of velocity. The meteor passing the earth at eighty miles a second bows to her as he passes. Thus the moon also is perpetually deflected from its path by the earth, and the earth by the moon, and both are turned constantly aside from their straight course by the sun; and the whole host of heaven is constantly moving in a rhythmic dance wherein each star influences the motions of the whole, and is influenced by the movements of each of the others.

Our consciousness that we cause motion leads us to ascribe all change of velocity to force, all force to will. The same consciousness bears witness also that all change of direction implies the influence of will. The weight of bodies, the attraction of gravitation, the correlated forces of the universe, these are but reverent forms of words in which we speak of that which can only be referred to the Divine Will. The untaught man, the poets of the earlier ages, were more true to reality when they used more religious forms of speech. It is not so much figurative, as literally true, to say that He who formed the Seven Stars and Orion still guides them on their way. Their circling orbits by their figure, and the golden orbs themselves by their motion, continually manifest the presence of His guiding hand. The forces of cohesion and repulsion, of electrical and chemical change, of heat, of light, all of the forces by which the existence of a particle of matter can possibly make itself known to our human senses, are but manifestations of the living action of the Most High.

Thus the first law of motion leads us to see God in all things, and all things as the present creations of his hand. It might lead us astray, it might lead us to Pantheism, were it not that it first leads us to perceive that force is an attribute of will, and independent of matter; thus keeping us to the conclusion that the Creator and Governor of all things is free, living, — and our hearts add, good.

THOMAS HILL.

THE SIMILARITIES OF PHYSICAL AND RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE.

I.

GROUNDS AND METHODS, NEGATIVE.*

THE word "science" at the present day is commonly employed in reference to physical knowledge. Such an expression as the Science of Religion or the Science of God strikes us as unusual. It seems to involve a figurative extension of the word beyond its proper sphere. Yet, until a hundred or two hundred years ago, science denoted merely knowledge in general, or, in a more special sense, systematized knowledge of any kind. Shakespeare speaks of music, mathematics, and other sciences." In the middle ages, the science par excellence, which would have been supposed to be referred to, if the general word was used for some particular but unspecified branch of knowledge, was the science of theology. To express the science of nature it would have been necessary to join with it some qualifying adjunct.

The change in the use of the word indicates a great revolution in thought. It is an interesting historical witness to the wonderful achievements of physical investigation, and to the lofty claims that it makes at the present day. "I alone," modern science tacitly says, by the very name by which it designates itself,—"I alone am scientia, - real knowledge, all else is more or less guess-work."

And this is not merely a tacit assumption, an unconscious arrogance, but a claim which men of science nowadays are very fond of publicly proclaiming. The certainty of science is contrasted with the uncertainty of other branches of pretended knowl

A certain resemblance which may be seen between this paper and a lecture by Rev. A. P. Peabody, D.D., delivered last winter and soon to be published, perhaps requires me, in justice to myself, to state that this article is the fruit of independent studies and conceptions, having been, in fact, very fully sketched out in my note-book four years ago, and briefly presented to my people at Watertown two years ago.

J. T. B.

edge, especially with that of religion. Science, it is declared, is most careful in its requirements of proof before it gives credence, Religion most careless. Science carefully examines nature and life to see what things really are, builds up its laws by an inductive accumulation of fact upon fact, and then demands that every generalization be experimentally verified before it is accepted as true.

Religion, on the other hand, with pious credulity mounts any vaulting hypothesis that the church may order her to ride, leaps heroically upon it, up mist-formed high-priori roads, toward the highest heaven, and as she whirls through the dizzy heights lets down link after link of deduction with as much confidence as if the chain were fastened to some immovable support. Auguste Comte classes religion with metaphysics, as but "products of the world's crude infancy." "Science," says the great positive philosopher, "conducts God with honor to its frontiers, thanking him for his provisional services." Huxley presents against religion the charge, "that with her the belief in a proposition, because authority tells you it is true, or because you wish to believe it, which is a high crime and misdemeanor when the subject matter of reason is of one kind, becomes under the alias of faith the greatest of all virtues when the subject matter of reason is of another kind;" and he would enforce upon us the wise advice, as he calls it, of Hume,"If we take in hand any volume of divinity or school metaphysic for instance, let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matters of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.”

