HUMAN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 OF THE 
 
 M UVO,J$ 
 
 OPPOSED TO THE WOKD OF GOD. 
 
 AN ADDRESS, 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE ALUMNI OF LA FAYETTE COLLEGE, 
 EASTON, PA., ON TUESDAY OF COMMENCEMENT 
 WEEK, JULY 26, 1859, 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. J. WASHINGTON WOOD, 
 
 PASTOR OF THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN CHESTER, ORANGE COUNTY, N. Y. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE ASSOCIATION. 
 
 EASTON, PA. 
 
 LEWIS GORDON, PRINTER. 
 
 1859. 
 
 TUTTLE 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 Key. James W. Wood; 
 
 Easton, July 26, 18591 
 
 Dear Sir , — At a meeting of the AlumDi of LaFayette College, the 
 undersigned were appointed a Committee to express to you their thanks, for the 
 very able and interesting address delivered by you, before them, at their annual 
 meeting, held this day, and to request a copy of the same for publication. 
 
 Yours very respectfully, 
 
 B. F. FACKENTHALL, ) 
 
 FRANCIS MICHLER, [ Committee ; 
 ELISHA ALLIS, ) 
 
 Easton, July 21, 1859. 
 
 Messrs. B. F. Fackenthall, F. Michler and E. Allis, 
 
 Gentlemen , — Your favor of yesterday was duly received. The Ad- 
 dress you refer to is herewith committed to your disposal. 
 
 Yery truly yours, 
 
 J. W, WOOD. 
 
.ADDRESS. 
 
 G-entlemen of the Alumni : — 
 
 My appearance before you to-day is a result of your mis- 
 fortune. The accomplished gentlemen, whom you selected to 
 perform the duties of this hour, have been unable, for the 
 present, to favor the Association with the benefit of their supe- 
 rior abilities ; so that you are doomed to endure an affliction 
 from them and an infliction from me. The polite invitation of 
 your committee has given me the honor of addressing you, 
 though I am neither primus , nor secundus , but a certain terti- 
 um quid , which means, as the audience will understand, in your 
 favor, not the best you have, but, as good as you could yet. 
 
 It is more than a score of years since the first class left the 
 halls of our College, and for so long a time ''some of us have 
 mingled in the great battle of life. Already we are on that 
 eminence, from which we can see the thickly shaded frontier, 
 through which the king’s highway, well lighted, leads onward 
 and upward to “ things unseen.” Whether on the rough edge 
 of battle, or in the general’s marquee, the lessons of experience 
 and observation make us feel that “Life is serious, Life is 
 earnest,” and that a grave responsibility rests on educated men, 
 who, with loving hearts and beaming eye and elastic tread 
 should lead their race “to glory and to virtue.” Our life is 
 allotted in an age of cheerful activities, which, as when nature 
 leaps forth with songs and blossoms from dread winter’s reign, 
 are already bursting away from the effete forms of ignorance 
 and misrule, and giving promise of a higher life to sanctified 
 humanity. A spleeny student, full of moping melancholy, 
 
4 
 
 ought to ante-date himself a hundred years. Sweet light is 
 waking the world, and the songs of the morning are full of 
 hope. Galileo is now a freeman, for science is relieved from the 
 incubus of a foul and fossil faith, and bathing in the clear 
 stream of truth, and weaving in her robes the beauties and 
 brilliants of her own realm, all redolent from the fields, she 
 walks forth in the graceful dignity of a queen — as the royal 
 help-meet of a Bible Christianity. All hail ! to the nuptials of 
 every department of truth ! the church of God, sharply defined 
 by the doctrines of regeneration by the Spirit, and justifica- 
 tion through faith in the atonement, is putting on her beautiful 
 garments, and diffusing her heavenly gifts. Her presses do 
 not groan, but their humming is the refrain of the jubilate, first 
 sung by night when a Prince was born in the City of David. 
 Her missionaries, the mightiest men on earth, have already 
 shouldered the gates of the Philistines, while their Christian 
 homes, graced with the piety that first sought the Redeemer’s 
 tomb, stand in the darkness of heathenism as the lights of the 
 world. Minds of a philosophic mold, when submissive to the 
 mind of God, are making grand achievements towards a satis- 
 factory explanation of mental and moral ' phenomena ; while 
 others, not so submissive, are laboriously whittling out and 
 painting queer images, and labelling them “ Ego,” or “ non 
 Ego” — “das Etwas” — or “das Nichts^das reine Nichts” — • 
 which bewilders the superficial and amuses the profound. 
 
 But it is good to live associated with the mighty agencies of 
 our day, and to feel their power moving us onward in the path 
 of truth — or, if evil, testing our ability to resist their blind 
 momentum. As the old eagle stirreth up her nest, lest her 
 young should never unfold the wing ofj high endeavor, the moral 
 forces of these days are so adjusted as to push every educated 
 and honest mind off from the quiet luxury of mere study, and 
 the formalities of recitation drills, so that it may be a beneficent 
 power among men — another layer in the lever by which God 
 would raise the world. 
 
 In view of these consentaneous or opposing activities I pro^ 
 pose to make some remarks on 
 
HUMAN PHILOSOPHY AS OPTOSED TO THE 
 AUTHORITY OF THE WORD OF GOD. 
 
 The reference is to the false philosophies of mind and morals, 
 which have obtained currency in some quarters. My plan is 
 not to assume to make a ponderous treatise, or to analyze in 
 detail any one system, but under the freedom of a popular ex- 
 ercise, to take a bird’s eye view of several schemes which coun- 
 terfeit, ignore, or oppose the claims of a Bible Christianity. 
 
