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to those tendencies, Mr. Fisher desires an ordinal 'more thoroughly and consistently Protestant,-more entirely in accordance with the teaching of Holy Scripture, and more in harmony with the Thirty-nine Articles.' It is impossible to give in the space at our disposal even an outline of the arguments by which Mr. Fisher endeavours to maintain his position. One chapter unfolds and refutes the sacerdotal theory; another attempts to show that the baptismal service involves the sacramental construction of the Romanizing party,' and rejects the evangelical modes of interpretation as untenable. Then follow more than one hundred pages on the history of the baptismal views of the Reformers. The whole work should have been presented in a more condensed form. Mr. Fisher appears to have been at more pains to collect his information than to digest it; and we imagine that there are not many readers who will care to wade through so many sheets, which are occupied in proving that but one interpretation can be given to the Liturgy, whilst this interpretation they are called on to condemn. There remains, however, a second difficulty, which has not, we think, yet been solved. Amongst those who admit and deplore with Mr. Fisher the existence of exceptionable passages in the English Service, there are few, indeed, who believe its revision to be safe or practicable, -at any rate for the present. Meanwhile, we heartily sympathize with the concluding exhortation, to find in prayer the best resource in the midst of surrounding discouragements and the surest ground of hope for the most desirable end.

Reflections on Church Music; for the Consideration of Churchgoers in general. By Carl Engel. London: Scheurman and Co. 1856.

THIS book relates to a subject which we should be glad at some time to take up in a more elaborate manner than our present hints will allow. We believe there are few things in connexion with public worship, the value of which is more overlooked by Ministers and people, than congregational singing. As one of the noblest aids to true devotion, one of the greatest beautifiers of public worship, the little systematic attention which it generally receives, is perfectly amazing; and we believe that when this matter is properly understood, every Minister will regard the cultivation of church music, not as a thing good enough in its way, but as an object of first-rate interest and importance. We are fully prepared to endorse the sentiment of Luther: I want to see the arts, especially that of music, in the service of Him who has given and created it: next unto theology, I give the place and highest honour unto music.' The volume of Mr. Engel is written on the whole with very good taste and judgment. It deals with the requisite knowledge of church music and its essential qualities; gives rules for singing, with the kind of music suitable for congregational use; expatiates upon organ-playing and choir-singing, and goes at great length into the requisite qualifications of an organist. This last topic-the qualifications of an organist-we would recommend as well worthy of being carefully pondered by all gentlemen who preside at that instrument. If they will only allow themselves to think that a word of advice may do them good, they may peruse it with great benefit. On some points we must beg leave to differ from the author. He recommends, for instance, that in all tunes there should be one note to

MISCELLANEA.

The Imperial Atlas of Modern Geography. Parts I. to X. Blackie and Son. The maps of this excellent series are carefully compiled, and coloured on a plan which combines the advantages of beauty and dis tinctness. The publishers hope to complete the work in about thirtytwo parts. We hope they will relax no effort, but sustain its character to a successful close.-Natural Philosophy for Schools. By Dionysius Lardner, D.C.L. Walton and Maberly. This is an abridgment of the work, in four volumes, published by the same distinguished author. It is profusely illustrated, and well adapted for junior students, and for use in ladies' schools.-The Great Law of the Human Mind, and the Heavens and the Earth. London. 1856. We learn from the hand-bill which accompanies it, that this work begins the Millennium.' When we see some plainer signs of that event, it may be proper to recur to this unpretending volume, and attempt to trace the relation of cause and effect.-Hours of Sun and Shade; Reveries in Prose and Verse. By Percy Vernon Gordon de Montgomery. London and Edinburgh. 1856. If Mr. Percy Vernon Gordon de Montgomery is not a poet of the highest rank, the fault does not rest with his godfathers and godmothers. They have done their part in giving him a name, which is a little poem in itself, and not by any means the least attractive in the present volume. Unfortunately there are limits to the virtue of a name; and since Nature withheld from our hero the gift of poetry at his birth, it was somewhat too late to repair the omission at his christening.-The Arctic Queen. This slender pamphlet consists of a poem dedicated to the late Dr. Elisha Kane; it is without title-page, preface, or author's name; but coming to us from the other side of the Atlantic, we are kindly disposed to announce its existence, and the same sideration forbids us to add another word.-The Schoolboy's Way of Eternal Life: his Religious Motives, Trials, and Duties. A Course of Twelve short Lectures. By the Rev. E. Huntingford, D.C.L. London. 1857. This little volume will meet the want so generally felt by parents, who, however anxious to train their children to act on religious principles, find the majority of sermons, of whatever intrinsic merit, either too long, or beyond the comprehension, and far removed from the sympathies, of early boyhood.' It is full of good counsels, and in point of style has many better sentences than the one we have borrowed to explain its object.-Consolator: or, Recollections of a departed Friend, the Rev. John Pearson. By the Rev. Alfred Barrett. London. 1856. A beautiful memorial of private and ministerial excellence. We know not whether most to admire,the rare elevation of the author's sentiment, or the lovely graces embodied in his subject; but those who knew Mr. Pearson best may be assured that the one is entirely worthy of the other.-Inspiration a Reality: or, a Vindication of the Plenary Inspiration and Infallible Authority of Holy Scripture. By the Rev. Josiah Lowe, Incumbent of St. Jude's, Liverpool. Our limits forbid us to do more than recommend this able little work. It consists of a number of categorical replies to the more elaborate treatise by Mr. Macnaught.

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LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM NICHOLS, 39, LONDON WALL.

THE

LONDON QUARTERLY REVIEW.

JULY, 1857.

