organ. The extended surface of the retina is for the mind; the mind being active in the retina uses it for seeing color, light, and relations in space. In solving the geometrical problem, the string and chalk and board are tools wholly external to me, both mind and organs. My organs, however, are so closely united to my mind that my mind manifests its final purposes only in them. Still are the thought and willing of the mind the essential elements of that final purpose which is manifested in and carried out through the organism. The closeness of relation which exists between the final purpose and its own means of execution, does not change the essential nature of the final purpose. Space makes no difference with the idea. My final purpose to adapt my eye for seeing and comparing two objects lying side by side exactly two and ninety-nine one-hundredths inches from the cornea's external surface, is essentially the same as that to build a house in China. Thought and will combined and working toward a goal belong to final purpose in nature. Nor does great multiplicity or subtlety of efficient causes used as means to the desired end, change the nature of final purpose. The more numerous and independent the causes which are combined, the more complete is the proof of the idea and energy which combined them. According to the doctrine of chances, there is less and less probability of chance as the number of combinations increases. Every organism is the result of countless efficient causes, but no enumeration of them can do otherwise than make more pressing the inquiry after the final purpose of the organism. Nor does the lapse of long time during which the means for reaching the goal are in use, nor a countless series of secondary causes, change the essential nature of final purpose. The idea thus carried out into execution may be all the grander. The thought and will which use through long stretches of time, wisely and unswervingly, the necessary means for realizing the final purpose, are for that reason all the more admirable. It is the largest final purpose which requires most time and most numerous means to realize itself. The meaning of final purpose in nature should, then, be to the unprejudiced mind clearly apparent. Such facts as are held before us by the construction of the eye, by all organism indeed, and by the uni verse as an orderly whole, prove a principle underlying all the forms of nature. Thought and will, combining and using efficient causes as means to secure results, are everywhere manifested. We may sum up these inferences from the facts of final purpose in nature by noting the following points: In final purpose the whole as an idea precedes and controls the execution of the parts. The thought and plan to secure the whole is first; the parts are planned and executed in reference to the whole. All the parts, moreover, can be understood only in reference to the whole of which they are parts. All the details are illumined only in the light of the complete idea. In final purpose thought combined with will precedes and forms the principle of the whole process. The thought of the perfect eye with its final purpose of perfect vision, is needed in order to understand at all the imperfect eye of the embryo or of the diseased adult. Everything about the eye is to be understood only in the light of its idea. In considering final purposes our thought shows itself as overleaping time in unique and marvellous fashion. In tracing the causes of any product we desire to go step by step backward, never leaving out any links in the endless chain. In inquiries into final purpose we leap at once forward to the final result as an ideal whole, though its realization may be countless years and even ages removed. The distant goal is reached by one bound in thought; and then the mind returns from this ideal future to understand better the present facts in the light of the great idea which it has brought back. Every seed contains within itself certain refined material for the protection and nourishment of the germ when it shall grow, cer tain forces also of mechanical, chemical, and vital sort. seed is comprehensible to the human mind until the final purpose of its construction is brought to light. We must somehow learn what it shall be, for what end it is constructed. The idea of the perfect plant must be brought from the ideal future of the seed to shine upon its present construction. Final purposes are never accounted for by simply enumerating efficient causes; unless we reckon thought, stimulating energy and combining these forces, into our problem, we can never even approach its solution. The facts of design and adaptation in nature are proofs of a principle underlying all nature. Thought and will are at the ground of things; for the facts are clear and numerous enough to prove the principle. In this truth that thought and will combine to express and realize themselves by use of means toward their end, do we find the meaning of final purpose in nature. With a few last words we take another step to a remoter inference. As we have already said, manifold final purposes are more or less clearly manifest in many single organisms of nature; just as manifold material and forces are seen combining in every effect. The way, when we study final purpose in nature, rises before us peak above peak till we are weary of climbing with the staff of logic. Yet every instance of final purpose in nature is a proof that thought and will is present with us here and now. The thought is therein manifest, the will is therein expressed-face to face with us. When we look widely over nature we discern a unity of materials and forces in