men." In other words he attempts to use church discipline for the decision of a question about the ownership of real estate. He, ruling the church at Salem and swaying it by his caprices. is to be "a judge and divider over" the young commonwealth. But the churches, or their elders, instead of yielding to Mr. Williams and his church, take occasion from those letters of admonition "to deal with him and the church in a church way." Some of the churches "write to the church of Salem to present before them the offensive spirit and way of their officer both in judgment and practice." These proceedings in the way of admonition and counter-admonition are not without effect at Salem. At last it begins to be felt there that Mr. Williams has erred in some things, and "divers of them that joined with him in those letters "-" acknowledge their error and give satisfaction." He finds that the majority of his own church is no longer with him in this last movement. What next?

On the Lord's day, Aug. 16-26, 1635, the church at Salem, being assembled for worship under the presidency of its Ruling Elder, receives a written communication from its Teaching Elder who is detained at home by some temporary illness. The letter from Mr. Williams is "delivered and read in the public church assembly;" and the scope of it is "to give them notice that if the church of Salem will not separate not only from the churches of old England but the churches of New England too, he will separate from them." He does not merely resign his office, he announces his withdrawal from the church, and will have henceforth no communion with it in sacrament or in prayer, unless it will follow him in his renunciation of all communion with the surrounding churches. "The more prudent and sober part of the church, being amazed at his way, cannot yield to him;" and indeed "the whole church is grieved," and it may well be. It finds itself excommunicated by its own minister because it has declined to excommunicate all other churches at his bidding. He means what he says. The Sabbaths come and go, but he comes no more into that assembly. He holds a private meeting in his own house with. as many as will stand on his platform of "rigid Separation." He will have no communion whatever, in worship, with any

body who worships in that church. He refuses even to pray with his own wife, or to give thanks with her at their family table, till she too withdraws from the church which he has denounced as "anti-Christian."

A General Court is held (Sep. 2-12,) while the excitement caused by these proceedings is blazing; but though the attempt of the Salem church to coerce the civil government by ecclesiastical power is noticed, not without grave resentment, no mention seems to be made of Mr. Williams as responsible for that attempt. Inasmuch as he has withdrawn from all the churches of the colony, why may there not be a hope that, in his disgust, he will withdraw from the colony itself? But at an adjourned session, five weeks later, to which all the ministers in the Bay have been invited, "Mr. Williams, the teacher at Salem," has been summoned and is present. The matter charged against him is in the two letters which have so disturbed the tranquility of the commonwealth; "that to the churches, complaining of the magistrates for injustice, extreme oppression, etc., and the other to his own church, to persuade them to renounce communion with all the churches in the Bay, as full of anti-christian pollution, etc. He justifies both these letters, and maintains all his opinions, and being offered further conference or disputation, and a month's respite, he chooses to dispute presently. So Mr. Hooker "-soon to become the famous Thomas Hooker of Hartford-"is appointed to dispute with him, but cannot reduce him from any of his errors."* An

* "One single glimpse of this debate is afforded us by Mr. Cotton, writing not very long after. He says that Mr. Williams complained, now in open court, that he was wronged by a slanderous report up and down the country, as if he did hold it to be unlawful for a father to call upon his child to eat his meat. Our reverend brother Mr. Hooker (the pastor of the church where the court was then kept) being moved to speak a word to it, 'Why,' saith he, 'you will say as much again (if you stand to your own principles) or be forced to say nothing.' When Mr. Williams was confident he should never say it, Mr. Hooker replied, 'If it be unlawful to call an unregenerate person to take an oath, or to pray, as being actions of God's worship, then it is unlawful for your unregenerate child to pray for a blessing upon his own meat. If it be unlawful for him to pray for a blessing upon his meat, it is unlawful for him to eat it, for it is sanctified by prayer, and without prayer unsanctified, 1 Tim. iv, 4, 5. If it be unlawful for him to eat it, it is unlawful for you to call upon him to eat it, for it is unlawful for you to call upon him to sin.' Here Mr. Williams thought better to hold his peace than give

adjournment is had, and the next day "the court sentences him to depart out of our jurisdiction within six weeks, all the ministers save one approving the sentence, and his own church having him under question also for the same cause."

