mortals, who are on this side of the awful and mysterious veil-that you will be in the midst of these grand realities, beholding the marvellous manifestation, amazed and transported at your new and happy condition of existence, while your friends are feeling the pensiveness of your absolute and final absence, and thinking how, but just now, as it were, you were with them."-Vol. ii., p.

241.

It does always appear to me very unaccountable (among, indeed, so many other inexplicable things,) that the state of the soul after death, should be so completely veiled from our serious inquisitiveness. That in some sense it is proper that it should be so, needs not be said. But is not the sense in which it is so, the same sense in which it is proper there should be punitive circumstances, privations, and inflictions, in this our sinful state? For one knows not how to believe, that some revelation of that next stage of our existence would not be more influential to a right procedure in this first, than such an absolute unknown. It is true, that a profound darkness, which we know we are destined ere long to enter, and soon to find ourselves in amazing light, is a striking object of contemplation. But the mind still, again and again, falls back from it, disappointed and uninstructed, for want of some defined forms of reality to seize, retain, and permanently occupy it. In default of revelation, we have to frame our conjectures on some principle of analogy which is itself arbitrary, and without any means of bringing it to the test of reason.

It is a subject profoundly interesting to myself; my own advance into the evening of life is enough to make it so; and then the recent events! You have your own special remembrances, though, as to the several objects, going to a considerable time back, I have one most interesting recent object: and there are-wereHall, Anderson, Hughes; where and what are they now at this very instant how existing, how employed?"-Vol. ii., p. 248.

ancholic animal temperament-and his deep and reverential piety, might, better than any one else, who has become known to the world in modern times, be taken and regarded as a type of the MEDITATIVE SPIRIT. His mind was so fashioned as to fit it for reflecting, in portentous outline and lurid color, the lot and fate of man, as severed from the favor of his Maker, and yet as not released from his eternal obligations to sovereign justice.

That special mood of mind which we bere intend, and which, as we think, Foster so signally realized, should, were there any practical purpose in view, be distinguished from those conditions of the mind with which it might perhaps be confounded. Foster's mood, then, was not that of the mystic, whose mental structure must include more of the abstractive faculty than he possessed, (who was in fact wanting in this power,) and far less vividness of the moral instincts. With the mystic-and this is his criterion-moral sensibility heart-power, is either originally deficient, or it has become paralyzed. Foster again and again, and in the most impassioned manner, says, “take away the atonement and I am utterly wretched." But the mystic, although the doctrine of the atonement may find a place in his written creed, is little conscious of its presence, nor does he much need it; his soul does not turn upon that pivot; he has made his way, by dint of contemplation, so far within the orb of the Deity, that he does not think of a mediator, or desire a way of reconciliation and of access to God. Besides, the mystic is of too calm a mood to trouble himself with the ills that are affecting his fellow-men; it is not he who kindles into tempestuous indignation at the hearing of injustice, misrule, hypocrisy; he could never annoy us, as Foster so often does, by the utterance of intemperate denunciations, or by uncharitable violences of language. The mystic makes himself as happy in his airy region, as is the insect that takes its circuit, high in the bright sunshine, over a battle field, or a city smote with pestilence.

