opinion, if acted on, would be most injurious to the cause of both, because great powers of thought belong to some who, unhappily for themselves, are not devout or spiritual-minded. Truth is advanced by the efforts of various minds, and what an irreligious man throws out may be converted to a use he little dreamed of by the religious. Mr. Dequincey has said finely of Kant, contrasting him with my Father: "He was the Gog and he was the Magog of Hunnish desolation to the existing schemes of philosophy. He probed them; he showed the vanity of vanities which besieged their foundations, the rottenness below, the hollowness above. But he had no instincts of creation or restoration within his Apollyon mind; for he had no love, no faith, no self-distrust, no humility, no child-like docility; all which qualities belonged essentially to Coleridge's mind, and waited only for manhood and for sorrow to bring them forward." It was because my Father had these qualities that to him the philosophy of Kant was religion; and, indeed, I think it may be maintained, that although Kant's process was analytic rather than synthetic, and was occupied in clearing away rather than in erecting, it was by no means purely destructive, but, after the clearance, had materials enough left wherewith to construct the base of a philosophy co-incident with a spiritual Christianity.

It was affirmed by Hume that religion must rest on faiththat reason could not proye its truth. This proposition was reaffirmed by Kant, but with an utterly opposite inference from that which Hume drew from it, for he saw what Hume saw not, that there is a power in the human mind sufficient to support and substantiate religion, apart from the mere speculative faculty; that spiritual truths must have their own specific evidence; that if there is no absolute demonstration in these matters for the mere understanding, none is needed, none would serve any pur pose of religion; that theoretic reason has performed her whole office in religious proof when she has shown the impossibility of disproving the objects of faith. Reason cannot oblige us to re. ceive, said Kant, more than reason can prove. But what mere Speculative Reason cannot oblige us to receive, the Moral and Spiritual within us may. This is the doctrine of the Aids to Reflection; I believe that my Father, in his latter years, added

something to it, on the subject of Ideas, which will appear, trust, hereafter.

The question for us is not, did Kant himself accept the outward Revelation, but does his teaching overthrow or does it esta blish the religion of the heart and conscience? If it establishes the law written in the heart it will assuredly strengthen the outward Revelation, when rightly used. There are some who say, that God, and Christ, and Law, and Nature, and Scripture, have all placed religion on the rock of external evidence. The larger and stronger this rock can be made to appear, so much the better. To rest the whole structure of the faith upon it my Father ever held to be a most venturous and blind proceeding. He held that beneath this rock there is a broad and deep foundation, out of which the rock grows and with which it coheres as one, that this foundation was laid by the Creator himself—that His voice, both as it speaks in the heart and reasonable mind, and as it is uttered in the Written Word, refers us to internal evidence as the only satisfying and adequate evidence of religion;-that on this foundation, the accordance of the Bible with our spiritual wants and aspirations, the internal coherency of the whole scheme of Revelation within itself to the eye of Reason and the Spirit, Christianity ever has been and ever must be supported and maintained. They who term external evidence the rock of the Faith, its only secure foundation, never scruple to adopt from those whom they condemn as Rationalists, because they hold the internal evidence indispensable, thoughts and sentiments which they, with their professions, have but little right to. They make themselves fine with borrowed plumes, and talk of spiritual ideas, instincts, needs, aptitudes, preconfigurations of the soul to religion, and correspondences of the heart and spirit to doctrine." They say that religion is to be known by its fruits,

72 Mr. Allies, in his Church of England cleared from the charge of Schism; and Mr. Archer Butler, in his Letters on Mr Newman's Essay on Development, have treated in a searching and masterly way certain portions of the external evidence against Romanism in defence of our church. A man who clearly and learnedly sets forth historical records, must throw light on the truth; but no good is done to the cause of religion by those declaimers who exalt outward evidence without bringing it forward, and condemn the demand for internal evidence while they are

the nobleness, the blessedness, the inward peace and beauty that it produces. Now if these deep ideas, these harmonies of the human spirit with objects of faith, presented by the Written Word and Tradition, exist, must not they be the rock that underlies the structure of external evidence and substantiates it? Can we think that it is in the power of any appearance to the outward sense, any vision or voice, to implant the ideas of God or of any spiritual reality? Can these outward signs do more than excite it? Maintainers of external evidence, as the rock of the faith, insist that religion must first be proved historically, and then brought home to the heart by its internal merits. It never can be proved historically unless, as a whole, it be ideally true, and if the power of ideas within us show it to be such, this must be the deepest and only sufficient proof of its reality. To say that Reason and the Moral Sense may speak, but only after outward evidence has been given to the Understanding, is to annul the very being of Reason. For that is a spiritual eye analogous to the bodily one. What should we say of an eye that could not be sure whether a particular object was black or blue, round or square, till it was declared to be so by authority? Should we not say that it had no power of sight at all? Let the maintainers of external evidence and historical proof guard this rock and make as much of it as they may; but let them not cry out angrily against those who seek to probe and examine it; for assuredly if it will not bear the hammers of all the Inquisitors in Christendom it is no true granite but crumbly sandstone. Doubtless religion, as far as it is outward history, and involves facts and events, must be outwardly proved and attested: but how insignificant would be the mere historical and outward part of religion, how unmeaning and empty, if it were not filled and quickened by spiritual ideas, which no outward evidence can prove; which must be seen by the eyes of the spirit within us; must be em

