and still to exact of me a man's work, is an outrage upon my natural sense of justice, and is what no reasoning in the world can satisfy me a just God will or can do. Bring in the supernatural, then, merely with a view of repairing nature, or to supply the deficiencies of nature in relation to a natural end, and you bring in what seems to me to be really superfluous, what is an indignity to my nature, and what I feel bound to reject, especially if you add, that my refusal to accept it and thank God for it will be the greatest sin I can commit. But to maintain that natural reason is inadequate to a supernatural end, is perfectly in accordance with reason, and is offensive to no natural sense of justice: nor can natural reason be offended by the assertion, that God, in his infinite love and mercy-in his superabundant goodness, has seen fit to confer on us, as our final reward, if faithful to the end, a good infinitely surpassing any to which we could have attained by our natural faculties, even in their integrity and normal exercise. No despite is done to nature by the proffer of a good above nature, if accompanied by the proffer of the supernatural assistance necessary to secure it. Does he wrong me, who, instead of leaving me to earn by hard toil my dollar a day, proffers me a million a day, and shows me how I may obtain it with even less toil? God, in the supernatural, does more than this.. The supernatural is not a revelation of his wrath, but a revelation of his love, even for the sinner, and the revelation of a far higher love than is manifested by our creation. He who attains to even a faint conception of the glory to which he calls us, has, at first, only the feeling, "this is too good to be true; it is not possible that the infinite God should have so great a love for me, all unworthy as I am." But, if there be any truth in the Gospel, it is true. This unbounded love is real; and eye hath not seen, and ear hath not heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive what God hath reserved for them that love him. When the supernatural is presented in this light, as a higher order of life and a higher destiny than a purely natural life and natural destiny, reason herself, at once, concedes her own inadequacy, and affirms, alike, the necessity

of supernatural light and strength. Then the conflict between reason and faith ceases, and our whole higher nature aspires to the supernatural. Then, too, the sin of unbeliefthe deliberate rejection of the good provided for us, and offered to us on the easiest terms, becomes quite intelligible. It is not only an act of disobedience to God, who has a right to command us, but an act of the basest ingratitude, and even contempt, which reason herself declares should not go unpunished.

We think Mr. Mansel would have better attained his end, if, instead of laboring to create a distrust of reason in this age of skepticism and indifference, he had labored to establish the truth of Christianity, as a supernatural order of life and immortality. No little of the unbelief that afflicts the Christian's heart arises from the confusion, in most nonCatholic minds, of the natural and supernatural, and the false notions of each, presented in the works of the ablest of non-Catholic theologians. Many of them understand, by the Gospel, little more than a republication of the law of nature, among whom we find the vastly overrated Bishop Butler, or a solemn sanction of future rewards and punishments given to natural morality. Nearly all of them regard the supernatural merely as a means of perfecting or completing the natural, as if God had sadly bungled in his original creation of man. They do not seem ever to rise to the conception of Christianity as a supernatural order of life, with a principle, means, and end of its own, not included in nature, or even indicated by it. It does not contradict nature, but presupposes it, and, though superior to it, harmonizes with it. What we want brought out and placed in a clear and strong light, is the fact that Christianity, though presupposing the natural, is itself really and truly a supernatural order of life, and by no means included in or developed from the natural. Christianity is this, or it is nothing, and the sooner we cease talking about it the better. Of this order there are and can be no natural indications. Natural reason has and can have no prolepsis, or natural anticipation of it, and, till revealed, no aspiration to it. Reason can know,

of herself, that there is more than she knows-mysteries she cannot solve, depths in the divine nature she cannot fathom; but she cannot know, of herself alone, that such an order exists, for there is nothing which she knows, either of God or nature, from which she can infer either its existence or its necessity.

The first indication of this order must, necessarily, come from revelation; and, if it had not been revealed, we should never have had the slightest conception of it, or felt the slightest need of it. But, though its existence is supernatural, the fact of its revelation can be established to natural reason with as much certainty as any other fact; and it is by the establishment of this fact to reason, that faith is joined to reason, and rendered itself reasonable.. We know, by reason, that God is; that he is most perfect being; that he is infinitely true-the truth itself, and can neither deceive nor be deceived. Knowing this, we know that whatever he says is true, and may be reasonably believed on his word. If, then, he has revealed this supernatural order of life, we know that it exists, and have ample reason-the best of all possible reasons, for believing it. We would, then, establish the fact of revelation, before spending our time in useless. efforts to prove its necessity, or even its antecedent probability.

