their violent internal divisions; we must listen to the strifes of their schismatic parties, when one said, 'I am of Paul-and another, I am of Apollos;' we must study the true character of those early heresies which even denied the resurrection, and advocated impurity and lawlessness, claiming the right to sin 'that grace might abound,' 'defiling the mind and conscience' of their followers, and making them abominable and disobedient, and to every good work reprobate;' we must trace the extent to which Greek philosophy, Judaising formalism, and Eastern superstition, blended their tainting influence with the pure fermentation of the new leaven which was at last to leaven the whole mass of civilised society. To this formidable list of requirements must be added some knowledge of the various countries and places visited by Paul; and as relating to the wide range of illustration, Mr Howson mentions a circumstance connected with our naval hero Nelson. In the account of the apostle's voyage to Italy, when overtaken by the storm (Acts xxvii.), it is mentioned that the ship was anchored by the stern; Mr Howson cites some cases in which this has been done in modern times, adding: There is still greater interest in quoting the instance of Copenhagen, not only from the accounts we have of the precision with which each ship let go her anchors astern as she arrived nearly opposite her appointed station, but because it is said that Nelson stated after the battle, that he had that morning been reading the twenty-seventh chapter of the Acts of the Apostles.' [The Martyrdom of Paul.] world doth acknowledge God, there Paul of Tarsus is revered, as the great teacher of a universal redemption and a catholic religion-the herald of glad tidings to all mankind. Mr Conybeare, in 1855, published a volume of Essays, Ecclesiastical and Social, reprinted with additions from the Edinburgh Review. In these he treats of the Mormons, the Welsh Clergy, Church Parties, Temperance, &c. His views on church parties, and on the different phases of infidelity, are further displayed in a novel-Perversion, three volumes, 1856-a very interesting and clever tale of the times.' The ingenious author died prematurely in 1857. The family of Mr Conybeare had been distinguished for two generations. His grandfather, JOHN JOSIAS CONYBEARE (1779-1824), was successively Professor of Anglo-Saxon and of Poetry in the university of Oxford, and wrote a work on the Interpretation of Scripture for the Bampton Lectures. His father, WILLIAM DANIEL CONYBEARE (17871857), the dean of Llandaff, was one of the earliest promoters of the Geological Society, and a frequent and valuable contributor to its published Transactions. To the Bampton Lectures he was also a contributor, having written a work On the Fathers during the Anti-Nicene Period, 1839; with a series of Theological Lectures, 1834. DR R. C. TRENCH. The dean of Westminster, DR RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH (born in 1807), first earned distinction, as already stated, by his Justin Martyr, and other poems, some of which have gone through several editions. He graduated at Trinity College, As the martyr and his executioners passed on, their Cambridge, in 1829, and was some years a curate way was crowded with a motley multitude of goers and in Hampshire. Lord Ashburton presented him to comers between the metropolis and its harbour-mer- the rectory of Itchin Stoke, and the bishop of chants hastening to superintend the unloading of their Oxford appointed him his examining chaplain. In cargoes-sailors eager to squander the profits of their 1845-46, he was Hulsean Lecturer at Cambridge; last voyage in the dissipations of the capital-officials then Theological Professor of King's College, of the government, charged with the administration London; and on the death of Dr Buckland, in 1856, of the provinces, or the command of the legions on Dean of Westminster. The theological works of the Euphrates or the Rhine-Chaldean astrologers- Dr Trench are-Notes on the Parables and Miracles; Phrygian eunuchs-dancing-girls from Syria, with their Five Sermons Preached before the University of Campainted turbans-mendicant priests from Egypt howling bridge, 1856; St Augustine's Exposition of the Sermon for Osiris-Greek adventurers, eager to coin their on the Mount, with Introductory Essay; a volume of national cunning into Roman gold-representatives of his Hulsean Lectures; Synonyms of the New Testathe avarice and ambition, the fraud and lust, the super- ment; &c. The last of these works evinced extensive stition and intelligence, of the imperial world. Through learning as well as acute philological observation, the dust and tumult of that busy throng, the small and the dean has also critically examined the troop of soldiers threaded their way silently, under the English language. His treatises on the Study of bright sky of an Italian midsummer. They were