there could be any other sphere more important than that occupied by the Christian mother, who sits at the fountain head, and casts the salt of divine grace into the very source from which the whole stream flows. The attempt to belittle in the minds of men the work of the mother in forming the sentiment of the family life is a thrust at the foundations upon which all other human agencies for rearing the structure of Christianity rest. Infant baptism naturally embodies in its meaning that whole circle of ideas that have ennobled the condition and duties of woman in Christian lands. It is a triumphal arch, forcing upon the attention of the world the all-important, though unseen, victories that woman wins in the sphere of her home duties. The unobtrusiveness of the position calls for such a divine monument. To many of us, who wish to retain the true idea of the inherent dignity of the position which the mother occupies amid the Christianizing and civilizing agencies of the world, infant baptism and its cluster of symbolical doctrines are allies with which we are loth to part.

Still another reason for the neglect of infant baptism is to be found in the extreme to which we are everywhere pushing, both in family and state, our ideas of individualism. We have come to be morbidly sensitive to the fear of imposing a condition upon children which they have not freely chosen. Because we have admitted that baptized children are not constituted by virtue of their baptism members of the church, in the ordinary sense of that expression, there has been danger of our going to the extreme of supposing that they sustained no particular relation to the church, and that the church had no special responsibility for them. But they should be regarded as the foster-children of the church. They should be made to feel that the church prays, labors, and hopes for their early conversion. They should be made to feel that it is no small calamity for them to separate themselves by their conduct from the sympathy of the church. It would be well if baptized children were brought up to feel it worth their while to conduct themselves so that when from any cause

they change their residence they could obtain from the church a certificate of baptism and of correct outward demeanor.

The practice of infant baptism, when its significance is more fully apprehended, will awaken in the church a sense of responsibility for baptized children akin to that which parents have for their own children. There is no Christian grace the want of which is more imperative upon the church at the present time than this. In this age of individualism and of the breaking up of family traditions and conservative institutions, the tendencies are all centrifugal. They have already resulted in a dangerous weakening of our sense of responsibility for the Christian nurture of children. The neglect of infant baptism is a sign of this weakened sense of responsibility, and at the same time it is a cause reacting to aggravate the evil. In this age of active inquiry the more general practice of the rite would lead to a more general consideration and appreciation of its rational significance and of the fundamental importance of the ideas which it symbolizes. We are no longer in much danger from that mysticism which transformed infant baptism into a magical rite. The Baptists have done their part to break the spell of those ideas. If, now, they must retain the practice of immersion, why may they not add to it the vitally important ideas expressed by infant baptism.

(To be continued.)

ARTICLE IV.

HERBERT SPENCER'S RELIGION.1

BY JOHN W. MEARS, ALBERT BARNES PROFESSOR OF INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN HAMILTON COLLEGE, N. Y.

It is a long time since purely English philosophy has produced so able, so comprehensive, and so daring a thinker as Herbert Spencer. Unlike Mr. Mill, he constructs, rather than criticises. We are not troubled to gather his own opinions from his writings. He has planned out an entire scheme of philosophy, and has sent forth a prospectus of what he proposes to do. Of this great work, embracing ten volumes, and treating of philosophy in its first principles, of biology, psychology, sociology, and morality, and fit to command the best energies of a master mind for a long lifetime, he has issued four complete volumes and parts of others, covering, perhaps, more than half of the whole. In these, we have some of the clearest and most forcible statements of opinion upon great and abstract topics to be found in the English language.

If the truth must have opponents, it is just such opponents we prefer to see and to meet-frank, out-spoken, unreserved. For we are constrained to place Herbert Spencer among the enemies of that which we consider truth. Theoretically, indeed, not an atheist; his philosophy denies the possibility of all practical relations between God and man, if, indeed, it be not fairly chargeable with denying the existence of any thing that could properly be called God. But it is to be said. in his favor, that he does not overlook or disparage the seriousness of the questions involved between philosophy and religion. He does not ignore or disdain them like Comte, or leave you in doubt, as does Mr. Mill. He plunges at once, in the very opening of his first principles into these questions,

1 First Principles of a New System of Philosophy. By Herbert Spencer. (2nd ed.) New York: D. Appleton and Co. 1872.

giving the first chapter of all to "Religion and Science," thus recognizing the primary importance in philosophy of those issues which to us also are radical and vital.

Herbert Spencer's system connects itself with, and diverges from, that of Sir William Hamilton, though the connection can scarcely be considered as characteristic, the divergences being radical both as to scope and method. Thus as to method, not to speak of Hamilton's life-long practice of elaborating topics and pushing discussions without considering well their mutual bearings, as if tunnelling a mountain from both sides without calculating whether the two passage-ways would meet—while every step of Spencer's work appears to be carefully calculated with reference to all the rest, we are struck with the fact that abstruse, ontological discussions, occupy the forefront of Spencer's work. It is true that Sir William Hamilton's first published discussion, Philosophy of the Unconditioned," was in the same high region of speculation; but when he undertook the office of teacher, and gave his nearest approach to a system of philosophy in his Lectures, he reserved ontology to the last. Herbert Spencer has begun his tunnel into the mind, by sinking a shaft from the highest point of the line, piercing at once to the heart of the work, and grappling with its most profound and difficult portions.

"The

His First Principles commence with an attempted reconciliation of religion and science, which is remarkable as coming from the side of science, and as proving that the pressure for such a reconciliation is felt in that quarter as well as in the other. It is an admission on the part of the philosophers that religion is a fact that cannot be sneered, or generalized, or shouldered out of the way; that philosophy must give account of it, not as an accident, but as an essential indestructible element of the constitution of things which it would understand; that a science which ignores religion is no more scientific than a religion which ignores science is truly and soundly religious.

In this specific point of view, Spencer has placed religion

in a better position than Hamilton left it. The latter put it outside of all scientific relations by his doctrine of the utter inconceivableness of the infinite, handing it over to faith as something entirely different from knowledge. The former argues, at least, for such a degree of knowledge as brings religion within the range of science, and furnishes a common ultimate object for science and for religion. Spencer, too, is to be clearly distinguished from the Positivists in his relations to religion, since Positivism limits all human interest and capacity to phenomena, and after trying to turn its back upon religion, at last constructed in serious earnest a caricature of religion, which was as futile as it was ridiculous.

In a letter to the "New Englander" of 1864, Mr. Spencer uses the following emphatic language, as to his relations to the system of Comte: "On all points that are distinctive of his philosophy I differ from him. I deny his hierarchy of the sciences. I regard his division of intellectual progress into the three phases, theological, metaphysical, and positive, as superficial. I reject utterly his religion of humanity. And his ideal of society I hold in detestation. Some of his minor views I accept; ..... but from everything which distinguishes Comteism as a system I dissent entirely."

Let us freely make this concession: Herbert Spencer is no Comteist, no Positivist even. He stands on a higher plane of speculation. But, after all, this plane is so narrow, that it serves as little more than a kind of high-water mark. It is such an advance as encourages us to hope for more in the same direction, but of itself it is almost as barren as blank atheism.

We do not know whether Spencer has anywhere explained why he put ontology first in his speculations; or why he introduced his ontology with religion and science. Perhaps it was done with a certain newspaper-like deference to popular sentiment, or as a shrewd and subtle mode of advertising; commending his book by announcing a topic of general interest in his first chapter. He is not to be blamed for it, if he did. Nor is he to be blamed for writing in such a clear