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thinking of opposing sects. And they have been peculiarly charitable in their judgments. They would not quench the fires of hell, but they have not consigned to those eternal torments the heathen sage, the pagan king, or the unlettered devotee to degrading forms, so long as they were true to the light they had. This, they affirm, has shined in every age enough for the practical ends of life. It is the voice of Deity in the soul, which, when obeyed, will lead to everlasting life; which, when resisted, will end in everlasting death. The Friend would welcome Socrates, and Seneca, and Plato, and Pythagoras into the abodes of the blessed, as well as the fathers of the church and the guides of modern Christians. The expansiveness of his benevolent desires is as boundless as the limits of the universe. He does not deny or doubt a state of future retribution. The universality of God's grace, to Jew and Gentile, Scythian and Barbarian, of whatever country, or kindred, or age, was one of the favorite tenets of Fox and Barcklay and Penn, and which they embraced with undissembled fervor.

There was one more form of generous toleration for which the Friends were distinguished, and which is not often spoken of. They honored woman. They respected her voice in religious meetings as well as in the social home. They ever have zealously cultivated her intellect because they believed in her real and natural equality. They never depreciated her tastes or her genius. They would condemn her to no coarse and degrading duties. In all respects she was viewed as the companion of man, rather than his slave, his friend and counsellor and helpmate, rather than an inferior to be flattered by silly speeches and amused with toys and spectacles. The Friend associated with woman, not with seductive influence to beguile her, but with dignity and simplicity, as the being whom God gave to cheer him in his loneliness, or assist him in his misfortunes. Under such a treatment she has ever retained in his ranks, a true as well as admitted equality..

Such have been some of the blessings which Fox and his Society have conferred upon the world — some great ideas and some valued rights. Who will not concede that the principles of peace, of liberty and of generous toleration, are the glory of all true benefactors to our race, as well as the pride and the boast of a progressive age?

In view of these great substantial ideas, and also in view of the undoubted excellences which have ever characterized the

followers of Fox, we can readily excuse any peculiarities in dress, or manners, or modes of speech; even opposition to many harmless pleasures, and disregard of many elegant arts. Such outward peculiarities will probably pass away, for they do not constitute the genius and the life of the system which they defend. These were not uppermost in the minds of Fox or . Penn. What they thought of was nobler, higher, and more enduring, even the religious and moral welfare of a wicked world, Nor were their labors and principles in vain. Their ideas, in some respects, have been modified by the progress of society, but all that is truly great in them will live forever; while their errors, and who on earth can claim exemption from mistakes and follies, we believe will vanish gradually before the light, not of human reason, but of that everlasting Gospel which is to be the salvation of nations, and of that divine Spirit whose teachings they so earnestly invoked.

ARTICLE IV.

REASON IN SEARCH OF A RELIGION.

Reason in Religion. By FREDERICK HENRY HEDGE. BOSton: Walker, Fuller & Company. 1865.

THE sceptical spirit is fast passing from the destructive to the constructive stage. This is a human necessity. It is impossible to rest in negations, to live comfortably among ruins. To pull things in pieces is the easiest of all arts, and the least rewarding. Voltairism has had its day. It never satisfied the finer type of the unbelieving mind. That is nearer akin to tears than to sneers and scoffs. Miss Hennell, who ranks among the ablest and most earnest of British atheistic writers, says with pathetic truthfulness: "It is useless for reason to convince itself to weariness that Christianity is a fable; and to go on showing plainly to our eyes how it grew out of its earthly root; while

the heart keeps protesting that it contained a response to her need whose absence leaves her cold and void. It would be much better for reason to cease its claim to be solely attended to, till her wants have been supplied." This confession, wrung out of an honest hour, is shared more or less audibly by many unsettled speculators in moral and religious science. It will not do to let go all the old holding places until some others are provided. We have come, through a century of demolition, into the age of reconstruction in free inquiry. Comte, Spencer and Stuart Mill have undertaken this n universal philosophy, with suggestive oftener that sufficing results. The world yet waits to see if the Michael Angelo of the new St. Peter's has appeared. The book before us is a fruit of the same intention, in Christian dogmatics. It is not Parkerism in temper and purpose, however it may agree therewith in parts of its system. It professes to build up, and not to lay waste. Vigorous thinking, and a vivid, energetic style have been generally conceded to this volume. Yet it is only a fair criticism to say, that the thought is often less strong than nimble; that the style is sometimes strained and ambitious beyond the best requirements of rhetorical taste. Thus the line - "Man is a yonder-minded being, an embodied hereafter" begins one of these prelections. Dr. Hedge's mind is poetical rather than logical. Hence, though his book is intended to be a popular body of well-reasoned divinity, it turns out to be a fragmentary and inconsequential series of theological tracts. We have subjected it to a careful analysis, not, however, to review it at length, for that would demand a treatise on natural and revealed religion. Instead of this, we shall condense the thoughts which run through these chapters into as concise an expression as is consistent with intelligibility, adding here and there a comment upon the argument, where it does not manifestly carry its own refutation. This will necessarily preclude the notice of the varied embellishments so gracefully thrown around these dissertations. Once for all we will say, that the ornamentation of this structure is quite as lavish as its frame work of ideas will bear. It is not severely chaste enough, in method, for an accurate, scientific study. Our objection is not that the preacher stands out so conspicuously on these pages: most books of this kind,