march- Words, and on English' Past and Present, are full ing, though they knew it not, in a procession more truly of curious information. Such remarks as the followtriumphal than any they had ever followed, in the training evince the author's study of our language and of general or emperor, along the Sacred Way. Their prisoner, now at last and for ever delivered from his captivity, rejoiced to follow his Lord 'without the gate.' The place of execution was not far distant; and there the sword of the headsman ended his long course of sufferings, and released that heroic soul from that feeble body. Weeping friends took up his corpse, and carried it for burial to those subterranean labyrinths, where, through many ages of oppression, the persecuted church found refuge for the living and sepulchres for the dead. Thus died the apostle, the prophet, and the martyr; bequeathing to the church, in her government and her discipline, the legacy of his apostolic labours; leaving his prophetic words to be her living oracles; pouring forth his blood to be the seed of a thousand martyrdoms. Thenceforth, among the glorious company of the apostles, among the goodly fellowship of the prophets, among the noble army of martyrs, his name has stood pre-eminent. And wheresoever the holy church throughout all the 731 literature: [The Word 'Its.'] One is surprised to discover of how late introduction the word 'its' proves to be into the language. Through the whole of our authorised version of the Bible 'its' does not once occur; the work which it now performs being acccomplished, as our rustics would now accomplish it, by 'his' or 'her,' applied as freely to inanimate things as to persons, or else by 'thereof' or 'of it.' 'Its' occurs, I believe, only three times in all Shakspeare, and I doubt whether Milton has once admitted it into Paradise Lost, although, when that was composed, others freely allowed it.* How soon all this was forgotten we have striking evidence in the fact that * In illustration of Dr Trench's remark, we may note the use of the word her by Milton in describing the form of Satan: His form had not yet lost all her original brightness.' Dryden, when, in one of his fault-finding moods with the great men of the preceding generation, he is taking Ben Jonson to task for general inaccuracy in his English diction, quotes this line from Catiline: Though heaven should speak with all his wrath at once, and proceeds, heaven is ill syntax with his;' while, in fact, up to within forty or fifty years of the time when Dryden began to write, no other syntax was known. Curious, also, is it to note that in the long controversy which followed on the publication, by Chatterton, of the poems which he ascribed to a monk Rowley, living in the fifteenth century, no one appealed at the time to such lines as the following: Life and all its goods I scorn, followed in the same path. Shakspeare loves them so well, that besides often citing them, and innumerable covert allusions, rapid side glances at them, which we are in danger of missing unless at home in the proverbs of England, several of his plays, as Measure for Measure, All's Well that Ends Well, have popular proverbs for their titles. And Cervantes, a name only inferior to Shakspeare, has not left us in doubt in respect of the affection with which he regarded them. Every reader of Don Quixote will remember his squire, who sometimes cannot open his mouth but there drop from it almost as many proverbs as words. I might name others who held the proverb in honour-men, who though they may not attain to these first three, are yet deservedly accounted great; as Plautus, the most genial of Latin poets; Rabelais and Montaigne, the two as at once decisive of the fact that the poems were not most original of French authors; and how often Fuller, of the age which they pretended. From words to proverbs is a short step, and Dr Trench has given us a volume entitled, On the Lessons in Proverbs, 1855. He treats of the form and generation of proverbs, and of the poetry, wit, or wisdom contained in them. Lord John Russell, we may remark, is said to have given a happy definition of the term proverb: The wit of one man and the wisdom of many.' The dean vindicates the importance of proverbs: [On Proverbs.] The fact that they please the people, and have pleased them for ages-that they possess so vigorous a principle of life, as to have maintained their ground, ever new and ever young, through all the centuries of a nation's existence-nay, that many of them have pleased not one nation only, but many, so that they have made themselves a home in the most different lands-and further, that they have, not a few of them, come down to us from remotest antiquity, borne safely upon the waters of that great stream of time, which has swallowed so much beneath its waves-all this, I think, may well make us pause should we be tempted to turn away from them with anything of