find an almost universal verification of the anticipations deduced from the original induction; and those facts which fail to verify, alike fail to invalidate, the induction with which we

set out.

4. We feel ourselves authorized, on the basis of the abovenamed verifications, to reassert the original induction, which recognizes omnipresent divine agency in every part of the system of nature, inorganic as well as organic.

If it be allowable to consider the doctrine of theism as established, to this extent, on a valid foundation of scientific verification, it is also true, that standing on this higher level the doctrine admits of further deductions, requiring in turn new verifications. If we may believe in the existence and omnipresent agency of a divine personality, not cognizable in any local embodiment, like that of the human personality, the truth of this belief involves many other truths of the highest interest and importance, which are deducible from it. A few of these deductions may be indicated.

1. If a sovereign divine personality may exist and become an object of firm belief without being cognizable in any local embodiment, then may other subordinate personalities exist and act, apart from any cognizable local embodiment.

2. Human personalities, which we know in connection with organized material bodies, may exist after death in a disembodied state, or in bodies not cognizable to our senses.

3. The personalities above named as not cognizable to human perception in any local embodiment, may be locally or otherwise cognizable to each other, so as consciously to constitute a social state with the sovereign and supreme personality at its head, consciously recognized by all.

Other deductions equally legitimate might be drawn from the doctrine of theism. But our object is illustration and not exhaustive treatment. Of course the reader needs not be told that all that is embraced in the above deductions and much more, has in some form entered into the belief of all nations from the remotest antiquity down to the present time. It does not enter into our plan to explain how these beliefs actually found a place in the creeds of the race, but simply to show that they are legitimate deductions from that simple form of theism,

which taking its rise in a general spontaneous induction of divine agency in the universe, is confirmed and verified by a scientific view of facts, ascertained, co-ordinated and interpreted according to the recognized rules of scientific procedure. What remains to be said concerns the possibility and nature of the verifications which are applicable to the foregoing deductions. The whole controversy with regard to theism at the present day, is narrowed down to the decision of two questions; -First, is any verification of the foregoing deductions possible?-Secondly, if so, what is the mode of procedure by which they are to be verified?

The possibility of verification, in the case before us, depends, in part at least, on the possibility of intercommunication between our visible world and the unseen world, if there is such a world. "If any voice that man could trust" could speak from observation and experience touching the world of the unseen, this would, so far, be a verification in point. It is easy to see that the validity of the verification in question would depend on the trustworthiness of the alleged witness or wit

nesses.

This brings us to notice the precise position, as regards the doctrine of theism, of alleged miraculous revelations, touching the character of the sovereign personality, the economy of the unseen world, and the relations of human life and destiny to that world, and to a supposed future state of existence. Brought to the standard of the scientific method, the logical relation of a supernatural revelation is that of a proposed verification of ulterior deductions, from a theory already credibly established on a basis of scientific induction, deduction, and verification. The belief in the existence and sway of a sovereign divine personality in the universe may be regarded as a common ground of agreement with a large majority of thoughtful minds. But here arises the controversy, as regards revealed religion, in distinction from natural religion,-embracing the question of miraculous signs and messages from the unseen world. The logical position of these alleged miraculous signs and messages is that of an intended verification of highly probable deductions, legitimately drawn from a theory, which, to

say the least, rests on a plausible foundation of scientific validity.

In favor of the trustworthiness of this form of verification, may be urged the antecedent probability, derived from the fact, that the propositions to be verified are, to a great extent, legiti mately deduced from premises of acknowledged validity. The assumed autoptical and historical evidences of the actual occurrence of miracles, are urged in the same direction. The doubting scientist urges against all reliance on this form of verification, the alleged antecedent improbability of any deviation. from the observed order of natural law. We must content ourselves with having defined, without discussing, the issue raised at this point.

