they consist of courses of sufficient length to allow of an elaborate treatment of the subjects brought forward. The lecturer attracts those who have affinities with himself, and the hearers are prepared to listen, from interest either in the subject or in the speaker. Since the institution went into operation, in 1839, a large number of courses have been delivered on the most important subjects, and by men holding the first rank in their several departments. The attendants on these several courses have varied from one to several thousand persons. Thus conducted, the Lowell Institute is a University for the people. Few Universities in the world could boast of a better series of lecturers, and fewer still, of so many attendants on the lectures. Nor is it a well founded objection, that they are not heard by the most ignorant classes of society. It is far better, that the audiences should be composed of those who are able to appreciate the best thoughts of the best minds. Such persons become the teachers of others, and the ideas which they have received spread insensibly through the mass of society.

The volume at the head of this article contains twelve Lectures by President Hopkins on the Evidences of Christianity. It possesses great merits. The style is clear, forcible, not infrequently rising into eloquence, and always marked by a business-like character, proceeding by the shortest way towards the main point, as if the writer were too much in earnest to waste either his own or other's time on matters of secondary importance. Having at the outset stated, with the good sense that characterises the whole volume, the precise object which he purposes to accomplish, he examines the question of the antecedent probability or improbability of miraculous communications from God, and then shows how far miracles are susceptible of proof, and how far they are the fitting evidence of a Divine revelation. Having disposed of these preliminary topics, he proceeds to an exhibition of the internal and the external evidences of the truth of our religion. In treating of the internal evidences, his great object is to show that Christianity is adapted to the wants and capacities of human nature, and thus contains in itself the highest evidence of its truth, and while doing this, to bring to view those circumstances which make it impossible to account for the existence of

1846.] Adaptation of Christianity to the Conscience. 219

such a system without attributing to it the supernatural origin which it claims. This branch of the subject is especially important, for it presents the kind of evidence which to nearly all men is the most convincing. It meets the wants of those who have neither time nor opportunity to examine the historical evidence. It requires no preparation, to feel its force, but a knowledge of Christ's teachings. and some experience of life. Any man who possesses honesty and good sense is able to understand and appreciate it, and to such a one, it seems to us that, if duly weighed, it must be overwhelming.

The great characteristic of a true religion must be, that just in the same degree as it is obeyed, it is suited, from the nature of the truths which it teaches, the duties it enjoins, and the motives it presents, to carry man upward towards the perfection of his nature. We reject the various systems of Paganism without examining their evidence. It is sufficient for us to see, that if they are fully obeyed, the best of them, instead of raising man upward to the perfection of which he is capable, will mutilate and distort his moral being and leave him at a very low stage of moral progress. Many of them tend to repress his best capacities, while they stimulate his passions and lower propensities. We see that a man may be better than these religions. They therefore do not contain the true laws for the growth of the soul. Without further examination we reasonably and logically pronounce them to be false. A religion, on the other hand, which sets forth the true laws of man's progress, and which contains nothing that is not in entire harmony with these laws, bears in itself an unquestionable seal of its truth.

Will Christianity bear this test? It has been in the world eighteen hundred years. We are not obliged to speak theoretically, but may try it by the severer test of experience. Tried in this way, how far is Christianity fitted to be the guide and helper of man to the perfection of his nature?

The most important point in this inquiry is, to show that it is adapted to the conscience. A true religion must, obviously, be fitted to quicken and develop the moral nature, and at the same time to guide its activity aright. President Hopkins argues most convincingly, that Christianity

meets this demand, - that it is adapted to the wants of the conscience, in the first place as a perceiving power, and, secondly, as a power capable of improvement. The first and invariable effect of Christianity, when practically received, is to arouse the conscience, to make it more sensitive to sin, more quick and true in its perception of right. To discover its adaptation to the conscience as a power capable of improvement, we have only to look at the history of the world. There is as much difference between the conscience of a New Zealand cannibal and of Fenelon, as between his intellect and that of Newton. The Sandwich Islanders when first visited by Europeans had scarcely any words by which to express the higher virtues, so little were the moral sentiments developed. But wherever Christianity has prevailed, the moral judgments and moral standards of mankind have constantly improved.

