Chase.] \.IA. [Feb. 7, 



"rejoice ever more. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks. 

 * * * Quench not the spirit. Despise not prophesy ings. " 



These different directions of investigation give differences of character 

 to the results of investigation. Philosophy is not religion ; neither of these 

 important pursuits can fill the place of the other; each may, however, 

 help the other. Philosophy is a study, religion is an instinct ; philosophy 

 is theoretical, religion is practical ; philosophy is a doctrine, religion is an 

 experience. A religious philosophy is better than a godless philosophy, 

 because it looks at truth under more varied relations. A philosophical re- 

 ligion is better than a fanatical religion, because it is in harmony with all 

 the mental faculties. But a philosophy which seeks, on the authority of 

 a supernatural revelation, to fetter the intellectual interpretation of the 

 physical universe, narrows the mind, while it checks the intellectual and 

 moral progress which are important ends of religious teaching ; a religion 

 which is limited to the acceptance of philosophical inferences, may satisfy 

 an indolent aesthetic curiosity, but it lacks the earnestness and enthusiasm 

 of a living faith which impels its possessor to a steadfast continuance in 

 well-doing, a faith which shrinks from no obstacle and welcomes martyr- 

 dom in preference to a surrender of its convictions. 



"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." This truth was 

 recognized by Auguste Comte, the advocate of so-called Positivism, when 

 he taught that intellectual development is, first, theological ; next, meta- 

 physical ; and lastly, positive. A thousand years before the Christian era, 

 David and Solomon had taught the Jews, and Buddha had taught the 

 Hindoos, the vital doctrine which Comte distorted and corrupted, but they 

 were not like Comte, so foolish as to remove the corner-stone after building 

 the superstructure. They did not believe that the science of phenomena 

 was more positive than the knowledge of God and the knowledge of prin- 

 ciples, or that a system, which was founded in error and which continually 

 added error to error, could finally culminate in "positive" and unques- 

 tionable truth. 



Five hundred years after those early sages had directed the attention of 

 lovers of wisdom to the beginning of wisdom, the disciples of Zoroaster in 

 Persia, of Confucius in China, and of Pythagoras in Greece, participated 

 in the wide-spread reformatory movement, which accompanied the restora- 

 tion of Jehovah-worship at Jerusalem and the settlement of the Old Testa- 

 ment canon under Ezra. They prepared the way for Socrates, who, like 

 Pythagoras, shrank from the seeming arrogance which was involved in the 

 title "sophist," or wisest, and claimed to be merely a " philosophos, '* or 

 lover of wisdom. Even the sophists generally regarded theology as the 

 highest science. Socrates, agreeing with them in this estimate, believed 

 himself to be a special ambassador of God to the citizens of Athens, acting 

 under the continual guidance of a daimon, or divine influence, which kept 

 him from falling into error. 



Another semi-millenium beheld the birth, in Bethlehem of Judea, of a 

 teacher whose words were received, by his disciples, as coming with an 



