s from doubt towards faith. It was not orthodoxy, but
it was the first approach to it.

This double aspect, philosophical and critical, of the reaction, brings us
to the end of the second period in the history of German theological
thought.

It has already been stated that the elements of other movements existed,
which were hereafter to develope; and that one of these was an attempt,
originating in the philosophy of Hegel, to reconstruct the harmony of
reason and faith from the intellectual, as distinct from the emotional
side. It bore some analogy to the gnosticism of the early church; and the
critical side of it gave birth to Strauss.

We have traced the antecedent causes which produced rationalism, and two
out of the three periods into which we divided the history of it. We are
halting before reaching the final act of the drama; but we already begin
to see the direction in which the plot is developing.

It is when a great movement of mind or of society can be thus viewed as a
whole, in its antecedents and its consequents, that we can form a judgment
on its real nature, and estimate its purpose and use. As in viewing works
of art, so in order to observe correctly the great works of God's natural
providence, we must reduce them to their true perspective. It is the
peculiarity of great movements of mind, that when so viewed they do not
appear to be all shadow and formless, nor acts of meaningless impiety.
They are products of intellectual antecedents, and perform their function
in history. In nothing is the Divine image stamped on humanity, or the
moral providence of God in the world, more visible, than in the
circumstance, of which we have already had frequent proofs, that thought
and honest inquiry, if allowed to act freely, without being repressed by
material or political interference, but checked only by spiritual and
moral influences, gradually attain to truth, appropriating goodness, and
rejecting evil. Thought seems to run on unrestrained, stimulated by human
caprice, sometimes by sinful wilfulness; yet it is seen really to be
restrained by limits that are not of its own creation. In the world of
conscious mind, as in unconscious matter, God hath set a law that shall
not be broken. Reason, which creates the doubts, also allays them. It
rebukes the unbelief of impiety, making the wrath of man to praise God;
and guides the honest inquirer to truth.

A period of doubt is always sad; but it would be an unmixed wo