Our interest in this subject. 705 people until their ministers teach them to expect salvation from the word believed, and not from the external rite; until the Word of God is set in due honour, and the Apocryphal writings cast out from that co-ordinate place which they obtained in dark times; until the members of the Church are guided to observe the Lord's day; until the offences against the divine commandments are confessed and forsaken; until the Church ceases to lead up all the youth of the country of a certain age indiscriminately to the Lord's Table, even those who cannot examine themselves, and therefore eat and drink judgment to themselves; and last, not least, till they cease to give to Cæsar the things that are God's and Christ's, and cast the throne of the secular ruler out of the range of the Church which Christ has purchased to be his own, to lead and guide as a living shepherd by his Word and Spirit in the paths of peace and power. But cui bono? Whom does this concern? What benefit is any one to have by raising this question? Surely it concerns the whole Church to have the atmosphere purified, and not to be left in ignorance whether a portion of the visible Church be ruled by the darkness of this world or by the principles of heavenly truth. But it concerns ourselves; for if we countenance a Church that deals thus unfaithfully with its people, it will infallibly react upon ourselves, and we shall become indifferent to and reconciled to practices which we believe to be at variance with spiritual life and prosperity. But it concerns us to determine our course of action towards brethren, as we cannot deny it to be a duty to sympathise with those who openly protest against what neutralises and spoils the principles of grace. There is a strange confusion of ideas in this field, and those who would abhor the idea of associating with a British Puseyite think themselves justified in owning and aiding the same type from Germany because he is a German, and in discountenancing those who are seeking to deliver men's souls from the power of that noxious error. It is surely time to let in daylight upon this very important question. "Sell all" in the way of following Christ. There is a receiving of Christ without his cross which enables those who know nothing of duties to get a full peace. But if the Spirit do not first convince of sin, neither does he convince of righteousness, and the peace is not his, and will not abide. But cui bono? What is the upshot of the whole, and whom is it to profit? In the first instance, the truth itself. It scatters the hallucination, so widely prevailing, that religious life should rise to its highest prosperity in such an atmosphere of errors and unfaithfulness. Does the world need to be told that there may be a certain luxuriance of theological science, when men of mind treat certain high themes with genial power and warmth, drawing and delighting crowds of students, and casting a nimbus of reputation around the seat of their teaching, whilst the truth that alone is sanctifying and saving is afar off, and the people perish? Thus it was with the scribes in the days of our Saviour on earth, thus with the great scholastic doctors, and thus it is with the great body of German professors. Even if a breathing of grace comes upon such a church as did visit Germany in 1817 after its neologian deluge, it fails of its end through the attempt men make to subordinate it to the revival of Lutheran errors. But, secondly, we say it is profitable in our own self-defence; for if our Churches coquet with those on the Continent, and, for the sake of great names and reminiscences, compliment and flatter those who make rites and festivals and sacraments the main religion, we are certain to be ourselves infected as those who go too freely about a house that has the plague. We shall find the evil we treat so indulgently at work undermining our principles at home. There has been already superabundant experience of this kind through the crowds of youth who have studied at German universities, and the young people who have been sent to be educated there, where so many have suffered such havoc in their souls as can never be compensated, and who at the same time introduce the leaven among ourselves. Once more, it is in the interest of our brethren of the true Church—we mean those brethren in Germany who are testifying and suffering for truth against error. There has been much injustice committed against Christ's people in this respect. Men suppose they have a mission to benefit fallen Churches, and think themselves entitled, with this high object, to court the good opinion of those at fault by turning their backs upon Christ's brethren who fill the place of his witnesses in sackcloth in these dark lands! Shall this carnal policy have a blessing? It is as when the good kings of Judah went down to help Ahab (Ephraim was also an erring church!) and Personality and Law. 707 turned their backs on the prophets who testified in God's Spirit against his abominations. The witnesses for truth on the Continent at this day are not less Christ's prophets, standing as they do on the ground of the Word, than Elijah and Elisha were in theirs. Shall such contempt of Christ's people bring a blessing? There has been too much of this in the Free Churches. Has it not recoiled on themselves? DANIEL EDWARD. ART. V.