we ignore his claim and his mere personal fancies, the universal relativity which pervades his thinking converts his whole system into a great parable,-a parable in the form of a philosophy. He who can view it in this light will doubtless be able to discover much that is helpful and even rational in its greatest apparent absurdities. But the majority of persons will not be able to read it thus. The literalness of the illustration will transfer itself to the subject illustrated. The human mind cannot long rest in the relative. It demands the posi tive, and if positiveness be denied, it will supply the defi ciency by reading positiveness in between the lines, even though the result should be an utter absurdity. This has actually occurred in the building of a sect upon Swedenborg, -a sect which is self-preservative, and therefore self-assertive as against all other religious organizations. An organization founded squarely on the seer's favorite idea of a universal fellowship would probably soon be dissipated and absorbed, and of this the Anti-memorialists seem to be well aware. The great Swede must henceforth be numbered among those men of wide vision, high aims, and large heart, who, while endeavoring to reveal to the race the cardinal reason of things, have unconsciously laid the foundations deeper than before of the worship of authority. His disciples seek to find in him a new and supplemental "Thus saith the Lord."

We have used to a considerable extent the methods of destructive criticism in discussing this subject, believing that the truth which is in Swedenborg would be best advanced by exposition of that which seems to us to be error. But we distinguish sharply between Swedenborg as a thinker and Swedenborgianism as a tendency,-between the bright grains of truth that glitter here and there throughout his theology and the absurdity which lurks in his claim. Concerning his teachings much might be easily said which could not be compressed within the limits of a brief review. A comparison between certain views expressed by Swedenborg more than a century ago and characteristic ideas of the most advanced and spiritual Christian apologists of to-day, Newman Smyth, for example, would perhaps be interesting, if not instructive. But that his claim has not reproduced itself in extreme types of fanaticism

has excited surprise even in progressive minds, and is perhaps due to a marked strain of rationalism which has operated as a balance-wheel. As it is, a distinction is again compelled between Swedenborgianism and Swedenborgians, among whom are numbered many persons of deep spirituality and great intelligence.

The trouble with Swedenborg was not, as with mere sectarians, that his theme was too small, but that it was too great. He flew like an eagle toward the sun until his eyes were blinded. We have felt deep reverence before this great mind which seems to us to have been touched with insanity. We are fully aware that the depths of such a subject cannot be sounded with the plummet of criticism. It may be that it is unfathomable. Mr. O. B. Frothingham, in a recent number of the North American Review, expresses the opinion that "Mr. Henry James is the only man who has sunk his shaft into the depths of Swedenborg's mind," and adds that "no one is justi fied in discussing the claims of Swedenborg who has not read his (Mr. James') remarkable books." But on a subject at once so confessedly occult and interesting, every fresh view may surely be regarded in the light of a contribution. The present generation is at all events nothing loath to "try the spirits whether they are of God."

ARTICLE IV.-DARWIN AND DARWINISM.

THE influence which the work of this great man has had upon the religious as well as scientific thought of his time is such as to make a survey of his work profitable to all Christian thinkers.

What he was and did, what he was accused of doing, what the ultimate verdict and result appear to be, are the main points to be included in our survey.

1. He was the son of a naturalist, and the grandson of a naturalist, entering his calling to be a student of nature with an inherited aptitude and force. At twenty-two, after a university training, he was selected as a naturalist well qualified to accompany her Majesty's ship Beagle in a voyage of exploration around the world. After five years spent in this way, he returned, and employed himself, at first, in editing and publishing the results of his researches. Afterward, and for some fifteen years prior to the publication of his great work, he published little, but devoted himself to the accumulation and study of the facts of nature, especially in geology, botany, and zoology. The fruit of this secluded and patient labor at length appeared.

