to man; and earnestly endeavour to find authority for such a hope in the Scriptures. But we who have discarded this false dogma are under no such constraint. We believe that the children of Adam, by ordinary generation, are mortals, and not immortals; that their natural life terminates in death; that no one can live again, much less live for ever, unless he is raised up by the Almighty power of God; that it is only by a new spiritual birth and the impartation of the Divine life, through Christ, that he becomes an heir of everlasting life; and that God acts as truly in His sovereign capacity in the bestowment of this higher life, as of any other, that no one can claim it. All that any creature can claim is, that he shall be treated justly, according to the conditions of the life that has been given him. And so we believe that God will reward and punish all the children of Adam, for the deeds done in the body, according to the light that has been given them, and for none other; that some will be beaten with few stripes, or none at all, unless they shall deserve them; and others with many. It behoves every one to make the most of the opportunities that are accorded to him; and so we are exhorted to do; and he will find the full measure of his just reward in doing this. No one can reasonably complain that the higher privileges, and the consequently higher responsibilities of others have not been accorded to him. No subject of the British Government can reasonably complain that he was not born a prince or a noble, nor that the opportunity of becoming one is not accorded to him. The toad cannot complain of injustice in that he was not constituted a bird; nor any brute, in that he was not constituted a man ; nor any man in that he was not constituted something different from what God made him. Nor can anyone reasonably demand another life after the present life is ended; certainly not, if he has failed to make the most of the privileges, whether many or few, that are given to him in this. Why should those who close their eyes to the light which is now given them, who aspire to nothing better or higher than the gratification of their animal appetites and passions, and who are constantly violating even the law of their lower natures, and who sink themselves even below the level of many of the brutes around them, be thought to have any claim on their Maker for still higher gifts and opportunities? What expectation or desire will be disappointed in them-excepting the desire to prolong their unworthy lives, which is common to all animals-when their natural life shall end? or, what loss will there be to the universe of God? His resources are infinite, and there will be no lack of guests in that world of light and life: as there is no lack in the harvest, though many of the seeds are lost in the gathering. I cannot but think that this hypothesis of another probation for man after the termination of his natural life, which is so contrary to reason and to the teachings of Nature, as well as of God's Word, is a device to soften somewhat the hideous features of the Augustinian system which the Platonic doctrine of a compulsory immortality has fastened upon it. But that those of my Christian brethren who have come out so far from under the dark shadow of this great delusion as to see the falsity of its main postulate, should stop halfway, in the twilight, as it were, and still cling to this fancy that owes, not only its origin, but all its plausibility to this false postulate, and that by their position and arguments in support of it should contribute so much to strengthen the cause of our common adversaries and weaken our own, is to me a source of deep regret, and indeed of discouragement. Let me beg of them carefully to reconsider this question in the light of the suggestions above made, and of others which may occur to them, but which cannot now be noticed. The Scriptural argument on this question must be deferred to another time. Philadelphia. J. H. PETTINGELL, D.D. SCIENCE AND FAITH. IT is very common to hear it said at the present time that, while science is a matter of knowledge, religion is a matter of faith; and hence the inference that the former is clear and certain, and the latter vague and uncertain. Now this is not only a very superficial way of talking, but involves a pernicious fallacy which I desire in this article to expose. First of all, let us understand what we mean by science and what we mean by religion. The words, both in Greek and Latin, from which the word science is derived, mean to know. Science, therefore, signifies knowledge. But in a technical sense, we generally understand by a science, knowledge arranged or formulated into some system. But all positive or certain knowledge pertains to facts: how facts exist, or forces operate, or, in the language of the schools, the quo modo, is a matter of opinion about which scientists and philosophers are often not only widely apart, but frequently in direct antagonism. Both in physics and metaphysics there are various schools of thought, and manifold are the theories held by scientists and philosophers, from Plato, Pythagoras and Aristotle, down to Darwin, Tyndall, and Spencer. When men speak of religion as a matter of faith, in contradistinction to knowledge or reason, in view of science, they mean Christianity, and in an objective sense; for religion, in a subjective sense, is, of course, a matter purely of personal and individual experience, and in this respect could not be contrasted with any scientific system. But now observe that Christianity is a religion of facts. All its great doctrines rest upon historical facts-as the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and the Ascension. So, too, the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, the establishment of the Church, and the conversion of the nations by the preaching of the Gospel. are facts of history, just as susceptible of proof as any other facts; and, what is more, the existence of Christianity these nineteen centuries as one of the most important factors in the civilisation and progress of the race, nay, as the mightiest moral force in the world, is evident to all intelligent persons. The Christian religion, therefore, is a matter of knowledge and of reason as well as of faith, just as much as any science or philosophy. Faith is not opposed to knowledge or reason; indeed, there can be no true faith without knowledge. It may not be the knowledge of sight or of absolute demonstration, but the knowledge of testimony; that which comes through reliable witnesses, whose witness is subjected to a discriminating judgment, a reasonable analysis. Hence to say that "where faith begins reason ends," as did David Hume, is simply absurd. A far wiser saying, or aphorism, was that of Richard Hooker, that "Faith is the highest exercise of reason." And this is as true in science as in religion, because there are mysteries in both which the finite mind cannot grasp or solve, which lead the true philosopher as well as devout Christian to acknowledge his own ignorance and insignificance, and to adore a Being of infinite wisdom and power. The circle of absolute knowledge of the wisest, even as far as scientific facts are concerned, is exceedingly