JULY NUMBER. IV. THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL. By the Editor. V. THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. By Rev. T. J. Barkley. VI. TRACES OF THE PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY IN THE THE REFORMED QUARTERLY REVIEW. JANUARY, 1880. ART. I.-THE POPE'S ENCYCLICAL. A TRULY important document, which well deserves, as it solemnly challenges, the most serious attention of the whole Christian world. This, whether we agree with the teaching contained in it or not; since in either case, it is not to be disputed that the subject with which it is concerned is of the most momentous interest for the universal Christian life, which, if Christianity be of God, means nothing less than the life and well-being of the world in the broadest view. In this light the encyclical is emphatically a tract for the times. It addresses itself to the inmost need and profoundest problem of the age. It has a voice for Protestants no less than for Roman Catholics. A voice not to be followed blindly, of course, but a voice at the same time not to be turned away from with wilfully closed ears, as if, coming from a pope, it could have no meaning except for Roman Catholics. The subject of it, is what we are concerned with; what all the great questions of the age, secular or religious, are concerned with; and that subject, whatever may be thought of the papal judgment in regard to it, we can have no right to regard with indifference. If the papal judgment be wrong, it is only so much the more important that the intelligence and conscience of the Christian world should be put upon the task of finding what may be taken as a true answer to the question, about which the infallibility of the encyclical is held to be at fault. In such a case, that only can deserve to be considered true Protestantism, or a true and right method of antagonizing Romanism. Where instead of this, however, we have the whole subject of the encyclical ignored or waived aside as if it belonged to the pope's brain only, and were not something for anti-papists to trouble themselves about one way or another, can we hesitate to pronounce such Protestantism utterly unworthy of its name? It belongs to the camp of antichrist. It is treason to our Lord under the show of zeal for his cause. I do not propose, in the present article, anything like a formal review or criticism of the papal document. My object is simply to use it as an occasion, or general text, for some observations, more or less loosely thrown together, on the vast and difficult theme to which the document is devoted; more from the desire of exciting and stimulating thought (with morally honest thinkers), than from the expectation of bringing what I have to say into the form of any final and fully rounded result. I. And here, first of all, our attention is challenged to the question whether or not there is to be discerned in the encyclical any departure from the previous teaching of the Roman Church on the great subject with which it is employed.. That subject is the much vexed question of the age, the relation of human reason to divine revelation, which, in other words, means the relation of science and philosophy to religion and faith. In the famous syllabus of Pius IX. we have this settled for the Roman Church (as it might seem once for all), in terms which have been taken to mean open war against all modern culture. But in the encyclical of Leo XIII., some have supposed themselves able to read between the lines at least, if not openly, a more liberal spirit, the beginning indeed of a gentle inoculation with the reigning genius of the age, which may be expected in due course of time to turn the syllabus, and all it represents, into quiet obsolescence. Is there any ground for this imagination? Roman Catholics of course treat it with derision as an idle dream, in which the thought is fathered by the wish. And to my mind, I confess, they appear to be right. The notion with some would seem to be that the syllabus came out as a sweeping condemnation of the use of reason in every form, while the encyclical is a plea for the use of it, under safe guidance, such as the philosophy of the angelic doctor Thomas Aquinas. But surely this is a great mistake. If one pope, looking in one direction, lays all emphasis for the moment on one side of his subject, it does not follow that another pope laying full emphasis on the opposite side of the same subject, should be considered out of harmony and agreement with the first. It is simply in that case a difference at most like that between the holy apostles, St. James and St. Paul, in regard to the doctrine of justification. It resolves itself into a mere amphibology of terms. There is only too much force in the following indignant protest of the American Catholic Quarterly on this point: "There is not a single word in the syllabus of Pius IX. (for this is what is referred to) that can be tortured into condemnation, or even the faintest shadow of censure, of human reason, its legitimate rights, or its correct use. If it does, let it be produced. It does not breathe on this matter a single syllable which every right-minded Protestant, who has not parted company with his former belief in revealed religion and Christianity, would not cheerfully subscribe to. It condemns only those who do not use reason, but abuse it; those who lift it out of its proper sphere; who make of it a judge of the mysteries of Christian faith; who contend that theological must be discussed in the same way as natural science; and finally, (not to enumerate them all), who are bold enough to say that philosophy must be treated without any reference to supernatural revelation. As if the speculation of any philosopher, had he even the mental calibre of an Aristotle, an Augustine, or an Aquinas, could possibly be true when in open contradiction with God's revealed Word. It is these men who trample on the mysteries, miracles, and teachings of the Old and New Testaments, who insult and blaspheme God and his revelation, in the name of reason, that Pius IX. condemned in the syllabus. And we should like to be told when or where they have ever found favor and approval at the hands of the present pontiff? Not in the present encyclical surely, in which, like Pius IX., he teaches explicitly that reason must know her place and keep it, nor venture beyond her depth. Her duty, and it should be her highest boast, is to be the handmaid and follower (ancilla et pedisequa) of theology and revelation. She must never have the presumption to withdraw herself from the control of divine authority (non ita tamen, ut auctoritati divinæ sese audacter subtrahere videatur). Let her remember that it is trampling alike on faith and reason to accept as true any conclusion which is opposed to revealed doctrine (si conclusionem aliquam amplectatur quam revelatæ doctrinæ repugnare intellexerit). In the next paragraph he scouts, not only as a fallacy, but as the height of folly and ingratitude, the notion (already condemned in the syllabus) that human intelligence loses its dignity, and becomes fettered and enslaved by subjecting itself to divine authority. All this is, or ought to be, so well and widely known that it is a pity and a shame that we have here to repeat it." II. This is so true and so well spoken, that it gives me pleasure here to quote it. And it is gratifying especially to find that the writer, in resenting what he considers a wrong done to the orthodoxy of his own church, has kindness and honesty enough at the same time to be just toward the Protestant church; distinguishing, as he does, between such as are Protestants in the way of infidel negation only and such as are Protestants in the way of believing affirmation. On this matter of faith and science, the absolute supremacy of the supernatural in revelation over all natural science and reason, which is claimed to be the soul of the syllabus, there is not in it, he tells us, "a breath of doctrine which any right |