teacher. The services are opened and concluded with a form of prayer from the Veda. Songs are sung. The Veda is expounded. The whole service is an imitation of Christian worship. Women and children are enrolled as members, but women do not attend the services, but if they wish to know what has been done, must ask their husbands to tell them.

There is a branch of the Arya Samaj even in London. The hymn-book used in the service is entitled Theistic Hymns. Nearly all the hymns are from Christian hymn-books. Among them are the following:

But the Arya is eclectic. He borrows a gem wherever he can find a lending hand. Accordingly, in his Theistic Hymns for use in the London congregation, are the following:

"The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but him had fled;"

"Tell me not in mournful numbers

Life is but an empty dream;"

"There's a magical tie to the land of our home

Which the heart cannot break, though the footsteps may roam;"

"India, thou best of the climes of the world,
Where victory attended thy banners unfurled,
O, country of sages! O, land of the brave!

Thou cradle of poets, and the hero's proud grave."

In another paper we shall endeavor to show the great religious significance of these disintegrating forces within the Hindu faith, and their real character as precursors of the certain domination of Christianity over all the native faiths of India.

Comp. Forman, The Arya Samaj: Its Teachings and an Estimate of It, pp. 61, 62, Allahabad, 1887.

When 7. Hurst

ART. III.-THEOLOGY: A SYMPOSIUM.

THEOLOGY AS A SCIENCE.

SCIENCE is truth systematized in other and fuller terms, it consists of information, facts, or phenomena, first carefully and definitely ascertained; next, accurately reduced to their principles and relations; and then clearly set forth in logical order and philosophical manner. These three processes, investigation (by experiment, observation, or testimony), analysis, and synthetic statement, are essential to any lucid and successful scientific treatment or treatise. Herein SCIENCE, properly so called, differs from mere knowledge or simple belief; it is the classification and verification of these latter; they furnish the materials out of which it constructs the edifice; they afford the crude elements from which it educes law and generalization, and which it arranges accordingly.

It has often been questioned whether theology is strictly a science at all, or ever can be truly made or called so. That the Bible does not propound it as such, at least in the modern acceptation of the word, is admitted by the wisest advocates of the inspiration of Holy Scripture; and they are thereby relieved of many of the apparent discrepancies arising from a comparison of biblical phraseology with scientific terminology. The sacred writers give testimony only in the form of history or poetry, doctrine or prophecy, on matters relating to God, angels, and man, affecting conduct in this life and destiny in the next; but it is wholly in a popular style, and rarely, if ever, in the guise of formal ratiocination or abstract enunciation. They are often experts in the topics that they treat, and they are always truthful in their statements when interpreted according to their real intent and the usus loquendi of their times; but their reasonings are not cast in syllogistic form, nor their figures conformed to strict rhetorical rule; their narratives are not constructed after the classic pattern, nor their teachings enunciated according to pedagogic art. They utter no dogmatic dicta, they discuss no metaphysical abstractions, they attempt no scheme of theodicy. But they supply the basis and the tests of all these. The decalogue, for example, is a prac

tical guide to the most important duties of life, sacred, social, and personal; but it is not, and never pretends or was meant to be, a full code of morals, much less a didactic exposition. of ethics in general. So likewise the tale in Genesis gives glimpses of the origin of man and his abode, and pictures of primeval manners; but it was not put forth as a scheme of ontology, cosmology, or anthropology, nor can it legitimately be used as an outline of the astronomical, geological, physiological, psychological, sociological, or ethnological genetics and growth of our planet and race. Yet all these sciences, as developed from other sources by modern savants, of course have important relations to these divinely as well as humanly indited pages; and we cannot afford to neglect or disparage the quota of information which they contribute to the general stock on the points where they come into the field of inquiry. Precisely in the same manner, but in a vastly more interesting way and valuable degree, because more directly and extensively, the Bible yields the disjecta membra out of which the body of theology is to be reconstructed in harmonious strength and symmetric beauty, by means of the same processes employed in other departments of modern science, namely, a collection and comparison of all the particulars known, from whatever source; a thorough and searching test of their pertinence and correctness; an inexorable dissection of their common elements, their essential differences, and their mutual dependencies; an ingenions but ingenuous classification and reconstruction according to their true relations thus discovered; and finally, a clear and unsophisticated tabulation and exposition, whether in simple or learned words. That such an achievement is desirable no one surely will deny; that it is practicable would seem evident from the nature of the case, as viewed in the light of the above definitions and discriminations. The tendency of the age is strongly in that direction, and the example set in other lines of thought stimulates theologians to the attempt. The world will never rest, nor will the mind of man be satisfied, until something like scientific order is evoked out of the chaos which has hitherto so sadly reigned in this realm. Let us look calmly and closely at the principal difficulties in the way of this result, some of the encouragements in its pursuit, and the best means for its accomplishment. These three aspects of the case are so mutually

