their appropriateness, and are inevitably rejected. If God intervenes in human affairs only through the transcendental side, only in the inherent and necessary laws of human nature itself; if he be only the fixed, the permanent, the necessary in human action, where is the room for prayer, praise, sacrifice, or devotion? Who could pray to his own instincts, sacrifice to the spontaneity of his own nature, or build temples to the permanent, fixed, and necessary laws of his own activity? There would be no Divine Will to propitiate, no sovereign and efficacious Grace to supplicate,no extra-human Aid to be implored or to be hoped for; no Divine Sympathy for us in our trials, no solace in our afflictions; no Divine Counsel to direct us in our doubts, and to guide us through the darkness which at times envelopes us, to the clear radiance of Truth and Love. Do the proud oppress; do the haughty insult; do the wicked triumph, and trample the righteous in the dust; are the poor neglected, and left to perish? there is no appeal to the Divine Justice which may interpose, to a righteous God who may come to the rescue of the poor and the oppressed, and overwhelm the wrong-doers with his judgments, and chastise them for their insolence and want of love to their brethren; for God intervenes only in the common sense of nations, the instincts, or the spontaneous aspirations of the race, and these are always the same, invariable in time and place; and, therefore, since impotent to prevent iniquity, of course impotent to redress it. Evidently, then, religion can be a fact of human history, only so long as we are destitute of philosophy. We must cease to be religious the moment we are sufficiently enlightened to comprehend the origin, nature, and tendencies of religious institutions. This is what M. Cousin himself, on more than one occasion, significantly hints, and it is what his friend and pupil Jouffroy expressly asserts.

We see here the fundamental vice of modern philosophy itself, and in its later as well as in its earlier develop ments. Its grand error is found in the point of departure of Cartesianism. Des Cartes assumes the sufficiency of Reason, as manifested in the individual consciousness, to account for all that can appear in the life of humanity. Obviously, then, nothing can be ad

mitted as an integral, an essential, or as a permanent and necessary part of human life, that does not come in through humanity as the operating cause. The old French philosophers, a much wiser and worthier set of men than we commonly allow-plain, straightforward. outspoken, and the sworn enemies of all cant and humbug,-saw very clearly, that on this principle, religion, since its very essence is in the recognition and worship of a supernatural and superhuman Providence, could not subsist a moment after men had once come to see whence had originated their religious institutions, faith, and disciplines; and, therefore, they said all plainly that religion originates in human weakness and ignorance. They considered religion, therefore, a reproach and a shame, and as such condemned it, and labored to teach men philosophy; so that they should be able to cast it off, and live without it. The Germans saw this, but shrunk from the conclusion. Warm, and somewhat devout of heart, they would retain religion; subtle of brain, and speculatively inclined by temper and education, they would retain philosophy; so they set themselves with right-down German earnestness at work to reconcile the two. They sought the source of religion, as a fact of human history, in human nature itself, and found man endowed by nature with a religious sense or faculty, which some of them called Religiosity. Now, said they, the controversy must end. Here is religion a very element of man's nature; it grows out of a fundamental want of his being, and therefore religion he has, and must, and will have, as long as he continues to be human. This philosophy was imported into France by Madame de Staël and Benjamin Constant, and in a modified form was accepted by MM. Cousin and Jouffroy. But, after all, this was merely a new version of the very doctrine of the old philosophes. At first, it seemed to be something else, and many an inquirer thought he had found what he was looking after. But alas! the discovery of the origin of religion in human nature destroyed the possibility of religiousness. The religiosity was struck from the list of human faculties, the moment it was discovered to be a faculty; because then it lost all its character of sacredness and authority, and men who understood the secret, could

regard only as a mere sham or pretence all religious exercises. Religion was no longer a law imposed on me by a lawgiver, but something growing out of my nature, standing on a level with industry, politics, art, and the like. Here was no God to worship, but an instinct to follow; no extra-mundane sovereign to obey, but an internal law to develope. There was something like mockery in kneeling down to pray, for who should hear our prayers? How could I, as an honest man, bring my gift to the altar? The pious feeling, the religious state of mind, was no longer possible. Our knowledge banishes our religion, on the German system, as well as on the old French system. There can be religion only where there is not only the belief in God, but a belief that God intervenes in human affairs through the side of the Actual as well as through the side of the Transcendental; for then only can there be any room for religious exercises.

