If Theology, or the science of God and his revealed will, is, as might have been expected, not less, but more recondite than any other, as its objects are vaster, more remote from human understanding, than those of any other science; surely, on philosophical principles, it is not unreasonable that authority should have its weight here, also, and equal measure at least to be dealt to all. Yet the modern world is agreed in ridiculing and denouncing the principle of authority in religious matters, as the bane of human society; and in exalting private judgment and opinion, as the Christian's only ultimate appeal in the matter. Apply this principle of independence to any other science, to any subject of human knowledge, or to any object of intelligent inquiry; and a race of sciolists, pedants, and sceptics would inevitably result. The authority of great names in science would lose all its just honor; there would be no system, no progress in observations; thousands of persons, incompetent to do more than deny the conclusions of the learned and the able, would refuse their assent to these, till the impossible time should arrive, when, by actual and personal investigation, they should be pleased to pronounce judgment on the accuracy of these conclusions; life would be consumed in negation; mutual trust and deference to superior knowledge and capacity would be annihilated. Whether in this incompatibility of private judgment with its best interests, and even with its stability, Revelation is very different from Science, we leave to the study of our readers, and to their observation of the fine gradations of independent judgment which conduct from Luther to Strauss; the former of whom began by denying the pope, and the latter ended by impugning the divinity of Jesus Christ.

VI.

The principle of authority and its correlative, subordination and dependence, is represented, in a remarkable manner, in the constitution of physical nature, especially in the province of astronomy. It is a remark of Dr. Whewell in his Bridgewater Treatise, [Footnote 136] "that the relations among the planets is uniformly, not co-ordinate, but subordinate. Satellites are subject to the influence of their primaries; primaries to that of the central sun; the central sun itself to a higher and more distant centre; in a sublimer material hierarchy, ascending in gradations of [{384}] immense numerical magnitude; and thus while insuring the stability of the whole planetary and stellar systems, ultimately, as every analogy teaches us, making one grand centre of revolution and subordination, at a point of space whose distance we cannot even imagine."

[Footnote 136: Bohn's Edition, p. 175.]

In his remarks on the Third Law of Kepler, namely, that the squares of the times of planetary revolution round the sun are proportional to the cubes of their mean distances from that central luminary, Sir J. Herschel has the following pertinent observations, "Of all the laws to which induction from pure observation has ever conducted man, this third law, as it is called, of Kepler, may justly be regarded as the most remarkable, and the most pregnant with important consequences. When we contemplate the constituents of the planetary system, from the point of view which this relation affords us, it is no longer mere analogy which strikes us—no longer a general resemblance among them, as individuals independent of each other, and circulating about the sun, each according to its own peculiar nature, and connected with it by its own peculiar tie. The resemblance is now perceived to be a true family likeness; they are bound up in one chain—interwoven in one web of mutual relation and harmonious agreement—subjected to one pervading influence, which extends from the centre to the furthest limits of that great system; of which all of them, the earth included, must henceforth be regarded as members." [Footnote 137 ]

[Footnote 137: Outlines of Astronomy, chap. ix §489.]

The remarks of the same great philosopher on the systems of double stars, in a later part of his work on astronomy, bear still more directly on the view we are proposing. "It is not with the revolutions of bodies of a planetary or cometary nature round a solar centre, that we are now concerned; it is with that of sun round sun—each, perhaps, at least in some binary systems, where the individuals are very remote, and their period of revolution very long, accompanied with its train of planets and their satellites, closely shrouded from our view by it the splendor of their respective suns, and crowded into a space bearing hardly a greater proportion to the in enormous interval which separates them, than the distance of the satellites of our planets from their primaries bear to their distances from the sun itself. A less distinctly characterized subordination would be incompatible with the stability of their systems, and with the planetary nature of their orbits. Unless closely nestled under the wing of their immediate superior, the sweep of another sun in its perihelion passage round their own might carry them off, or whirl them into orbits utterly incompatible with the conditions necessary for the existence of their inhabitants. It must be confessed that we have a strangely wide and novel field for speculative excursions, and one which it is not easy to avoid luxuriating in." [Footnote 138]

[Footnote 138: Outlines of Astronomy, chap. xvi. § 847.]

VII.

The phenomena of nature or suggest an interesting view all of law in general, which we shall in a few words faintly outline. It is constantly urged as an objection to the doctrine of revelation regarding the Blessed Eucharist, for example, that it is contrary philosophy, inasmuch as it assumes and implies the suspension of a universal law, which connects certain definite accidents or qualities of matter invariably with their corresponding substance; for in the Holy Eucharist the properties, qualities, or accidents of one substance are attached to another.