culties of the " unio naturarum," took refuge in Nestorian heresy, talking about a friendly and confidential relation between the Logos and Jesus; Reinhard's limitation of the "Communicatio Idiomatum," according to which each of the two natures assumed the properties of the other only so far as allowed by its own peculiar character, was a virtual abandonment of the whole dogma; in short, there was a general tendency of approximation to the position of the Socinians and of Spinoza; all parties tried to eliminate mysteries and miracles as much as possible, and to resolve them by aid of the so-called "Accommodation" theory into mere adventitious forms of thought and language. A dexterous veering between extremes was the sole resource of a system which, helplessly tossed on the horns of a dilemma, was obliged to change sides and alter its tone with farcical rapidity. On one hand it was said, "Why waste time on speculative matters, instead of attending to the one thing needful?" on the other, "Why refuse to believe a thing because you cannot explain it; why, when so ignorant of things plain and palpable to the senses, affect a superfluous scrupulosity about divine mysteries?" Each plea was put forward in turn, either with Arminians, Deists, etc., advancing moral essentials so as to veil theoretical paradoxes, or else following the common theological manœuvre of dictatorially silencing reason by proclaiming its feebleness. Random appeals to the sheltering vagueness of Scripture, shewed a general impatience of the yoke of creed, and the fretful ejaculations of theologians, as when, for instance, Döderlein denounced the whole subject as a wilderness of thorns and briars,1 betrayed their real antipathy. And when Lessing uttered a solemn farewell to orthodoxy, and Kant, following Spinoza's example, formed an independent religion of reason, dogma could only survive

1 "Devenimus in campum quem dudum horruimus, satis amplum, sed spinis et difficultatibus obsitum perplenumque, quas intercidere, vel si parcendum est sacræ sylvæ, theologis colendas et extricandas, multis bonis viris consultum videtur." Institutio Theol. Christ., p. 787.

as a legal fiction, or, at most, a speculative symbol, either as aptly expressing the wants of the "practical reason," or typifying the mystical yearnings of the pious heart.

There are some silent changes of opinion which are far more momentous in their consequences than any overt revolutions of history. Such was the great idealistic reaction of "Romanticism," which towards the close of the last century reopened the deep sources of religion in nature and the human soul. But this religion was incompatible with traditional theology. Theology, considered as a system of supernatural doctrine, can subsist only in a universe where miracle bridges over the sundered provinces of nature and God. Rationalism broke down the bridge, leaving the world temporarily godless; it rudely denied to a theistic God the power of miraculous interference, and found a helpless inanimate universe left upon its hands. Idealism filled up the gulf by restoring divinity to nature; but in so doing it subverted the intermediary diplomatic agency which had so long been transmitting messages over an imaginary void, and recording the interventional operations of a supermundane Being. The attitude of rationalism to creed-dogmas had been one of antipathy and denial; idealism, which is but rationalism in an enlarged and nobler form, arbitrarily appropriated their meaning, and unhistorically claimed them for its own. Its object, instead of destroying, was rather to preserve whatever it could assimilate and transfigure; and thus the ideas of incarnation and revelation passed into the language of philosophy as symbols of divine immanency. But the parodies of dogma set up by German speculation must not be supposed to have been a resuscitation of it.1 A bagpiper does not become a Scotchman by a mere assumption

1 E. Zeller, in the Tübingen Journal, vol. ix., p. 99, calls this a reinstatement of dogma by means of a double negation; first, a negation of its truth; then the negation of that negation by substituting a speculative meaning, and thus gaining the credit of sound belief and philosophical profundity at the

same time.

of the kilt, nor were the Anglo-Saxons converted into Christians because Augustine concealed Christian relics under the heathen altars. These fanciful revivals of dogma were only ingenious allegories, a quaint philosophical masquerade, differing little from ancient gnosticism except in the more distinct consciousness of figurative substitution; they were but a more or less forced application of ancient formula to illustrate, and by a tacit assumption of "reality" to prove, some speculative crotchet of the writer. Lessing's theory of converting "Offenbarungs-wahrheiten" into "Vernunfts-wahrheiten" became the source of many illusions, and assumed a process of distillation scarcely consistent with possibility or honesty. For although all religions may contain germs of truth and reason, it is not always easy, except with approximative vagueness, to distinguish essence from form, or to combine with any certainty the historical with what is thought to be the "true" meaning. The task of philosophy in regard to dogma is not so much to decipher its intent, to provide it with artificial crutches, or to torture it into a semblance of truth by expounding it in new meanings; but rather to point out the historical circumstances of its origin in nature and the human mind.

