the vigor with which the first of American periodicals has thrown off an element so deleterious as criticism.

REASON IN RELIGION. BY FREDERIC HENRY HEDGE. Boston: Walker, Fuller & Co.

"The various essays which are brought together under this title, discuss questions of Theology, and the opinions which mankind holds upon the most interesting philosophical and spiritual themes. The author's aim is to state, as fairly as he can, conflicting views, and to propound his own solution. In this labor, Mr. Hedge appears to represent the condition of Unitarian thinking which prefers a rational to a traditional ground of authority in matters pertaining to the spiritual life, and strives to interpret and accommodate the sacred history without forsaking it."

(Further than this the Atlantic does not venture.)

He stands where the juste-milieu, promising to become thoroughly critical, still holds with average Unitarianism upon some essential points: so that when the Left-Wing would claim him for a leader, he advances towards an unexpected pacification with the Right: not, however, effecting it with the more orthodox of the party, because his intellect is still too clear, and his common sense too shrewd. For they insist that in every collision between Science and Scripture, Science must give way before the text: while he claims that the interpretations of a genuine science can abrogate it. At such points, Mr. Hedge narrowly escapes admitting the supreme authority of Reason; but there appears to be some recoil of a cool and cautious temperament, which has balanced statements so long, and so heartily hated the crudeness which sometimes devotes itself to speculation, that he jumps back again upon some of the printed representations which the soul has once made of its experiences; this he does just when you are supposing that he had taken passage with the soul, which by developing, can alone explain and justify itself. A perilous jump, the Orthodox liberals aver, since he had pushed off too far before it seemed to him reasonable to attempt it. A useless expenditure of a manly intellect, the Radicals exclaim, who wonder that it does not feel quite safe in the deep-keeled and stout-ribbed buoyancy of the Master Builder. In short, of course, whenever a man essays that backward jump from the act of reasoning to the record that contains reason, he lands in the juste-milieu.

This is shown, for instance, in the admirable Preliminary to the book upon "Rational Christianity," entitled, "The Cause of Reason the Cause of Faith." After vindicating Rationalism out of Scripture itself, out of History, and out of the necessary constitution of the human mind, and making, in this review, some very clear and satisfactory statements which every liberal thinker would subscribe, and cordially thank Mr. Hedge for such an opportunity, he suddenly pauses to say: "I am far from maintaining that Christianity must stand or fall with the belief in miracles; but I do maintain that Christian Churches, as organized bodies of believers must stand or fall with the Christian confession, that is, the confession of Christ as

divinely human Master and Head." And we find that he has all along, while making such a thorough proclamation of the supremacy of Reason, assumed a boundary-line beyond which Reason must not go. But why should not the human reason, to which the divinity of Christ is addressed, accept that undoubted fact upon grounds of reason, and with all the consequences they involve? The Orthodox will say that Mr Hedge has already speculated so far that his boundary line is useless; the Radical will ask, why should a single fact or presumption of a fact be exempt from human search and recognition? How can any assumption that a fact or two must be taken for granted without rationalizing, become an organic and vital distinction involved in the Christian confession? Reason itself is the only preliminary fact, without which, neither living or confessing can proceed. And Reason itself is a limit as well as an expanse. It is a work of superfluity to furnish it with bars. But Reason includes, as Mr. Hedge himself would gladly have all men know, the intuitive sensibility for moral and spiritual truth and to this we hasten to refer in the interest of Mr. Hedge's own fine faith in Reason, the fact of the divinity of Christ. Does Mr. Hedge dread to leave the cognizable to our power of recognition? No, but he states that the power of recognition must cognize in this fact something exceptional to the recognizing power. Is it not more consistent to transfer the whole business to a thorough going external Authority, that permits Reason only to recognize the rationality of such pretended certitude?

