We must remember

As to the success of his labors. that he played for the future, and for an institution. No great institution rises in history except out of a soul which is the acorn of it. No speculation ever germinates of itself into a fact. Plato's fancied republic has been fruitless and harmless. It is an idea incarnate in a man, heated by his passions, swelling in all the veins of his personality, that strikes root in history; and that "corn is not quickened, except it die." Hildebrand was planted, and the Catholic polity rose out of his grave. His first victory over Henry was premature, and his subsequent defeat was not fatal. His mitre worked miracles, the legends say, after he died. He began to live after he died. The great contest raged after his eyes were closed. The marriage of the clergy was dishonored in the Catholic church in all after time by his uncompromising denunciation; and, in another generation, the emperor yielded the right of investing any churchman with the symbols of office, and granted freedom of election. A little more than a century later beheld pope Innocent III. practically as supreme in Europe as Hildebrand's policy would have asked. He left the church in the gristle; it hardened into bone.

As to the good this man accomplished, we must give a divided judgment. So far as he has helped to suppress liberty of thought, through the strength and skill of the pressure which the Catholic hierarchy lays upon it now, he has proved an enemy to his race. But so far as he helped to confirm, in the middle ages, the power of the papacy, and build up the unity of Latin Christendom, he did an immense service; for only thus were the bonds of order knit through a society that would otherwise have dissolved: only thus was learning preserved through the Latin tongue, that was kept alive as the language of religion; only thus was "a bridge thrown over the chaos between ancient and modern civilization."

The central error of Hildebrand's system and life was that of confounding Christianity with any visible institution of the earth. Men are insensibly seduced into methods as worldly as his, betrayed into passions as violent, and tempted to schemes as bloody, by starting with the idea that Christianity must wear a visible body on the

earth, and be served with outward implements. If we lodge our hopes of the gospel in the success of any one proud institution, we shall find all the impurities, all the vices, and essentially all the crimes, that belong to the earthly man, vitiating the stream that flows from it, just as we have found it in the Catholic Church; because an institution, having ranks, honors, and wealth at its disposal, will be managed by the earthly side, the unregenerate forces, of human nature. The kingdom of God cometh not with observation.

There is such a thing possible as a universal church. It exists now upon the earth. It is the salt, it is the lifeblood, of civilization. Its fibres run across the boundaries of kingdoms; it holds the Christian world in unity. It has its outward institutions, though they are not such as the monk of Clugny dreamed of; it has its laws and ministers, though there is no order, such as he prescribed, in their coming and their rank. It is not a Catholic polity, nor an Episcopal one, nor a Presbyterian one, no, nor all systems and hierarchies combined. Its buildings and trophies rise out of the silent pressures, through public sentiment and private hearts, of the spirit of the gospel. Hospitals, asylums, and schools of reform, are dots in the landscape of its power,-though no papal voice, or decree of council, called them into being. Every church built out of the desire of worship, is a symbol of its sway. Every work of art, showing how religion has refined and inspired the taste for beauty, is a graceful proof of its dominion. Every school that springs from a conviction of the worth of man and his right to education, is a witness of its vitality. Every law that ordains justice over the clamorous interests of a class, is a confession of its majesty. The affections that elevate, and sweeten, and hallow home, and the charities that flow out of mellow hearts to the needy, are streams of its life and promises of its triumph. Try to organize Christianity within one line of agencies, under the patronage of earthly power, and you kill it, or corrupt it. Unharness it, let it work free as an elemental force-the spirit that bloweth where it listeth, -and you have the leaven in the meal, with its prophecy of quickening for the whole lump. And when, at last, by its secret agency through invisible veins, and in impalpable

ways, far on in a century whose distance we cannot calculate as yet, the spirit of the gospel shall have poured itself through the trunk and in all the boughs of humanity, -sending justice as the organic fibre, and charity as the sweet juice, from the lowest root to the topmost leaf of society, then will the hope of the world be fulfilled; then will the scheme over which Hildebrand of Clugny mused and prayed, be realized in a form higher than he or his stormy age could have conceived; for then shall the promise and prophecy of Hildebrand's master, the true Lord of the church, be completed in history, and the mustard-seed appear in the developed tree, where the birds come to lodge and sing with joy.

T. S. K.

ART. XXIII.

