But their de

religion is worth more to them than to the other sex. pendence on Christ for the advancement of religion in society, is less perfect than their personal dependence, and the efficiency of believing women in the New Testament bears no proportion to their numbers. Not only do they make much less progress in religious knowledge, but their activity confines itself very much to works of love, in individual relations not affecting the community at large. Very different is the case with Peter, John and Paul. With them faith, in distinction from feeling, is the proper centre of their religious life, though in Paul there is a remarkable inclination to the side of knowledge, in Peter a disproportionate strength of the active will, in John a most perfect balance of knowledge and feeling. But each possesses all the forms of life in a considerable degree, and the normal condition of their faith may be estimated by the success which the quickening word wrought through them in wider circles of life, while, in the full flower of mercy-gifts of every kind, they manifested a high degree of improvability and a considerable strength of the passive will.

Such a relation, though in a different respect, exists between the Lutheran and Reformed Churches. Both rest on faith, but the latter with a disproportionate leaning towards the department of knowledge. The consequence is, that knowledge, especially dialectic knowledge, is highly cultivated in the Reformed Church, but the department of feeling is almost entirely neglected, and faith is so limited and encumbered that, just at the point where the Lutheran Church is particularly characterized by a reception of Divine mercies, viz. in the Lord's Supper, the Reformed Church substitutes partly knowledge and partly self-activity, and injures religion at the very heart. The Lutheran Church, by inclining less to the department of knowledge, brings both knowledge and feeling to a more harmonious development, and thus secures a more justly proportioned form.

What has thus far been presented, may serve to verify the psychological idea of religion, which we have maintained. But here we must not overlook the essential fact that religion has also a corporeal form, being as much affected by the outward and the material as mind is by the body. How different are the religious phenomena of this kind, in some circumstances, from what they are in others. Sickness or health, this or that kind of disease, this or that employment, climate, clearly occasion characteristic manifestations. Religion often produces a change in modes of speech, in the cast of the countenance, in the gestures of the body. To this corporeal form belong the water, the bread and the wine of the sacraments, and the resurrection of the body from the dead.

These facts, in the mere subjective idea of religion, as that of Schleiermacher, remain wholly unexplained and unconsidered. They are at best exceptions, and come into the idea by a sort of violence, if they do not destroy it altogether. On the contrary, these facts lie exactly in the track of our explanation. Out of a mere feeling of dependence, the idea of the world's renewal can never be deduced. But how easily can we derive it from an act of God imparting a life. The idea of personal life brings along with it the idea of body—the working of spirit on matter and of matter on spirit, the direct and indirect mastery of mind through the body over nature and the reaction of nature through the body on the mind. It is the nature of personality not merely to be a self-conscious spirit, but to have in it a self-conscious spirit standing in an important relation to matter, either personally connected with it, as in the case of man, or capable of assuming it, as in the case of the Son of God and the angels. We thus hold to a view of religion in which the resurrection of the body, miracles, etc., which stand as an irrefragable barrier against mere spiritualism, find a conceivable and appropriate place.

We come now in conclusion to the solution of a problem which goes to prove the actual necessity of our idea of religion. We are to show how this idea of religion comprehends all the branches of religious science within it. Possibly this may be considered our most dangerous rock, for we freely confess that the idea maintained by us is not adapted to the construction of a religious philosophy, as that science is commonly treated. Most clearly, we cannot say of the heathen systems of religion, nor of Mohammedanism, that they came from God or embrace an actual fellowship between Deity and humanity. They rest on a perversion of the divine idea, and include no act of God or living fellowship with him. If we must have a religious philosophy which embraces heathenism as a legitimate portion of it, Schleiermacher's feeling of dependence, or Hegel's self-consciousness, to which systems, by a distinction of degrees and kinds all that is merely subjective in religion can be reduced, would be better adapted to the purpose. But this becomes possible only by embracing an idea of religion of such a general and insignificant character, that, for conducting Christianity especially in its subjective parts out of the same, only a very narrow passage-way remains, while the objective, which is the most important element, reaches far beyond these limits, and brings us to the confession, sufficiently obvious at first blush, that Christianity is something much more than mere religion; otherwise we shall have a scientific idea of religion which fails

