As an illustration of what we are here urging, take the question of Biblical interpretation as related to modern science. The opening chapters of Genesis are not interpreted now as they formerly were. Formerly the six days of creation were regarded as six natural days, at least the age of the earth was fixed, on the authority of the inspired record, as only six thousand years. The investigations of Geology showed that the earth must be much older. At first, Biblical interpreters resisted. The inspired word must be regarded as authoritative against all uninspired science. But it was plain that God's word written in Scripture and on the rocks must be in harmony. No one questions the authority of the inspired record, but the interpretation of that record is not inspired, that perhaps may be amended. The result is, there is now an agreement acknowledged between Scripture and Science on this subject. Some of the very men who denounce modern philosophy, and profess to refuse it any function in constructing a theology, at the same time parade the agreement of the science of Geology with the proper interpretation of the opening chapters of Genesis. But philosophy is, to say the least, as worthy of regard as Geology.

The point we desire to make plain here is, that there is a more free and inward reconciliation between revelation and science acknowledged in the present than in any former age. This agreement is not indeed fully discerned or demonstrated. The two are still often arrayed against each other. Now and then a scientist, like Tyndal with his prayer-test, comes forward to proclaim a contradiction between science and faith, but the position taken now, more generally, by the best representatives on both sides is, that there can be no real contradiction, and when an apparent one presents itself both sides should labor to discover the real agreement.

These are some of the principles or methods according to which modern church history may be studied. We might present others, but these will suffice to show the importance of the subject.

Which of these shall the historian adopt? We reply, he

should have regard to them all. One does not exclude another. Christianity, in its onward progress in the world, has a constitution of its own, and may be studied in relation to itself, but as constituting the deepest element in history, it is related organically to all forms of human life. If we are able to understand what Christianity, in its essential nature, is, and study the fundamental law of its life, we will be able to take a many-sided view of its history, without interfering with its historical unity. This broad comprehension of the subject is what the student of history needs.

We repeat, however, what we stated in the beginning of this article, that no full and satisfactory method of interpreting modern church history can be found until the present period. comes to a close in some epoch. There are forces in history which seem to have been latent for ages, but which may become important factors in the coming age. The Greek Church, for instance, has been regarded as a sort of stagnant eddy, standing still while the course of history in other sections of the Church was moving on. But there are already indications that that Church may yet become an important element in Christian history. Changes may take place in the whole order of history which will reveal forces now at work of which we have been ignorant.

This fact, however, should not have the effect to weaken interest in the study of history from present data. But it should lead all to exercise humility and modesty in setting forth principles of interpreting the present movements of the Church. History opens up one of the grandest fields of study. Many master minds have traversed this field, but those who have studied history with most effect are the readiest to acknowledge that we know as yet but little about it. It contains the deep mystery of the world's life. Only in the light of its final conclusion will we be able to trace and read the meaning of its mysterious pathway. Faith now catches gleams of that light, and leads the way to only partial understanding of the past and present.

THE

MERCERSBURG REVIEW.

OCTOBER, 1873.

ART. I.-CHRISTIANITY AND HUMANITY.*

BY PRESIDENT J. WILLIAMSON NEVIN, D.D. LL.D.

As the subject is altogether too broad for anything like full particular discussion, all that I can aim at in the present paper must be an outline simply of its general significance, in the form of a series of brief and comprehensive topics or heads of thought following one another in close logical order, and yet thrown. each one more or less upon itself for its own separate evidence and confirmation.

I. The world of nature, made up as it is of innumerable parts, is nevertheless one universal whole, bound and held together through all its parts by the presence of a single Divine idea, which reaches its end in Man. Its constitution in this view is not mechanical, but organic; that is, it is not a scheme of things put together by simply external juxtaposition, but a system of things cohering together inwardly through the power of a common life. It may be regarded as a pyramid, rising through a scale of degrees to its apex; or as an orb, determined from all sides to its centre. In either case the end is the same. Man is the apex and centre, and for this reason also in himself separately considered an epitome, a synopsis or recapi

A paper prepared, by invitation, for the General Conference of the EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE.

tulation we may say, of the entire natural creation. He is the last sense of it, and the only true key to its meaning in all its lower forms of existence. So much we are plainly taught by the first chapter of the Book of Genesis. Our own consciousness confirms the lesson; and it has come to be so irradiated now by the light of science, that a man must forfeit all claim to rationality to make it a matter of any serious question or doubt.

