nent religious value as a basis of scientific deduction or as an object of speculative thought.

This does not, however, mean that we forfeit or deny any object of our religious contemplation, reverence, awe, or hope. It only means that the problem of the Universe is too vast to be reduced within range of the speculative understanding. It means that any intellectual statement is worthless, which pretends to make the Infinite Intelligence, or its way of working, comprehensible to human thought. When we say that "the mind is free" in presence of the insoluble problem of the Universe, we must necessarily mean not only the pious mind, but the secular, the scientific, the agnostic mind. Each will find its own thought reflected “as in a glass, darkly" in that strangely multiplying mirror, which the Universe must always be to us.

And I do not see why we should be in the least anxious to prove a speculative theism, in the way in which that feat has usually been performed. After all, our best notion of that which is infinite and universal must always be a sort of poetry. Who or what or how God is, can be spoken only in symbols to human thought. And, in all our thought upon that matter, we have to remember that the symbol is not the thing,- any more than when, in the poetry of the Hebrews, it was spoken of God's hands and feet and eyes and fingers. Our language, too, upon this topic, is symbol, not science; is poetry, not prose; is song, not creed.

Let us apply the same thought to the second element of the religious consciousness. God, we are told,-also in language of poetic symbol,- is "the Eternal, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness." Some metaphysicians say that there is no power, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness; that goodness, justice, mercy, love, are only thoughts, emotions, qualities, of our own souls. Still, let us not quarrel about the phrase. All such phrases are only hints and symbols of the fact. Of God outside of us, in the universe, in the realm of visible things, it is impossible for us to know anything at all, except so far as we can see order, method, purpose, in the laws of nature, in the proc

esses of evolution. It is that within us which makes for righteousness-or, in the Christian symbol, "the Word made flesh, and dwelling among us full of grace and truth" -that alone gives us a true image or revelation of the God we really adore. That power "makes for righteousness," it is true. But it is by aiding us in the struggle with what we know is evil, in the effort to establish what we know is right. So, then, except we hold fast that fundamental distinction of Right and Wrong, we cannot know anything truly about God; we cannot even think of any God worth knowing. Our conviction of this "element of the religious consciousness' may take the noblest form of intellectual statement, that Infinite Good exists in the person of a Divine Will, sovereign, fatherly, gracious; but it is still "evidence of things not seen." The belief, so far forth as it is religious, is in One who "worketh in us, both to will and to do."

All this does not help us in the least, so far as I can see, to what we may call a distinct, speculative theism; that is, to an understanding of the being and attributes of God, or his way of working as a Conscious Agent behind the phenomena of the universe. As to that, we are unable to see that the human mind has made any advance at all since the days of the world's childhood. Except for the greater wealth of subject-matter contributed by science and the experience of mankind, the speculations of the Stoics are exactly as good as the speculations of the Hegelians. If we were to be asked to give an intellectual expression to our religious belief, doubtless we should not do it in the form of Paley's argument for a Coutriving Mind, or any expositions of the metaphysical Absolute, or the scientist's demonstration of a Cosmic Theism. Either of these we may take for symbol as far as they will go. But we might do better to go back even as far as the language of the Bible, which contains the frankest and noblest symbolism that has yet gone into human speech. This would be truer to us: not because it is clearer in argument than Paley, or nicer in metaphysical subtilties than Hegel, or more convincing than

the processes of modern Science; but because it carries our thought by more lines of sacred association, and by a greater uplifting of the religious imagination, to that Universal Life, of which the truest thing we can say is, by a sublime personification, this: that "in Him we live and move and have our being."

But we cannot forget here the great service which Schleiermacher, and those who have worked in the same general direction with him, have done for the religious life of this latter time. The mere fact that for dogmatic theology they have substituted speculative theology, that for a cruel and despotic creed they have given us its insubstantial and harmless reflection in the mirror of Christian experience, is a revolution such as the early reformers could never have dreamed of. It is all there: the Incarnation, the Trinity, the Atonement, Election, and the Judgment; but as different from the menacing and imperious dogmas of the past, as the fair reflection in a lake, or the bright landscape on canvas, is from the bleak precipices and the horrible chasms of an Alpine range. In color and shape, you could not tell the difference. That difference is in the lack of substance and of life. No mobs, like those at Ephesus, will fight for the honor of the spectral Second Person of this spectral Trinity. No fires, like those of Seville and Geneva, will be kindled to suppress the heresies that may assail the dim Phantasmagory. The dogma has become simply a constituent part of modern philosophic thought. Here is its harmlessness; for nobody is afraid of a reflection in a mirror. Here, too, is its security; for nobody can hurt a`shadow.

