detect principles in facts, and which alone makes philosophy possible. Having, then, the three faculties of Sense, Understanding, and Reason for prosecuting investigation, the author states what is necessary in order to constitute a Rational Cosmology. As universal nature is a fact, it necessarily implies a maker. Hence we must have, (1) "a clear conception of what is essential in a being that must be the maker of the universe;" and (2) "a clear conception of the immutable principles that must determine the laws, and by which we may expound the nature of the universe."

Thus the plan of the work before us is as follows: (1) To point out how we may obtain a clear idea of an "Absolute Creator;" (2) to discover, by the insight of reason, the "eternal principles of the universe;" and (3) to examine the "laws of the universe," as deduced from the facts, and see whether they are such as the already discovered principles made necessary.

Before entering upon the first of these divisions, Dr. Hickok gives, in his introduc tion, a brief summary of all past philosophical investigations, in which he shows how all the philosophers from Thales to Cousin, with the exception of Plato, have erred radically in not fully admitting an absolutely independent and personal creator. Thus Bacon's system, in rejecting all à priori principle, has found its full development in the positivism of Auguste Comte, and thus the "world's philosophies, holding all being as fact, or constitutionally natured, are, to-day, all radically materialistic," and "necessarily in the end Atheistic or Pantheistic."

Passing to Chapter I., the author discusses, as preliminary to his cosmology. "the idea of an Absolute Creator." Such an idea, he shows, can not be attained by the intellect acting through the sense. For, in order to a clear perception, a sensation must be so distinguished and limited by the intellect, that its quality and quantity may be known. If, then, we seek for the Absolute by means of the sense, it will be impossible to attain more than the unlimited, or infinite. Again, the Absolute can not be attained by means of the Understanding. This faculty can only connect qualities into some common substance, in which they inhere. And to attempt to reach the unconnected, or Absolute, by a series of successive connec tions, is attempting, argues Dr. Hickok, "to make an endless descent where each dropping footstep can only fall upon a stair that must be conditioned upon another yet beneath it." Having shown that it is impossible, from the nature of the case, to arrive at the Absolute by means of the Sense or the Understanding, the author next appeals to the Reason, "the faculty for direct and immediate insight." This insight of Reason discovers a spontaneous, living energy in a grain of wheat, but this energy is dependent for its action upon so many conditions of earth, air, rain, etc., that it falls far below the Absolute. The same spontaneous energizing is found, by the same faculty, in the ox, with the important addition of self-direction. The ox can move himself, select his food, etc., but still he is "subjected to all the conditions of matter," so that he is far removed from the Absolute. On examining the next higher order of animal existence, we find another important addition. Man has not only the spontaneous energizing and self-direction of the ox, he has also a rational existence. He can create for himself ideals of excellence, and thus has within himself tests by which to judge himself, and to approve or disapprove his actions. Here we have spontaneous agency with its own law imposed upon itself, but we have not reached the Absolute. For we know that man is much under the influence of sense and appetite; there is a law in his members working against the law of his mind, and continually threatening to overthrow it. The same is true to

some extent of a still higher order of beings, whose existence Revelation makes known to us. Although higher in supernatural endowment than human beings, yet there are orders among them imposing the conditions of superior and inferior, and "opening the door to such spiritual passions as pride, envy, etc." Besides, the highest angel is still "limited in his rational powers," and hence must often be led to seek light and guidance from a higher source.

The insight of reason finding these several orders of existences all subjected to some limiting conditions, rises to the idea of Supreme personality, "elevated above all outer authority, and absolved from all obligation ab extra." "He is conditioned

solely by what he knows in himself is due to himself, and is, therefore, Absolutely self-law and self determiner." "Such supreme self-determination is the very conception of Absolute Reason," and "is manifestly a person, having in himself the knowledge of all possible, and the self-determining will to execute all his own behests." Such a Being must be without beginning or end, unsustained and uncaused; "the positive affirmation of the I Am."

Having thus indicated the process by which we arrive at the idea of an Absolute Creator, and having defined what is comprehended in this ideå, the author proceeds, in Chapter II., to discuss "the eternal principles of the universe." These "principles" are educed from what is perhaps an original view of matter. According to Dr. Hickok, matter is not a dead mass, moved by external forces, but is itself force. The simplest idea of matter is the point at which two antagonist forces meet and hold one another in position. This gives permanent substance, but it would remain uniform and invariable. Hence, in order to account for the varied modes and forms of matter, another force is necessary. This is called a diremptive or repulsive force, and is conceived as starting from the limit where the two antagonist forces meet, and working away from the limit on each side. Now these three forces, called molecules, meeting in the limit, make up a compound different from all, which may be called an atom. Thus objective matter is a combination of distinguishable forces." As to the origin of these forces, Dr. Hickok takes the ground, that while man has a "capacity of initiative causality," and may thus originate personal acts, he can not originate any thing impersonal. Neither man nor angel could evolve and put into action an objective force. This, the insight of reason clearly sees, may be done only by the Supreme Spirit, who is limited by no conditions without himself. "God," says Dr. Hickok, "not from the impulse of constitutional craving," but under the "ethical behest" of a sense of what is due himelf "arises to the work of creation." He "puts his simple activity in counteragency, ... causes act to meet and hold act, and in this originates an antagonism which constitutes force."