Elsewhere, as on pages 241, 242, 260, Mr. Hedge seems on the point of remanding the personality of Christ back to the contemplation of the unbiased and independent Reason, as when he says: "The heart that seeks will find a practical solution of it suited to its need; but all will not find the same;" and again, "in the sphere of spiritual contemplation, no personality abides but the ever-becoming personality of God, conceived by faith, and born of faith in the individual soul." But his more conservative intention still lingers in the sentence, "whatever derived and secondary power by Divine permission may hold that place, is a temporary viceregent, occupying a borrowed throne, and exercising a delegated sway." This temporary viceregent is the divinely human Master and Head. And yet, Dr. Baur of Tubingen, and Theodore Parker, would gladly quote the fine saying: "what was true of Christ historically is potentially true of all men. There is nothing between God and man, but man's self-alienation through waywardness and sin." Is it certain, then, as stated on page 228, that “all candid inquiry must agree that Jesus felt himself 'sent' and ordained by God, in a quite peculiar and exceptional sense?"

We believe that a similar judgment of having travelled so far from tradition, that

"Should we wade no more,

Returning were as tedious as go o'er,"

will be made upon Mr. Hedge's treatment of miracles, by all the Orthodox liberals, who are told that the modern repugnance to miracles is partly due to the use which has been made of them as the evidences and authority

of Christian truth. "Miracles are valueless as proof of divine authority because, with our views of such matters, it is easier to believe in the thing to be proved than it is to believe in the alleged proof." The question will naturally recur, of what use, then, are miracles? To this, Mr. Hedge has no satisfactory answer. He simply says that there are more things in heaven and earth than the understanding dreams of, and that if he rejects everything miraculous from the sacred record, he must reject the whole. This is merely a surmise that miracles are possible, and that the accounts of reputed miracles serve as mortar to spiritual truth in Scripture. Yet Mr. Hedge picks out a quantity of this mortar, when he confesses that he cannot receive some of the miracles; and he appears to desist only when his freedom threatens to undermine the history. This does not furnish to any school of believers a philosophical process for retaining the supernatural element in the life of Christ.

But Mr. Hedge also desists from this decomposing criticism because he believes in the a priori possibility of miracles: and we find an argument addressed to those who reject all miracles because they are reputed violations of the "order of nature." To this the genuine supernaturalist and the rationalist will unitedly raise the same demur; "You have robbed miracles of their use and station in the Christian scheme, of what consequence is it to prove them not impossible? We do not care to have them possible if their value is exploded. If they do nothing but hold the texts in some kind of continuity upon the printed page, are they worth the surmise that science may yet declare their possibility. When will miracles, if possible, be useful? And if they are useless, how can they be ever possible?"

How many things could be referred to some hoped for legitimation by science, if the power of a traditional education lent to them sufficient interest. The Chimera and the Tragelaph might then not be impossible, however useless. It is plain, that this suggestion is the last resort of an intelligence that has stormed all the old lines of the supernatural, and shrinks from attacking the citadel. But caution was sacrificed at the very first parallel which reached and undermined the doctrine, so vital to any theory of the supernatural, that miracles are evidences of Christian truth, and proof of divine authority. After this, science will not think miracles worth the saving.

When Mr. Hedge says that "what we call the order of nature is but the statement, in objective terms, of the limitation of our human experience," we appeal to the hint for a better definition, which is found in the sentence at the head of page 287, "if the truths which relate to the kingdoms of nature come by inspiration, how much more the truths which relate to the kingdom of heaven!" As the divine intellect inspires the finite to develope itself, heaven's first law of order is restated by every province of nature, and her modes of operation are perceived to be the projections of the infinite logic. No science is possible until the human intuition receives and transmits the divine methods. Science could not live a single day, by analysis and synthesis, by induction and deduction, by patient observation and Kep

lerian hypothesis, if the scientific intellect did not contain the divine categories which planned and uphold the universe. So that the "order of nature," is a continual correction and amplification of the limitations of human experience by the higher modes of the human reason which are diviners of God's creative methods. They descend into apparent disorder, and rhythm and harmony commence. They disenchant all superstitions, let in light and air to ventilate places which mystery has made unwholesome, and nourish and refine our awe by disproving the exceptional. The Chimera would have no chance at all, unless it had been originally a Hebrew one. A Greek or a Vedaic improbability would not be worth trying to interpolate into the consistent logic which appears in the uniformity of nature. If we hold no stock in a superstition we do not care to "bull the market,” because, as Mr. Hedge justly remarks, “as a matter of external evidence to be weighed in the balance of probabilities, the a priori presumption against such facts outweighs any testimony that can be adduced in its support." If so, and if its use exists no longer, let us not plague science to surmise or to search for its possibility.