indifference or disdain. And then, further, there is this to be considered, that some of the greatest poets, the profoundest philosophers, the most learned scholars, the most genial writers in every kind, have delighted in them, have made large and frequent use of them, have bestowed infinite labour on the gathering and elucidating of them. In a fastidious age, indeed, and one of false refinement, they may go nearly or quite out of use among the so-called upper classes. No gentleman, says Lord Chesterfield, or 'No man of fashion,' as I think is his exact word, 'ever uses a proverb.' And with how fine a touch of nature Shakspeare makes Coriolanus, the man who with all his greatness is entirely devoid of all sympathy for the people, to utter his scorn of them in scorn of their proverbs, and of their frequent employment of these: * Hang ’em ! They said they were an hungry, sighed forth proverbs; Coriolanus, Act. I., Sc. 1. But that they have been always dear to the true intellectual aristocracy of a nation, there is abundant evidence to prove. Take but these three names in evidence, which, though few, are in themselves a host. Aristotle made a collection of proverbs; nor did he count that he was herein doing ought unworthy of his great reputation, however some of his adversaries may have made this a charge against him. He is said to have been the first who did so, though many afterwards whom Coleridge has styled the wittiest of writers, justifies this praise in his witty employment of some old proverb; nor can any thoroughly understand and enjoy Hudibras, no one but will miss a multitude of its keenest allusions, who is not thoroughly familiar with the proverbial literature of England. Their habitat, or native place, he thinks, is easily perceived: Thus our own Make hay while the sun shines, is truly English, and could have had its birth only under such variable skies as ours-not certainly in those southern lands where, during the summer time at least, the sun always shines. In the same way there is a fine Cornish proverb in regard of obstinate wrongheads, who will take no counsel except from calamities, who dash themselves to pieces against obstacles, which with a little prudence and foresight they might have avoided. It is this: He who will not be ruled by the rudder must be ruled by the rock. It sets us at once upon some rocky and wreck-strewn coast; we feel that it could never have been the proverb of an inland people. Do not talk Arabic in the house of a Moor-that is, because there thy imperfect knowledge will be detected at once-this we should confidently affirm to be Spanish, wherever we met it. Big and empty, like the Heidelberg tun, could have its home only in Germany; that enormous vessel, known as the Heidelberg tun, constructed to contain nearly 300,000 flasks, having now stood empty for hundreds of years. As regards, too, the following, Not every parish priest can wear Dr Luther's shoes, we could be in no doubt to what people it appertains. Neither could there be any mistake about this solemn Turkish proverb, Death is a black camel which kneels at every man's gate, in so far at least as that it would be at once ascribed to the East. BISHOP BLOMFIELD AND OTHER CAMBRIDGE DIVINES. The scholarship of Cambridge has been well supported by the late bishop of London, DR CHARLES JAMES BLOMFIELD (1786-1857), and DR S. T. BLOOMFIELD, vicar of Bisbrooke. The former edited Eschylus and Callimachus, and wrote some theological treatises, including Lectures on the Gospel of St John. Dr Bloomfield's Greek Testament, with copious Notes, 1832, is now in its ninth edition, and his College and School Greek Testament supplied a desideratum in scholastic literature. The REV. HENRY ALFORD, of Trinity, vicar of Wimeswould, Leicestershire, like Dr Trench, commenced author as a poet-Poems and Poetical Fragments, 1831; The School of the Heart; &c.--but his Hulsean Lectures, 1841, his various collections of Sermons, Greek Testament, with notes, &c., have given him a reputation as a divine and a scholar. The REV. CHARLES HARDWICK, of St Catherine's Hall, has written a valuable History of the Christian of my fall. It had, it seems, been reclaimed by the good old man who had sent it to me, and who doubtless concluded that I should have no more need of books in this life. He was wrong; for there has been nothing in this life which I have needed more. I asked for this book with much earnestness, and was answered by signs which I could not comprehend. Church, 1853; a History of the Thirty-nine Articles, the book which had so much interested me in the day 1851; and Sermons, 1853. DR E. HAROLD BROWNE, the Norrisian Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge, has also given an Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles, 1850; a work on the Prophecies, 1836; &c. DR JOHN JAMES BLUNT (17941855), Margaret Professor of Divinity, was a voluminous and popular writer-his