stinctive yearnings of the human heart. It is his conviction that
the course and constitution of nature, the whole current of history, and
the entire development of human thought in the ages anterior to the
advent of the Redeemer centre in, and can only be interpreted by, the
purpose of redemption.

The method hitherto most prevalent, of treating the history of human
thought as a series of isolated, disconnected, and lawless movements,
without unity and purpose; and the practice of denouncing the religions
and philosophies of the ancient world as inventions of satanic mischief,
or as the capricious and wicked efforts of humanity to relegate itself
from the bonds of allegiance to the One Supreme Lord and Lawgiver, have,
in his judgment, been prejudicial to the interests of all truth, and
especially injurious to the cause of Christianity. They betray an utter
insensibility to the grand unities of nature and of thought, and a
strange forgetfulness of that universal Providence which comprehends all
nature and all history, and is yet so minute in its regards that it
numbers the hairs on every human head, and takes note of every sparrow's
fall, A juster method will lead us to regard the entire history of human
thought as a development towards a specific end, and the providence of
God as an all-embracing plan, which sweeps over all ages and all
nations, and which, in its final consummation, will, through Christ,
"gather together all things in one, both things which are in heaven and
things which are on earth."

The central and unifying thought of this volume is _that the necessary
ideas and laws of the reason, and the native instincts of the human
heart, originally implanted by God, are the primal and germinal forces
of history; and that these have been developed under conditions which
were first ordained, and have been continually supervised by the
providence of God_. God is the Father of humanity, and he is also the
Guide and Educator of our race. As "the offspring of God," humanity is
not a bare, indeterminate potentiality, but a living energy, an active
reason, having definite qualities, and inheriting fundamental principles
and necessary ideas which constitute it "the image and likeness of God."
And though it has suffered a moral lapse, and, in the exercise of its
freedom, has become alienated from the life of God, yet God has never
abandoned the human race. He still "magnifies man, and sets his heart
upon him." "He visi