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the country and the habits of the people, the infidelity of France made its appearance in Germany. France revealed religion was attacked openly and without disguise; in Germany, under the mask of alliance and friendship: in both countries, the object of attack was the same, the overturning of the Christian faith. What Voltaire attempted by means of buffoonery and ridicule, Emanuel Kant tried to effect by the subtleties of metaphysical philosophy. From the year 1770, till near the end of the century, Kant was professor of logic and metaphysics in the university of Königsberg. His general principles of philosophy are satisfactorily exhibited in an article in the first volume of the Edinburgh Review, by the late Sir James Macintosh; his religious opinions, in so far as it is here necessary to state them, may be gathered from his own writings, from which we may take the liberty of giving a few brief extracts.

In his treatise, entitled Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft.-" Religion within the bounds of reason," are found the following passages: "That religion in which I must know that any thing is a divine command, in order to acknowledge it as my duty, is a revealed religion, or one which needs a revelation. On the contrary, that in which I must first know that any thing is my duty, before I can acknowledge a divine command, is natural religion. He who holds only natural religion to be morally necessary, that is, to be duty, may be called a Rationalist. If he denies the reality of all supernatural divine revelation, he may be called a Naturalist. If he admits the possibility of a revelation, but asserts, that to be ac

quainted with it, and to adopt it as real, is not necessary to religion, he may be called a pure Rationalist. If, however, he holds a belief in a revelation to be necessary to religion in general, he may be termed a pure Supernaturalist. The Rationalist, by virtue of his very name, must, of course, confine himself within the limits of human knowledge. These he will never, as naturalist, deny nor call in question, either the intrinsic possibility of revelation in general, nor the necessity of a revelation as a divine means for the introduction of pure religion; for on such points no one can decide any thing by reason. Consequently, the question in dispute can only be as to the mutual claims of the pure Rationalist and the Supernaturalist; or, it can concern only that which the one looks upon as necessary and sufficient for the only true religion, while the other regards it as only accidental."—" The constitution of every church always arises out of some historical,-revealed,-system of belief, which may be called the ecclesiastical faith; and this is best founded upon sacred records. Since, then, it is now not to be avoided, that an authoritative ecclesiastical faith should thus be connected with a pure religious belief, as the vehicle and means of publicly uniting men for the advancement of the latter; it must also be conceded, that the permanent support of this ecclesiastical faith, the gradual and general spread of it, and even the proper respect for the revelation incorporated in it, can hardly be sufficiently provided for by tradition, but only by written documents; and these again, must, as a revelation, be an object of reverence both to contemporaries and to posterity. This

is necessary for mankind, in order that they may have some certainty in regard to their religious duties. A holy book acquires for itself the highest respect with those-and with such indeed most of all-who cannot read it, or at least cannot gain from it any connected idea of religion; and no reasoning can effect any thing against the decisive reply, which vanquishes all objection. It is thus written :

"A pure religious belief is the highest interpreter of the ecclesiastical faith, that is, of revelation. In order to connect with such an empirical faith,-which, as it would seem, accident has played into our hands,—the basis of a moral belief, either as object or as auxiliary, it is necessary that the revelation which has thus come into our hands should receive a particular interpretation, that is, be explained throughout in a sense which shall coincide with the general practical rules of a religion of pure reason. For that which is theoretical in the ecclesiastical faith, cannot interest us in a moral view, unless it influence to the fulfilment of all human duties, as being divine commands,-which indeed constitutes the essential part of all religion. This mode of interpretation may often appear, even to ourselves, to be forced, as it regards the mere text; often it may really be so; but still, if the text can possibly be made to bear it, this interpretation must be preferred to such a literal one, as either contains in itself nothing favourable to morality, or even goes so far as to operate against it. It will also be found, that the same course has been adopted in regard to all ancient and modern forms of belief, which have been in part consigned to sacred books; and that ju

dicious and reflecting teachers have interpreted these books, until they brought them by degrees to coincide, as to their essential contents, with the principles of a moral belief. The moral philosophers among the

Greeks, and afterwards among the Romans, did the same thing with their fabulous systems of mythology. They at last found out a mode of explaining the grossest polytheism, as being the mere symbolical representation of the attributes of the one Divine being, and of imparting a mystical sense to many a profligate action, and even to the wild, but beautiful dreams of their poets; and thus they converted, in a measure, a mass of popular superstition-which it would have been unwise to have subverted, because it might have been succeeded by an atheism still more dangerous to the State-into a system of moral precepts, intelligible, and profitable to all men. The later Judaism, and even Christianity, is made up of similar interpretations; some of which are exceedingly forced; but in both, this is done for purposes unquestionably good and essential to all mankind. The Mahommetans, (as Reland shows,) know how to give to the description of their sensual paradise a spiritual sense; and the same is done by the Hindus in the interpretation of their Vedas; at least for the enlightened part of the people."

"Nor can this mode of interpretation be charged with any want of honesty or good faith; provided we do not assert that the sense which we thus give to the symbols of popular belief, or to the sacred books, is precisely that which they were intended to convey; but leave this undetermined, and assume only the pos

sibility of understanding the authors of them in this manner. . . . This can be done without even offending too much the literal sense of popular belief; from the circumstance that long before the existence of this latter, the tendency to a moral religion lay hid in the reason of man. Of this tendency, however, the first rude manifestations had reference only to external religious observances; and, for the furtherance of these, gave occasion to those professed revelations; so that, in this way, they imparted even to these inventions, (Dichtungen,) although unintentionally, something of the character of their own spiritual origin. . . . It is a necessary consequence both of the physical and moral tendencies of our nature,-which last are the foundation as well as the interpreters of all religion,-that religion should at last be gradually freed from all empirical motives, from all ordinances which rest merely upon history for their support; and which, by means of an ecclesiastical faith, unite men, for the time, for the promotion of good, and that thus the religion of pure reason should come at last to rule over all, that so God may be all in all. The envelopes in which the embryo is first formed into man, must be thrown off when he is about to enter into the light of day. The leading strings of holy tradition, with their appendages of statutes and observances, which did good service in their time, become by degrees no longer indispensable; yea, they become at length shackles, when the infant grows up into youth. So long as he (mankind) was a child, he was wise as a child, and was able to connect with ordinances, which were laid upon him without his knowledge or assent, a degree