 Mind governs the world. Thoughts are the instruments of 
 power. The blind momentum of superstition and obstinacy fails 
 to jar the earth, as it once did. Human wisdom, when void of 
 the Christian element, is projected before the gaze of men, like 
 pyrotechnics on the brow of night, only to burst in amusing 
 scintillations, and fall useless to the ground. Papal bulls once 
 made the kingdoms tremble, plunging, like African buffalo, 
 straight ahead, without reason or mercy ; but now, how feeble, 
 and how few ! Among all the high contracting powers in the 
 world of mind, we claim the first place for the mind of God, 
 and submit that the claim is neither audacious, nor unphilosoph- 
 ical, while the rejection of it is both. 
 
 A true philosophy of mind must necessarily take cognizance 
 of the existence and control of God, as revealed in the scrip- 
 tures — of the dependence and fall of man, and of his recovery, 
 only through supernatural assistance. Were men competent to 
 elaborate, by their own invention, a system of philosophy which 
 should be an ultimate rule and standard for mental and moral 
 conduct, then was the revelation in the Scriptures unnecessary. 
 The Creator does not supernaturally effect for men what they 
 can do for themselves. The Scriptures mark the limits of re- 
 ligious thought, and hence that philosophy, which ignores those 
 limits, and speculates in a region beyond, is, by the necessities 
 of the case, mere speculation, and may be nonsense. Authorita- 
 tive and ultimate religious truth, supernaturally revealed, is as 
 necessary for the philosopher as for the peasant. Cousin ex- 
 claims in rapture, that philosophy is “ the light of all lights — 
 the authority of all authorities. ” If modesty suggests the lim- 
 
7 
 
 itation of the human mind, and its necessary ignorance on some 
 points, Schelling responds with superb disdain “ One sees not 
 wherefore philosophy should pay any attention to incapacity.” 
 Yet we venture to ask who, but God in the Scriptures, has spo- 
 ken intelligently of the absolute and the infinite ? Who, but 
 He, knows anything of the essence of spirit, and whether it has 
 any exercise back of its own consciousness ? Is it unphilo- 
 sophical, in a system of natural order, that an infinite Creator 
 should assume, as of right, the control of the creature ? What 
 ought to be put before the first Great Cause ? and shall the 
 Christian quail before philosophy when he reads — “ By faith 
 we know the worlds were made by the word of Crod , so that the 
 things that are seen , were not made of things which do appear V 1 
 No. We demand that the Bible be admitted as teaching us ul- 
 timate truths respecting God, and in Him, authoritatively limit- 
 ing the range of human speculation in the direction of the 
 Absolute and the infinite. 
 
 The poet Shelly, who shamefully at times affects to be an 
 Atheist, is yet unable to ignore the presence of Peity, and 
 Bays — 
 
 “ The awful shadow of some mighty power 
 Floats, tho’ unseen, above us.” 
 
 Beyond the nature of an infinite personal God there is abso- 
 lutely nothing to buoy the wings of the imagination, and that 
 philosopher who describes himself as thinking profoundly in a 
 region where God is not, has a full share of impudence and is 
 an ineffable fool. The teachings of such a philosophy are wild, 
 and of no more value to the world than the cries of penguins 
 around Cape Horn. 
 
 Christianity is a life from God, and because it is a life, it is 
 a power. It is for man’s highest interest, individually and so- 
 cially, to be subjected to this power. The facts in natural 
 science that the angles of a given crystal are of a certain size 
 — or, that some animals have a vertebrae, are not more palpa- 
 ble and settled, than the fact that an individual, or a nation, 
 cannot successfully pursue the greatest good without the word 
 of God, and the supernatural power which it proffers. Man 
 needs to be directed and controlled — but, constituted as he is, 
 
6 
 
 that control will be superficial and impotent, unless it refers 
 primarily and mainly to those parts of his being and conduct 
 which are beyond the cognizance of human foresight and law — 
 the understanding and conscience must be reached, and brought 
 into submission to an authority which they will recognize a& 
 appropriate and sufficient, and as cognate and correlate with 
 themselves, before the hand and foot will move as they should. 
 An obedience, effected without the consent of these higher and 
 characteristic parts of man’s nature, is not only unnatural and 
 forced, but it is dangerous and prophetical of revolution. Now 
 the Bible sets forth a personal God, who claims especially to 
 reign over mind. Himself “ a Spirit, infinite, eternal and un- 
 changeable,” he makes created spirits the special objects of his 
 control, and does not allow the existence of an intelligent be-* 
 ing in circumstances where his authority is not pertinent, and 
 His favor essential, to that being’s happiness. The nature of 
 Christianity as revealed in the Scriptures, and the experience 
 of our race, have shown that nothing else can' be substituted, 
 either wisely or safely, for its authority. It has so far con- 
 quered the world of mind that, all shrewd projectors of antag- 
 onistic schemes court her name and her glory. It is often 
 easier and more feasible to conform, in appearance, to a pre- 
 dominant sentiment, than to stem the general current. In our 
 country Christianity is a popular and national term. It is 
 therefore, policy to put the word in a conspicuous and bold 
 position, on the forehead of every enterprise which involves re- 
 ligious considerations. Often the more anti-christian is the 
 scheme to which it is affixed the greater will be its prominence, 
 and the more loudly will its abettors cry — “ Hoc signo vinces.” 
 
