The soul in union with God does not believe that the union will ever terminate. To the mere logician this is foolishness, but those like Paul, who know that they are children of God and therefore heirs, know that as Jesus lives they shall live also. Eternal life has begun now. It is not fanaticism to believe in communion with the Father and the Son. This is better than the fetishism of a blessed wafer or of water sprinkled by a priest, better than the 'sacerdotal vanities' of 'episcopal powers,'' baptismal regeneration,' or a mechanical apostolic succession.

In some of his later books,1 Newman has retracted what he wrote about the immortality of the soul. He was satisfied that the child of God could have no doubt about the future, and he had advanced arguments for the probability of a future life. Now he confesses that 'other experiences had gradually swung him in the other direction.'

John Stuart Mill in his 'Autobiography' tells us he was brought up from the first without any religious belief. He added, 'I am one of the very few examples in this country of those who have not thrown off religious belief, but never had it, I grew up in a negative state with regard to it.' His father's creed was that some evil being made the world. The son was left to grope for the light by means of dry and hard logic. Religion had more attraction for him than for his father, and whatever may have been the precise relation to the kingdom of God which he finally reached, he was certainly nearer that kingdom at the end of his career than at the beginning.

For Mill's religious opinions we need not go outside the Three Essays' which were published after his death. The first is on Nature,' and the second on the Utility of Religion. The third is 'Theism.' The first Essay might be called an impeachment of nature for her crimes, cruelties and immoralities. Nature is the wild animal, and man is the being whose work is to tame and civilise. Nature is not to be followed or imitated but to be observed. It is such as no

1See 'Life after Death,' 'Palinodia,' and 'This and the other World.'

2

* Supposed to have been written between 1850 and 1858.

being who had the attributes of justice or benevolence could have created. The great forces which strike us with awe and sometimes admiration are reckless in their action. They care for nothing which is dear or precious to man. Nearly all things

which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another are natural every-day performances.'1 Nature not only kills but kills with cruelty. She 'impales men, breaks them as if on a wheel, casts them to the wild beasts,' in short, she is not surpassed in ingenious cruelty by a Nabis or a Domitian.

Writers on Natural Theology try to make it appear that the suffering in the world exists to prevent greater suffering, that misery exists to prevent misery. If this thesis could be made good, it would only avail to justify the work of a limited being compelled to labour under unwilling conditions. It is out of place on the supposition of the Creator being omnipotent. The old Deists deified Nature. They set her up as the standard of morality, but goodness is in man, not in nature. Her very instincts and impulses are

evil.

In the second Essay the theology of consciousness is examined. The learned Theists of this class take up with some form of the intuitional philosophy, and from internal feeling infer objective truth. The question now is if religion is not sustainable by argument, is it useful or necessary to the welfare of mankind? The answer is that the hope of immortality may be useful, yet history bears out the idea that man may be happy without such a belief. In a higher and even a happier condition of life it might be that man would not wish to be chained to existence, and would prefer annihilation to immortality.

In the third Essay the writer works his way to some shadows of belief. He first considers Natural Religion, that is, the common belief that God created and governs the world. To disprove this nothing can be found, at the same time nothing to prove it. The first argument is that for a First Cause. This is inferred from the fact that every effect has a cause, but causation can only be applied to the changeable phenomena of the world, and not legitimately extended to the material universe itself. Moreover, our knowledge of

causes is merely sequence and cannot be carried back to the First Cause. Some have supposed volition identical with a real cause. The will produces an effect, but will always assumes force, and there is no ground for supposing that force was created by volition. So far as we have the means of judging, other agents besides will have power over phenomena. Mind may be the product of unconscious power. For that which has no beginning, no cause is needed. Matter and force so far as experience teaches us had no beginning. The argument thus fails for a First Cause. That for general consent resolves itself into the argument on which the general belief rests. That from consciousness has no validity as the idea in the mind does not prove the external object. There is no passage from the subjective to the objective. One argument has scientific value. The argument from design. There is design in nature. The eye was made to see. Here is evidence of an intelligent will. Nature shows a Deity, but only of limited power. The very idea of contrivance implies limitation. God may be omniscient but there is nothing to prove it. The wisdom manifested in Creation is beyond man's wisdom, but there is nothing to prove it infinite. Nature has no moral end. It seeks not the good of the sentient creature. There may be in creation traces of benevolence, but that is not its sole nor even its chief purpose. that was its intention the failure has been ignominious.