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To the allied subjects-that is to say, to subjects that are allied, either by some real connection ex- Nor was Foster's mood (if we are free to speak isting between them, or by the homogeneity of the of it without reserve) that of more happily confeelings they excite-there are very frequent stituted Christian minds. Devout as he was, and allusions in Foster's letters. In truth, a sort of eminently serious and energetic too, as to his setmonotonous pensiveness-the mood into which tled belief-his morbid instinct, and his gloomy one unconsciously falls while listening to the con- imagination, stood between him and that light tinuous tolling of the funeral bell-coming across and peace" which, notwithstanding the state of a silent valley, in a summer's evening, prevails the world, belongs to, and distinguishes, the genthroughout. The brevity of life; the decay of uine Christian temper. Paul, assuredly, was as the body; (and Foster begins to call himself an much alive, as a good man ought to be, to the conold man as early as possible, and a broken man dition of his fellow-men; nor was he, either in a while he was apparently in firm health;) the mystical, or in a secular sense, of an abstracted death of friends; the shifting of all earthly inter- and insensitive temper; and yet his epistles do ests; the solemnities of the future life-these are not contain a line indicative of a mood of mind the staple of his letters varied by references, more resembling Foster's. One feels, even when not or less formal, to the sad condition of the moral able to detect the sophism precisely, that there is, world-the hopelessness of any remedial means and must be, a capital fallacy somewhere, in his and to those weighty and insoluble problems which line of reasoning; there must be, for the whole have ever been the burden of reflecting spirits, re- tenor of the apostolic writings implies the very lating to the position and the destinies of the human contrary to his conclusions. If space permitted family, and its relationship to the justice, the wis- we could exemplify this discordance in several re dom, the power, the goodness of God. Politics markable instances. A fellow traveller, somealso, and literature, take their turns; nevertheless to times, who has unluckily chanced to get off the whatever topics he may divert, in his converse road, is seen making great strides in the right with his friends, or when writing for the press, direction, but yet over ground so rugged and im these were his own themes; these the constitution- practicable, that though he does keep abreast of al material of his thoughts: and he himself, with the company, one expects to see him fall exhausted his high and over-wrought moral sensibility-his at every step. Such a feeling attends the perusal rich, vivid, and awe-struck imagination-his mel

of Foster's letters.

Nor is Foster to be numbered among metaphysic | Almighty wisdom and beneficence. But, now, reasoners; for neither the limit of his faculty, nor let us impart culture to this being; and with culhis moral tastes, would have allowed him to grasp ture, so improve his condition, as to allow him pure abstractions, or to pursue the interminable leisure-leisure to ponder his lot, and to ask himtrack of those who have attempted to solve the self whether he be happy or miserable; and then problems of the moral world, by an analysis of he will begin to think himself-if not miserable, primary ideas. The Theodicea was not his book; yet far less happy than he might bé, and ought to Leibnitz was not his master, any more than Male- be. And if his position be subordinate-if his branche, or Clarke, or Jonathan Edwards. He well-being is dependent upon the will of those frankly acknowledges, more than once or twice, who are, or who seem to be, more blessed than himthat he found the greatest difficulty in attempting self, and then we go on to cherish in him the to prosecute any purely abstract course of thought. moral instincts-to quicken those sensibilities that It can scarcely be necessary to say, that Fos- kindle, and are again kindled by the imagination. ter's pensive musings had no alliance whatever Do this, and the man resents his fortunes-his with the inquiries, with the deductions, or with bosom heaves with pride-he challenges his masthe hypotheses that belong to Science-to philoso- ter to establish his right of domination, and he phy, properly so called. While he pays respect, revolves the purpose, and contrives the means of as so intelligent a man would be sure to do, to liberty. Still farther, call up the affections, give science, he does not conceal the fact that his ac-him social excitements, refine his good-will, talk quaintance with its processes or deductions was superficial; nor does he anywhere himself attempt to follow out a course of reasoning in a scientific mode.