this infinite combination of them under varied types and forms. We discern also, though only dimly, a unity of final purposes. This first is made for that second, and that second may also be made for the first; both first and second may be made for a third something-we know not what. Some things we count higher in the scale of being than are others; a man than a monad, a thought than a mechanical force. We seem to trace an advance in the forms taken by matter and physical forces; they seem to be going forward toward some goal. Means and ends in nature are complicated, involved, involuted, so that we may sometimes conclude: the universe comes we know not whence, and-why we know not -goes we know not whither. But this conclusion is mostly drawn in those moments of melancholy such as came over Mr. Tyndall when he wrote his Belfast address, and consigned himself and everything else ultimately to the azure of the past. The spectacle of the grand whole moving forward to its grand and distant goal, in better moments rouses and nourishes within us the larger hope. Nor are we left in condition of mere unevidenced hope. We have not a few clear proofs that all things are bound together in unity of thought and force; that the universe is moving according to underlying, absolute thought, and under the impress of interpenetrating, absolute will-forward toward a goal. The claw of the tiger is enough to class him amongst the flesh-eating animals. As Cuvier showed, his whole construction, not only in paw and shoulder, muscles and blade, in tooth and jaw and eye, but also in the internal organs of nutrition, is written in the claw. The highest final purpose of man, the evidence shows, is not in the animal part of him, but is in mind and morals, in character and spirit. So may we reason from history, that the final purpose of the entire race of men is in the highest and most spiritual development of the race. And then there may be final purposes still farther on. For the final purpose which is manifested to us in nature is never an isolated and closed one; it is ever one of many, a segment from an infinite circle, a link in an infinite chain. We find, however, unity of force in the varied and numberless exhibitions of force. So do we find unity of thought in the varied and numberless manifestations of final purpose. The unity of forces leads us to the idea of One Absolute Will, the unity of thought to the idea of One Absolute Mind. If then there is only a first and second step from the clear and prevalent fact of final purpose in nature, to the first meaning of this fact, there is only another step still to its grand conclusion. The first and second steps lead us to the inference that thought and will underlie nature; the next step leads us to the inference that the thought and will are the thought and will of the Absolute One. The grand conclusion from the fact of final purpose in nature is as to the being of God. The time is come to express our conclusion in the words of one, distinguished alike as a student of science and philosophy: "We are therefore satisfied to utter the conviction which has been indicated by the foregoing remarks, viz: that we surely recognize only one single principle for the universe, one single living idea, out of whose reality, though itself needing no deduction, springs the reality of all existence, out of whose sig nificant contents spring the forms of unfolding as well as the general laws which each particular effect obeys; so that, finally, apart from this, there can neither exist any separate world of matter resting on itself, nor any unoriginated, eternal kingdom of laws."* * Lotze, Allgemeine Physiologie, p. 59. ARTICLE VI.-CONCERNING A RECENT CHAPTER OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. [The task of preparing a biography of the late Dr. Bushnell is in reverent and loving hands, and will soon be completed. More than a year ago, one who had been for more than forty years in habits of frequent and fraternal intercourse with the great preacher and thinker, was invited to contribute some of his own recollections and impressions as a possible help to the work in hand. What he attempted in response to that invitation was simply a letter to Mrs. Bushnell, to be used at her discretion. Some use has been made of it in the biography which is about to be published. But those for whose use it was written, in the hope of throwing light especially upon one portion of the story, have thought that the entire letter may be worth publishing; and by their permission it is submitted, in its original form, to the readers of the New Englander.] LETTER. DEAR MADAM:-I have been hoping that I should be able to re-examine, deliberately, the whole series of pamphlets, reviews, and newspaper articles, which accompanied and followed the publication of the two volumes, "God in Christ," and "Christ in Theology." Disappointed in that hope, I now propose to give you, in what may seem an egotistic way, my unaided and perhaps inaccurate recollections and impressions concerning the entire discussion. There is no need of my saying to you that my intercourse with Dr. Bushnell, from the beginning of his ministry, was free and hearty. One of his earliest sermons-perhaps the earliest of all-was preached from my pulpit; and thenceforth I counted it a privilege to confer with him. His habits of thought were very unlike my own, especially in those early days; but however we might differ in opinion on particular questions, I rarely failed to get some quickening suggestion from his way of seeing things, or to learn something from his incisive way of putting things. Occasionally I heard him preach--sometimes in my |