regard to the person of Christ reached its extremest results in both directions and exhausted itself in the first centuries of Christianity, so error in philosophy seems to have rendered this service for the truth, of showing to what heights and depths of folly and ruin a partial philosophy in either direction may lead. The day has dawned already in which philosophic investigation is carried on in the true inductive method and begins with the fundamental facts of consciousness - the intuitive knowledge of matter, of mind, of God, and of each as distinct and differing in nature from the others. Let a man hold fast to the deliverance that he has a face-to-face knowledge of the external world, of his own mind, and of the existence and presence of God, and he may defy all the arts of a false philosophy to lead him astray.

Just in proportion to the extent to which these fundamental convictions are ignored or obscured does fatal error creep into our reasonings. Philosophy is just beginning to settle her debt with Sir William Hamilton, who, with all his splendid contributions to a true science of the mind, still, by his notion of the relativity of human knowledge and his virtual denial of a direct knowledge of matter, left the door ajar for a subtle Idealism to enter and prepared the way for Mansel's resolution of the whole material of our religious faith into sheer contradiction. I know matter as something external to myself. I may learn a thousand things about it, but my knowledge of its existence can never be more perfect. To say that the external substance furnishes six of the twelve parts of my conception, while the organs by which I perceive it furnish three, and the mind itself three, is virtually to deny that we have any face-to-face knowledge of matter at all. And so to relegate our idea of the divine existence to the realm of faith, because, forsooth, any proper knowledge of God would require an apprehension of the manner in which his infinite attributes coexist to form one object is to deny one of the simplest facts of consciousness. There may be a thousand facts about God, of which I am ignorant, but my mind cognizes his existence and presence for all that. As another has said: "The African on the banks of the Niger may be altogether ignorant of its source and termination, but it would not be right on that account to deny that he has any knowledge of the river, and it would be equally wrong to deny that we can know God, merely on the ground that we do not and cannot grasp his infinite attributes." To tell me that this knowledge of God, “wherein standeth my eternal life," possesses no external validity, and to inscribe upon the temple of religion the legend, "To the Unknown God," is simply to sweep away the foundations of all knowledge. The clearness and power of this intuitive knowledge may be dimmed and blunted by sin. To see God revealed to my soul as distinctly as I see the forms of my fellow-men may belong to me only in those clearer moments to which here and hereafter the pure in heart may come, but still the fact remains that an intuitive knowledge of God, distorted, blunted, overlaid with a thousand superstitious fancies though it be, belongs to man as man, revealing itself in his consciousness of the Infinite around him and in his fears of the judgment before him. This conception of God is not the straining forward of the soul into an unknown abyss, as Kant maintained, nor is it a mere negation of all bounds and limits, as Hamilton fancied; for both these philosophers, in their constant declarations

66

that God is, and that he is a God of truth, declare in effect that, apart from all faith, they have substantial knowledge of God and of certain of his attributes. As "there is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding," the very height and glory of his nature is that he may look into the face of God and say: "My Father!" To waken this intuition into living power and to restore the actual communion of the soul with God, Christ has come, and in him who is "the brightness of the Father's glory and the express image of his person" we who once were so involved in "the dark windings of the material and earthy" that we dared scarcely say, we have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear," can declare with joy that "now our eye seeth Thee." This grandest intuition of the soul it is ours to interpret, to illustrate, to defend, by voice and pen, in heart and life. Men may mistake it and deny it, but its establishment upon a scientific basis is the test and the goal of a true philosophy. We may each do something toward the grand result, not only by the service of the intellect, but by living every day "as seeing Him who is invisible," and from our own certainty of the truth commending it to others. The noble lines with which Wordsworth concludes "The Prelude" set forth the preacher's work no less than the poet's :

"Prophets of nature, we to them may speak
A lasting inspiration, sanctified

By reason, blest by faith; what we have loved
Others will love, and we will teach them how;
Instruct them how the mind of man becomes
A thousand times more beautiful than the earth
On which he dwells, above this frame of things
In beauty exalted, as it is itself

Of quality and fabric more divine."

Upon the side of the great entrance-hall of the Royal Museum in Berlin is painted a colossal picture of Kaulbach's, which unites more than any other picture in the world the interest of history and poetry, of weird imagination and symbolic lore. It represents that last battle between the Romans and the Huns, which decided the fate of European civilization. The story goes that the hosts on either side fought desperately for three long days, until the greater part of the combatants were slain, and the rest, worn out with the conflict, fell to the ground in heavy sleep. But as the night came on, the spirits of the slain, still fierce and restless even in death, rose from their bodies and held a still and awful battle in the air. This shadowy combat Kaulbach has painted. There, on the right, comes Attila, the "scourge of God," borne aloft upon a shield, and leading on his barbarians to death or victory. And there Theodoric, the Roman leader, advances to meet him, with sword in hand and the cross behind. The picture is wonderful for its vivid portraiture of deadly conflict, but far more for its symbolic teaching that the battle which determined the future of Christianity and of the world was not so much a battle of men and spears as a battle between the spirit of two opposing civilizations, a battle in which subtle and shadowy principles contended for the mastery of the world. So, brethren, let us never forget amid the practical noise and strife of our lifework, that above our heads another battle is going on, in which our struggling finds its only true significance. The battle of the ages is a battle of

principles, and he who has most possessed himself of the knowledge of that upper warfare will best conduct the fight amid the clang of arms and the shock of opposing battalions. Let us thank God that the issue is not doubtful. Though the armies of error are more subtle and more fierce than those shadowy barbarians that follow after Attila, the hosts of God are stronger still, for the Cross is with them, and by that sign they conquer !

