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Our work is done, in simply directing attention to these expositions, in doing so by giving some desired information concerning their author. Apart from that, these volumes have a solid value of their own; their intrinsic excellence will continue to invite the criticism, and reward the study of the scholarly, of all shades of evangelical thinking. The new editions, reaching us through an American publishing house, appear among us at a significant time. We are just getting under the new flag of a genuinely catholic creed; and this catholic theologian, is just passing out of his forty years of public life into his well earned retirement. And as he does so, the Scottish press accompanies him with the assurance that "few ministers living are regarded with profounder respect than the founder of the Evangelical Union, which now consists of nearly a hundred congregations."

Yet, forty years ago, this man was denied " a name to live" in a Protestant communion. He desired to lengthen the cords of the church he loved. But no: he might strengthen the stakes already driven, but for lengthening the cords there was then no provision. And so being cast out, he took the cords of the gospel with him; and while it is true that being out, he went further than his first intent, still having stretched the cords to their fullest tension, he has of late been "strengthening the stakes," on the old ground as well as on the new. No better orthodox book upon the Pauline view of the Atonement has seen the light of late years, than this author's "Romans Third."

At last, however, the times have signs that the Church which has Augustine and Arminius in her membership, which sings Toplady's and Wesley's hymns out of the same book, is evidently about to let the followers of Augustine and Arminius and the singers of Toplady and Wesley live, without reproach, in the same communion. Out of his retirement, therefore, and from under a less bitter odium theologicum, we shall look with interest for Dr. Morison's long-promised "Galatians." He, of all men we know, has the apparatus, the skill, the personal and spiritual experience, the sympathy with the "rare man," Paul, that fit him to bless our common Protestantism, by giving it a full, scriptural, forcible exposition of its grand Magna Charta,

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-the Epistle to the Galatians. And may others follow that uncompleted work. The opportunities are opening, more widely than ever, for the genuine gospel to get a hearing without theological prejudice on account of diversities in Christian belief. In these widening spheres for "the truth as it is in Jesus," we believe that James Morison has earned the right to be heard. He is heard; and will be more fully heard by all who welcome the spreading liberty of Christian thought and speech; as one who by fighting his own way into this liberty, has fought the battles of many; as an expositor with the strength of Trapp, the precision of Calvin, and the unction of Matthew Henry; as as a noble minister of the gospel, who "through good report and bad report," still held his place as a preacher of unwonted power, and, as many live to testify,-a friend to the weary heart in search of God.

ARTICLE IV.-PAUL JANET ON FINAL CAUSES.

M. JANET'S "Final Causes" is, beyond a doubt, a most important work, and, indeed, an almost epoch-making book in Natural Theology. It has attracted much attention from all classes of thinkers, scientific, philosophic and theologic, and has already taken its place as a standard work on the subject. The book was first issued in the original French in 1876, and in the second and revised edition was translated into English by William Affleck and published in Great Britain, and this translation has quite recently been published in this country. In style it is marked by that perfect limpidity and transparency which is almost peculiar to French writers. As to originality, while it is plain that M. Janet has read very widely, it is also plain that the work is no patch-work, no crude and hasty compilation, but a carefully wrought out system. He has been much influenced by Leibnitz and later German philosophers. He is also, of course, much indebted to French writers, Bossuet, Fenelon, and later ones. He has also drawn somewhat from English sources, specially Newton, Clark, and Paley.

As to general method and spirit, M. Janet's work is not a polemic, but a philosophical examination and discussion of the subject, and it is conducted throughout with the greatest calmness and candor. Objections are put and answered somewhat after the Platonic style. The argument is closely knit and thorough. Not a corner but is searched, and there is everywhere the evidence of scrupulous thoroughness, which seems at times almost fastidious. The author does not heap up facts of adaptation after the manner of the Bridgewater Treatises; but he is concerned in applying a philosophical dialectic to the principle of final causes, to the discussion of the question whether or not the principle of inferring design from adaptation is a valid one, and, as the author expresses it, this is accomplished by "what the English call cross examination."

"The present work," he says, "is not altogether of the same kind as those of which I have just spoken," (referring to

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Bridgewater Treatises," "Duke of Argyle's Reign of Law, and Professor Flint's Theism." It is not a treatise of natural theology, but an analytical and critical treatise on the principle of Final Causes itself. Different times require different efforts. Philosophy has, in our days assumed a new aspect. On the one hand, the development of the sciences of nature, which more and more tends tó subject the phenomena of the universe to a mechanical concatenation, on the other hand the development of the critical and idealist philosophy that had its center in Germany at the commencement of this century, and which has had its counterpart even in Scotland with Hamilton and Ferrier, and in fine, the progress of the spirit of inquiry in all depart ments, have rendered necessary a revision of the problem. The principles themselves must be subjected to criticism. At the present day the mere adding of facts to facts no longer suffices to prove the existence of a design in nature, however useful for the rest that work may still be. The real difficulty is in the interpretation of these facts, the question is regarding the principle itself. . This principle I have endeavored to criticise. I have sought its foundations, authority, limits, and sig. nification, by confronting it with the data and the condition of modern science, as well as with the doctrine of the boldest and most recent metaphysics." (pp. iv., v.)

The treatise is divided into two books, the first of which treats of the phenomena of finality, and the second, of the cause of finality. Herein is a division of labor in teleology which has been little, if ever, regarded by other writers, and which is considered by M. Janet as of great importance. He

says:

"This inquiry divides itself into two problems: 1st. Is finality a law of nature? 2d. What is the cause of that law?

These two questions are quite distinct, and much obscurity arises from having confounded them. We will treat them separately in two different books." (p. 13.)

M. Janet seeks to show in the first book that there are phenomena in nature characterized by "adaptation to the future," as, for example, the wing of a bird is in forming adapted to a future action, flight. Such phenomena are not sufficiently ex plained by physical causation, and we must consider not only

the cause as influencing its effect, but also the effect as influencing its cause either by ideal design or otherwise. We must read organic phenomena not only forward-efficient causation -but backward-final causation-that is, in such phenomena not only does the past control the future, but in some way the future also controls the past. In short, to show that there are means and ends in nature, not only in organic, but also in inorganic nature, that is to show that "finality is a law of nature," this is the object of the first book. In the second book M. Janet seeks to show in what way the ends in nature control the means, that it is not an unconscious instinctive operation, like that of a beaver building a dam, but conscious and intelligent, comparable to the action of an architect building a house. The "first cause" of the law of finality-the law that there are means and ends in nature as well as causes and effects, that the future controls the past, as well as the past the future-is shown to be a Personal Intelligence. To acknowledge finality is one thing, and to acknowledge the cause of finality as lying in the ideal design of an intelligent Being is another thing. One may thus be a teleologist, yet not a theistic teleologist, as witness, for example, Hegel and Hartman.

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Mr. James Sully, in a notice of the "Final Causes," in Mind for January, 1877, disparages this distinction, and asserts that even M. Janet does not keep to it. He says that design is meaningless unless it means "ideal pre-representation." pages 61 and 92 the author does indeed state "ideal pre-representation" as the method of finality, and in the first instance certainly as being a formal statement of the law of finality, it ought to have been made broader and included unconscious finality. However it is plain from the whole tenor of the first book, and from such passages as on pages 11, 103, 124, 187, etc., that M. Janet does recognize the distinction, and keeps to it, as much as is necessary.

We think that Mr. Sully's criticism on this point is a failure, and Professor Flint, in his preface to the translation, strikes keenly at another criticism which Mr. Sully makes in this

same notice.

We can only consider in this paper the first book by way of exposition and criticism.

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