our island only not be frightened from its propriety by the highsounding philosophy of the continent-neither overborne by its pretensions, nor overawed by its cabalistic nomenclature-would our savans and theologians but keep unmoved on the ground of common sense, and by their paramount demand for evidence at every step, lay resolute arrest on the pruriencies of wanton speculation then while they rejected all that was unsubstantial and unsound in the dogmata of the transcendental school, it were well that they imported the earnest and lofty enthusiasm of its disciples into the phlegmatic universities and no less phlegmatic churches of our land. We do not need to take down the framework of our existing orthodoxy, whether in theology or in science. All we require is that it shall become an animated framework, by the breath of a new life being infused into it. Ours has been most truly denounced as an age of formulism: But to mend this we do not need to exchange our formulas, only to quicken them; nor to quit the ground of our own common sense for baseless speculations; nor to substitute the Divine Idea of Fichte for a personal and living God; nor to adopt for our Saviour a mere embodied and allegorized perfection, and give up the actual and historical Jesus Christ of the New Testament; nor finally to go in quest of a chimerical ontology in upper regions far out of mortal ken, and for visions of merest fancy there, to renounce either the certainties of our own palpable and peopled world, or the truths which He who dwelleth in the heavens brought down from heaven, because no man can ascend into heaven or tell the mysteries and glories of a place which he never entered.* What we want is that the very system of doctrine which we now have shall come to us not in word only but in power. As things stand at present, our creeds and confessions have become effete; and the Bible a dead letter; and that orthodoxy which was at one time the glory, by withering into the inert and the lifeless, is now the shame and the reproach of all our Churches. If there have been the revival of a more spiritual philosophy in France or elsewhere, it might well humble us; but this is not exactly the quarter from which we should expect our revival to come. Prayer could bring it down from above; and it is only thus that all which is good in Puritanism, its earnestness without its extravagance, its faith without its contempt for philosophy, its high and heavenly mindedness without the baser admixture of its worldly politics and passions-it is only thus that the Augustan age of Christianity in England, an age which Mr. Carlyle has done so much to vindicate and bring to light, will again come

* John iii., 13.

back to reform our State, and to bless our families. But we must not withhold one part at least of the sketch of this great writer, the whole being one of the most eloquent and masterly that is presented in these volumes :

"In adverting to the philosophy of England, which bears the German stamp upon it, almost every one will immediately recall the name of Thomas Carlyle, a name which stands first and foremost among the idealistic writers of our age. In bringing the works of Carlyle for a moment before our attention, we shall not give any opinion respecting his theological sentiments, inasmuch as these lie quite beyond our beat, and have to be judged of before another tribunal, beside that of à priori reasoning. Neither do we wish to track his philosophical views to the German originals, from which it is unquestionable that many of them have sprung. In the case of a writer so powerful, so original, and so full of native fire and genius, it is a thankless task at best to assign a foreign paternity to the burning thoughts, that we find scattered with no sparing hand almost through every page. That Mr. Carlyle has learned much truth, and added much inspiration to the force of his genius, from the literature and philosophy of Germany, he would himself be the first to own; but his sentiments have not been so much borrowed from these sources, as inspired from them: he has used these philosophers as his familiar companions, rather than as his masters; and instead of sitting at their feet, we should rather say that his soul has burned within him, as he has walked with them by the way.""-Vol. ii. pp. 201, 202.

"Much would we say of Carlyle's earnest appeals on the religion of the age, were we not afraid to venture into so fruitful, and, we might almost say, so dangerous a subject; but here, too, we find him uttering his lamentations or his anathemas against the hollow-hearted formalism of Christendom, against the sham worship which has taken the place of the undaunted faith and burning love of the prophets and apostles of God. Without distinction of name, of rank, or of popular favour, he tears the mask from the features of hypocrisy, and places again and again, in no very flattering contrast, the pompous, easy, formal, soulless worship that is seen in many a Christian temple, with the Hindoo, the Mohammedan, or even the untutored Indian, who sees God in everything he sees, and hears him in every thing he hears. Will you ever be calling heathenism a lie, worthy of damnation, which leads its devotee to consecrate all upon its altars, and with a wonder, which transcends all your logic, bows before some idol of nature; while those who, with sleepy heads and lifeless spirits, meet in a framed house, and go over a different set of forms, are the only elect of God? Clear thy mind of cant! Does not God look at the heart?' With a truly Platonic contempt for the material, and as ardent a love for the intellectual, the ideal, the Divine, our author wanders through all the regions of literature, of morals, of religion, of the habits, customs, laws, and institutions of our day, chastising all that is shallow and insincere, and pleading for everything that is earnest and true in human life."-Vol. ii. pp. 204–206.

