religion of the land, and "Holy Scripture" as the real and ultimate rule of its proceedings, may rightfully wage a warfare for just cause. True, reason as well as Christianity demand that nations as well as individuals should "live peaceably with all men, as much as lieth in them," "if it be possible," since peace is the normal and proper condition of man, and wars should be a means to that end; but reason surely does not require that to secure peace and avoid war, every principle of right and justice shall be held in abeyance, or be abandoned, or be trampled under foot of the wicked and lawless; and that every species of indignity should be endured. Christianity, by her own express hypothesis "if it be possible," more than intimates her conviction that after all our effort, peace with "all men" cannot be maintained, and by her own express limitation, "as much as lieth in you" (rò è uv) may be supposed to suggest the employment of whatsoever means may lie within reach, not for purposes of vengeance that she expressly forbids-but to secure peace and quietness, attaining thereto by moral dissuasives and influence such as it possesses, if thus it may be attained; but if not, by the use of such other means as may "lie in them," as may belong unto them. And it "lieth not" in any nation to be an unresisting and unassisting spectator of the invasion of the rights and the compulsory subjugation of those who rely upon it for protection and have committed themselves and their interests to its care. Compulsory process and military force, "as much as lieth in her," all she may possess, may be the only means whereby a stable peace can be obtained. Thus when causeless, unjust, persistent, and otherwise invincible rebellion shall occur; a rebellion in the interest of barbarism, servitude, degradation, and sin, for the support and maintenance of the mother of harlots and abominations; shall it be admitted that Christianity, the religion of a true civilization, the assertor of human equality, the elevator, the antagonist of sin, the unyielding foe to whatsoever is abominable or maketh a lie, gives no power for its suppression, no authority to "crush it out," withholds its consent to the use of means which God and man place at its disposal applicable for this purpose, and trammels or renders futile thus the effort to defeat the nefarious designs of wicked or mistaken men? And shall we suppose that when nothing

else will answer, where rebel hands have already begun the combat and struck the blow; where the power at the disposal of the government is in all human judgment sufficient, and the resources ample for the emergency and to compel the restoration of the peace which rebellion has disturbed, that Christian principle will not allow this power and these resources to be employed? This would be for God in his providence to put into our hands means to no purpose. This would be emphatically "to bear the sword in vain." We may not teach thus. The necessities of our national existence to-day forbid such teaching. Patriotism demands that the sanctions of our holy religion shall be given to its combat for humanity, freedom, unity, and stable peace; and the strong and vigorous arms of its soldiery must not be palsied, their earnest hearts must not be chilled with doubts as to the religiousness of their vocation. Let us gratefully record, that the multitudes of heroic slain, whose blood flowed so freely on every battle-field of our present struggle, by their gallant uprising and their noble daring in grasping the weapons of the carnal warfare at their country's call, were not obeying commands which the nation might not rightfully issue by authority of the religion of our hope and joy. To these heroic dead-PEACE! If in the good "fight of faith," they have acquitted themselves with as much of manliness, if in other respects they have "warred as good a warfare," then for the wearing and wielding of the carnal weapon in this contest, and their standing up for the mastery on these fields reddening with the blood of humanity's martyrs, under the call of their sorrowing country, the voice of "the man of sorrows will utter no word of condemnation. Even from fields of gore and of carnage the peans of another triumph shall ascend, and from fields of disaster there shall go up the victorious warrior. Accessions shall be received from among earth's soldiers slain to the hosts of the robed and glorified who people Heaven's bloodless homes, and shout glad jubilees in the streets of the city of the King Invisible. To the marshaled hosts living, success! For the rebellious, even for "the children of Benjamin our brother," in the "sin which they have sinned," pleadings, supplications to THEE MOST HIGH, that their hearts "may be turned as the streams of the south," to repentance of their iniquity, to submission to their true rulers,

to obedience and unity under legitimate authority, lest they be utterly destroyed. For the earth, "let" it "be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters fill the great deep." Then shall "the nations learn war no more."

"Then shall PEACE wreathe her chain

Round us forever."

Happy day! Jesus, master, onward speed its coming glory!

ART. II.-GERMAN MATERIALISM-THE NATURALISTIC SCHOOL.

[FROM THE FRENCH OF THE REVUE DES DEUX MONDES-PART SECOND.]

III.

