and confirmations of God's method with the sinner. They give a naturalness, and therefore an intrinsic probability, to the office of the "one Mediator between God and man," and to the divine appointment by which he "bore our griefs, carried our sorrows, and was bruised for our iniquities," so that "by his stripes we are healed."

Were we willing to transgress our proposed limits, we should here present the natural religion of the soul as bearing its emphatic testimony to the peculiar doctrines of Christianity. The soul's natural religion, however, is one, not of intuitions, but of questions, yearnings, and needs; not of dogmas, but of postulates; and the adaptation of the posi tive religion of the gospel to meet and satisfy this interrog ative religion of the soul, constitutes the most valuable, convincing, and edifying portion of the internal evidences of Christianity. But we must not even enter on this rich field.

We beg leave to make an important discrimination with reference to what we have here written, partly for the truth's sake, and partly for consistency's sake, lest we may seem to have contradicted what we have written elsewhere. Natural theology or religion bears two widely different meanings. It may denote such knowledge of divine things as man could attain without revelation; or it may denote, in addition to this, what man can see in nature by the light of revelation. In the former sense our estimate of the contents of natural religion is exceedingly low. We believe that mankind would reach, with the progress of knowledge, the conception of Deity, that is, of creative intelligence, but not of a personal God; still less, of the moral attributes which the Bible reveals. It is of the actual contents of nature, of the truths of which the material universe bears the clear and ineffaceable record,-not of man's power to peruse that record unaided, that we have spoken in the present Article. The book was "in the right hand of him that sat upon the throne," and men might read the writing on the covers, or catch a word here and there on the margin of the leaves; but until Christ came, 66 no man was able to open

the book, and to loose the seals thereof." In fine, with reference to almost all the fundamental truths, which are commonly, and, with the qualification indicated above, rightly regarded as within the province of natural religion, we would adopt, mutatis mutandis, the following statement of Professor Cooke with reference to the proof of the divine goodness in nature :

"I do not believe, in any sense, that nature proves the goodness of God. When the heart has been once touched by the love of God, as manifested on Calvary, the tokens of God's goodness are seen everywhere; but before this, nature, to one who has seen its terrors and felt its power, looks dark indeed; and the pretence that the material universe, unexplained by revelation, manifests a God of unmixed beneficence, not only does harm to religion, but places science in a false light. The most superficial observation shows that this is not true. Lightning and tempest, plague, pestilence, and famine, with all their awful accompaniments, are no less facts of nature than the golden sunset, the summer's breeze, and the ripening harvest; and who does not know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now'? It does not change the terrible fact to say that nature has been disordered by man's sin; for sin is, itself, the greatest evil in the world, and its ghastly forms meet us at every step. So prominent, indeed, is the evil in nature, and so insidiously and mysteriously does it pervade the whole system, that an argument to prove the malignity of God could be made to appear quite as plausible as the arguments which are frequently urged to prove his pure beneficence; and wherever the unaided human intellect has attempted to make to itself a beneficent God, it has always made a malignant Deity as well. Nature manifests God's wrath no less than his love; and it is a false and sickly philosophy which attempts to keep the awful fact out of sight. God is our Father; but nature could not teach it, and the Word was made flesh' to declare it. God is love; but nature could not prove it, and the Lamb was 'slain from the foundation of the world' to attest it."- pp. 347, 348.

We have thus cursorily surveyed a large part of the field of argument and illustration opened by the admirable book which gave us our text, and to which we have constantly referred for the facts in physical science that we have adduced. It remains only to give a brief analysis of the work before us.

The author commences by defining the separate provinces and mutual relations of science and revelation, pointing out