 These sentiments are counteracted or ignored, in the philos- 
 ophy (falsely so called) to which I refer. As we approach that 
 part of our subject, it will probably not be unnatural to begin 
 with an examination of the human head. This we have exhib- 
 ited to us — like bibles for the blind, in relievo , to be read through 
 the ends of the fingers. Phrenology presents us with an 
 example of geometrical metaphysics, whereby, the human head, 
 embossed, reveals the soul in triangles and trapeziums. Mr. 
 Combe reckons thirty-five elevations, under which the inner 
 
8 
 
 man protrudes towards the outward world — but science is cu- 
 mulative — and Professor Fowler details eighty-three in his 
 mental geography, each of which has its counterpart, like Ebal 
 and Gerizim of old, for cursing and blessing. These, he says, 
 are “ independent faculties, each of which exercises a distinct 
 class of functions.” But whether the soul is material or imma- 
 terial, Mr. Combe answers, “ The solution of this question is 
 not only unimportant, but impossible.” There is found more- 
 over, in all these tumuli, no chamber for the human will, and 
 our philosophers declare, there is no such faculty. Mr. Spurz- 
 heim says : “ Will is no more a fundamental power than is 
 
 the instinct of animals. It is only the effect of every primitive 
 faculty of the mind. Each faculty being active produces an 
 inclination — a kind of will.” Having substituted instincts, 
 impulses, and natural tendencies for a responsible will, Mr. 
 Combe represents the convicted criminal, “ as the victim of his 
 own nature and external condition, who is to be pitied more 
 than blamed.” His apology for the crimes of pope Alexander 
 VI., is as good as our New-York Archbishop could invent, for he 
 says, “ such a brain is no more adequate to the manifestation 
 of Christian virtues, than the brain of an idiot is to the exhibi- 
 tion of the intellect’ of a Leibnitz, or a Bacon.” “ Divines,” 
 says he, u should introduce the natural laws into their discourses, 
 and not represent Christianity as a system of spiritual influen- 
 ces — of internal operations on the soul. ,, 
 
 Gentlemen of the Bar and Pulpit, here are ethics for your 
 practice and your homilies. The old Bible doctrine of the re- 
 sponsibility and guilt of man, as having a will, is obsolete since 
 the advent of craniology. Abandon your penalties, and com- 
 miserate the rascal for the unfortunate size of his cerebellum 
 and executive knobs. Let those who sit in ermine learn to 
 manipulate the heads of their prisoners, and issue their manda- 
 mus for the excitement of the tardy organs of virtue. Let men 
 of erudition know the mistake of Edwards in giving the world 
 a treatise on the will, and not the skull, and let casuists study 
 bones instead of consciences. Phrenology, in fact, as its Magi 
 apply it to educational and moral interests, is so gross a mate- 
 rialism, and so subversive of scriptural truth, as scarcely to 
 
9 
 
 merit a denial. It is a caricature of science and an outrage 
 against Christianity. 
 
 But after all, “ the human head divine” is an interesting la- 
 boratory of thought. It is not always “ in wandering mase3 
 lost.” Its products are often brilliant, even if they are not 
 solid, and weighty, though they be wicked. We are indebted 
 to Germany— ‘to her laborers, and patient investigators, and 
 writers — to her noble and flexible language, rivalling the tongue 
 of Homer and Plato in its copiousness, strength and beauty, for 
 many of our most useful books. In its editions of the classics, 
 in philosophy, in literary criticisms, and some departments of 
 Biblical interpretations, in history and poetry, the language of 
 Goethe, Schelling aud Olshausen contains immense stores of the 
 most useful knowledge ; those stores will yet nourish and invig- 
 orate an Evangelical faith in Europe, and contribute largely to 
 bless the world. But much of its philosophy of mind and morals 
 is lamentably destitute, not of vigor and brilliancy so much, as 
 of the Scriptural element and common sense. 
 
 Lord Bacon taught the inquirer to look at the relations and 
 movements of things ; the German, looks at the things them- 
 selves. The inductive school sees the world as it is, spread out 
 in those relations of power and beauty, which are believed to 
 bear the impress of the Great Designer ; the rationalistic school, 
 first strips everything of all its qualities and relations, and looks 
 at it in the abstract state — the absolute state. After taking the 
 universe apart, they put it together according to their own wis- 
 dom. Like tyros in mechanics, they get the watch apart without 
 much injury, but when they have put it together, you cannot 
 tell whether it is a time-piece or a turnip. 
 
 As to what is meant by the absolute, it is difficult to under- 
 stand. The higher German philosophy seldom uses illustrations, 
 because it conceives of everything as out of existence ; but the 
 English mind lays hold of these, as of a walking cane, to spirit 
 its progress. You have seen a species of swallow dig holes in 
 the high-land cliffs, where they may lay and brood ; the Bacon- 
 ian method of investigating those holes, would be to climb up 
 and look in — but our Teutonic friends pronounce that a very 
 clumsy and unscientific mode of procedure, and they advise you 
 
 b 
 
io 
 
 to remove the entire hill, and leave the holes suspended in purls 
 naturalibus, and then study them. 
 
 These philosophers are not willing to begin with anything that 
 God has made — not even with that Great Being himself, but as- 
 pire to be themselves original creatures. The process is truly 
 original. They first put everything out of existence, including 
 God and themselves, and then begin to manipulate their first 
 production as a pure nothing — das reine Nichts ; but this is not 
 recognised, after all, as the starting point. The first object on 
 which the philosophic eye rests, is the relation of this nothing to 
 nothing else. Through this relation the reciprocal action of 
 “ the me n and “ the not me ” begins, and a universe is the result 
 — not all at once, but by development. Thus runs poor reason 
 under the philosopher’s cap, until Prof. Fichte announces to his 
 class, “ To-morrow, gentlemen, I shall create God.” 
 
