-

resolved into a persuasion that because we have observed that each event follows some other event, it will probably be so again. It is not too much to say that this confounding of the necessary with the customary is contradicted by the consciousness of every man and child upon the planet. By an irresistible law of thought, every change whatsoever is recognized to be the result of some power that effects the change — a power behind the phenomena and separate from them,—a power of which we have the type and proof in every effect which our own wills produce upon our own organism or upon the outward world. The natural result is that Comte has no such thing as an Inductive Logic, and can have none. Where there is no Causation, there can be no law; where there is no law, there can be no logic. And this is not all. By this same rule which excludes the idea of Causation, all the grandest intuitions of the soul are immolated, for they all rest upon the same evidence. We lose all proof that either spirit or matter exists back of the phenomena open to the senses. We have no warrant for believing that matter is anything more than a possibility of sensations, or that mind is anything more than a series of feelings aware of its own existence. Even mathematical truth is purely phenomenal. Two and two, it is true, make four with us, but it is only because we are used to it. In the planet Jupiter, where the customs of society are different, two and two may make five. There is no such thing as absolute truth. Right and wrong themselves are matters of convention. There is no eternal necessity in our nature which makes the right praiseworthy and the wrong condemnable. We have perceived the consequences of lying to be bad- we call it a vice therefore. But in the star Sirius, or even in the moon, where the consequences are more happy, lying may be a virtue. The universe is a Cosmos no longer. There is no will binding its parts together. The world and its events are but a procession of phantoms without connection or order, of whose origin, significance and destination we know absolutely nothing,- a conclusion of absolute skepticism which Lord Neaves justly ridicules in the persons of Mill and Hume, its advocates, by the following humorous lines :--

"Against a stone you strike your toe;

You feel 't is sore, it makes a clatter;
But what you feel is all you know

Of toe, or stone, or mind, or matter.
Mill and Hume of mind and matter
Wouldn't leave a rag or tatter:

What although

We feel the blow?

That doesn't show there's mind or matter.

"Had I skill like Stuart Mill,

His own position I could shatter;
The weight of Mill I count as nil,

If Mill has neither mind nor matter.
Mill, when minus mind and matter,
Though he make a kind of clatter,
Must himself

Just mount the shelf,

And there be laid with mind and matter."

As if these conclusions were not sufficiently absurd, we have the direct denial that there is such a thing as purpose in the Universe. What are called marks of design are only accidental coincidences. Final causes are

merged in the totality of secondary causes.

The sole explanation of the wondrous adaptations of nature to the good of man is that these are simply the result of mechanical laws. There is no sense in wondering at the order of the heavenly spheres, with the laws that govern nature, how could there be any disorder? Thus the lofty thought of the classic poet that the highest link of nature's chain must needs be tied to the foot of Jupiter's chair is exchanged for the blasphemous assertion that the heavens declare, not the glory of God, but the glory of the Astronomer. But the followers of Comte convict themselves of folly by their unintentional use of language which implies adaptation in nature. Darwin is obliged to speak continually of the design of such and such a series of arrangements, as for example, that required for the fertilization of orchids. On Comte's own showing, there has been a curious design in the arrangement of all things from the very beginning with reference to the development at last of a true philosophy — a wonderful series of adaptations by which, when time was ripe and the world's needs greatest, a Comte was brought forth, and humanity delivered from its metaphysical and theologic folly. Surely a design like this, executed too only through unnumbered subordinate adaptations and arrangements of human character and history, proves a designer of endless wisdom and goodness. But says Maudsley, one of the Positivist camp-followers: "Design, according to Spinoza's sagacious remark, would imply imperfection in the designer-a necessity of adding something to himself to make up his sum of blessedness—and this notion involves you in a self-contradiction, for imperfection of any sort is inconsistent with your very idea of God.” But what sort of a God would be Mr. Maudsley's perfect God? His only notion of a God must be that of a being not so great or free or active as ourselves-an Asiatic Brahma, as "idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean." No,—the forthputting of designing wisdom and of creative power is not inconsistent with infinite perfection, since it is voluntary self-limitation, for the sake of revealing his glory. God is limited by nothing outside himself, but only by the decrees of his own most free and blessed will; and such a self-limitation is only a proof and fruit of infinite perfection. again, when the Positivist argues that the imperfection of the design proves the absence of all purpose in the Universe, it is hard to tell which is to be most condemned, the ignorance of the objection or its presumption. It is the old boast of Alphonso of Castile, that if he had been present with the Almighty when the Universe was planned he could have suggested to him some valuable improvements. The Universe, it seems, can with all its imperfections produce a Comte, but cannot equal his intelligence. Or, if a serious reply must be made to an argument so shallow, we might show that the whole tendency of modern science, nay, the very principle that guides her in all her researches, is to take for granted that there must be adaptations and uses in things whose purpose and design have hitherto been hidden. Increasing knowledge has only taught her that everything is for some end, and even if it were ultimately discovered that there was organic imperfection in the System, it would only prove a deeper adaptation of that system to man's state of conscious moral discord and evil, an adaptation revealing to him the ruin sin has wrought, and exciting in him longings for the deliverance from bondage of the whole creation of God.

