, though this last phrase sometimes covers the whole science of mind. . Ethics are related to law and duty, and to virtue and vice. "Aristotle says that fiOoc, which signifies moral virtue, is derived from t'6'or, cus- tom, since it is by repeated acts that virtue, which is a moral liatiit, is formed" (see Fleming's Vocab. Phil. p. 171). " Ethics, taken in its widest sense, as including the moral sciences or natural jurisprudence, may be divided into, 1. Moral philosophy, or the science of the relations, rights, and duties by which men are un- der obligations towards God, themselves, and their fel- low-creatures. 2. The law of nations, or the science of those laws by which all nations, as constituting the society of the human race, are bound in their mutual relations to one another. 3. Public or political law, or the science of the relations between the different ranks in society. 4. Civil law, or tlie science of those laws, riglits, and duties by which individuals in civil society are liound — as commercial, criminal, judicial, Roman, or modern. 5. History, profane, civil, and political" (Peemans, Introd. ad Philosoph. p. 96). Ethics, then, covers the science of all that is moral, whether it re- lates to law or action, to God or the creature, to the in- dividual or the state. It goes wherever the ideas of right and wrong can enter.
I. Etiiical science maj' be divided into philosophi- cal ethics, theological etliics, and Christian ethics.
((».) Philosophical Ethics. — The science, in this as- pect, must find its root and its life, its forms and its
authoritj', in the depths of the human constitution. This leads necessarily to the idea of God. AVe do rot affirm that ethics cannot be discussed at all without bringing in the notion of a supreme being. On the contrary, it is undeniable that we find in man a moral nature ; whatever may be the character of his morali- ty, the very doubts about that imply they«r^ of mo- rality. He manifestly has relations to virtue and vice, to right and wrong, to blame and praise, to guilt and innocence. True, if he does not accept the idea of God, morals seem to lose their foundation. Why should a man obey the dictates of his nature, even when obedience seems to be right and useful, unless his nature is a product of wisdom, and reveals the law and the nature of an infinite intelligence.' But truth is stubborn, and even a fragment of it, swinging in the air without a foundation, will live. Pulled up out of the soil of the doctrine of God, the moral ideas, howev- er shorn of their strength and withered, still assert their authority and insist on obedience, from motives of utility, or fitness, or hap]iiness. A genuine pliilo- Eophical ethics, however, will find a Creator from the study of the creature, and will raise frcm the nature of man a law which will ground itself in the idea of God.