chief works being arguments on the Veracity of the Books of Moses, the Gospel and Acts, &c.; a History of the Church during the Three First Centuries, Sermons, &c. The REV. WILLIAM GOODE, rector of Allhallows, London, has been a vigorous opponent of the Oxford Tractarians, and author of other theological works -The Gifts of the Spirit, 1834; The Established Church, 1884; The Divine Rule of Faith and Practice, 1842; &c. DR KITTO. DR JOHN KITTO (1804-1854) devoted himself, amidst many discouragements, to the illustration of the sacred Scriptures. He was a native of Plymouth, the son of humble parents, and a fall from the roof of a house, a few days after he had completed his twelfth year, deprived him of the sense of hearing. His description of the calamity is simple and touching: I was very slow in learning that my hearing was entirely gone. The unusual stillness of all things was grateful to me in my utter exhaustion; and if in this half-awakened state, a thought of the matter entered my mind, I ascribed it to the unusual care and success of my friends in preserving silence around me. I saw them talking, indeed, to one another, and thought that out of regard to my feeble condition they spoke in whispers, because I heard them not. The truth was revealed to me in consequence of my solicitude about 736 'Why do you not speak?' I cried. 'Pray let me have and the book.' This seemed to create some confusion; at length some one, more clever than the rest, hit upon the happy expedient of writing upon a slate, that the book had been reclaimed by the owner, and that I could not in my weak state be allowed to read. 'But,' I said in great astonishment, why do you write to me; why not speak? Speak, speak!' Those who stood around the bed exchanged significant looks of concern, and the writer soon displayed upon his slate the awful words-'YOU ARE DEAF! Did not this utterly crush me? By no means. In my then weakened condition nothing like this could affect me. Besides, I was a child; and to a child the full extent of such a calamity could not be at once apparent. However, I knew not the future-it was well I did not; and there was nothing to shew me that I suffered under more than a temporary deafness, which in a few days might pass away. It was left for time to shew me the sad realities of the condition to which I was reduced. The deaf boy, after his recovery, was placed in the workhouse, until some employment could be found for him. He was put apprentice to a shoemaker, who used him with great cruelty, but an appeal to the magistrates procured his release from this tyranny; and being assisted, in his nineteenth year, to publish a volume of essays and letters, friends came forward, and he was enabled to follow out his strong bias for theological literature. He spent ten years in travelling and residing abroad, the result of which appeared in his Biblical criticism and illustrations, and in his account of the Scripture Lands, 1850. On his return to England, in 1833, he wrote for the Penny Magazine a series of papers called The Deaf Traveller, and ever afterwards was actively engaged in literature. He edited The Pictorial Bible, the Journal of Sacred Literature, and the Cyclopædia of Biblical Literature; also a valuable work, Daily Bible Illustrations. Two small volumes, entitled The Lost Senses, one on deafness and the other on blindness, were produced by Dr Kitto, and are interesting from the facts and anecdotes they contain. He concludes that the blind are not so badly off as the deaf. 'It is indeed possible that, so far as regards merely animal sensation, the blind man is in a worse condition than the deaf; but in all that regards the culture of the mind, he has infinitely the advantage, while his full enjoyment of society, from which the other is excluded, keeps up a healthy exercise of his mental faculties, and maintains him in that cheerful frame of mind, which is as generally observed among the blind, as the want of it is among the deaf.' A pension of £100 was settled upon Dr Kitto by the government. He went abroad to recruit his health, which had been injured by too close application, but died at Canstadt, near Stuttgard, in his fifty-first year. HENRY ROGERS. Few books of religious controversy have been so popular as The Eclipse of Faith, or a Visit to a Religious Sceptic, 1852. This work went through five editions within two years. Though the name of the author is not prefixed, The Eclipse is known to be the production of MR HENRY ROGERS, one of the professors at the Independent College, Birming-involuntarily escaped me! But if the last be impossible, ham. Mr Rogers officiated for some time as minister at least the gospels must cease to exist before infidelity of an Independent congregation, but was forced to can succeed. Yes, before infidels can prevent men from relinquish his charge on account of ill health. He thinking as they have ever done of Christ, they must