Looking, however, to their external manifestation and effects--a philosophy of nature which cloaks its thoroughly heathenish sentiments beneath the bright and seductive attraction of beautiful and highly-finished form--may perhaps appear more dangerous and more pernicious than rationalism, especially when in the comparison the latter appears under its more moderate, pliant, and skillfully modified phases. But it is not so much in and by themselves, and generally, that we have here to consider these two kinds of error. In such a case the sentence we must pass upon them would be, that they are equally fatal and pernicious. At present we are rather concerned with them in their reference to our own age, and to that struggle which it has to undergo with them. In this respect I can not hesitate decidedly to pronounce rationalism the greater and the more dangerous error of the two. For not only has it struck its root more deeply in the spirit of the age, and is far more widely diffused, but it is far more supple. Parasitically it engrafts itself on the truth and its various systems, to prey upon them the more successfully. It is ever ready to make concessions to and to capitulate with its adversary, in order to triumph over it the more completely in the end. And when it seems driven altogether from the field, it still holds its ground beneath some new disguise. In short, it is scarcely possible to determine the point, if indeed it is ever reached, where it can be safely said that the evil is completely and forever eradicated. It is only life itself--the higher spiritual life, that is--and the true philosophy which traces and restores it in the mind’s triple faculties of knowledge, that can extricate us from this dilemma of conflicting errors, and provide the clew which shall guide us out of the dialectical mazes of the reason. On the other hand, a false philosophy of nature--and such is every system that stands in hostile opposition to religion, or attempts to usurp its place--which is conceived in a merely empirical spirit, will never prove dangerous. After a brief and limited influence, it will soon fall into neglect and oblivion. When, however, it is the result of a lofty and intellectual effort--when a truly great and comprehensive spirit moves within it--then will it soon become conscious of those limits, and feeling its own false position, it will, ere long, find the passage to the divine, which is beyond and above it. But it is not easy for a philosophy of nature to be or at least long to remain strictly and absolutely confined to its own limits of system, even because of the continual advance of this science of life. And as soon as it recognizes its true place as second and subordinate to a divine philosophy, then does it immediately cease to be a false faith. It is forthwith reconciled to the truth, or at least is already far on the road toward a complete reconciliation with it. This milder judgment, however, can not in justice be extended