contracted; and when you come to causes and effects, Nature and laws, forces and operations, the scholars and savans are in the dark as much as the unlearned. Outside of this circle, so far as positive knowledge is concerned, all is unknowable, and hence all are agnostics. Still, theories, beliefs, or creeds, are held, and have great influence upon the world, because in nearly all the transactions of life men act upon probabilities, and walk by faith and not by sight. Prof. Virchow, of the Berlin University, one of the most distinguished evolutionists in Europe, admits that faith is as necessary in science as in religion. Prof. Wm. Pierce, the author of a book on mathematics, which it has been said not more than three persons in the United States were able to understand, utters these significant words: "Faith in the supernatural is as necessary in science as to the conduct of life; and the ripest scholar is not wise if he ever leave behind him the filial spirit which cries at every stage, Our Father, which art in heaven.'" Prof. Gray, of Harvard College, says: "Faith, in a just sense of the word, assumes as prominent a place in science as in religion. It is indispensable in both." Prof. Cooke, of the same College, in his admirable work, entitled, " Religion and Chemistry," uses these words: "Moreover, faith is not peculiar to religion. All our knowledge, not the result of personal observation and investigation, is held on faith, that is, on trust in other men; and absolutely all knowledge is held on trust in the authority of our own powers. Much of the knowledge that we hold without question is utterly beyond the capacity of our own intellects to verify; and moreover, no one doubts the existence of truths which now lie beyond the scope of the most gifted genius, but which hereafter may be attained by man." Now these admissions from such men are exceedingly weighty, and ought to put to silence those small philosophers of our day who prate so much about science as something positive and certain, and sneer at religion as simply a matter of faith; who only boast of their knowledge because so ignorant. For men of real learning and great ability are the first to concede how little they know either of matter or spirit. "Science," says Pascal, one of the master-minds of the seventeenth century, "has two extremities to which we tend; and the pursuit of knowledge is but a course between two ignorances, as human life itself is only a wayfaring from grave to grave. The first is pure natural ignorance, in which all men find themselves at birth. The other extremity is the conclusion to which all great minds come, when, having run through all that men can know, they find that they know nothing, and meet in the same ignorance whence they set out. But it is a learned ignorance which has. become conscious of itself." A philosopher of a much later date, of great distinction, Sir William Hamilton, gives expression to almost the same thoughts, in these words: "There are two sorts of ignorance: we philosophise to escape ignorance, and the consummation of our philosophy is ignorance. We start from one, we repose in the other. If, as living creatures, 'We are such stuff As dreams are made of, our little life So, as cognizant intelligences, our dream of knowledge is a little rounded with darkness. The highest reach of human science is, indeed, the scientific recognition of human ignorance. Qui nescit ignorare, ignorat scire.' And, asks Mr. Huxley, one of the great lights of modern science, and a leading evolutionist: "For, after all, what do we know of this terrible matter,' except as a name for the unknown and hypothetical cause of states of our consciousness? And what do we know of that spirit over whose threatened extinction by matter a great lamentation is arising, like that which was heard at the death of Pan, except that it also is a name for unknown and hypothetical cause or condition of states of consciousness? In other words, matter and spirit are but names for the imaginary sub-strata of groups of phenomena." But now, if savans are so ready to confess their ignorance, what shall we say of the common people; nay, of ordinary scholars? What do they know even of the truth of the most familiar facts of science, to say nothing of laws and operations? They receive all the facts of Astronomy, Chemistry, and Geology, at second-hand— on the testimony of others- and hence all their knowledge is most emphatically that of faith. What, for example, do they know of the sun's distance, or that of a fixed star, from the earth? Or of the size and weight of a planet? or the velocity with which it moves? or the velocity of light or electricity? Or what do they know of the almost omnipotent powers of oxygen? or the conservation and correlation of force ? or the formation of the rocks and the fossils imbedded in them, which indicate the various epochs and ages of the world, save what is told them by scientific men? Suppose I were to ask a man of ordinary intelligence, "Do you believe that the sun is ninety-five millions of miles from the earth, and that light comes from it to us in eight minutes-hence, travelling about two hundred thousand miles in a second?" He would no doubt say, "Yes." But why? Did he ever prove it? No. Could he, if he tried? Probably not. It is a matter of faith, then, is it not? Yes. In whom? Scientific men; men who have the mathematical ability and the time to give to such problems. And yet they have only approximated to the truth; for it is not yet positively settled what is the exact distance of the sun from the earth. If we now turn for a moment from Nature to man himself, we shall find problems and mysteries still harder to solve. For who can tell how the body and soul are connected ? or how the mind and the brain, or the will and actions, are related? or explain the manifold phenomena of sensation and reflection? Or who shall decide between two such philosophers as Descartes and Leibnitz? one holding that the mind at first is a tabula rasa or a blank, the other to innate ideas. Then hear what Pascal says: "Man is to himself the most marvellous object in Nature, for he cannot conceive what body is, still less what is spirit; and less than all, how body can be united to spirit." There is, therefore, very little that is certain or positive in mental philosophy or psychology. We make the case still stronger, so far as natural science is concerned, when we consider the changes that have taken place, which show how unreliable, after all, are the deductions of learned men, who, in the age in which they lived, were regarded as almost infallible. Take, for example, the science of Astronomy. For two thousand years the Ptolemaic system of the universe was held as true; a system which held this earth the great centre over which the sun, stars, and planets revolve. Again, in Natural Philosophy, for many centuries it was an axiom that "Nature abhors a vacuum," and this accounted for the rising of water in a pump. This error was not exploded until Torricelli, in 1608, demonstrated his theory of atmospheric pressure. In geology there has been no end to changes within a century. There is scarcely a geologist to-day who holds the theories put forth as science by Dr. Buckland, in the "Bridgewater |