PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 225 



rational grounds, a thorough believer in theism. I do not think 

 he would have said, with Bacon, that he "had rather believe all 

 the fables in the Legend, the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than tliat 

 this universal frame is without a mind," for he would have held 

 that in questions of this kind we should ask not what we would 

 "rather believe," but what seems to be true on the best evidence 

 before us. He was in the habit of saying that, next to the be- 

 lief in his own existence, was his belief in the existence of other 

 miuds like his own, and from these fixed, indisputable points, he 

 reasoned, by analogy, to the conclusion that there is an Almighty 

 Mind pervading the universe. But when from the likeness be- 

 tween this Infinite Mind and the finite minds made in His image, 

 it was sought, by a priori logic, or by any preconceived notions 

 of man, to infer the methods of the Divine working, or the final 

 causes of things, he suspected at once the intrusive presence of a 

 false, as well as presumptuous, philosophism, and declined to yield 

 his miud an easy prey to its blandishments. To his eyes much 

 of the free and easy teleology, with which an under-wise and not 

 over-reverent sciolism is wont to interpret the Divine counsels 

 and judgments, seemed little better than a Brocken phantom — 

 the grotesque and distorted image of its own authors, projected 

 on mist and cloud, and hence very far from being the inscrutable 

 teleology of Him whose glory it is to conceal a thing, and whose 

 ways are often past finding out, because His understanding is 

 infinite. 



As Prof. Henry was a believer in theism, so also was he a 

 believer in Revealed Religion — in Christianity. He had not 

 made a study of systematic, or of dogmatic, theology, as they are 

 taught in the schools, and still less was the interest he took in 

 polemical divinity, but he did have a theology which, for practical 

 life, is worth them all — the theology of a profound religious expe- 

 rience. He was a fresh illustration of Neander's favorite saying: 

 Pectus facit theologum. The adaptation of the Christian scheme 

 to the moral wants of the human soul was the palmary proof on 

 which he rested his faith in the superhuman origin of that scheme. 

 The plan had to him the force of a theory wnieh is scientific in 

 its exact conformity to the moral facts it explains, when these 

 facts are properly known and fully understood. 



Hence he was little troubled with the modern conflict between 

 science and religion. History, as well as reason and faith, was 



