Secondly, what is the result of Mr Spencer's ambitious attempt to build up a complete scheme of philosophy and history of the universe, setting out, as a first principle, from the extinction and denial of all theology, and an utter rejection, as unthinkable and unreasonable, of that fear of God which is the beginning of wisdom, and that knowledge of the Holy, which alone is understanding? His success in the field of zoology may be inferred from his definition of life already examined. His like success in the field of physics, or of lifeless matter, may be inferred from the utter inversion of notorious facts, and of logic, which stood sentinel fifteen years at the entrance to his physical speculations; that Newton and men of science had adopted the law of the inverse square for that of gravitation, as an à priori truth, because any other was unthinkable. This was a plain warning to any thoughtful reader, that in this system the reign of darkness would not be confined to theology alone, but extend impartially to the whole range of material and physical science.

The third variety of headless philosophy, that of Sir W. Hamilton, is equally barren of any trace or sign of success in the discovery of any new truth, in physics or sociology. This is the less surprising when we remember the profound contempt expressed by Sir W. Hamilton for mathematics, that one sphere of thought, below the region of morals, where clear and certain truth has been attained, and is still attained by all patient inquirers, and which alone supplies master keys for its progressive attainment in all the rest. All these three philosophies have supplied a large and indefinite amount of flat self-contradictions, thinly disguised and veiled from superficial readers by learned phrases and metaphysical abstractions; but I doubt whether any one of the three has contributed a single grain to our know

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ledge of the laws of Nature and of the material universe. Certainly in every age the King of Heaven has reserved his chief gifts, of new insight into the laws of Nature and the system of the material universe, for men of a serious and reverent tone of mind. Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton, the two Herschels, Lord Bacon, Boyle, Cavendish, Dalton, Davy, Faraday, Cuvier, are examples of this general law of the Divine government.

The three Anti-theologies of Comte, Spencer, and Hamilton, have one common feature, a darkening and benumbing effect on the study of physical science. M. Comte's first principle with regard to the stages of science is the exact antithesis of the real truth. The only manly and mature stage of scientific thought is that which he defames as its puerile and infant stage; when men cease to grovel on the ground like the brutes, or Nebuchadnezzar in his madness, and in their study of God's works lift up their eyes unto heaven, their understanding returns to them, and they bless, praise, and honour the Most High. Having mistaken the highest and only truly human stage of science for the lowest and worst, he inverts the relation of the two others, and honours with the name of youth that mere infancy in which men renounce the study of second causes, along with the knowledge of the great First Cause, and reason itself goes to sleep, and the mind of man is degraded to a mere camera obscura, to register passing phenomena as they occur. The stage M. Comte extols as the maturity of science, answers either to its mere babyhood, or its extreme old age and decrepitude, in which it has been smitten with utter palsy. The effect of the atheistic starting-point, in Spencer's system, is a like confusion, perplexity, and darkness. Even when he borrows facts from the discoveries of others to weave them into his system, they are so disguised by some cloak of metaphysical mist, that their definite

meaning is obscured. The same is true of the Hamiltonian system. Some degree of light is needed even for the healthy growth of a plant, and some clearness in the apprehension of fundamental ideas is essential to real progress in all natural science. What results can be expected to follow, when in the highest and noblest field of thought, the proper home of light, to multiply direct contradictions, to say things and straight unsay them, the fit character in Milton of the father of lies, is proclaimed to be the highest possible achievement of human reason. Now this is the common feature of the Scotch, French, and English varieties of atheistic speculation, and the same principle applies, doubtless, to other German theories. Thus the atheistic theory of Haeckel and Helmholz starts from a self-contradiction at the lowest point of its scheme of being, besides ending in a blank of darkness at the summit. It professes to build up the whole universe out of atoms, which are vortices. of revolving matter, made unalterable by some artifice of mathematical calculation, when from their very definition it is plain that they are not atoms at all, but an immense multitude of smaller atoms, ever changing, and to which permanence can be ascribed by a blunder of reasoning alone. The clearness of vision, on which progress in natural knowledge depends, can never be gained by putting out the eyes of the soul, till it becomes blind to the simplest and highest of all truths, that there must be Self-existence somewhere. So that it starts, like Mr Spencer, with affirming two opposites at the same moment, that to think of Self-existence anywhere is impossible, and yet that we cannot help thinking of Self-existence somewhere. A philosophy which starts in such mental dizziness, can hardly reach a greater depth of confusion at its close, than that with which it begins.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE FOUR MAXIMS OF MODERN NATURE-WORSHIP.

ANTI-SUPERNATURALISM, in striving to sweep away Christian faith and all revealed religion, as a fraud and gigantic delusion, and to prove the four Gospels forgeries of a late date, which gained general acceptance by some unaccountable delusion of the early Christians, has a rival creed of its own, based on four main principles.

"Just are the ways of God...unless there be

Who think not God at all,

If any be, they walk obscure;

For of such doctrine never was there school

But the heart of the fool,

And no man therein doctor but himself."-Sam. Agon.

The first is the old doctrine of the "fool," who says in his heart, "There is no God." It is unfolded by the help of "Science falsely so called," into two great maxims. First, that Theism, Belief in a personal God, is one of three untenable attempts to explain the mystery of the universe; and that the great First Cause which sits concealed behind all phenomena is, and must ever remain, wholly inscrutable. Next, that all pretended revelation merely assumes without proof the existence of a God, and that all Nature is mute, and supplies no real evidence whatever. Its starting-point is thus the same which the Psalmist long ago described, “Understand, ye brutish among the people, and ye fools when will ye be wise?"

A second main principle of Nature-Worship, borrowed from the creed of the Sadducees, is the eternal and irreversible reign of death; for it proclaims “the glorious perfection and invariability of the order of nature; "this order includes as a matter of fact the universality of death; and its sure tendency, according to one of its exponents, is to a reign of omnipresent death. Dr Strauss, in his "Life of Christ," tells us that the proposition,

"A dead man has returned to life,' is composed of two contradictory elements; that in the attempt to maintain the one, the other threatens to disappear; if he has really returned to life, it is natural to conclude that he was not wholly dead; if he was really dead, it is difficult to believe that he has really become living." "Thus that unbelief alike in God's power and God's goodness, which it must be one main aim of revelation to remove, is found to centre in one gloomy doctrine, the omnipotence of death. The Christian revelation, in its central truth, the Resurrection of Jesus, directly meets this great evil, and thereby satisfies the moral conditions of a message of God. A revelation would be a mockery, which left men at liberty still to continue Sadducees, worshippers of the powers of Nature, believers in no supremacy but that of death and the grave." ("Horae Evangelicæ," p. 467.)

How deep-rooted is the evil to be overcome, a slavish prostration of the mind before the despotism of Death, is clear from this statement of Strauss. The Gospel, according to the author of "Supernatural Religion,” “is emphatically contradicted by the glorious perfection and invariability of the order of Nature." "That perfect and invariable order" by which death has reigned supreme from Adam to Moses, and from Moses to Christ; of which he seems as enamoured, as Satan is described by Milton to have been, of SIN, before he saw her hideous offspring and his own. What an outrage on all reason! to speak of the glorious perfection of an order of Nature, in which death reigns for ever supreme. What a blessed contrast are those gracious promises, "I will ransom