going on around us, discovered by Science and characteristic of Nature, are sometimes placed by theologians in opposition to the Will of God, simply indeed (however paradoxically) from the very fact that such regularity of action was wholly different from human action-the latter proceeding from variable and uncertain will; and thus has probably arisen the theological phrase Arbitrary Supernatural Will,' as expressive of the nature or direct source of the Divine Government.

Science, on the other hand, knows nothing, in a theological sense, of Will.' All its discoveries, all it finds traces of, are expressed by the term 'Law,' the sense of which is entirely opposite to that of Will.' Law being a term expressive of the uniformity, invariability, and regularity of the constant course of procedure of the phenomena manifesting the Unknowable or First Cause.' Science, too, discovers nothing supernatural, everything known to it being clearly within the domain of Nature. Indeed, it has been asserted that the supernatural can never be a matter of Science or knowledge, for the moment it is brought within the cognisance of Reason, it ceases to be supernatural.'2

•

To the extent to which reasoning can be intelligibly resorted to, with a view to explain so metaphysical, mysterious, and sublime a subject as the method of the Divine Government on Earth, it seems essential to preserve throughout discussion the distinct meanings of the human ideas 'Will' and Law,' which are still but human, however applied in endeavours to define the attributes of Deity. In the Duke of Argyll's 'Reign of Law,' these meanings are (it seems to me) as much as possible confused (rather Will' entirely emptied of its distinctive meaning, and Theology thereby altogether ignored); but the Duke's argument may have required, or his main conclusions, possibly, could only be established by means of, such confusion.

6

Manifesting to us. A law of nature, after all, being merely a metaphor expressing a generalization of relations made by the human mind.-Buckle, vol. i. p. 28, note 32.

2 The Order of Nature, by the Rev. Baden Powell, essay Longmans, 1859.

ii. sec.

1.

This distinction in the human mind between Will' and Law' is not only very real, but is apparently ineradicable, for it is found historically to pervade all philosophical literature, dividing philosophers themselves into two distinct schools, viz. Idealists and Sensationalists (or Realists). All men, observed Coleridge (Table Talk'), are born disciples of Plato or Aristotle; that is, their different idiosyncrasies will range them under one or other of these great catholic but opposite thinkers; and neither school seems able, by reason probably of such innate intellectual difference, fully to appreciate the other. Adequately to discuss this remarkable distinction (which can here be barely indicated) would require a volume, and probably no satisfactory or definite result by any amount of discussion could from our present materials be arrived at. An attempt to explain it was made by Dr. Whewell in his Essay on 'The Fundamental Antithesis of Philosophy,' 2 or, the opposition between Ideas and the Senses, between Theory and Fact. His expressions are, I venture to think, too strongly contrasted; he shows, however, that the Idealist is not content to derive his conclusions solely from the facts of sense, but requires something else, which he regards as contributed by the mind itself. The objection of the Sensationalist to admitting the assumption that the mind, per se, and wholly irrespective of facts or sensations, can contribute anything, is founded on the total absence of any sort of verification, or external standard, to which appeal can be made in

1 'In our common philosophical language, sensations and ideas represent the two great sources of our knowledge. We have an outward source, Nature; and an inward source, pure ideas, which terminate on the side of the Will. Sensationalism accordingly is the philosophy built upon the former. Idealism is that built upon the latter.'-Historical and Critical View of the Speculative Philosophy of Europe in the Nineteenth Century, by J. D. Morell, A.M. Introduction, p. 67, note i., 2nd ed. Johnstone, 1847.

2 Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, vol. iii. part 2, No. 14, 1844.

3 The radical antithesis is not between fact and theory, but between verified and unverified inferences.'-G. H. Lewes, Aristotle, The Metaphysical and Scientific Methods,' p. 74.

proof of such assumption, or, of that in particular which is asserted to be so contributed. The conclusions of the Idealist, as such, cannot be tested; being pure conceptions that cannot be derived from the senses. They may therefore be untrue; at least they cannot be proved to be true, and therefore ought not to be made the basis of positive belief.

