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never gave them the slightest clue concerning the distinctive doctrines of revealed religion-that many of the views concerning what is supposed to be universal natural religion are still subjects of dispute among those who in the present day reject divine revelation -and that even those who partially accept revelation have nothing and give nothing on the most essential points but a prospect of endless dispute. This state of things in matters spiritual we contend is owing to the imperfect use of reason, and the non-recognition of this truth-persuading principle, viz., inward conviction. In short, our position is this,-if reason could settle these disputed points, then considering the powerful forces which have been brought to bear upon them, it ought to have succeeded in so doing long ago; but so far from this being the case, we find "confusion worse confounded" starting up in all directions. Reason, by all its seeking, never did and never can find out God, heavenly mysteries, and the nature of mind. In matters merely metaphysical we think the evil might be vastly mitigated by more attention being paid to the rigid demonstration of its would-be established principles; in fact, to a demonstration almost Euclidean in its method, but not, of course, in doctrine. There would probably be a tenth part of the present readable matter for us on such a subject, but it would be worth the more. We should have more of the gold of truth, mixed with less of the sand and mud of error.

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Natural religion generally denotes those truths which are supposed to be derived from the "light of nature," or, if preferred, from "the unassisted powers of human reason.' These primary truths are few in number, and are generally enunciated as comprehending the belief in the being and perfections of God, the relations in which we stand to Him, the duties arising from those relations, the immortality of the soul, the government of the world, and the doctrine of future rewards and punishments. Whilst inclined to allow "the light of nature its due influence in man's spiritual development, there is one thought that we feel necessary to keep constantly before us, viz., that from having been brought up within the constant hearing of revealed doctrines, it is a difficult matter for such as ourselves to say what is really derivable from this source. There is as much difficulty in saying where reason should give place to simple faith, as there is in assigning the precise boundary between instinct and reason. The nearest solution of this problem is to be found by a perusal of the ancient Greek and Latin authors, and by a reference to Oriental faiths. And now what of revelation? It is our thorough conviction that in a perfect condition of our intellectual and spiritual nature, revelation and sound reasoning must be always at one. The difficulty, then, is to ascertain the precise limits to which reason may go on this subject. As long as we simply employ it to obtain the evidence on which the truth of revelation rests, we are in no danger; but having once admitted the divine revelation as an established fact, all the doctrines found, after a careful examination, to be therein contained, cannot

be more surely established, although their reasonableness may be an additional evidence in their favour. We believe that reason may be legitimately employed in arriving at the precise meaning of the inspired writings, and the relative bearings of the different parts to each other: but thus far do we go, and no further; for divine revelation being once allowed, the truth of its teachings must depend on the confidence we repose in the veracity of the revealer. This somewhat lengthy introduction must be excused; but without some such expounding of our views it would be nearly impossible to see on what grounds we generally condemn the teachings of so many men of undoubted genius.

We take the term science in its widest sense, as "knowledge reduced to a system," whether that knowledge be founded on physical or metaphysical data. Physical science, in its own nature, cannot and does not produce scepticism: it is only when it passes out of the region of the certainly, tangibly, and systematically knowable, and laying hold of hastily formed hypotheses, argues upon them as if they were absolute truths, that it can be charged with scepticism. A mere verbal argument will suffice on this head. Physical science is well-digested, positive knowledge of organic and inorganic substances: scepticism is doubt or actual disbelief concerning the mental, moral, and religious elements of man's nature. Like produces like as well as cures like, and these two definitions. show that the two definita possess nothing in common, and therefore the one cannot lead to the other. Physical science in all its departments is rapidly becoming beautifully coherent and systematic: who would undertake to systematize the mutable, controvertible, and divisible statements of metaphysics? According to our conception of a science, metaphysics do not really come within the category; but metaphysical writers claim as much for their idol, and they must wear the brand with which we at present mark all speculative inquiry. Whilst asserting that physical science cannot induce scepticism so long as it is restricted to its proper field of inquiry, we also assert that the teachings of metaphysics need not necessarily lead to this evil if less attention were paid to their attractiveness, and more to their suitableness to the object aimed at. The partial cure for sceptical tendencies, as we have indicated above, is in rigid demonstration-a species of mental gymnastics hitherto too much avoided in non-physical matters. But metaphysical science, as read and thought of in the past and present, has produced and does induce scepticism-a position we shall endeavour to maintain by an appeal to testimony. We shall endeavour to show that the principles of many speculative thinkers have led and do lead their followers to doubt and confound matter, mind, God and eternity.