to him of the well-being of those whom he has never seen, wake up that mighty force of the human soul-the faculty of moral abstractionschool him in the science of rights, of duties, of But, though neither mystic, metaphysician, nor privileges:-thus train him, and teach him, too, philosopher, we claim Foster as a clearly defined to think himself immortal; thus make him a type of the MEDITATIVE MOOD; and he is so, not thousand times more than he was at the first; and far in any vague sense, but in a special manner, as happier too, in any genuine and worthy sense of related to the progress of the human mind, and its the word, and then he will have learned to believe recent development. He is the meditative man of himself wronged and unhappy ;-he will have this present epoch :-he represents the passing exchanged brute hilarity for a painful sensitiveness crisis of that economy whereto he actually be- toward innumerable ills, and for a moody petulongs. His intense moral sensitiveness, the refine-lance, ever questioning the heavens, and askingment of his notions on ethical questions-a refine-"Hast thou made all men in vain ?" ment bordering always upon sophistication and Christianity and philosophy exerting their influextravagance, and, especially, that reflective habit, which brings before the mind-ever and again, and with a painful sense of its being an urgent reality-the actual condition, and the destiny of the human family-these elements of Foster's intellectual life are not simply his; for they mark the ripening and development of christianized civilization at this moment. Remarkable men, it is often said, represent, as well as mould their times: Foster represents, quite as much as he has moulded his.

ence upon the human family, first severally and then conjointly, and continuing to act upon each other, so as to enhance the influence of each; Christianity and philosophy thus quickening and refining the human spirit, have done, and are doing for civilized communities that which we have just now imagined to be done for the individual man. And now at length, that is to say, within these "last days," the reflective mood, under its various phases-political and religious, threatens all institutions, convulses nations, perplexes philosophy, and almost endangers Christi

And yet how wonderfully are the forces of the moral world held in equipoise amid perpetual movements!-even as the planetary masses are preserved in equilibrio while all are running their circuits! Those excitements of the reflective mood which now seem to be giving it a dangerous intensity, are themselves abated by a reäction that comes on, as if in obedience to some deep law of nature. Real advances in the social condition of a community render men so much the more painfully sensitive of political ills, and dangerously resentful of political wrongs; in consequence, the entire fabric of society is threatened; the course of improvement is therefore necessarily arrested, the community falls back on its course, and it awaits another season. And so if we look to Christianity, which in our times has done very much more to refine the sentiments of nations than to reform their morals-which has winged the thoughts of the thoughtful, has lent philosophy an upward impulse, has suffused those gentle sympathies that lead men to consider their fellows even when they do not love them :-Christianity has taught, it has trained, it has driven men to think at large of

Many pages would barely suffice to convey, even in outline, an idea of what we have here in view-anity itself. namely, the rise and progress of that REFLECTIVE MOOD which makes the lot or fate of man on earth, and his future destiny, its object and its burden. We must entirely resist the temptation to enter upon a theme so copious, so fertile, so wide in its range, so momentous in its bearings upon the future history of the human mind. We must not dare even to name the men whose names mark the changing aspects of this occult history-this recondite progression of the intellectual system, from the oriental era to the present age--the history of man's own feeling concerning his place in the universe, and the treatment he meets with in it. It must here suffice to remind the thoughtful reader, that what takes place in the development of the character of an individual, takes place, in its essential element, during the development of a race or community; or indeed of the human family, so far as it is civilized and christianized. The brute man-untaught, and occupied wholly with the toils, pains, and sensuous enjoyments of animal existence, does not stay to inquire concerning his own lot, as better or worse than it might be; much less concerning the lot of his fellows-his clan or nation-least of all, concerning the destiny of his species, as dependent upon, and as related to

human well-being, of human responsibility, of human frailty," and of the individual import of the

pains and joys of life, and all this in a manner that now recoils upon Christianity itself, and leads-it has led extensively-to a silent but resentful rejection of its own claims!

To individuals professing to reject Christianity on such grounds, the question might fairly be put, "What is it that has taught you to think Christianity and its revelation of futurity incredible?" The true answer, although it is an answer which we should obtain only from ingenuous bosoms, would be," It is Christianity itself that has taught us a mode of thinking, and has suffused through our souls a moral instinct, which, to us, renders it, taken as a whole, incredible, or, if not incredible, insupportable!"