ART. I.-1. Institutes of Metaphysic, the Theory of Knowing and Being. By JAMES T. FERRIER, A.B., Oxon., Professor of Moral Philosophy and Political Economy, St. Andrew's. Edinburgh and London: Blackwood and Sons. 1854. 2. Psychology the Test of Moral and Metaphysical Truth. A Lecture. By the REV. H. L. MANSEL, M.A., Prelector of Moral Philosophy, Magdalen, Oxon.

We have several objects to fulfil in the present paper; all of them depending upon one another, and all bearing upon the general design of the whole. We desire to sketch, in a brief outline, the course of speculative philosophy prior to Christian revelation, in order to make clear and definite the connexion between the two. We desire to trace, still as briefly as may be, the history of the antagonism and reconcilement of the faith of the reason with the faith of Christ, following the two down through the centuries of the Christian era, until, with the uprising of modern infidelity, called alternately atheism' and 'pantheism,' we arrive at the third great era of speculation. We shall thus view speculative philosophy as it has appeared in ignorance of, in obedience to, and in revolt from, the announcements of revelation. It will be seen that we regard speculative philosophy from the historical point of view; that is to say, we consider it less valuable for its own intrinsic truth or certainty, than as the curious and constant expression of that craving for the ideal and the infinite which has been implanted in human nature. Nay, further, it is held that the capital value of speculative philosophy to us lies in its standing as evidence of the necessity of something

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higher, stronger, and more authoritative than itself. Philosophy is, by its own failures, the more valuable and dignified a witness for the faith by its own failures, on the other hand, it is degraded from all title to be placed co-ordinate with the Christian verity as an attempt to explore ideal truth. When we have established this, we purpose to treat more fully upon the present position and bearings of philosophy, in order to adduce its most recent manifestations as an evidence in favour of our main position no less cogent than is its past history. And, in conclusion, we shall endeavour to draw some deductions as to the extent and purpose to which philosophy ought at the present day to be studied.

In the first place, then, let us briefly traverse the course pursued by speculative philosophy prior to the dawn of Christian revelation; in order that we may be able to perceive in what degree the unassisted power of speculative reason availed to attain the truth which has since been given from heaven, and how far it fell short of that attainment.

Speculation, when in the sixth century before the Christian era it started into a life of its own from the womb of poetry, announced its aim and nature with a distinctness and boldness which it has not always since retained. Its aim was to discover an impersonal principle or ȧpxy sufficient without preliminary to underlie all the phenomenal manifestations of the universe; and in its nature it was thus a deductive theory of the universe. Each of the pre-Socratic philosophers announced some one principle, by which he hoped to be able to solve all questions of whatsoever nature; and the result was that they mutually destroyed one another, or rather that not any one of them, owing to the partial character of his hypothesis, obtained an assent as universal as his pretensions demanded. It would be loss of time to state or discuss the comparative merits of these pre-Socratic philosophers. Much labour has been expended already in the attempt to arrange them into schools, to classify them according to their tenets, and establish a succession of master and pupil amongst them. But in the uncertainty of chronology and the scantiness of their remains, little can be arranged satisfactorily. It is sufficient that the three great schools, or rather series of teachers,-the Ionian, Pythagorean, and Eleatic,-stand out to our view with distinctive, sharplydefined features, and serve, moreover, as types, to one or other of which speculative thought in all subsequent periods has assimilated itself. Philosophy, in those early ages, boldly demands from herself the solution of the vast and indeterminate problems which had been struck out by the hopes, and fears, and aspirations of mankind. She no longer rests satisfied with the facile explanations of all existences and changes which poetry offered; she scorns the cheap hypothesis of an infinite

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number of personal agencies of power and caprice sufficient to account for things the most incongruous. With sudden and extreme reaction she rushes from the thronged Olympus, and seeks after a solitary and abstract motive principle. In this hopeless search she wandered like Bellerophon after he was thrown from the fields of air. It was to be long before she discovered that no one impersonal principle could be alleged as the cause of the universe; that while the questions to be solved remained as prodigious as before, the means of solution were, without poetry and religion, no longer adequate.

Meanwhile, this early philosophy is observed to assume a triple character, which the philosophizing intellect has since preserved. Without exception, the pre-Socratic philosophers, evidencing a true philosophic impatience at being unfurnished with a cause, start by announcing some one principle as lying at the bottom of all existing phenomena. But these principles are very diverse one from another. The Ionian principles are material, and lead in time to physical investigations; the Pythagorean principles are mathematical, pointing to no less positive results: but the Eleatic principles are subjective entities, generalizations of thought as expressed in language; and are precursors of something widely different, yet no less important than the positivism of the other two schools. In Zeno of Elea and his followers we see dialectical philosophy exhibited in a boldness and purity which succeeding Eclecticism has shrunk · from realizing. They start from the widest generalization of language and of thought; they utterly set at nought the process of verification so indispensable in experimental philosophy: their principle has sprung from the brain equipped with native arms and to be defended by native skill; it is a dialectical principle, and must be dialectically maintained, viz., by a comparison of opposing probabilities. Herein we find engendered many marks which never left the ancient philosophy,-its logomachy, its arrogance, we had almost said its unscrupulousness,-whatever, in fact, was afterwards denominated 'sophistry.'

There remained but one further step, and philosophy would have completed the first circuit of her allotted orbit. Socrates was to bring down philosophy from heaven to earth.' This great man, having diligently studied both the physical theories and the dialectical deductions of his contemporaries and predecessors, and finding them all inadequate to solve the mysteries of existence, all too narrow to hold the mighty fact of life, was led to search for some other thing as the object of science; and finally believed that he had discovered it in man himself. From Socrates is to be dated the birth of moral philosophy. Henceforth philosophy assumes an eclectic character, which she has ever since more or less maintained.

Plato was the first great eclectic philosopher of the ancient