Again, Christianity, as must obviously be the case if it be true, is adapted to the wants of the affections. It would not be difficult to show from an analysis of the mind, that the laws by which our religion would control, and the ends to which it would direct, the affections, are such as are necessary to their healthiest growth and highest development. But experience speaks more impressively than theory. Words cannot describe what Christianity has done for the affections. In a dreary and wintry world, it has opened regions of perpetual summer. It has hallowed domestic bonds. It has created the word home, or given it a meaning which it never had before. Woman, throughout the Heathen world the slave of men's lusts or love of ease, Christianity has raised to an equality with man. By its revelations of immortality and by laws and influences bearing on this point, it sometimes seems to have raised. even parental love from a merely animal instinct into a spiritual affection. Nay, more; it has not only purified, but has strengthened the affections. Take the strongest of all, that of parents for their children, and who can doubt that Christianity has immensely increased its strength. There is no more significant evidence of it, than a fact of whose existence it is hardly possible to form a conception, -the wide prevalence of infanticide. Throughout a vast part of the Heathen world, child-murder has been held to be venial. Nor has this horrid practice been confined to

1846.] Adaptation of Christianity to the Intellect. 221

the ignorant and barbarous. Solon allowed it at Athens; in Sparta, by the laws of Lycurgus, the mother was required to surrender up for exposure her feeble and sickly offspring; and, still more strikingly, this same practice was to form a chief balance-wheel in the ideal republic of Plato. Even in Christian countries, wherever Christianity loses its hold to any considerable extent on the minds of the people, it is found that the character of human affections is lowered. They lose their sacredness, become sensualised, and so of necessity are enfeebled. What a horrible commentary on this general statement is found in the thronged Foundling Hospital of Paris. And one of the reasons given for sustaining it is still more horrible, that it is a great nursery of human life-that it is necessary to prevent infanticide.

The adaptation of Christianity to the intellect is not to be overlooked; for although it is not its purpose to give rules for mental culture, we have a right to assume that a true system of religion must be, at least incidentally, favorable to the growth of the mind. That it has been so with Christianity, cannot be doubted. So far as its requirements are yielded to, it brings men out from under the dominion of sensuality and the low vices which dwarf and imbrute the intellectual faculties. It sets an especial value on truth, by making it the foundation of all human good, and so directly fosters that principle which is to the intellect what the love of right is to the moral nature, namely, the love of truth. Wherever it exists in its purity, it protects the freedom, and insists on the responsibility, of the individual mind. It brings up before all believers problems, fitted peculiarly to task the faculties, whose practical importance secures for them the most serious consideration. And, above all, it makes familiar to the humblest Christian a class of truths beyond all others the most sublime, the most elevating and purifying and inspiring, on which the mind can be employed. The study of the classics, of natural philosophy, of history, of political economy, doubtless tends to enlarge and liberalize the mind. But their influence in this direction is not to be compared with that which results from devout meditation on the Divine character, from the contemplation of nature and man in their relations to a Providence, the investigation of the great problems of philanthropy and the questions of private duty

which our faith presents. This much may be said of Christianity, that it stimulates the mind to investigate, and at the same time reveals for its contemplation the sublimest and the most practical truths. It makes it familiar with great principles; and this not in the way of barren speculation only, but by insisting on their application to one's daily life. The necessary consequence is, that the general culture is most liberal, and civilization in its best sense most advanced, where Christianity has the most power over the general mind.

Without specifying further the particular cases of adaptation, they may all be summed up under one general view. There are no principles in human nature which are intended to be eradicated. They are all good, when kept within their proper limits and controlled by proper laws. But there are many which need excitement, all need to be guided, and all to be restrained. Excitement, guidance, and restraint; the great problem for all moralists and philosophers has been, to frame a system of living, which should so unite these characteristics and be so adapted to man, as to lead him on to his legitimate perfection and end. Yet so complex is human nature, and so multiplied are human relations, that no philosopher has ever succeeded in framing a system which could in any degree meet this want. The best of them has been some wild Eutopian dream, which would have put the world "out of gear" had it been acted on for a day. Yet that problem which has baffled the wisdom of sages, Christianity has completely solved. President Hopkins devotes an able lecture to the proof of this point. Yet it hardly needs any proof. Nearly all skeptics even, while denying the divine authority of the religion, have been forward to acknowledge the perfection of its morality, and to confess that as a system of excitement, guidance and restraint, not only has experience detected no imperfection in it, but that just as far as men come under its influence, it must carry them forward towards the perfection of their nature.

The first general conclusion to be drawn from this view of the adaptation of Christianity to human nature is, that as a system for the moral government of life, it is the true A system, which contains those laws-and none else - which, obeyed, conduct man to the perfection of

one.