We cannot leave the subject without a few words upon the probable influence of Robertson, and his school of thought, upon the mind of the age, and especially upon the future of the pulpit and Church. The fact of his influence is unmistakable; and it is so wide-spread, and reaches so many orders of minds, as to prove that it is rather a sign of the times, a mark of the general growth of liberal principles, than a casual incident or happy congeniality. The most important of all events is growth itself. We must judge of an age of the world as we judge of an individual life, and give more importance to organic development than to mechanical methods or speculative opinions. We have certainly grown up into a higher stature of thought and faith. Our height and muscles, more than our words, show that we have put away childish things, and have become men. As well argue down the beard and the roast-beef of manhood, and plead for the smooth lip and the milk of childhood, as to argue down the life that speaks to our life in Robertson's pages, and to try to bring back the sway of the old dictators. There is especial adaptation in his works to our American mind, and to our liberal Christian community. We shall write more simply and honestly if we make the case our own, and consider his service to ourselves and our children.

was.

Our point of starting in theology is very much what his We Unitarians went out from the extreme Evangelical school of New-England Calvinism, and have been, very much in his temper, working our way towards a satisfactory platform. We have neither gone over to the Tractarians nor to the Deists, but have kept our position within the Church, acknowledging Jesus Christ to be our Lord. We desire to be Liberal Christians, very much as he wished to be; and we claim to be a branch of that Broad Church to which he belonged. We are grateful to him for the help of his large and brave spirit, as well as for the light of his leading thought. If we are to define his intellectual service to us, the statement would be somewhat thus:

We came out from the old Calvinism, because it seemed at once to offend our reason and our conscience by denying the

unity of God, and affirming the utter depravity of human nature. Throwing off the old belief, we were somewhat troubled to supply its place by a satisfactory faith. Rejecting the doctrine that there are literally three persons in the Godhead, as virtual if not open Tritheism, we were troubled to find a sufficient ground of faith in Christ, when we had refused to regard him as the second God. Some of our teachers tried to make up for the discarded doctrine of the absolute Godhead of Christ by assigning to him pre-existence and true and super-angelic glory; and they who could not be content with this virtual worship of a demi-god, and who taught his simple humanity, tried to make much of his person by dwelling upon his miracles. Thus arose the two schools of early American Unitarianism, the Arian and Humanitarian, neither of which met the wants of reason or faith, since neither ages nor miracles can give the divinity which the soul craves in the object of its trust. We have been gradually correcting the errors and limitations of our worthy fathers, and settling down upon the New-Testament doctrine of the Divine humanity of Christ; regarding him as the manifestation of God, the incarnation and humanizing of the eternal Word. For a quarter of a century and more, our leading thinkers have occupied essentially the ground that Robertson held, and have trusted in "God in Christ reconciling the world unto himself." Channing, though sometimes wavering between the old Arian and Humanitarian theory, and resting, first upon pre-existence, and then on miracles, as the great proofs of Christ's authority, virtually belonged to the better school, and recognized the aptitude of man for communion with God, as the reasonable interpretation of the mission of him who claimed to give full communion with God from the supernatural indwelling of the Divine Word. Towards this faith, our leading thinkers, and our denomination as a body, now tend. Even the extreme Transcendental school of Theodore Parker has contributed to this result, by showing the reasonableness of believing in the Immanence of God, in face of the old legalists, who made light of the very idea of an Incarnation. History and Philosophy are both settling down upon positive

faith in the personal Christ, as the base of faith, and spring of power. The Christology of Robertson is essentially that which is prevailing among us. We call it pure Unitarianism, although we do not insist upon giving him our name. We only say, that to believe that the Divine in Christ was the human side of God, and that the Spirit is the power which enables God to mingle with men, is not to believe in any plu rality of persons in the Godhead, or to deny our steadfast faith that God is One. His general idea of God in Christ is of course nothing new; but the love and manliness with which he makes his faith vital, and brings it home to our affections, surely give him a place among the benefactors of our liberal theology.

