spices," &c. Kant's great principle was to subordinate Revelation to Reason. He would not build moral duty and virtue on the basis of Christian faith, but he set up a system independent of the Gospel, and paramount to it. The essential truths of the Gospel were to be dissolved into ideas. Man was to be able to purify and perfect himself by his own will, without the graces of the Holy Spirit; and to save himself by his own works, without the death of Christ. The historical facts and supernatural doctrines of Christianity were to be mere figurative shadows, a sort of hieroglyphical symbols of universal religious truth residing in the reason of man.

This system, however, was deemed unsatisfactory by many. "In this Christianity of Reason," wrote one, "I see neither reason nor Christianity." "Under the pretext of making us rational Christians," said another, "it makes us irrational philosophers." This phase of Rationalism being thus pronounced to be more irrational than any of the supernatural phenomena of Christianity which it endeavoured to solve, an attempt was made to supplant it by another form of philosophical speculation, which also claimed to give a new direction to the interpretation of Scripture. The leaders of this school of philosophy were Schelling and Hegel. The former asserted the identity of God and nature; the latter regarded God as the absolute idea, ever developing itself in the world, and manifesting itself to the human mind. This philosophy was a revival of that which identified the creature with the Creator. It was, in fact, Pantheism under a more spiritual form. According to this theory, God is Nature, and Nature is God: God is the universe, and the universe is God. It would seem that this neo-philosophy is, after all, but a mere plagiarism of the ancient religion of the Hindoos. "I was once arguing," writes a German missionary, " with a number of Hindoos. When they could proceed no further, they said, 'Come to our holy father; he is one of the wisest and holiest of men; he will soon silence you.' Coming to the man, I found he was a Fakeer, a worshipper of Shiva. I asked him, 'Whom do you worship?' he replied 'God.' 'Who is God?' I said. He arose from his scat, laid his left hand upon his breast, pointed with his right to heaven, and lifting up his eyes, said, 'I worship God, the eternal, the infinite, the omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, the holy, just, and righteous, the Creator of heaven and earth, the supreme ruler of all things; He it is whom I worship.' I rejoiced at this sublime declaration, and wished to hear these beautiful words once more; I repeated my question, 'And who is that adorable Being whom you worship?' The Fakeer pointed to himself, and replied, 'I am He, He that speaks in me; I am that Being, I am a part of Him, I am He.'”*

* "Recollections of an Indian Missionary," by the Rev. C. B. Leöpolt, p. 25.

We are glad to quote the testimony of another witness, whose German birth, and experience in the mission-field of India, proves him unusually well qualified to express an opinion on the subject. "On returning to my native country, after fourteen years' absence," says the late Rev. J. Weitbrecht, "I was astonished to find that a system of heathenish origin had gained its admirers and followers in Protestant Germany. The prevailing system of our modern infidel philosophers is Pantheism in principle; the personality of God is denied. I told my countrymen, he that desires to learn the true character of this philosophy, separated and denuded of all Christian ideas, together with its moral bearing, should go to Bengal, and settle on the Ganges among the Brahmins, who have known it for thousands of years, and developed it to perfection. I feel assured the sight of their horrid idolatrous ceremonies would shake his whole being. He certainly would return home radically cured of all pantheistical ideas; he would be compelled, in putting his hand on the Bible, to exclaim, Here is life and truth, which satisfies the soul and rejoices the heart; there is falschood, corruption, and death."*

Nor can we overlook the testimony of one of Germany's most illustrious scholars, on the enormous gulf between the religion of Pantheism and of the Bible. "Christianity," wrote Niebuhr, not many years ago, "after the fashion of the modern philosophers and Pantheists, without a personal God, without immortality, without human individuality, without historical faith, is no Christianity at all to me; though it may be a very intellectual, very ingenious philosophy. I have often said, I do not know what to do with a metaphysical God, and that I will have none but the God of the Bible, who is heart to heart with us."†

Happily there have been German writers, like Neander, Tholuck, Hengstenberg, Hävernick, Guericke, Kurtz, Olshausen, Kahnis, and many others, who with the illustrious Niebuhr have deplored the ravages made by Neologianism and Pantheism, and have endeavoured to repair them. It was natural for the Rationalistic school, conscious of the bar which the plain meaning of Scripture must necessarily oppose to their crude theories, to seek to evade its power by great pretensions of criticism. Hence the efforts which have been unceasingly made, both abroad and at home, and to our sorrow by ministers of our own Church, to discredit the writings of "holy men of old, who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost."

