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superstition and barbarism; but let the two be united and pursued together, and neither can fly into an extreme. We then have, in the ideal or ultimate reconciliation of rational with revealed science, the ideal or ultimate reconciliation of Christianity with civilization. Philosophy is married to religion, art to worship, and earth to heaven.

Thus what we have been taught respecting God in Scripture by our creed, we find proved (i. e. shown to be rational) in nature by our science. And whether we say, in philosophical phrase, that the Infinite Will (causa causarum) proceeds logically towards the Infinite Reason (ratio rationum) through those successive mechanical, chemical, organical, ethical, political, and religious forces in which it is rationally exerted throughout immensity and eternity; or whether we say, in theological phrase, that the "Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth," hath decreed, "according to the counsel of his will, for his own glory, whatsoever comes to pass;" or whether we say, in Scripture phrase, that Jehovah is "the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the beginning and the ending, which was, and which is, and which is to come, the Almighty;" in either case, we are but apprehending the same intelligible and adorable Reality.

Let heathen philosophy proclaim the Godhead unknown, and inscribe upon its fanes the fitting motto of such a deity,

"I am all that was, and is, and shall be;

Nor my veil, has it been withdrawn by mortal;"

but for the Christian philosopher to avow that "the last and highest consecration of all true religion must be an altar,—‘To the unknown and unknowable God,'"* is to forget that the times of such ignorance are now passed, that the veil of Isis has been rent, for all that will reverently gaze, and that only by ever knowing the ever knowable God do we have life eternal.

We have thus reached, as our general conclusion, a modified affirmative to the whole series of questions propounded. As * Hamilton's Philosophy, p. 457.

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we passed from one to the other we have striven for a firm foothold at each step by carefully avoiding the quagmire on either side. Considering the Absolute as an object of thought, we have admitted that our conception of it must be partial, while we have maintained that it may at least be consistent. Considering it as an object of faith, we have admitted that our belief in it is instinctive, while we have maintained that it involves no latent absurdity. Considering it as an object of knowledge, we have admitted that our cognition of it is imperfect, while we have maintained that it is nevertheless certain. Considering it as a reality to be revealed, we have admitted that a rational theology is possible, while we have maintained that a revealed theology is its indispensable complement. Considering it as a reality to be demonstrated, we have admitted that the revealed theology is necessary, while we have maintained that a rational theology is its indispensable supplement. And by means of such distinctions we have escaped the corresponding extremes of atheism and pantheism, skepticism and mysticism, nescience and omniscience, naturalism and paganism, rationalism and dogmatism; at the same time that we have combined into one connected argument the several truths thus sifted from each discussion. Were such an arrangement and treatment of these difficult questions more generally observed, we cannot but think that much of the controversy now waged about them would disappear.

It only remains to close our sketch with a remark or two, by way of review, survey, and prospect.

On reviewing the wide field we have traversed, we are impressed by the continuity, extent, and importance of modern philosophy. We find different thinkers, of different schools, in different nations, contributing without concert to a movement which, during the lapse of half a century, has grown and spread until it involves the most precious interests of civilization. At its origin, like a mountain rivulet which a pebble might so divide that it shall afterwards flood opposite valleys, the question presented seems almost too simple and harmless for grave discussion. Shall the Absolute be held as a subjective idea, or as an objective reality? Idealistic Germany has pursued the former; realistic England has

pursued the latter; while versatile France has seemed to vibrate from one to the other. And in the wake of each philosophical tendency have followed portentous systems of science, religion and politics, which, as simple monuments of speculative energy, have in no former age been surpassed.

On surveying the results now before us, we are impressed by the grave crisis which has been reached in human progress. There are, in the bosom of this age, two rival philosophies struggling for the mastery. In their extreme form, as fully matured in the systems of Hegel and Comte, they may be termed the Absolute Philosophy and the Positive Philosophy. The former penetrates behind phenomena in search of their essence and cause, and thence proceeds deductively, by mere logical process, to reconstruct the existing universe. The latter enters among phenomena in search of their laws, and there proceeds inductively, by mere empirical process, to investigate the existing universe. The one would take ontology as the basis of ætiology and nomology, and thereon erect the sciences into a system of philosophic omniscience; the other would take nomology as the basis of ætiology and ontology, and thereon erect the sciences into a system of philosophic nescience. While the one would bring philosophy to a premature completion, the other would abruptly leave it incomplete. If the pyramid might be taken as the symbol of the one, the obelisk would serve as the symbol of the other.