II.

SCIENCE AND RELIGION.*

The annual festival which brings us together marks the close of another year's professional instruction, and the completion by many before me of their whole preparatory training for the work and business of life. The friendships cemented by common pursuits and aspirations are soon to exist only in memory, and the hard tests of practical life are to decide how much of manly energy and sagacity and principle there is on which to build a permanent success. It is a noble profession to which you have bound yourselves. There is but one which can rival it in dignity. The three great learned guilds are one in their object, and one in their method of work. All have in view the good of human kind. All base their hope of good upon the study of God's laws. He must be a shallow and unworthy representative of the legal profession whose highest conception of it is that of a moneymaking trade, and whose mind, with all its matching of precedents and forging of arguments, never once finds in the law the dim reflection of God's eternal justice and truth. And he must be a sorry doctor who never loses sight of selfish comfort or reputation in disinterested service of humanity, and who forgets that in every case of disease that comes beneath his eye are illustrated the highest truths of God's great creation of mind and matter. The physician is brought face to face with the saddest and solemnest aspects of human life — he should be a wise and humble man; he has piteous hands held out to him for help - he should be a man of tender human feeling, while he is yet careful and calm; he must again and again see the soul hovering between two worlds and at last passing away like the spark of an extinguished taper, - he should be a truly religious man.

The great German dramatist puts into the mouth of one of his characters the words: "Respect the dreams of thy youth." I cannot believe that one of those whom I especially address is destitute of some such high ideal of professional beneficence and character. Yet at the same time you will not deem it unkind if I remind you that the dust of our life-struggle often obscures to us the lofty beacon-lights that guide our way; and that, with all pursuits of natural science, Medicine shares the common danger of forgetting those spiritual facts which give to its conclusions all their validity and significance. Those whose occupation and principal study of life it is to adjust applications of the great laws of chemistry and dynamics, and who are exercised but little in subjects and fields of thought external to mere nature, come often to be practical unbelievers in anything but nature. Con

* An Address delivered at the Commencement of the Medical College, Cleveland, February 18, 1867.

1

tinually occupied with the phenomena of the body and its effects on the mind, even the physician sometimes finds it hard to admit within his scheme of things anything supernatural or beyond the cognizance of the senses. The theologian is sometimes guilty of the opposite fault, while nature and the supernatural together constitute the one system of God, he ofttimes ignores the results of science and decries her methods. Religion and science will never understand each other, or find terms of harmonious coöperation, until the great truth is recognized by each that observation and consciousness are alike sources of knowledge, and that equal validity is to be ascribed to the ascertained results of metaphysical and moral inquiry with that which we ascribe to the processes of natural research. It is my profound conviction that neither the scientific man nor the moral philosopher can achieve success in the building up of his own system, or in the symmetrical development of his own character, so long as either disdains the pursuits of the other. The two systems are complementary to each other, and each without the other is fragmentary and incomplete. The greatest possible heresy on the part of either is to play the empiric by assuming that its system comprises the whole of truth, and that there is no knowledge but that which comes through its peculiar method. Such partiality and egotism is foreign to the true scientific spirit. I doubt not, therefore, that your training here has favorably disposed you toward the theme which I desire to elucidate, namely, the indissoluble connection between physical and metaphysical inquiry, or what is much the same thing, the mutual dependence of science and religion.

My first proposition is that no system of thought deserves the name of true science which does not recognize the existence and importance of a realm of metaphysical, moral and spiritual truth, side by side with the great fields of physical inquiry. Though many are prone to deny it, there is such a thing as metaphysical science. The observation and classification of phenomena do not by any means comprise all that is possible in scientific research. By the word phenomena I mean here the phenomena perceptible to the senses. If used in the larger sense, which embraces all that occurs or reveals itself within the mind as well as without, the word phenomena may include within its scope all the raw material of our knowledge. There are phenomena of mind as well as of matter. Self-consciousness is as valid a source of knowledge as consciousness of the outer world. And it is the merest begging of the question for the Positivist to declare that only the phenomena of sense are to be recognized as of any value in scientific inquiry. The results of intellectual philosophy are just as real and valuable as the results of physical investigation, and to say that accepted moral truth has no other basis than faith, while physical truth is positive in any peculiar sense, is simply to deny the dicta of consciousness. Mental and spiritual facts are just as demonstrable, though by a different kind of evidence, as the facts of the visible and material universe around us. Let us strip away the mystery and prejudice that envelope that much-abused word, metaphysical. It means nothing but that which is beyond the sphere of the physical. For example, I burn my hand in the flame of this gas-burner. The gas, the flame, the disintegration of the tissues of my hand, are physical facts; but do these comprise an exhaustive summary of the case? Some philosophers