Unquestionably God intervenes in human affairs through the necessary and invariable laws of nature and of humanity-what we call his intervention through the side of the Transcendental; but this intervention is not what we call, nor what the religious world has always called, PROVIDENCE. This intervention is ontological, and the relation it implies is not that of Providence, but that of Creation. Unless we adopt pantheism outright, and make the action of man and of God one and identical, to say that God intervenes only under the relation of Creator, is to assume that he has in creating man given him all that he ever gives him, made in the very elements of his nature all the provision for his whole life, here or hereafter, that man needs, or that he does or will make for him. Now, this is precisely what we understand, not by Providence, but by the denial of Providence.

But as we showed, in our former article, though from another point of view, this theory of the non-intervention of Providence, save through the fixed and permanent laws of human nature, will not suffice to explain and account for the facts of human history. By it we may explain and account for what is fixed, permanent, uniform in history; but how explain by its light, or account for what is exceptional, variable, individual, diverse? Vico, by his

common sense of nations," can only explain what is common to all nations; not by any means what each nation has in its life that is peculiar to itself. We have seen that we cannot do it merely by the aid of climate and geography. The difference of races may do somewhat; but if we assume, or even if we do not assume, that all the varieties of the human race have sprung from the same family, this difference will be insufficient to account for all the diversities which we find in the lives of different nations and individuals. On this ground, we ask again, what shall we do with PROVIDENTIAL MEN, who come at long intervals of time and space, and by their superhuman virtue, intelligence, wisdom, love, and power of sacrifice, found systems and eras, redeem and advance their race? History presents us, at least tradition presents us, these men standing by the cradles of all nations, as the founders of their respective civilisations. These men cannot come as the ordinary developments of humanity, for humanity cannot of itself surpass its uniform type. What shall we say of them? Shall we boldly deny their existence as individuals, and with Vico declare them vast collective beings; understanding by Homer, not

"The blind old bard of Scio's rocky isle,"

but a long series of bards and rhapsodists, the Homerides; nay, not the Homerides merely, but the whole Greek people embodying itself and history, through the whole epoch of its earlier and heroic life, in a sublime Iliad, and a

didactic Odyssey? Shall we say that there was no Moses, but the Jewish people, emancipating themselves from servitude, who obtain after various trials and vicissitudes a country, and establish a fixed code of laws, political, civil, and religious? And Zoroaster, and Pythagoras, and Plato, and Confucius, the heroes, sages, poets, prophets, and philosophers, founders of states and empires, the benefactors of the race, whose very names cast a spell over us, and make us thrill with the love of glory-must these all dissolve at the first touch of criticism, as spectres at the approach of morning light, and leave us to be dissipated and deadened in the vague and indeterminate masses heaving and rolling in a wild, madden

ing chaos, borne blindly, without perceiving why or wherefore, hither and thither, by every wind that sweeps over them? As well strike the Divinity from heaven, as dispeople the earth of its heroes. No; these Providential Men, these Angels of God, these Messengers of truth and love, were not mere fictions, the mere impersonations of the thoughts, feelings, and deeds of the masses in their respective nations; but they were great and glorious REALITIES, almost the only realities on which the eye can seize and repose, through all the long vista of the past. No; critics and philosophers, having spoiled us of our God, do in common charity spare us the glorious army of saints and martyrs, heroes, prophets, apostles, and sages, by whom our race has been redeemed and blessed. To spare us these is not to rob the masses of their glory, for their glory is that they love, and reverence, and cherish the memory of these, and profit by their diviner lives.

Moreover, this theory which recognizes God, not in the exceptional, the individual, and the diverse, but merely in the fixed, the uniform, the identical, and the necessary, in human history, refutes itself. Nothing is a more uniform, universal, and permanent fact of history, than this very belief that Providence intervenes in human affairs on the side of the ACTUAL, as well as on the side of the Transcendental. All ages and nations have believed in not only a general but a special Providence -a Providence intervening for individuals and nations, and through specially appointed nations and individuals as agents, or ministers. According to the theory in question, this belief can have resulted only from the presence of God in human nature, and therefore must have the highest stamp of truth the theory does or can recognize. If the theory be true, this belief must be true; therefore, if the theory be true, the theory itself must be false.

