nation from Dr. Bushnell's unfavorable representations. It is not our Christian principles, but our failing to live up to them, that is to be censured. In our endeavors we will welcome help, from whatever quarter it may come, and in whatever form, whether of reproach or of commendation, of encourage. ment or of admonition. Let the righteous smite me; it shall be a kindness: and let him reprove me: it shall be an excellent oil.*

The volume before us contains much that is valuable. Besides the discourses or essays in which the arguments occur which we have been reviewing, there are eight or ten others. One of them is on "the ostrich nurture"; one is on "the out-populating power of the Christian stock"; and another is entitled, "when and where the nurture begins." The rest are on, parental qualifications; physical nurture to be a means of grace; the treatment that discourages piety; family government; plays and pastimes, holidays and Sundays; the Christian teaching of children; and family prayer. Without approving every sentiment expressed, we commend the perusal of the book to the discriminating reader. He will find it highly interesting and suggestive.

Would that the author might have health and a disposition to prepare an improved edition, thoroughly expurgated of the present errors, and thus furnish, on a subject of immense importance, a volume that might be a worthy companion for his recently published sermons, and for his thrice welcome chapter on the character of Christ.

* Psalms cxli: 5.

LAW IN RELATION TO MIRACLES.*

[BY JAMES M. HOYT, ESQ., OF CLEVELAND, 0.]

MAN is in one sense, of necessity, ever learning, and never coming to the knowledge of the truth. As a being of limited capacities, starting here with an unlimited expanse of truth around him, the unknown, while it ever invites him to exploration, ever widens in its outlines and recedes from his complete comprehension. Launched into existence here, his capacities, however noble in nature and destiny, and however rightly put in action, are yet in infancy. Personally, in his growth to manhood, as toward wide horizons of truth, he may so advance beyond the crude conceptions and experience of childhood as to cease to think as a child, and to speak as a child, and may put away childish things.

But as higher and outlying horizons, yet unsurveyed by his intelligence, unknown to his consciousness, he must, even in his sturdiest manhood in this life, in the view of beings of a higher intelligence, wear the badges of infancy. And this would be true, and must ever continue true, of man in relation to beings of an intelligence transcending his own, were every act of his capacities rightful and healthful in the conquest of truth, and every step onward one of unerring progress. All this is of necessity incidental to the expansion of powers ordained to increase through action-to be developed by

* An Address before the Rhetorical Society of Rochester Theological Seminary, at its Anniversary in May, 1863. Published by request.

growth to advance from stage to stage of stature by the acquisition and assimilation of truth.

The imperfections, however, of man's knowledge in the realms of truth open to his exploration here, are increased indefinitely by the imperfect action of his powers. These are often used perversely. The fruit of such action, instead of normal progress in acquiring truth, is abnormal deformity through the acceptance of false conceptions as true, and the use of delusive standards in exploring the unknown. Hence, error and delusion have come to be constant elements in man's advances into the unknown, which need constantly and carefully to be eliminated.

Fallacy has been so often accepted as reality in man's enterprises to enlarge the boundaries of his knowledge, that he is compelled, as the inexorable condition of true progress, to return constantly to demonstrable standards of truth; to test every essay into the unknown, and every fancied acquisition of possessions there, by the tried measures of an assured experience.

Man's use of his capacities has been so almost universally perverse-we glance only at its fact, not at its cause-his efforts to determine the unknown have been so often fruitless, so often presumptuous, so often reckless in judging of that beyond his experience by standards which only a puerile reason could deem adequate, that modesty and caution in his speculations, and distrust of the accuracy and healthfulness of his intellectual action, ought always to accompany his inquiries. I speak thus, because convinced that in nothing has man been guilty of greater presumption and puerility in reasoning, than in his treatment, to a great extent, of the subject which I invite you now to consider, namely-Law, in its relation to Miracles.

I would define law, as a mode of action. Some might prefer adding, that it is also a mode or condition of existence, But the latter statement is implied in the first, for there can be no action without the existence of all concerned in the action. Again: Some may deem it essential to state that law is not only a mode of action, but is also a mode of relaVol. xxxiii-40.

tion. Here, too, while conceding that law is indeed a mode of relation, I deem the statement superfluous, because implied in the former. For, if law be a mode of action, then action according to a given mode, of necessity implies relation. True, we may conceive of relations according to fixed modes, which, within limited spheres, and for limited periods are unaccompanied by that form of action which shows itself in visible changes. But even there, when tested by broader relations, there is constantly an inherent though latent action of force or power tending to preserve the relation, and fix its identity and steadfastness amid opposing forces. It is the action, in fact, of a perfectly adjusted counterpoise of forces, the result of which is the harmony of apparent rest. But in reality, to a view reaching deeper than the surface, it will appear that each atom involved in the whole relation steadfastly stands sentinel at its post, bearing and resisting to the full limit of the force made to inhere in it in its relations. For instance, look at a tree, in a still atmosphere. It is an embodiment of relation, in all its parts at rest. The trunk, the branches, the attenuated spray, the foliage, are all, apparently, at rest. But really each is acting with inherent force to maintain the steadfastness of the whole, each atom acting in the trunk and branches by cohesion against gravity-acting in modes which elude our senses; but which make the integrity of the relation constant. So that while that tree in all its parts is the fruit of law as a mode of relation, this result itself is the fruit of law as a mode of action.

Beyond its relations to the material, the statement that law is a mode of action, appears equally true in relation to the mental and spiritual. As to any law of the understanding, any law of the heart, any spiritual law, having its field of development in the realm of the soul, it will not be doubted that every such law, within its sphere, is a mode of action. Even considered in the abstract, as for instance, a mathematical law, determining the relations of quantity or space-it may be urged, that we can conceive of such a law, only as it is associated in the conception with real relations to quantity or space, made overt to our consciousness in the discernment

་

of the relation as mentally applied. I do not confound here the act of the mind in conceiving the law, as determining that the law is a mode of action; but urge that we do not conceive of the law, however abstract, except by conceiving of the relation implied in the law in action, as applied to quantity or space.

Not pausing to pursue this inquiry further, I return to law in its relations to the material world, as more immediately involved in our subject. I venture to assume, then, in the present discussion, that law, considered as an ultimate generalization, is defined with sufficient precision and comprehensiveness as a mode of action.

Any action, seen constantly to be in accordance with a fixed mode, suggests some force or power back of the action, predetermining the mode. The mind, when it discerns a law, intuitively assumes that there is some force or cause which is the source of the law. We live in a universe of action; action so constant, so multiform, so universal, that we conceive of existence and action as inseparable.

The action, also, is so uniformly in accordance with determined modes, that our consciousness perpetually testifies that we live in a universe of law. Law, inhering in every atom, uttered by every voice of nature, written all over the earth and the heavens.

In such a universe of law, a soul must be sunk below intelligence, or be so perverted as to thwart its intuitions, if it does not seek for a Lawgiver.

Again: The modes of action which come to our knowledge, though wondrously varied, the more closely we study them, appear the more clearly to be the best possible to effect the results which flow from them.

These modes, too, in relation to the results, are seen to be never accidental, but to be determined by a selection, which reveals, the more fully we comprehend it, the more perfect wisdom. By as much as we grow in our intelligent apprehension of the realities to which we are related in our existence; by as much as the horizon of human knowledge, amid the countless forces in action around us, expands in discerning