 The philosophy of Schelling, who was a pupil of Fichte, is 
 based upon what he calls the absolute. His definition is — “ the 
 absolute is neither infinite nor finite, neither to know nor to be, 
 neither subject nor object ; but that wherein all opposition of 
 subject and object, knowledge and existence, spirit and inert 
 matter, ideal and real, together with all other differences and 
 distinctions, are absorbed and disappear.” However wild and 
 irreligious such a definition is, it is a comfort to be able to un- 
 derstand something when walking in the wilderness of trans- 
 cendental thoughts. The notion of a universal annihilation is 
 conceivable. 
 
 Hegel, Professor at Heidelberg, brought German metaphys- 
 ics to perfection, by making its darkness more profound, and its 
 folly more palpable. It is well known to all thinkers, that cor- 
 rect and lucid definitions are of the first importance in a scien- 
 tific discussion. None are more seriously careful in this regard 
 than Professor Hegel. Lest I should be thought to caricature 
 his opinions, may I be allowed, without the imputation of pe- 
 dantry, to repeat, in his own language and words, his definition 
 of an idea. If any are not familiar with the German, let them 
 not indulge in premature regrets, for they will get about the 
 same sense as those who are : — u Die idee ist der Yerlauf, dass 
 der Begriff als die Allgemeinheit, welche Einzelnheit ist, sich 
 
11 
 
 zur Objectivitat und zum gcgensatz gegen dieselbe bestimmt ; 
 und diese Ausserlichkeit, die den Begriff zu ihrer substanz bat 
 durch ihre immanente Dialektic sich in die Subjectivitat zuruck 
 fuhrt.” — i.e., “ An idea is the course that the notion, as the 
 generalness, which is singleness, determines itself to the objec- 
 tivity, and to the opposition against the same ; and this extern- 
 alness, which has the notion to its substance through its imma- 
 nent dialektic, brings itself back in the subjectivity.” 
 
 Will not whole volumes, as perspicuous as this, enable one to 
 understand Cousin "when he says, 66 philosophy is the light of 
 lights,” and why an admirer of Hegel said at his grave, “ the 
 system is perfect. Go ye into all the world and preach this 
 new Gospel !” 
 
 The application of transcendental philosophy to religion, goes 
 to show that there is no personal and self-existent God, until 
 after he has been developed in nature. The finite regresses into 
 the infinite — nature returns towards the absolute, and in this 
 return, God is unfolded and realised. But even then his per- 
 sonality and consciousness are not separate from those of men, 
 but included and expressed in them — Nature is God extended. 
 The plain English of the whole is, “ There is no G-od /” In the 
 history of Rationalism, by Amand Saintes, the profound w T riter, 
 who published the letters of Schleiermacker on the Lucinde of 
 Schelling, is represented as saying, that the world would have 
 been better off if it had never heard the name of God ! 
 
 A philosophy which reduces the universe to an abstraction, 
 and makes that abstraction the womb from which God is deve- 
 loped, has, of course, no trouble in ignoring the Scripture, and 
 the life by faith in a Redeemer — that book is a human produc- 
 tion, and a myth at that. Its doctrines are credible, only as 
 they are found in agreement with the philosophy in question, 
 which is seldom the case. The influence of this philosophy in 
 disturbing confidence in a Scriptural religion has extended, 
 more from the position of its authors than from any force of 
 truth in itself. They have been, for the most part, the author- 
 ised teachers in the largest universities in the world, with access 
 to almost all the literature extant among men, and with the 
 presses and funds of Europe largely at their command. It has 
 
12 
 
 begotten a desire among learned men, of the class referred to, 
 to be original, rather that Scriptural, and a willingness to be 
 reputed great, without being right. Baron Bunsen is just out 
 in an English dress, with the startling discovery that man was 
 on the earth 20,000 years before Christ. This readiness to 
 sacrifice the Scriptures at the shrine of human learning, has 
 been but feebly counteracted in the land of its birth ; for even 
 Evangelical men like Hengstenberg and Olshausen are not 
 wholly free from mysticism. The civil authorities, who super- 
 intend the Church, do not read their Bibles enough to know how 
 to keep it pure. The King of Prussia became alarmed at the 
 influence of the Hegelian philosophy, and would fain be a nurs- 
 ing father to Zion, so he employed Schelling to rebut Hegelian- 
 ism. But, Schellingism turned out to be the worse of the two. 
 Schelling removed from Munich to Berlin, but evidently left his 
 Bible at the former place — as in Bunyan’s Holy War, “ Mr. 
 Eorget-Good was made recorder of the town of Mansoul.” — 
 England and America share the honor of furnishing men, of no 
 small stature, who dare to stand by the Word of God. Stewart, 
 Robinson, Lewis, Barnes, Alexander, Hodge, and Park stand, 
 like Joshua on Gibeon, to hold the sun from going down till the 
 victory is won. 
 