-Personality and Law: The Duke of Argyll.1 T is now sixteen years since the Duke of Argyll published The Reign of Law. In the preface to that work there was an intimation that the subject might be further pursued at some future time. That has now been done. In ten successive articles, or chapters, on "The Unity of Nature," published in the Contemporary Review, and soon to be gathered into a volume, we have a sequel to that work of great ability and value. By these works the Duke has laid his contemporaries and those who shall come after under an obligation it would be difficult to estimate. The Reign of Law was published opportunely. Physical science had achieved great triumphs both as science and as subservient to the practical purposes of life. In view of this, not her special devotees alone, but all right-thinking men were exultant. In the deeper insight into Nature, and in the more efficient and wider control of her forces, they found new stimulus to inquiry and an added dignity to life. But in connection with this, and deriving prestige from it, there had come in a materialistic philosophy, shrouding in twilight, if not extinguishing, the hope of a future life, tending to lower the tone of morality, and changing the benignant aspect of law into the sternness and rigidity of fate. Every physical event was under law. Law was fixed, settled, uniform. It must be, to be law. There was, therefore, under the reign. of law thus viewed, an order of events that was a barrier to prayer, and that no will could change. At this juncture it 1 From the Princeton Review. was an unspeakable relief to many to be shown that events are brought about, not by a single force or law, but by a combination and adjustment of forces not only admitting but requiring the interposition of purpose and will, and that this rigidity, this inflexibility and absolute uniformity of law, is the very feature of it that makes the whole system of laws capable of being adjusted by will and flexible to its purposes. This the Duke showed in The Reign of Law with great beauty and amplitude of illustration, and with a clearness that left no room for doubt. Scope was thus given to freedom, and a way was opened for an answer to prayer not only, but for an answer without a miracle. Another concomitant and outgrowth of the materialistic combined with the scientific movement was a denial of purpose in Nature as reached by contrivance. The question here involved is fundamental; for if purpose reached by contrivance cannot be found in Nature, man has no data on which to base the belief of an Intelligence and a Will back of Nature. In discussing this question the Duke showed that contrivance for the accomplishment of purpose is a necessity that arises out of the immutability of Natural Forces, and that the whole order of Nature is one vast system of contrivance by which the unchangeable demands of law are met and satisfied. As a part of this discussion we have an investigation of "the machinery of flight," than which there is nothing of the kind in the language more original and beautiful. But ample as is the exposition of contrivance in Nature, and satisfactory as it must be to those who admit it to be contrivance, perhaps a word may be added to meet the sceptical attitude of those who deny that. That there should be such denial on the part of any who study Nature is surprising, since purpose and contrivance, or that which simulates them, are the only stimulus and guide in such study. We study Nature for the thought that is in it. If we deny to it thought as revealed in contrivance and purpose, it means nothing, and can no more be studied than a book that means nothing. That there are in Nature numberless instances of what would be contrivance if arranged by man no one can doubt. No definition of a contrivance can be framed that these will not satisfy. The question then is, and the only question, Have we a right to regard these The Duke of Argyll. 709 If it arrangements as caused by a Being having Intelligence and Will analogous to our own? This we naturally believe. be not so, language is falsely constructed, for, as the Duke has shown, those who deny it are constantly obliged to use language that implies it. If it be not so, if these marvellous appearances of purpose and contrivance are mere semblances, then Nature herself is constructed on the principle of falsehood. It would be interesting, if there were space, to trace this phase of scepticism to its source. Passing to his papers on "The Unity of Nature," we find the Duke carrying over the universality of law as an element of that unity. In doing this he shows the extent of the unity, involving as it does the interaction of light and heat and gravitation, which seem to pervade all space, and the adjustment of these, together with that of the substances of Nature with their chemical laws, to the demands of organic and sensitive life. He shows, in opposition to the agnostics, that man has power to attain valid knowledge on these subjects, and still that he is no exception to the unity of Nature because of this, or because of his capacity, denied to the brutes, of improvement as a race. He does show, however, that man is an exception to that unity by his capacity of retrogression or development downwards, and by the fact of such development. "That," he says in his sixth paper, "which is rarely exceptional, and indeed absolutely singular in man, is the persistent tendency of his development to take a wrong direction." He shows, as Whately had shown before him, that man could not have been originally a savage; and in treating of the history of religion he makes it clear that "the famous generalisation by Comte of the four necessary stages in the history of religion" is baseless. Instead of the order fetishism, polytheism, monotheism, and then Comtism, he shows that monotheism was first. Round each of the points above mentioned, as well as others treated of, strong interest gathers at the present time. In the discussion of these we are struck with the clearness of the statements made, and with the ample equipment of knowledge in natural history, in physics, in historical research, and in mental and moral science that reveals itself as it is needed. We admire also the uniform candour manifested towards those of opposing views, and the modesty which led the Duke to say, |