This notion of matter being a compound of antagonist forces, which hold one another in some permanent position, furnishes a basis for all space and time determinations. Without such a substantial object common to all men, and furnishing the same varied phenomena, or successions, to all, each man would have his own spaces changing with every change of place, and his own times changing with every interval of unconsciousness, but there could be no "determination of one common space, and one common time."

Again, if matter were not force, it could never be known. No impression can be produced upon the senses, and hence there can be no perception, except by some force. Now, if the sensation is caused by a force impressed upon matter, and not by matter itself, then it is not matter, but the force which is given in perception.

This view of matter is also confirmed by the theory of static and dynamic forces-these are only other names for what Dr. Hickok calls antagonist and diremptive forces.

Our space will not allow us to follow the author step by step, in his ingenious application of this theory to all the principles of natural science. Beginning with the laws of motion, he shows that these must be, according to the proposed theory of spacefilling forces, just what they are proved to be by actual experiment. The same theory would necessitate the material creation to be a sphere, all the parts of this sphere to be attracted towards its centre, etc. Thus the principles of magnetism, of electricity, of heat, of world-formations, of light, of geological formations, of cometary bodies, of stellar distribution, chemical and crystalline principles-together with the principles of life, into which, however, a new element enters-are all successively examined. After thus determining how "a universe of central working forces," if brought into existence, must be, Dr. Hickok goes on, in Chapter III., to examine the necessary laws of the universe, as they are known to exist, and finding them just such as the principles evolved from his theory made necessary, he concludes that he has reached a “true and valid science of the universe," a Rational Cosmology. In an appendix the author applies the views given in his work to the "Mosaic history of creation," and contends that the record is thus relieved from some "apparently irreconcilable incongruities in its own statements;" as, for instance, the creation of light before the sun and moon appeared, etc.

It will thus be seen that the pretensions of this work are great indeed. It aims at no less than to point out the root of all physical science, and the basis of all true theology. The name of the author guarantees the ability with which the task is executed, but still the work embraces several points about which philosophers and theologians will, no doubt, continue to differ for a long time to come. Among these points we may note the following:

1. The question as to the standard of right and wrong, whether such a standard exists independent of God himself, and to which God conforms his actions. The affirmative of this question seems to be involved in the following statement, which we have already quoted: "Principles are truths prior to all facts, or makings, and are themselves unmade. They stand in immutable and eternal necessity; and while they condition all power, can themselves be conditioned by no power. Even Om. nipotence can be wise and righteous, only as determined by immutable principles." 2. The extent to which man is responsible for his own acts, is touched upon in the following: "With all rational spirits there is such capacity of initial causality, and thus of all free and responsible beings we affirm that their personal acts are their own origination, and can no more be transferred to any other person than their separate identity. Man and angel can, in this sense, truly create. Their good or bad deeds are of their own origination."

3. The author's view of the creation, although it does not exclude, would seem to involve little direct agency or intervention on the part of the creator. God calls into existence certain forces, causes them to combine in such a way as to form physical matter, and to continue to work in this matter in such a way, as finally to construct the present universe. "How the universal cosmos may be originated," he observes," and how it must then be orderly and harmoniously arranged by the determinations of its central forces, and the wonderful beauty which comes out in the consummated structure, may all be apprehended in the rational process, which we have so carefully and extensively pursued." ... "We have the forces in which

matter is, and the principles of their working determining what matter does, but all is mechanically pushed or pulled into its shape and proportions. This mechanism will work on in the worlds, and when the superficial strata have cooled and hardened to a permanent crust that admits collected gases to combine, and form themselves into vapors and mist, and these condensing into water, which, as superincombent upon the solid earth, gathers itself into ocean beds, and then both land and water become enveloped by an atmosphere, through which every where the radiations of light are reflected and diffused, there then comes an occasion for a higher order of existence than any chemical combinations or crystalline concretions can reach."

THE HISTORY OF THE RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, CALLED METHODISM, CONSIDERED IN ITS Different DenoMINATIONAL FORMS, AND ITS RELATIONS TO BRITISH AND AMERICAN PROTESTANTISM. By Abel Stevens, LL.D. Vol. II. From the Origin of Methodism to the Death of Whitefield. Fourth thousand. New-York: Carlton & Porter. 1858.