 Just now, in Europe and America, the transcendental stock 
 is deteriorating from both the boldness and frankness of the 
 earlier sires, but has improved somewhat in sleekness and nim- 
 bleness. Among these latter disciples, we meet with nothing 
 more frequently than an explicit admission of a Scriptural pro- 
 position in its abstract form, and an advocacy of opinions which 
 palpably contradict it. If the question is, Was Paul inspired? 
 Certainly he w T as, they reply, for all great minds are inspired. 
 All genius is a spark from Deity. Demosthenes was inspired to 
 defend his country by eloquence, Washington by the sword, 
 Milton to sing of Paradise, and Longfellow of Hiawatha. Was 
 Jesus sent from God? Yes, and so were Luther and Edwards. 
 Thus they admit a Scripture truth, and claim credit for frank- 
 ness, but proceed to eviscerate it of its living contents. 
 
 These phenomena of the human mind, in the persistent pur- 
 suit of the veriest vagaries, are at once proof of its limitation. 
 
13 
 
 its weakness, and its willfulness. Some of the mightiest intel- 
 lects of the nineteenth century have resolved to reverence noth- 
 ing but their own conclusions, and to believe nothing that was 
 ever believed before. With indomitable perseverance, and self- 
 cheering complacency, they have constructed roads to no where, 
 and windows which nobody can see through, and done what in 
 them lies, to engineer the world back into the tohu and bohu of 
 primeval chaos. It appears to be as much a matter of surprise 
 to them, that others do not understand their theories, as it was 
 to Sancho Panza that his master did not relish his proverbs. It 
 is related that a professor in one of our theological seminaries, 
 while on a visit to Europe, had a personal interview with a Prus- 
 sian philosopher on the higher mysteries of Teutonic metaphysics. 
 The American professor insisted on a precise definition of every 
 term used, and a lucid explanation of each proposition announc- 
 ed. The philosopher explained and defined, and defined and 
 explained, but every new explanation and definition seemed only 
 to suggest a new difficulty to the acuteness or obtuseness of the 
 quiet, imperturbable Yankee, when the poor German, astonished 
 and grieved, lifted both hands and eyes to heaven, and exclaim- 
 ed, “ Mein G-ott ; forgive Christopher Columbus for ever having 
 discovered America !” 
 
 The present antagonism between Evangelical truth and a vain 
 philosophy, is only another instance under the law of reproduc- 
 tion, showing that “ that which has been, is now.” Men are 
 willing to repeat a thousand times the experiment of seeking 
 good without God, which, like the bough loaded with fruit hang- 
 ing over the head of Tantalus, always eludes their efforts to 
 reach it. The Reformation was mainly directed against the 
 scholasticism which had overwhelmed the Roman world. The 
 Platonists and the Eclectics in the third century sought to make 
 all religions coalesce, and Christ was put on a level with Pytha- 
 goras and Empedocles. Manes rose, and the turbid streams of 
 Persian mysticism were mingled with the dark floods of Gnosti- 
 cism in the West. The opinions of men gradually usurped the 
 place of the authority of God in the Scriptures. The acutest 
 minds discussed the most puerile subjects, and scholastic decisions 
 gradually became the staple of theology. 
 
14 
 
 And now were exhibited the legitimate and inevitable results 
 of merely human philosophy, in the degradation of every thing 
 sacred, and scandalization of all that is good. The reduction of 
 human wisdom alone to religious practice always makes a pan- 
 demonium. The pagan Saturnalia was introduced into the 
 Church, with its wild orgies and shameful excesses. The “ Fes- 
 tival of the Ass” conducted that animal to the altar, caparisoned 
 in sacerdotal robes, and supplied him with provender while reli- 
 gious service was performed before him. The ass wisely fed 
 on the hay and left the priest and the people to do the braying. 
 Then came the “ Feast of Fools,” wherein a boy bishop, or 
 “the Pope of Fools,” burlesqued the worship of God, and eccle- 
 siastics and laymen shared in the pleasures of waltzing and ob- 
 scenity in the temple of Deity. “ The glutton mass,” the 
 “ Lord of Misrule,” and the “ Abbot of Unreason,” were prom- 
 inent in the ceremonials of religion, while the Vicar of Christ 
 gave his benediction on the whole. This was philosophy with- 
 out the Bible, bringing forth fruit after its kind. The antiqua- 
 rian is amused, and the Christian grieved, in reading the history 
 of the middle ages. The organization of all this grotesqueness 
 and blasphemy is preserved in that corporation, whose charac- 
 teristic is the substitution of the opinions and decrees of men for 
 the word of God. The life of that Upas tree, now called Ro- 
 manism, was, when a germ, called philosophy, and it was against 
 its gnarly trunk that the mighty Luther flung the axe of the 
 word of God. 
 
 So now transcendentalism and Romanism are alike, in that 
 they both reject the ultimate authority of the word of God. 
 What boots it, whether that authority is rejected in the groves 
 of the Academy, or the conclaves of Cardinals ? Hegel’s trea- 
 tise on nothing, and the dogma of the immaculate conception 
 have a family likeness, and the records show that they were be- 
 gotten of speculative philosophy. That philosophy is the pabu- 
 lum of popery. Writers are mistaken, who deny that the Pope 
 is a philosopher. The world is suspicious of divinity — his dear- 
 est children are fighting in his own door yard, so that it is impos- 
 sible for a bachelor destitute of grace, to bear what he elves, 
 without metaphysics. His infallibility has always been tran- 
 
15 
 
 scendental — his inspiration speculative and his usefulness doubt- 
 ful. When Schelling begins at the little end of nothing anni- 
 hilated, and makes a universe, and a priest creates God from a 
 wafer, impartiality declares both equally transcendental and 
 nonsensical. And thus it would not be difficult, nor uninstruc- 
 tive, to run the parallel between Romanism and Rationalism 
 through the whole length of both, and show that both are the 
 products of the human mind in its lapsed and darkened state — 1 
 the wild philosophy of wandering willfulness, baseless in nature 
 — -Christless in theory, wicked in practice, and hopeless in 
 prospect. 
 