The chief service, however, is done not by merely making the dogma harmless and spectral, but by linking modern forms of thought and experience with the old sanctities of the religious life. Those wonderful Triads which Coleridge borrowed (it is said) from Schelling, and took to be a sort of mystic Trinity, may seem to us, it is true, a mere play of words; but they greatly widened the horizon of English thought, and led the way to a far larger and freer intellectual life among those whose narrow Orthodoxy has been

sublimated into the rare ether of his transcendental speculation. The thin formularies which Cousin and his school of French Eclectics translated out of Hegel are already a little the worse for wear; but, fifty years ago, they were full of a kindling vigor for minds that had grown discontented with the narrow issues of the New England Unitarian controversy. And, of more value than either of these effects, it may well be believed that the most intelligent and vital piety in American or Scottish Orthodoxy to-day is where its teachers have been, without knowing it, emancipated from the cramps of a sterile bigotry by the mellower and tenderer atmosphere of the German speculative theology.

This result was the easier, because Schleiermacher was no bleak and arid metaphysician, but a man full of a sweet piety, a steady patriotism, a noble integrity and moral earnestness. Historian, critic, scholar, theologian, his great function was to be the most eminent of preachers to the souls of his own people, the tenderest of friends and counsellors to his nearer circle of friends. So that, with all his intellectual eminence, and his fame as a constructor of the new theology, it remains his true glory that he sought its foundations in his own experience, and that he has made it a fresh testimony and help to the reality of the religious life.

J. H. ALLEN.

CARDINAL MANNING.

The literary works of Henry Edward, Cardinal of Westminster, constitute a longer list than people outside the Catholic Church might be inclined to suppose, although any visitor to London who remembers his brilliant eyes and interesting dark face, will readily accord to him a place among the intellectual men of the day.

The Cardinal's book on The Internal Mission of the Holy Ghost contains a generous share of reason and truth, and will strike all its readers as an enlightened and intellectual production. Its style is sweet and easy to follow, and its divi

sions are interesting and apposite. The seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, which receive seven chapters, are described as The Gift of Holy Fear, The Gift of Piety, The Gift of Fortitude, The Gift of Science, The Gift of Counsel, The Gift of Understanding, The Gift of Wisdom. There are three lovely chapters devoted to The Virtue of Faith, The Virtue of Hope, and The Virtue of Charity.

The Cardinal's account of the decision of the Council of Trent regarding grace is most interesting. His analysis of justification and also of the primal perfection of man is very able and good.

Cardinal Manning evidently admires Thomas à Becket more, and the Emperor William less, than we do; but perhaps this is but natural.

We will make a few extracts from the book before us, which seem to us rational, brilliant, and lucid:

There are, as you know, four kinds of light by which we can shape and govern our actions. There is the light of reason, sufficient in the order of nature, but at times both cold and dim. There are wide regions of truth, in which reason can hardly see its road. Reason can see its way in the order of natural truths; but, without the Spirit of God, it cannot see its path in the order of grace. Reason is a good light whereby to travel on the earth; but it does not give light enough to show the way up the mountain which leads into the kingdom of God. It can lead us some way, and then we need another light; and reason delivers us over to that other guide. When reason has done its utmost in proving to us that God has revealed his will, then we believe that revelation to be divine; after that, faith guides us onward. We make an act of faith, which is the highest act of reason; and that act of faith delivers us over to a divine guide. Thenceforward, reason and faith walk side by side. All the rest of our lives we are guided by reason and faith together. The lesser light is the light of the reason, the greater light is the light of faith; and these two are distinct, but indivisible for ever. And then, springing from reason and faith, there is the light of prudence, which is both natural and supernatural. But we have, lastly, another light which is higher than all; and that is the light of faith made perfect by the four gifts of wisdom and of understanding and of knowledge and of counsel. These four of the seven gifts perfect both the reason of man and the virtue of faith; and, as I said before, faith is the most perfect act of the reason, the highest and the noblest, and the nearest to that eternal union of the intelligence with the uncreated wisdom of God. Such is the illumination of the reason.