Higher Verification of Religion. 23 nimmermehr einen gutten frommen Mann, sondern ein guter frommer Mann macht gute Werke "-good works make not the man, the good man makes the works. He has a triumphant elevation of spirit in magnanimity and honour, a placid feeling of serenity and blissful contentment in gentleness and humility. He enjoys a noble satisfaction in victories obtained by self-command over the propensities of animal nature, and independence of soul in the consciousness of having nothing to hide-nothing to be ashamed of. The love of Christ satisfies him; is more than all the world. It is a revelation of Jesus in all His beauty, the fairest of ten thousand, the altogether lovely. His religion possesses that internal and external reasonable verification which satisfies mind and conscience; a holy, useful life before God and man. Higher verification. There are Bacons, Newtons, Shakespeares, in science and literature; Isaiahs, Johns, Pauls, exceeding in enlightenment and privilege of revelation. Rome disciplined human will and Greece brought mind to the subjection of law, Asia gave vividness to the spiritual imagination, but the Hebrews specially enlightened our conscience. These Hebrews were of extraordinary toughness, and justify their being matched against evil-that deadly power which baffles and hurts the human spirit. Secular philosophy can give reasons for the excellency of Romans, Greeks, Easterns, in their vocations; Divine philosophy explains the ground. of faith in Jewish mind: a vivid, abiding conviction of the existence and presence of God, elevated by Divine Inspiration into permanent power. "God was to Israel neither an assumption nor a metaphysical idea. He was a Power that can be verified, as much as the fire to burn, or bread to nourish.. The greatness of Israel in religion, the reason why he is said to have had religion revealed to him, to have been entrusted with the oracles of God, is because he had in such extraordinary force and vividness the perception of this power." Men, nowadays, may be mighty as the former sages; and holy ones equal the ancient saints. Of like faith and character, they attain to the enlightenments, possibly the revelations which adorned the old prophets. Due mental, emotional, spiritual calibre, can rise to the high knowledge, "Literature and Dogma :" Matthew Arnold. awful experience, abiding conviction, possessed by the holy Apostles. Those, to whom God is not only a Power but a Person in human flesh by Jesus, and in human spirit by the Holy Ghost, may attain heights of ascent. The Holy Ghost, to those who receive Him, affords illumination to every rational faculty. The present bubbles and ripples of knowledge are surface-marks of a great spiritual stream, flowing from the throne of God; for the healing of nations, the beautifying of all lands. Intelligence is not divorced from Piety. The best minds cleave to religion. History proves the need of an ethical ideal; and experience shows that, without the aid of Supernatural authority, moral and spiritual restraints lack power to enforce obedience. Supernaturalism was affirmed by Jesus, the highest mind in the world. It is the power which gives victory to the Bible, makes the Church mighty, priests' orders valid, sacraments efficacious, prayer to prevail. To say "that a religion divested of the supernatural, having the light of nature only, and based simply on human reason, could be more firmly established," is downright nonsense. Our faith, Divine in origin, has historical evidence capable of verification on every line of argument; but persuade men generally that it is not of Divine authority, a human invention, and you will weaken public and private morality—that power which is alone capable of holding society together during perilous times. One from the invisible must give other and different proof of his office than one from the visible world. Miracle is that proof, and the only one. The assertion-" morality would be purer without Divine sanction, hope of resurrection, and expectation of future life; for freedom from responsibility and future judgment would lead to more disinterested conduct"-sets at nought all experience, takes encouragement from the good and restraint from the bad. We possess historical proof that virtue, pure morality, has not been able to maintain itself in the earth, nor to thrive by the light of Nature alone. Duty may be seen and proved by reason, but additional sanctions are required for the enforcement. Men of to-day are not the only ones who talked of regenerating the world by fine arts and intellectual lights; but from first to last, apart from religious purity, the vaunted culture has led to sensuality. History shows that Cause of Failure as to Art and Science. 25 men drag down Christianity; how, then, can the origin and continuance of it be accounted for without extra-mundane means? Genesis iv. 19-22 affords a striking illustration of the relative nothingness of Arts. In Lamech's family are represented three grades of civilisation-agricultural, mercantile, sensual; and Lamech, a murderer, is the first recorded polygamist. Did that ancient civilisation emancipate the world, or enslave it? Did the strife maintained by those mechanical, sensual Cainites against the Sethites lead to a moral and spiritual victory? Alas! The Cainites found themselves under the water with their organs, their implements, their beauty; but the Ark, which they had ridiculed as an ungainly and retrograde structure, rode in peace over their heads. Those centuries in which the Sophists ran their career; when Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, taught at Athens; when the school of Alexandria was founded and Euclid wrote his Elements:" when Archimedes propounded theories and principles