position without magnitude. Matter is thus magnitude circumscribed by space. Hume's error was the want of common sense. If the mind had magnitude, it would be divisible ad infinitum. It would not have existence as a unity. In fact, it would not have been the Ego at all. Phidias could say, "I conceived-I produced a likeness of my own thought. You could not see it in my mind, yet I saw it there. You can now see what I saw, for I have given you a physical sign or symbol of my spiritual thought in an artistic form,-in viewing it you now can see my inner soul and hidden thought revealed." Thus, by physical signs, called the language of words, we can read all that any author knows, or, at least, designs to make known. It is the same with God in all his revelations to his creature man. The law was God's idea of the beautiful and the sublime. He first wrote it with his own finger on two tables of stone. It was then revealed in physical shape, that man might learn the very mind of God. It was thus God's original design that men might copy and transcribe it on the fleshly tablets of their hearts. He magnified it to its highest height in Christ, and made it honourable and beautiful withal, after it had been broken on the part of man.

Ah, there is a height and depth, a breadth and length, in God's law, which your philosophy has never dreamed of. Angels can only desire to look into it. Redemption is its best expositor. Thus, at the Cross, we see the attribute of justice, which had been violated by man's sin, fully pacified; for there the swelling tide of vengeance-just was met by the heaving billows of eternal love, and there they both embraced and kissed. Hence from the Cross salvation sprang, for God in Christ was the Mediatorial one. Thus we humanly speak of God, when we behold on the Cross the Saviour of this wicked world, crucified betwixt Jew and Gentile, as betwixt two thieves. Hence the rejectors of the rejected may yet be saved. For from that very Cross there flows a stream pure as crystal, as from the eternal throne, in which the most sinful aud polluted may simply wash and be made wholly clean. All this is the just working out of God's all-perfect law. The design was of God; Christ was the exemplar, and he was the revealer of his Father's will. We read its spiritual meaning at the Cross, and we see in the sacred symbols of Baptism and the Eucharist the very mind of God. And we also see in them, as symbolised, the passion of our dear Lord. "Thy law," he said, "I have within my heart,"—hence his willing perfect obedience to his Father's law. He was thus in his divine and physical form God's express image-the Logos and the Spirit in one, that we might know the very mind and love of God to man.

MATERIALISM.

A materialist cannot possibly know God as a Spirit. A materialist has no soul. His ideas are physical realitiesqualities of matter, as odour is a quality of the rose,—hence thought is evanescent, and when gone, it is lost for ever. No, good sir, you here commit a large mistake; memory, you said, holds them fast, and reminiscence proves the personality and identity of that mind which we call the Ego. I remember best the scenes of my infant days; they are as vividly before my mind's eye as if I saw them present now. But what of that?

A materialist pretends it is a baseless dream. And yet he believes it true. And after all he cannot believe in God! Why so? You say you can form no well-grounded notions concerning God's form, his substance, his size, or his mode of You make me blush with ire, and cause me living.' only to feel pain." See, my dear sir, the dreadful logical sequences to which materialism is necessarily forced to submit. If mind be matter, thought and reason are only qualities of matter too. Hence God, as mind, is only a quality of matter; and although matter ever was, and is, God never is, he only always is beginning to exist. And as matter changes, there can be no stability in God. So said a consistent French Pantheistic materialist; and you have indorsed his blasphemous atheistical creed. And still you dare thus to proceed. Hence you add, since we cannot possibly know God, whether revealed or not, "let us endeavour to discover, from the observation of the physical laws, how he governs all material existences." But even here you cannot rest in peace-you have still some hankering after your first consistent love. "There are faculties, you say, which take cognisance of the abstract relations of things." Strange faculties these for a stone or a sponge to possess, "These are, locality, order, number, and time. Locality is the power by which we (say rather a stone) take cognisance of relative position; order gives the physical (why not moral?) arrangements of objects (why not beings?); number, of their numbers; and time of duration. (Let the reader now mark well)-None of these relate to the qualities of physical objects: (hence they must relate to the spiritual mind)-but both order and number presuppose the existence of such objects (are they not mind?) to be arranged in space and enumerated. Our conceptions of space, number, and time, have no limits, (all matter is conditioned-limited). The faculties which form these (that is, things beyond material limitation) lose themselves in the infinite, (such as Kant's a priori conceptions. Where is materialism now?). In exercising them we are capable

of rising above this earth and its qualities (Combe's mind cannot be material now, hence thoughts are not qualities of matter); but when we (that is, by becoming spiritualistic) do venture on such excursions, our faculties return (like fallen meteoric stones in full blaze) freighted with knowledge of only one truth, that nature, in its full extent, is unfathomable by our feeble powers. So said the great Newton," After all, I have only been gathering a few pebbles on the shore of the infinite abyss of knowledge: but I believe in God, and in Christ my Redeemer." Amen. See his scarcely known work on the Apocalypse.

It would be too painful for me to follow at length your disconnected and blasphemous statements which constitute only one great mass or chaos of contradictions and grosser absurdities. I shall therefore at once appeal to your grand definition, which is so precious a morsel that I had reserved it for an after treat. It is in these words:

DEFINITION.

Laws of Nature, and Natural Laws.