involved or indicated that they may most conveniently be considered together under the several heads with respect to which we have room briefly to present a few particulars.

1. The chief of these obstacles, no doubt, and one that must forever be a main impediment to a finite mind, is the essential abstrusity of many-we might perhaps say most-of the components themselves that go to make up what is distinctively called theology. The foremost topic, from which the whole subject has derived its name, is God; a being of absolute perfection, uncognizable by the senses, the very origin of the conception of whom is disputed, and whose nature we can only know, even after revelation has condescended to enlighten us, by a comparison with our own. The next great theme of theology, parallel with this, is man; but he, unfortunately, is almost as great a riddle to himself. Finite though he is most emphatically, and falling short even of his own ambitions, especially in his present depraved estate, he yet exhibits powers and functions and capacities that evince his divine origin and similitude, but which, even with the full light of consciousness directly beaming upon them, are a puzzle that has made the famous paradox of antiquity the standing and still unexhausted lesson of philosophy, "Know thyself." But, thirdly, theology is practically occupied with the mutual but not altogether reciprocal relations of these two beings to each other, still more than with the inner nature of either of them. This, while it somewhat relieves in other respects, rather enhances the problem; for it is like formulating an equation between two qualities, both of which are unknown. Their very resemblances and differences give intricacy and uncertainty to the comparison, and make the theological calculations and balancings almost endless and confusing. The votary of natural science is not slow to point to these hinderances in the path of the theologian, and often sneers at the vain and seemingly hopeless task of unraveling the tangled thread of investigation.

But let him not boast too soon; there is another side of the question. Ask him what he positively knows about the essence of matter, or the inner nature of force, the two prime elements of which he has to treat, and you will immediately see that he is as ignorant of these, and of the nexus between them, as the theologian is of the similarly fundamental ques

tions relating to spirit, whether human or divine. Even physical science deals only with observed or felt phenomena, that is, literally, "appearances;" and metaphysical science, of which theology, is a branch, has precisely the same sphere, but in a supernatural aspect. In short, genuine philosophy, which comprehends both departments, has for its legitimate office, as above defined, the collection, discussion, and promulgation of such external facts exclusively. The two realms correspond exactly to each other, as the terrestrial and the celestial globes; although the configurations upon them are entirely different. There is, therefore, no inherent absurdity or impracticability in a system of theological science any more than in a physical one, so far as the subject-matter is concerned.

The objection often urged against the certitude of theology on this ground, and especially the allegation that it is all or chiefly speculation, is so specious and common that we linger a little to refute it more fully. For the purpose of exemplification we select two of the most cardinal and perplexing doctrines of revealed religion, the trinity and its congener the incarnation; we would like to complete the triad by including the atonement, but our space forbids. Unitarians affirm that the idea of three persons in one Godhead is a mathematical contradiction, and demand a specific definition of the distinction signified by the term "person," if Trinitarians would relieve themselves of the charge. But in every science, and indeed in every-day phraseology, nothing is more common than to speak of a thing as triple in one respect and yet single in another; and when we come to differentiate two objects we never, as we have already seen, are able to do so by a palpable discrimination of their interior substance. All that we can in any case reach is a verbal statement, often merely figurative, and always liable to captious perversion or educational misapprehension, of the difference in idea or aspect which they present to the mind of the propounder, but which he may not perhaps be able fully and clearly to outline to himself, much less adequately convey to another. This is not mere dialectics, nor play upon words; but an actual variation in conception, which language helps to fix and crystallize. The same truth is more strongly illustrated by the doctrine of what we may in like manner style the hypostatic union between the divine and

33-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. V.