Or

The tendencies of a philosophy built upon such principles as these are too manifest to require elucidation. They tear up Philosophy by the roots, and Religion must share the fate of Philosophy. One of Comte's grandest generalizations indeed is this, that theology and metaphysics are relics of the race's infancy, necessary stages in human progress, but to be regarded in these days only as stepping-stones which may be removed, now that we have risen by them from infancy to manhood. Biology is only a part of physiology; brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile; man, to use Dr. Holmes' simile, is only "a drop of water imprisoned in a crystal, one little particle in the crystalline prism of the solid universe." All his higher ideas of that Universe, its forms of beauty, its divine arrangements, its moral influences, are cast aside as worthless. All his noblest intuitions - substance causation, law, freedom, conscience, accountability, immortality—are metaphysical or theological chimæras. There is no place for sin nor for repentThere is no God to direct the blind, resistless forces of nature, or to hear and answer the cry that rises from the desolate heart of man. In the terrible language of Holyoake, one of the advocates of this Atheistic creed: "Science has shown us that we are under the dominion of general laws, and that there is no special Providence. Nature acts with fearful uniformity; stern as fate, absolute as tyranny, merciless as death; too vast to praise, too inexplicable to worship, too inexorable to propitiate; it has no ear for prayer, no heart for sympathy, no arm to save." With such a picture of the Universe before us, we seem enshrouded by the darkness of Byron's dream : "The bright sun is extinguished, and the stars

ance.

Do wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless and pathless; and the icy earth;

Swings blind and blackening in the moonless air.

Morn comes and goes-and comes, but brings no day,

And men forget their passions in the dread

Of this their desolation, and all hearts

Are chilled into a selfish prayer for hight.

The waves are dead; the tides are in their grave;

The moon, their mistress, has expired before;

The winds are withered in the stagnant air,

And the clouds perished; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them - She was the Universe."

And Comte himself has given us proof, if any such were needed, that the human soul revolts at the picture of a universe without a God, and has an instinct implanted in its very constitution which cannot be satisfied without some semblance of worship. The later speculations of the great Positivist aimed at nothing less than the establishment of a new religion which should dispense with the notion of a Deity or a revelation, a religion of which Comte himself was to be Sovereign Pontiff and Supreme Lawgiver. The object of adoration is Collective Humanity or the totality of all the forces engaged in the perfecting of the race, embracing therefore the solid earth itself which supports this race, the former to be designated as the "Great Being" and the latter as the "Great Fetish.” Three hundred and sixtyfive of the world's benefactors are chosen to represent humanity as objects of worship, and the statues of all these are set up in the Pantheon of the new religion that each day of the year may have its special saint for com

memoration.

For the separate weeks and months there are dii majores, or greater gods, and among them Confucius, Voltaire and Mahomet, though no place is found for Christ. For private devotion, there is the adoration of the mother, the wife, the daughter. An ejaculatory prayer is proposed consisting of the following words: "Love as our principle; order as our basis; progress as our end." Instead of the sign of the Cross, so common in the Romish Church, the three principal cerebral organs are to be thoughtfully touched by the finger. For priests there is a College of Savants; for sacraments there are birthday, wedding and funeral rites; for the last judgment there is a posthumous decision of learned men upon the merits or demerits of the dead; the fame of this decision stands for immortality, and a civilized earth is made to serve for heaven. Such is the substitute for the religion of the Bible, proposed by the Atheistic philosopher. Revolting at the childishness of worshiping God, he constructs a religion in which the race shall worship man. With such poetic justice is the truth avenged. With such unconsciousness of its own nature does the wisdom of this world prove itself to be foolishness in the sight of God.

