in words, transcendental speculation, every naturalist holds to it and stands upon it, at every step of his way. Any syllogism, deductive or inductive, can claim validity for a moment, only as it rests ultimately upon what no syllogism could produce. If there be nothing which cannot be proved, then is there nothing which can be proved. "They," said Theophrastus, "who seek a reason for all things overthrow all reason.' "To deny that anything is evident of itself unto man," said Hooker, "is to destroy the possibility of knowing anything."

Moreover, it is to be noted, that the mere classification of the facts of nature, by which some particular fact is referred to a more general one termed a law, is far enough from being science. It is not a knowledge of nature which we thus possess, for knowledge is the agreement in consciousness of an object with our ideal, and hence involves a transcendental element in its very being. That which is made must be expounded by that which is unmade, penetrated and informed by the truth object of belief, not of knowledge,

of science.

the thing seen must be unseen; else is it only an a matter of opinion, not

Furthermore, any professed explanation of one fact by another, so far from enlarging the domain of our knowledge, only transfers us to a wider field of ignorance. When we seek the reason why, in any particular case, we assuredly do not find it by simply learning that it is the same which works other and grander results. Nothing can be more absurd than to suppose that I know what makes the apple fall, as soon as I learn that it is the same power that holds the planets in their places. I ask for an explanation and am answered: gravity;- but the response, reduced to its simple meaning, is only the truism: whatever is, is, in other words: that which makes the apple fall, is that which made it fall. To say that this power produces many other effects does not explain any one of them. Though we suppose ourselves thus to have comprehended the facts, they are really more incomprehensible than before, just in proportion to their greater extent. We have not increased our knowledge, but have only, in truth, affirmed our ignorance in broader terms. If in the last resort we introduce a Deus

ex machina, to cut the knot which we cannot untie, this is only a still broader fact, which explains nothing, and is as void of all rational signification as the one with which we first started. A God who is only necessary in order to expound nature, needs himself an exposition as much as nature does. Moreover, even such a Deity is altogether beyond experience; and Humboldt was therefore more consistent than most modern naturalists when he excluded God entirely from his "Cosmos," We should not mourn over his irreligion while we cling to a method of investigating nature whose legitimate result would lead us also to ignore both absolute truth and an absolute Deity.

The truth is, all science which is not properly transcendental is both unphilosophical and irreligious, unphilosophical, because it offers no rational and self-sufficient principle for the explanation of nature, and irreligious, because its highest generalization, to which it gives the name of first cause, is only assumed to be first, in contradiction to the very process by which its being has been affirmed. If the reason did not by its own immediate insight know God, and could believe only in the Deity derived from experience and induction, then all reverence and worship would be impossible. We could not adore gravitation, we could not love some grand law of central forces; and just as little could we offer these exercises to the power next beyond these, which the logical understanding affirms to be, but of which it can predicate neither freedom, nor love, nor self-origination.

ARTICLE VII.

NATURE-WORSHIP; ITS ROOT AND ITS FRUIT.

THE remark is a correct one, that popular literature has never been so tinged with a religious hue as now; but, unfortunately, not with the Christian religion distinctively. Thus, we open a volume of Schiller and read: "I find in the Christian system

the rudiments virtually of the highest and noblest. In its pure form it is a representing of moral beauty, or the incarnation of the Holy." This sounds hopefully, a vibration, one would gladly believe, from a harp over whose strings the heavenly wind is playing. But listen again:-"A healthy poetic nature wants no moral law, no rights of man. It wants no Deity, no immortality, to stay and uphold itself withal. These points, round which ultimately all speculation turns, can never become concerns of serious necessity for it." We pause and ask, Under what dispensation are we here? Does this belief know what it worships? Nor can we find any sensible relief from our misgivings when a kindred spirit, Carlyle, assures us that " Schiller, too, had his religion; was a worshipper; and so in his earthly sufferings wanted not a heavenly stay. In all relations, conditions, he is blameless, amiable. That high purpose after spiritual perfection which with him was a love of poetry, and an unwearied, active love, is itself, when pure and supreme, the necessary parent of good conduct, as of noble feeling. With all men it should be pure and supreme, for, in one or the other shape, it is the true end of man's life. Neither in any man is it ever wholly obliterated; with the most, however, it remains a passive sentiment, an idle wish." With due respect for brilliant genius, and a yet higher reverence for all honest, earnest doubt, we are constrained to repeat the inquiry, Is this our New Testament of redemption and holiness, or is it a newer still? What simple reader of the Gospel (and these are the best readers of it) would ever conjecture that the above text and comment could claim the same parentage with the words of the evangelists?