The Divine Personality.

Infidelity: its Aspects, Causes, and Agencies. By the Rev. Thomas Pearson. New York: Robert Carter & Brothers.

WE prefix to a brief discussion of the subject of the Personality of the Divine Existence, the title of the prize essay of the British organization of the Evangelical Alliance. Pearson's work is evidently the most successful attempt yet made to put abstruse themes into a popular shape. The most subtile and recondite themes are made intelligible to the common mind. This statement is especially true of the first part of the work in which Mr. Pearson considers the various aspects of infidelity; and it holds particularly of the second chapter of this part, in which he treats of "Pantheism; or, The Denial of the Divine Personality." In this chapter our author has gone to the root of practical infidelity-we say practical, for we must hold that pure atheism can never be any thing more than theoretical. Infidelity begins when man, identifying God with nature, denies his personality, and so virtually denies his being.

We now propose to make a brief statement of some of the considerations of which the personality of God is affirmed. And here in the outset we make acknowledg ment of indebtedness to the author whose work heads this article. Stating the points involved in our own language -if indeed there is more than one phraseology in which those points can be stated-we shall attempt little more than to compile from, or abridge the argument there presented.

Pantheism, which is a denial of the Divine personality, may be stated, as that idea of God which makes no distinction between him and his works. The pantheistic doctrine makes the Deity no more than an intellectual principle pervading the world of matter and of spirit. It says, God is all things, and all things are God. He is not an individual existence, or person, independent of the world, existing apart from it; but is one with the world, is mingled in it, is, so to speak, distributed over it and through it,-being simply the activity of the world.

According to pantheism, what we call the laws of God, are not really laws, but his very presence-the modes of his being the varied forms in which he appears. Gravity, for instance, is not a law in the hands of Deity, is not an instrument which the hand of God uses for the regulation of the physical world; it is the very hand of Deity. And so of every other active force in the world. They are, so to speak, but branches of the Deity-the different forms of the divine intelligence, permeating different parts of the creation.

The idea of God as a person supposes, on the contrary, God to be a distinct being, a real person, having an existence wholly aside from his creation. God rules in the world, not by being absorbed in it, but by holding in his hands the laws, the principles, the forces, or whatever other name we choose to give them,-by which all the movements of the world are kept in subjection. The idea of personality supposes the world to be one thing; and God a being distinct from it. He is not a distributed intelligence, an everywhere present, every-way embracing principle, but a Sovereign, of whom, indeed, and through whom, and to whom, are all things; but who in no true sense of the words is the same with all things.

Following the author named above, we may state four objections to the pantheistic idea of God.

1. The doctrine robs God of his freedom. It binds him in slavish connection with his works. He is not a free, independent, voluntary Creator, but his action is compelled. "The distinguishing characteristic of the Deity, being an absolute creative force, which cannot but pass into activity, it follows, not that the creation is possible, but that it is necessary, "1 is the language of pantheism.

2. The doctrine necessarily destroys human responsibility. We are constituted to feel our accountability only to a being. To realize that we are only in the presence of active, even intelligent principles-only in the presence of that kind of God that is diffused over, and vitally bound up with the world, will never quicken remorse for sin. Man is conscious of responsibility only to a person. We are not responsible to each other-to persons like ourselves. Hence, if we are really responsible, there must be a superior Person, a Ruler and Judge, towards whom responsibility can be felt.

3. The doctrine denies worship. And this on the same general principle that it denies responsibility. Men have never worshipped principles. Paganism always embodied principles in idols, or personal forms, before its worship was possible. Men cannot now worship idols-the general intelligence makes this impossible. They cannot worship each other-for each sees man to be fallible and needy with himself. Man can worship only a person that is greater than man; and the existence of such a person pantheism denies.

4. The doctrine denies individual immortality. The doctrine, indeed, is inconsistent to admit the individuality of man at all. If God is all things, man of course can have no existence separate from him. The divine intelligence diffusing itself everywhere, in all existences, and being the intelligence and activity of every intelligent and active thing, there can be no such thing as individuality. When we say that men are so many individuals, we say that they are vitally separated from each other. They are not one, but many. But pantheism says they are all

1 Cousin, as quoted by Pearson. The French philosopher, however, would shrink from the legitimate interpretation of his words.