error it may contain."* But how futile is the attempt to convince one that an event has occurred, which he professes to know is either impossible, or never to be believed! In other words, how futile to argue with one who begs the question in dispute!

The foregoing observations upon the reception that is given by skeptics at the present day to the proof of Christian miracles, brings us to the deeper and more general cause of unbelief, which is none other than the weakening or total destruction of faith in the supernatural. It is not the supernatural in the Scriptures alone, but the supernatural altogether, which in our day is the object of disbelief. At the root of the most respectable and formidable attack upon Christianity-that which emanates from the Tübingen school of historical critics-is an avowed Pantheism. The doctrine of a God to be distinguished from the World, and competent to produce events not provided. for by natural causes, is cast away. The apotheosis of Nature

* Renan's Life of Christ, p. 45. The force of this prejudice against the supernatural is strikingly exhibited in the case of M. Renan. His book contains not a few hasty and erroneous statements; but two remarks are sufficient to show the weakness of the entire structure he has raised. I. He concedes that at least the narrative portions of the Fourth Gospel are from John; and although, misinterpreting the testimony of Papias in Eusebius, he has a groundless theory as to a change and growth which the First and Second Gospels are supposed to have undergone,— Papias had the same Matthew and the same Mark that we have-he nevertheless concedes that the synoptical writers also present, to a large extent, the testimony given by the apostles. Having made these concessions, he cannot impeach, on any plausible hypothesis, the credibility of the testimony. To hold the testimony to be genuine, and yet false, is too much even for the credulity of his confréres, the skeptical critics of Germany. They see very clearly how unsafe it is for them to concede the genuineness of the documents. II. Renan describes Jesus as a person of the loftiest intellectual and moral character, and yet holds that he stooped to connive at a fraud in the case of Lazarus, and to allow himself to be falsely considered a miracle-worker by the people about him. That is, he makes Him out a Jesuit. To such weakness is this writer driven by his inability to recognize the supernatural. An Article by Renan, (we may add), which is conceived in a thor oughly Pantheistic spirit, appears in the Revue des Deux Mondes for October, 1863, under the title, "Les Sciences de la Nature et les Sciences Historiques." "Deux élémens," he says, "le temps et la tendance au progrès expliquent l' univers." p. 769. Renan, like Strauss, espouses a philosophy that leaves no room for the Supernatural.

or the World, of course, leaves no room for anything supernatural, and a miracle becomes an absurdity. Indeed, the tacit assumption that a miracle is impossible, which we find in ♦ so many quarters, can only flow from an Atheistic or Pantheistic view of the Universe. The Deist can consistently take no such position. He professes to believe in a living and personal God, however he may be disposed to set Him at a distance and to curtail His agency. He must therefore acknowledge the existence of a Power who is able at any moment to bring to pass an event over and beyond the capacity of natural causes. Nay, if his Deism be earnestly meant, he must himself believe in a miracle of the most stupendous character-in the creation of the world by the omnipotent agency of God. Holding thus to the miracle of creation as an historical event, he cannot, without a palpable inconsistency, deny that miracles are conceivable or longer possible. For no sincere Deist can suppose that the Creator has chained Himself up by physical laws of His own making, and thereby cut Himself off from new exertions of His power, even within the sphere where natural forces usually operate according to a fixed rule. One of the marked characteristics of our time, therefore, is the loose manner in which Deism is held even by those who profess it, as shown in their reluctance to take the consequences of their creed and their readiness to proceed in their treatment of the subject of miracles upon Pantheistic principles. The theories and arguments of Strauss and the Tübingen skeptics, which are the offshoot of their Pantheistic system, are appropriated, for example, by Theodore Parker, who professes to believe in the personality of God. But though entertaining this different belief, it is plain that he generally brings to the discussion of miracles the feeling and the postulates of a Pantheist. His Deism is so far from being thorough and consistent, that he not only, here and there, falls into the Pantheistic notion of sin, as a necessary stage of development and step in human progress, but also habitually regards a miracle as equivalent to an absurdity. Not a few ill-supported speculations of physical science, which have been lately brought be fore the public, have their real motive in a desperate reluc