A sceptic was originally a disciple of Pyrrho and Timon, who aimed by a constant balancing of opposite arguments to reduce everything to a state of uncertainty and doubt. A new and more congenial school of scepticism arose under Ænesidemus, and extended

to Sextus Empiricus, whose distinguishing tenet was that speculation may be reconciled with practice. Our business, however, is with the modern use of the word. It is now almost synonymous with unbeliever, viz., in the whole or a part of natural religion, or of revealed religion, or of both, and comprises secularists, absolute religionists, atheists, pantheists, deists, physical rationalists, and theological rationalists. It is quite true that these different sects of unbelievers cross one another, but each possesses distinctive traits, derived from a peculiar school of speculative inquiry. Since, doubtless, some of our readers are acquainted with the writings of the whole or a part of the thinkers referred to, we must ask them to decide for themselves whether we interpret their expressed thoughts aright.

The Secularists are of modern origin, their representative man being Mr. G. J. Holyoake, who lays down as his chief position the gratuitous assumption that "the nature that we know must be the God that we seek." Another essential article with them is that science is the providence of man, and that absolute spiritual dependence may involve material destruction." They also assert that this life being the first in certainty ought to hold the first place in importance. The doctrine, then, which the secularist teaches is, that if man uses the powers of nature aright, he need not seek any assistance from heaven. They say they are not prepared dogmatically to assert that there is no God, but that they are not satisfied with the arguments adduced for the existence of a God. The Bible, we find, in its over-simplicity, takes the existence of a Divine Being to be a fully established fact in its very first statement,-in fact, as wanting no proof except what may be found in "the things that are made." The secularist really denies the possibility of estab lishing by valid argument anything which is beyond the reach of our bodily senses.

Within the last twenty or thirty years a species of infidelity has grown up in America, which is named by its advocates the religion of humanity, or absolute religion. It is a species of idealism, and it is prophesied concerning it that it is destined ere long to usurp all other religious beliefs, but which we think, from its very indefiniteness, will probably soon dwindle away and be a thing of the past. It is, with the exception of a belief in the one infinite God, a system of unbeliefs. We refer our readers to the writings of Mr. Parker and Mr. W. J. Fox, the latter of whom enunciates as his primary principle that the source of all revelation is the moral constitution of human nature. It has an able organ in this country in the Westminster Review, in which we find that its great objection to the Christian faith is that it rashly undertakes to prove an infinite negative-no inspiration anywhere else but among the Jews. Sir J. Bowring's Lecture to "the people" on the "Religious Beliefs of Eastern Nations" was impregnated with this idea; and Mr. Gladstone, in his Edinburgh address on "Mythology and Theology," certainly lays himself open to the charge of asserting that there

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has always been a human as well as a divine element operating for the redemption of mankind. We grant that in leaving the inhabitants of the heathen world to their own natural resources for so long a period, and thus enabling them to discover their own inability to sound the depths of their existence and spiritual nature, there was a kind of NEGATIVE preparation for a higher order of things, but this is all. The religion of humanity demands that if a man would find a means of renovation, he must look for it, not in the Bible, the Shastras, or the Koran, but to the original intuitions in his own heart. Thus all written revelation is ignored, and religion is found only in the outward universe and the inward man. Of course we do not recognize the Shastras or Koran to be inspired; but the absolute religionist implies that revelation, if there be such a thing, may be found in the breast of all, of what nation or race

soever.

