enabled by language, and consequently by reason, to deal with reality, to connect not only the outward, but also the inward phenomena, under the guidance of their individual languages. Reasoning connects successfully what is based upon reason.

It may also be said with equal truth that we must believe in the evidence of reason, on the ground of our belief in language, as that, on the same grounds, we believe in the evidence of the senses: for language is the common product of both reason and the senses, and combines scientific intelligence and artistic productiveness.

If we follow out still further the striking fact of language being primitively the congenial organ of reason, we are forcibly led to the conclusion, that all our faith in the reasoning process by which we deal with reality, in short, that which prevents us from overstepping the boundary between reason and madness, rests upon the instinctive, and therefore originally unconscious assumption that reason and things, mind and nature, men and the universe, subject and object, are merely the two different poles of one and the same substance, the Absolute Being-Thought.

How could man be understood by man? how could primitive words be used in connection, by composition, derivation, or juxtaposition, were there not an original objectivity in the reasoning process? and how is that objectivity possible but upon the assumption that all reality, all nature, is the unconscious expression of thought, subject to the laws of development in space and time? that matter is nothing but the limitation of finite existence, a limitation impossible to explain except by assuming the infinite which is thought and will, as the first cause? And here we stand upon the confines of religion, as far as it is the expression of truth in the relation of the infinite to the finite.

If, again, our philosophy of religion should lead us to the conclusion, that a belief in reason, as the faculty by which we discover the connection between cause and effect, and that

between subject and predicate, implies the belief in reason as conscience, that is to say in truth as good, and in knowledge as the apperception of good and evil; the evidence of language would be of still greater importance as tangible evidence in favour of the reasonableness and objective truth of our religious faith. We shall conclude our present reflections by contemplating some of the results of the philosophy of language upon the philosophy of religion.

III.

THE MUTUAL RELATION BETWEEN THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE

AND THAT OF RELIGION.

Ir language be the work of the human mind, religion is so likewise; because they are the two effects of the operation of one and the same faculty, directed, in language, to the manifoldness of things, in religion, to the unity of this manifoldness, or to the first cause of the universe. The advance from the individual object which strikes us through the senses to a notion which defines the species and genus, is a process which supposes the existence and primitive assumption of a first cause. Again, as no instinct can remain without its corresponding manifestation, the mind must produce language.

Descending to the sphere of simple history, we find that religion, whether it means truth respecting the relation of the soul to God, or the corresponding acts of worship and of the social life of worshippers, cannot exist without words. But moreover the highest media of the manifestation of religious truth are religious words and teachings, and their only safe records, sacred books. It follows from our philosophy of language, as the organ of reason and the depository of thought and of facts, that the proper tribunal for interpreting such a code is reason, so far as religion is the expression of truth, ideal or historical. Any non-rational interpretation of those records is, therefore, in itself as irreligious as it is irrational. It may be necessary for private interests, perhaps ennobled, at least strengthened, by practical purposes to employ an irrational interpretation, but in itself any such interpretation is either a proof of illogical perversity and ignorance, or an avowal of imposture and conscious unbelief.

Now the philosophical analysis of language shows what is requisite for discovering the real sense of a word in a given record. We must first try to understand the original meaning of the word, its inherent power as it were; and then its signification in that given period of language, which evidently implies that we know, at least, the relative age of the record. This enquiry leads us farther into all the various points of historical criticism. Here we meet with questions such as, whether Moses is to be supposed to have related the story of his own death, because we call certain books, the books of Moses, as we call others the books of Judges and Kings-and again, whether Isaiah, a prophet before Sennacherib, must be supposed to have spoken of Cyrus as his contemporary, for a similar reason. In all such questions, reason alone, perhaps, will not obtain a hearing, owing to the indifference to truth, and because the faith of many exists upon unreasonableness: but language comes in at the head of facts, which are not so easily disposed of. There may be unbelief connected with the promotion of such investigations, but there always is with the attacks upon them on theological grounds. Such enquiries may be conducted individually here and there without faith: but there is no faith worth having implied in an indifference to them. The seriousness and value of the religious belief of any class of men, or of any nation, so far as they are considered rational beings, will always bear a due proportion to the efforts they make to investigate these points, and to bring the problems connected with them before the tribunal of reason, in order to secure a solid basis for historical belief.

But the bearing of a philosophical analysis upon the philosophy of religion goes much farther. It dives down to the very

foundation of every historical tradition.

The laws of development in language must be, and demonstrably are, the same as those of the evolution of any religion, whether conveyed by words and written tradition or not. The

meaning of a word changes the reality of things, and the word, as a living evidence, acts upon the imaginative as well as reasoning faculties of the mind. Ecclesia, as applied by the Christians to their meetings, signified (like synagogue, which means congregation) the assembly of the associated people, the people themselves. The Romanic nations adopted the term as chiesa, église, iglesia, applied however to the locality and to the governing body: a very sad fall indeed. The Germanic nations, who used for ecclesia the word Gemeinde (community), or others of the same meaning, adopted from the Byzantines the expression (Church, Kirk, Kirche), which originally referred to the place of worship as dedicated to the Lord (Kyriake from Kyrios). The popular element thus gradually disappears in the notion of government, the people in the ruler, and the word itself, in its intellectual application, refers to the governing body as a priesthood. What is priesthood?—the quality of being one of the Elders (presbyters) of the congregation, chosen to preside at their meetings, for worship as well as social administration, for meals (the love-feasts or agapes), the regulation of alms-giving, and so on. But what does priest mean conventionally?—a mediator between God and the people.

Thus words, which were originally rational and correct expressions, either became absurd or false. Are they then to stand in the way of truth, when they have lost their truth? This question might easily be answered, were it not that there are attached to the absurdity or to the lie institutions and interests, and all the passions by which these are surrounded and supported, hiding their hideous faces under heavenly masks.

There are two modes of proceeding open to a nation, anxious for truth and able to attain it, when it makes this discovery. Either the word may be given up, or the dictionary may be practically corrected, by recalling the original meaning. In the first case, it is dropped and replaced by one the meaning of which is unmistakeable. The Germans, at the Reformation, replaced Kirche