We must not rehearse in detail the sequel of the story;— how, instead of a strict enforcement of the sentence, he was permitted in consideration of his health to remain in Salem through the winter, under an injunction "not to go about to draw others to his opinions;"-how, as soon as he was well enough, he renewed his work of agitation;-how the court of magistrates, finding their authority defied and their clemency (or what they thought was clemency) abused, attempted to put him on shipboard, that he might try what liberty there was for such agitation in England; how he escaped out of their hands, and went beyond their jurisdiction into the land of Narragansett, where he builded a city and devoutly named it Providence; how, notwithstanding the contempt with which Puritan statesmen in the other colonies regarded his experiment in the science of government, or as they thought no-government, the relations between him and them were always friendly;-how he grew wiser and gentler, though hardly less crotchetty, as he grew older;-how he kept company with the wild men of the woods, winning their confidence and love;-how his old age was honored ;-how he died and was buried, leaving a name not unworthy of grateful and perpetual remembrance wherever there is perfect liberty for men to think, to speak their thoughts, and to worship in spirit and in truth. It is enough that our learned friend, Dr. Dexter, has given us a vision of the irrepressible conflict between Roger Williams and the Puritanism of Massachusetts Bay.

an answer." Dexter, p. 57. Alas! for the quibble about "unregenerate doings"a quibble that has puzzled the heads and hardened the hearts of thousands! Too often a "chop-logic" theology, misled by false philosophy, has put the light of life into a dark lantern, and has entangled the preaching of the gospel in perplexities which no ordinary hearer can unravel.

ARTICLE III.—THE INWARD AND THE OUTWARD.

THE ordinary view of the Inward and the Outward sets each against the other in the contrast of a perpetual antithesis. Thus while each has its partizans, no one can support both; he that maintains one of them thereby excludes the other; whichever is declared true, the other is by implication declared false. Here is the root of wide-branching, multitudinous controversy, and to the end of time there is no hope of settlement; for in reality each one is as true-and as false-as the other. The view which this paper will endeavor to present offers terms of an honorable peace in the alliance of the contending parties, for it declares that the Inward and the Outward are correlatives, and that the being of each lies wholly in the mutual relation. Each is what it is only by reason of the other, and the truth of either is to be found in the fact of both. Apart from each other they are abstractions and untrue, for the actual is the indivisible concrete of them both. Looked at from the inward, the actual is an Essence which must appear; and looked at from the outward, it is a Phenomenon which is the appearance of an Essence. There is an Inward which makes itself outward; and there is an Outward which is only the inward as outward. With this brief general statement of our principle, let us follow it into the three special spheres of Nature, Morals and Art.

I. NATURE. A fundamental question for human science iswhat is the real-what is ultimate, essential reality? The first answer was that of Physics: Nature, the materiality which is to perception. Nay, retorted Metaphysics, it is the Supernatural, the ideality which is to thought. Each insisted on his own answer; neither would hear to the other's. The one would exclude ideality altogether, for that it held to be distinctly the unreal. The other was equally determined to exclude materiality, being equally clear that that was the unreal. The dispute was waxing warm when Philosophy entered and after listening awhile took advantage of a pause to interrupt: My

friends, you are both right, or rather you are both wrong. Reality, that which truly is, cannot be Matter, for matter is that which is and is not. It fleeth as a shadow and never continueth in one stay. It is perishable; indeed to perish is its very nature. Nor is reality purely ideal, for that is in the air, a mere possible; a maybe which as yet is not. Give over quarreling, join hands, and learn the truth. Reality is not materiality alone, or ideality alone, but both together. That which is, is the indivisible, homogeneous concrete of ideal and material. The Inward and the outward, because the inward of the Outward, and the outward of the Inward. You are standing on opposite sides of the gold and silver shield, and, stoutly maintaining your exclusive views, tilt against each other on a mistaken issue in which both are right and yet neither. But they would not listen, and shrugging their shoulders each went his several way. Philosophy looked after them saying to herself: Well, it is but a question of time. Truth is truth whether we know it or not; whether we admit or deny it, we cannot alter it. Take your separate roads; wherever you think they are leading, you will find they bring you together, as workmen in a tunnel who begin to bore the rock from opposite sides, and see nothing of each other till the work of each is completed, and then they meet in the middle and shake hands, standing for the first time in full light with a view from end to end. And Philosophy walked away to her own higher speculations.

Time is verifying this prophecy. The work of physical and of metaphysical science, each on its own line, has already advanced far enough to bring them nearer together than they were at first, and so we have spoken of the doctrines of abstract materialism and abstract idealism in the past tense. The latter, as a doctrine involving the denial of reality to matter, disappeared with Berkeley, or is maintained only by a few Rip Van Winkles of Berkeleyism who have slept through a century of progressive thought. Idealism, which we may characterize for convenience as abstract in Berkeley, transcendental in Kant, subjective in Fichte, objective in Schelling, and absolute in Hegel, has arrived by these stages at the concrete position stated above, where Matter is embraced within the actual as the externality of the ideal, subsidiary, yet essential