the offices and the limitations of natural religion, and show. ing the competency of even inanimate nature to bear authentic testimony to creative design. He then adduces successively the testimony of the atmosphere as a composite whole, and of its several constituents, oxygen, water [aqueous vapor], carbonic acid, and nitrogen. He next considers the "argument from special adaptations," an argument which his subject enables him to urge with peculiar pertinency and power, so very numerous are the characteristics and phenomena of the atmosphere which fit it expressly for vital uses, and which, however successfully science may force them into line with the whole constitution and course of nature, seem at first sight somewhat anomalous and abnormal. Then, as the essential complement and counterpart to this, Professor Cooke presents the "argument from general plan," showing the filaments of unity and continuousness of purpose, the tokens of the same mind, the vestiges of the same shaping thought, as they pervade, with mutual correspondences, all departments of nature. The work terminates with a lucid and explicit statement of the different methods of scientific and religious thought, of the inadequacy of the former to grapple with the great themes which appertain to man's interior and everlasting life, and the inadequacy of the latter, at the same time, to issue ex cathedra judgments in the realm of pure science, or on merely physical and material subjects, except in their psychological and religious bearings. We close by quoting from this part of the volume the following paragraph, to which it were well for both scientific men and theologians to give heed:

"I cannot but believe that the appearance of clashing between science and religion would be wholly avoided, if the teachers both of God's unwritten and of his written word would pay more regard to the necessary limitations of scientific and religious thought. On subjects where the methods of acquiring knowledge are so utterly unlike, where the relations of the knowledge to the human understanding are so different when gained, it is in vain to expect literal accordance. Science, both in its methods and its results, addresses the understanding exclusively; Christianity appeals

chiefly to the heart. Science aims to instruct; Christianity aims to persuade. Science is attained by study, and is possible only for the few; Christianity is a free gift from God to all men who will receive his Son. The results of science are fully comprehended, and can be expressed in definite terms; the truths of Christianity stand on a level above man's intellect, and can only be shadowed forth in types and symbols. The forms of science are constantly changing; the types and symbols of Christianity are permanent. Lastly, while the language of science may be so varied from time to time as to express accurately the current ideas, Christianity necessarily retains the forms under which it was first revealed. Under such conditions how can it be expected that the language of revelation should agree with the letter of science? You might as reasonably find fault with nature because its crystals are not perfect, as criticise the Bible because its language, although embodying divine truth, is not free from the necessary limitations and imperfections of the human medium of thought.” — pp. 341, 342.

ARTICLE IV.

NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY.

BY REV. DANIEL T. FISKE, D.D., NEWBURYPORT, MASS.

[This is the Thirteenth of the Series of Articles representing the peculiar views of different theological sects or schools.]

THE doctrinal system termed " New England Theology," is a modified form of Calvinism. It originated in connection with that remarkable religious movement in our country, a little more than a century ago, called "the great awakening." Among the men who have contributed to its development and elucidation may be mentioned the two Edwardses, Bellamy, Hopkins, West, Smalley, Spring, Emmons, Griffin, Dwight, Woods, Taylor, and Beecher. It has been variously designated. At first it was called "new light," or "new light divinity"; sometimes "Berkshire divinity" (from the fact that several eminent men who adopted it resided in Berkshire county, Mass.); often "Edwardean," or

"Hopkintonian," or "Hopkinsian divinity "; or simply "Edwardeanism," or "Hopkinsianism." In England, where it was embraced by many distinguished divines, it was called "American theology," to distinguish it from European systems. But since its general prevalence in New England, and especially since the beginning of the present century, it has been, in this country, more commonly denominated "New England theology," to denote its origin, and to distinguish it from other systems that have more or less extensively prevailed here. Some persons have questioned the propriety of this designation. The term "New England theology," it is said, should be applied to that system of doctrines which the Puritans brought with them to this country, which was almost universally prevalent here for more than a century, and which has always been held by many of the New England ministers and churches. But why does that system need a new name? It is "Calvinism"; it is the "theology of the Reformers"; it is "Old School theology"; and if this is not enough, let it be christened "Puritan theology." But why should a system which did not originate in New England, and which has not been the predominating system here more than half the period since the settlement of the country, be called "New England theology?" and especially since it has to a great extent been displaced by another system which did originate here, and which needs some appropriate name, not only to discriminate it from the old system, but also to indicate its local origin?

Some object to the term, that it is too narrow, seeming to imply that the theological system which it denotes is limited. to the comparatively small territory included in the New England states. But it implies no such limitation, any more than the term "Genevan theology" implies that the system of Calvin is limited to the city where he taught it, or than the term "Old School Presbyterian theology" implies that the system thus designated is limited to the Old School Presbyterian church. What we call New England theology, we are well aware long ago passed beyond the limits of New