from clerical pens, are published from the pulpit before they reach the press. But if the pulpit be the legitimate throne of eloquent speech, it should not fail in clear, simple, self-consistent statement and reasoning.

The author divides his work into two sections: Theistic Religion, and Rational Christianity. His introduction consists of two discourses. The first affirms, that the knowledge of religious truth comes not through the understanding, but through the moral faculties as a subject of faith. "To the mere understanding, the world is as intelligible and as satisfactory without a God as with one." p. 13. The province of this faculty is only to examine the facts which lie around it, and to demonstrate their conditions. It can never get beyond the limits of a "positive philosophy." A distinction is here assumed between the understanding or speculative reason, and the practical reason or moral sense. pp. 14, 15. The second discourse asserts, that the popular faith is Manichean, based on Augustine's false rendering of the "natural man," in the Pauline epistles. Dr. Hedge would translate it, "the animal man." The animal man can not be a Christian; that is, man can not be this while living as a mere animal an axiomatic statement which, one would think, the apostle might have despatched in much fewer words than he has given to its vindication. Our author's improved version does not fit the logical connection of the apostle's reasoning. There is no room, moreover, to dissect between the "animal" and the "natural" man in this way. Neither a true exegesis or anthropology allows it. Calvin's explanation can not be set aside; that the oxido ǎv0pwños "is not merely the man of gross passions, but whoever is taught only by his own faculties." These are only varieties of the same class, differenced by degrees of the animal or natural life, in distinction from the spiritual. Dr. Hedge's distinction here made is therefore without a difference of radical qualities. But it governs his entire inquiry. He goes on to say, that the "natural man" has in him the germ of godliness. The carnal part of the natural man is conceded to be at variance with God; but this is only a partial state. The processes of divine grace in human nature are all strictly natural. Every thing in

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God's government of matter and mind is natural in opposition to unnatural, which we have never heard questioned.

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But Calvinism, says our author, demands to "denaturalize" man, to make him "inhuman before he can become religious. The doctrine taught by Augustine, and revived by Calvin, is that human nature, as such, is adverse to religion is incapable of holiness: nature must be supplanted by grace and after that change has taken place, the righteousness that follows is no product of human nature, but grace excluding human nature, and acting in its stead." p. 28.

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This is a misconception. We no where affirm that human nature, that is, the human soul, is constitutionally incapable of holiness, but always and directly the reverse. This we maintain, that by its actual unholiness it is incapable of cleansing itself into purity. Human nature is not "supplanted," but is regenerated, by grace. Its righteousness is personally its own; but it is inwrought and perpetuated through the grace of God. Dr. Hedge interprets into a physical disorganization and reorganization, what we defend as a spiritual, and not "unnatural" but supernatural restoration of human nature to holiness.

Coming to the discussion of "Religion within the bounds of Theism," our author is positive that science does not find God; rather, it loses him as it advances. Science can not discover the being of God, and necessarily ignores his providence. Its business is "to find natural, known, appreciable causes for every fact and event: . . where religion says 'creation', science says, development.'" p. 40. But faith demands both God and his government. Science refuses mystery: religion needs it. This is evidently designed sharply to distinguish the methods rather than the essential spirit of scientific explorations, for farther on, the author is eloquent in setting forth this very unsympathetic, "geometrizing" agent as "an evangelist whose mission it is to show us the Father,' and regenerate the world . . . . the prophet whom nature vouches, the fellow-laborer who also cometh in the name of the Lord."

God, thus missed by science but demanded by faith, must be self-revealing. It lies in the very nature of Deity to disclose himself. How? In the human soul, by the quickening of the mental faculties into a state of exaltation. This is inspiration,

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