Such are the charges currently made nowadays against the trustworthiness of the truths of religion; such are the unfavorable comparisons made against its methods and results as compared with those of science. Not a few men of eminent reputation in physical investigation have lent themselves to it. More of lesser knowledge have loudly exulted in it; and many and many who have got some little smattering of modern science have thought to show their superior enlightenment by most extreme charges against the validity of religious knowledge.

Now, I would freely admit that there has been and still is, among what has been currently accepted as religious truth, a great deal that has not been as certain as it should be. Theology has advanced exaggerated claims to absolute knowledge. It has indulged in most groundless hypotheses. It has made most unwarranted assumptions about the plans and counsels and inmost nature of the Godhead, and about the details of the future life, and about scores of other things entirely beyond human power to know. Creeds have laid down dogmas about human nature and Scriptural inspiration, the authority of prophets and apostles, the work and deeds and nature of Christ, that have shown themselves plainly contradictory to observation and experience, to reason and the moral sense.

Mediæval scholasticism especially sinned grievously in these respects. It delighted in hair-splitting disputations over frivolous puzzles and in endless speculations about things not only transcending the possibility of human knowledge, but destitute of any practical moment. Its only criterion of truth was the deliverances of the church or the almost equally venerated Aristotle. When Bacon turned the human mind to the pursuit of the useful and the study of natural things, and enjoined the method of induction and the test of verification, knowledge made amazing conquests. The human atom, looking forth from his petty pellet of planetary matter, has measured and weighed the celestial bodies, traced their orbits through the heavens, divined the processes by which they grew from dusty nebulæ into glowing sun or life-blessed planet; he has tracked the subtle Proteus, Force, from form to form, and made it now fly with his messages and then drag him on his errands and spin and knit and reap and sew for him. It is not strange, therefore, that physical science should have grown somewhat conceited and imagined that its pet methods and its own narrow circle of work were alone compatible with any solid attainment.

And the religious world for the most part has unwittingly comfirmed this assumption. Finding the researches of modern science in geology, astronomy, ethnology, and so on, bringing up formidable objections to current religious doctrines, instead of saying, "Religion knows only the truth: if the received doc

trines are shown to be inconsistent with any fact, let them be revised," instead of thus honestly acknowledging the possibility of some past errors, and removing from religion the burden of sustaining portions found to be erroneous or doubtful, the religious world, for the most part, has clung to the most incredible parts as if they were its most essential elements; and it has sought to justify them by declaring that the unconverted reason is incapable of comprehending the high mysteries of religion. Religious truth (theologians and preachers, defending the old beliefs, have maintained) belongs to another realm from ordinary kinds of truth. It is not to be tried by the understanding. It is not to be brought to the bar of common sense, but it is to be discerned by the inner soul, and its evidence found in the soul's satisfaction in it. "In the things of God," as Mr. Mansel, one of the ablest exponents of this view, tells us, "reason is beyond her depth, and we must accept what is established or we must believe nothing." By this view, which has been advocated and defended by such men as Hamilton, Mansel, Baden Powell, and Faraday, the field of truth is divided into two separate portions, one, the province of knowledge, where science holds sway; the other, the province of belief, where religion has her throne. The two, however opposite they appear, can never, it is declared, really interfere or trouble each other. Science may establish that scientifically the sloth and the humming-bird and the kangaroo and a thousand other species of living creatures could not have come from Australia and South America and Greenland across seas and icy deserts to take shelter in Noah's ark. Scientifically, then, it is not to be credited, that is all. But as a matter of religion, it is none the less to be accepted. It only requires more of that faith without sight by which the believer should walk.

Now, by taking this mode of defending itself against the incursions of modern science, the church has aided much in spreading suspicion of the certainty of its cherished doctrines. When its own advocates would make a believer's mind like those vessels that are built with water-tight compartments, one-half of it for

the play of common sense, the other for the dwelling-place of faith, such troublesome things as reason and observation being securely locked out when the soul is at its devotions or considering its