With regard to the nature of the supernatural order of life, it is undoubtedly mysterions, but, as Mr. Mansel probably wishes to maintain, it is hardly, when once revealed, more so than even our natural life. It is not the mysteries of the supernatural order that causes men to hesitate to believe it, but the false notion that its mysteries contradict reason. Reason never rejects because it cannot comprehend; it rejects, only, because it finds itself contradicted. There are depths in this supernatural order reason cannot soundmysteries, the truth of which she cannot intrinsically demonstrate, and which she must take on external evidence, the same as the majority of things of our natural life; but she can, nevertheless, comprehend the relation of these mysteries with herself and with each other, place them in a true scien

tific order, and give them a true scientific exposition, as we see in the science of Catholic theology. Taking our data from revelation, instead of reason, we can proceed to the construction of supernatural theology, with the same ease, the same firmness, and the same certainty, at each successive step, that we can natural theology itself. We do not demonstrate its principles, nor do we in any science, for the first principles of all science are given, not demonstrated. In the natural order, no more than in the supernatural, does reason seek and establish its own principles, because it cannot operate-nay, cannot exist, without principles. In regard to the natural life, the principles are given in immediate intuition; in the supernatural, they are given mediately, through divine revelation. This is all the difference, and it is a difference that does not affect the science or certainty of our conclusions.

In controverting the Kantian philosophy embraced by the author, that the form of thought is imposed by the subject, and the Hamiltonian doctrine, which he also adopts, that the infinite is inconceivable, we by no means wish to be understood as maintaining that religious thought has no limits, or that its limits are not determined by the subject. We know, as well as any one, that the human understanding is limited, and that its knowledge, when the most full and complete, is inadequate, and never exhausts the subject. But what we do contend is, that our knowledge, as far as it goes, is not false, is knowledge, as it presents itself, not as we form it, and that the object is known, so far as known at all, as it is. What we wish to deny is, that the subject limits the object, or imposes its forms on the object. The subject is never on the side of the object, and it knows the object is so and so, because so and so the object presents itself, not because such and such is the constitution of the cognitive subject. When I perceive a tree, it is the tree itself I see, not a projection of my own mind, and the tree is the same as I see it, whether I see it or not, as all the world believes.

Correct these errors of philosophy; bring out more clearly than the author does the distinction between the natural and

the supernatural, and insist that the supernatural does not depress the natural, but presupposes and elevates it, and the work before us will have very considerable merit, and deserve to be generally read. But as it is, with profound respect for the excellent intentions of its author, and a very high esteem of his learning and talents, we cannot award it any very high praise. It will hardly serve as an antidote to the errors it appears to have been written to refute, and it will be far more likely to confirm others of a hardly less dangerous character. As for the rest, the work is commendable for its calm philosophic spirit, its uniformly courteous tone, and freedom from all asperity or bitterness. It is the work of a scholar, of a gentleman, and one who, if he were not misled by a vicious philosophy, would be a sound Christian believer.

ART. II.--Études de Théologie, de Philosophie, et d'Histoire. Publiées par les PP. CHARLES DANIEL & JEAN GAGARIN, de la Compagnie de Jésus, avec la collaboration de plusieurs autres Pères de même Compagnie. Paris. Lecoffre & Co., 1857-1859. 8vo. Since March, 1859, Quarterly.

We have always the same old enemy to combat, but not always on the same battle-ground, nor with precisely the same weapons, the same tactics, or the same strategetics. Each age has its own battle-ground, and its peculiar weapons and mode of warfare. The Fathers lived in the midst of a hostile world, when the battle with error was serious, earnest, and they fought bravely, as men who fight for life or death, for all that is near and dear to them, against real enemies, who also fought in earnest against them; and they came off conquerors, though by being slain, not by slaying. They were followed by the Scholastics, who lived for the most part in the bosom of a nominally Christian world, and who simply, in peace, gave lessons to be applied in war. They did well and nobly the work they had to do;