Each step in investigation seems to separate such a theoretical possibility farther and farther from the real and actual. Of course it will be remarked, "it is, nevertheless, possible that a living particle may be made some day." But can it be proved to be impossible that a whale or an elephant should be constructed out of the non-living at some future time?

In my work on "Protoplasm, or Matter, Life, and Mind," published some months since, I have examined several physical theories of life which have received many advocates, and have been most warmly supported during the last twenty years. Not one of them, however, is found to stand the test of careful critical analysis. Each breaks down, and completely, upon examination, and the last proposed, and perhaps the most pretentious, is the weakest of them all. Many are so obviously inconsistent with facts known to almost every one, that it is wonderful such notions should have been seriously advanced. Unproven and unprovable assertions have been repeated over and over again, until it becomes tiresome to notice them. The fallacy of the crystal argument has been many times exposed during the last hundred years, but there it stands in all its fictitious strength, in the very last work written in favor of the hapless spontaneous generation doctrine. Writers on the physical force side are never tired of speaking with contempt of the views of their opponents, while it is utterly impossible to get them to acknowledge that their own assertions should be subjected to any examination whatever, because, according to them, the physical view only is to be received.

But if any form of the physical dootrine of life had been proved to be true, or had been shown to be based upon some sort of trustworthy evidence, or had been shown to exhibit even an appearance of plausibility, it would undoubtedly have been a duty to inquire very carefully whether religious views could any longer be considered tenable. No one will deny that belief in any of the fanciful hypotheses of the last ten years is consistent with the display of virtues called. Christian," though many are doubtful whether the physical doctrine is not inconsistent with a belief in the evidences of

Christianity. But it has certainly to be shown that the evidence adduced in favor of physical views of life is strong enough to disturb, ever so slightly, the old foundations of Christian faith.

ART. VI.-ALBERT BARNES.

By Rev. Z. M. HUMPHREY, D.D., Philadelphia, Pa.

Ir is not the purpose of this paper to present a biographical sketch of its distinguished subject. That purpose has already been anticipated by numerous writers for the press. The biography itself is yet to be written by more careful hands than ours. We shall attempt only an estimate of the position occupied by Mr. Barnes in the Presbyterian Church of the United States, and of the special service he has rendered in that position. Such an estimate has not yet been publicly made. A natural unwillingness to recur to old controversies in this period of reunion, has restrained the pens of some. The expressed desire of Mr. Barnes himself that the ashes of dead fires should be as little disturbed as possible, has prevented his more immediate friends from alluding very clearly to the earlier trials of his ministry. But justice can scarcely be done to his memory without some direct and candid reference to what all are thinking of. We venture upon our present task the more willingly, because we believe that what we have to say to him is honorable and to the glory of God. Having had no part in the controversies in which Mr. Barnes was involved, regarding them and him with an impartial eye, our reverence for him becomes the more profound as we behold what through him God has wrought.

A few historical memoranda are necessary to our purpose. Mr. Barnes was born at Rome, in the State of New York, on the 1st day of Dec., A. D. 1798. Like our Chief Magistrate he was occupied, at one period of his life, in the employment of a tanner. He was, however, persuaded, while yet a young man, to turn his attention to the study of civil law. But before his graduation at Hamilton College, in the year 1820, he relinquished his purpose to become a lawyer,

and consecrated himself to the work of the gospel ministry. He resorted immediately to the Theological Seminary at Princeton, N. J.—was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of New Brunswick, April 23d, 1823, and after remaining one year in Princeton as resident licentiate, was ordained and installed pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Morristown, N. J., on the 8th of February, in the year 1825. From this place he was called after a most successful pastorate, to the First Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, of which he became pastor June 25th, 1830. In 1867 he resigned this charge and was released from active duty, but was elected Pastor Emeritus, which title and position he retained until the day of his sudden yet peaceful death, Dec. 24, A. D. 1870.

It was a favorite thought with him, in his later days, that the course of his life was ordained by God, and that he was led by many a path which he knew not, or which at least he did not select. He regarded his history as illustrating that wise control with which all human affairs are governed.

