RENUNCIATION OF INFIDELITY.

Well-directed efforts are unceasingly made to check the progress of infidelity, and this rather by steady and small-voiced operations than by more pretentious means. It affords us much pleasure to quote an instance of this progress (to use a cant word of the day), recorded in the Times journal of August 5, 1858:

"Some years ago there was a rather numerous society of persons at Nottingham, chiefly operatives, who professed to disbelieve the tenets of the Christian religion, and set up a peculiar creed of their own. Great numbers of the working people were from time to time attracted to the lectures of these free-thinkers, and some conversions were made; but after the first excitement of the thing was over the members of the party began to drop off, and under the influence of repeated discussions between the leaders of the sceptics and various religious ministers of the town, particularly the Rev. J. W. Brooks, the vicar, the society gradually collapsed, and last week its president, a framework knitter, named Jonathan Barber, publicly announced his secession from the doctrines he had so long advocated. After a lecture by the vicar in the school-room, Barker-gate, Barber stated that it was about 14 years since he and other infidels first met in that room, on the invitation of their much esteemed vicar, for the purpose of holding discussions on infidelity; and he now thought it right publicly to acknowledge in the same place that throughout those discussions he had had misgivings in regard to the existence of a God, and that for the last five years he had been uneasy in his mind with respect to Christianity. This uneasiness increased when he found himself upon a sick bed, and on reviewing his creed he found it worthless in the prospect of death. He had therefore determined, after a considerable struggle with his pride, to avow his entire renunciation of his infidel sentiments, and his belief in Divine revelation. A working man named Start, in proposing a vote of thanks to the vicar for his very able and convincing lecture, to which he had listened with the deepest attention and found singularly useful to himself, avowed that he had held the same infidel sentiments as Barber, but had been led to see his error, and now publicly thanked God, who had in great mercy brought him out of darkness into His marvellous light. Two other men in the room admitted a similar change of sentiments. The infidel party in Nottingham is now broken up."

MATERIALISM OF THE DEVELOPMENT THEORY.

This theory (see pp. 11-13) when taken in its full extent, is manifest Materialism. The animals of lowest organization have been derived, it asserts, from inanimate matter by some ordinary and general process of nature; and those of higher forms have been derived from the lower, till man was finally arrived at the crowning point. Thus, not only are all the ordinary phenomena of organic life, but likewise all our intellectual and moral attributes, derived primarily from inert matter by the operation of natural causes, without any separate creation, either of animal life, or of the spiritual life of man. The advocates of the theory will, doubtless, admit the former fluid and incandescent state of

The Metempsychosis.

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the globe; and it then follows, necessarily, from their theory that the noblest qualities of man's intellect, the tenderest feelings of his heart, the deepest consciousness of his moral responsibilities, and his highest aspirations for the future, must all have been contained in a molten mass of matter, to be finally evolved from it by natural causes a few thousand years ago. Yet there are men who, in the confidence of their own intuitive insight into the Creator's ways, shrink not from conclusions which, we doubt not, will appear so preposterous to most of our readers.

These views present one of the alternatives if we reject the theory of successive creations, and the permanence of species in the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Such views differ from those of the author of an Essay on the Philosophy of Creation, by a distinguished member of the University of Oxford. According to this latter theory, the offensive part of the materialism is avoided, by regarding the spiritual part of man's nature as the special object of a separate and independent creation; while, to the merely animal part he is indebted for the same material elements and natural causes as those from which the brute creation is supposed to derive its origin.

Though this theory avoids the more monstrous extravagance of development, which, in the Vestiges of Creation, assumed the unequivocal form of materialism,-it loses the greater simplicity of the more unrestricted theory; and still involves, what appears to us, the enormous difficulty of conceiving how the sensation, volition, memory, foresight, and all the instincts of animals, can be derivable from inanimate matter. We believe that a careful consideration of such theories must generally lead to increased confidence in that which maintains that the Creator, for the introduction of new classes of animate beings from time to time, has called into action powers altogether different from those which we recognise in the ordinary course of nature.—W. Hopkins, F.R.S.; Cambridge Essays. 1857.

COMBUSTION-THE METEMPSYCHOSIS.

Berthollet, in his Chemical Statics, observes: "When bodies are burnt, none of their principles are destroyed: they had previously formed together one kind of compound, and they now separate from each other, at the high temperature to which they are exposed, in order to form others with the vital air in contact with them and such of the principles as cannot unite with the vital air, viz. the earth, some saline and some metallic particles, compose the cinder. The new compounds formed are carbonic acid and water. The proportion of these varies according to the proportion of the carbonic particles, and of the hydrogen that had been contained in the inflammable body.

It was said of old, that the Creator weighed the dust and measured the water when he made the world. The first quantity is here still, and though man can gather and scatter, move, mix, and unmix, yet he can destroy nothing: the putrefaction of one thing is a preparation for the being, and the bloom, and the beauty, of another. Something gathers up all fragments, and nothing is lost. Thus, the laws by which matter is modified, effect so many desirable purposes, and at the same time prevent the destruction of those elementary principles which are actually essential to the preservation of the world.

