called themselves by the Holy Name. What does it mean?

The answer is very clear. To a church seeking a supremacy and claiming its rulers as infallible, so far as the Book should have a power, that power must be used for the Church. Until the Reformation which was an attack on the Church as then organized, the Bible was the book of the Church. Its popes and cardinals and priests could read it, if they chose, but it could not be trusted with the people, except as the Church should interpret it to them.

The Council of Toulouse in 1229 enacted the following decree: "We also forbid the laity to possess any of the books of the Old or New Testament, except, perhaps, the Psalter or Breviary for the Divine Offices, or the Hours of the Blessed Virgin which some, out of devotion, wish to have; but having any of these books translated into the vulgar tongue, we strictly forbid.”

If the priests were ignorant even of the alphabet, it was not of vital concern; their superiors commanded their course.

The Reformation, on the other hand, placed the Book in the hands of the people. Instead of being the book, so far as used, of the Church, it became

the book of all mankind. Previous to the Reformation the Church was the final authority in all questions of conscience and liberty; but ever since, in all Protestant lands, the Bible is the standard; and until this present time all Christendom is divided into these two general companies; the one guided by the Priesthood, the other, by the Book.

As a matter of history, the Revival of Learning and the great Protestant Reformation were cotemporary; how related, we shall hereafter consider. What then was the attitude of the Church previous to the Revival of Learning, since it must be acknowledged that the Church had the dominating control in the Dark Ages? All through the Dark Ages there were devout scholars. To those relatively few faithful men is due the gratitude of devout hearts in all times. The brilliancy of the light is not due to the candlestick; even the pestilence cannot keep away the Sisters of Mercy; the ignorance of a continent will not darken the inquiries of Becket or Abelard. The venerable Bede, Anselm, the scholastic theologian, Bernard, the hermit monk of Cluny; Aquinas, the Angelic Doctorwhat names are these representing a piety and scholarship shining all the more brightly because of the density of the darkness around them!

The exceptions, however, do not constitute the Church. A selfish hierarchy bent the Book to its own will. There was no objection to any man's learning, until that learning should oppose some dogma or rule of the Church. Up to such a limit a Galileo could be free, but not beyond it. Free scholarship was cramped, and the age sunk back into barbarism. The promulgation of a new thought was the signal that a new martyr was discovered. Just in proportion to the arrogance of the papacy, so was learning imperiled.

It was the age of scholasticism. The teachings of the early Christian Fathers were shaped by those of Aristotle, until neither they nor the disciples of the great philosopher could recognize what had been taught. Scholasticism was the highest learning; and its originators and teachers were in the Church. It was poor philosophy; but such as it was it belonged to the Church. It was a dreamy intellectualism of little practical worth. It was a dark day for truth when "the will" was declared superior to intellect. The logical result was seen in the will of the Church, some of whose speculations reached the problem; how many angels could dance upon a needle's point. The more men speculated, the more dim the day; but a brighter

dawn was coming, and in the light of such a day, we turn to observe the intimate relations between the Book and the Revival of Learning.

In spite of all that scholasticism did not do, it did create a desire for knowledge. It employed the very powers whose action it denied; viz: the reason. The spirit of inquiry was awakened to new objects of thought. Scholasticism turned away from the world to dream, hence the prominent thoughts of the ecclesiastics were away from this life; given to another world rather than to this. It is a lamentable result of intellectual waste when we accept the statement of Hallam: "After three or four hundred years, the scholastics had not untied a single knot, nor added one unequivocal truth to the domain of philosophy."

Against this so-called learning that died from its own uselessness we turn to a philosophy of a different kind. A new sun could hardly cause a greater change on the planet than that which originated with the new method of Lord Bacon. He made all nature his teacher. Nothing concerning the affairs of men escaped his profound observation. The world paid him tribute. With his advent the atmosphere of mysticism was changed. He brought men to a knowledge of themselves and

of the world in which they live. The method of thought he initiated has ruled in the three centuries reaching to the present. He scanned the broad domain of all knowledge; weighed the past and cast the worthless aside; and then with the pen of a master laid his philosophy down for the future to read and to finish.

It is impossible to trace the steps of modern philosophy from the days of Descartes its founder. That has been a mighty river of speculative philosophy, hiding under the names of Leibnitz, Malebranche, Pascal, Newton, Galileo; a profound undercurrent in the Scotch and German philosophies, and gaining its hold upon New England in the person of its greatest exponent, Jonathan Edwards.

Who were these leaders in intellectual power? Bacon avows his paramount obligations to the Scriptures above all else. Descartes began his speculations on the side of a doubt in order to reach after belief, leading directly up to the truth of the knowledge of God gained from the successive reasonings from consciousness. The philosophy of Leibnitz, "the most comprehensive genius since Aristotle," was wrought upon a Christian basis. Over against the theories of Hume that