LITMIR.BIZ

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mind that has them, explains the unwillingness of this system to allow any motives to God, any field of objective operation, any special relation to individuals, any revealing interposition, any supernatural agency.

      Is it however true, that human belief can only choose between these two extremes, and must oscillate eternally between the Atheistic homage to Force, and the Pantheistic to Thought? Far from it; and it is curiously indicative of the state of the philosophic atmosphere in Germany, that one of her most discerning and wide-seeing authors should find no third possibility within the sphere of vision. In any latitude except one in which moral science has altogether melted away in the universal solvent of metaphysics, it would occur as one of the most obvious suggestions, that the intellect is not the only element of human nature which may be taken as type of the Divine, and as furnishing a possible solution to the problem of origination. Quitting the two poles of extreme philosophy, confessedly incompetent in their separation, we submit that Will presents the middle point which takes up into itself Thought on the one hand and Force on the other; and which yet, so far from appearing to us as a compound arising out of them as an effect, is more easily conceived than either as the originating prefix of all phenomena. It has none of the disqualifications which we have remarked as flowing from the others into their respective systems of doctrine. It carries with it, in its very idea, the co-presence of Thought, as the necessary element within whose sphere it has to manifest itself. Its phenomena cannot exist alone; it acts on preconceptions, which stand related to it, however, not as its source, but as its conditions, and are its co-ordinates in the effect rather than its generating antecedents. If therefore all things are issued by Will, there is Mind at the fountain-head, and the absurdity is avoided of deriving intelligence from unintelligence. While it thus escapes the difficulty of passing from mere Force to Thought, it is equally clear of the opposite difficulty of making mere Thought supply any Force. The activity of Will is not, like that of Intellect, a subjective transit of regimented ideas, but an objective power going out for the production of effects; nay, it is a free power, exercising preference among data furnished by internal or external conditions present in its field; and it thus constitutes proper Causality, which always implies control over an alternative. We need hardly add, that all the requisites are thus complete for the true idea of a Person; and an Infinite Being contemplated under this type is neither a fateful nor a logical principle of necessity, but a living God, out of whose purposed legislation has sprung whatever necessity there is, except the self-existent beauty of his holiness. Thus, between the Force of the physical Atheist, and the Thought of the metaphysical Pantheist, we fix upon the fulcrum of Will as the true balance-point of a moral Theism.

      It would be impossible, perhaps, to find anywhere a finer instance of perspicuity in condensation, than is given in the following reference to

      LESSING'S THEOLOGICAL CONCLUSIONS.

      Lessing refused to surrender Christianity, on proof of error in its first teachers, uncertainty in its reported miracles, contradictions in its early literature, misapplication of Messianic prophecies. All these he regards as but the external accidents, the transitory media, of the religion, constituting, it may be, its support in one age and its weakness in another. They do not belong to its inner essence, in which alone the real evidence of spiritual truth is found; and he who detects anything amiss with them may even render a service by driving men from sham-proofs, that really persuade no one, to true ones that lie at the heart of things. Religious doctrine cannot be deduced from mere historical facts without a μεÏαβαÏÎ¹Ï ÎµÎ¹Ï Î±Î»Î»Î¿ Î³ÎµÎ½Î¿Ï vitiating the whole process. Facts indeed may become the proper ground of moral and spiritual faith; but then they must be facts which come over again and again, and betray an element that is permanent and eternal; which form part of the experience and consciousness of humanity; and ally themselves with the Divine by not losing their presence in the world. But unrepeated facts, which limit themselves to a moment, which are the incidents of a single personality, and are left behind quite insulated in the past, show—were it only by your not expecting them again—that they are detached from the persistent and essential life of the universe and humanity. They are but once and away; and least of all, therefore, can testify of the untransitory and ever-living. The real can teach us only so far as it[Pg xxxiii] has an ideal kernel, redeeming it from the character of a solitary phenomenon. Among the various expositions and applications of this favorite theme of Lessing's, we select the following sentences from his Axiomata.

      1. "The Bible evidently contains more than belongs to Religion."

      2. "That in this 'more' the Bible is still infallible, is mere hypothesis."

      3. "The letter is not the spirit, and the Bible is not the Religion."

      4. "The objections therefore against the letter and against the Bible, are not on that account objections against the spirit and against the Religion."

      5. "Moreover there was a religion ere there was a Bible."

      6. "Christianity was in being before Evangelists and Apostles had written. Some time elapsed before the first of them wrote, and a very considerable time before the whole canon was constituted."

      7. "However much, therefore, may depend on these writings, it is impossible that the whole truth of the Christian religion can rest upon them."

      8. "If there was a period during which, diffused as the Christian religion already was, and many as were the souls filled already with its power, still not a letter had yet been written of the records which have come down to us; then it must be also possible for all the writings of Evangelists and Apostles to perish, yet the religion taught by them still to subsist."

      9. "The religion is not true because Evangelists and Apostles taught it; but they taught it because it is true."

      10. "Its interior truth must furnish the interpretation of the writings it has handed down; and no writings handed down can give it interior truth, if it has none."

      In his controversy with Göze, he illustrates this distinction between the essence and the historical form of Christianity, by a parable to the following effect. A wise king of a great realm built a palace of immense size and very peculiar architecture. About this structure, there came from the very first a foolish strife to be carried on, especially among reputed connoisseurs, people, that is, who had least looked into the interior. This strife was not about the palace itself, but about various old ground-plans of it, and drawings of the same, very difficult to make out. Once, when the watchmen cried out "Fire," these connoisseurs, instead of running to help, snatched up their plans, and, instead of putting out the fire on the spot, kept standing with their plans in hand, making a hubbub all the while, and squabbling about whether this was the spot on fire, and that the place to put it out. Happily, the safety of the palace did not depend on these busy wranglers, for it was not on fire at all; the watchmen had been frightened by the Northern lights, and mistaken them for fire. It is impossible to convey by a clearer image Lessing's feeling, that a Christianity once incorporated in the very substance of history and civilization, seated deep in human sentiment and thought, and developed into literature, law, and life, subsists independently of critical questions, and is with us, not as the contingent vapor that a wind may rise to blow away, but as the cloud that has dropped its rain and mingled with the roots of things.

      In immediate contrast with the foregoing application of a critical method to the historic documents of Christianity, it is beautiful to see the same genius turned with eager joy to a practical recommendation of the experimental life of Christianity.

      THE REDEEMING LAW OF SYMPATHY.

      It is quite true, that self-cure is of all things the most arduous; but that which is impossible to the man within us, may be altogether possible to the God. In truth, the denial of such changes, under the affectation of great knowledge of man, shows an incredible ignorance of men. Why, the history of every great religious revolution, such as the spread of Methodism, is made up of nothing else; the instances occurring in such number and variety, as to transform the character of whole districts and vast populations, and to put all scepticism at utter defiance. And

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