It surely would not be a difficult task to prove that a scheme of spiritual principles which in any such manner as this operates to expand and to rectify our notions of FIRST TRUTHS, to purify the moral temperament, and to soften and to vivify the instinctive sympathies, and to refine the tastes, as well as to raise the standard of virtue in a community, can itself be nothing but TRUTH. "Can you indeed believe?" we should say to such persons, "Can you deliberately believe a system to be earth-born, and (which if it be not from heaven must involve frauds and errors that are of lower origin than earth) can you think a system false which is capable of working upon a civilized and instructed community in the way which Christianity works? Can you give verdict against it, and say that it is a fraud?"

for it has only of late come into operation; it is only now making itself felt; and barely does it draw upon itself, as yet, any observation, even from the most observant and thoughtful minds. And yet what can be of more serious import? Our space admits of nothing beyond a hasty reference to a subject which might well employ the undiverted attention of any who may be competent to pursue it.

John Foster, such as he appears in these volumes, lay prostrate and helpless amid the desolations of the moral universe: he clung to his be lief as a Christian; yet, in doing so, he held fast also to a very dark despondency. But minds more elastic than his, and less profound too, will leap up from the same slough, leaving behind them as well their despondency as their belief. They will go away lightened, just as a ship is lightened, which, in a gale of wind, has thrown overboard, not its ballast only, but its stores of food and water: the vessel dances now over the billows-and will dance-until the crew has perished! Foster's mood of mind exhibits, in a marked manner, what the last fifty years have been doing for us, under the light-light rather than warmth of a purified Christianity. It is not that tendency to unrestrained speculation and skepticism which is said to attach to Protestantism, and which has had its course in Germany, that we are now speaking of; but it is a silent influence over the imagination, and over the moral sentiments of a cultured people, which springs from the wide diffusion of the Gospel itself; we mean the Gospel freed from corrup tions, but bereft of power.

It is, however, quite beside our present purpose, as well as wholly superfluous, to attempt an apology for the Gospel. We have another and a We are, however, accosted-and perhaps anspecial object in view-an object obtruded upon us grily-by the question, "What then! Do you by the consideration of what might be termed intend to say that truth, purely enounced, can Foster's case. This case is of a kind that in-operate to bring about its own rejection?" Yes, we are bold to affirm, that it does so, if it be not ministered in the plenitude of its forces it is doing so now, to an extent little thought of; and it will go on doing so, unless those renovations of the spiritual life come in, which might lodge Christianity far more firmly, than at present, in the minds of men.

volves deep consequences, and demands, we think, the most serious regard at the present mo

ment.

Take a sample of quotations from Foster's letters, such as should fairly represent his habitual views, his ordinary state of mind, and the deep gloom that oppressed him through the greater part of his course. It may be well to strengthen our argument by a passage or two;-five times as much might be cited.

It has been usual at all times during the last fifty years, and especially among Protestant writers, to expatiate upon the corruptions of Christianity, such as have attached to Romanism in Spain, Italy, and France, as the fertile sources of infidelity and atheism. The mass of men, it is said, knowing little or nothing of the religion of Christ, beyond what priests and monks have taught and shown them, have concluded all to be an imposture, where so much of profligacy and of fraud was apparent. This is quite true, and it is obvious too; meantime something else-something "I hope, indeed may assume, that you are of a not so obvious, and yet not less momentous, or cheerful temperament; but are you not sometimes less deserving of regard, is also true, namely-invaded by the darkest visions and reflexions, while That the wide suffusion of a purified Christianity casting your view over the scene of human existon the surface of society, and the indirect influence, from the beginning to this hour? To me it ence of the refinement of tastes which thence re- appears a most mysteriously awful economy, oversults, especially among the cultivated classes, is spread by a lurid and dreadful shade. I pray for generating infidelity and pantheism among us, silently, but to a great extent. Popery, with its barbaric polytheism, its miracles, its cruelties, has probably done, or nearly done its work, as the parent of infidelity. Men of education, throughout Europe, have at length come to see that Voltaire's inference, carried over from Popery to the Gospel, was as incorrect and unphilosophical as it was wicked. German neology has underdug French flippancy; nor need more be said in confutation of this sophism, for it is obsolete.