Then, in his view of human nature, he strengthens and comforts us greatly. Our good old fathers rejected the Calvinistic dogma of total depravity, but sometimes gave us little comfort in its substitute,- that human nature, innocent indeed, yet meagre and God-forsaken, is without positive divine instincts, such as the Locke school held forth. We were sometimes taught that man was not depraved, nor much of any thing at all, but a flexible mixture, to be duly moulded and stamped at will. Even the gifts of the Spirit in the gos pel, instead of being presented as normal helps to human dependence, and incentives to aspire, were regarded as marvellous facts of the primitive and exceptional age. Such views, of course, never ruled the living heart of the people; but they were taught, and all our triumphs of spiritual conviction have been double victories over the old superstition and the new materialism. It is cheering to note the steps of our rise to the true views of the human soul and its life. There was a time when our scholarly leaders went almost mad for the classics, and delighted, as Robertson would have done, in quoting Plato and Zeno, Cicero and Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Antoninus, against Calvin and Edwards, and perhaps against Priestley and Belsham. Channing, with his ideal principles and glowing humanity, followed Buckminster, and put the fervor of the spirit into the stately classicism of the dominant Cambridge school. Orville Dewey brought the richness

of human life into the liberal pulpit with Shaksperian breadth. James Walker, with his massive logic, made divine philosophy preach the religion of Christ. Step by step they have been gaining and enlarging the old Hebrew legalism by more and more of the Greek culture, or the Indo-Germanic liberty and largeness. Step by step, and never more than within the last five years, we have been carrying out our essential principle, and bringing the One and All of the Godhead together in our faith, and accepting the All of Nature, Humanity, and Providence, for the One Infinite and Eternal Being.

In this point of view, we rejoice in all such large and luminous souls as Robertson. He helps us in our work of integration at our post within the kingdom of God. He helps our free thought much, and our true manhood more, alike by his valor and his inspiration. In the question between Rome and Reason, he mightily enforces Reason. Yet Reason is not all of true Protestantism, and of itself can as little repel the legions of Loyola as of Cæsar. In that greater question between Rome and free manhood, or between the strength that is trained in passive obedience, and that free virtue which is trained in the open word and spirit and kingdom of God, he is for free manhood, and a mighty champion of the great age coming, when God shall be served with our strength as well as our mind, and the imperial reason, with God its light, shall guide the imperial will; with God its strength within the Church, which trains men to be the children of God, and brothers of each other. The imperialism of Athanasius and Hildebrand, of Augustine and Calvin, we neither hope nor expect to see restored. That priesthood and that dogma are not the absolute truth or power. In Christ we find the absolute word, and in the Holy Spirit the absolute power. Such lives as Robertson's encourage the faith, that God will come nearer to us with our earnest striving and prayer, and make his dwelling with men.

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ART. VII. — POSITIVISM IN THEOLOGY.

First Principles. By HERBERT SPENCER. London: Williams & Norgate. 1862.

POSITIVISM, properly speaking, is the name of that great reform in scientific method which has been gradually working itself out during the last three hundred years, and which, like the infant Hercules, is strangling even in its cradle the serpents of superstition and ignorance. It gives unmistakable signs of extending to every department of human thought, and achieving a radical revolution even in the treatment of the most recondite problems of philosophy and theology. It is so irresistible in its influence, because it is an all-pervasive spirit and method, rather than a system of definite results: it is anterior and superior to all systems, because these are, so to speak, merely its successive avatars or incarnations. Utterly regardless of consequences, and quite insensible to hope and fear, it devotes itself solely to the discovery of truth: fanciful hypothesis, impatient guess-work, dogmatic assumption, charlatanism of every name and nature, it sternly rules out of court, and proceeds calmly to weigh evidence, sift testimony, and pronounce judgment according to fixed and universal principles. Whoever disputes the validity of its decisions, only betrays his own misunderstanding of its claim to credence; for, in every province of human knowledge, the positive method is absolutely supreme. Whether it bears the name of Science, Philosophy, Rationalism, Naturalism, Positivism, or any other name, it must dominate in all investigations after truth as truth; and to its supremacy are to be attributed whatever stable results have been gained by human thought, study, and search.

But, although for ages the Positive method has been reg nant in special departments of knowledge, and in some of these has caused most marvellous growth, it has neither extended itself to all of them, nor attempted to colligate them all in a high organic unity. Material Nature is now wholly