EVERY philosophic mind, in reading the above exposition of the system of Dr. Büchner, has doubtless noticed a strange gap: the author, who explains everything by matter, has entirely forgotten to tell us what matter is, and what he understands by the word. That, however, is not a question of slight importance, and it has for centuries busied men who were neither fools nor children. Is it not known that into the idea of what we call matter and body two very different elements enter: one which comes from our sensations, and is nothing but the totality of the diverse modifications of our organs; the other comes from without, and is really distinct and independent of our impressions ? Now when it is said that matter is the original of things, this is evidently spoken of matter as it is in itself, and not as it appears to us; for if an analysis should prove that matter is composed only of our sensations, and includes nothing external, matter itself would thereby disappear, being but a modification of our minds, and materialism would change into idealism. It is therefore fully evident that the first obligation of a materialistic system is to distinguish what comes from ourselves from what comes from without in the notion of body or matter; but this distinction is difficult, as the history of science shows. Mr. Büchner has wholly neglected it; his system is defective, therefore, in its basis.

Let us try to do what he has not done; let us show by analy

sis how obscure and imperfect is the notion of matter; how far from self-sufficient it is; how it vanishes and disperses on examination. "It is an intangible something," says Fenelon, "which melts in my hands when I press it."

We must first ask what a body is, vulgarly understood. A body is a solid, colored, resisting, extended, mobile, odorous, warm or cold mass. In a word, it is an object which strikes my senses, and I am so habituated to living among such objects, to using, enjoying, hoping for, and fearing them, that they seem to me the most real things in the world. I laugh at those who bring them in question, and, if I wish to imagine my own mind, I give it the form of a body. What is there solid and faithful in this kind of representation of matter? Philosophy to answer this question begins by distinguishing the apparent from the real. This distinction the most positive and exact sciences have made familiar to us. In astronomy everything depends upon the distinction of real from apparent movements. If we consult appearances the sun seems to move from east to west, drawing with him the planets. In reality the earth moves and has two motions, of which we feel neither; the one a rotation on its axis, the other a revolution about the sun. We must likewise distinguish in the stars apparent from real size, apparent from real position. To get the true height of a star in space, astronomers are obliged to allow for the deviation of luminous rays through the atmosphere, that is, for refraction. Optics in general teach us not to confound visible appearances with the true form, true size, true position, true movement of objects.

We are authorized by all these facts, and by many others well known, to ask ourselves whether, in the notion that we form of bodies, there is not a part, which must be attributed to the observer himself, which comes from and disappears with him. Among the qualities that we attribute to matter there are two especially which appear to us to animate nature, and wanting which she would seem to us delivered to death: light and sound. Well, let us ask physicists what is sound and what is light. Here is their response: Sound and light are vibrations, that is, movements. Let us pause a moment upon this fine theory of physics, which has shed so much light upon the question of external perception.

If we strike a cord drawn taut, we impart to it a vibratory go-and-come movement, which our senses can seize; the touch feels it shiver under the thumb; the sight, in place of a very distinct line, perceives a cord swollen toward the middle and much less luminous, whose swelling goes on decreasing till it returns to a state of rest. This kind of movement is what we call a vibration, and it is from this simple elementary fact that the whole vibratory theory has sprung, so important in modern physics, and whose vocation is to so grand a future. Now, while the vibration lasts, while the finger feels the cord shiver, we hear a sound. The sound begins and ends with the vibration. Furthermore, the most exact experiments and the most precise calculations establish a rigorous relation between the pitch of the sounds produced and the number of vibrations, a number which is in constant relation with the length, tension, etc., of the cords. It is, therefore, proper to affirm, that the sole cause of the sound, or sonorous sensation, is a movement. This movement is communicated by the air, which is itself a vibratory body, to the ear, a mechanical instrument arranged to collect and transmit aerial vibrations to the acoustic nerve. It is there, there only, that the mechanical sound ceases and is replaced by a sensational sound. There motion is. transformed into sensation, an unexplained and perhaps absolutely inexplicable phenomenon.

What is certain is, that until the moment when the acoustic nerve comes into play, there is absolutely nothing without ourselves but a vibratory motion, such that if we suppose for a moment the auditor to disappear, the nerve capable of perceiving sound paralyzed or destroyed, no animal on the earth or in space able to hear, then there will be absolutely nothing without us which resembles, in any respect whatever, what we call a sound.

Much time, many experiments, and many reasonings were required to apply to light this theory of vibrations. Sonorous vibrations may be perceived by the senses, luminous vibrations cannot; the elastic medium which transmits sounds may be perceived by the senses, it is the air; the elastic medium which is thought to transmit light is apparent to no sense, it is the ether. It follows that, as to sound, the vibratory theory is a result of experiment, it is merely a summary of the facts; as