ences, it would not be going too far for him to assert that he could demonstrate the inapplicability of demonstration.

It may be asked, why I have taken so much pains with this preliminary matter, which is merely the logic of natural theology. Why seek to strike out abstract reasoning, and to bring the question down to the limits and principles of the inductive method, so that our researches may be governed by the rules of physical inquiry? Unquestionably, every sincere believer would be glad to accept a demonstration of the truths of religion, if it could be had; why endeavour to cut him off even from the hope of a possible future enlargement, in this way, of the grounds of his faith?

I answer, first, that it is of great importance so to arrange the system of our belief, that proofs of the same general character may be classed together, and the relative strength of different arguments may be clearly ascertained. They lose their proper weight in our estimation, if brought to a false standard, or tried by an insufficient test. A pretended demonstration of a matter of fact, if compared with the reasoning of Euclid or Laplace, must appear, I do not say feeble, but illogical and false; and the failure of a favorite argument is very likely to draw down with it, in the mind of the inquirer, all faith in the doctrine itself, its other supports being then disregarded or held in light esteem. I would save the earnest seeker after truth from the anguish of disappointment, in looking after what cannot be found, and thereby enable him duly to appreciate the strength of the proofs within his reach. There can be no fears for the strength of our religious faith, if it stands upon the same platform with the whole round of the physical sciences, so that no assault can reach even its outworks until the entire fabric of these shall be demolished, and it be made to appear that all the boasted attainments of the last three centuries in the study of nature have been unprofitable and vain.

The theological argument is of the same kind with that which supports the conclusions of the physical inquirer; but it is superior, immeasurably superior, in degree. The proofs of design,

for instance, which form the basis of one portion of this argument, are numerous beyond calculation. They are diffused everywhere, above, around, and within us.

trust.

They are not drawn only from a few scratches on mountains of rock, or from fossil remains here and there dug up from the earth, put together with slow toil, and their history with difficulty spelt out. They do not rest on a few experiments carefully devised and with great labor repeated. The study of years is not required before their import can be made known even to a few, while the bulk of mankind must ever remain ignorant of the doctrine, or receive it on These are difficulties with which the geologist, the chemist, the astronomer, must contend. But the marks of contrivance that form the language in which the sublime dogma of God's existence is written fill the earth and skies, and are open alike to the most elevated and the meanest capacity. They are equally obvious in the structure of every blade of grass, and in the mechanism of the heavens. They exist alike in the object perceived, and in the percipient mind; in the hand that fashions, the ear that hears, and the lungs that breathe. They are found in the bones of extinct races, and in the habits of all living things; in the skeleton of the mammoth, and in the instinct which teaches the bee to frame its wonderful cell, and guides the water-fowl to its The atmosphere, that wraps the earth in a garment, testifies His presence; and the sun bears witness to Him who lighted up its fires. "There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world."

nest.

Secondly, we seek to confine this inquiry within its legitimate boundaries, because the grounds which justify the exclusion of metaphysical proofs show also the irrelevancy of metaphysical objections. It needs but little study of the evidences of natural religion to convince one, that the arguments which have been brought against the doctrine of the being of a God are, almost without exception, abstract or metaphysical in character. They are founded on alleged imperfections in our knowledge of cause and effect; on a supposed inconsistency of the attribute of in

finity with the moral qualities of God; on the assumed inviolability of abstract but personified laws; on the difficulty of conceiving of eternal duration, or of any person who is increate; on the fallacy of reasoning from what is finite to what is infinite; and last and chiefly, on the absence of demonstration itself, which, it is taken for granted, is quite as essential in this case as for establishing a proposition in geometry. To take away the whole basis of these objections, by showing that they are no more pertinent to the subject in hand than to the doctrines of physical science, is to contribute most effectually to the argument of the theist. If it be proved that reasoning from such premises is nugatory and inapplicable, the very groundwork of the systems of Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Fichte, and other modern infidels, is removed, and the superstructure falls. The philosophy which attempts to define and demonstrate all things necessarily leads to fatalism. In the posthumous work of Spinoza may be found the perfect type of these demonstration-seeking systems, systems which can never really transcend the sphere of the abstractions on which they are founded, and therefore never can consistently admit a Deity, except in that pantheistic sense which regards God as a pure idea that is necessarily involved in all existence, and ends in an avowed identification of the Divinity with the material universe. The title of his book, "Ethics reduced to a Geometrical System, and proved by the Geometrical Method," answers to its contents; as he begins with a list of axioms and definitions, and proceeds by a series of theorems and proofs to that doctrine of atheistic fatalism which has been the seminal principle of the infidel philosophy of Germany down to the present day.

