to be converted by the soul into a fact of consciousness. In like manner the motion of the vibrating air is passed through the hearing mechanism into the auditory nerve, up which it passes to the brain, and is there determined by the mind as a sound sensation. The organic sense-impressions are the condi tions that determine the soul to the production of the sensation; just so, we are told, the conditions that attend the formation of the physiological germ of a human organism determine the substantial reason of the world, or the "unseen Holy," to the production of an individual soul. Just as the brightness of the divine glory in the days of the Jewish tabernacle in the wilderness pervaded the holy of holies and fell over all the objects therein, so God pervades and hovers over all germinal matter, from low sponge and prone fish up to erect man; and just when the bioplasmic matter has by fertilization passed into a perfect physiological organism, then the immanent Creative Power breathes into it the breath of its peculiar life. Just as light, falling on the optic sense-organ, determines the soul to the production of vision, so the perfect germ of a physiological organism determines the great Under-soul to the production of an individual soul. The cruel, licentious Nero derived from Agrippina, his mother, the features of body indicative of excessive animal passion, for which she herself had become infamously famous, and the immanent Deity, from whom come all individual souls, as fire kindles other fires, breathed into that sensual body the breath of a spirit-life loaded on the side of self and cruelty as heavily as the body was on the basely sensual side. We are told that Lotze would not have us think of the immaterial world, the unseen Holy beyond us, as separated from the material universe, but that each individual soul originates in God, who is omnipresent, and where he is there is the capability of creation. The physical and mental identity of parent and child are by this theory referred to the immanent Deity, as the great Dynamis, the Absolute, from whose exhaustless power and substance the soul comes as direct as heat and light from lightning flash, as immediate as flashing spark from smitten steel.

The scientific doctrine of heredity, which states that strong mental impressions exert a special influence on an organism in the embryonic stage of life, must, by Lotze's theory, be referred, not to the parental mind, but to the Divine. The strong passions,

the peculiar traits, which the law of heredity transfers down the line of genetic descent, are passed from parent to child by the great Under-soul, in whom all nature is spiritualized, and from whom all souls are as closely and immediately derived as bud and blossom and fruit from the branch. In Mr. Cook's lecture on "Heredity" an Irish woman is referred to, who fiercely, intensely, steadily hated another woman. After a daughter was born the cause of that hatred was removed, but that daughter grew up unlike the other children, and was so devoid of the kindlier feelings that she would plunge a knife with girlish glee into the body of a sister, and feel no regret for the act. We would say that the fierce, persistent hating mood of the mother had passed by heredity over to the child; but Lotze, the accredited advocate of this form of dualistic theism, would say, When God created the bioplasmic matter to be used as the basis of that individual life called the Irish woman's daughter, then he locked with it that immaterial, hard, ungloved hand, the heartless soul. For every human soul, he affirms, comes directly from the exhaustless substance of the Absolute.

It is difficult to see how the question of human responsibility can be fully or fairly met by the philosophy that thus identifies the ongoings of nature with modes of the Divine mind, and that affirms that, apart from God's immediate energizing, there is no vision, no hearing, no birth of soul, no formation of body, no start of crystallization, no motion of masses of matter, no union of chemical substances, no formative power of any thing.

Not many men are idealists, even of a moderate kind. The physical side of things is that with which they have most to do, and of which they will think and feel most. Above them, about them, through them roll the ever-active currents of physical law. Sense and thought are largely filled by it. Accordingly let them be taught to believe that natural law and God are one; let them believe that the growth and death and fall of the season's leaves are as direct a putting forth of divine power as the withering and death of the fig-tree cursed by the Son of Man,, save that the one was a momentary, supernatural act, and the other is a prolonged supernatural; let them place the inherited mental wickedness and imbecility, as well as their opposites, to the account of God's direct, personal gifts to man; let them regard miasmas creating pestilence as radia

tions of the Divine Immanency, as wasting javelins shot fresh from his quiver; let them believe that close behind the curtain of a storm, as close as driving hammer to driven nail, sits the Divine power, shooting the lightning gleams as directly as he flashed the light about the footsteps of the persecuting Saul; let them be taught that only mind and matter exist, and, therefore, the universe is not so much the garment as the living body of God, and that all its changes and activities are his momentary or prolonged volitions; let these thoughts and beliefs hold them, then inevitably the doctrine of the Divine Transcendency will weaken and fade away, and the Divine Immanency will push it back, eloud it over, and crowd it down into the region of tradition or philosophic vagary. By the mind of average imaginative capacity the Divine Transcendency will not long be held. Its occasional devotional trances, its gleaming, swiftly-passing poetic visions, its religious fervors kindled by transient mystic fires, will become fewer in number and weaker in force, and sooner or later suffer hopeless, helpless shipwreck on the restless sea of the daily passing physical experiences. On the other hand, the Divine Immanency, as the active, controlling Principle of the universe, as the omnipresent Dynamis, as the immediate Energy back of the physical experiences, crowding out the distinction of second causes, and the belief in physical force as distinct from divine volition, will then pass, with an easy and dangerous incline, down into the confusions, the limitations, and the contradictions of pantheism.

