tant that we should know how we have
inherited them. If we would understand our times, we must know the
productive influences of the past; if we would thread the present mazes
of religious pretension, we should not neglect those immediate agencies
in their production that had their origin near the beginning of the
eighteenth century. These agencies are three in number: 1. The formation
and growth of that compromise between church and state which is called
Toleration; 2. Methodism without the Church and the evangelical movement
within it; 3. The growth and gradual diffusion, through all religious
thinking, of the supremacy of reason. The theology of the Deistic age is
identical with Rationalism. That Rationalistic period of England is
divided into two parts: from 1688 to 1750, and from 1750 to 1830. The
second age may be called that of evidences, when the clergy continued to
manufacture evidence as an ingenious exercise,--a literature which was
avowedly professional, a study which might seem theology without being
it, and which could awaken none of the dormant skepticism beneath the
surface of society.[187] The defense of the Deists was perhaps as good
as the orthodox attack, but they were inquirers after truth, and being
guided by reason, they deserve all commendation. Yet they only
foreshadowed the glory of the present supremacy of reason. Deism strove
eagerly for light; it saw the dawn; the present is the noonday. The
human understanding wished to be satisfied, and did not care to believe
that of which it could not see the substantial ground. The mind was
coming slowly to see that it had duties which it could not devolve upon
others, and that a man must think for himself, protect his own rights,
and administer his own affairs.

Reason was never less extravagant than in this first essay of its
strength; for its demands were modest, and it was easily satisfied,--far
too easily, we must think, when we look at some of the reasonings which
passed as valid.[188]

English Deism, a system which paralyzed the religious life and thought
of the nation, has never had a more enthusiastic eulogist than the
author of this historical plea for Rationalism. If the demands of the
Deists were "modest," who shall be able to find a term sufficiently
descriptive of the claims of their present successors?

VII. ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. By Benjamin Jowett, M. A.
Professor Jowett, as commentator on St. Paul's epistles, had already