upon an article on the state of the French church. From this letter, dated the 20th of December last, we translate a few paragraphs, which were written, it is true, for the meridian of Paris; but they may not be wholly inapplicable further west.

"For some years past, we have heard much talk about the religious reaction. It is proclaimed from the house-tops; it is announced in all the pulpits, and in all the books. But when we begin to search after this strange phenomenon, what do we find? We enter pretty little churches, with gilded ceilings, well warmed and carpeted, where one finds himself too comfortably placed on earth to be able to spend a thought on heaven. We hear the Credo sung with a waltz accompaniment, and dancing tunes played at the elevation of the Host. If a sermon is preached, the speaker feels obliged to disguise the objects of worship before presenting them to us,- to cover them up under all the frippery required by the taste of the age; and how can it be expected, that preachers should prove the divine character of that, which they themselves are striving to render common and secular. Think you, that they talk to us about the Gospel, and about Christian morals? No; no such thing. They preach about Pythagoras, and Epicurus, and Spinoza; or they have something to say about the invasions of the Goths, borrowing prosy remarks from writers on the philosophy of history. We go away from the church asking ourselves, what we have to do with Epicurus, and whether this is what is meant by a religious reaction.

"We find a new class of Christians springing up around us in the fashionable and literary world, who make a parade of their melancholy and their religious faith in halting verses, and prate about the Bhagavad Gita and the Zendavista, and the other topics of those lectures on philosophy, which are designed for people who wish to talk about every thing in general and nothing in particular. And these insipid persons, incapable alike of skepticism or belief, are constantly wearying us with harangues about the religious reaction.

"You will not suspect me, Sir, of the presumption and bad

taste of wishing to read the clergy a lecture on theology. I do but give you the impression of those who live in this secular world, when I say, that perhaps the church was never in a more dangerous situation than it is at present. The greatest proof of the strength of Catholicism is, that it is able to resist, not an assault, not a war, but the peace, the conciliatory measures, the universal toleration, with which it is surrounded. We ask only for faith of one kind or another; we accept every thing, and we would invent a religion, rather than be without one altogether. It behoves the members of the church to organize and turn to profit this necessity of believing something, which is now appearing amongst us, and, above all, to arrest it in its almost irresistible inclination towards mysticism.

"The priests have not understood this condition of things. They have mistaken this readiness to accept any faith for a religious reaction. The misfortune of Christianity is, that they no longer fight against it; it is embalmed, it is sanctified; it is canonized like a saint. But you know better than I, Sir, that saints are only canonized after their death. It is dangerous to allow one's self to be made a relic of. The priests have gone to sleep, trusting to this perfidious calm. Having hardly escaped from the terrible attack of Voltaire, they hailed what was only disgust and weariness at materialism as a disposition to return to religion. In their eyes, every one who was a spiritualist became a religious man; every one who repudiated the Encyclopédie, became a Christian. In their eagerness to rescue all minds from the philosophy of the last century, they accepted professions of faith, without being at all rigid in respect to rites and doctrines. They opened the gates to religious liberalism. They made a breach, and through this breach have entered pell-mell, pietism, sentimentalism, symbolism, and all sorts of Germanism. They no longer preach upon morals and doctrines, but upon Christian philosophy, and all kinds of historical and æsthetical generalities. At the present time, we want nothing better than religious belief; but, if we must accept, as articles of faith, all that we hear from the pulpit, and as words of the Gospel, all the pitiable rhapsodies and contemptible contests about words, which are published by those who call themselves

your organs, no wonder that our faith wavers and our hearts incline to doubt."

This is a lively picture of the confusion that results, when an erratic speculative philosophy assumes the name and garb of religion, without any of its spirit, and substitutes its own vague and unmeaning generalities in place of the vital truths of Natural Theology, and the doctrines of the Gospel. It remains to be seen, whether the study of the same writers and the prevalence of the same tastes will ever produce a counterpart to this state of things on our side of the Atlantic. One security against such an evil consists in the fact, that the antecedent circumstances in the two cases are different. We are not recovering from the prolonged torpor of materialism and infidelity, in order to be thrown by a reaction into the wilds of a mystical philosophy, and a heated, vague, and unsettled faith. It is an idle task to preach against sensualism and the empirical philosophy to the descendants of the Puritans; it is merely apeing the manners and the sentiments of a few French declaimers, whose words have no applicability or meaning for the western world. There are no admirers of Condillac among us; and, if there are a few imitators of the Baron d'Holbach, their errors were not caused by the prevalence of one system of philosophy, nor will they be converted by the introduction of another. Metaphysical arguments will not cure that blindness and insensibility of heart and intellect, of which ignorance and heedlessness are the primary and the sustaining causes. Instead of calling upon such men to close their eyes and ears, and distrust the information given by their senses, for fear they should be deluded by empiricism, or some other philosophical bugbear, rather bid them open their minds and hearts to the sights and sounds of creation, and hear and see everywhere proofs of the being

of a God. Preach the Gospel to them instead of metaphysical speculations, remembering the pregnant aphorism of Bacon; "As to seek philosophy in divinity is to seek the dead amongst the living, so to seek divinity in philosophy is to seek the living amongst the dead."

VII.

BERKELEY AND HIS PHILOSOPHY.*

BISHOP BERKELEY is remembered on this side of the Atlantic chiefly from his benevolent scheme of founding a college in Bermuda, to assist in the propagation of Christianity among the Indians. In the furtherance of this project, he resided about two years at Newport, Rhode Island, and his benefactions to Yale College and the clergy in his vicinity displayed the deep interest he took in the cause of education and religion in this country, and the catholic spirit that prompted him to aid an institution directed by men, who dissented from his views of doctrine and church government. His philosophical works are not generally known, though the allusions to them are frequent in the writings of other and more popular metaphysicians. Men are disposed to accept upon trust the reputation of that class of writers, to which he belonged, or to glean a scanty knowledge of their doctrines from publications of the present day. Here, they are alluded to or quoted for the purpose of censure or refutation, and the view which the reader gains is distorted and partial. Few authors are more talked about and less studied, than Locke, Berkeley, and Hume.

* From the Christian Examiner for July, 1838.

The Works of GEORGE BERKELEY, D. D., Bishop of Cloyne. To which are added an Account of his Life, and several of his Letters to Thomas Prior, Esq., Dean Gervais, Mr. Pope, &c. London. 1837. 8vo.