ruins, as mere superstition and bigotry. While we are unwilling that savans should force their theories upon us as creeds, we must permit them to treat our creeds as theories until found consistent with science. We need not fear, that practically and personally the one party will be any the less moral, religious, and orthodox, or the other any the less learned, humane, and philosophical, on account of such a problematical state of their relations.

So long, indeed, as theology, in a course of education, is forced into any warlike bearing, offensive or defensive, apologetic or polemic, even her own interests may be damaged; but when she is allowed her due place among the sciences, as alike entering with them all into the training of an accomplished scholar, and it is made the recognized vocation of both teacher and pupil to address themselves to her lessons with philosophic candor and conscientious enthusiasm, truth will at least be in the way of gaining the homage of reason, and from the first have the vantage over error.

2. It would reach a larger and more varied mass of the forming mind of society. Instead of being confined to one calling, it would include candidates for all the three learned professions, who, viewed respectively as votaries of physical, metaphysical, and theological science, are the real parties first interested in the reconciliation, and by their presence together

in the same audience might yield a wholesome stimulus and check upon both professor and student.

3. It would be preventive, rather simply remedial, as to existing social perils. However desirable it may be to equip the church with new apologetic appliances in view of modern scientific skepticism, yet these after all would not reach the evil at its hidden springs. It has its origin in the very methods, habits, and acquirements of science, and by means of these alone can be mastered and corrected.

4. It would have the high character and even the impressive appearance of an effort to follow the revolted sciences into their own haunts of estrangement and error and win them back again by their own logic and laws. It would be leading forth the young and eager thought of the time on a new mission of truth and love, rather than in the old and crooked ways of prejudice and passion. What are most of the existing treatises or even professorships put forth in the interest of theology, as viewed by her foes, but weak confessions that she is on the defensive, and base signals of defeat? It is not by polemics, apologies, or evidences, that she will ever resume her rightful dominion in the seats of learning. It is not by any sacred sophistry that she is to convince the disciples of reason, or with mere dogmatic assertion that she can reclaim the homage of philosophy. Science, like nature, can only be controlled

through a knowledge of her laws. These once found and imposed, she will prove no wayward seeker of the truth, but as her Eastern sages once read a gospel in the stars, will come by her own researches to the manifested God, and worship him with fair and costly art.

But from whichever side, or at whatever point of the academic system, the work of affiliation shall proceed, as it advances it cannot but be met with a wide and hearty welcome. He has but illy scanned the present state of learning who takes the wordy strife of mere bigots and savans as a fair reflection of the general mind upon the question. There runs through the catholic thought of the age, however seldom expressed, a deep undertone of sadness and misgiving rather than of mutual anger and defiance. True philosophy takes no delight in this sore feud, which has rent the body of her disciples in twain, but in their midst still secretly yearns for a just reconciliation. And when once any movement shall have gone forth among them that shall seem to command them with a voice of reason and love, it must sooner or later be hailed with joy, however obscure and feeble may have been its beginnings.

Thus has Providence prepared the soil, as well as disclosed the field, and sifted the seed for a mighty harvest of truth, in which we may be the sowers and the latest posterity the reapers. A great work may

at least be commenced by us: the time is at hand; the scene is ready; and the mode is obvious. In these last days and at these ends of the earth, we have the means not merely of projecting, but also of inaugurating that scheme of perfect knowledge through which the dissevered hosts of philosophy are to be thoroughly organized, and at length science matured, art perfected, society renewed, and the whole world filled with a glory of which it is not possible now to conceive.

Here let us rest in this difficult ascent of thought which we have climbed. Though the way may have seemed uncertain and tedious, yet the prospect gained is sure. That which can now only be called the ultimate philosophy may rise under another name and in other ways; but whenever, wherever, and however inaugurated, it is itself inevitable. Every species of pledge, the word of God, the law of facts, and the voice of reason, combine to proclaim it. It is that perfect system of knowledge and of society which both logically and providentially results from the whole previous development of humanity. It is the goal of history, seen with the eyes of prophecy and philosophy, and yearned after by the heart of philanthropy. It is the millennium projected upon rational sequence as well as divine decree; and could

it fail to come to pass, it would not simply be as if a great human hope had perished, but as if the divine reason had falsified its own premises, laid through all the past, and left the problem of the world unsolved. Astronomers tell us that were this material globe to reel from its orbit, it could only be by a miracle, suspending the very laws of mathematics; but how much less conceivable that the moral world should ever recoil in mid-progress and the whole work of time become a meaningless fragment! The flower of the planetary life, rooted in extinct marvels and blooming through long ages of sin and sorrow, will not thus be blighted at its budding. The fairest ideal that lives in divine and human fancy will not thus be turned to naught.

Behold then at one glance the issue to which we are come. The summary want of the age is that last philosophy into which shall have been sifted all other philosophy, which shall be at once catholic and eclectic, which shall be the joint growth and fruit of reason and faith, and which shall shed forth, through every walk of research, the blended light of discovery and revelation; a philosophy which shall be no crude aggregate of decaying systems and doctrines, but their distilled issue and living effect, and which shall not have sprung, full-born, from any one mind or people, but mature as the common work and reward of all; a philosophy which, proceeding upon the unity of truth,