simple, it cannot be corrupted through the fault of individuals. Thus, in the sinner, it will not suffer; it will be the accidental only, to wit, the corrupted thought, the guilty will, that will be punished. When a judge punishes a guilty man, what does he condemn in him? The nature of the man, or only his will which did the evil? His will, of course; but he cannot separate them, he punishes both at once. That which the legis lator here below cannot do, the Judge Supreme will do with ease; he will separate the nature from the will, and maintaining the purity of the nature, which is his work, and which cannot be evil, he will punish, or rather leave to punishment, that which he did not make, namely, the perverted will of the sinner.

"All, then, good or bad, are united in paradise, that is, in the primitive perfection of human nature. Only, some are in their thoughts in this paradise, where they are rising still higher and nearer to God; these are the elect. The rest, that is, the reprobates, are far from paradise in their wicked, impious thoughts, loaded with the darkness of their ignorance and sins.

"The great mystery of the world, in its double evolution, to wit, the creation, and the return of the creation to God, is now accomplished; and as we began with God, it is with God that we end; with that God, at once present and concealed, whom we cannot name, but whom we ever see in all things; with that God, who, being infinitely above the world and before the world, yet fills it, and gives it life through his own being; and, like the light of the sun in the glowing air, ends by becoming alone visible in all things, whilst, moreover, he rises infinitely above even this new transfigured creation, and none can attain unto him, even in deification, unless it be Christ the Son."

Such is the system of Scotus Erigena; and it must be tried, not by the light of the nineteenth, but by that of the ninth century. While we dissent from his modes of interpretation, and from many of his particular conclusions, we should remember that it is a decade of centuries since the day of his attaining manhood; and that, during that period, great progress has been made in the course of human thought. No man is to be judged by the things in which he conforms to his age, so much as by those in which he leads and moulds it, or stands in advance of it. Still less is a man to be condemned for not knowing things that were not discovered for ages after his death. It does not make us deny the genius and power of Kepler, to find him believing in astrology, and ignorant of that law of gravity whose existence is demonstrat

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ed by his own discoveries. We reverence the penetrating intellect of Aristotle, and his searching powers of observation, even though his reasoning was sometimes absurd, and his catalogue of animals does not enumerate the fauna of New Holland. No! the genius of Kepler prepared the way for Newton; and that of Newton, the path for Leverrier. Each of these names awakens the same deep reverence in our hearts. The labors of Aristotle did not lead to the same discoveries as those of Cuvier, nor was Cuvier acquainted with the results of the latest researches into embryology. But none the less true is it that Cuvier's genius and his studies were the necessary forerunners of the zoology of today, nay, his discoveries form some of its best and most important parts. Published to-day, the system of Erigena were a strange, antiquated, and useless thing; published in the middle of the ninth century, it was the first fruits of the cultivation of the Germanic race, under the influence of Christianity; it was the introduction of intellectual life into the Church, and of true religion into philosophy; it was the beginning of the growth of theology as a science.

Taillandier (whose discussion of Scotus's life, doctrine, and merit is very full and impartial) says that Erigena united in his system the characteristics of both the Platonic and the Alexandrine schools, but added to them a new and Christian spirit. The Neo-Platonists denied all attributes to God; the Alexandrines made him present in all things, but not accessible to the human soul. Scotus reasoned like a Neo-Platonist, and like an Alexandrine, but also like a Christian, by insisting on the freedom of the will, and the perpetual personality of the individual; and made the Infinite Spirit a present Father to his earthly children. The doctrine of Erigena, that philosophy and religion are the same, was the foundation of the two principal schools of the Middle Ages. The scholastics affirmed that philosophy is religion, and so neglected religion to study philosophy. The mystics asserted that religion is philosophy, and therefore neglected philosophy to muse and pray. But this doctrine of our Scotus is no antiquated thing. We find it, to-day, combined with a belief in "primordial causes," in the earnest and glowing words of a living divine; who says, "that a certain capacity of elevation or poetic ardor is the most fruitful source of dis

* Bushnell's Phi Beta Kappa Oration, pp. 31, 32.

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covery " in science. "The man is raised to a pitch of insight and becomes a seer, entering into things through God's constitutive ideas, to read them as from God. For what are laws of science but ideas of God, - those regulative types of thought by which God created, moves, and rules the worlds? Thus it is that the geometrical and mathematical truths become the prime sources of scientific inspiration; for these are the pure intellectualities of all created being, and have their life, therefore, in God. Accordingly, an eloquent modern writer says, Those pure and incorruptible formulas which already were before the world was, that will be after it, governing throughout all time and space, being, as it were, an integral part of God, put the mathematician in profound communion with the Divine Thought.'"

