ities will run. On this foundation its structure}

rests.

The religious belief of young men, therefore, is a subject of the most vital moment for themselves, and for all. Whatever tends to affect it is pregnant with incalculable consequences. To weaken or lose it, is to impair the very life of society. To deepen and expand it is to add strength to character and durability to virtue. The present must be held to be a time of trial, so far as the faith of the young and the faith of all are concerned. Questions touching the worth and the authority of Christianity are widely mooted and openly canvassed. There may be something to alarm-there is certainly much to excite serious thought in this prevailing bias of religious discussion. Of one thing we may be sure, that it is neither possible to avert this course of discussion, nor desirable to do so. It must have free course. The thought of many hearts must be spoken out-otherwise. it will eat within, and the last state will be worse than the first. It may be perilous to have the faith of our youth tried as by fire; but it would be still more perilous to discountenance or stifle free inquiry. Christianity has nothing to fear from the freest discussion. Its own motto is, "Prove all things-hold fast that which is good."

It seems a very hopeless thing, nowadays, to try to hold any minds by the mere bonds of authority. The intellectual air all around is too astir for this. There is no system of mental seclusion can well shut out the young from opinions the most opposite to those to which they have been accustomed. The old safeguards, which were wont to inclose the religious life as with a sacred charm, no longer do so. Even those who rest within the shade of authority, do so, in many cases, from choice rather than from habit. They know not what else to do. They have gone in quest of truth, and have not found it; and so they have been glad to throw themselves into arms which profess an infallible shelter, and seek repose there. This is not remedy for doubt, but despair of reson. And no good can come in this way.

The young can only be led in the way of truth, not by stifling, but by enlightening and strengthening all reasonable impulses within them. Religion must approve itself to them as thoroughly reasonable-in a right sense-as well as authoritative. It must be the highest truth in the light of judgment, and history, and conscience.

II.

OBJECT OF RELIGION.

HE fundamental point in religious inquiry

THE must be the character of the Supreme

Existence.

That there is a Supreme Existence or Power operating in the world can scarcely be said to be denied by any. The Pantheist does not deny the reality of such a Power. The Positivist does not dispute it. Both fall back upon something higher, some. thing general, in which lower and particular existences take their rise. The atheist or the absolute skeptic of existence superior to his own is not to be found, or, at least, need not be argued with; for it is not possible to find any common ground of argument with him, and all controversy must suppose some common ground from which to start. The pure atheistic position is so utterly irrational as to be beyond the pale of discussion. Every-where in the range of modern speculation and modern science, it is conceded, or, rather, it may be said to be implied as a rational datum, without which neither philosophy nor science would be intelli

gible, that there is a universal principle pervading existence, and in some sense controlling it. What principle? and in what sense superior and controlling? It is here that all the controversy lies, and has long lain; and in our time especially, the inquirer is met here at once with seductive theories, which, while they serve to exercise his rational instinct, and seem to fall in with the advancing results of scientific investigation, are in their very nature destitute of all religious and moral value.

The Pantheist tells him that the universal principle is nothing else than the spirit of nature, or the collective life, animating all its parts, and ever taking new shapes of order and beauty in its endless mutations. The Positivist speaks to him of the laws of nature, or the great scheme in which these laws unite, regulating and governing all things. By both the universal principle is held to be a principle within nature. Whether it be regarded as a Pantheistic spirit-life, or a material law or force the conclusion is the same, that it is only nature itself in some modification or another which is the ultimate spring of existence, and the great arranger of it. There is no room left in either view for an Existence transcending nature, and acting independently of it.

It may seem that this is a very old delusion;

and so it is. There is no creed of human origin older than that which deifies nature. There is no speculation more ancient than Pantheism. X Yet there is none also younger-none more powerful over many minds at the present day. Is nature a self-subsistent, ever-unfolding process, containing all its energies within itself? and are life and intelligence mere developments from its fertile bosom? Or is mind the primary directing power of which nature is but the expression and symbol? Is there a life higher than any mere nature-life-a rational' and moral Will, transcending and guiding all the processes of nature-in nothing governed by, in every thing governing them? This is the issue, more pertinently and urgently than ever, in the present crisis of speculative and religious inquiry.

How deeply this question goes into the whole subject of religion and morality must be obvious to any reflection. If once the doubt insinuates itself, and begins to hold the mind as to whether there is a higher Will than our own instructing and guiding us, to which we are responsible, and whose law should be our rule, it is plain that the very spring of divine obedience must be slackened, if not destroyed. Men can not habitually hold themselves free from a sense of duty and yet be dutiful-can not deliberately