If

After Natural Theology comes the question of Revelation. The latter has a starting-point in the former. It professes to be a message from a Being, whose existence is, at least, indicated in nature. The very imperfection of Natural Theology removes some of the stumbling blocks of Revelation. This was Butler's argument, and so far as it went, was valid, but Butler did not face the fact that the God of Nature is not omnipotent. If we can believe that God regards the happiness of His creatures, we may believe a revelation probable, but the supernatural evidence for Christianity is not sufficient. From what we know of the Divine government it is likely that God made provision in his scheme of creation for revelation by natural development, and from what we know of the history of the human mind, we may infer that that is really

folding of a purpose as old as creation. A Divine Person is held up as a standard of excellence, and a model for imitation. It is not the God of the Jews, nor the God of nature, but God Incarnate. It is the Divine Man that has taken such a hold on the modern mind. Whatever rational criticism may take away it cannot take the Christ. None of the disciples of Jesus, nor of their proselytes could have invented the sayings ascribed to Jesus, or imagined His life and character in the Gospels. There is no one in the world's history to be compared with the Prophet of Nazareth.

Thomas Carlyle's biographer1 has summed up his religious opinions partly from his books but mostly from his conversation.

He is described as a Calvinist without the theology. He retained the substance while dropping the form, for what was really left was the effect on himself. The stern creed which made him what he was, he rejected, but in character and conduct he had much of the old Scotch Puritan. He was educated for the ministry in the Church of Scotland, but he early told his friend Irving that he had ceased to believe in any external revelation depending on the evidence of historical miracles. He was conscious of darkness rather than of light, and his few gleams of faith seemed more likė coruscations than actual fire. He is commonly called a Pantheist; but there is a spiritual Pantheism, and a materialist Pantheism, and all kinds of Pantheism between. It is hard to believe that any thinking man is not a Pantheist of some kind. God was not personal. To believe that would be anthropomorphism. He is often named in the plural as the 'Eternities,' the 'Infinities,' the 'Immensities.' As man has intellect and conscience so must have that Being who is infinitely greater than man. He is the Soul of the world, not far from anyone of us, but in us and around us. He governs with absolute justice. Revelation and inspiration are in man. The breath of the Almighty giveth him understanding. Materialism is only 'mud philosophy,' for the Deity is behind and through all matter. The root of creation is spirit. The most manifest thing in the world is the distinction between right and wrong. Man's first business is duty to do the right. A life to come is not improbable. Carlyle rated

forms of positive unbelief as much as he rated some forms of positive belief. He is not more severe on 'Puseyism, Free Kirk of Scotland, and such rubbish,' than he is on Strauss, Renan, and Colenso. He could not believe that historical Christianity would be much longer received by educated men, yet God, in His own time, would build up a temple for Himself on the ruins of the old belief. Samuel Wilberforce and Thomas Erskine regarded Carlyle as a deeply religious man. Though he set aside the supernatural, or rather identified it with the natural, he always told his mother that he believed as she did. In his last days he read the Bible much, and 'found it as deep and wonderful as it ever used to be.'

James Anthony Froude1 the brother of Richard Hurrell Froude was early associated with the Tractarians at Oxford. He was engaged by Newman to write some of the lives of the Saints, but he was soon convinced that he was in 'a region of Will o' the Wisp superstitions and could only find legends where he expected history.' The Nemesis of Faith' was understood at one time to represent Froude's own mental history, but this has been denied. It may, however, be taken as representing the writer's attitude towards orthodox forms of Christianity. The hero is a student who cannot subscribe to the established creeds because he has come to believe that the Bible is not generically different from other books.

Froude wrote but little on theological subjects and has nowhere categorically declared his belief. He was no friend to Ritualists or Roman Catholics, and in ecclesiastical history his sympathies were with the Puritans and the much depreciated writers of the eighteenth century. Dr Newman had wished for something deeper and truer than that which satisfied the eighteenth century.' On this Froude wrote, 'A good many years, perhaps a good many hundreds of years, will have to pass before such sound books will be written again or deeds done with such pith and mettle.' Before the Tractarian movement, the Church, though not perfect, had done its work satisfactorily. The Ritualistic movement was of no more significance than that of the spirit-rapper. The serious forces of the world will go on in spite of it. He quoted with approbation the saying of a Professor of astronomy that the