only serve to advance and strengthen the cause of Christianity.1 Prior to the dawn of revelation nature existed alone on the earth, and had a necessary work to do in preparing the way for its advent; 2 and as the old Mosaic economy was not destroyed, but fulfilled in the coming of Christ, so revelation came not to set at nought, but to elevate and give a higher value and significance to the laws of nature, which, 1 "The law of nature implanted in men's souls was designed to lead them to their Creator."-(Rev. J. SMITH.) 66 2" Whilst, on the one hand, the seed of divine truth, out of which Christianity sprang, was communicated to reason by divine revelation, so, on the other hand, reason, unfolding itself from beneath, had to learn by experience, especially among that great historical people, the Greeks, how far singly and by its own power it could advance the knowledge of divine things." (NEANDER.) 'The three great historical nations had each in its own peculiar way to co-operate in preparing the soil on which Christianity was to be planted, the Jews on the side of the religious element, the Greeks on the side of science and art, and the Romans, as masters of the world, on the side of the political element,-when the fulness of the time was come and Christ appeared-when the goal of history had thus been reached then it was that through Him, and by the power of the Spirit that proceeded from Him, by the might of Christianity, all the threads of human development, which had hitherto been kept apart, were to be brought together, and interwoven in one web."-(Ditto.) "The ancients had done their work when Christianity appeared. They had shown how far the human mind can go under the best auspices to find out a religion suited to the race. They had prepared the world for the most speedy propagation of the new system of religion. They had furnished models of literature to be useful in all time."- (ALBERT BARNES.) "He (Paul) declares that to leave men to seek after Him was the purpose which God had in view in distributing the nations over the face of the earth. By this means the nations had the entire revelation of God in nature and in Providence subjected to their study, so that, if the knowledge of God is by any natural means to be obtained by man, the amplest opportunity of obtaining it has thus been supplied to the race. This afforded an experimental proof of the utter inability of philosophy or human reason, without a revelation, to find out God, and to construct a satisfying religion for man." -(Dr. W. L. ALEXANDER.) "The wisdom of Divine Providence was conspicuous in the fact that, previously to the introduction of Christianity, all the resources of human wisdom had been exhausted in efforts to confer upon men true knowledge and true happiness."(Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation.) "Men were not commanded to believe in order to obtain salvation, till by experience they were convinced of the insufficiency of reason to direct them how to be restored to the favour of God."-(Dr. W. BATES: Spiritual Perfection.) After it appeared that the world, by their human wisdom in the ages of ignorance and corruption, could not attain to a right knowledge of God and of the manner of worshipping Him acceptably, it pleased the divine wisdom of Providence, by a method which they accounted foolishness, .. to bring to salvation such as were sincerely disposed to embrace and practise the truth."-(Dr. S. CLARKE: Sermons.) 66 equally with itself, have God for their Author, and have alike for their object the perfecting of the race. The more we come to know of the laws of nature, and the better we comprehend the principles of divine revelation, the more clearly will it be seen that there is nothing contained in the one that is opposed or detrimental to the other; but that, on the contrary, the one is directly calculated to promote and further the cause of the other.2 1" In Christianity nothing truly human is crushed, but, on the contrary, exalted and glorified. Christianity is the religion of humanity."-(Dr. BRÜCKNER: The Church of the Present.) "The prerogative of the divine Word is not so much that of announcing a new morality as of giving power to practise the old."--(VINET.) "To tell the truth is not a duty merely because God commands it, but God commands it because it is a duty. . . . Kindness is not beautiful merely because Christ loves it, but Christ loves it because it is beautiful."-(Rev. R. W. DALE.) Though Christ hath brought greater light into the world, he never meant to put out any of that natural light which God hath set up in our souls."-(Whole Duty of Man.) "Dominus naturalia legis non dissolvit sed extendit, sed et implevit."-(IRENÆUS.) "The work was one of restoration, of return and of enlargement, not of innovation.”--(W. E. GLADSTONE.) 2"The two volumes of nature and grace are so distinctly perfect, contain so much true beauty and solid worth, that, in order to be thoroughly admired, they can want nothing more than to be well understood. And, moreover, they correspond so strictly. . . and are so peculiarly fitted to illustrate, unfold, and enforce each other, that nothing can redound more to the credit and esteem of either than a nearer contemplation of both. Doubtless, the more intimately men are acquainted with them the greater excellences they will discover, and the severest search, if honestly made, must end in deriving both from the same original."