has been a contributor to the Edinburgh Review, blot out the gentle words with which, in the presence and a collection of his various papers has been of austere hypocrisy, the Saviour welcomed that timid published under the title of Essays: Contributions guilt that could only express its silent love in an agony to the Edinburgh Review, three volumes, 1850-55. of tears; they must blot out the words addressed to In 1856, Mr Rogers published an Essay on the Life the dying penitent, who, softened by the majestic and Genius of Thomas Fuller, with Selections from patience of the mighty sufferer, detected at last the his Writings. He has also contributed some short Monarch under the veil of sorrow, and cast an imploring biographies to the new edition of the Encyclopædia glance to be remembered by Him when He came into Britannica. Learned, eloquent, and liberal in senHis kingdom;' they must blot out the scene in which timent, Mr Rogers is an honour to the Dissenting the demoniacs sat listening at His feet, and 'in their body. The Eclipse was written in reply to Mr F. right mind; they must blot out the remembrance of W. Newman's Phases of Faith, noticed in a previous the tears which He shed at the grave of Lazarus-not page. Mr Rogers adopts the plan of sending to a surely for him whom He was about to raise, but in pure missionary in the Pacific Ocean an account of the sympathy with the sorrows of humanity-for the myriad myriads of desolate mourners, who could not, with religious distractions in this country. All the controversies and new theological opinions, English Mary, fly to him, and say: Lord, if thou hadst been and German, which have been agitated within the here, my mother, brother, sister, had not died!' they last twenty years are discussed, and a considerable must blot out the record of those miracles which charm part of the reasoning is in the form of dialogue. of the truth of His doctrine, but as they illustrate the us, not only as the proof of His mission, and guarantees The various interlocutors state their opinions fully, benevolence of His character and are types of the and are answered by other parties. Deism is repre- spiritual cures His gospel can yet perform; they must sented by a disciple of Professor Newman, who blot out the scenes of the sepulchre, where love and draws most of his arguments from the Phases veneration lingered, and saw what was never seen of Faith. A new edition of this work being before, but shall henceforth be seen to the end of time called for, Mr Newman added to it a Reply to the the tomb itself irradiated with angelic forms, and Eclipse of Faith, 1854, and Mr Rogers rejoined bright with the presence of Him who brought life and with A Defence of the Eclipse of Faith. There is immortality to light; they must blot out the scene a good deal of vigorous thought and sarcasm in where deep and grateful love wept so passionately, and Mr Rogers's Eclipse and Defence, while in logical found Him unbidden at her side, type of ten thousand acuteness he is vastly superior to his opponent. times ten thousand, who have sought the grave to weep Occasionally he rises into a strain of pure eloquence, there,' and found joy and consolation in Him whom, as in the following passage: though unseen, they loved;' they must blot out the discourses in which He took leave of his disciples, the majestic accents of which have filled so many departing souls with patience and with triumph; they must blot out the yet sublimer words in which He declares himself the resurrection and the life'-words which have led so many millions more to breathe out their spirits with childlike trust, and to believe, as the gate of death closed behind them, that they would see Him who is invested with the 'keys of the invisible world,' 'who opens and no man shuts, and shuts and no man opens,' letting in through the portal which leads to immortality the radiance of the skies; they must blot out, they must destroy these and a thousand other such things, before they can prevent Him having the pre-eminence who loved, because He loved us, to call himself the Son of Man,' though angels called him the 'Son of God.' It is in vain to tell men it is an illusion. If it be an illusion, every variety of experiment proves it to be inveterate, and it will not be dissipated by a million of Strausses and Newmans! Probatum est. At His feet guilty humanity, of diverse races and nations, for eighteen hundred years, has come to pour forth in faith and love its sorrows, and finds there 'the peace which the world can neither give nor take away.' Myriads of aching heads and weary hearts have found, and will find, repose there, and have invested Him with veneration, love, and gratitude, which will never, never be paid to any other name than His.' [The Character of the Saviour.] And now what, after all, does the carping criticism of this chapter amount to? Little as it is in itself, it absolutely