fully exhibiting the preparatory office it
fulfilled for Christianity, we shall assume that the mind of the reader
has already been furnished and disciplined by preparatory principles. He
can scarce have failed to recognize that this development obeyed a
_general law_, however modified by exterior and geographical conditions;
the same law, in fact, which governs the development of all individual
finite minds, and which law may be formulated thus:--_All finite mind
develops itself, first, in instinctive determinations and spontaneous
faiths; then in rising doubt, and earnest questioning, and ill-directed
inquiry; and, finally, in systematic philosophic thought, and rational
belief_. These different stages succeed each other in the individual
mind. There is, first, the simplicity and trust of childhood; secondly,
the undirected and unsettled force of youth; and, thirdly, the wisdom of
mature age. And these different stages have also succeeded each other in
the universal mind of humanity. There has been, 1st. _The era of
spontaneous beliefs_--of popular and semi-conscious theism, morality,
and religion, 2d. _The transitional age_--the age of doubt, of inquiry,
and of ill-directed mental effort, ending in fruitless sophism, or in
skepticism. 3d. _The philosophic or conscious age_--the age of
reflective consciousness, in which, by the analysis of thought, the
first principles of knowledge are attained, the necessary laws of
thought are discovered, and man arrives at positive convictions, and
rational beliefs. In the history of Grecian civilization, the first is
the Homeric age; the second is the pre-Socratic age, ending with the
Sophists; and the third is the grand Socratic period. History is thus
the development of the fundamental elements of humanity, according to an
established law, and under conditions which are ordained and supervised
by the providence of God. "The unity of civilization is in the unity of
human nature; its varieties, in the variety of the elements of
humanity," which elements have been successively developed in the course
of history. All that is fundamental in human nature passes into the
movement of civilization. "I say all that is fundamental; for it is the
excellency of history to take out, and throw away all that is not
necessary and essential. That which is individual shines for a day, and
is extinguished forever, or stops at biography." Nothing endures, except
that which is fundamental and true--tha