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his enemies, by removing the pillars of Dagon's temple. We have in all things to deal with the world as it is, not as it should be; and while we may despise frigid and ceremonious politeness, red tape, and boarding-school starch, yet even these are more humanising than shirt-sleeved democracy, and rude familiarity. Truly, etiquette is often a great bore; but verily it is often an equal blessing. It is something like an air cushion, not much in it perhaps; it is not solid and angular, or hard and rough like some over-praised virtues; but it is not the less useful. It ever acts as a buffer in its true acceptation. But for it we should often be hurt, but for it we should often suffer; it is ever a safeguard to us, and like an air-cushion, it greatly eases the jolting of our chariot as we journey through life.

From this short analysis of etiquette and the proprieties of daily life, it will be clearly seen, I hope, that I am not holding the position of an apologist, defender, or advocate of our social amenities. I have merely tried to interpret their use, and ascertain the reason of their existence. And so far as the evidence goes, it appears that we cannot associate together without their observance. They are not temporary expedients, but permanent essentials of intercourse; they grow out of, and are sustained by the root instincts of human nature; and as such, no one need be their apologist or champion any more than a botanist need apologise for the bark on trees, or a naturalist justify the brilliant plumage of birds, or the soft, warm coat of the seal. (To be continued.)

SCIENCE AND THE CHURCH.

In the first paper on this subject, we drew attention to the general relation of science and the Church as the prime question of to-day, and endeavoured to enforce the Church's duty in regard thereto. In a second paper, the significance of the modern relation of science and the Church was enunciated, and under this idea we had three things to note:

1st, What had brought this new relation about, viz., a new attitude on the part of science through its declaration of a definite belief as to the First Cause.

2nd, Whether or not this new attitude of science afforded any ground of union between science and the Church; and,

3rd, By whom and by what this new attitude had been effected. The first point was dealt with, and some radical objections to the relation in question answered. We have in this paper to direct attention to the second, viz., whether this new attitude of science affords any ground of union between science and the Church-any common ground on which both may meet.

The facts are briefly these :-The Church teaches a Revealed DivineHuman Unit of Personality as the Highest Power,-one only Lord God; modern science teaches, as the deepest fact of life discoverable by reason, the existence of an Unconditioned First Cause, in its nature unknown to and unknowable by man.

Is there any ground of union between these positions? Is there any such common ground as will serve for the formation, in the universal human mind, of a properly based conviction or rational belief that the cause of nature and of revelation are one? Who does not desire to see man as man, the universal reason, at rest on this greatest question of human life-the nature of God? Are we here then on the way to having that proved which has been so long assumed on the one hand and denied on the other? Put so, is it not manifest that we touch the very centre and spring of man's future thought and life? If there is such common ground, if the Church and science are finding it, then the inference is immediate,-Has the rational life of universal man in very truth begun, and are we now looking upon the rudiments of its formation? Of such moment and effect is our question of union between science and the Church.

Let us put an à priori form of argument first.

Clearly, if ever the mind of man is to be rationally enlightened, that enlightenment must have its ostensible beginning, not in spiritual conceptions, but in an agreement on some common principles and ideas of natural reason. The necessary previous spiritual aptitudes to make these reasonings of legitimate effect is an entirely individual question : these may be present or absent, and neither possibility concerns us; but, assuredly, and in either case, we shall do nothing towards universal rational enlightenment unless there can be first a common consensus on certain purely natural considerations.

Many things concur in pointing us to men of science as the proper source of such considerations, as, for instance, that they may fairly be reckoned the mouthpiece of natural reason in its highest problems; moreover, the advanced idea of a First Cause as a necessity of human thought having come from them, shows that natural reason is, by them,

being prepared for clearer conceptions on this ruling, and therefore on every subsidiary, question, and this without assuming that the idea so given is the basis of the desired union; and finally, these things are in agreement with the law that the intellectual progress of man is from the leaders of thought to the people. We may therefore take it as proved, that it is to science we should look for the first ostensible movement towards that common centre in which science and the Church shall unite to lay the foundation of universal thought-progress.

But surely, again, this is what New Churchmen of all men ought to be on the outlook for some such state of the moral and intellectual