Absolute Miracle.

One of the subjects on which plain speaking was most difficult, and at the same time most important, was that of miracle. There is of course a radical antagonism between the miraculous assumptions of theology and the axioms of science. But until the order of nature was clearly and certainly established, there could be no distinct apprehension of miracle in the absolute sense as an interruption of that order. In popular acceptation miracles were not infractions of established laws, but only wonderful occurrences. The childish intellect loves wonder, but is im

patient of explanation. It little heeds the ingenious machinery moving from hour to hour with constancy and regularity; it is only when the artist checks the wheels or strikes the bell exceptionally for its amusement that the manifestation is hailed as a success. This is the way in which pious people usually regard manifestations of divine agency in the government of the world. That which has no obvious natural cause is hastily referred to a supernatural one; and no occurrences are thought religiously significant save those which, creating surprise and astonishment, appear to claim to be considered as special providences. So far the notion of miracle is merely relative. Being unaccompanied with any clear consciousness of a universe of order, it implies no clear notion of a breach of order. But the case is different when an intelligent study of nature has engendered settled convictions as to the strict continuity of causation. Miracle then changes its meaning; or rather it becomes unmeaning and self-contradictory, as implying imperfection in a perfect government, disorder in inevitable order, something overlooked and unexpected in the plans of supreme wisdom, requiring interpolation and revision. No such absurdity was seriously contemplated by antiquity; and even the loose notions about divine interference vulgarly entertained were often more accurately limited or even repudiated by deeper thinkers. A general idea of regularity in nature1 was suggested by common appearances to the earliest reflection; and though the notion was vague and imperfect, a mere inference roughly formed by way of analogy from human law, still it sufficed to give a salutary check to the superstitious fondness for wonders and signs. Thus Philo speaks of the Mosaic miracles as mere child's play in comparison with those of

1 Thus Philo of Alexandria, speaks of the "chain of universal unity and harmony, the eternal law of the eternal God, forming the impregnable substruction of the All." Gfrörer's Philo, pp. 197, 339, etc.; and see Sophocles J Ed Tyr., 865, and Antigone, 454.

creation; and St. Augustin ridicules the vulgar stupidity of those who, overlooking greater wonders, measured the capacities of the universe by the narrow estimate of human experience. By the Fathers, and especially Augustin, the term miracle is generally confined to the relative sense, in denoting something which, however extraordinary, is still natural; "Nature and the will of God," says Augustin, 66 are one; so that miracles are not contradictory to nature, but only to our limited knowledge of nature."3 The early diffusion of Christianity really depended not so much on miraculous displays, as on what was called the "demonstration of the spirit," i.e., the aptitude of the doctrine to the natural predisposition or mental susceptibilities of the convert; and, as Origen remarks,5 whatever the influence of such displays over cotemporaries, they could not have the same force in later times, especially when their conceptional or mythical character began to be suspected. Their power to convince was moreover from the first complicated and impeded by the general belief in dæmoniacal agency and sorcery, so that an ulterior criterion was wanted to

De Vitâ Mosis, vol. ii., p. 114.

2 De Civitate Dei, xxi. 8.

3

Ibid. ; and "De Utilitate Credendi" 16. "Contra Faustum, xxiii. 3. All the excuses and palliations of miracle used in modern theology may be found in Origen and Augustin; such as the substitution of relative for absolute; the distinction of supernatural and unnatural (Origen against Celsus v. 23); the hypothesis of preformation (De Genesi ad litteram, ix. 32). The obscurity of Augustin arises from his identification of nature and divine will being incomplete; from the will, although admitted to be “wisely omnipotent," being still external and capricious in its imputed action; the ideas of necessity and immanency are wanting; an external will is always at hand to thwart or control the internal; and hence nature's ordinary course as known to experience is occasionally distinguished from the teleological or theological idea of nature,-a distinction which afterwards gave opportunity for the definitive opposition of God and nature as exemplified in the scholastic definitions,-"Miraculum est quod fit praeter ordinem totius naturæ creatæ ;"-" Miraculum est talis Dei operatio quâ naturæ leges ad ordinem et conservationem totius universi spectantes reverâ suspenduntur."

No individual can be properly said to create a new religion. Wherever such a phenomenon appears, it existed unconsciously in the minds and feelings of the people, until genius performed the part of midwife, and in the fullness of time summoned it into visible existence.

5 Comment. on John ii. 28. Comp. De Princip., iv. 2.