what we have written leads any to benefit by sympathy with the comprehensive spirit of a famous metaphysician and metaphysical theologian—to refresh and elevate their minds by the meditative study of his works—and to be warned of the still prevalent illusions which carried him captive, and, seeming to gain strength and courage from the victory, have carried captive the succeeding generations of German speculators. These lessons are needed in an age in which there are signs that the revival of old controversies, and the rise of new ones,—many of them not remotely connected with these illusory habits of thought,—are about to surprise a generation ill fitted to deal with abstract speculation. We love to anticipate a future history of Metaphysics and Theology in this country more encouraging than these omens seem to forebode; and to have disclosed before us in imagination, as one of the characteristics of the succeeding age, an ethically disciplined metaphysical spirit, operating according to the canons of a well-applied Logic, under the increasing light of Biblical science, towards the production of a richly intellectual and yet profoundly scriptural theology, and the attainment, for the Christian religion and the Christian Church, of a position among the forces at work in society, which the human agency charged with their maintenance and propagation is not at liberty to disregard.
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