-(Rev. J. BALGUY.) "I am sure . . . that we shall not make the highest progress with our ministerial work under Christ for the salvation of men's souls, except in connection with advancing knowledge and culture of every kind. . . The thing to be done is as complex as man's nature and God's world; and we must take note of all the elements, and be willing to have help from all the workers in all the parts. . . If we have not sympathy with all our fellow-workers, and with the various plan, so far as we understand it, by which this world is being educated to its manhood and perfection in every sense, we shall do little or nothing in helping to roll the mighty wheels of this world's providence forward in the way they are going, While, on the other hand, I am equally sure that the men of the world-chiefs of its parties and schools-whether of thought or action, will fail, and, in the end far more miserably, in all their attempts to carry on the world's progress without the hallowing and animating power of the Christian religion."-(Dr. RALEIGH: Religion and Modern Progress.) "I am convinced that there is nothing to lose, but everything to gain, by a true and careful study of God's works; that the more light we can get, the more cultivation of our understanding, and the more thorough discipline of our intellect by the study of all this which God has scattered in such wonderful profusion around us, so much the better shall we be able, not only to serve Him in our vocation, but to understand the meaning of His spiritual reve If men would but see and acknowledge that in everything they are subject to law, and if they would seek for the cause of every calamity, the source of every evil, in a broken law, then would evil soon cease, and this earth become again a paradise.1 lation." (Bishop TEMPLE.) "To sin is to act on an irrational principle." (CLEMENT of Alexandria.) "Religion does, as a general rule, produce those virtues and induce that conduct which, by way of natural consequence, work the stuff that life is made of into something happy and prosperous."-(Rev. T. BINNEY.) 1 All the works of God seem to be under law of some kind. The heavens and the earth obey the ordinances of God's appointment, and the lower animals are led by the instincts with which their Creator has endowed them. When we ascend the scale of creation, we find that God's responsible creatures are still under law, but that law of a higher kind a moral law. This law is the golden chain by which the Governor of the universe binds his intelligent creatures to Himself and to one another."-(Dr. M'Cosн.) "Nec erit alia lex Romæ, alia Athenis, alia nunc, alia posthac, sed et omnes gentes et omni tempore, et sempiterna et immortalis continebit, unusque erit communis, quasi magister et imperator omnium Deus."-(CICERO.) "The unvarying tendency of my mind is to regard the whole laws of the animal economy and of the universe as the direct dictates of the Deity; and in urging compliance with them it is with the earnestness and reverence due to a divine command that I do it."-(Dr. A. COMBE.) Dr. JOHN BROWN, in speaking of Dr. Andrew Combe and his labours "to bring back the bodily economy of man to its allegiance to the Supreme Guide," continues: "This is something which, if acted upon by ten thousand men and women for five-andtwenty years, with the same simplicity, energy, constancy, and intelligence with which, for half his lifetime, it animated Dr. Combe, would so transform the whole face of society, and work such mighty changes in the very substance, so to speak, of human nature, in all its ongoings, as would as much transcend the physical marvels and glories of our time, and the progress made thereby in civilization and human well-being, as the heavens are higher than the earth, and as our moral relations, our conformity to the will and the image of God, are-more than any advance in mere knowledge and power-man's highest exercise and his chief end." The mass of suffering which man sternly mounts upon to arraign the Deity is heaped up by himself only, and might be swept away by the same hands that placed it there. Three generations of a wise and virtuous race would nearly efface the mischiefs of all the ages of sin and sorrow which have preceded them."-(Small Books on Great Subjects.) "Life consists in the maintenance of inner actions corresponding with outer actions;" and "the degree of life varies as the degree of correspondence." "Taking the extreme case, it is clear that, did the actions of an organism accurately respond to all the co-existences and sequences of all things whatever in its environment, its life would be eternal.”—(HERBERT SPENCER: Principles of Psychology.) "In the present state all which we enjoy and a great part of what we suffer is put in our own power. For pleasure and pain are the consequences of our actions; and we are endued by the Author of our nature with capabilities of foreseeing these consequences. 66 I know not that we have any one kind or degree of enjoyment but We have thus, we trust, in some measure prepared the way for establishing a closer and more intimate connection between religion and education, by removing some of the errors that, to our mind, not unfrequently invest Christianity. We go upon the belief that it is God, and not the Evil One that governs the world; that it is good and not evil towards which all things are tending; that a bright and glorious future yet awaits mankind in this world; and that all things are at present constituted in the best possible way for the bringing about of this,-in other words, that this 2 by the means of our own actions."