But that other, and more deep-seated source of perplexity and of unbelief to which we are here adverting, is not obsolete, it has not spent itself;

the piety to maintain a humble submission of thought and feeling to the Wise and Righteous Disposer of all existence. But to see a nature created in purity, qualified for perfect and endless felicity, but ruined, at the very origin, by a disaster devolving fatally on all the race-to see it in an early age of the world estranged from truth, from the love and fear of its Creator, from that, therefore, without which existence is a thing to be deplored-abandoned to all evil, till swept away by a deluge-the renovated race revolting into idolatry and iniquity, and spreading downward through ages in darkness, wickedness, and misery-no divine dispensation to enlighten and reclaim it,

which stagger our belief in Christianity, strengthened theirs.

except for one small section, and that section itself a no less flagrant proof of the desperate corruption of the nature;-the ultimate, grand re- But we have a second remark to make upon the medial visitation, Christianity, laboring in a diffi- passages we have just now cited, and it is this, cult progress and very limited extension, and soon namely:-That as the appearance of sentiments perverted from its purpose into darkness and super- such as these is characteristic of the times, and is stition for a period of a thousand years-at the an indication of what is going on around us-ocpresent hour known, and even nominally acknowl-cultly perhaps so, the diffusion of these modes of edged, by very greatly the minority of the race, feeling, through the religious community, ought at the mighty mass remaining prostrate under the in- once to be met, on the part of whoever is com fernal dominion of which countless generations of petent to the task, in a wise and effectual manner. their ancestors have been the slaves and victims- There are those who will say-Leave this sort a deplorable majority of the people in the Chris- of melancholy and unprofitable moodiness to itself; tian nations strangers to the vital power of Chris- it will never spread; it will never affect more than tianity, and a large proportion directly hostile to it; a few minds of morbid structure, similar to Fosand even the institutions pretended to be for its ter's. This is, we think, an inconsiderate conclusupport and promotion, being baneful to its virtue sion, and it is one which will be accepted only by -its progress in the work of conversion, in even those who are living in too great a bustle to find the most favored part of the world, distanced by leisure for thinking, and who, accustomed to look the progressive increase of the population; so that down, from pulpits and platforms, upon areas filled even there, (but to a fearful extent if we take the with faces, surmise little or nothing of what is world at large,) the disproportion of the faithful to going on in the secrecy of bosoms. It is quite true the irreligious is continually increasing;-the sum that you may find means for discouraging and for of all these melancholy facts being, that thousands dissipating melancholy modes of thinking; but, if of millions have passed, and thousands every day you wholly succeed in doing so, you bring a comare passing, out of the world, in no state of fitness munity that once was deep-feeling into the frivolous for a pure and happy state elsewhere. Oh, it is a shallows of literary, scientific, and sensuous impiemost confounding and appalling contemplation!" ty. What is the gain of this process to religion? -Vol. ii., p. 444. Look at the general condition of society in France ! Nothing can be more perilous than the attempt to turn off religious meditation from its path, by means that are not of homogeneous quality.

