great facts in the history of man. The influence of the mind of this people upon the rest of mankind has been immense and peculiar, and there can be no difficulty in recognizing therein the hand of a directing Providence; but we may not make ourselves wiser than God, nor attribute to him methods of procedure which are not his. If, then, it is plain that he has not thought it needful to communicate to the writer of the Cosmogony that knowledge which modern researches have revealed, why do we not acknowledge this, except that it conflicts with a human theory which presumes to point out how God ought to have instructed man? The treatment to which the Mosaic narrative is subjected by the theological geologists is anything but respectful. The writers of this school, as we have seen, agree in representing it as a series of elaborate equivocations, -a story which "palters with us in a double sense." But, if we regard it as the speculation of some Hebrew Descartes or Newton, promulgated in all good faith as the best and most probable account that could be then given of God's universe, it resumes the dignity and value of which the writers in question have done their utmost to deprive it. It has been sometimes felt as a difficulty to taking this view of the case, that the writer asserts so solemnly and unhesitatingly that for which he must. have known that he had no authority; but this arises only from our modern habits of thought, and from the modesty of assertion which the spirit of true science has taught us. Mankind has learned caution through repeated slips in the process of tracing out the truth.

The early speculator was harassed by no such scruples, and asserted as facts what he knew in reality only as probabilities: but we are not on that account

to doubt his perfect good faith; nor need we attribute to him wilful misrepresentation, or consciousness of asserting that which he knew not to be true. He had seized one great truth, in which, indeed, he anticipated the highest revelation of modern inquiry; namely, the unity of the design of the world, and its subordination to one sole Maker and Lawgiver. With regard to details, observation failed him. He knew little of the earth's surface, or of its shape, and place in the universe; the infinite varieties of organized existences which people it, the distinct floras and faunas of its different continents were unknown to him: but he saw that all which lay within his observation had been formed for the benefit and service of man, and the goodness of the Creator to his creatures was the thought predominant in his mind. Man's closer relation to his Maker is indicated by the representation that he was formed last of all creatures, and in the visible likeness of God. For ages, this simple. view of creation satisfied the wants of man, and formed a sufficient basis of theological teaching; and, if modern research now shows it to be physically untenable, our respect for the narrative which has played so important a part in the culture of our race need be in nowise diminished. No one contends that it can be used as a basis of astronomical or geological teaching; and those who profess to see in it an accordance with facts, only do this sub modo, and by processes which despoil it of its consistency and grandeur, both which may be preserved if we recognize in it, not an authentic utterance of divine knowledge, but a human utterance, which it has pleased Providence to use in a special way for the education of mankind.

TENDENCIES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN

ENGLAND, 1688-1750.

THE

BY MARK PATTISON, B. D.

HE thirty years of peace which succeeded the peace of Utrecht (1714) "was the most prosperous season that England had ever experienced; and the progression, though slow, being uniform, the reign of George II. might not disadvantageously be compared, for the real happiness of the community, with that more brilliant but uncertain and oscillatory condition which has ensued. A laborer's wages have never for many ages commanded so large a portion of subsistence as in this part of the eighteenth century" (Hallam, Const. Hist., ii. 464).

This is the aspect which that period of history wears to the political philosopher. The historian of moral and religious progress, on the other hand, is under the necessity of depicting the same period as one of decay of religion, licentiousness of morals, public corruption, profaneness of language, a day of "rebuke and blasphemy." Even those who look with suspicion on the contemporary complaints from the Jacobite clergy, of "decay of religion," will not hesitate to say that it was an age destitute of depth or earnestness; an age whose poetry was without romance, whose philosophy was without insight, and

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whose public men were without character; an age of light without love," whose "very merits were of the earth, earthy." In this estimate, the followers of Mill and Carlyle will agree with those of Dr. New

man.

The Stoical moralists of the second century, who witnessed a similar coincidence of moral degradation and material welfare, had no difficulty in connecting them together as effect with cause: "Bona rerum secundarum optabilia, adversarum mirabilia (Seneca, ad Lucil., 66). But the famous theory which satisfied the political philosophers of antiquity — viz. that the degeneracy of nations is due to the inroads of luxury is laughed to scorn by modern economists. It is, at any rate, a theory which can hardly be adopted by those who pour unmeasured contempt on the eighteenth, by way of contrast with the revival of higher principles by the nineteenth century. It is especially since the High-Church movement commenced that the theology of the eighteenth century has become a byword. The genuine Anglican omits that period from the history of the Church altogether. In constructing his "Catena Patrum," he closes his list with Waterland or Brett, and leaps at once to 1833, when the "Tracts for the Times" commenced, as Charles II. dated his reign from his father's death. Such a legal fiction may be harmless or useful for purposes of mere form; but the facts of history cannot be disposed of by forgetting them. Both the Church and the world of to-day are what they are as the result of the whole of their antecedents. The history of a party may be written on the theory of periodical occultation; but he who wishes to trace the descent of religious thought, and the practical working of

the religious ideas, must follow these through all the phases they have actually assumed. We have not yet learnt, in this country, to write our ecclesiastical history on any better footing than that of praising up the party, in or out of the Church, to which we happen to belong. Still further are we from any attempt to apply the laws of thought, and of the succession. of opinion, to the course of English theology. The recognition of the fact, that the view of the eternal verities of religion which prevails in any given age is in part determined by the view taken in the age which preceded it, is incompatible with the hypothesis generally prevalent among us as to the mode in which we form our notions of religious truth. Upon none of the prevailing theories as to this mode is a deductive history of theology possible. 1. The Catholic theory, which is really that of Roman Catholics, and professedly that of some Anglo-Catholics, withdraws Christianity altogether from human experience and the operation of the ordinary laws of thought. 2. The Protestant theory of free inquiry, which supposes that each mind takes a survey of the evidence, and strikes the balance of probability according to the best of its judgment, this theory defers, indeed, to the abstract laws of logic, but overlooks the influences of education. If, without hypothesis, we are content to observe facts, we shall find that we cannot decline to study the opinions of any age, only because they are not our own opinions. There is a law of continuity in the progress of theology, which, whatever we may wish, is never broken off. In tracing the filiation of consecutive systems, we cannot afford to overlook any link in the chain, any age, except one in which religious opinion did not exist. Certainly we, in this