I have no fears for the security of the theist's faith, when it rests on the same basis with all the doctrines of natural science, and with all the conclusions which govern the daily conduct of men. To distrust such evidence, or to be incapable of acting upon it, is the common test of the folly that borders upon idiocy; and to such an unbeliever, therefore, may be literally applied the words of Scripture, "The fool hath said in his heart, There is

no God." The infidel systems of modern philosophy agree very nearly with the mythology of the ancients, which admitted "Fate, Chance, Nature, Time, Space, to be real beings,-nay, even gods." "Mankind in all ages," says Mr. Mill, "have had a strong propensity to conclude that wherever there is a name, there must be a distinguishable separate entity corresponding, and every complex idea which the mind has formed for itself by operating upon its conceptions of individual things was considered to have an outward objective reality answering to it." "This misapprehension," he goes on to say, "of the import of general language constitutes Mysticism, a word so much oftener written and spoken than understood. Whether in the Vedas, the Platonists, or the Hegelians, mysticism is neither more nor less than ascribing objective existence to the subjective creations of the mind's own faculties, to mere ideas of the intellect; and believing that by watching and contemplating these ideas of its own making, it can read in them what takes place in the world without."* In religion, it may be added, this mysticism leads to the most subtile of all forms of idolatry, the only one, indeed, that is now practicable among a civilized people, — the deification of an idea, the apotheosis of an abstraction.

The proposition, that all the fundamental truths of religion relate to matters of fact, and must be established, if at all, by moral reasoning, leads us to look beyond the belief in the being of a God, and to inquire if it holds true, also, of the doctrine of immortality. I pass over the evidences of the moral government of the Deity, as unnecessary to be considered here; since it is obvious that they must consist in a copious induction of examples, to prove that the reward of virtue and the punishment of vice are the great objects of all the general laws by which the world is governed. The only argument brought against this doctrine, being an enumeration of cases of a seemingly promiscuous distribution of happiness and misery in this life, is an application of the rules of physical inquiry, so that abstract reasoning

* J. S. Mill's Logic, Am. ed., p. 464.

is admitted to be out of place on either side. These apparent exceptions, this allotment of good and evil in a measure which often does not correspond with our sense of merit and demerit, create a presumption, it is said, that the scheme of moral government, which has only its beginning here, will be completed in a future state.

If the immortality of the soul did not open so attractive a field for general disquisition, it would be difficult to conceive of it as supported by abstract arguments, or as clouded by metaphysical doubts and difficulties. "If a man dies, shall he live again? The question here relates to a fact of the second order, to an event which is to take place, a future occurrence; if the present or actual existence of the mind or person is a fact, so also is its future existence. Our means of answering the question, too, are more limited and imperfect in this case than would suffice for the establishment of any fact in physical science. As it relates to the future, we can have no sensible evidence of it; and as the grave confessedly does not give up its dead to our bodily apprehension, the testimony of others, except so far as they speak of a revelation, is also set aside. The axiom respecting the uniformity of nature, which is the usual foundation of our reasonings from the past to the future, cannot aid us here, because we are not asking now whether it is probable that an observed law of nature will continue in force; the question is, whether there has ever been such a law, whether a messenger has ever come back to us from that invisible bourne. Accordingly, it is distinctly admitted by the most judicious writers on natural theology, that the argument, after all, is but a series of presumptions, which we indulge the more readily because the conclusion to which they point is one in which all persons willingly acquiesce; it agrees with the involuntary shrinking of the rational mind from the idea of utter extinction. Most of these presumptions were as well stated by the ancient philosophers, by Socrates, and Plato, and Cicero, as by the moderns. The use of such speculations is not to establish the truth of the point in question, but to refute the objections which have been urged against the possibility of