It is obvious that Theology, from its very nature, that is, a logical system or exposition of the Nature, Attributes, and Will of Deity, a kind of knowledge hardly derivable from sensible facts, must, so far as it can be treated philosophically at all, follow the method of Idealism. Accordingly it is Plato and not Aristotle who is the great philosophical authority with theologians.2

It might appear on first impression, indeed it has been by many supposed, that Idealism affords greater scope to the intellectual faculties than Sensationalism (which has been described by the opposite school as 'cold,' 'low,' 'grovelling,' 'utilitarian,'' material,' &c.), and enables the mind to discover and grasp truths to which Sensationalism is inadequate to attain ; but, on examination, it will be seen that in effect the very reverse is the case. The moment the objective method, that is, the building up of our ideas upon a sensational basis, and verifying them by an appeal to external nature, is departed from, due control over the imaginative faculty would seem to be lost, and intuitions, or the intuitive conclusions of the imaginative and emotional consciousness, are admitted, and by the Idealist accepted, as truths; and it will be found on analysis that it is upon such truths are really erected those theological dogmas and beliefs which have ever been 1 Cudworth's Eternal and Immutable Morality, book iv. chap. i. and ii.

....

The piety of Platonism, its abstractedness from the visible world, its elevation of the moral sentiments, recommended it forcibly to the imagination and the feelings of the contemplative theologian. The expressed partiality of Augustine for the philosophy of Plato, combined with the invectives against Aristotle thrown out from time to time, had established that philosophy, in name at least, as the orthodox system of the Western Church.-The Scholastic Philosophy, &c., by Dr. Hampden, lect. ii. p. 61.

brought to bear to coerce and abase what their advocates term 'the pride of the human intellect,' and which form a system that has sometimes even openly boasted of subjugating the reason of mankind. These alleged truths are, indeed, the foundation of all that goes by the name of 'authority' in the intellectual struggle that is ever proceeding between authority and reason, and they will on close consideration be discovered to form effectual though conventional boundaries to all philosophical enquiry; the fetters by which, until recently, scientific progress has been so hampered, and freedom of intellectual enquiry all but suppressed; although the subject may be so speciously manipulated as to make it appear otherwise, as it very adroitly, however really fallaciously, effected in the Archbishop of York's The Limits of Philosophical Enquiry.' (Edmonston and Douglas, 1868.)

It is noticeable that the term Theology was at first generally used as synonymous with Divinity, and limited in its meaning to the systematic knowledge of God derived from the study of Revelation,' but that with the advance of knowledge its meaning has been extended (especially by Ray, Derham, and Paley), so as to enable it, if possible, to embrace the discoveries of Science under the term 'Natural Theology,' another ambiguous and misleading phrase, causing great confusion of thought even in minds of the most powerful cast, as may be seen on turning to Lord Brougham's preliminary discourse to 'Paley's Natural Theology.' Natural theology, however, as yet only aims at embracing the examination of Nature as supplying 'evidences of the attributes of the Deity,' as Paley expresses it; or, as Lord Bacon says, after calling the phenomena of Nature a volume of the Works of God, and, as it were, another Bible, Volumen operum Dei . . . et tanquam Scriptura altera,'* There are two books of Religion to be consulted-the Scriptures to tell the Will of God, and the book of creation to show His Power.'

93

See the article 'Theology,' in the Penny Cyclopædia.

2 Bacon, Parasceve, aph. 9.

3 Ibid. De Dig. et Augment., lib. i.

That the Laws of Nature are in reality Divine commands, and to be studied, reverenced, and obeyed accordingly, is a conclusion subsequently derived from Science, and was first systematically expounded by George Combe, especially in his work entitled 'Science and Religion."1

The following figure exhibits in outline the essential distinctions in the human mind, above and in the foregoing 'Discourse' remarked upon, between Will' and 'Law,' and the opposite or distinct methods of thought and enquiry, as well as conclusions, to which each, more particularly, though not exclusively, appears to tend.