On the 2nd of April, 1875, Dean Stanley delivered an address at Dundee, under the auspices of the University Club, on the subject of the mutual relations of Religion, Science, and Literature.

The Dean, who was enthusiastically received, said that in dealing with this somewhat dry subject he had thought it best, partly for his own convenience, partly for their pleasure, to place it before them in a concrete form. Great ideas and great doctrines, and the mutual relation of these doctrines, were best understood-or, at any rate, best appreciated, when they appeared before us in flesh and blood. And he proposed, therefore, to select as examples of theology, science, and literature, three great men, who were a few years ago, accidentally brought into mutual relationship by the fact that then three anniversaries were celebrated at the same time in their three respective countries-Calvin, Galileo, and Shakspere. It was his intention to speak of these three great men as the representatives of theology,

science, and literature, but chiefly with the view of showing the relation in which all the three stood to the religious and moral advancement of mankind, which was the one point that united together these three great branches of thought.

He spoke first of Calvin, the great French or Swiss reformer. What good has he left behind him? While he lived, and for 100 years after his death, there was no theologian in Protestant Europe whose name could be compared with his for weight and authority. It was an argument in itself, far more than Luther or Melancthon or Zuinglius; he was the theologian of the Reformation. Geneva is the only city in Europe besides Rome that has a religious ecclesiastical sound in its very name. Whatever theology sprung up in Great Britain at that time came straight from them. The English Puritans and Nonconformists, the Presbyterians of Scotland, whether Established or Free or United, all owe their existence more or less to Calvin. But the fame of Calvin is no longer what it was, and the

reason is that Calvin threw his whole strength into one particular phase of Christian belief and of Christian practice. He saw straight before him, but only in one direction. He was the most splendid of partisans, but still a partisan. He was the founder of a particular school or sect of belief. He was not the promoter of truth and goodness for their own sake. This is the first lesson which we draw from

Calvin.

But it would be doing great injustice to Calvin and to ourselves, and it would be to miss one main part of the lesson which his appearance taught us, if we did not acknowledge the lasting benefits we owed to him. He was not now speaking of the great ability and the candor and good sense of his controversies, because they had been expounded by Greek writers of the same kind, and were not peculiar to himself even at that time. He confined himself to two points in which he stood pre-eminent. The first which he would notice was in the truth contained in his doctrines. Nothing is more useful for men

who are educating themselves, nothing more profitable for theological study than to endeavor to find out what is the truth that lies at the bottom of doctrines in opinions with which, as commonly expressed, we feel ourselves constrained to disagree. Such is the case with the doctrine of predestination, which is at the root of all that is peculiar in what we call Calvinism. There has been so much exaggeration, so much folly talked concerning it, that we are sometimes inclined to think of it as of a thing altogether passed by. But the truth itself which it was intended to convey is one which never will be altogether put out of the world. It is, that there is an overruling Providence which guides our steps in life without our perceiving it—that there is a power greater than ourselves, without which we cannot move or act ; that this Providence leads us through mysterious paths to our very highest good; that whatever we have good or excellent in ourselves or others comes from this higher Power. This is the true doctrine of Predestination-a doctrine which many think mere Fatalism, but

which in itself is perfectly certain and most important; and the merit of Calvin is, that though he may have pushed it to excess, yet he hoped to preserve it in the world and hand it on to us. They might remember that a great writer of our own time, as unlike Calvin as it is possible to conceive, has recorded solemnly that this doctrine of Predestination, so understood, was in his judgment unquestionably and indispensably necessary. He meant Thomas Carlyle. When in his history of Frederick the Great he said this he meant, and at the bottom of his heart Calvin also meant to tell us, that we are each and all of us instruments in the hands of the Supreme Government for working out His will-links in the chain of a long-enduring Providence with a work before us to do, for the sake of doing which each one of us was sent into the world.

There was a second benefit of Calvin's appearance which also ought to be looked for in connexion with any form of theology which claimed to be considered-what was its worth and practical result? When,