The error of the advocates of this theory, arises from their assuming that all in the life of humanity must be a development of humanity itself. But humanity does not suffice for itself. The Creator has not merely created man, placed him here, and left him to the natural workings of the original principles of his being, as the Epicureans teach, but he remains ever near

him, watching over him with a tender love; and intervenes to aid his growth, and the accomplishment of his destiny. This brings us to

II. THE RELIGIOUS VIEW OF PROVIDENCE. In our former article we objected to M. Cousin's doctrine that it gave no place to human freedom; we object to it now, that it gives no place to the Divine freedom. Unquestionably, M. Cousin asserts that the human me, as Leibnitz contends, is a force, a cause, and really is no further than it is free; but in tracing virtually, if not expressly, all the facts of history to the Impersonal Reason, and assigning to the reflective reason, in which alone the me intervenes, only a retrospective agency, he renders this liberty of the me altogether unproductive, and therefore as good as no me at all. Unquestionably also, he asserts, and it is a capital point in his philosophy, that God is cause, and substance, or being, only in that he is cause; therefore necessarily asserting his freedom, for a cause not free is no cause-the cause being not in it, but in that which binds or necessitates it. But in his account of the Divine intervention, he recognizes that intervention only in creation. It is, as we have seen, solely an ontological intervention, coming through the side of our permanent nature, affecting us in the fixed and unalterable laws of our being, and not through our life, our actions, and reaching our substantive existence through our phenomenal existence. Therefore, whatever freedom there was in creating us, there can be none in governing or controlling us. The Divine Action is limited, restrained by the laws or nature of the creature. God can act only in these laws; nay, these laws are his action. There is and can be no Divine influx but these laws themselves. Consequently, God is not and cannot be free to correct their action, or to give them a new direction, or an additional force, as may be required for the greatest good of the race, unless we lose them entirely and fall into absolute pantheism. From the first point of view, we lose man, from the last, we lose God.

The simple objection we here raise to M. Cousin is that he recognizes he Divine intervention in human affairs only in the nature with which he has created or creates us. As this nature, according to him, is fixed and unalter

able, we have and can have no free intervention of Providence in the actual affairs of individuals or of nations. It seems to us that a little attention to the language of an Apostle would have rectified this theory. It is, says St. Paul, whom we dare quote as a philosopher as well as an inspired apostle, if indeed the former is not presupposed in the latter it is in God that "we live and move and have our being." M. Cousin says it is in God that we have our being. Our ontological existence given, our whole phenomenal existence is given. But if this were so, why did the Apostle not stop with saying, "in God we have our being?" But our ontological or substantive existence being given, our whole phenomenal existence, that is to say, all the facts of our lives, all that we can exhibit in our actual living and acting, is not given. All does not flow out of the laws of our own being or the original principles of our nature. Our actual lives exhibit the presence of other principles and agencies, and among these is that to which all the world gives the name of Providence. "In him we live and move." We depend on God for our being; he, as it were, stands under us, and upholds, continues us in being by the continued presence-active presence, for God is never a mere looker on-of his creative energy. So far M. Cousin. But we, who are thus created, constituted, as active forces, are yet unable to act, or to produce in our own sphere, that is, to live and move. We are equally dependent on God, on the other side, on the presence, the active intervention of God for the conditions of life and motion. This last intervention, inasmuch as it is super-natural, not restricted to our mere natures, but comes in and affects our lives, and the principles of our nature through our living, and therefore not bound by them, is the true providential intervention. It is a free intervention, and therefore implies the Divine Sovereignty. It enables us to feel that God is free at any moment to intervene in our behalf, to reward us for our virtues, to console us in our afflictions, to redress our grievances, and to punish us for our offences.

We have made Bossuet, a celebrated Catholic Bishop, author of the Discours sur l'Histoire Universelle, the representative of this religious view of Providence, because it is from it, as his point

of sight, that his history is conceived and written; also because he is among the earliest of those who have attempted a universal history. This work has had a great reputation, and it must be owned that it is written with great eloquence and power, with the force and dignity becoming an eminent prelate of the Church; yet regarded as a history, it is unquestionably very defective-defective considering the state of historical knowledge at the time it was written, and much more so now. Its merit is that it is written from the point of view of Providence, and designed to show the active intervention of Providence in the affairs of this world to reward and to punish, to solace and to succor, and especially its intervention in the rise, progress, and decline of states and empires. But the Prelate sees seldom the people,-seldom condescends to bestow a thought on the domestic and every-day life of the masses; he dwells in the Temple, or follows the Court and the Camp.

