Right and Wrong were confounded. Cruelties unheard of were perpetrated. Her rivers were stained with the blood and choked with the bodies of the slain; until it seemed as if the knell of the whole nation was tolled, and the world was summoned to its execution and funeral. Within a little space, three millions of souls were offered on the bloody Altar of Humanitarianism.

Let the men in our own country, and in these our own times, writers, lecturers, statesmen, philosophers, poets, whoever and whatever they may be called, who suffer no opportunity to pass by unimproved to stab the Cause of Christ, and sneer at the Church, and laugh at Creeds, and who at the same time, instil into the minds and confidence of the people, their own Godless theories, (and our modern literature, which comes into all our parlors, and fascinates and beguiles the minds of the young, is full of such deadly poison), let them, we say, one and all, gaze upon this picture until they are satisfied. Like causes will produce like results everywhere.

We close, as we began, by saying, that there are abroad two Theories of Life, of Social Progress, of Civilization, which are now struggling for the mastery.

ART. III.-POSITIVISM.

1. A History of the Intellectual Development of Europe. By JOHN WILLIAM DRAPER, M. D., LL. D., Professor of Chemistry and Physiology in the University of New York: Harper & Brothers. 1863.

2. History of Civilization in England. By HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE.

3. The Biographical History of Philosophy, from its origin in Greece down to the present day. By GEORGE HENRY LEWES. New York: D, Appleton & Co. 1859.

FARRAR, in his History of Free thought, states that the Positive Philosophy of M. Auguste Comtè is the extreme form of Anti-Christian speculation in Europe, the various Schools of unbelief shading down from that Atheistic darkness to the refined sentimentalism of Newman and Renan. It was to be expected that the first named philosophy would find disciples and advocates in America. Accordingly, the work placed at the head of our Article, with several professions of a different and more genial Faith on the part of the author, is a learned and laborious compilation upon the basis of that Philosophy. The adoption of such a basis is the more remarkable and decided, because the work professes to be an account of the "Intellectual Development of Europe." The very conception of the book, referring the intellectual development of Europe to a mere Physical Law, is the most exaggerated application of the system of, M. Comtè.

It is usual for writers of this class to put forth the most earnest remonstrances against the right of any one to bring moral or religious considerations to bear upon their speculations. They make themselves the champions of the largest liberty, and piteously complain of the persecutions which Science and free inquiry have endured from Religion and the Church,

In regard to the first position, it is unquestionably the duty of every man, who believes that the foundations of Religion or Morality will be undermined by any new System or alledged discovery, to oppose the novelty, with all the force of argument and reason that he can command. And no reason or argument can be more legitimate than the proof that the new doctrine does undermine the foundations of Religion or Moraltiy for it is the method of true Science to compare truths together, and to test the unknown by the known. In that way only can Truth be established. The honest and rigid application of that method, will presently determine whether the new doctrine is true or false. If it is true, then the alleged contradiction to a previously known truth will be shown not to exist. The contradiction was only in the mistaken conceptions of the opponent. This has been the legitimate history of all disputed opinions, which have ultimately worked their way into acceptance as truths.

The attempt to excite prejudice against Religion and the Church, by the cry of persecution, proceeds upon an utter misconception of the facts. Christianity and the Church cannot persecute, without falsifying all the principles of their own foundation. When fanatical and wicked rulers in the Church have been clothed with secular power, they have often violated the teachings of Christianity by persecution, but this only as they outraged the principles of their Religion by other deeds of wickedness. Persecution is one expression of that evil heart of man which the Christian Religion tries to change and improve. If the men engaged in these occurrences had been reversed in position in regard to temporal power, the same unseemly exhibition of unhallowed temper would probably have been made. Certainly, in these days, the only form of persecution allowed, vituperation and insult, is visited, in abundant measure, upon Religion and the Church.*

* A practical demonstration of this principle was given the other day in the United States Senate. There, one of the largest-liberty men, a champion of Infidel radicalism, from Mass., attempted to procure the expulsion of a Senator, for no other offense than the offering a series of Resolutions, impugning, by an array of cogent facts, the infallibility and purity of the Administration!

We do not intend to bring any moral or religious considerations to bear upon the works named at the head of this Article, however legitimate that mode of argument may be. But we do propose to examine the fundamental principles which belong to them all, and to the class of books which they represent, by their own favorite test, Positive Science. An American Quarterly will be expected to pay most attention to the American writer.

Dr. Draper's book is a pretty fair specimen of that phase of Modern Science which is bitterly hostile to Christianity. The argument is a studied, or, it may be, an unconscious confusion of the merest truisms, with the most pernicious falsehoods. And, while the truths are proved by a wearisome surplusage of evidence, the falsehoods are quietly assumed to be incontrovertibly established by the same evidence. This peculiarity is, as far as our reading extends, the characteristic of the whole swarm of books and Essays, from that class of Physical inquirers who fancy that the accumulation of a large amount of facts, in the field of Physical Science, qualifies them to pronounce, ex cathedra, upon the most profound problems of morals and religion. The source of this hallucination seems to be, that these gentlemen have learned so much, that they complacently take it for granted, that there is nothing else to learn. Having traversed, with laborious diligence, the whole circle of Natural Science, and feeling a very pardonable self-gratulation at this achievement, they forget that there is another large department of human knowledge, not included in their curriculum; and they forthwith proceed, with an air of philosophic precision and comprehensiveness, to classify the more obvious phenomena of that unexplored department, under some one or more of the Sciences which have monopolized their attention. Thus our author, who had previously published a very creditable work on Physiology, gravely announces the subject of the present work to be, to prove that all the phenomena of human life, character, and history, and all human relations, are the passive subjects of physiological law. The following are some of the passages in which this object of the work is set forth :

"The equilibrium and movement of humanity, are altogether physiological phenomena." Page 2.

"Social advancement is as completely under the control of natural law, as is bodily growth. The life of an individual is a miniature of the life of a nation. These propositions it is the special object of this book to demonstrate."

"No one, I believe, has hitherto undertaken the labor of arranging the evidence offered by the intellectual history of Europe, in accordance with physiological principles, so as to illustrate the orderly progress of civilization." "Seen thus, through the medium of

physiology, history presents a new aspect to us." Preface.

"The production, continuance and death, of an organic molecule in the person, answers to the production, continuance and death of a person in the nation. Nutrition and decay, in one case, are equivalent to well-being and transformation in the other." Page 11.

If the author had simply put forth this astounding proposition, and then applied himself to the proof of it, the book would have been very harmless, for then, every one would have seen that the formidable array of facts, offered as evidence, had little or no connection with the thesis to be maintained. But he adroitly disguises this professed object of the work under a more general, and a very different proposition, which he thus announces :

"The government of the world is accomplished by immutable law. Such a conception commends itself to the intellect of man, by its majestic grandeur. It makes him discern the external, through the vanishing of present events, and through the shadows of time. From the life, the pleasures, the sufferings of humanity, it points to the impassive; from our wishes, wants, and woes, to the inexorable."

"It is of law that I am to speak in this book. In a world composed of vanquishing forms, I am to vindicate the imperishability, the majesty of law, and to show how man proceeds, in his social march, in obedience to it." Pages 15, 16.

These are stately words, announcing a truth so universally acknowledged, that it may well be called a truism. And it is to the establishment of this truism, that all the illustrative evidence from the Physical Sciences is brought. The proof was unnecessary, as the proposition was undisputed. Unquestionably, the Universe is governed by LAW, and therefore, says Common Sense-the highest philosophy of all-by a Law GIVER.

The discovery and annunciation of special laws, is the business and glory of true Science. But, whether a particular law