It is asserted by Lord Bacon, Dr. Arnold, and, M. Cousin, that philosophic atheism is impossible. Practical atheism is certainly rife enough. But many speculative inquirers and men of science think themselves exempt from the stigma of atheism so long as they allow a great first cause in nature, although they strongly deny that there exists a personal and living God.

To pantheism we can hardly do justice in a single paragraph. It derives its name from its main assertion that God is all, and all is God. It is Oriental in its origin, and we find the material world termed by the Greeks "the body of Zeus," although pantheistic doctrines did not meet with general acceptance in Greece. The father of modern pantheism is Spinoza, in whose writings it is first exhibited in the form of a demonstration. Descartes before him had derived existence from thought. Spinoza identified these, referring both to one infinite substance, of which everything is simply a mode or manifestation, thus annihilating the distinction between God and the universe. Fichte relegated both these teachings, and reduced everything to the all-engrossing ego. Schelling and Hegel reproduced what Fichte had rejected, and plainly declared everything to be a gradually evolving process of thought, and God himself the whole process. Spinoza taught unity of substance; Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, with important variations, taught the identity of existence and thought. Pantheism is essentially idealistic, and contains principles far less intelligible and more mysterious than are to be found in the Christian faith. It says that finite things have no distinct existence in nature, and that there exists only one absolute Being, manifesting itself in a variety of forms, demonstrated by the aid of the assumption of universal identity. In Germany we see divines and professors of theology embracing these doctrines. Strauss regards Christ as merely an embodied conception of the church, and rejects a personal God and au historical Christianity. M. Cousin does not hold with Spinoza that God is a pure substance, but he holds that He is a trinity of manifestations, being at the same time God, nature, and humanity,

and declares the finite to be comprehended in the infinite, and the universe to be comprehended in God. In our own country we have pantheists under the name of Intuitionists, who are followers of Emerson. This fanciful writer says, "The currents of the universal Being circulate around me. I am part and particle of God." The man who can look around him and say that the universe is God, and that he himself is an incarnation of God, certainly denies a personal God.

Deists are those who believe in natural religion, but deny the divine authority and the inspiration of the Scriptures. Numberless examples will occur to our readers of men of this stamp, although we cannot say that deism is as flourishing now as it was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Then existed Hobbes, Bolingbroke, Shaftesbury, Gibbon, Priestley. The Boyle lectures were founded to counteract its principles. It seems now to degenerate into infidelity and atheism.

We next come to that species of scepticism which is, par excellence, the scepticism of the day, viz., rationalism, physical and theological. The scientific rationalist alleges that the universe is regulated by certain fixed and self-operating laws, something akin to the atomic theory of Epicurus. La Place endeavoured to prove that it was possible for the planetary system to have been formed by the known dynamical laws of matter and motion. M. Comte, the founder of the positivists, attempted to verify these hypotheses on mathematical principles. Darwin, in his "Origin of Species," and the (anonymous) author of "The Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation," have gone farther, and consider the development theory sufficient to account for the formation of the world and the various tribes of animals and vegetables which inhabit it. Dr. Oken says, "Whatever exists has not been created, but developed from an infusorial point." Before development begins, they assume "spontaneous generation" by means of electricity, mucus, &c., so as to do away with a creative act; but observation has not discovered nor history recorded such development, and the consequent transmutation of species. Professor Huxley, in his first Sunday evening lecture to "the people," recognized no creative agency.

Theological rationalism probably arises from the importation into its beliefs of some of the opinions above alluded to. Let a man once really belong to the school of Cousin, or Hegel, or Schelling, and carry the principles insisted upon by either of these to their limits, and he must necessarily deny the plenary or partial inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. Semler of Halle was perhaps the first who taught that the Scripture writers accommodated themselves to the prejudices of those whom they addressed. The rationalist takes clearness as the gauge of truth. The only thing with them which is sure and established is virtue; and rationalism rejects the idea of an immediate divine influence in general, and a supernatural communication of divine things in particular. The Holy Spirit with them is religious enthusiasm. Strauss and

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