Kahnis records an instance of another eminent biblical critic, holding a foremost place among the German Rationalists, who went to his grave about twelve years ago, in the ninetieth year

* "Lectures on Indian Missions," by J. Weitbrecht.
"Niebuhr's Life and Letters," vol. i. P. 123.

of his age, with these awful words on his lips the very day of his death, "I stand righteous before God, having willed what is right." Contrast this with the words of our own Hooker when dying: "Though I have, by His grace, loved Him in my youth and feared Him in mine age, and laboured to have a conscience void of offence to Him and to all men; yet if thou, O Lord, be extreme to mark what I have done amiss, who can abide it? And therefore, where I have failed, Lord, show mercy to me: for I plead not my righteousness, but the forgiveness of my unrighteousness, for His merits, who died to purchase a pardon for penitent sinners." Or if we prefer to accept the dying testimony of a layman of rare intellectual gifts, let us hear the last words of Dr. Gordon, of Hull, a glorious specimen of the Christian philosopher, in the best sense of the term, triumphing over death: "All human learning is of no avail. Reason must be put out of the question. I reasoned, and debated, and investigated, but I found no peace till I came to the Gospel as a little child, till I received it as a babe. Then such a light was shed abroad in my heart, that I saw the whole scheme at once, and I found pleasure the most indescribable. I saw there was no good deed in myself. Though I had spent. hours in examining my conduct, I found nothing I had done would give me real satisfaction. It was always mixed up with something selfish. But when I came to the Gospel as a child, the Holy Spirit seemed to fill my heart. I then saw my selfishness in all its vivid deformity, and I found there was no acceptance with God, and no happiness, except through the blessed Redeemer. I stripped off all my own deeds, threw them aside, I went to Him naked. He received me as He promised He would, and presented me to the Father. Then I felt joy unspeakable, and all fear of death at once vanished."

It

Another phase of the Rationalism of the present day is to be seen in the tortuous way in which Truth is treated by those who claim to be the instructors of the age. Had we not the experience of the mode by which German philosophy has abused the truth, we should not be prepared for this specimen of what some would call American Transcendentalism. appears almost incredible that any man could be found to set his hand to such absurd reasoning as this. Yet Dr. Child, a noted American sceptic, has had the audacity to treat what the heathen Plutarch has so happily defined-"The Truth, than which no greater blessing can man receive, or God bestowin the following manner: A lie is true to the cause that produced it; so that what we call a lie is truth, that exists in nature, just as real as what we call a truth. A lie is a truth intrinsically; it holds a lawful place in creation; it is a necessity." Here is rationalism, or naturalism, as it is sometimes termed, with a vengeance; but its false mode of reasoning is