...

We turn to another of this school of naturalists, the recluse and pensive Novalis. "Man announces himself and his gospel of nature. He is the Messiah of nature. .. There is but one temple in the world, and that is the body of man. Nothing is holier than this high form. Bending before men is a reverence done to this revelation in the flesh. We touch heaven when we lay our hand upon a human body." This is the careful utterance of a profoundly devout spirit, according to the system thus set forth; nature-faith and nature-worship reaching nigh on unto perfection. If there be light here, it is not

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sunlight; there is no warmth in it. We shiver as in an icecellar. One step more only into sheer pantheism, if we are not already out on its drear waste. And Mr. Waldo Emerson stands. ready to tell us that "prayer" to God is an absurdity, because this " supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness between God and us; that is, that we and God are not the same entity. We are not surprised, therefore, to find this writer styling the doctrine of a "pure theism" an "untruth"; nor yet, further, to hear him in his self-deification say, "No law can be sacred to me but that of my own nature: good and bad are but names very readily transferable to this or that. The only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong what is against it." We are even informed, on what we believe to be reliable authority, that, on a winter day, this gentleman has been heard standing at his window to say, in grave soliloquy, "I snow"; "I rain"; "I blow"! One would think it almost as baffling to get up a consciousness of personally performing these functions-except it may be the lastas to feel individually responsible for the original appleeating of Eden. The latter, we fancy, were decidedly the easier. What nature-worship is cannot be condensed within the terms of a definition. But by a somewhat circuitous route we may arrive at a distinct enough idea of its form and spirit, albeit these are of a very impalpable and evanescent quality. To believe and to adore, in some sort, are as natural to us as to listen and to wonder. A constitutional capacity for religion is as much a part of our souls as is such a capacity for artistic culture and enjoyment. The main question of religion is, acceptableness with God. Just here, then, a multitude of writers meet us maintaining that this question is satisfactorily settled by the concession now freely made; that is, they contend that every person, by virtue of his capacity to be sincerely religious, is in some degree a devout and spiritual man— does love God and his neighbor with a genuine love. The measure of that degree is the amount of training bestowed upon this naturally implanted germ. Piety is but the progressive development, under favorable influences, of this original attribute of humanity. In some, indeed, that force lies dormant, overlaid by accumulations of base rubbish, paralyzed by adverse causes. Would

such an one redeem his character and destiny from so unworthy a bondage? His better nature must be exercised, cleared from vile restraints by energetic efforts at self-emancipation. The mingled elements within him, by some process of self-clarifying, must be separated; the grosser must subside, the more etherial be fixed and made dominant.

This is for substance the theory of a salvation which is sufficient unto itself. This is its root. That root throws out various growths. Some flourish with much of leafy verdure, of heavenward stature; they look very like the trees of life in the midst of the Lord's garden. Others present but an earthward, stinted, miserable aspect. But the underground growth, not that which is above ground, determines the quality of the fruit as essentially the same and worthless.

The world by its own wisdom knows not God. Intellects which have delighted and instructed us on every other subject, only have made spiritual darkness denser by all their efforts to scatter its mists. Very often they show us a vigorous grasp of thought, a far-seeing eye, an admirable power of patient reflection, a captivating tenderness of tearful sadness. But what avails it to a soul trembling to its centre with the questions of life's mysteries, obligations, destinies, full of doubts, disbeliefs, strugglings of half-fledged faiths, to be told to rally itself by its own courage when it has no courage; to draw hope and repose out of its own dry wells of salvation; to lay its flushed cheek down on the calm lap of Nature, and amid her solitudes to still its perturbations into rest? Yet what more does this selfinspired gospel really tell us than that? We have seen, and shall yet further see, how far away from Christ speculation may travel under guidance of its highest priesthood, when it goes forth under the lights of earth instead of heaven to erect altars to Nature instead of Grace.

It is this scheme of mere naturalism, in many a shifting shape, now robing itself in unintelligible mysticism, and now speaking the language of common life, which is expelling from the more cultivated and fashionable classes of society the severer truths of evangelists and apostles; while men are learning that they are of the godlike, the saintly of the earth, because their sympathies and tastes are impressible by the graceful and