The French claim for Bossuet the high honor of having been the first to conceive the plan of a universal history, written in a philosophic spirit, from a given point of view; but possibly without sufficient foundation. Bossuet's originality is more in the execution than in the conception of his work, the plan of which was given him by the Church itself, was indicated in Genesis, and had been rough-sketched, at least, by St. Augustine in his Civitate Dei. Moreover, the History of the World, by Sir Walter Raleigh, which preceded! the Discours sur l'Histoire Universelle by more than half a century, is conceived in the same spirit, written from the same point of view, and with virtually the same thought. Sir Walter finished only a third part of his work as originally designed; but he has, in the masterly preface to the part completed, sketched the plan of the whole. As a mere history, though by no means without its merit, it unquestionably falls far below the work of the Catholic Prelate; but the Preface and Introductory Chapters, philosophical and theological, are written with great vigor and majesty of thought, with a pathos, a richness and a magnificence of style and language, hardly surpassed, if equalled, by anything of the kind we are acquainted with, and show, among other things, how little philoso

phy has really advanced since the pretended reforms introduced by Bacon and Descartes.

But if Sir Walter, as is the case, asserts the fact of Providence, and undertakes to write the History of the World, in order to establish its certainty, and to illustrate its operation in human affairs, and must, therefore, take precedence of Bossuet; he does not, it must be admitted, seem to have clearly and distinctly conceived of history itself as the realization of a grand Providential Scheme, and therefore cannot with strict propriety, notwithstanding his philosophy and philosophic spirit, be ranked among philosophical historians. Perhaps, after all, Bossuet is the first not to conceive of history as the realization of this providential scheme, for that, as we have said, was given him by the Church, and to some extent by the Jewish History recorded in the Scriptures; but the first, while asserting the supernatural intervention of Providence, to develope the systematic character of this intervention, and to give a regular and continuous history of it, in its relations and connexions with the more mundane history of states and empires.

Saint Augustine had conceived, and to some extent sketched the history of the rise and progress of TWO CITIES, one of which he called the "City of this world," whose end is destruction, the other of which he called the "City of God," whose end is to remain for ever the empire of the saints, and the habitation of the just. Here is unquestionably the germ of the Discours sur l'Histoire Universelle. But Saint Augustine wrote not as the historian, but as the polemic and the dogmatist; while Bossuet writes almost always as the simple historian, only as the historian of principles rather than of mere facts and details. He is writing for the instruction of the Dauphin, and his design is indeed to prepare his royal pupil, should Providence call him to the throne, for the proper discharge of his duties as sovereign of France. He writes, therefore, from the point of view of religion and politics, with the evident design of showing from the history of God's providence, and that of renowned states and empires, that no policy of a prince, however wise to mere human apprehension, can ever be successful, if it in any respect runs counter

to the laws of God, as displayed in his providential dealings with mankind. He sought to inculcate the wholesome lesson, always inculcated by the Catholic Church, and always needing to be inculcated, whether the political sovereignty be vested in the one, the few, or the many, that there is a King of kings, a Power above the state, who is the true Sovereign, and whose laws can never be transgressed with impunity. Nor this only; he every where sought to show, by implication, however, rather than by express assertion, what the English Solomon, James the First, in his Remonstrance for the Divine Right of Kings, in reply to an Oration of the Cardinal du Perron, undertakes to controvert, namely, that this true Sovereign, this King of kings, Law of laws, to which the civil magistrate owes allegiance, has on earth even, a visible embodiment, and a representative, other than that which may be conceived of as existing in the state itself. He therefore contends for Two

EMPIRES

1. The Empire of the People of God, the RELIGIOUS.

2. The Empire of men, the POLITICAL. In his view, these TWO EMPIRES are not co-ordinate, though co-existing; nor does he make the first subordinate to the second, raising the civil power over the ecclesiastical-the human over the Divine-as do the Anglicans in their theory of the Reformation; and as does James, especially in his Remonstrance, or defence of kings; but he makes the Religious Empire, which derives its authority immediately from God himself, supreme, and proclaims it from his episcopal chair as the law of the political power; a doctrine humbling to the pride of kings, and which, through the long period from the establishment of the Barbarians on the ruins of the Roman Empire down to the Reformation in the sixteenth century, had caused an almost unbroken war between the civil government and the ecclesiastical. Protestantism, under its social aspect-not to speak of it under its theological aspect, with which we have now no concern-is the successful protest on the part of the civil magistrate-civil governmentsagainst this doctrine, then asserted by the Church,and still its doctrine, though for the present suffered to lie in abey

ance.