It is obvious from these extracts, and indeed from all his writings, that they are not the dogmata of Germany which Mr. Carlyle idolizes, but the lofty intellect, the high-souled independence, and, above all, as most akin with the aspirings of his own chivalrous and undaunted nature, the noble-heartedness of Germany. And, indeed, there is one grand peculiarity for which we would set him down as a direct and diametrical opponent to the philosophy of her reigning schools-and that is the value he ever and anon expresses for facts, his reverence for " great facts," although in the very class of those truths which continentalism would stigmatize as empirical, and reckon with as of immeasurably lower grade than any of the logical results of its own hypothetical speculations.* There lies an immense responsibility on professing Christians, if such men as he, with their importunate and most righteous demand for all the generous and god-like virtues of the Gospel, are not brought to "the obedience of the faith." There must be a most deplorable want amongst us of the "light shining before men," when, instead of glorifying our cause, they can speak, and with a truth the most humiliating, of our inert and unproductive orthodoxy. These withering abjurations of Carlyle should be of use to our churches; and yet most assuredly it is not by grafting the German philosophy on the gospel of Jesus Christ, nor yet by overlaying its literal facts or literal doctrines with the glosses and the allegories of German rationalism,-it is not thus that we shall be able to vindicate, far less to magnify, our religion in the eyes of the world. Without the mutilation of it by one jot or one tittle, we have but to fill and follow up that Gospel, to embody it entire in our own personal history, turning its precepts into a law, and its faith into a living principle. All the elements of moral grace and grandeur are there-the sublime devotion-the expansive charity-the greatness of soul, inspired not by the visions but the clear and certain views of immortality, and hence the noble superiority to the common-place objects of a selfish and shortsighted world-the habit of unwearied well-doing, even in the midst of surrounding apathy, or it may be of calumny and injustice, those heaven-born virtues which spring not from earth, but are nurtured by prayer, and descend on the breast of

-

*The distinction between necessary and empirical truths might with all sound philosophy be acquiesced in, were it not for the degrading associations which the term empirical carries along with it-tending to bring down the category of "Quid est" among the lowest, when in fact its rightful place is among the highest objects of human thought. We therefore desiderate another nomenclature for this distinction, as due to the worth, and, we add, to the dignity of experience or of experimental science. Such is the power of imposition that lies in mere words; and we should therefore greatly prefer the classification of abstract and substantive truths.

every true believer from the upper sanctuary: And, to crown the whole, the single-hearted loyalty to Him who poured out his soul unto the death for us, and who, Himself the exemplar of all righteousness, tells His disciples that He will hold them to be indeed His friends, if they but love one another and keep His commandments-These are the simple and sublime lessons which all the wisdom of all the schools never could have reached, and most certainly can never realize-because only to be sustained on the basis of those Scriptures which "cannot be broken," and of that Word which "passeth not away."

We feel that we have scarcely yet broken ground on the subject of the German philosophy, and more especially of its bearings on the high questions of Natural and Revealed Religion. Nothing, it must be obvious, beyond the general and the introductory can possibly be overtaken within the compass of one Article; and that for doing full justice to the theme, there should be a succession of Articles-though not more than one of moderate size in each Number of the Review-so as to bestow a piecemeal treatment both on particular authors and particular arguments. It is thus that we should like to obtain distinct and thorough critical estimates, through the medium of some one or other of their writings, of Kant, and Fichte, and Schelling, and Strauss, and above all of Cousin, at whose hands-though himself not altogether unscathed by the transcendentalism which he has done so much to expose-we expect, and indeed have already received most important service, for the re-establishment both of a sounder metaphysics, and of a sound mental philosophy. We happen to know a sufficient number of men in this country, equal, and more than equal, to the accomplishment of what we now desiderate in behalf of this Journal; and who, would they only give themselves to the task, could make triumphant exposure of the cosmogonies, and, more monstrous still, of the theogonies, that have issued, as their original fountain-head, from the school of Königsberg. These men, we understand, in certain subordinate matters of speculation, in some of what may be called the secular parts of their philosophy, are not altogether at one. But this is a difference which in itself, as well as the exhibition of it in these pages, might well be tolerated. Enough for us, if they hold in common that indispensable philosophy, which is either conducive to, or might legitimately co-exist with, a sound faith. Enough, if they can join heart and hand against those speculations which would displace from our creed, either a personal and living God, or a Bible which both in its history and in its doctrines, they hold to be literally true.

Let us proclaim it as the great and distinctive feature that we should wish to see henceforth impressed upon this department of the Journal-the most special service which through its medium we should like were rendered to society-the best and worthiest honour in short to which it can aspire-is that it shall ably acquit itself as a defender of the Christian faith, intact and entire, against those new and unwonted forms of infidelity which are so rife and rampant in our day-whether springing up in our own land, or imported from abroad. And on the subject-matter, as well as the credentials of Christianity, we hope and are persuaded that it will give forth no uncertain sound; but will both be the unflinching advocate of pure Scripture doctrine, and breathe throughout its pages the spirit of a deep-felt and devoted piety.

But as yet we have only spoken of one department in the Review--even that which is consecrated to the exposition and defence of a sound Theology, in connexion with a sound mental Philosophy and a sound Ethics. We are glad to know that in the high department of Physical Science, it will be supported as heretofore by savans of the first name in the country-while, for the general and miscellaneous reader, every exertion will be made to obtain the best possible contributions on books of history and travels and the fine arts, as well as on the methods and statistics of education. The last of these subjects should ever occupy a prominent place in a work devoted, as this is, to the best and highest interests of society-and more especially to what might be termed the great problem of our day, which is to devise and carry into effect the likeliest means for the permanent amelioration, both as respects their comfort and their character, of the working classes in our land.

There are certain topics of an ephemeral character, which are more appropriate for the columns of a Newspaper than for the pages of a Review. And yet these may at times be so closely associated with permanent truth, or be so conducive to the illustration of it, as to claim a rightful place in the higher of these periodicals. Of this we have given recent instances in our dis cussions both on a Poor-law, and on the Corn-laws. To these we should like that a third instance were added, in an Article on the present fearful destitution which has overtaken certain parts of our empire-the most expressive title for which would be "The Political Economy of a Famine." We regret the impossibility of such a preparation for the Number now issuing from the press; but though we cannot at present give the reasoning, it may be of more practical importance that we give the results of it. We have already expressed our fears, lest the power and the prolific virtues of Free Trade should be greatly over-rated