II. It is no less plain, however, that man is the consummation of nature in this way, only because he is in himself a great deal more than nature. Nature in its totality looks beyond itself, is a continual nisus indeed in its own constitution toward a higher order of existence without which it has no power ever to become complete; and the very fact that it ends in man implies therefore of itself that he is for it at the same time the beginning of that higher existence, and the medium accordingly through which room is måde for the work of creation to run its course in new and far more glorious form. Such superiority belongs to him, as we know, in virtue of what he is as mind or spirit, in which are joined together as one the two faculties of the will and the understanding, making him to be in the image and likeness of God, and capable thus of receiving into himself the light of God's truth and the power of God's love as the perfection. of his own life. Man in this way exists really in two worlds. In his physical organism he belongs at all points to the world of nature, the system of things seen and temporal, with which he stands in continual communication through his bodily senses. In his spiritual organism he is just as intimately comprehended in the world of spirit, the system of things unseen and eternal, which lies wholly beyond the range of his senses, although it is all the time touching him in fact and making itself felt upon his life in a different way. The difference between these two orders of existence with man, however, is not just that between body and spirit generally considered; for the distinguishing life of man, that by which he differs from the mere animal, is primarily and essentially all in his mind, and only by derivation from thence in his body. But his mind itself is so constituted as to have in it so to speak two different regions, one looking

directly into the natural world through the body and the other opening principally into the spiritual world. Hence properly speaking the difference between the external man and the internal man, some sense of which is found entering into the deeper thought of the world through all ages. It is not simply with the regenerate and righteous that such dualism has place; it belongs to our life here universally.* Man is by his creation. at once both spiritual and natural, the denizen of two worlds. That is his distinction from the beast, which is natural only and not spiritual.

III. The dualism here brought into view, it is hardly necessary to say, is not abstract, the conjunction of these two modes of existence in any simply outward relation. It is a distinction which seeks and demands unity, the organization of its two sides into the power of a single concrete life. Neither is there any room for doubt, in regard to the law which should govern the coalescence of the two orders of existence into one. The natural, all know at once, is in order to the spiritual. Here only it is that mind comes to its native home and true destination, by entering into the light of God. The two orders of life are thus of themselves correlated as outward and inward, lower and higher; and this implies of course, that the outward and lower should be ruled in full by the inward and higher. That is the true idea of human culture. That is the only intelligible

"Das Gesammtverhalten wie das Gesammtgefühl des Menschen bekundet auf unwiderstehliche Art, dass er als Fremdling' sich wisse in dieser Sinnenwelt und dass das Hinausstreben über dieselbe der eigentliche Sinn aller eigenthümlich menschlichen Thätigkeit sei. Daher die rastlose Unruhe und der tiefe Zwiespalt, der sein ganzes Wesen durchzieht, indem er jedes Erreichte sofort wieder vor sich verneinen muss; die ungestillte Sehnsucht gerade mitten im kräftigsten Lebensgefühle, die jeder höchsten Freude sogleich sich beimischende ernste Wehmuth, was ebenso die Quelle höchster Erhebung zu Poesie und Religion dem Menschen wird, als umgekehrt den irdisch Gesinnten in die Verödung eines leeren, ewig unbefriedigten Strebeps hinauswirft: alles dies is nur dass Zeugniss einer unablässigen Verneinung seines gegenwärtigen Zustandes; das heisst aber zugleich: seines substantiellen Hinausseins über denselben. Es ist zugleich die thatkräftige Wirkung und unwillkührliche Beglaubigung seines wahrhaftigen, jenseitigen Wesens. Indem der Mensch alles Zeitliche zu einem Ungenügendem herabsetzt, in keinem irdisch erreichten Ziele sich gefangen giebt, verräth er dadurch, eine überzeitliche Macht und eine überzeitliche Bestimmung in sich zu tragen." From I. H. Fichte's Psychologie.