-(BUTLER: Analogy.) "By prudence and care we may for the most part pass our days in tolerable ease and quiet; or, on the contrary, we may by rashness, ungoverned passion, wilfulness, or even by negligence, make ourselves as miserable as ever we please. And many do please to make themselves extremely miserable, i.e., to do what they know beforehand will render them so. They follow those ways, the fruit of which they know by instruction, example, experience, will be disgrace and poverty, and sickness and untimely death." -(.Ditto) "The philosopher who will understand and interpret history must really believe that God, not the Devil or his punchinello, governs the world."(Chevalier BUNSEN.) "It lies we know at the root of all religion to believe that this system of things is really from God; that the divine thought presided at its origin, and that the same is present, upholding and carrying forward this beautiful order with which we are now encompassed."-(Professor SHAIRP: Religion and Culture.) "We live not only in a world of change, we live in a world of progress. There has been a gradual and evidently an intended advancemeat in the physical and intellectual amelioration of the race.”—(Dr. M'Cosн.) 66 "We live in the lively expectation of a coming era when the work which the first man failed to accomplish will be performed by the Second Man, which is Jesus Christ.' Let but human nature as the root of bitterness be regenerated, and then all its capabilities, all its acquisitions and improvements, will be devoted to the most beneficent purposes, and will change the very aspect of the world. The state of the earth depends essentially on the character of its principal inhabitant; and when the character of man is renovated, the state of our world will be renovated also; the agencies at present conflicting will become conspiring; that which is barren will become fruitful; and that which is hurtful will become beneficent."-(Dr. M'Cosн.) "That onward movement of the race in knowledge, in power, in worth, and in happiness "has gladdened and cheered all who believe, and who through long ages of gloom and misery and havoc have still believed, that truth is strong next to the Almighty-that goodness is the law of His universe, and happiness its end." (Dr. JOHN BROWN: Hora Subseoiva.) "Behold how creation is redeemed by the redemption of the Church; how full it is of all manner of tame and industrious beasts; behold how full it is of horses and of chariots; behold how the wild and ravenous behold world is perfect as regards the condition of those who live in it.1 In this way all things in nature are at work for our good, and there is nothing therein that is opposed to grace, nor is reason opposed to revelation, or morality to reli 4 beasts have ceased from the land-the dragon and the crooked serpent." —(EDWARD IRVING.) "A brighter morn awaits the human day, When every transfer of earth's natural gifts Who, like a penitent libertine, shall start, Look back, and shudder at his younger years." (SHELLEY.) 1 "We hold it to be of great moment to establish the doctrine that this world is perfect, considered in reference to those who dwell in it.”— (Dr. M'COSH.) 2 "It is the characteristic scheme of His providence to provide for the happiness of His creatures in every state of being, if they do not deliberately rebel against Him."--(JOHN BOWDLer.) "God has made all creation doctrinal, full of the truth on which He seeks to mould the whole of man's inner undying nature."-(Rev. J. BALDWIN BROWN.) 66 3" Christianity has everything to hope and nothing to fear from the advancement of philosophy."-(Dr. CHALMERS.) Science, or a proper knowledge of the things that belong to the present life, is so far from being blameable, considered in itself, that it is good and ordained of God." –(T. A ́KEMPIS.) "All light and science, under all shapes, in all degrees of perfection, is of God."-(T. CARLYLE.) "Every new discovery in science yields its contributions to the proofs and illustrations of the wisdom, the power, and goodness of God."-(Dr. M‘CosH.) "What are the laws of science but ideas of God-those regulative types of thought by which God created, moves, and rules the world? ... ... All great discoveries not purely accidental" are "gifts to insight, and the true man of science" is "he who can best ascend into the thoughts of God, he who burns before the throne in the clearest, purest, mildest light of reason.”—(HORACE BUSHNELL.) "He that takes away reason to make way for revelation puts out the light of both; and does much the same as if he would persuade a man to put out his eyes, the better to receive the remote light of an invisible star by a telescope." When God "illumines the mind with supernatural light, he does not extinguish that which is natural. Reason must be our last judge and guide in everything." (JOHN LOCKE.) "Nothing can be more binding upon reasonable creatures than reason.' -(Rev. J. BALGUY.) "We may justly say that faith is an act of reason.' (Dr. PYE SMITH.) "Whatever is really contrary to reason is also contrary to revelation."-(Ditto.) "Reason is in a sense the Word of God, viz., that which he hath written upon our minds and hearts, as Scripture is that which is written in a book. The former is the word whereby he |