The doctrine of a future life, which stands prominent among the legitimate deductions from any consistent system of theism, looks forward to a final decisive test of truth or falsehood on all questions involved in that of a miraculous revelation. Conscious existence after death will be, to him who has thus passed the shadowy bourn, a verification of the hopes and anticipations of this life. But if death is supposed to be the end of conscious existence, there is, in like manner, an end of controversy, with no witness to the decision. The logic of science, as far as it goes, and the logic of faith, which outruns that of science, alike affirm the improbability of such a decision.

If there are any who are not quite satisfied with the proposed verifications of the simple religious creed indicated above, they may wisely fall back on the dictum of M. Comte, which he places at the foundation of the religion of Humanity. He tells us that in matters of religion, a theory is admissible, when it satisfactorily explains essential phenomena, even though it may lack objective confirmation, and may never be able to realize this complement of demonstration. The principle is wise and wholesome, and embodies the safe discretion which is applicable to all practical affairs,-sanctioning, as it does, the choice of the highest probability, as the safest guide amid the uncertainties of our mortal state.

We close with the following summary statement of the case of theism, as it seems to us to stand, after the foregoing survey of the facts and reasoning in which it rests.

1. By the admission of all, the theistic conception of natural agency rises spontaneously in the human mind, in the infancy of the individual and of the race, and long stands as a sufficient and satisfactory solution of the existence and order of the uni

verse.

2. There is nothing in the intellectual evolution of the human race, or in the discovery of natural laws, which renders the existence of a personal God logically incredible.

3. The primitive conception of, and belief in, divine agency in the universe, enlarges its sphere of comprehension to grasp and embrace all laws of evolution and other laws of phenomena afterward discovered. To its original raison d'étre it adds all the discoveries of science as corroborative proofs.

4. When science has observed its facts, and generalized and co-ordinated them according to their relations of similitude and succession, or according to their laws of co-existence and sequence, it will have encountered, in the order of phenomena, especially in the organic kingdoms, a class of facts, which are luminous at all points with suggestions of intelligent personal causality, and which can be generalized and co-ordinated on no other basis than that of the assumption of such causality.

5. Finally, religion does not need to go to science for the foundation of its faith; but science does need the help of religion in order to co-ordinate and explicate the highest facts, with which it has to deal.

ARTICLE VIII. -NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.

THEOLOGICAL AND RELIGIOUS.

PROFESSOR FISHER'S HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION.*— This work, we are informed in the preface, grew out of a course of lectures delivered at the Lowell Institute in Boston, in the spring of 1871; but, it might be added, in its preparation and its design and whole scope, it was by no means confined to a course of lectures of a more or less temporary character. For many previous years the author had devoted himself to researches in the wide field of Church history, and he had pursued these studies with an earnest enthusiasm, and in a spirit of profound scholarship, that lend authority to his opinions. This is not a book of rhetorical essays upon a period of vivid interest, but it is the fruit of long years of patient investigation. It is weighty with solid learning and thought. It is both a text-book in the sharpness and lucidness of its analysis, and a work for private reading in the interest, and glow, and unity, of its treatment of a grand theme. It has almost an epic movement. The figures come out upon its shifting scenes in the clear light of truth, not grandiosely magnified but simply great, and the action is rapid, ever evolving something new though with the consistency of an inward principle of spiritual unity. There is at the same time an artistic completeness bringing the whole into a condensed and comprehensive plan, which is cleanly finished to the satisfaction of the most critical mind, and a philosophical method that grasps the deeper causative law of action and manifests a true historic insight. The long historical preparation of the Reformation, the slowly broadening and deepening adumbration of the drawing on of that great event, the rise of the papal hierarchy and its decline through the centralization of nations, or the springing up of a national idea adverse to the exclusive dominion of the ecclesiastical idea, connected as it was with the birth of vernacular literatures and the freeing of the popular intelligence, and the many different influences that swell the main cur

*The Reformation. By GEORGE P. FISHER, D.D., Professor of Ecclesiastical History in Yale College. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co., 1872.