itself disclose the character, and still less the nature and essence, of the object on which it depends, no more than the senses declare the nature of their objects. Like them it acts spontaneously and unconsciously, as soon as the outward occasion offers, with no effort of will, forethought, or making up the mind. But the religious sentiment implies its object; and there is but one religion, though many theologies."1

66

There is, as it appears to us, a mixture of some truth with much grave and dangerous error, in these and similar speculations. It is an important truth, and one which has been too often overlooked in treating the evidences of Natural Theology, that the sentiments of the human mind, not less than its intuitive perceptions or logical processes, have a close relation to the subject of inquiry; but it is an error to suppose that all the sentiments having a religious tendency can be reduced to one, whether it be called "a sense of dependence” or “a consciousness of the infinite," for there are other sentiments besides these which are equally subservient to the uses of Religion, such as the sense of moral obligation, of the true, of the ideal, of the sublime, and of the beautiful. It is also an important truth, that there are spontaneous "intuitions of reason," or fundamental and invariable "laws of thought," which come into action at the first dawn of experience, and which have a close connection with the proof of the being and perfections of God; but it is an error to suppose that the proof depends exclusively on these, or that it could be made out irrespective of the evidence afforded by the works of Creation and Providence. It is further an important truth, that the religious sentiment, or religious tendency, is natural to man, and that it may appear either in the form of Religion or Superstition: but it is an error to suppose that "there is but one

1 THEODORE PARKER, "Discourse of Matters pertaining to Religion," pp. 14, 17.

religion, although many theologies;" for these theologies must spring from fundamentally different "conceptions of God,” and what are these conceptions, in their ultimate analysis, but so many beliefs, doctrines, or dogmas, which, whether formally defined or not in articles of faith, have in them the self-same essence which is supposed to belong only to the bigotry of "articled churches?" But the fundamental, the fatal error of all these speculations, is the denial of any stable and permanent standard of objective truth. Truth is made purely subjective, and, of course, it must also be progressive, insomuch that the truth of a former age may be an error in the present, and the supposed truth of the present age may become obsolete hereafter. So that there is really nothing certain in human knowledge; and "truth" may be justly described as never existing, but only becoming, as never possessed, though ever pursued; it is a verité mobile, a truth not in esse, but in fieri. Hence we read in recent speculations of a "new Christianity," of a “new Gospel," and of "the Church of the Future," as if there could be any other Christianity than that of the New Testament, any other Gospel than that of Jesus Christ, or any other Church than that of apostolic times.

I have adverted to this theory, because, while it is of little value in a speculative point of view, it is often found to exert a powerful practical influence, especially on "men of affairs,” men who have travelled in various countries, or who have been employed in the arts of diplomacy and government; and who, finding religious worship everywhere, but clothed in different forms, and marking its subserviency to social and political interests, have been too prone to place all the varieties of belief in the same category, if not precisely on the same level, and to regard with indifference, perhaps even with indulgence, the grossest corruptions both of Natural and Revealed Religion. The world is surely old enough, and its history sufficiently instructive, to prove, even to the most indifferent statesmen,

that truth is always salutary, and error noxious, to the commonwealth, and that nowhere is society more safe, orderly, or stable, than in those countries which are blessed with "pure and undefiled religion." But let the opinion spread from the prince to the peasant, from the aristocracy to the artisans, from the philosopher to the public, that there is either no difference, or only a slight and trivial one, between truth and error, that it matters little what a man believes, or whether he believes at all: let the general mind of the community become indoctrinated with such lessons, and it needs no prophetic foresight to predict a crisis of unprecedented peril, an era of reckless revolution. A philosophic dreamer may affect a calm indifference, a bland and benignant Liberalism; but a nation, a community, cannot be neutral or inert in regard to matters of faith: it must and will be either religious or irreligious, it must either love the truth or hate it: it is too sharp-sighted, and too much guided by homely-common sense, to believe that systems so opposite as Paganism and Christianity, or Popery and Protestantism, are harmonious manifestations of the same religious principle, or equally beneficial to the State.

CHAPTER VIII.

THEORIES OF CERTITUDE AND SKEPTICISM.

WE formerly adverted to the distinction between Dogmatic and Skeptical Atheism; and, believing that the latter is the form in which it is most prevalent, as well as most insidious and plausible, we now propose to review some recent theories both of Certitude and Skepticism, which have sometimes been applied to throw doubt on the evidence of Christian Theism.

The Academy of Moral and Political Sciences in the French Institute announced in 1843 the theory of Certitude as the subject of a Prize Essay, and issued the following programme as a guide to the competitors in the selection of the principal topics of discussion:

"1. To determine the character of Certitude, and what distinguishes it from everything else. For example, Is Certitude the same with the highest probability?

"2. What is the faculty, or what are the faculties, which give us Certitude? If several faculties of knowledge are supposed to exist, to state with precision the differences between them.

"3. Of Truth and its foundations. Is truth the reality itself, -the nature of things falling under the knowledge of man? or is it nothing but an appearance, a conception, necessary or arbitrary, of the human mind?

"4. To expound and discuss the most celebrated opinions, ancient and modern, on the problem of Certitude, and to follow