"Porro si sapientia Deus est,. ... verus philosophus est amator Dei."-ST. AUGUSTINE. NEW YORK: JAMES MILLER, PUBLISHER, 522, BROADWAY. BOSTON: WALKER, FULLER, & CO. 1866. In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. CAMBRIDGE: PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON. V. THE METHOD OF CHRISTIAN CHARITY. C. F. Barnard. VI. MISS MARTINEAU'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.-E. E. Hale Theology. Colenso on the Pentateuch, Part V., 119. Oort's Baalim in Israel, 123. Pleyte's Religion des Pre-Israelites, 124. Hennell's Present Religion, 125. Renan's Les Apôtres, 127.- Philosophy. Martineau's Essays, 132. History and Politics. Kleine Historische Schriften von Heinrich von I. THE RELATIONS OF LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY TO THE ORGAN- IZED RELIGION OF THE WEST. — A. D. Mayo . II. THE CONFLICT OF REASON WITH BIGOTRY AND SUPERSTI- - - S. Osgood. V. THE GERMAN WAR FOR THE UNION. — Frederic Schütz - - Theology. Merivale's Conversion of the Northern Nations, 280. History and Biography. Mommsen's Römische Geschichte, II. MORAL LIFE UNDER THE EMPIRE.-H. J. Warner . V. JOHN PIERPONT.-C. A. Cummings THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER. JULY, 1866. ART. I.-GOD IN OUR HISTORY. THE grand Christian doctrines of election and predestination have been sadly belittled by dogmatic interpreters. Rightly understood, they only declare that decisive part which God, by his Spirit and his Providence, has in the direction and unfolding of the spiritual fortunes of humanity. With no reference to individual allotments, or to the fixing of personal fates, they belong wholly to questions outside the freedom of the human will, and above the region of sectarian disputes. They draw our attention to the overwhelming fact, that the current of history is not a wild and will-less stream, stagnating here and rushing there, according to the fortuitous nature of the country; but a river of God, its course foreseen, its tributaries provided, its contracting highlands and its widening plains pre-arranged, while its fountains are fed by snows and rains, both descending in due season from Him who sitteth on the circle of the heavens. Because the Infinite Creator and Inspirer has been pleased to wrap his election and his predestination up in the very nature of the human soul, there are those who think the plan and course of history determined by human accidents and individual caprices, who trace to this school of philosophers or that class of statesmen, this happy invention or that special discovery, this giant intellect or that vigorous will, — to VOL. LXXX.-NEW SERIES, VOL. II. NO. I. 1 |