 But these systems are not only alike and parallel, they are 
 mutually productive of each other, like the “ das Nic hts” and 
 “ das- Andernichts” — the nothing and the nothing else, of He- 
 gel. The eye of the informed and impartial observer cannot 
 fail to see that, as Romanism sprang from the philosophy of the 
 third and fourth centuries, so modern rationalism is a sprout 
 from the roots of the old tree which the reformers girdled. It 
 could not well have its rise and its influence, except in conjunc- 
 tion with a faith which rests on man, instead of God — a religion 
 of the imagination, instead of the Bible, which justifies men for 
 good works which they never perform, or punishes them in a 
 limbo that has no existence. Rationalism is the philosophy of 
 Romanism, and Romanism is the religion of Rationalism. Phi- 
 losophy must have a religion, and religion must have a philoso- 
 phy. If the philosophy is a product of the human will, discard- 
 ing the authority of the Bible and setting, up for itself, the reli- 
 gion, which accompanies it, will have the same marks ; and if 
 the religion is from men and not from heaven, the philosophy 
 will acknowdedge no other origin. 
 
 Romanism is a religion of the imagination, and rationalism a 
 philosophy of the imagination. They unite in many points, but 
 especially in appearing to* be what they are not. With an ap- 
 parent regard for the Bible, Rome has taught the world to ignore 
 it, and to regard the dogmas of her casuists, and the decrees of 
 her councils. She has assumed to be inspired, but never has 
 proved it, and to be infallible, but has often blundered. She 
 disperses pardons which she does not possess, and grace which 
 
16 
 
 does no good. She professes to be the light of the world, yet 
 has kept it in darkness, and to be the friend of intelligence, yet 
 hates a free press. The reality of Romanism is what men make 
 her to be, not what she professes. The counterpart of this pre- 
 tentious faith is an imaginative and vaunting philosophy, which 
 promises more than it performs, makes facts from fancies. To 
 correspond with the religion, its definitions must be nonsense— 
 its truths abstractions, and its logic so geared as to draw grave 
 conclusions out of nothing. It must assume to know where it is 
 really ignorant, and repudiate all reason and authority but its 
 own. 
 
 This philosophy and religion cannot be separated ; like the 
 Siamese Twins, the life of each depends on their union. The 
 Wine of Rome’s fornication, with which she has made the nations 
 drunk, is a speculative transcendental philosophy — this clothes 
 the priest with power, transubstantiates the w T afer, makes madon- 
 nas wink, and multiplies the sale and raises the tariff of relics. 
 A philosophy which pretends to account for these phenomena in 
 their favor, is the more transcendental, because it assumes to be 
 divinely sublimated, and conversant with things unseen. Kant, 
 Spinoza and Fichte did not traverse a more unreal region in 
 their speculations, nor perpetuate a greater fraud on the under- 
 standing, than does every Roman Bishop in his* mystical devo- 
 tions. Both ape the divine, and make a show of the profound, 
 while all is hollow and deceitful. 
 
 Yet there is power in these combinations. There is a point in 
 the history of every mind, where it “ does not like to retain God 
 in its knowledge,” and where it is in danger of abandonment to 
 its own imagination. The interests of the soul loom up, vast, 
 profound, awful, and there is a certain, fearful looking. If at 
 that moment a man can be furnished with a philosophy and a 
 religion, ready made and of easy fit, which shall represent , but 
 not realise , to him those interests, accomplished with a gorgeous 
 ceremonial policy of insurance on his spiritual estate, he is like- 
 ly to be converted at once into a philosopher and a religionist, 
 and to be filled with complacency towards some proxy father in 
 God. Thus a great politician may slide into a cathedral, to wor- 
 ship in the daytime by gas light. Under no bigoted prejudices 
 
IT 
 
 towards established order, with ungloved finger, he dips the- holy 
 water, and, as he reverently kneels on the mosaic, for want of a 
 seat, he feels willing to endure the ache of his knee-pans, be- 
 cause he has sinned in Congress- Above him are angels in 
 stucco, the only kind he is not loth to meet ; he listens with 
 classic taste to the organ’s notes reverberating through corridor 
 and nave, while the Latin, in bewitching soprano, makes wor- 
 ship charming , the gorgeous altar on wheels, the graceful genu- 
 flexions and crossings, the sprinkling of water, the sombre light, 
 the sonorous recitations of Mediaeval Latin, the marching of 
 boys, all dispose him heartily to say Amen when the bell rings. 
 Confiding conscience to those whose business it is to keep it, he 
 returns to the street, convinced that the zeal of the Bible sects 
 is an annoyance to the country. The honors of the day engage 
 his thoughts, and he soliloquizes as he walks, “ to shoot, or to be 
 shot ? that is the question.” 
 
