he only means of arriving at certainty,
and that everything which cannot be proved by experience is uncertain,
and has no right within the domain of science. This is the central
thought of his whole system.

Pierson stands related to Opzoomer as Mansel does to Sir William
Hamilton. The son of religious parents, he was at first rigidly
orthodox. He is now pastor of the Walloon Church at Rotterdam. His early
writings were touchingly beautiful and attractive, for it was in them
that he laid open his inner life. But in his later works he assumes the
air of the censor and scoffer. He was long the personal friend of La
Saussaye, but, owing to doctrinal differences, they have parted and now
pursue different paths. He is an orator of the American type. His
opinions are elaborated in his two works, _The Origin of the Modern
Tendency_, and the _Tendency and Life._ In the latter treatise we learn
not merely the personal views of Pierson, but the creed advocated by all
the adherents of the empirical-modern theology.

The New Theology, he holds, has an indisputable right to assume the
epithet "modern," in distinction from "liberal." The latter term is
borne by the Groningen school, which always opposes the church-creed.
The principle of reform has not been fully carried out by the
Protestants. The Protestant builds his faith on the Bible, but on what
does he build his faith in the Bible? Is it not the testimony of the
Holy Spirit? He has this support only through the Bible. Certain liberal
theologians, like the orthodox, are extremely illogical in their
conclusions concerning the word of God. The former will not accept of
verbal inspiration, yet they call the Bible a divine book, which,
fortunately, could be no better. Though they laugh at the story of Jonah
and the whale, they accept every word of Christ, who quotes the story.
They will not hear of present miraculous interpositions of providence,
but accept some of the miracles of the Bible. There are Catholic priests
who are affability itself, while there are orthodox Protestants
possessed of ultra views. In contrast with all these classes stand the
heroes of the _Modern Theology_, who possess the "passion for reality,"
and are endowed with the new cosmology of Galileo.

All true knowledge, argues Pierson, is self-knowledge. Reality comes to
us in the impressions we receive of it. I see, I hear; and whether there
is a reality outside corresponding to the impression, is a questio