nature and teacher from its phenomena-the blessed Jesus. These parables consist of a main outline designed for practical illustration, with voluntary finishings designed to complete the narrative or form a natural and touching picture. Who would be such a fool as to say, "This parable has no meaning; for look at that additional and useless detail, which has no practical or illustrative application!" We would tell him that use is sometimes attained by the addition of something useless,-useless, that is, in the sense of not serving the immediate purpose, but more useful in the end just because it postpones the use. So the very law of uniformity in variety is not only an intelligential law, but it is a law of use; and the whole system with its laws merges into a system of use. And thereupon the human mind will ever be impelled and authorized by its own imperative nature to ask of the whole the old question, “What is the end of God in creation ?" .* Naturalists are doubtless great men, and many of them are good men ;* but they are not lords of all discussion. And it is very arrogant for them first to exclude every consideration which does not belong to their department, and then to issue a ukase to which every other department of the world of thought is expected to bow, requiring all to stop at their terminal point. It is very stupid for them to draw conclusions which may be good for them, but when broader considerations are adduced modifying the universality of their conclusions, to answer, "That does not belong to my department." The exclusive naturalist may never go beyond "birds fly because they have wings." The philosopher will say, "Birds fly because they have wings, AND they have wings in order that they may fly." The following books have been received too late for full notice in our January number: Lyra Calestis, by A. C. THOMSON. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. Gaussen on the Canon-a superb volume. American Tract Society. Of this last a notice will in fact be found in our Foreign Literary Intelligence. * It is due, we believe, to the scientific men of our country to say that the great body of them take ground against skepticism. American science is not irreligious. CORRECTION. In our notice of Dr. Stockton's book of poems we imputed to him the doctrine that "denominational organizations are wrong." In a private note to us he states that he holds no such doctrine, and wonders whence we "derived this notion." It is of little consequence whence, but we cheerfully record the correction of our misstatement to which he is entitled. THE METHODIST QUARTERLY REVIEW. APRIL, 1863. ART. I-NATURAL THEOLOGY. "THE invisible things of God," says St. Paul, "from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead." This being premised, it follows that the more deeply we inquire into nature, and the wider we make our circle of knowledge, the more will the wisdom, power, and goodness of the Creator shine forth. False views of nature, and a narrow conception of the plan of the universe and of the relation of its parts, almost necessarily lead to false views of God. We should, therefore, hail with peculiar delight the daily accessions that are made to our knowledge of nature, although there should occasionally appear phenomena which seem to militate against the wisdom and goodness of God, and may be pressed into an unholy cause by the false interpreters of nature; we should rest assured that these discrepant phenomena will be ultimately explained, and furnish new proof of the divine attributes. Just as the complex and erratic motions of the moon, which baffled the genius of Newton, and were for a long time regarded as a strong objection to his theory of gravitation, but now, being explained, afford a striking proof of its truth. It is not necessary for us to inquire whether man without divine revelation would have had any idea of a God. The proof of the divine existence derived from nature is no more FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XV.-12 affected by the determination of this question than the truth of the Newtonian system is affected by the answer to the question, whether Kepler and Newton could have demonstrated the plan of the solar system if Copernicus had not suggested the idea to them. Pythagoras first demonstrated the theorem that bears his name; but, independently of his authority, we can prove that in every right-angled triangle the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. By Natural Theology, therefore, we mean that which can be proved concerning God from the structure of the universe, independently of the authority of revelation. In appealing to the structure of the universe for the proof of the existence and character of God, it is assumed that this mundane fabric is not eternal. But we need not dwell long on this point, since there is scarcely any one that will now advocate its eternity. That the planetary system is not eternal, may be argued from the existence of a resisting medium in space, which has already retarded Encke's comet, and which in the course of time, probably millions of years, will stop the planets. " "The chronometer of the heavens must" therefore "have been wound up within a limited time, for it has not yet run down." The continual changes that occur in the earth show that it is not self-subsisting. According to the opinion of the most eminent physicists it was once a fiery mass. Certain it is that as we descend from its surface its heat increases, so that at the depth of not many miles it must be a liquid mass. The upheaval of mountains of granite, the distortion of numerous strata of our globe's crust, and the remains of extinct volcanoes, all bear witness to the existence of powerful internal fires which exhibited themselves with great intensity in the early history of our planet, and which indeed have not yet subsided. Its oblate form shows that in all probability when its diurnal motion began it was in a fluid state. And it can be demonstrated mathematically that its present form would precisely follow from its rotating in a fluid state with the velocity it now has. Sir Charles Lyell, who differs from most natural philosophers respecting the primitive history of our planet, nevertheless remarks: If, in tracing back the earth's history, we arrive at the monuments of events which may have happened millions of ages before our times, and if we still find no decided evidence of a commencement, yet the arguments from analogy in support of the probability of a beginning remain unshaken; and if the past duration of the earth be finite, then the aggregate of geological epochs, however numerous, must constitute a mere moment of the past, a mere infinitesimal portion of eternity.-Principles of Geology. The only form of infidelity from which Christianity has anything to fear is the Theory of Development. A theory of moral development has been formed by the rationalists of Germany to explain the sublime system of moral truth contained in the Bible, without recurring to divine inspiration. According to this theory the monotheism of the Jewish religion was a simple development of polytheism, and Christianity sprang up spontaneously out of Judaism. A system of natural development has been devised by certain students of nature to explain the order and harmony of the natural world without having recourse to a designing mind. The history of the moral world refutes the former theory, and the history of the natural world shows the falsity of the latter. No writer, either in ancient or modern times, has given such a systematic theory of development as the author of "The Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation." His work is plausible, but not profound, appealing to our ignorance rather than to our knowledge. As it is one of the most popular forms of infidelity, perhaps we should say atheism, and lies directly in our way, and may be regarded as a type of the whole class, we shall examine those parts of it that mostly concern us. We may pass by his universally diffused "firemist," his formation of the solar system by the simple operation of dynamic law, and enter at once into the organic world. But while we do this we are free to say that in our judgment no natural law will explain the distribution of matter in the solar system, the density of the planets, their relative distances from the sun, their inclination to the plane of their orbit, the period of their rotation, the retrograde motion of the satellites of Uranus, and the constitution of the sun himself. The great argument for the existence and attributes of God is to be found in the organic world, in that wonderful variety of plants and animals, in the adaptation of means to ends, in |