in mechanics and hydrostatics; when Pythagoras experimented on harmonic intervals, Hipparchus and Ptolemy studied the stars; and anatomy began to be investigated as the basis of scientific medicine: did they win the world from misery, regenerate one heart, or save one soul? When the science of ancient Greece had cleared the world of fantastic images of false divinities, the scientific method was well-nigh completed, by the union of induction and experiment; was this science the salt of the earth? Did the scientific intellect go on and possess the universal mind? The impact of atoms being accounted the all-sufficient cause of things; were men satisfied with the operation? The whole world answers-- "No." From the minds of philosophers was dissipated "every thought of a deflection of the universe by the gods," but neither sage nor simple was content. Literature, arts, refinement, luxury, gave much outward fineness, softness, finish, to manners; the old poets, orators, sculptors, painters, philosophers, were a wonder; but Juvenal and Persius among the Latins, Lucian amongst the Greeks, and St. Paul a Hebrew, testify that society was a sink of sensuality. Why? Because art and science were divorced from ethical and religious purity. Philosophi sine Deo non sunt periti, sed perituri. Because men would not believe the wonderful, though all things were wonderful. " 1 The ethics of Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Cicero, are in some respects admirable; but they had no authority from Divinity, and failed. The ablest people of whom history bears record is unquestionably the ancient Greek. "The average ability of the Athenian race is, on the lowest possible estimate, very nearly two grades higher than our own—that is, about as much as our race is above the African negro.' This race did not go on to possess the world. Though highest in products of the understanding, fairest of all men in form, cleverest in art, they speedily became servile and sensual, intolerant and fierce. Like the Romans, they fell into moral putrefaction which slew them. When godless Science has done the utmost, and irreligious Art has put her finest finish on work, only Frankenstein's monster is produced which slays them both. Art and Science are good, as the handmaids and adorners of morality, as lighteners of labour, as smoothers of Nature's asperity: but, put instead of Religion and of God, they and their worshippers perish like children of Cain. The gutter-child, by intellectual drill, may be converted into "the subtlest of all the beasts of the field;" but we know the original of that description. History, human experience, Scripture, alike testify-"Where there is no vision, the people perish" (Prov. xxix. 18). "It is impossible to show by what practical measures religious feeling, which is the essential basis of conduct, can be kept up without use of the Bible;" while experience proves that the purest morality and noblest life are formed by its precepts and examples. The inability of laws to attain even the imperfect end at which they aim, is proved by the fact that in all ages and in every condition of society, an authority superior to their own has been called in to sanction and maintain them. Religion is that authority." "2 Social and moral direction is a far more important object than scientific inquiry; being that, indeed, which elevates and gives best use to inquiry. The most violent opponents allow that a life guided by the rule of Christ's morality, and governed by Christ's authority, is the noblest of which we are capable. Even the lowest ranks of society find that by 1 Galton's "Hereditary Genius." "The Great Problem: can it be Solved?" Rev. G. R. Gleig, Edinburgh Magazine, January, 1875 General Incapacity of Doubters. 27 Christ's rule they are enabled to perform the highest actions of virtue. Among the opponents of Scripture, are some high-minded, honest men. The laureate lauds them too much 66 There lives more faith in honest doubt, We only believe him so far as John Newton was wont to say "Some men's doubts are better than other men's certainties." The character of other doubters whose heart, not head, is at fault, has been quaintly sketched by an old writer-"Sinners perched on the dunghill of their vices, clapping their wings in self-applause, and fancying themselves much grander creatures than the Christian; who all the while is soaring on high like the lark, and mounting on his way to heaven." There are dishonest sceptics, professing to be wise, whom Tennyson well describes "Law is God,' say some: 'No God at all,' says the fool; 'For all we have power to see is a straight staff bent in a pool."" To all such, these are our only words— "Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all." Longfellow. The higher and more honest infidels, of scientific power, have little spirituality, fail in reverent heed of Scripture, are not comprehensive men. They amass, sometimes systematise facts, and unsparingly devote the best years of their life to one section of physical science. As a matter of course, their mechanical process fails when applied to ideas; and their partial apprehension of general truth, and of Nature as wholly material, narrows their minds. Good in technicalities, but not of wide range, they are unfit for the elevated themes of theology in the widest sense universal. Contemplating phenomena, physical antecedents and consequents, they explain the structure of the world according to the technic of man, taking no account of the spiritual. The mechanism is all, according to their theory; nevertheless, the doctrine of continuity proves that the visible is a shadow of the invisible, and the natural a passing of the Supernatural into history. Schelling too pantheistically expresses it—" Nature |