following eloquent passage:-"Unhappy is it that we should be obliged to discuss and defend what a Christian people were intended to enjoy; to appeal to their intellects, instead of 'stirring up their pure minds by way of remembrance,' to direct them towards articles of faith, which should be their place of starting, and to treat as mere conclusions what in other ages have been assumed as first principles. Surely life is not long enough to prove every thing which may be made the subject of proof; and, though inquiry is left partly open, in order to try our earnestness, yet it is in great measure, and in the most important points, superseded by revelation, which discloses things that reason could not reach, saves us the labour of using it when it might avail, and sanctions thereby the principle of dispensing with it in other cases. Yet, in spite of this joint testimony of nature and grace, so it is, we seem at this day to consider discussion and controversy to be in themselves chief goods. We exult in what we think our indefeasible right and glorious privilege, to choose and settle our religion for ourselves; and we stigmatize it as a bondage to be bid take for granted, what the wise, good, and many, have gone over and determined long before, or to submit to what the Almighty has revealed.”

I may venture to remark that this same spirit of questioning and disputing previously settled points, such as our author shows to be so lament

able in the highest of all concerns, pervades also the concerns of human government, and society is in consequence distracted with restlessness, disquietude, and uncertainty. No law is so sacred in the eyes of men that we can confide in its being a lasting law; no institution seems to be secure of its existence for twenty years to come. Surely this is a great evil. Surely if the nature of human beings were fairly and practically examined, it would be found that a spirit of rational reverence is more suitable to them than a habit of denial and defiance, until the reason of each is satisfied upon every rule and custom to which obedience is expected.

A moral poet of our time, who was beyond all question the most thoroughly practical man who ever wrote in verse, has, with his accustomed force, represented the evil of what is sometimes called "philosophic doubt" or "free thinking" in matters of religion:

"From my soul I hate

This clash of thought, this ever-doubting state,
For ever seeking certainty, yet blind

In our research, and puzzled when we find.”

But the story of the brother and sister in whom this miserable restlessness of mind was brought about, is full of instruction, and told with admirable terseness :

"I was a Ratcliffe, taught and train'd to live
In all the pride that ancestry can give;
My only brother, when our mother died,
Fill'd the dear offices of friend and guide;

My father early taught us all he dared,
And for his bolder flights our minds prepared.
He read the works of deists, every book
From crabbed Hobbes to courtly Bolingbroke;
And when we understood not, he would cry,
Let the expressions in your mem❜ry lie;

The light will soon break in, and you will find ^ Rest for your spirits, and be strong of mind."

There is great skill in this brief narration. How true the remark that the sceptical father did not dare to teach the children what his own

mind had adopted. Even the boldest and the worst shrink with an instinctive dread and horror from the inculcation of impiety upon minds that are as yet simple and innocent. Even a fallen nature must have experience of sin, in sentiment, if not in action, before it seems anything but a hideously unnatural thing to attempt to harbour therein the seeds of impiety. But let us go on to see how the promise of "rest for their spirits" was fulfilled to these children:

"Alas! however strong, however weak,
The rest was something we had still to seek.
He taught us duties of no arduous kind,
The easy morals of the doubtful mind;
He bade us all our childish fears control,

And drive the nurse and grandam from the soul.
Told us the word of God was all we saw,

And that the law of nature was his law;
This law of nature we might find abstruse,
But gain sufficient for our common use.
Thus, by persuasion, we our duties learn'd,
And were but little in the cause concern'd.

"We lived in peace, in intellectual ease,
And thought that virtue was the way to please,

And pure morality the keeping free
From all the stains of vulgar villainy.

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Free, sad discourse was ours; we often sigh'd
To think we could not in some truths confide;

Our father's final words gave no content,
We found not what his self-reliance meant:

"in ceasing to obey, Misery and trouble meet us in our way.”

This is the true philosophy of human nature. Pride may reject it, ignorance may thrust it aside, presumption may treat it with derisive scorn; but sober experience will say, "This is true."

I must return to the theological writer already quoted, in order to borrow from him the exposure which he thinks it his duty to make of the inconsistency of many who call themselves philosophical, touching those points of knowledge which are the most important of all. The great mass of educated men are, he says, at once uneasy, impatient, and irritated, not simply incredulous, as soon as they are promised from any quarter some clear view of the original and apostolic doctrine, to them unknown, on any subject of religion. They bear to hear of researches into Christian antiquity; if they are directed to prove its uncertainty and unprofitableness, they are intolerant and open-mouthed against them, if their object be to rescue and not to destroy. They sanction a rule of philosophy

which they practically refute every time they praise Newton or Cuvier. In truth, they can endure a positive theory in other provinces of knowledge, but in theology it becomes practical. They perceive that there, what in itself is but an inquiry into questions of fact, tends to an encroachment upon what they think fit to consider their christian liberty. They are reluctant to be confronted with evidence which will diminish their right of thinking rightly or wrongly as they please. They are jealous of being forced to submit to one view of the subject, and to be unable at their pleasure to change. They consider comfort in religion to lie in all questions being open, and there being no call upon them to act. Thus they deliberately adopt that liberty which God gave his former people in wrath," a liberty to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine," the prerogative of being heretics or infidels.

It would be well, continues our author, if these men could keep their restless humours to themselves; but they unsettle all around them. They rob those of their birthright who would have hailed the privilege of being told the truth, without their own personal risk in finding it. Such troubles of the Christian community would, in a healthy state of things, be silenced or put out of it, as disturbers of the king's peace are restrained in civil matters.