On turning now from our survey to the prospect, we cannot but be impressed by the need and imminency of some logical conciliation of these two philosophies. It would be folly to denounce either, because of the perilous extreme to which it has been carried. There must be valuable elements of truth in movements which have engrossed the most powerful minds of this century, and still involve the whole existing mass of knowledge. The true view to be taken of them is, manifestly, that both are legitimate within the limits which they impose upon each other. It is only when either process of reason, the intuitive or the discursive, the deductive or inductive, is pursued independently of the other, or of revelation, their common check and guide, that they become erroneous and pernicious. Let the science of the Absolute be pressed in defiance of the

laws of facts, and it cannot but be vague and visionary; let the science of the phenomenal be pressed in defiance of the causes of facts, and it cannot but be partial and schismatic: but let both be merged in the science of God, that only First and Final Cause of all the intermediate laws of facts, and while our knowledge of the Creator is acquiring precision and pertinence, our knowledge of the creation will be acquiring unity and completeness. In other words, the Absolute philosophy and the Positive philosophy logically converge toward an Ultimate philosophy, wherein the finite reason shall be reconciled with the Infinite Reason, and human science rendered perfectly coincident with Divine Omniscience.

ART. III.-The History and Theory of Revolutions, as applied to the Present Southern Rebellion.

THE present generation in this country have heretofore known revolutions only as matters of history, or as events occurring in some distant part of the world. We have read of them, heard of them with the hearing of the ear; but now a revolution, or an attempt at one, has become to us a present and most visibly real fact. The word has always had, for the public ear, a portentous and startling sound. We have been accustomed, and justly so, to connect with revolution the idea of civil war, as the world has known it hitherto, with all its atrocities and horrors; its wild, uncontrollable phrenzy, setting man against man, and community against community, with all the ungovernable fury of a tempest; its fratricidal hate and bloodshed; its unleashing all the worst passions of the human heart, which, in their wild and lawless revel, respect not the rights of man or the virtue of woman; its smoking and ruined cities, its pillaged towns, its deserted and untilled fields, and all its sanguinary paraphernalia of dungeons and scaffolds, guillotines and gibbets, armies and battle-fields. Perhaps we have generally derived our ideas from the French Revolution of 1792, which was a

familiar fact to our fathers in their younger days, and of which some fragments of the nameless horrors, and wild excesses, and almost incredible atrocities, were wont to be rehearsed in youthful ears round many a family hearthstone, and to be perused as amongst the earliest lessons in history.

And now we are in the midst of a revolution! We, in this republican America, in this lauded nineteenth century,—we, devoted to the arts of peace, engrossed in the pursuit of gain, covering the seas with our commerce, dragging forth the treasures from the mountains, chaining the continent together with our iron bands, tilling the broad acres of our wondrous and fruitful country,—we, in the midst of a revolution? It is even so! And have we before us the possibility of an experience such as other nations have tasted when overtaken by revolution? No man can say that we have not! When once the social structure moves upon its deep foundations, upheaved by the throes of civil convulsion, no prophet's ken can unerringly foretell where the movement will stop. All our predictions and confidences have failed us. In the very hour of our youthful and boastful self-glorification, when we were proclaiming on every hand our confidence in our republican experiment, and demonstrating its stability and permanence, we are called to go down into the very valley of the shadow of death, to have the thick mists settle upon our path, and the ground to quake and gape beneath us, and the very air to be filled with discordant voices of alarm and doubt, of malediction and terror.

It is well, then, that amid the fearful possibilities with which we are environed, we can look back, and calmly, in the light of history, study the general laws and workings of such national exigencies in the case of other nations. For history, whilst it never exactly repeats itself, is a perpetual prophecy of its own evolution. It is well that we can look back and see other nations, much weaker than our own, survive much worse disasters than ours, as yet, appears to be, and even flourish in the midst of them. It is well that we are permitted to observe how the turbulent and brutal passions of men, let loose like hellhounds of havoc and lust by the tocsin of war, are allayed by the gentle wand of peace, and how in due time all the virtues,

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