Upon passages such as the foregoing we should remark, first, that it is a style of speaking which, although not often heard, is truly characteristic of -it is symptomatic of this present era. It is not The further spread of Christianity is not merely the style of any past era. We could adduce strik-devoutly desired by Christians, but is looked for as ing illustrations of the fact, by citing what should a probable event. We ought, however, to remembe parallel passages, from the writers of successive ber that it may spread-it may continue to spread ages. To go no further back, Foster's language in the way in which, of late years, it has-superfiis not that of the sober non-conformists whom he cially, but not deeply ;-that is to say, everywhere would have called his ecclesiastical predecessors raising the tone of moral sentiment-purifying and fathers. It was in a light essentially differing the domestic atmosphere-removing from view, from this, that Baxter was accustomed to look upon throughout Christian countrics, whatever is morthe very same objects. And, assuredly, the robust ally offensive-cherishing and promoting beneficent disputants of the Westminster Assembly were not enterprises-and, in a word, diffusing, on all sides, soul-troubled in any such manner! Theologically, a vital sensitiveness, and bringing all minds into a as well as logically, and to their own entire ease habit of benevolent reflectiveness. It may do all of mind and "comfort," they dealt with, and final-this-and it may do it to an extent of which we ly determined questions, the mere thought of which cannot now calculate the consequences-and yet, broke Foster's heart! Had he, with his mournful as at present, it may be making little or no prostrains, come in their way, they would have re-gress as a deep spiritual power, evolving mighty garded him as little better than a blasphemer; and counteractive influences within the bosoms of men it is a doubt if even his hatred of prelacy would individually. What, then, ought we to anticipate have been held good for "bailing" his ears. No as the inevitable consequence? The consequence, -in their time the recovered Christianity of Lu- infallible, irresistible, is-and we ask that the imther's period had not, in any such manner, purified port of our words may be seriously considered-the the moral or the intellectual atmosphere, as is im- result of the expected and desired diffusion of plied in breathings, and in sighs, such as those of Christianity, in highly civilized countries, under its Foster's correspondence with his friends. Two present aspect of a mild, purifying, but powerless hundred years ago the great truths of the Gospel influence, is an antagonist reaction from Christianbeat strong in the trunk arteries; but had not sent ized sensibilities, upon Christianity itself, and fine feelings and a fine complexion to the surface which must bring about, unless the course of things of man's moral nature. All modes of thinking be early arrested, the substitution silently of a were barbaric, and the modes of feeling were such Christianized Pantheism. as might allow good men, with an easy conscience, Let it be remembered, that what we are now to burn one another; and such as strengthened dealing with are not those definite causes which them to endure their hour when their own time may be capable of being scientifically stated and came to be burned. The conventional ideas of the logically followed out to their effect. divine government had been compacted out of speaking of a thing so indeterminable as the moral men's recollections of the ways of the Holy Office, sensitiveness of communities, and of the conseand their experience of Star Chamber mercy. quences that are involved in the presence of this They read Scripture by a Smithfield light, and vague force. We are speaking of the nebulous were not appalled at that which we read with matter of the moral universe; but, because it is heart-stricken discomfort. The very same things imponderable, unfixed, and not to be mapped, is

We are

certain instances, and the positive evidence of science. All such discordances-whether real or apparent, will find the proper means of adjustment, readily and finally, in due time. We have no anxieties on this subject. Men "easily shaken in mind," will rid themselves of the atoms of faith which perhaps once they possessed, by the means of" difficulties," such as these. But it is not from causes so superficial that serious danger to the faith of a people is to be apprehended.

this influence therefore unimportant? If any could |pancies between the terms of biblical history in think so, we might remind them of what this same unappreciable power, slowly rising, by a few degrees yearly, and suffusing itself wider and wider, has effected in our times. The adjuncts of the national movement thrown out of our estimate, it was this silent swell of the moral sensitiveness of an entire people, that at length denounced the "trade in blacks" as a horrible crime, and which, so far as the people's will and acts could go-suppressed it. Again, the same tide of feeling, rippling upward always in the British bosom, at length denounced slavery itself as an intolerable evil, and annulled it, and paid the price, cash down, for buying relief from that anguish which the thought of slavery had come to inflict upon the keen moral sensitiveness of the British people. But where was this same mighty influence fifty years ago? Latent, yet not latent, simply because the appalling facts regarding slavery had not then been presented to the British mind-but it was latent, just as the vigorous affections of manhood-the determined energies of five-and-twenty--are asleep in the brain and bosom of the rude, reckless, purposeless schoolboy. The reflective mood had not been ripened until of late.