at the very point where it ought to be most perfect. Or if we would extend and animate the idea of religion so as to embrace Christianity, we should be driven to straits, in another direction, and have an idea too exalted for the heathen religions, and indeed exactly opposed to them. For if you place at the foundation of your inquiry about the nature of heathenism, not merely the oft-quoted passage in Acts xvii., but the more complete and extended one in Romans i., you have in heathenism religio a non religando or religendo. According to Paul, in this passage, heathenism in its noblest form, the Grecian, is a perversion and consequently a destruction of the idea of God. It proceeds not, like Judaism, from a partial development of acknowledged truth, towards a full reception of the same; but by degrees, sometimes through apparent progress, it goes on to a total loss of true divine knowledge, as is actually the historic course of heathen religions to this day. Of course there remain some traces of truth in false religions. How. else could they rise, exist, advance, recede, yea, destroy themselves, if there were no element of truth in them? It is moreover not denied that individuals have sometimes risen in a religious respect above the communities in which they lived; but that which properly belongs to heathenism, its grand characteristic, is a lie! Consequently we must either cease calling Christianity religion, or else cease calling heathenism and Mohammedanism religion, and so give up the idea of a universal religious philosophy; we may still however philosophize about religion, about Mohammedanism and heathenism on the one hand, Christianity and Judaism on the other. We are also of opinion, that the name, religion, unscriptural, heathenish, radically subjective, uncertain in meaning, as it is in philo. logical derivation, had better be applied exclusively to heathenism and Mohammedanism, and a different term, such as revelation or spiritual life, be used to denote Christianity. Religion would then have reference to the common relation of the human mind, we say not to God, for this would not be true of heathenism, but to some mighty supernatural being. In this way we might avoid that endless confusion of speech and idea, which has arisen from not making a proper distinction between the subjective and the objective, and from transferring the characteristics of the one to the other. Nothing would then prevent us from treating religious philosophy as prelimi nary to the philosophy of revelation, thus making a negative preparation for Christianity. Finally, the investigation about Judaism and Christianity would respect their original derivation, and this would form a suitable introduction to heathen religions as perversions of the

original revelations. Or, more correctly, when the philosophy of revelation, not merely of its proper self, but the perversion of it in all the various forms of the same, comes to be scientifically comprehended and put in contrast with Judaism and Christianity, then heathenism will form the reverse side of the philosophy of revelation. And as then, on the side of the divine-life process, the Old and New Testament fellowship follow their originals, so on the reverse side, gnosticism, Mohammedanism, pantheism, atheism, and all the manifestations belonging thereto, are included in heathen religion, and so two parallel series of historical revelation would arise, of which the one would be a development of the truth, the actual fellowship between God and man; the other, on the contrary, would embrace the perversion of the original revelation, would be an apparent development, and a final self-destruction. Thus the separation of that which does not properly belong together, would be completed, and at the same time the unity of philosophic examination would be preserved.

All the remaining theological sciences might be set forth without difficulty, as belonging to the idea which we have presented. Thus, biblical theology has to do with the scientific presentation of the truth imparted by God in that fellowship of life, received and understood by man, and, indeed, received in its original and proportionate form. Dogmatism would concern itself with the same truth, so far as it has been formed into symbolic propositions, and has become the foundation of ecclesiastical knowledge. Ethics has reference to the same truth, so far as it serves as a measuring-rule for the critical examination of the common and peculiar fellowship of life. Historic science would bring to view the continued series of Divine acts, and of human experience corresponding thereto, in which the living fellowship between God and man is truly unfolded. In the liturgy, we should seek to comprehend the Divine acts through which the fellowship of life existing in the community is partly propagated, partly renewed and strengthened, and the activities by means of which man receives this Divine action upon himself, and also the expressions of the selfacting will through which it authenticates the presence of that fellowship of life as organic in its relation to God. In ecclesiastical law, the Divine working might be considered as coming to utterance in the community through which this fellowship of life is regulated, conformably to the necessities of humanity, in its relation to the worldly life. The teaching of Christian art would bring us, finally, to an understanding of those acts of revelation by means of which Divine thoughts are expressed by human genius in the form of beauty.

If now, by our idea of religion, we gain this advantage, viz. that all the theological sciences come before us in a living and compact membership, whereas before there was scarcely room for one of them, and others were degraded to a place unworthy of them, it seems to be of the utmost importance that we attempt the construction of a theological system on this basis, viz. that religion, instead of being mere knowing or acting or feeling, or a combination of these three elements, is a LIFE, a life of God imparted by Him, and in which all the elements of religion cohere.

ARTICLE VIII.

NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.

I. MORNINGS AMONG THE JESUITS AT ROME.1

THIS work has, but a few days since, fallen into the hands of the reviewer, although it is the fourth edition, from which the title-page is here copied. It is a recent work; and it must have had a great run in England, to have already passed through so many editions. To these may be added at least one edition, in our own country.

The attentive and intelligent reader of the work will not wonder at its popularity. It discusses one of the most urgent topics of the times in England; and one which seems about to become deeply interesting to American Protestants. The importation into our country of nearly half a million of foreign emigrants in a year, and the fact that the great mass of them are Roman Catholics, are things adapted to take strong hold of a sensitive mind, whose sympathies are strongly on the side of Protestantism. In days that are past, our country has, for the most part, looked calmly and unconcernedly on the immigration of Romanists, because they were so few in comparison with our Anglo-Saxon population, who are attached to the cause of the Reformation. But now, when the Irish emigrants and their descendants begin to be reckoned more in number than their countrymen who remain in Ireland, it is time for this Protestant country to look about them, and try to discover, if possible, what are to be the issues of this matter. The Romanists, as is well known, from their own boastings, are flushed with hopes of

1 Mornings among the Jesuits at Rome. By the Rev. M. Hobart Seymour, M. A. Fourth edition. London. 1851.