We anticipate that another objection will be made against this minimizing the value and rank of miracles, by the more liberal thinkers, who will ask why, if one rejects them entirely, must the whole history also be rejected, which contains the self-evident truths of Christianity. "Attempts to prove the truth of Christianity are like attempts to prove the existence of light. The light shines, and proves itself by shining. . . . . This moral light-the light of the Gospel-which shines into every soul that is willing to receive it, and which makes our soul's day,—what can we say of it that shall be so convincing as itself?" That is well said, to our hearty satisfaction. The moral light shines through all the obstructions of the narration, notwithstanding the miracles which Mr. Hedge cannot receive, and side by side with those which he retains. Add to or subtract from the miracles, and this moral light would still shine to kindle the answering light in human hearts. How can such history be undermined? Only by annihilating the moral and spiritual powers which receive its appeal. Eliminate those from man, and a miracle to every text could not save the record. Preserve them, and the soul's vital spark leaps from truth to truth, across the spaces filled by the miraculous, which separates and does not combine. Mr. Hedge himself shows that man's wit has no luting to bind the moral and thaumaturgic.

[Here the Atlantic begins to risk some approbation, but omits the closing paragraph which was perhaps too strong.]

It is a ripe and well-considered volume, admirable in treatment, extremely effective against all shades of evangelical speculation; judged from its own stand-point and within its limits, it is one of the best contributions of the liberal school to the literature of the country. May the freedom of our impersonal criticism stand commended to its magnanimous and genial author. JOHN WEISS.

The fusion and equality of races is not coming through conquest, but through intelligence and philanthropy. The noble and the ignoble forms of interest in the invisible world alike proceed not now from despair of the present life, but from full confidence in its capacity to receive the largest revelations. And the sense of the Divine Unity, and providential care is now the issue of the largest scientific knowledge, and the most impressive social and political teachings. The elements which resulted in early Christianity could not possibly effect such a manifestation of God as these signs of our time foreshadow.

In this faith, we would help, in our measure, to seek and lay the better foundations which eighteen Christian centuries, and the religious and democratic lessons of the nineteenth, have been preparing. Let us be grateful for the gifts of historical Christianity, but let us not fail to hear in the majestic roll of these tides of science and humanity, of nature and the soul, the voice of the living God. "BEHOLD I COME QUICKLY, and my messENGERS PREPARE MY WAY."

Of course, we do not mean to affirm that all of radicalism is to be represented in our magazine, but we have presented it to you, readers, for what it is worth, asking no favors which your impartial judgment shall not dictate. If THE RADICAL has your approval, as an effort in the right direction, shall we not claim your assistance? We do not hesitate. We ask of you, friends, your earnest co-operation to extend the circulation of THE RADICAL, in that measure which is for you now possible. This may prove one means by which we may all serve well our time. Seek and find the heart and purse of all earnest people whom it is your good fortune to know. We must enlist every man and woman to be glad messengers of good tidings. The number of such people in every community is greater than generally realized. Who cannot think of half a dozen "radical" neighbors ?

We shall not do wrong if we urge upon you the duty of self-sacrifice. That is something which RADICALS must welcome and accept. It is the certain accompaniment of all radical working and achievement. Radicalism did never yet pay large dividends. It can mean nothing of that kind to-day. It means much disappointment, much hard, persistent struggling; it demands faith and courage, with a patience added thereto which shall be a virtue for eternity, if need be! It calls for souls which surrender to no adversity. Turning every defeat into new determination, such souls may well claim all power on earth and in heaven. For "God delegates himself" to these "million deputies." And yet are we not wrong in urging that there is a real sacrifice to make in a true work? Rather is it not true that he who so loseth his life shall more surely find it? What is this self which so cheats us day by day into its service? Sacrifice that as completely as we will, the more is life abundantly ours!