rhetoric, it still remains essentially the same--that is to say, the absolute, alike deadening to intellect, and destructive to life. In science, the absolute is the idol of vain and empty systems, of dead and abstract reason. The Christian faith has the living God and his revelation for its object, and is itself that revelation; hence every doctrine taken from this source is something real and positive. The defence of truth against error will then only be attended with permanent success, when the divine doctrine, in whatever department it may be, is represented with intellectual energy as a living principle; and at the same time placed in its historical connection, with a due regard to every other historical reality. This calm, historical judgment of things--this acute insight into subjects, whether they be real facts or intellectual phenomena--is the invariable concomitant of truth, and the indispensable condition to the full knowledge of truth. This is the more so, indeed, as religion, which forms the basis of all truth, and of all knowledge, naturally traces with attentive eye the mysterious clue of Divine Providence and Divine permission through the long labyrinth of human errors and human follies, be they of a practical or a speculative nature. Error, on the other hand, is always unhistorical; the spirit of time almost always passionate; and both consequently untrue. The conflict against error cannot be brought to a prompter and more successful issue, than by separating in every system of moral and speculative error, and according to the standard of divine truth, the absolute, which is the basis of such systems, into its two component parts of truth and falsehood. For when we acknowledge and point out the truth to be found in those systems, there only remains error, whose inanity it requires little labour, little cost of talent, or time to expose and make evident to every eye. But in real life the struggle of parties often ceases to be purely intellectual--their physical energy is displayed in violent commotions; and in proportion as all parties become absolute, so their struggle becomes one of violent and mutual destruction--a circumstance which most fatally impedes the great work of religious regeneration--the mighty problem of our age, which so far from being brought to a satisfactory termination, is not yet even solved. In this respect it is no doubt a critical fact, that in certain quarters of European life, nay even in some entire countries, parties and governments should be more and more carried away by the spirit of absolutism. For this is not a question of names, and it is very evident that not those parties, which are called, or call themselves absolute, are the most so in reality; since now, as in all periods of violent party struggles, a whimsical mistake in names, a great disorder of ideas, and a Babel confusion of tongues, occur even in those languages otherwise distinguished for their clearness and precision.