vanishes; it is felt that the Christ thus portrayed cannot be the right interpretation of the history, in the face of all those glorious scenes with which the evangelical narrative abounds, but of which there is here an entire oblivion. But humanity will not forget them; men still wonder at the 'gracious words which proceeded out of Christ's mouth,' and persist in saying, 'Never man spake like this man.' The brightness of the brightest names pales and wanes before the radiance which shines from the person of Christ. The scenes at the tomb of Lazarus, at the gate of Nain, in the happy family at Bethany, in the upper room' where He instituted the feast which should for ever consecrate His memory, and bequeathed to his disciples the legacy of His love; the scenes in the Garden of Gethsemane, on the summit of Calvary, and at the sepulchre; the sweet remembrance of the patience with which He bore wrong, the gentleness with which he rebuked it, and the love with which he forgave it; the thousand acts of benign condescension by which He well earned for himself, from self-righteous pride and censorious hypocrisy, the name of the 'friend of publicans and sinners;' these, and a hundred things more, which crowd those concise memorials of love and sorrow with such prodigality of beauty and of pathos, will still continue to charm and attract the soul of humanity, and on these the highest genius, as well as the humblest mediocrity, will love to dwell. These things lisping infancy loves to hear on its mother's knees, and over them age, with its gray locks, bends in devoutest reverence. No; before the infidel can prevent the influence of these compositions, he must get rid of the gospels themselves, or he must supplant them by fictions yet more wonderful! Ah, what bitter irony has ISAAC TAYLOR A long series of works on theology and mental philosophy-ingenious in argument, and often eloquent though peculiar in style-have proceeded from the pen of MR ISAAC TAYLOR, a retired student residing at Stamford Rivers, near Ongar, Essex. Mr Taylor's father was preacher in an Independent chapel at Ongar, and there the essayist was born about the year 1789. The first, and perhaps the best of his works, is The Natural History of Enthusiasm, 1829. At that time the belief that a bright era of renovation, union, and extension, presently awaited the Christian Church was generally entertained. Mr Taylor participated, he says, in the cheering hope, and his glowing language and unsectarian zeal found many admirers. The tenth edition of the volume (1845) is now before us. Discord, however, soon sprung up in Oxford; and Mr Taylor, in some papers on Ancient Christianity, published periodically, combated the arguments of the Tractarians, and produced a number of works all of a kindred character, illustrating Christian faith or morals. These are Spiritual Despotism, 1835; Physical Theory of Another Life, 1839; Lectures on Spiritual Christianity, 1841; Saturday Evening, 1842; History of Fanaticism, 1843; Elements of Thought, 1843; Loyola and Jesuitism, 1849; Wesley and Methodism, 1851; Home Education, 1852; The Restoration of Belief, 1853; &c. In 1856, Mr Taylor wrote for the North British Review a long critical analysis of the works of Dr Chalmers, which gave great offence to many of the leading supporters of the Review, and led to its suspension for some time. With cordial admiration of the character and exertions of our great countryman, Mr Taylor questioned if much of his writing would live. The works of Dr Chalmers, he said, were deficient in method, in condensation, and style; his reasoning was also frequently inconsistent, and his opinions were hampered and restricted by adherence to creed, or to the polemical and systematic theology of Scotland. We shall not enter into the illustrations brought forward by Mr Taylor; but the following passage, of a more general description, appears to be as correct as it is forcibly expressed: [Character of Dr Chalmers.] Chalmers, if it were required of us to characterise him in a word, was the man-great in action: he was the man to give a needed and an irresistible impulse to whatever he applied his herculean shoulder. The world, or that world wherewith he concerned himself, he would not, and could not, and he did not leave just what and where it was when first he looked about upon it; for that first glance moved his soul to its depths; moved it, not with scorn-not with malign antagonism-not with a wild, unknowing enthusiasm--not with despondency; but with a hopeful and a reasoning confidencea calculated trust in the efficacy of those forces-those energies of renovation which, if well employed, and manfully worked, will not fail to bring about a better state of things, more or less complete. Chalmers was the man to give a healthful impulse to all things around him; but he was not the man to give them altogether a new direction. He was just so far the philosopher