divorce of religious sentiment thought. The result thus far would not appear to have been either the decline or degradation of Religion; much less the contradiction or empoverishment of tenets essential to the sum of Christian Faith; but rather the introduction of a broader yet deeper religious type in the adaptation of Revealed Truth to the abstract conceptions of the mind. No doubt the tendency of a classical revival in Science Apparent and in Art has been, in the first instance, towards art from the separate cultivation of distinct principles of Truth and Beauty. Hence the apparent and temporary divorce of Religion from Science; and during the last century, and partly in our own, from Art itself. The medieval intellect may be said to have been entirely and extravagantly religious; just as in Greece and Rome it showed itself exclusively human.' It still remains to develope a type of thought and conception which shall harmonize, after the fundamental idea of the Religion of Christ, the Human and Divine. There is, then, tempolittle to suggest that the separation of Art and Philosophy from Christian influence is other than transient and contingent or to show that Classicism and the entrance of a so-called Rationalistic 1 "In the East intellect is entirely religious; in Greek society it is exclusively human; in the modern world the religious spirit is mixed up with everything, but excludes nothing. Modern intellect has at once the stamp of humanity and of divinity. Human sentiments and interests occupy an important place in our literature; and yet the religious character of man, that portion of his existence which links him to another world, appears in every step."-Guizot, Civ. en Europe, Leç. vime. rary. Position of the Sciences. element have exercised any morbific effect upon the powers of Revealed Religion. § 5. The relations to Christianity of an increased Positive knowledge of the material world, and, as its result, of a Positive system of philosophy, have already been considered in various aspects. The notion that the world through the possession of the Positive Sciences has, since the older classical and medieval periods, entered on a new phase of knowledge and reflection, is plainly not without foundation. If we compare the present condition of the Natural Sciences with times in which Mathematics together with the rudiments of Astronomy, Mechanics, and Medicine constituted their whole domain :' when Physics, Biology, and Comparative Physiology existed only in outline; and Chemistry and Geology were wholly unknown; the difference is large indeed. Yet this was all that antiquity could in medie bequeath to after-ages; and all that the industry and penetration of the Arabians, having culled from their intercourse with the Greek Empire, brought into the common stock of knowledge. Their abeyance val times. 1 "La mathématique et l'astronomie, seul domaine que l'antiquité possédât dans la positivité (la physique et la biologie n'étaient qu'ébauchées, et la chimie n'existait pas)," &c.-Littré, Etudes sur les Barbares, p. xvii. Humboldt pronounces the Arabians the true founders of the Physical Sciences, according to the modern acceptation of them. They added to the old Greek conceptions the use of Experiment and Computation. See Lange, Gesch. des Materialismus, p. 83. Comte considers Physics to have commenced with Galileo's discoveries on the fall of heavy bodies: and that Geometry almost begins with Descartes; that of the ancients having been of a special and limited character. vival not able to There was an absence, whatever may be said of the inductive processes indicated by Plato or by Aristotle, not only of real information, but also of the method to seek it and to use it when found.' Is it, then, to be supposed that with these changes the limits or direction of even abstract speculation could have remained modelled only on ancient practice? It is further true that, through the sup- Their repression by medieval Catholicism of the critical unfavourspirit, the antagonism between the defenders of Religion, Revealed and the investigators of Natural Truth, more apparent than real, was largely increased. Nor at first was this doctrine of authority much impaired by the interposition of Protestantism. The Reformation, it has been well said by Hallam,2 "was but a change of masters," and those great mation men, who had been really, though unconsciously, them. contending for a perpetual freedom of belief, were the first to coerce speculation, and to inhibit differences of opinion in matters of faith. But it is forgotten by the leaders of the school of thought, which would substitute positive knowledge for theological beliefs, that the general emancipation of thought effected by the Reformation was posterior 2 nor was 1 See at length Whewell, Hist. of Induct. Sc., Bk. IV. Religion, or rather Theology, being in the Middle Ages the only outlet for human effort and human interests, may seem to have suffered from the very introduction of other fields of inquiry. 2 Literature of Europe, I. 370. Lecky, Hist. Rat., I. 404, pursues this topic with some vehemence. hostile to to the religious revolution and dependent upon it.1 Religion also during the same period with Science had entered upon a new phase or stand-point of opinion; of which, however, the Reformation was the true cause and spring. Science and Religion may be long in working out upon a common footing the details of their respective systems. But it can be friendly to no real argument (although repeatedly urged by M. Comte) against the truth of a Protestant Christianity, that it has revolted from the domination of an unreasoning Catholicism: however imposing in speculation, or even in its historical results, may be the idea of unity. Protes tantism inquiry. Rationalism not the § 6. If it were true, as has been alleged, that true con- Rationalism is the legitimate result of Scepticism and Toleration in religious belief; it might next be sequence of tolera tion of opinion. me 1 Guizot, Civ. en E., Leç. XII, points out that "while the civil and religious societies have undergone the same vicissitudes and been subject to the same revolutions, resulting in the overthrow of absolute power, the religious society has always been foremost in this career." So, in pronouncing on the English Revolution of 1688, Hallam observes that it "is justly entitled to honour as the era of religious, in a far greater degree than of civil, liberty: the privilege of conscience having had no earlier Magna Charta, and Petition of Right, whereto they could appeal against encroachment."-Const. Hist., II. 324. So also Mr. Buckle, Hist. Civ., II. 138, sees "in the Reformation of the sixteenth century the seeds of those great political revolutions which, in the seventeenth century broke out in nearly every part of Europe." 2 Mr. Lecky, Hist. Rut., I. 400, 406, regards Rationalism as the issue of the Reformation; and Toleration as the result and measure of Rationalism in Protestant countries. He nowhere, indeed, in his work, defines Rationalism; but in more than one passage sufficiently describes his notion of it. It is a disbelief in authority (I. 90), a demand for evidence. "The essence of the rationalistic spirit is to interpret the in the asked whether Scepticism may not be considered to have been the natural result of the Reformation and of the changes which were then inaugurated. And there are writers of a free and philosophic spirit who seem to see nothing mediate between Roman Catholicism and what they denominate Rationalism. But while admitting that toleration of opinion is the legitimate consequence of private Involved judgment, and that the principle of private judg- principle ment was the privilege asserted for human thought judgment. in the act of the Reformation; it still remains to be shown that private judgment itself is identical with Rationalism in anything like the current acceptation of the term, or in a sense to be held perilous Real sense to the claims of Revelation. Faith, it needs hardly alism. be repeated, is, on the one hand, no unreasoning acceptance of truths, however sacred. Nor again is the admission of Authority in matters of Religion articles of special creeds by the principles of universal religion, by the wants, the aspirations and the moral sentiments which seem inherent in human nature. It leads men, in other words, to judge what is true and what is good, not by the teachings of tradition, but by the light of reason and of conscience." Adopting Dr. Farrar's learned and careful history of the term, "Rationalism is properly opposed to Supernaturalism, having Reason, and not Revelation, for its formal principle; and stands for a purely philosophical view of religious truth."-Bampton Lectt., pp. 589-592. It is hence of importance to insist that the right use of reason does not tend to diminish faith in the supernatural; nor was there any such tendency inherent in the principles of the Reformation; which gave the occasion only and imposed the duty of free inquiry. Hegelianism (Panlogism, as it has been termed) is the acme of Rationalism, which supersedes or constitutes reality. "Alles, was wirklich ist, ist vernünftig." of private of Ration |