In 1859, when he was fifty years of age, he published his epoch-making book on The Origin of Species, and twelve years subsequently, after several minor publications, the grand supplement to it, on The Descent of Man. By these works Mr. Darwin has taken rank as the greatest scientist whom this century has produced. The testimony now given from a quarter where at first the most pronounced hostility appeared, was recorded summer before last, in the inaugural address of the professor of systematic theology in Bangor Seminary, Dr. Lewis F. Stearns, in these words:

"The broadest, boldest, most successful generalization since. the days of Newton, there is no question that it [evolution] is to be the working hypothesis of science for years to come, taking its place by the side of the law of gravitation."

And a year ago last winter, Dr. John Cotton Smith, in whose

recent death the Episcopal Church mourns the loss of one of her foremost sons, said:

"The hypothesis of a universal and all-comprehending evolution is a gain for theism, if it can be established. It brings the agency of God in nature into harmony with all the higher conceptions to which the best philosophy has given rise. . . . We are not disposed to sit down quietly under the verdict that it is still unproven. We rejoice to be moved forward by the impulse of a grand anticipation, and we yield ourselves to the enthusiasm which forecasts this great vindication of the highest rational relation of God to nature and man."

This may be considered as fairly canceling the proposition maintained some years ago by Professor Charles Hodge, of Princeton Seminary, that "Darwinism is atheism."

What, then, is the profound generalization from the study of the phenomena of life, which at first was known, from its first great expounder, as Darwinism?

It is, that a common origin has given rise to all forms of life, from the lowest to the highest; that the widest differences, such as those between a jelly-fish and a philosopher, are due to the diversifying operation of natural causes through illimitable periods of time, chiefly through what Darwin called "natural selection," known better in Herbert Spencer's phrase as "the survival of the fittest." Sir John Lubbock, President of the British Association, in his address at York in 1881, explains it more fully by saying:

"The theory is based on four axioms: (1) That no two animals or plants in nature are identical in all respects. (2) That the offspring tend to inherit the peculiarities of their parents. (3) That of those which come into existence, only a small number reach maturity. (4) That those which are, on the whole, best adapted to the circumstances in which they are placed, leave descendants."

Those peculiarities of individual structure, by which the parent forms secured survival over their competitors in the struggle for existence, would thus give rise, by inheritance, to permanent variations. The continuance of this simple process, allowing an indefinite duration of time for it to work in, would develop all the diversified species of organized forins at present existing.

Such, broadly stated, is Darwinism. We perceive at once what an acute writer has observed, that natural selection does not tell us why various forms exist. It only tells us why there are no more of them existing. Thus, from the nature of the case, it cannot do away with the doctrine of a Creator.

The idea of natural selection is not new; it occurs in the discussions of the Greek philosophers, over two thousand years ago but Darwin first worked it out and expounded it so as to secure the attention of the world. Not exclusively to him belongs the honor. His friend, and recently his pall-bearer, Alfred Wallace, had simultaneously with him reached the same conclusion, and had simultaneously announced it, in short papers which they both published, the year before Darwin's book on the Origin of Species appeared. But, through what Mr. Mivart praises as "the noble self-abnegation of Mr. Wallace," the palm is borne by his friend, without dispute.

No student of nature ever lived, more patient and earnest, more modest and candid, more fair toward objectors and frank in confessing the weight of their objections, than Darwin, most earnestly desirous to get at the truth of the Creator's way, and nothing but the truth. He was a reverent believer in God as the Creator of all that exists. His study was simply to find in what way God had created this world of diverse forms. His reward he found in the exalted idea of the Creator's wisdom to which his theory conducted him. In his book on the Origin of Species, he thus expresses it:

"There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms, or into one, and that while this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed laws of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms, most beautiful and most wonderful, have been and are being evolved."

2. Thus much for what Darwin was and did. What he was accused of doing is the next point in our survey.

He was accused of having expelled God from the universe, while he had merely endeavored to expel the notion that God made the world and its tribes as a toy maker constructs a child's Noah's ark. Bishop Cummins, in 1874, said: "Christians should resist to the last Darwinism; it is contrary to Scripture."