will not be an Antichrist to deny the Father and the Son; nor that man of sin who, by subtlety and force, shall renew the old delusion that men can be happy without God; but we may expect clear proof that there are only two principles on which the system of the universe can be explained. 1. A Personal Intelligence creating, sustaining, ruling-this is the Christian hypothesis, and will be preserved. 2. A supreme power, but no Supreme Being; an invisible principle, not a personal God-this really atheistic, is called the Pantheistic notion, and will be destroyed.

It will be shown that only two principles of government are possible in the world-1. Providence. 2. Law. Providence, foreseeing, arranging, applying. Law, ordering, subordinating, invariable. Providence, without law, would be uncertain and capricious. Law, without providence, is an absurdity. The doctrine of providence requires interventions. The doctrine of law adjusts and limits varieties of motion and life. The two principles, when applied, merge into one process; for as there is a world of mind, besides that of matter, and as our own mind subordinates matter by acting upon the intelligible order in it, we have proof of a twofold mental action our own, in ascertaining and using the intel ligible order; another, as manifested in that order. Providence then is the soul of law, and law is providence in action; in other words, God governs by law-" Deo est Natura, quod fecerit." Consequently, intellect cannot be divorced from piety; and no truly scientific man should say—“ There never has been, and never will be, any intervention in the operation of natural laws."1

It is certain, then, that the origin and maintenance of law are by an ordaining Intelligence. Take an illustration of highest order-the Divine Individuality of Christ Jesus. He lived 1800 years ago, and was confessedly the crown and perfection of humanity. He could not have been the product of an atheistic, or of a pantheistic system of the universe: for perfection, by either system, is only attainable as the ultimate outcome, as the indefinitely remote completion, of a wellnigh immeasurable period of evolution. The Perfect Man,

1 "Conflict between Religion and Science : " Prof. Draper.

Revelation a Message to Intelligence.

19

therefore, must be regarded-not only on Scriptural, but on scientific grounds-as a providential Manifestation of the Divine Personality. The early appearance of Perfect Humanity, and in an age, by itself, wholly incapable of producing such a type, was, in itself, a miracle. Such a break of continuity is conceivable and practicable only on the supposition of a Personal Ruler of the universe; of a Lawgiver higher than His own laws, manifesting Himself equally in the orderly sequence of Nature, and in those extraordinary Revelations which, as varying and enlarging that orderly sequence, we call miraculous.

We obtain the same truth from three representatives of opposing schools of thought: "The Life of Christ," by Dr. Farrar; "Ecce Homo;" and "Vie de Jesus," by M. Renan. They agree on two great facts-1. That primitive Christianity is the true religion. 2. That Jesus, by whom it was given, is the One around whom universal history gathers. Hence it follows that the life of Christ was a real life. He undoubtedly lived and taught as the New Testament substantially represents. Christ was the highest and purest Intellect the world ever possessed; we have example and proof that purest faith is married to highest reason.

Revelation, the Divine warrant for piety, far from opposing Intelligence, is a special message to our intelligence; unites the reasoning power of the philosopher, the imagination of the poet, and the inspiration of the seer. This trinity of graces renders the power of the Bible-one book-greater than that possessed by the whole literature of Greece-many books. This one Book, from a nation despised by all in former, and by some in present time, holds the world in awe. It is read and preached in hundreds and thousands of churches. It is in the cottage of the lowly man, and abides with the honourable; it weaves the literature of the scholar, and sweetens the common talk of life. It enters the closet of the student, the king's chamber, the counsel-hall. In sickness and sadness, in perils and partings, in life and death, it tempers our grief to finer issues, and gladdens joy with yet brighter hopes. Our best prayers are in "its storied speech," which tells of earthly duties and heavenly rest, as if Plato's

wisdom, Newton's science, and Milton's art, had sought to make it beautiful and good. No other book, sacred or profane, can pretend to the suffrages of so many men of great genius, of so many intelligent and educated adherents from so many nations and races, or has formed, like it, "a succession of men heroically bent on making it universal." A Book --thus winning Reason's highest triumphs, the crown of poetry, and glorification by art, revealing wisdom from the depths, morality from the heights, and transforming the death-angel into a heavenly messenger-approves itself to the best and wisest of our race, unites intellect and piety in sacred bonds.

Professor Huxley, in his lecture on the " Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge," said "The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority as such. For him scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin. And it cannot be otherwise, for every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority, the cherishing of the keenest scepticism, the annihilation of the spirit of blind faith. . . . The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification."