We have sought to give our readers some idea of the system of Scotus Erigena, a man of small stature, but of great genius, extensive and profound learning, "a logic worthy of Plato and Proclus," a lively imagination, strong common sense, a shrewd native wit, and a divine instinct to recognize the highest truth wherever it may lie concealed, who rejected, from an instinctive impulse, all the erroneous consequences which might be drawn, by a falsely strict logic, from his doctrines. He saw that the true office of logic is to legitimate the deductions of reason, not to usurp the office of reason in drawing those deductions. Hence, he did not lose the soul, as did the false mystics, in the return to God. There was a union of substance, but no confounding of persons. Thus, while he kept bright the glorious views of the future life which mystics enjoy, the future dwelling in the bosom and essence of Deity, he did not lose the personal consciousness, the memory of friends and recognition of them, and all the other hopes which, to the common believer, hang round the doctrine of the resurrection. So, too, while he placed the Divine Being far above the region of things and far above the reach of mortal understandings, making the only knowledge of him to be the denial that he is any thing, he at the same time made him present in the human soul, not far from any one of us, able and willing to hear our cries and grant us all things. Nor, on the other hand, though he made union with God to be the end of life, did he at all favor either ascetic retirement or indulgence in fanatic zeal and an impious fervor of piety. He kept near to God, yet separate from him. He neither allowed the universe to be a machine from which

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its Author was remote, nor did he confound it with its Author and make matter to be part of the Godhead.

The doctrine of Scotus concerning the identity of religion and philosophy was, as we have said, the foundation of the two principal schools of the Middle Ages; the scholastics predicating religion of philosophy, and the mystics philosophy of religion. Scholasticism, and mysticism, and false mysticism, have played their part; new schools in philosophy and science have arisen, and new modes of thought prevailed; but the teaching of Erigena is the unseen basis of them all. Philosophy and religion are one and the same; the one seeking for the truth of God, the other for the God of truth. Theology is the only science; for what are physics and metaphysics but the study of God's works?—and even the mathematics, are they not, to say the least, illustrated by him alone? Creation is a set of diagrams. what others can he have? for the geometer; so that, even if space and time be independent of the Creator, they are measured only by motion; even algebra and geometry imply, therefore, motion; motion implies force, and force will. All things, then, are of God, and we understand nothing until we are reconciled to him. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom," and wisdom is perfected in us only so far as Christ is formed within us, only so far as we are lifted into the life of Christ, are made one with him and with Him that sent him, see and feel that all things are of God, see that there is a sense in which we may speak of "the identity of the law of gravity and purity of heart," both alike the law and working of the Father's love.

In chemistry, botany, zoology, geology, mathematics, the highest thinkers are men of deepest religious thought. The "connection of the physical sciences" is becoming clearer, and a tenth Bridgewater Treatise might be made less "fragmentary"; the history of the inductive sciences" is ever showing clearer "indications of the Creator." It is daily more evident that no "system of nature," nor of "logic ratiocinative and inductive" can deny to "faith the things that are faith's." We are glad, that, both in Germany and in France, men are paying some homage to Scotus Erigena, the first to say, what all must confess to be true, that, in the intellect, philosophy and religion are one and the same.

T. H.

C. A. Bentl.

ART. III. THE WATER CELEBRATION.*

WHAT is most simple and common around us, so as ordinarily to escape even our notice, often involves matter of surprising significance and deep meditation. When we look upon so familiar a thing as rain or dew, a mass of vapor, or a cup of cold water, we do not reflect, perhaps, that we are contemplating one of the most mysterious elements and everlasting agencies of the Almighty, the great instrument, indeed, which, in connection with fire, he has used in all the fashioning and disposing of his universe. "In the beginning," after the general act by which "God created the heaven and the earth," before even the light was, the first thing, as we read, that took place on the earth, when "it was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep," was, that "the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters"; and only after their right distribution did the earliest blade of grass appear, the fruitful tree arise, "the moving creature, that hath life," animate the scene, and "the fowl fly in the open firmament of heaven."

As we ponder such a process, complacency at our own doings gives place to admiration of the Divine. It has been of late a season of jubilee in this city. A stream from one of nature's reservoirs has been led for twenty miles beneath the ground, through hills and rocks, across swamps and rivers, to pour its refreshment into the heart of our city; and the magnificent triumph of human energy and skill has been celebrated with unparalleled displays of splendor and rejoicing. And whether we look at the greatness of the work now accomplished, its vital connections with the health, happiness, and morality of a great city, its relation to ever-increasing and future wants, or at the difficulties and delays attending the inception and progress of the enterprise, this final outbreak of joy at its completion will hardly seem strange or excessive. Certainly no procession for a military triumph, no exultation over the fatal working of the arts of destruction, can have any claim to the justification that may be pleaded for the, perhaps somewhat, showy and expensive

#

Speeches of Nathan Hale, Chairman of the ers, and of Mayor Quincy, on Occasion of the Lake Cochituate into Boston, Oct. 25th, 1848. of the day.]

Board of Water-CommissionIntroduction of the Waters of [Published in the newspapers