An

Perhaps it was in some such light as this that Pythagoras meant the Metempsychosis to be understood. It might be a curious inquiry, whether or not he received the doctrine from the Egyptian priests, as they from the philosophers of India. ancient Shastre, called the Geeta, has a beautiful stanza upon this subject, in which the varied form that nature assumes is compared to a change of dress. (See Halhed's Account of the Hindoo Land.) Ovid, in the speech he forms for Pythagoras, compares it to wax, where the substance is always the same though the outward form is varying. Dr. Darwin thus

pursues the same idea: "Hence when a monarch or a mushroom dies, A while extinct the organic matter lies; But, as a few short hours or years revolve, Alchemic powers the changing mass dissolve; Emerging matter from the grave returns, Feels new desires, with new sensations burns: With youth's first bloom a finer sense acquires, And loves and pleasures from the rising fires.' Metempsychologic appellations are used in a good as well.as bad sense. Thus, the designation of wolf has been applied to St. Paul; Christ is the lion of the tribe of Judah, although Satan, "as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour."

The doctrine of Pythagoras and Plato is humorously illustrated in the Dreamer, (a series of dreams forming an indirect satire on the abuses of religion, literature, &c. by Dr. William King,) by quotations from sacred as well as profane writers, e. g. Isaiah, lvi. 10, 11; Nahum, ii. 12:

A judicious critic, (Dr. King writes,) or observant reader, will scarce allow that more than four or five, in the long catalogue of Roman Emperors, had any humanity; and although they might perhaps have a just claim to be styled Lords of the Earth, they had no right to the title of Man. There is an excellent dissertation in Erasmus on the princely qualities of the Eagle and the Lion; wherein that great wit has demonstrated that Emperors and Kings are very justly represented by those animals, or that there must be a similarity in their souls, as all their actions are similar and correspondent.

What is Superstition?

"TO DIE CHILDLESS."

THE origin of the word Superstition has been described as some mysterious belief respecting the relations between the Dead and the Living the deceased and those who survive them-the World that is seen, and the World that is not seen.

Cicero thus defines the word: "Not only Philosophers, but all our forefathers dydde ever separate Superstition from true Religion; for they which prayed all day that theyr children mought overlyve them, were called superstitious; whiche name afterwards was larger extended."-Old Translation.

Lactantius, however, says "the word got its meaning from the worship of deceased parents and relatives, by the Superstites or Survivors; or from men holding the memory of the dead in superstitious veneration."

Cicero and Lactantius thus agree in connecting the word with some visionary notion respecting the relation between the Dead and the Living who survive them.

The question may be said to turn mainly upon the rites of sepulture. The Ancients believed that the manes of unburied men were restless and unhappy, and haunted the earth; and in this point of view they deemed it unfortunate not to have a child to close their eyes after death, and to perform duly the last solemn rites: accordingly, they even adopted children with this view, rather than die without survivors.

This may not seem a very satisfactory solution of the matter, as it might be asked, Why should one's own children be absolutely required? Could not others perform the last rites? The question then still remains: Why was it considered so terrible a misfortune to survive one's children? It is obvious that there was something more at bottom than mere natural feelings.

Passing over the use of Prayers to the Dead,* and Prayers for the Dead, among the Ancients, we come to the Doctrine of Vicarious Sacrifice.

The Ancients believed that the Death of one person might be prevented by that of another. From hence came the custom of those Devotements we read of, made for the life of a friend, a nation, or a prince.

We now proceed to illustrate the belief of the Ancients in the importance of securing to themselves the rites of Sepulture by their surviving children. Solomon declares, in Ecclesiastes vi. 3: If a man beget an hundred children, and live many years. and that he have no burial: I say that an untimely birth is better than he. Bishop Pearson, in treating of the Fifth Article of the Creed, in which, arguing that Hades is a place, and not a state, refers "to the judgment of the Ancient Greeks," because there were many which they believed to be dead, and to continue in the state of death, which yet they believed not to be in Hades, as those who died before their time, and those whose bodies were unburied.

The souls of the latter bodies were thought to be kept out of Hades till their funerals were performed; and the souls of those who died an untimely or violent death, were kept from the same place until the time of their natural death should come.

Bishop Pearson then quotes from Virgil's account of the souls who wander and flit about the shores of Hades for a hundred years. Thus he (Virgil) is understood in the description of the funeral of Polydorus, Æn. iii. 62:

Ergo instauramus Polydoro funus, et ingens
Aggeritur tumulo tellus :

Condimus.

animamque sepulchro

Not that anima does here signify the body, as some have observed, but that the soul of Polydorus was at rest when his body had received funeral rites,ad quietem inferni, according to the petition of Palinurus. And that the soul of Polydorus was so wandering about the place where his body lay unburied appeareth out of Euripides in Hecuba; and in the Troades of the same poet this is acknowledged by the Chorus. And when their bodies were buried, then their souls passed into Hades, to the rest. So was it with Polydorus, and that man mentioned in the history of the philosopher of Athenagoras, whose umbra or phasma, (according to Pliny,) walked about after his death.

"When a father mourned grievously for his child that was taken away suddenly, he made an Image of him that was then dead, and worshipped him as a god, ordaining to those under him Ceremonies and Sacrifices. Thus, in process of time, this wicked custom prevailed, and was kept as a law."