This is only half true. Making holes and filling them up again is a waste of labour. A continual undermining of foundations renders even the firmest fabrics insecure. Authority is practically admitted into natural science. Of course, observers must maintain their independence; and science progresses not altogether authoritatively but experimentally; if, for example, we doubt whether there is on the floor of the deep ocean a thing called Bathybius, the doubt may arise from our knowledge of the analogy of Nature; but he who counts "scepticism the highest of duties" should even doubt concerning his doubt, and deny actuality or reality to knowledge. The truth is "Theological habits of thought are relatively useful, while scepticism, if permanent, is intellectually and morally pernicious." It is well to dig about trees, not to uproot them; and we all know, as to Scripture and science, theology and therapeutics, that the mass must wait outside and receive the result on authority. "To bring into

1 "Cosmic Philosophy: " John Fiske.

Root of Doubt is Want of Knowledge.

21

doubt in any way (and it is of little moment in what way, or on what pretext), that which the common sense of mankind has always assumed to be certain, is, if not to shake the evidence of all truth, yet to paralyse the faculty by which evidence of any kind is seized and held."1

Is

Even in natural knowledge the researches and discoveries of the most self-reliant investigators are worked out upon the foundation laid by previous authority, whether that authority be censured, or amended and confirmed; and must be matter of faith to most men, only to be justified by those who have power to verify. Would a learned professor call it intelligence or stupidity, for common men to deny everything that they do not know by their own actual verification? the professor's own authority to be absolutely rejected? Is he never to give dogmatic expression of belief? Must the botanist try every statement of the astronomer; and the patient demand proof, in the physician's prescription, that the drugs will heal? Or are godly men, with their prayerful, scholarly, critical, historical investigations, the only men whose authority we refuse?

Doubt, in itself, is not a mark of knowledge; at the best, it is the halting step of prudence in pursuit of knowledge, but a contemptible thing indeed when flaunted as an encouragement to godless unbelief. What saith another professor?"We encounter our sceptical 'as if.' It is one of the parasites of science, ever at hand, and ready to plant itself, and sprout, if it can, on the weak points of our philosophy. But a strong constitution defies the parasite, and in our case, as we question the phenomena, probability grows like growing health, until in the end the malady of doubt is completely extirpated." a

As to the comfort of doubt, that is downright nonsense, there is no comfort in it; uncertainty and suspense are full of discomfort. Duty, far from delighting in it, does her best to get rid of it; and, obtaining confidence of conviction, reposes and rejoices in the truth: "La Philosophie est une tentative incessante de l'esprit humain pour arriver au repos."

1 "Physical Theory of Another Life: " Isaac Taylor.
"Scientific Use of the Imagination :" Prof. Tyndall.

"He that ever following her commands,

On with toil of heart and knees and hands,
Thro' the long gorge to the far light has won
His path upward, and prevail'd,

Shall find the toppling crags of Duty, scaled,
Are close upon the shining table-lands

To which our God Himself is moon and sun.

Tennyson, Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington.

The argument strengthens in the region of morality and religion. Irresistible mathematical evidence would confound all characters and dispositions; subvert rather than promote the purpose of the Divine Counsel, which is to produce obedience as the free-will offering of love. Do we then ignore reason in religion? Certainly not. Religion is intensely practical, and not less experimentally realised and verified in the soul of a devout man than is science in the mind of a physicist. Faith implies knowledge of some ground for reliance; and, as knowledge becomes definite, the faith, confessed in our creed, is understood in the explicit and implicit meaning; and is expressed in our symbols as definitely, clearly, precisely, as is any problem in science. The shallowness, sometimes imputed to devout men, belongs rather to the narrower mental sphere of objectors, who set a higher value on a little technical knowledge than on good sense, exercised and approved by greater general knowledge. Revelation is made to reason, not to unreason; and reason is that foundation on which Divine revelation erects a spiritual superstructure.

There is without doubt in the "single-eyed," and in them alone, a sense of certainty in relation to Scripture, "which is neither the offspring of reason, nor the result of culture; but, like life itself, a direct inspiration of the Almighty."1 To such men the Bible carries its own evidence; and truth, like wisdom, is seen by its own light. "Sol facit ut solem videas; Deus facit ut videas Deum." This spiritual discernment, the property of millions who never framed a syllogism, is the work of that faculty by which we recognise excellence. Hence, we conclude that the material frame of man is to human intelligence what human intelligence is to piety.

1 "A Story of the Bible," p. 29: Interpreter Series.