The fabric of Divine Providence has been compared to a tapestry. On the heavenward side its figures are clear, and the unity of its design is perfect; on the earthward side the pattern is imperfectly presented, its threads seem sometimes to run into hopeless tangle. We often fail, while watching the weaving, to understand the governing purpose of Him whose wisdom and skill we can not deny ; but when surveying, even from our uncertain point of view, that portion of the fabric which is completed, we discover such signs of order in what had appeared disorder, and of harmony in what had appeared fortuitous, that we can well believe that those who look from the heavenward side can find no fault in either pattern or execution. Those who most reverently observed the course of events in the early days of the Church of Christ were doubtless often puzzled by what they beheld; yet afterward acknowledged with thanksgiving the skill of the guiding Hand. The life of St. Paul was marked by many an appårent disaster; his work was frequently interfered with; he experienced opposition among his brethren; it would not be strange if he were sometimes himself disheartened by his "bonds in Christ;" but when he discovered that in conse

quence of these bonds Christ was preached more widely and with more vigor, he rejoiced in what his friends had counted misfortune, and hastened to assure them that his trials had "fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the Gospel." "History repeats itself" in the church as well as in secular affairs. Indeed, the law by which the history of the church is shaped is virtually the same as that by which the history of kingdoms is divinely controlled.

Men are God's instruments, working generally for ends which are definite to themselves, yet for results which they do not always anticipate. They do not always understand the forces by which they are moved. They often yield to influences which they do not suspect, and come out at the end of life, having done what they had not planned, having failed where they had been most confidant of success.

One of the most powerful of the mysterious forces by which human acts are controlled is scarcely thought of by the majority of men. It is so subtle that we can hardly define it. For the want of a better term, thinkers have styled it "The Spirit of the Times." It is a reigning power so pervasive that none can escape it, so strong that resistance to it is seldom successful; yet it defies analysis. It is distinct from the power of an individual earthly will. If a man of decided character influences us, we refer our movements to him as we refer effect to cause; but the Spirit of the Times affects us when we are addressed by no personal appeal. We are influenced to think and to act when we can not refer our impulse to any orator we have heard, to any book we have read, to any friend with whom we have conversed. Great bodies of men are found to agree in opinions, at which they have arrived by no logical process. They move confidently on a given path, without recognizing any one as their leader, or if they have a leader, they follow him the more enthusiastically the more perfectly he represents their mysteriously formed opinions. Men adopt new phases of sentiment, they talk earnestly about out-worn dogmas, they engage in new forms of activity, stigmatizing old methods, sustaining themselves by but faint reasoning the while.

Those who recognize this curious fact and endeavor to ac

count for it, begin with philosophy and end with generalizing. They study the supposed formers of opinion only to discover that these very men have themselves been acted upon by the general formative power. Then they betake themselves to vague discourse upon " the march of progress," "the advance of discovery," "the triumphs of investigation," half conscious all the while that investigation, discovery, progress, are as much stimulated by the Spirit of the Times as they contribute to its formation. Then, at length, they are led to confess that the men of most influence in any day are those who most truly represent this Spirit, whatever it may be. Is the Christian thinker mistaken when he refers that Spirit ultimately to God? Was that penetrative German far from the truth who said, "God is the Lord of the Times, the center of the Times is Christ, and the Spirit of the Times is the Holy Ghost?" We can not, of course, refer what is bad in ruling ideas to God, except as he permits their admixture with what is good, and then uses both good and bad for the furtherance of his own wise purposes. We may be sure that if there is any law by which the Spirit of the Times is formed or changed from age to age, he has devised it and ever regulates its action. The life of St. Paul is fruitful in illustrations of that law as it was developed while he lived. He was himself a conspicuous representative of the Spirit in the interest of which those who opposed him wrought, though unconsciously and by seemingly contrary methods. It is not necessary to suppose that in their opposition they were not as conscientious as he, or that he himself was not sometimes mistaken. Both suppositions may be presumed. The issue reflects the more glory upon God.

If these statements have turned the thought of the reader for the moment away from Mr. Barnes, their importance will be seen, when, returning to him we discover how signally he illustrates the principles we have affirmed. He did not compare himself to St. Paul, yet he so recognized a similarity in position, that on the first Sabbath after his restoration to his pulpit by vote of the General Assembly (to be subsequently referred to in this article), he selected the first chapter of the Epistle to the Philippians as the lesson of the day. We do