is thanked for the countenance of three elderly ladies, by damning the LOOKER-ON in their hearing. I beg he will continue these kind testimonies, and support me through my work with the sanction of his saving anathemas.

The outrageous kindness of Mr. Brute, in throwing the most conciliating abuse on the eighteenth number, has carried it off so rapidly, that the author is hesitating whether it be not expedient to reprint it. Mr. B's condemnation is wanted to help off the first number; as a second edition of it has already been produced, and thus a greater proportion remains.

The baronet who gaped so often some nights ago, in a company in Berners-street, while the LOOKERON was being read, could not have opened his mouth to a better purpose.

To a variety of other characters who have recommended my work by yawning, dozing, sleeping, burning, tearing, daubing, and cursing applause, my most grateful acknowledgments are here presented; and I beg (with assuring them that I shall ever study to excite the same flattering symptoms of their disgust) to subscribe myself their much-abused and obliged humble servant,

SIMON OLIVE-BRANCH.

No. 27. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 10.

Πάντα ἀλλήλοις ἐπιπλέκεται, καὶ ἡ σύνδεσις ἱερά.

ANTONINUS PIUS.

All things are double, one against another; and God has made nothing imperfect. ECCLES. chap. xlii. ver. 24.

It is so long since the subject of Religion has made its appearance in the LOOKER-ON, that it may surely come boldly forward after such an interval, and challenge the attention of the gayest of my readers. I have promised to present it in its liveliest dress; so that none of my fair disciples may blush at its homeliness, and so that it may decently enter the drawing-room of a duchess, or the levee of a prince. I have before observed, that, for the sake of the loose form of the argument, and the variety of discussion it admitted, I have chosen to consider those analogies on which religion grounds its apology, and those beautiful resemblances, in the scheme of life and constitution of nature, to the course of Revelation, which develope and vindicate the glorious consistency of our Maker's appointments, and the steadfast unity of his plans and counsels. In the progress of my lucubrations on this subject, I shall keep in view the conduct of a book which has ever been my delight since reading and reflecting have been my occupation-I mean the mighty performance of bishop Butler, to whose work if I could turn the attention of any serious mind, my labours would be indeed recompensed.

That I may likewise lay my account sometimes to arrest a volatile and vagrant spirit, that is spending itself in desultory pursuits, and give it a steady direction, I shall intersperse my matter with anecdote and digression, as I see opportunities; and while the main body of the argument marches onward under the conduct of the victorious prelate, I shall follow him up with my light-armed troops, scouring the country, beating about for forage, and watching the motions of the enemy.

It is but justice that I should dedicate a little portion of this paper to the consideration of a work to which it is so much indebted.

I know but few books, on any subject, or in any language, that are not somewhat objectionable on the score of bulk and prolixity. Profit, vanity, dotage, habit, and facility, all help to persuade an author to swell out his publication as far as it will bear. But, in truth, the strength, the consistency, the form, and the vivacity of an argument, lose as much by the general propensity to accumulate around it superfluous matter, as the muscular vigour of our bodies under the oppression of corpulency and the weight of years. It is, however, the nature of probable evidence, of which the substance of this excellent volume consists, to owe a principal part of its strength to an accumulation of instances; and, according to the well-known principle in hydrostatics, the more its surface is enlarged, the greater will be the number of the columns on which it presses, and, consequently, the greater its support. On this ground, the seeming repetitions of bishop Butler stand excused to the sensible part of his readers; since it is the pressing concurrence and uniform bearing of its probabilities, that carries presumptive testimony to the very confines of demonstration.

This elegant kind of reasoning, in defence of Revelation, doubtless did not originate with the excellent author of this book. The correspondence between the natural and moral dispensations of God, has always been occurring to the studious and contemplative. Our great countryman was the first who presented these analogies under one view, and digested them into a regular aud uniform plan of defence in behalf of our holy religion. An argument so beautiful and so fertile, in favour of so universal a cause, could not but suggest itself to the most enlightened of the ancients; but as their notions of Nature's laws were very far from the truth, the chain of analogy soon fell short; and every attempt to pursue the comparison to any length soon perished in solecism and error. So grand and boundless an investigation was reserved for maturer and happier times, in which our Creator is pleased yet a little more to unveil his goodness, and yet a little further to draw aside the curtain from the sanctuary of his wisdom. Neither good sense nor discretion have dictated the arguments which some objectors have opposed to this reasoning from analogy in behalf of religion. To those whose belief is implicitly grounded on the basis of scriptural authority, it holds out at least an innocent and delightful contemplation. While the strong pillar of their faith stands immoveably firm, it cannot displease them to see its beauties and proportions unfolded, and the rich order of its capital emerge from the mists which surround it. To those who require external consistency and connection in the objects of their faith, it affords an evidence satisfactory and consoling; while it imposes silence on those arrogant claimants who are satisfied with nothing less than a clear and rational view of the whole internal constitution and

plan of God's Revelation, by forcing a conviction upon them, that their lives are passed in the same blindness and ignorance with respect to the things of this world, which they yet must acknowledge to exist, and to owe their origin and their order to the wisdom of God. The objections, therefore, which are founded on the incomprehensibility of Revelation should, in common justice, be first tried against the objects of our daily experience: here they are overthrown by the evidence of our senses, and the obstinacy of facts; here we are constrained to bow down the pride of our understandings; to acknowledge effects, without comprehending their causes ; to admit truths, which we cannot explain; and to rest our reasonings on data that will ever disappoint our researches, while our views are bounded by mortality.

"Since I was of understanding," says the learned and candid Sir Thomas Brown, " to know we know nothing, my reason has been more pliable to the will of faith. I am now content to understand a mystery, without a rigid definition, in an easy and Platonic description. Where there is an obscurity too deep for our reason, it is good to sit down with a description, periphrasis, or adumbration. By acquainting our reason how unable it is to display the visible and obvious effects of nature, it becomes more humble and submissive to the subtilties of faith." Such objections to the frame of our religion as have no other ground than the impossibility of bringing it entire within the scope of our understanding, are stifled in the very womb of infidelity; they are strangled ere they can pass the threshold of life. Plainly, then, the attempt is ridiculous to oppose them to that invisible system, in respect to which our experience supplies no documents or