 The potency of a vain philosophy is not confined to cultivated 
 minds, but through them it reaches the masses, loosening hu- 
 manity from its safe moorings in revealed truth. It rules Asia 
 through Confucius and Zoroaster, Africa through Fetichism, and 
 Europe through Rationalism. With insidious advances, it has 
 permeated a portion of the American mind, and held it in vas- 
 salage as with the spell of an enchantress. Akin to the orien- 
 tal speculations, which annul the authority of the word of God, 
 is the crafty plan which has found a metropolis for the saints, 
 in the highlands of the west. The economy of Mormonism is 
 very much like that of Romanism, because it is difficult to invent 
 anything worse. It has a prophet for a pope, apostles for car- 
 dinals, Danites for Jesuits, the roll in the Egyptian tongue in- 
 stead of the decrees of councils in Latin — it regards the gentiles 
 as Rome does heretics — it brings into practice the theology of 
 Den — has saints as holy as some of the fathers, and women as 
 useful as the nuns. Fanaticism has its philosophy, and he would 
 fail to account for the phenomena of Mormonism, who should 
 consider only its outward manifestations. The beginning of 
 that delusion is at the point, where the human mind resolves to 
 diverge from the authority of the Scriptures, and the angle of 
 its divergence can be measured only by the law of God. Human 
 
 c 
 
18 
 
 reason can neither sound its depths, nor control its zeal. Brig- 
 ham Young is a transcendentalism and, having largely introduc- 
 ed the female element into his politics, his philosophy puzzles 
 even the President of the United States Located on the apex 
 of North America, and, providentially, drifted up to its Salt 
 Lake, they are a sublimated people, and probably as high as 
 their system will carry them ; for if Mormons go to heaven by 
 virtue of their peculiarities, we might prudently say with the 
 servant of a profligate nobleman, “ If he has gone to heaven, it 
 is not best to have it known, lest others might be deterred from 
 wishing to go there.” 
 
 Notions of social reform, the most visionary and impracticable, 
 take a strong hold of the mind of some, who get principles from 
 their own preferences, rather than from the Bible. Under the 
 profession of a liberality, whose basis is selfishness, and a form 
 which involves its own dissolution, agrarian and libertine senti- 
 ments are put forth, as pertinent and sufficient, to remove all 
 the evils of our social state. The reformers of this school affect 
 to revere the Scriptures and to apply them to practice, yet the 
 Christian element in their schemes is so much smaller than a 
 grain of mustard-seed, that a spiritual vision, with the power of 
 Lord Rosse’s telescope, would fail to detect it. Who has not 
 heard the low growl of agrarianism in New York and Philadel- 
 phia, demanding the virtual abolition of the Sabbath and its 
 transmutation into that carnival, which a skeptical philosophy 
 and a sensual religion has made the sacred day to be in Europe. 
 It proposes to make capital a god — to give the working man a 
 pastime that will lead him to ruin, and to facilitate the attend- 
 ance on worship by annulling the Decalogue. The philosophers 
 of this way assume to be the illustrators in chief of Christian 
 philanthrophy, while, in reality, they form a clique wherein is 
 gathered much of the feeble infidelity of our times, which goads 
 its victims on to the sacrifice of character and property. These 
 inveigh with vehemence against the Church, for her tardy bene- 
 volence towards the indolent poor, and with cool serenity as- 
 sume for their “ common” the honors of the good Samaritan. 
 “ Bear ye one another’s burden, and so fulfill the law of Christ,” 
 was the motto of the phalanx ; and how beautifully it was car- 
 
19 
 
 ried out, -when cock-crowing ceased on the adjacent farms, and 
 the treasurer carried off the capital of the brotherhood. Men 
 who would live by their wits, yet find their stock too small, pro- 
 fess a rapid edification by the Scriptural instance where, “ they 
 had all things common,” and still hold themselves ready to re- 
 vive apostolic times, by voting themselves a farm — while they 
 gravely question Paul’s inspiration when he says, “ If any would 
 not work, neither should he eat.” But, the world ought to be 
 old enough to know that, every project for making man happy 
 is visionary and self-combustive, which ignores the moral disease 
 of humanity, and denies the absolute necessity of a supernatural 
 remedy. 
 
 I have spoken freely of the philosophers of Germany. Jus- 
 tice to them and myself invites me to observe, how many noble 
 exponents of a Christian philosophy that country affords. It 
 were inexcusable to class the evangelical Neander with the 
 pantheistic Strauss, or the believing and urbane Ullman with 
 the blaspheming Fichte. Indeed the recent skepticsim of Ger- 
 many had its paternity across the channel, in the sophistries of 
 Hume, and the cowardly sneers of Gibbon, who, disgusted with 
 the history of a religion invented by man, invented its counter- 
 part in a vain philosophy. The naturalism and the veiled athe- 
 ism of the class referred to, have been fully exposed by learned 
 critics. They deserve the scorn of the Christian world. When 
 men assume the prerogatives of God, who should defend them ? 
 A pride of intellect has led these modern gnostics on — one the- 
 orist has provoked another to rival or excel him in originality — 
 one has split hairs and another has split the splits, and they 
 have so knocked each other on the head that they see stars 
 where none exist. They are. 
 
 “ Gens ratione ferox, et menlem pasta chimseris.” 
 
 “ A race with reason mad, and fed upon chimeras.” 
 
 A true philosophy must begin with God, and arrange every- 
 thing in order, form and subjection to Him. Reason may con- 
 sider the character and extent of His existence, but the liberty 
 to inquire after God does not involve the liberty of denying His 
 existence. Here is a limitation of reason, which we hold to be 
 responsible. Is a rational being at liberty to deny everything, 
 
20 
 
 if he pleases, because he is rational ? That were unreason. — 
 Man is finite. The idea of a deity is of the nature of an axiom 
 to the human mind. Reason begins with God. The mind must 
 repose on something, before it unfolds its thoughts. Thus the 
 great Augustine says, “Faith precedes intellect, but it involves 
 intellect.” Hence the formula of true reason is not, philoso- 
 phy or faith, but, faith and philosophy. Faith fastens to God, 
 and is the hook on which the chain of reason hangs below. The 
 Creator made no man capable of sound reason in a state of 
 separation from himself. If a man wishes to enjoy the pleasure 
 of children in swinging, he must first attach the swing-rope to a 
 beam above, and then swing — but how foolish to refuse thus to 
 fasten the rope, and seizing his own waistband, to think to swing 
 himself. This is what we reprehend, in the philosophers refer- 
 red to, that they, in theorizing, abstract themselves from God, 
 and then assume to be par excellence , the reasoners of the world 
 — while, by the necessities of the case, such an abstraction turns 
 a wise man into a fool. 
 
