ART. III.-The Church and the Poor...... ART. IV.-A Plea for High Education and Presbyterian Colleges.... 635 The publisher of the Biblical Repertory takes the liberty to say, that out of Philadelphia and New York, the subscribers are almost entirely ministers; and he thinks that in most churches there are ladies and gentlemen sufficiently intellectual to appreciate the themes discussed in its pages. If one could be found in each church, it would nearly double our subscribers. We would thank our ministers THE PRINCETON REVIEW. JANUARY, 1862. No. I. ART. I.-The Limits of Religious Thought, examined in eight Lectures, delivered before the University of Oxford, in the year 1858, on the Bampton Foundation. By HENRY LONGUEVILLE MANSEL, B. D., &c. Boston: Gould & Lincoln, 1859. THIS book assumes that Christianity is related to philosophy. We therefore propose to consider Christianity from a speculative point of view; and, in the course of the discussion, to show the import of Mr. Mansel's argument, and to determine its value in Christian evidences. Philosophy culminates in theology. God is the ultimate problem to which all the lines of philosophical investigation conduct. It is, therefore, proper for philosophy to inquire, whether, from a speculative point of view, Christianity is entitled to the high pretension which it assumes, of being a revelation from God of transcendental truths pertaining to the respective characters of God and man, and from these characters explaining the government of the one, and disclosing the duties of the other. It is obvious that if philosophy must, from the principles and the laws of human reason, pronounce, there is no God; or if it must pronounce, from these principles and these laws, that man has no right of intelligence either to believe or disbelieve in a God, Christianity must, rationally, fall under the same adverse judgment. But if, on the other hand, it can be shown that, speculatively, atheism is impossible, and the understanding is thereby remitted to the evidences of natural theology, untrammelled by any a priori or speculative doubt, and that the great fact which Christianity assumes, that there is a God, stands on the rational ground of a conviction constrained by the most insuperable negative considerations, and by the most diverse positive evidence, Christianity thus becomes possible as a divine revelation, and is remitted to its proper evidences for proof of its high pretension. It thus becomes manifest that the first requirement of a speculative proof of Christianity is, to show that there is a God to make such a revelation. And if the philosophical proofs of a God shall disclose him to human understanding, under the same special representations in which he is revealed in Christianity, this will be a cogent reason for the truth of Christianity. For if the most scientific thought will disclose an inference so complex in its premises in regard to the most difficult of questions, in just the same form and limits in which it is presented in a doctrine taught by unscientific thinkers, who profess that the doctrine was received from a higher intelligence than their own, or if the author, though illiterate, professes to be of higher intelligence than man, it is evidence of both the authority and truth of the doctrine. Christianity attempts no proof of the existence of a God; and, therefore, it only speaks of him, as if his existence were admitted. Christ came not as a philosopher, with reasons to authenticate his mission and his doctrine, but as more than a philosopher, with miracles suspending the laws of nature which philosophers can only learn so far as to obey them. Criticisms of theology, both natural and revealed, correspond with the respective schemes of philosophy of which they are the polemic applications. Sensualism and Intellectualism, the philosophical opposites of each other, put forth their respective principles as tests by which the problem of God is to be solved, and also by which Christianity is to be criticised. The first, |