as an accomplished man must be who concerns himself at all with the things of philosophy; but he was not (as we presume to think) a philosopher in any higher sense; or in any sense that should give him a place of his own among those who have wrought out a scheme of thought for themselves, and for their times. The thought of this present age has not pivoted itself upon Chalmers's mind. He was the philanthropist, eminently so; and his understanding was of that robust order which utterly forbade his giving himself up to any of those vapouring modes of enthusiasm which so often bring all philanthropy into contempt. By an instinct quicker and surer than the guidance of reason-although reason never failed to come up to his aid-he rejected whatever was visionary and impracticable, or not at the moment practical; and by the same instinct, duly sustained as it was by the force of the dialectic faculty, he seized upon whatever was good and right in the main, and also sound in principle, among things actually existing and constituted, and which may be made available for immediate purposes: these he took up, and upon these he worked with a prodigious energy, and with an industry-rare excellence commensurate with that energy. Decisively conservative in temper, and reverential too in feeling, his aim was to bring up the things that are as near as possible to their normal state of effectiveness: he laboured to reinstate-to invigorate-to quicken the languid pulse of the social body; to redress-to clear away from it encumbering accumulations. But there he stopped. Wanting almost entirely the analytic faculty-wanting also the severe critical faculty-and wholly wanting reflective to distrust obvious conclusions, and to scrutinise that melancholic element which leads minds severely all things that are offered to their assent-Chalmers sent world of painful speculation, had never trodden a path, down his line into no abyss; he himself, as to the dim like that of Bunyan's Christian, through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. As a most kind-hearted man, his sympathies were awake toward all kinds of trouble, whether of mind, body, or estate; but specially and intellectually he had no sympathy with minds deeper rooted than his own, or more discriminative, or more exact, or more analytic, or more scrupulously honest toward their own misgivings. Such minds, in approaching his, would quickly discover that from him they would not receive the aid they needed. And thus it is as to his philosophie writings. Admirably adapted as they were to effect their immediate purpose-a purpose conservative and confirmatory, as related to the diffuse intellectuality of the times when they appeared, and well adapted too, as they may still be, to meet the same order of intellectuality at this time, or in any time future, they wholly fail to satisfy the conditions of philosophic discussion, such as it has of late years become. It may seem unfair to require of a manof a teacher-that he should forecast the progress of opinion for half a century in advance of his own times; but this at least may be said, that while a writer who touches the boundaries of thought in all directions is likely to anticipate the recurrent theories of times future, he who stops far short of those limits is likely to be numbered with the antiquated at the very next coming on of a crisis in speculative philosophy. [Dangers of Religion of the Imagination.] Unless a perpetual miracle were to intercept the natural operation of common causes, religion, not less than philosophy or poetry, will draw enthusiasts within its precincts. Nor, if we recollect, on the one hand, the fitness of the vast objects revealed in the Scriptures to affect the imagination, and on the other, the wide diffusion of religious ideas, can it seem strange if it be found, in fact, that religious enthusiasts outnumber any other class. It is also quite natural that enthusiastic and genuine religious emotions should be intermingled with peculiar intricacy; since the revelations which give them scope combine, in a peculiar manner, elements of grandeur, of power, and of sublimity (fitted to kindle the imagination) with those ideas that furnish excitement to the moral sentiments. The religion of the heart, it is manifest, may be supplanted by a religion of the imagination, just in the same way that the social affections are often dislodged or corrupted by factitious sensibilities. Every one knows that an artificial excitement of the kind and tender emotions of our nature may take place through the medium of the imagination. Hence the power of poetry and the drama. But every one must also know that these feelings, how vivid soever, and seemingly pure and salutary they may be, and however nearly they may resemble the genuine workings of the soul, are so far from producing the same softening effect upon the character, that they tend rather to indurate |