The most unfounded con

tance to admit a supernatural cause. jectures are furnished in the room of argument, so earnest is the desire of some minds to create the belief that the worlds were not framed by the word of God, and that things which are seen were made of things which do appear. To this we must refer the ambition of some philosophers to assert their descent from the inferior animals--a wild theory only to be compared with the old doctrine of transmigration. The disposition to remove God from any active connection with the world, or to place Him as far back as possible in the remote past, is the real motive of this attempt which can plead no evidence in its favor, to invalidate the distinction of species and discredit our own feeling of personal identity and separateness of being. There can be no doubt that a powerful/ tendency to Pantheistic modes of thought is rife at the present day. The popular literature, even in our country, is far more widely infected in this way than unobservant readers are aware. The laws of Nature are hypostatized,-spoken of as if they were a self-active being. And not unfrequently, the same tendency leads to the virtual, if not open, denial of the free and responsible nature of man. History is resolved by a class of writers into the movement of a great machine-into the evolution of phenomena with which the free-will neither of God nor of man has any connection.*

We are thus brought back, in our analysis of the controversy with the existing unbelief, to the postulates of Natural Religion. On these the Christian Apologist founds the presumption, or anterior probability, that a Revelation will be given. These, together with the intrinsic excellence of Christianity, he employs to rebut and remove the presumption, which, however philosophers may differ as to the exact source and strength of it, undoubtedly lies against the occurrence of a miracle.

The tendencies to Naturalism, at work at the present day, are forcibly and comprehensively touched upon in Chapter I. of Bushnell's "Nature and the Supernatural"-a work which, in its main parts, is equally profound and inspiring.

The antecedent improbability that a miracle will occur, disappears in the case of Christianity. The issue relates to the miracles; but the ultimate source of the conflict is a false or feeble view, on the part of the unbeliever, of the primitive truths of religion. This will explain how a new awakening of conscience, or of religious sensibility, has been known to dispel the incredulity with which he had looked upon the claims of Revelation.

It is more and more apparent that the cause of Natural Religion, and that of Revealed Religion, are bound up together. But the native convictions of the human mind concerning God and duty cannot be permanently dislodged. Pantheism mocks the religious nature of man. It is inconsistent with religion— with prayer, with worship-with that communion with a higher Being, which is religion. It is inconsistent, also, with morality, in any earnest meaning of the term; for it empties free-will and responsibility, holiness and sin, of their meaning. Everyone who acknowledges the feeling of guilt to be a reality and to represent the truth, and everyone who blames the conduct of another, in the very act denies the Pantheistic theory. Conscience must prove, in the long run, stronger than any speculation, no matter how plausible. In the soul itself, then, in its aspiration after the living God and its conviction of freedom and of sin, there is erected an everlasting barrier against the inroads of false philosophy, and one that will be found to embrace within its impregnable walls the cause of Christianity itself.

ARTICLE VII.-RELATIONS OF SEPARATE STATES TO

GENERAL JUSTICE.

Staatsrecht, Völkerrecht und Politik. Von ROBERT VON MOHL. Tübingen 1860.

Two widely diverse views may be taken of the relations which the separate States cf the world sustain toward general justice. One, which may be called the selfish view, regards the individual State as fulfilling its work, when it has observed all its obligations to other States, and has likewise taken the best means in its power to secure just conduct, on the part of those who are subject to its laws, towards the subjects of other States and towards these States themselves. Beyond this it has no work in the world outside of its own borders, unless control over what is done upon its ships on the high seas be an exception; and if any wrong, anywhere abroad, is committed, it is in no way called upon to interfere, either for the help of the injured, or in the execution of the laws of another State. If, in the progress of civilization and of mutual trust, the intercourse between the inhabitants of neighboring States becomes closer, and their relations become more and more complicated, it has a right to use its own laws exclusively in its own courts, but if, instead of doing this, in certain cases it allows the laws of other States to regulate decisions, such complaisance is to be regarded as being by no means a right which other States can claim, but a concession for which they ought to be thankful, or which is paid for by equal concessions on their part. Thus the whole system of private international law, one of great and continually increasing importance, rests on no foundation of justice, but simply upon the comity of States. Again, when a crime has been committed within the limits of one State, and the offender escapes into another, he is, according to this same view, like any other emigrant: the State may harbor him, and