so palpable, as to carry its own refutation along with it. The mind which could conceive such an abuse of terms must have been previously so blunted by its unsanctified reason, as to have become incapable of perceiving its own folly. We are reminded by it of an anecdote recorded by the late abbé Huc in his "Travels in China," showing the indifference of the heathen mind, or rather its incapability of distinguishing between truth and falsehood. He relates an interesting conversation between himself and one Ki-chan, a literary mandarin, concerning the difference between ministers of state in Europe and China-"Your mandarins," said Ki-chan, "are more fortunate than ours. Our emperor cannot know everything; yet he is judge of everything; and no one dares to find fault with any of his actions. Our emperor says, That is white; and we prostrate ourselves and say, Yes, it is white. He shows us the same object afterwards, and says, That is black; and we prostrate ourselves again, and say, Yes, it is black." The relater, however, of this curious story, so suggestive of heathen ethics and rationalistic ethics, could not have had much room for boasting of a superior morality, if he had remembered the teaching of his own Church on the same subject. Cardinal Wiseman, who, we may suppose, speaks authoritatively on such an important matter, teaches us that, in order that " we may in all things attain the truth, and that we may not err in anything, we ought ever to hold it as a fixed principle, that what we see white we should believe to be black, if the hierarchical Church so define it to be."* Assuredly this is an awful sign of the foretold apostasy, which places the authority of fallible man in opposition to Him who is the essence of Truth itself; and presents a striking contrast to the famous apothegm of Bacon respecting the condition of a wellregulated mind in its actions through life :-" Certainly," he says, "it is Heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in Charity, rest in Providence, and turn upon the poles of Truth."

Another phase of the infidelity of the present age is to be seen in the quiet assumption, on the part of the scientific world, that the Word and the Works of God are in contradiction to each other. But if there be any truth in the oft quoted maxim, that "History is philosophy teaching us by example," we should remember that a similar denial, on the part of the Encyclopedists in the last century, culminated at length in the public worship of the Goddess of Reason, and the horrors of the French Revolution. The denial of Scripture infallibility was as truly the origin of the French school of atheists as of that of their successors in Germany and England in the present day.

Exercises of St. Ignatius, edited by Cardinal Wiseman,
C

Vol. 63.-No. 313.

If we notice the conclusions at which many of the scientific men have now arrived on subjects referred to in Scripture, we at once discover not only the infidelity which betrays the origin of their speculations, but the great differences which exist among themselves. They are like the builders of the Tower of Babel, distracted often by a strife of tongues, and uttering a harsh jargon of discordant sounds. Take, for example, some very prominent subjects of discussion in the present day respecting the origin and the antiquity of man. According to Scripture chronology, man has existed on earth for about 6000 years; and the whole human race sprung from one pair, whom the Creator originally formed from the dust of the earth. The first race of inhabitants are represented as having been entirely swept away, with the exception of eight souls, by the Noachian deluge; and language is said to have been uniform for a century subsequent to the Flood, until the time of the dispersion at Babel.

In opposition to these statements, if we accept the dicta of speculators who prefer the worship of the Goddess of Reason to the God of Abraham and of all the faithful, we must believe, with Professor Rask,* that Adam was by no means "the first man "created, though unable to determine the exact interval which must have elapsed between the two-the first and second; or with M. Desner,† a noted French savant, that "Adam, patriarch of the Hebrews," as he terms him, was created 2618 years after the time of Mizraim; which computation, it has been found, would make Adam the contemporary of Constantine; or with the late Baron Bunsen, who argued that the discovery of pottery at a certain depth in the alluvial soil of Egypt proved the existence of man in that country some 20,000 years before the Christian era; or with Sir Charles Lyell, who, though he admits, in reference to the last-mentioned theory, that the brick exhumed from the bed of the Nile "might be very modern," supposes man to have existed an indefinite number of ages ago;§ or with the author of a recent German work on Anthropology, who advocates 35,000 years as the correct period; or with Mr. William Jukes, who prefers the limit of 100,000; or with Dr. James Hunt, who takes a desperate step in advance of his fellow-theorists, by affirming that

* Rask's Tractate on the Longevity of the Patriarchs, p. 38.

+ Desner's Chron. des Rois d'Egypte, p. 316.

Egypt's Place in Univ. Hist. vol. iii. Pref. p. xxv. Bunsen's theory has been completely set aside by the unlooked for discovery of the Grecian honeysuckle stamped upon some of these sup.

posed pre-Adamite fragments; so that, instead of being the workmanship of man 20,000 years B.C., they cannot possibly have an earlier origin than the 4th century B.C., when the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great took place.

§ Lyell on the Antiquity of Man,

p. 38.