What has been said will prepare you for the few words in which I shall present the last thought of my subject. It is this: An impartial philosophy is essential to the perfect triumph of religion. If the universal sway of Christianity is to be brought about in accordance with the common laws of mind, it would seem that a true philosophy must be one of God's chosen weapons for subduing the world to Christ. Christianity has not only nothing to fear from a true science of the mind, but she must recognize in such science her indispensable coadjutor and ally. The stress of the argument against Christianity among investigators of physical truth is not so much theological as it is philosophical, and this fact is but the illustration of that wider principle enunciated by Sir William Hamilton, that "there is no difficulty emerging in theology which has not first emerged in philosophy." In spite of M. Comte, philosophy will exist while the world stands. It is time for the Christian church and the Christian ministry to understand its power, and instead of deploring its influence or treating it with shallow contempt, to use every effort to bring it into the service of Christ. As the greatest thinker of New England said a century ago: "There is no need that strict philosophical truth be at all concealed from men- no danger in contemplation and discovery in these things. The truth is extremely needful to be known, and the more clearly and perfectly the real fact is known, and the more constantly kept in view, the better. The clear and full knowledge of the true system of the universe will greatly establish the true Christian Scheme of divine administration in the City of God." Let us have done then, once for all, with the notion that metaphysical studies are beside the proper work of the preacher, and by necessity mystify his brain and destroy his practical power. The history of the church has shown that philosophy, instead of weakening the grasp and corrupting the principles of her preachers, has been their great discipline and strength. No man can clearly present or successfully defend the truths of religion without knowing them in their principles. A teacher of religion who sneers at metaphysics, as if it were a fog-bank in which only fools would risk their lives, is simply playing into the hands of infidelity and virtually declaring

that all true philosophy is on the side of the enemies of religion. To fill his place as a preacher in these days he must know the foundations of his faith in the human consciousness; must have some proper sense of those grand primitive affirmations of the soul, which,

"be they what they may,

Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet the master-light of all our seeing."

He must be able to show the dabbler in an Atheistic philosophy whither the principles he has ignorantly adopted will lead him; how completely these principles affront the reason and mock the religious nature of man; how they are based upon a single primary misconception with regard to the sources of our knowledge; how a simple confidence in the original intuitions of the mind will restore to us the world, the soul and God; how that confidence is the indispensable basis of all science, while a denial of a single one of these original convictions is like

"the little rift within the lute,

That by and by will make the music mute,
And, ever widening, slowly silence all."

It is the business of the preacher to know the false philosophy which threatens to leaven society, in order that in its place he may put the true. And this he can do in a thousand ways. Formal metaphysical disquisitions in the pulpit will never accomplish anything; but the incidental statement in sermon and correspondence and conversation of the fundamental errors of a false philosophy, accompanied by a simple reductio ad absurdum, will

open the eyes of many who have unconsciously imbibed notions hostile to

the true faith. The preacher is not only bound by his duty to God never to despair of philosophy himself, but is under obligation to labor and to pray that a true philosophy may uproot the false, and prepare the way for the final triumph of religion.

A true philosophy! It has been the dream and quest of earth's noblest spirits. But have they discovered the object of their search? Must not the world still ask: "Where shall wisdom be found, and where is the place of understanding?" We answer both yes and no. There has always been a true philosophy in the world side by side with the false. Side by side with the philosophies of Epicurus and the Stoics, partial in their sources and their results, dwelt for ages the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, both spiritual and both theistic, though differing largely in their methods and their spirit. And between our modern philosophies of Nescience and Omniscience there exists a sober philosophy represented by men like James McCosh, that aims to give to all the facts of human consciousness their proper weight and to maintain the faith of those sublime intuitions by which we cognize the existence of the World, the Soul, and God. As in theology, there are a thousand questions yet to solve, and with regard to many that are fundamental there is still diversity of opinion among the best of thinkers. Yet still the priests of God and the priests of Baal are easy to distinguish from each other, and in philosophy as well as theology the cry may still be echoed: "If the Lord be God, serve him; but if Baal, serve him!" Nor was there ever yet a day when the signs of the times were more hopeful for a true philosophy. As error with