time; and not in anywise farther than as it is reflected also in the intellect and will of man.

Having thus exhausted what appeared necessary preliminaries of the subject so far as the respective persons seem concerned, their claims, wishes, intentions, views, powers, and understandings in its regard, we shall, in the next lecture, proceed to what more directly bears on the subject itself.

GIFFORD LECTURE THE SECOND.

Natural theology, what is it? - Usual answers-Hutcheson-Varro -The Middle Ages-Raymund of Sebonde-Rays, Paleys, etc. -Till 1860-Since-Philosophies of religion-Pagan gods-De Quincey, Augustine, Cicero, Pliny, Juvenal, Herodotus, Aulus Gellius-The proofs historically treated-That the themePlotinus, Augustine-Natural theology not possibly a physical science - Understanding and faith, Augustine, AnselmMonotheism alone religion proper-The course, affirmative, negative - China, India, Colebrooke, Râs bihârî MukharjiHindu texts (Gnostics) - Hesiod.

HAVING discussed and settled, so far as seemed desirable, the personal aspects in connection with the matter in hand-what, viz., may have been the wishes, intentions, and general spirit of the Testator himself in the reference, as well as what expectations it may be in place to form in regard to the immediate lecturer, and the mood of mind in which he avows himself to enter upon this theme, -questions, it is hoped, all viewed with feelings and considerations not alien from, but so far in harmony with, the subject, -to that subject itself it only now remains for us more directly to turn.

It-that subject is formally dictated and expressly prescribed to us under the name of Natural Theology. We are met at once, in the first place, then, by the question, What is it-what is Natural Theology? I daresay we have all some idea, more or less correspondent to the interest itself, of what Theology is. Theology, by the etymology of the mere expression, is the logos of God. The Greek logos, to be sure, like the Latin ratio, has quite an infinitude of applications; but the application that comes pretty well at once to the surface here, suggests, as in some degree synonymous with itself, such words as description, narrative, account, report, rationale, theory, etc. Geology is a description, narrative, account, report, rationale, theory of all that concerns the earth in itself and in its vicissitudes. Zoology is such an account of all that concerns animals; and astrology, supposing it to mean, as it ought, all that astronomy means, is a description, narrative, account, report, rationale, theory of all the objects we perceive in the heavens, and of their various movements and general phenomena. Theology, then, is to expound to us God, the fact of His existence, and the nature of His Being. Now, the qualifying word, Natural, when applied to Theology, must have a limitative, restrictive, and determinative force. What is still in hand is Theology, the account of God; but that account is to be a natural account. In short, Natural Theology means that we are to tell of God all that we can tell of Him via naturæ, by the way of nature, we are to tell of Him all that we can tell of Him from an examination of mere natureof nature as we perceive or find it to be without us, of nature as we perceive or find it to be within us. The information so acquired will sometimes be found to be named, as by the Scholastics, and by Descartes and Leibnitz after them, the lumen naturæ, lumen naturale, lumière naturelle, the light of nature; and consequently, by very name, is opposed to the supernatural light which is to be understood as given us by express revelation.

Francis Hutcheson, in the third part, De Deo, of his excellent little Latin Synopsis of Metaphysics, says that "although all philosophy is pleasant and profitable, there is, nevertheless, no part of it more productive and rich

HUTCHESON-VARRO.

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than that which contains the knowledge of God, quæque dicitur Theologia Naturalis." This Natural Theology he goes on to describe as due to "philosophers who support themselves on the sole powers of human reason, and make no reference to what God has supernaturally revealed to inspired men." And the thing itself confirms the definition. We have only to look to what treatises have been actually written on the subject to perceive that the attempt in all of them is to demonstrate the existence and attributes of the Deity by reason alone, in application to nature itself as it appears within us or without

Any sketch of the history of these treatises-of the history of Natural Theology-usually begins with the mention of Varro, the contemporary of Cicero, a man, as it appears, of encyclopædic knowledge. I cannot see, however, much in his connection that is in application here. All that is known of Varro on this head is to be found in the sixth book of St. Augustine's City of God, the greater part of which is taken up with Varro and his relation to the gods. Augustine praises Varro, and says, " he will teach the student of things as much as Cicero delights the student of words." There shall have been on his part also "a threefold division of theology into fabulous, natural, civil." And here Varro says himself, "they call that kind mythical (or fabulous) which the poets chiefly use; physical, that which the philosophers use; civil, that which the people use;" and again he says, "the first theology is especially adapted to the theatre, the second to the world, the third to the city." But without going any further into this, it may be said at once that the Natural, rather Physical Theology here, only considered the principles of the philosophers, as the fire of Heraclitus, the numbers of the Pythagoreans, the atoms of Epicurus; and was merely a rationalizing of what was alleged of the gods into these these principles, and had no claim whatever to the title Natural Theology as understood by us. At all to allude to Varro in this connection is on the whole idle.

Of the power and majesty, as well as of the love of God, exhibited in the spectacle of the creation, we know that in the Old and New Testaments there is much both of awing sublimity and heart-touching gentleness. And, accordingly, we may as readily surmise that such marvels of poetry and inspiration would not escape the early Fathers, but would be rapturously used by them. And so indeed it was. Not but that there was a religious teaching, sooner or later, in vogue also, that despised nature, and turned from it as something inferior or wicked. All through the Middle Ages, and in most of their respective writings, there occur traces of references to nature that may be claimed in any professed history of the subject; but in point of reality there is no veritable "Natural Theology" till the work expressly so named by the Raimond Sebond, the Raimondus de Sebonde, of Montaigne. The place he is named from is supposed to be somewhere in Spain, but nobody seems to know where it is to be found; every new authority has a new name for it, Sebonde, Sabunde, Sabeyda, Sabieude,

etc.

Raymund flourished in the middle of the fifteenth century, and his book was called Theologia Naturalis sive Liber Creaturarum ex quo homo in Dei et creaturarum suique ipsius cognitionem assurgit-Natural Theology or Book of the Creatures, from which a man rises to a knowledge of God and the creatures and his own self. This is sufficiently promising; but, after all, there is not a great deal in the book. Nevertheless, it appeared of such importance to the Roman Curia that we find its Prologus in the list of forbidden books; this in 1595,