Every object and being in nature (hence including man) has received a definite constitution, and also powers of acting on other objects and beings. The action of the forces are so regular that we (who are we?) describe them as operating under laws imposed upon them by God; but these words indicate merely (our?) perception of the regularity of the action. It is impossible for man to alter or break a natural law (?) when understood in this sense; for the action of the forces, and the effects they produce, are placed beyond his control. But the observation of the action of the forces leads man to draw rules from it for the regulation of his own conduct; and these rules are called natural laws, because nature dictates or prescribes them as guides to conduct. If we fail to attend to the operations of the natural forces, we may unknowingly act in opposition to them; but as the action is inherent in the things, and does not vary with our state of knowledge, we must suffer from our ignorance and inattention. Or we may know the forces and the consequences which their action inevitably produces, but from ignorance that through them God is dictating to us rules of conduct; or from mistaken notions of duty, from passion, self-conceit, or other causes, we may disregard them, and act in opposition to them: but the consequences will not be altered to suit our ignorant errors or humours; we must obey or suffer.

There is a confounding of things which necessarily differ from the beginning to the end of the above definition. Every respective object and being in nature has, no doubt, received a

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definite constitution, aud also powers of acting on each other All creation, moral and physical, is thus related. The actions of the physical forces are inherent in things, and are so regular that an eclipse may be predicted with perfect precision; but the actions of the moral forces are quite the reverse. Moral law has somehow even lost its power over the human mind-it is more objective than subjective,—hence it is impossible to foretell with any certainty how any moral being shall act at any given time, and under any given circumstances. We cannot therefore describe them as operating under inherent fixed laws at all. God has promised to write them again on the heart,— but that implies that they are not inherent. "Now, it is impossible for man to alter a natural law." True, fire always burns, but a man may break and nullify a natural law and act in opposition to it at his pleasure. Thus, he can raise and dart his pugilistic arm and closed fist in direct opposition to the law of gravitation, as well as in violation of all moral law,—hence it is not true that the action of the physical forces and the effects they produce, are placed beyond man's control. Physical force is controlled and directed in the construction of the steam engine. It is true that the observation of the action of the physical forces leads men to draw rules from it-the action-for the regulation of his own conduct. Thus he learns when to sow and when to reap, and so on. You here clearly break down. To draw rules is to legislate,-hence the mind has moral freedom, and is not under the physical law of necessity in any shape. The mind, in drawing rules, chooses the best, or may be the worst still all is choice, alias freedom. A law-maker can make and unmake. Your admission nullifies not only the definition, but your whole system, and refutes your theory in your far-famed "Constitution of Man." "These rules are ealled natural laws'—not so, rules are moral laws,-hence not because nature but because God dictates or prescribes them as guides to conduct. But what must be said of moral laws, drawn by the observing mind? These are entirely overlooked, and they are as often purposely omitted in the orations by which almost every sceptic endeavours to bewilder and confound his simple-minded hearers. Man's mind and will are free, and thus can draw rules for the guidance of his conduct while dwelling among those thorns and thistles which beset his path during his weary pilgrimage on earth; but how often does he swerve from his own fixed resolves, as well as from those holy injunctions which God has revealed in his holy word! Hence our daily prayer, "forgive us our sins -receive us graciously-heal our backslidings, and love us freely." "If we fail to attend to the operations of the natural-physical-forces, we may unknowingly act in opposition to them." How could this be pos

sible if man cannot break a natural law?" but as the action is inherent in the things (“ beings" are here purposely omitted, evidently to mislead), and does not vary with our state of knowledge, we❞—that is, man in his state of freedom" must suffer from his ignorance and inattention;" or, "we (as onlookers only) may know the forces and the consequences which their action inevitably produces, but from ignorance that through them," that is, through physical and moral laws,"God is dictating to us rules of conduct, or from mistaken notions of duty, from passion or self-conceit, or other causes, we may disregard them, and act in opposition to them. (Here Combe slides out of his outer physical man, and speaks as a man of sense; that is, his moral nature revives within him, and he is a physical man no more.) But what has all this rambling to do with man's definite and fixed constitution? You speak an unknown tongue, the meaning of which you yourself do not understand, or all your self-evident contradictions are intended to mislead the thoughtless, and draw them into irredeemable error, ending in their perdition. True it is "the consequences will not be altered to suit our ignorant errors or humours.' But is it not clear as noonday, that if man were placed, as the Definition asserts, under inherent fixed laws, that it would be impossible for him ever to err at all? and hence he would not require to "draw any rules" whatever. "We must obey, or suffer." Why so, if we only act in agreement with our natural constitution? Might not man justly charge God with injustice when he "suffers," if his acting, whether good or bad, had always been direct necessitated obedience to the fixed laws of his original organic constitution? "Obey or suffer," can only be the command of a superior to an inferior possessed of intelligence free to act and free to choose. These self-contradictions which I have exposed, form the basis of far-famed "Constitution of Man!” and hence your fatalistic system necessarily falls along with it.

your

Moral and PHYSICAL SCIENCE.

It is a beautiful world after all, said Paley. No, said the elder Pliny, it is so bad, so wicked, and so wretched, that man can scarcely live out his natural life. Suicide is man's escape from human misery! So said Plato, Cicerò, and even Seneca as well! But you say that all evils may be cured by your new science of development; and all secularists say the same of theirs, for "knowledge is power." If so, what are its limits? Can it stay the tempest, arrest the earthquake, or direct the storm? Impossible. Physical science, at its best, only speaks of causes and effects as objects of sight, while moral science