presupposing the need and existence of it in their whole argument; whe look one way, and row another; who rave at Rationalism while they are picking her pocket; and jumble together whatever is most specious in different systems, without regard to consistency. This kind of writing pleases the mob of the would-be orthodox-the Majoritarians; but it is of ne service to religion.

braced by the will, not blindly and passively received! Mr. Archer Butler, in his Letters on Development, observes: "A man who should affect to discard all revealed testimonies, aud to prove the divinity of Christ or the Doctrine of the Trinity exclusively by internal reason, would be a rationalist, though his conclusion be not a negative, but a most positive dogmatic truth." Here the misemployment of reason, in which the formal nature of rationalism has just been declared to consist," is assumed, and we are told that rationalism is the discarding revealed testimonies, and trusting solely to the internal; and indeed the term is constantly applied in a manner that begs the question ;-applied to those who insist upon the paramount necessity of internal evidence in the things of religion. Certainly he who should discard all external testimonies of the Gospel Revelation, would be irrational and ungrateful to God who has given them; but the endeavor to show, that by the light within us alone we may perceive their truth, is no misemployment of reason or evasion of the obedience of faith. Faithless far rather are they, who mistrust internal evidence and seek preferably the external: how must they want the spiritual mind, which sees what it believes, and knows in what it is trusting? The question is this, Can external

73"The formal nature of rationalism is the undue employment of reason in the things of religion, with a view to evade, in some way, the simplicity of the obedience of faith." Rationalism, in one of the Tracts for the Times, was called " asking for reasons out of place." According to these definitions, rationalism is as general a term as impiety, or presumption, with which, indeed, it is commonly identified. Now, I think that a man can be guilty of this error only in this way; he may ask for a kind of reasons in spiritual matters, which are inappropriate to such matters; he may ask for positive logical proof of spiritual verities, or outward evidence of that to which the spirit within can alone bear witness; but, I believe, first, that there is no religious article for the reception of which we are not bound to give a sufficient reason; secondly, that sufficient reason for the reception of any religious article can never be found extrinsically; that its internal character, tried by the religious faculties given us by our Maker, ought to determine its acceptance or rejection. Leibnitz' Discours de la Conformité deJa Foi avec la Raison, contains a very clear view of this subject, as far as it goes. He maintains that the Fathers never simply rejected reason as modern teachers have done, both in the High Church and Puritan Schools, s. 51

testimony by itself, or principally and primarily, prove the truth of revelation ? The rationalism" of my Father assigns to outward testimony and internal evidence independent functions in the instruction of man; he conceived that the former must prove religious truth, so far as it is historical and logical; the latter must evidence it, so far as it is spiritual and ideal. Outward evidence can apply only to the outward event or appearance, and this, apart from the ideas of which it is the symbol, could never constitute an article of religion. The only office of external testimony with respect to the spiritual substance of the faith, in my Father's view, was that of exciting and evolving the ideas, which are the sole sufficient evidence of it,—at once the ground that supports it and the matter of which it is formed. The Incarnation and Atonement he believed to be both spiritual facts, eternal and incomprehensible, and also events that came to pass in the outward world of Time; he believed, therefore, that in the proof of both, external and internal evidence must work together, but that the work of the latter was the deeper and more essential. Before the publication of the Gospel nc man could have discovered, that the Son of God was to come in the flesh; nevertheless, it is reason and the spirit that has, in one sense, shown to men those deep truths of religion, the Redemption of mankind, the Divinity of the Redeemer, and the Triunity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Outward appearances have led men to the knowledge of them, but the recognition itself, which constitutes saving faith, is from within. To this rationalism Professor Butler himself draws very nigh when he says, that "the fundamental error (of Mr. N.'s whole Development system) "consists in this very thing, that Christianity is to be investigated as a mere succession of historical events in order to determine faith." "This," he says, "is to confound the knowledge of Church history as a succession of events, with the knowledge of Christianity as a Rule of Duty: to confound Christianity as a mixed earthly Reality with Christianity as a pure heavenly Ideal." Can we attain the knowledge of a pure heavenly Ideal, or a Rule of Duty, by outward attestation? Is not the law written in the heart that interprets and substantiates the teaching of the Scriptures ?-and if the Divinity of the Bible