atmosphere of the common life around them, especially of the scientific life, as will form the fitting ground and medium of their spiritual conceptions; some such natural considerations as will bring the Church and science into agreement. I do not mean noting the world's preparedness to receive New Church truth, nor giving instances, individual or other, in that direction, but something essentially deeper than all this: grasping in definite conception the actual universal tendencies, and consequent formulated thoughts, of the natural reason of the age, gauging its highest and therefore most distinctive ideas-just feeling its pulse, in fact, looking into its eyes and taking the inmost measure of its life. And all for what? Because, as New Churchmen and the New Church being what it is, we are on the outlook for the highest reasoned thought of the age, as affording the very considerations we need and expect, to be the vehicle of the Church's manifestation. We ought to be certain that the highest thoughts of science will subserve this purpose to the Church. We ought not merely to take such indications of the hour as may chance to turn up, but should be on the watch, as an astronomer must for the expected phenomena on which so much will depend, for the highest scientific attitude of the day with its distinctive ideas, expecting them to be such, in the good providence of the Lord, as will enable the Church to fulfil her function of communicating and advancing the rational life of man. For, of one thing we may surely be very confident, that the natural and scientific state and thought of the world matches, as by an inherent necessity, the spiritual-scientific state and thought of the Church, and that from the universal presence of the one Lord in all, providentially adapting with infinite variation the environment of the Church to her powers and needs; that the Lord has prepared a body, clothing, place, and medium, for the truth which He has at the

same time given the Church to teach; which means, being interpreted in the language of our present subject, that we may be certain beforehand that the teachings of science on this deepest problem now are the very and true grounds of that union of spiritual and natural thought which we desiderate for the rational progress of universal man. We should expect, in fact, to find some such truth answering the requirements of the case we are here considering as that of the Unconditioned Primal Cause now taught by science.

This is optimistic speculation? No doubt, but based on undeniable principles; and what else is New Church abstract thought?

But if the facts agree therewith, then at the mouth of the two witnesses every word will be established. Let us turn to the facts, the Divine Personality and the Unconditioned First Cause.

We shall be necessitated to look first at the difference between these teachings before considering their unity.

The one is professedly a revelation, the other professedly a discovery. It is clear that the revelation and the discovery, supposing them to be made at all, could not be made of precisely the same thing; a thing discoverable would never be revealed, that would only be the Prime Power forestalling itself. Agreement in difference, then, is, on the face of the matter, to be expected; and this we find. Nay, will it not be agreement as to the fact, if both are to speak truth, with some difference as to the nature of the fact? How else would this agreement in difference be possible? And this also we find. Furthermore, the only consideration that would warrant us in rejecting either of these witnesses to the one fact would be contradiction; but this we do not find. They present themselves, therefore, as two independent witnesses speaking within their sphere to the one fact, with the difference proper to them.

Coming closer, the revelation and discovery contract themselves to these apparently vital differences-"person" and "cause.” At first sight, it might appear as if there were the whole heaven's difference of a living being and an abstraction between these two; and Swedenborg might be quoted to show that there are those who believe in "an End of the universe from which come all the things of nature" (A. C. 4950), and those who think "in a middle way" that nature is from a being of whom they have no idea (D. W. xii.), 1 both of whom are at best only "interior natural men,” i.e., high class materialists. But in this objection there would lie some confusion of thought; for, first, we

1 Last vol. A. E.

have nothing to do with the men or their states, but with the intrinsic value of the doctrines propounded, and their likely results upon the receivers of them. And if it be thought that their value is determined by the states of the propounders, we say, Yes, for the propounders, but not necessarily for others; not for their disciples, for example, especially in a transition period like the present, when men are constrained to believe what they can find rather than go creedless. A man's ostensible belief may harmonize with his interior state or it many a man is the professed disciple of a creed who is not interiorly in the state from which that creed arose. So, a creed, that as a resting-place would be baneful, may, as a transition step, be a blessing. The philosophical and practical value of a doctrine, therefore, is the only ultimate test of the measure of truth it may contain, or may stand for; and such quotations as the above do not in the least affect us here. We cannot classify men and then ignore their doctrines.

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may not;

Again, "person" and " cause are by no means to be contrasted as if they were equivalent to "living being" and "abstraction." Evident it is that a cause cannot be an abstraction or nonentity; for, from nothing, nothing comes. A cause is something, whether material or other. When, therefore, the doctrine is propounded that there is a First Cause of the universe, the only legitimate interpretation of the doctrine is that there is a cause-of whatsoever kind-adequate to produce the effects in question.-a cause of the universe adequate to the production of a universe. From that point, difference may arise as to what the cause can be, or as to our capacity to know its nature; but when a cause is assigned an abstraction is implicitly denied. The advocates of the doctrine may themselves conceive of that cause as of an infinitely extended ethereal force; but what they think is nothing to the purpose, except as concerns themselves: it is what we, to whom the doctrine is propounded, are to think, that is the vital matter.' It would be purely suicidal, therefore, if we were to throw away the advantage thus afforded us by men saying more than they mean. They assign a cause, and it is for us to see that the cause is adequate.

Still, it will be thought by some that here lies the whole contention of believers in a Personal God. Admitting that what these advocates think is immaterial, yet if the Primal Fact itself be a Person, do they not, in their doctrine, come short of the fact by so much? and what value is the doctrine which from its very imperfection is untrue? But, this is only the old confusion returned on us. Is a man necessarily a devil because he is not God? If man contradicts God, to that extent

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