The interests of Methodism have never been in much apparent danger of suffer. ing from lack of attention on part of writers pro and con. In addition to numerous historico-biographical treatises on Wesley and his coädjutors, which, happily for the memory of their subjects, never attained to the honor of a second edition, we have had a Life of Wesley, (including, as all his biographies of necessity must, a history of the rise of Methodism,) by Southey; another by Moore; another by Whitehead; a history of the Wesley Family, by Adam Clarke; a history of Wesleyan Methodism, by Smith; a history of Wesley and Methodism, by Isaac Taylor; a Compendium of Methodism, by Dr. James Porter, together with not a few other works of a similar character, which it will not be necessary to mention here. Some idea of what has been done in the same direction by the opponents of Methodism, avowedly such, may be obtained from the fact that so late as the year 1846, was printed in Philadelphia, by John Pennington, a "Catalogue of Works that have been published in Refutation of Methodism, from its origin, in 1729, to 1846, compiled by J. C. Decanver," which catalogue, comprising the titles of three hundred and eighty-four publications, may be found, together with one hundred and forty-three of the most curious of works mentioned in it, in the Library of the Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the city of New-York, where it has been placed by its compiler. Formidable as this list may appear, Dr. Stevens assures us that it is not complete, and that the whole number of works, treating favorably and unfavorably of Methodism, can hardly be short of fifteen hundred!

The work whose title we have placed at the head of this paper, bids fair, if the task which its author has undertaken does not fall below its design, to supersede most of the previous publications on the same subject, as well as to obviate the necessity for any farther treatises on Wesley and Methodism for a long time to come. Dr. Stevens proposes to complete his history in four volumes, the last of which is to bring the narrative down to "the centenary celebration of Methodism, in 1839-a period prior to the sectional disputes which have divided the Methodist Episcopal Church, and which are yet too recent for a satisfactory judgment from history." The volume which has just been given to the public, as its title indicates, treats of the history of Methodism from its origin to the death of Whitefield, in 1770. Dr. Stevers writes in an easy and rather perspicuous style, and is per

haps as systematic in the arrangement and discussion of his topics, as the encyclopedical nature of his work will allow. The number of names merely, which are mentioned in the table of contents, is astonishing; indeed, it would be a comparatively easy task to prepare from the material thus comprised within less than five hundred pages, a complete biographical dictionary of the early Methodists, or Methodist Fathers, as perhaps we should designate them. The book, too, from the very nature of the subjects treated of, abounds in a variety of incident, which adds greatly to the interest of its historic details. Few, if any, historians can lay claim to absolute impartiality; and we are not so extravagant as to expect that a thorough Methodist, as Dr. Stevens evidently is, with an unmistakable leaning to the Arminian theology, should be able, on all points, exactly to please every class of readers. So far, however, as we can judge, he has written with no design or desire to make proselytes, and indeed exhibits a degree of candor which does him credit. In his preface he tells us that, "as a great religious development of the last century, affecting largely our common Protestantism, and unquestionably destined to affect it still more profoundly, Methodism does not belong exclusively to the denominations which have appropriated its name," and that he has there. fore "attempted to write its history in a liberal spirit, and to consider it not as a sectarian, but as a general religious movement, ostensibly within the Church of England, at least during the lives of its chief Methodist founders, but reaching be yond it to most of the Protestantism of England and America." We regard this new "History of Methodism," as a very opportune publication, and have no doubt, that several of its chapers will be read not only with interest, but profit at the present crisis, when the Holy Spirit is so manifestly being poured out upon the churches.

THE TRUTH UNMASKED AND ERROR EXPOSED IN THEOLOGY AND METAPHYSICS, MORAL GOVERNMENT AND MORAL AGENCY. By Elder H. W. Middleton, Panols, Mississippi. Philadelphia : J. B. Lippincott & Co.

The "error" which Mr. Middleton recklessly undertakes to expose, is the belief in those fundamental doctrines of Total Depravity, of the influences of the Holy Spirit, of Faith, of Repentance, of Regeneration, etc., which form the basis of all evangelical creeds, which are held by all orthodox theologians, of whatever denomination or school, and which every candid searcher for truth, whether learned or ignorant, infallibly derives from the Scriptures. The great "truth unmasked " is man's capacity to save himself, which is supported by the fact that it best accords with Mr. Middleton's own sense of the "fitness of things." No additional attraction is lent these views by the defiant and sometimes coarse manner in which they are presented.

THE COMING AND REIGN OF CHRIST. By David N. Lord.
Knight.

New-York: Franklin

The doctrine of Christ's personal reign on earth is one which may, no doubt, be explained in perfect harmony with the Scripture prophecies. This is more than can be said, however, for that exposition of this doctrine which is given in the work before us. Mr. Lord has undertaken not merely to point out what may be the minute particulars attending this great event, but boldly to affirm what these