 And the word of God is as good as himself to rest upon. — 
 Reason must listen when He speaks, and know that it is He 
 speaking, and not another. When His will is known, it is un- 
 reason to ignore it, or to go behind it. In regard to all mental 
 and moral questions, a man, outside of the circumference of the 
 expressed will of God, is beyond the necessary conditions of hu- 
 man reason, and therefore cannot reason. It is this fact which 
 stamps all anti-biblical theories in metaphysics with folly, and 
 classes them with the chimeras of a fabulous age. 
 
 I will trespass on your indulgence no longer. A kind Pro- 
 vidence has permitted us the greetings of another Commence- 
 ment ; we return to LaFayette the best honored of all her 
 guests — for who of us does not hold, while he enjoys but one, 
 that her diplomas are better than her doctorates ? The one was 
 well earned in the studying of many a hard problem, and bestow- 
 ed by learned and honored professors and curators — the other— 
 “sour grapes.” What reminiscences spring into life again by 
 these re-unions ? Those days of manual labor and long lessons 
 — the rearing of yonder noble pile, and the jolly transposition 
 of lexicons and trunks from the banks of the Lehigh to that 
 
21 
 
 crown of the borough ; the strong temperance principles that 
 obtained among trustees and faculty, when they ordered us to 
 cut down the apple-trees on the campus, and work them up into 
 bench-screws and fiddles — the literary contests, and the studied 
 productions, which we poured into the ears of patient and indul- 
 gent audiences in this lower vale. Do you not remember, when 
 now-a-days you see the floral missiles flung approvingly, perhaps 
 affectionately, at the feet of graduates, how, “ long time ago,” 
 we received our honors without any such demonstrations ? Are 
 we then envious because of the bouquets ? Oh, no — no. In 
 those days of yore the ladies, as kind heaven would have it, left 
 the flowers to hang upon their native stem, and shed their frag- 
 rance round their homes, while they gave themselves to us. We 
 are satisfied. Though there was no professorship of Anglo- 
 Saxon and English, we had learned from an old poet of the 
 Saxons that — 
 
 “ Life raaaks an race to run us on, 
 
 But selden laurel dekt his braew. 
 
 Hwa ran the race alone.” 
 
 Gentlemen, I have done. Let us return to our posts, with 
 warmer hearts and firmer purposes, in the service of the right and 
 the good. Christianity will live and triumph. The Star of 
 Bethlehem is in the ascendant, and our Alma Mater expects 
 ,every Alumnus to do his duty. 
 
22 
 
 MINUTES 
 
 Of the Meeting of the Alumni of LaFayette College , 1859 . 
 
 [In view of the change contemplated id the Exercises of the Meetings of the 
 Alumni ot LaFayette College, the Standing Committee havo thought proper to ap- 
 pend to the Address the Proceedings of the Association at the last Commencement. 
 It will be seen that the next Annual Address is dispensed with, and in its stead is 
 substituted a Re - Union of all the Graduates present at Commencement. The time 
 allotted to it, will be filled up by those representing the different classes with 
 ■short speeches, reminiscences of college life, class histories, &c., &c. The change 
 is but an experiment, resulting from the settled conviction in the minds of those 
 who have been present at the commencements of the past few years, that some- 
 thing must be done to give more life and interest to the meetings of the Alumni. 
 A full attendance next year will test the merits of the change. Such course can 
 then be adopted for the future as will promote the best interests of the Association.] 
 
 First Presbyterian Church, July 26, 1859. 
 
 The Association convened, and was opened with prayer by the Rev. David M. 
 James. The Annual Election was then held, and the following gentlemen were 
 elected Officers of the Association for the ensuing year : — 
 
 Edward F. Stewart, President, I Selden J. Coffin, Secretary, 
 
 Rev. E. Ferrier, Vice-President, | Elisha AIJis, Treasurer. 
 
 On motion, it was resolved, That the thanks of the Association be presented to 
 the Rev. James W. Wood for the Address delivered by him, and that a copy be 
 requested for publication. 
 
 Messrs. B. F. Fackenthall, F. Michler and E. Allis were appointed the Commit- 
 tee to carry out the purpose of the resolution. 
 
 It was then moved by Mr. E. Allis, That a change be made in the Order of 
 Exercises, by which, on the coming year, the Address of the Orator may be dis- 
 pensed with, and a Re-Union be held, at which brief Addresses shall be made by 
 those representing the various Classes of the Graduates. 
 
 After some discussion, the motion was carried. 
 
 B. F. Stem, E. Allis and S. J. Coffin were appointed the Standing Committee 
 for the ensuing year, with discretionary power to make all the necessary arrange- 
 ments for the Re- Union. 
 
 On motion, the Association adjourned, to meet at the call of the President. — 
 Closed with prayer. 
 
 EDWARD F. STEWART, President. 
 
 Selden J. Coffin, Secretary .