ART. IV.

THE FRENCH REFORMED CHURCH: ITS SYNOD OF 1872, AND SUBSEQUENT EVENTS.

[FIRST ARTICLE.]

THE prominent official position accorded to Protestants of eminent ability under the Third Republic, and the manifest movement of active minds in France, hitherto reckoned as Catholics or Freethinkers, toward Protestantism during the past two years, awaken a lively and hopeful interest in the fortunes of the French Reformed Church. To any proper

view of the present condition of affairs in French Protestantism a knowledge of the position and work of the Synod of 1872 is necessary. The assembling of that Synod realized a long cherished desire: it brought into more definite attitude the relations of the antagonistic elements which had been for a generation contending within the Church, and by its decisive action furnishes an important point of departure for the consideration of subsequent events. Some review of the earlier history of the Church will be appropriate, and of course at certain points essential to a proper understanding of the matters we wish especially to present.

The Albigenses in the south of France and more obscure sects were early precursors of the Reformation, while at the opening of the sixteenth century a marked spirit of Gallicanism prevailed in the north. Before Luther, Lefèvre d'Etaples, a doctor of the Sorbonne, commenting, in 1512, on St. Paul's Epistles, found in them the doctrine of salvation by faith. In 1521 Lutheran missionaries passed through France, and within fifteen years made immense progress in Dauphiné, Languedoc, Poitou, Saintonge and Normandie. The Lutherans have constituted a large section of the French Protestant communion; but the loss of Alsace and Lorraine has cut off the major portion of them, over 200,000, from the dominion of France. According to statistics given in 1872 there remained 80,117. The same authority, the Almanach de Gotha, gives the number of Reformed at that date as 467,531, only communicants being reckoned in these statistics.* The center of the French Lutheran Church was established at Strasbourg. Napoleon gave this body a special organization by the side of that of the Reformed Church in the Law of Germinal, 1802. It was in like manner modified with that of the Reformed Church by the decree of March 26, 1852. A Lutheran Synod was held in Paris in 1872 to reconstitute the Church after the losses of the war. Some agitation has existed for a union with the Reformed Church. A project introduced into the Legislative Assembly in July of last year for a further reorganization of the Lutheran Church was remanded to the next session.

Our concern is with the Reformed Church, and particularly

* The general Protestant population of France has been of late years estimated at about 1,500,000.

with that portion of it attached to the State, embracing almost the entire body-the National Reformed Church. Among those who listened to the preaching of the Reformers in France the doctrines of Calvin early became predominant. Without organization at first, the people read together in Olivetans, Lefèvre d'Etaples' Bible, or the new translation of Geneva, each one adding his comment. The foundation of the organized Church was laid in the first Synod, called by Antoine de Chaudieu with other pastors, and held at Paris May 25, 1559. In a hidden street in the Faubourg St. Germain, this small company, assembled under peril of death, formed in three days their celebrated Confession of Faith in forty articles, similar to the other Reformed symbols, and a Church organization approaching that of the Scotch Presbyterians. The Synod held at La Rochelle, in April, 1571, was the first which met under full sanction of the King, and was distinguished for its imposing character. Theodore Beza presided. The Queen of Navarre, the Princes Henri de Bearn and Henri de Conde, Admiral Coligny and Count Louis de Nassau were present, and many other great personages took part in its deliberations. The Confession of 1559 was re-adopted, and has been ever since distinguished as the Confession of La Rochelle. A Discipline of fourteen chapters is attached to the Confession. Each Church had its separate council, called a consistory. The colloque, a department of Churches in each province, appointed the pastor with approval of the congregation. Provincial Synods

were to assemble annually, and National Synods as occasion required. This synodical organization is pronounced by Pressensé "the most perfect model of representative government." The principle of conservative liberty is recognized. Suffrage is universal within the Church. Power is conceded to the pastors, who are equal among themselves, to instruct, but the voice of the laity can be always heard. Yet the Church, in accordance with the general systein of Calvin, failed to assert itself as a spiritual organization distinct from civil society. It appealed to the sword of the magistrate for its defense, and therein recognized a principle which, as interpreted by its adversaries, was turned to its own annoyance and devastation.

The date of the Synod of La Rochelle was the most flourishing point in the history of French Protestantism. The nobil