defender of the Church,--not of its abuses, but of its
doctrines. And if no new light can be shed on the Scripture text from
which assumptions were made; if these assumptions cannot be assailed, if
they are certitudes,--then we can scarcely have better text-books than
those furnished to the theologians of the Middle Ages, for no modern
dialetician can excel them in severity of logic. The great object of
modern theologians should be to establish the authenticity and meaning
of the Scripture texts on which their assumptions rest; and this can be
done only by the method which Bacon laid down, which is virtually a
collation and collection of facts,--that is, divine declarations.
Establish the meaning of these without question, and we have _principia_
from which we may deduce creeds and systems, the usefulness of which
cannot be exaggerated, especially in an age of agnosticism. Having
fundamental principles which cannot be gainsaid, we may philosophically
draw deductions. Bacon did not make war on deduction, when its
fundamental truths are established. Deduction is as much a necessary
part of philosophy as induction: it is the peculiarity of the Scotch
metaphysicians, who have ever deduced truths from those previously
established. Deduction even enters into modern science as well as
induction. When Cuvier deduced from a bone the form and habits of the
mastodon; when Kepler deduced his great laws, all from the primary
thought that there must be some numerical or geographical relation
between the times, distances, and velocities of the revolving bodies of
the solar system; when Newton deduced, as is said, the principle of
gravitation from the fall of an apple; when Leverrier sought for a new
planet from the perturbations of the heavenly bodies in their
orbits,--we feel that deduction is as much a legitimate process as
induction itself.

But deductive logic is the creation of Aristotle; and it was the
authority of Aristotle that Bacon sought to subvert. The inductive
process is also old, of which Bacon is called the father. How are these
things to be reconciled and explained? Wherein and how did Bacon adapt
his method to the discovery of truth, which was his principal aim,--that
method which is the great cause of modern progress in science, the way
to it being indicated by him pre-eminently?

The whole thing consists in this, that Bacon pointed out the right road
to truth,--as a board where two roads meet or diverge indicates