of civilization, and consequently, the nations of antiquity in general, have begun with making religion the only science, containing all others in itself, and without which reason could not exist. Among them faith triumphed over reason, feeling over logic. The exact sciences had a religious source; natural philosophy, medicine, and the arts found a place in theology, which alone embraced every thing. Such is the general fact, confirmed by ancient history, from the period, when leaving fetichism, the mind advanced to dualism, or polytheism, and at length to the secret rites, which are the last exclusive pretensions of theology.

It is very important to remark that a similar progress is found in the moral history of every individual. At first, and for a long time, we all remain creatures of feeling. Every thing is spontaneous and as it were by inspiration. Instinct is the first law of our animal nature; it is also the first law of our intellectual nature. The individual reason of man, in its youth, when imagination predominates, when natural and simple reason as yet proceeds only with faltering steps to the conquest of truth, displays the same progress as the religious history of the primitive nations. Then, when faith exists, it swallows up every other impression. We believe without reasoning. Mysteries do not displease us. Their very obscurity is not wanting in charms. We love to enjoy their contemplation, as the artist or the poet, with a similar feeling, loves to listen to the noise of the waves, or to let his eye wander in delight through the dark mazes of a forest. The understanding at that time, ignorant of itself and of its rights, deifies all nature; and in the infancy of

our life as in that of civilization, faith is conceived as a sentiment, foreign from reason, and even sustaining no relation to it. Then, in many instances, the most deplorable illusions, the most superstitious practices, testify to our abandonment of ourselves. Every age, in fact, has witnessed melancholy errors, as the punishment of man for entrusting his reason to other guides than reason itself, which is the gift of God, and of whom it always presents a bright, though imperfect image. This forgetfulness of reason, both among ancient nations and individuals of modern times, has given rise to that extravagance of feeling, that furious zeal for forms, those blind and fanatical excitements which outrage common sense, and convert the field of religious thought into a vast theatre of fictions, allegories and poetical reveries, in which images take the place of ideas, and the soul deprived of its compass proceeds so far as to violate its conscience, in the ecstacy of enthusiasm, and to attribute to heaven all the weaknesses and miseries of the earth. The worship of power, of pleasure, of deception, and of terror, has arisen from the mistake of man, in obstinately closing his eyes upon the authority which his reason ought to exercise over his faith. The Jewish people alone, in an age of remote antiquity had not a religion of mere feeling. Among them reason uttered its voice, even before civilization. It declared, there is one God, a pure and mighty spirit. The Jewish people could not have arrived at that point, and commenced where the loftiest reason generally ends, without a revelation. This also they had obtained.

It is an excellence of christianity that it has reconciled

these two orders of things, and denied by the lips of its divine founder, that reason ought to yield in the presence of faith. Jesus Christ preached nothing which the understanding condemns. Far from it. The essential ideas of the religion which he established for the salvation of the world,—the essential ideas, which may all be reduced to that of the frailty and imperfection of human nature, of a superintending, paternal Providence, of the necessity of moral action as a condition of future blessedness, of a certain and inflexible judgment, and of an immortality after death,—— all these essential ideas, the main pillars of the Christian Church, had been perceived by Philosophers, in the rare illuminations of their genius. But Jesus Christ alone was commissioned to reveal them to the world. He alone by his life and by his death, announced these things not as theories but as facts. He alone has given these sublime ideas to the people, so that the most unlettered of his disciples, firmly believes the doctrines, which Plato and Seneca could only conjecture.

We perceive, moreover, in reading the Gospel, as a proof of the authority of our Saviour, that his voice penetrates the most secret recesses of the mind; that he does not demonstrate, but announces; that truth coming from his lips shows itself so pure, as to prove to us at once, that it proceeds from the bosom of the Deity

Such, in our opinion is the true nature of Christianity, properly understood. Christianity is divine, inasmuch as it contains a system of doctrines to which reason assents, but to which, without an extraordinary aid, reason alone could not have attained. If any

incontestible truth comes to us from the chaos of the ancient and modern schools of Philosophy, it is the absolute impossibility of founding on reason alone, or deriving from critical speculations, a firm belief in the fundamental ideas of Christianity. The people at the present day, ignorantly detesting every doctrine and every minister of religion, declare that we ought to believe in God, in a future state, and to practice moral duties.

But in their good-natured simplicity, they do not suspect that these very things are Christianity,-Christianity, imperfect and unsystematized, to be sure,— but in all instances, the manifest remains of revelation. The people of antiquity had no such belief. Perhaps, they desired to enjoy it, but they never succeeded in satisfying themselves. These convictions are the growth of Christianity; and reason does not, by any means, disavow them. They are not, indeed, the whole of Christianity: they are only a part of it. They do not give the idea of the spiritual wants of man, of self-sacrifice, of disinterested virtue. But these ideas, do the people, at the present day, with all their morality possess?

From the fact that reason assents to all the fundamental ideas of the Christian faith, that it recognizes in that faith nothing which destroys its own peculiar laws, it follows that faith is never a sentiment, which has the right to dethrone the reason. Reason is capable of exercising judgment over faith, and it is because the Christian faith can stand that test, that one can be at the same time, a Christian, a reasonable man, and a good Philosopher. It follows also from the same

facts that Christianity in its influence over the moral nature of man is essentially progessive, since it has revealed absolute ideas, and absolute ideas will also take the lead in the march of civilization. It follows, moreover, that sound philosophers can be Christians; nay, that they must be, if consistent with themselves, since Christianity gives the seal of its divine origin, to the more lofty anticipations of Philosophy. It is the very sphere of Christianity to reconcile reason with faith, to unite these two powers, both of which emanate from the same source. Regarded in this light the Christian religion is eminently adapted to the present time. We need not state the reasons.

Unhappily, however, these evident principles, have not yet required all their ascendency in the Protestant Church. More than one sect, blinded by party spirit and extravagant enthusiasm, contend that the fundamental truths of the Gospel cannot exist out of their own little circle. More than one religious community confine salvation to their own members, and presumptuously condemn all who differ from them. More than one petty denomination, is filled up with obscure calumniators and furious devotees, who embrace their fellow partizans, and attack all others, and who deal damnation round the land, with the most obsequious forins and the most honied words. If we can believe them, the doctrine essential to salvation is their property. They have the sole disposal of it.

Let us pity those, who change into a human tribunal, the Church of Jesus Christ, the only master of his disciples. Let us openly profess a more consolin a more truly evangelical doctrine. Let us not demand,