What we have in view is that involuntary, and suddenly affected shifting of our intellectual position, which the discoveries of astronomy and geology have brought about:-a change of position, involving a change equally great, in the apparent magnitude of all those objects in the presence of which our religious conceptions have hitherto been formed;-a change, too, in our notions both of the processes, and of the principles of creative power. We had formed our ideas, very distinctly, of what God had done, and when it was done, and why, and now, not without amazement, we read on all sides a startling comment upon the words-" My ways are not as your ways-nor my thoughts as your thoughts, saith the Lord."

To the development of the same slow-working It would be idle to imagine that these vast reveforces, must be attributed that great movement of lations of Time and Space-God's own providenour times-the Evangelic Mission to the heathen tial revelations of his own works and ways, should world; and to the same, a hundred forms of Chris- exert no influence-or that they ought to exert no tianized benevolence; and to the same, a rise in influence upon those notions of the divine govern the moral energies of the domestic economy.ment, and of the moral universe, which were Whence come the anxious inquiries of parents as formed in the dark, and during the times of our to the disposal of their children at school and after- ignorance of everything more remote from us than wards, consistently with their highest welfare? a few hundred miles, and a few hundred years. It Was a solicitude of this sort prevalent fifty years is in vain to imagine that a Chinese wall can be ago? We think not. And whence arises the ea- carried up around the celestial empire of superangerness with which books are caught up, profess-nuated theological formulas—a wall which must be ing to treat of the moral domestic economy, and of the functions and duties of the maternal character? All these things are the indications, and they are the results, of that enhancement of the moral consciousness which has been in progress in England especially, which is now in progress, and which, in its silent course, is swelling and heading itself up to act, we will not say when, or in what precise manner, upon Christianity;-yes, upon that very Christianity whence the whole influence has taken its rise.

In whatever way this looked-for reaction should be met, and whatever those means are which thoughtful men should labor to render effective for the conservation of religious belief, the motives for an early consideration of the subject, are rendered imperative by some collateral facts, the influence of which upon religious belief at large, and upon the meditative consciousness of the educated classes, has rendered itself obvious, and must become more and more so every year. The reader will know that we here refer to that indirect modification of religious notions and sentiments, that results insensibly from the spread and consolidation of the modern sister sciences-Astronomy and Geology, which, immeasurably enlarging as they do, our conceptions of the universe, in its two elements of space and time -expel a congeries of narrow errors, heretofore regarded as unquestionable truths, and open before us, at once, a Chart, and a History of the Dominions of Infinite Power and Wisdom!

We should hasten to exclude the supposition that, in thus mentioning the relation of the modern sciences to Christianity, we are thinking of anything so small and incidental as are the alleged discre

as lofty as the stars, and so impervious as to intercept all communications between that sacred enclosure, and the open world of philosophy! This cannot be done; and assuredly it ought not to be desired.

The one science-call it astronomical geology, or geological astronomy, is daily bringing home to all minds the conviction that the universe is one place-that it is built of one material—that it is governed by one set of laws, and is adapted to the support of analogous, if not of identical modes of conscious existence; and that it presents, amid infinite diversities of forms and conditions, the prevalence of principle-shall we term it, THE DREAD UNIFORMITY OF FIRST LAWS! All discoveries bear this same inference, every deduction brings forward the same conclusion. The colossal telescope-the infinitesimal analysis-which gives expression to the revelations of the telescope, say the same thing; and what else do those aërolites say, that dash upon our planet? what are they but epistles from the skies, charged with a symbolic message to this effect-That the planetary stuff is all one, and the same?

In rigid logic-logic after the fashion of the medieval theology, it makes no difference in the working of a metaphysic or ethical problem, whether the consequence attaches to "few-that is to eight souls," or to millions. Whatever it is that can be made to appear to be certain, or probable, as relating to the few, must be granted to be certain, or probable, also, even when the conclusion is discovered to embrace the well-being of the million. But it is not, and it will not be the same in relation to the meditative consciousness-to that