and will; and a false
philosophy, with its unholy brood of Empiricism, Idealism, Materialism,
Rationalism, and Naturalism. The skepticism of the present day asserts
rights to which it has no claim whatever, for it holds that the
so-called mysteries of Christianity have no divine basis, and that there
can be nothing supernatural in revelation. Neither can the labors of the
skeptics produce substantial and permanent good in any department of
theology. The only way to combat them is not by reviewing the opinions
of departed thinkers and teachers, so much as by going directly back to
the Bible itself, and looking at it with the aid of every new step in
science. Such a weapon is a sound system. It may be termed the
_Evangelical-Biblical, historical-philosophical, Irenical-practical
theology_. If it be developed, all the shafts of infidelity will fall
harmless at its feet.

Immediately after the appearance of Professor Van Oosterzee's reply to
Renan, La Saussaye published his work entitled, _How must Modern
Naturalism be attacked?_ While he opposes Naturalism, he also takes
exception to the usual orthodox method of assailing it. In this work,
together with other treatises by the same vigorous writer, we find the
Ethical-Irenical theology stated and defended.

The term _Ethical_ is not, according to La Saussaye, the same as
_moral_,--for morality, conscience, duty, and virtue are terms which
find their home in the Kantian philosophy, and are now appropriated by
the Groningen School. _Ethical_ has application to the
receptivities,--the inner wants, and states of the heart. It differs
from _religion_ just as want differs from supply. The Christian knows
that religious truth, life, and action, are not the fruits of his
subjective state of feeling, but of revelation, and of the communication
of God to his spirit. The _ethical_ is the natural, and the _religious_
is the supernatural state of the heart. The Ethical theologians differ
from the Supernaturalists on the following psychological ground: the
former believe that the supernatural is communicated with human nature,
and is so inseparable from it that a denial of it is a rejection of all
that is most human in man. The latter hold that the supernatural, since
it is an essential part of religion, is not necessary merely to accredit
revelation, but to establish it.

While La Saussaye agrees with Van Oosterzee in application of the term
_ethical_, he does not hold with him that