Such, then, appear to be the prevailing causes of a Sceptical tendency in the mind; others, indeed, might be enumerated, but into one of these four leading principles they may all be ultimately resolved. When, therefore, the Sceptic accuses the believer of prejudice, it would be well for him to examine the state of his own understanding and heart, and to see whether the accusation does not recoil upon himself. If one or more of these principles have any decided influence upon his mind, he is unable to exercise a free and unbiassed judgmenthe does not believe, because his mind is incapable of belief.

CHAPTER IV.

Supposed Prevalence of Scepticism among Men of Science, especially among those of the Medical Profession.

To those, who have studied natural philosophy as a part of general knowledge, it has constantly afforded the most overwhelming proofs of the existence of a creating and a superintending Providence. To whatever department of the vast system around them they turn, they find in it such uniform and invariable marks of design, increasing upon them from every quarter, that they consider it in the highest degree irrational to doubt the existence of the designer. From the creature they rise to the Creator, from the governed to the Governor, from the world to its God.

It is a common remark, however, that among men of eminence in the particular branches of science, Scepticism prevails to a very considerable extent. This observation is by no means a just one, nor should the errors of a few, be visited upon the whole. From the days of Newton down to the present times, the firmest believers and the ablest defenders of the Christian faith, have been found among those, who

have stood foremost in the ranks of science and of natural philosophy.

To this representation, the French school of natural philosophy constitutes a lamentable exception. The rank which D'Alembert so deservedly held in mathematical science, gave him that influence over the philosophers of his day, which enabled him to enlist all their talents and exertions in the cause of infidelity. Every nerve was strained to bring the various branches of natural philosophy into the field against religion; anatomy, geology, and astronomy, were all pressed into the service, to throw some discredit or other against the sacred cause. The Revolution, which the diffusion of these wretched principles so indisputably caused, served only to propagate and to perpetuate the contagion. A volume, lately published, by Sir T. C. Morgan, which will be more fully noticed in the ensuing chapter, may be considered as an echo of the opinions of the French school; and it presents us with a sad document, if such documents, indeed, were wanting, of the absolute rejection of all religious principle, by the principal philosophers and literati of Paris. But though the examples of such eminent men must have a considerable influence over the public mind, yet if we examine the matter of fact, we shall find, that these philosophers are not the leaders, but the followers only, of the long and general apostasy of their country. It is not their science which has affected their belief, but it is their previous infidelity which has tainted their science.

The pursuits of natural philosophy are not, however, without their danger, not indeed as they enlarge, but as they contract the mind, and as they indispose it to the candid reception of moral evidence. Independent of the effects which have been described in the last chapter, there are other habits, which if they are not guarded against with due precaution, may grow upon the mind of the man of science, and, by degrees, diminish the influence of religious belief. Having been long accustomed to account for the phænomena around him from the agency of secondary causes, his contemplation is gradually withdrawn from the first great Cause of all things. He traces the wind and the storm to the operations of the electric fluid, he accounts for all these awful convulsions of the elements from philosophical causes, till he is unwilling to join in the juster notions of unlettered ignorance, and to acknowledge, that "it is the glorious God which "maketh the thunder." By associating, again, real events with fictitious terms, he is often tempted to ascribe to the latter, a certain mysterious influence, which practically invalidates the existence of a higher power. In all his researches into the phænomena of the world around him, and the laws by which they are regulated, the philosopher directs his attention so exclusively to what he terms Nature, and the operations of Nature, that he at last begins to attribute to this delusive term, an actual existence, and to ascribe to a word only and a shadow,

what he ought to ascribe to the being and to the agency of God. The word Nature is, certainly, a very convenient term for expressing the uniform action of the first Almighty cause, according to certain laws, which in his wisdom he has enacted-but when by frequent repetition, we lose sight of the real meaning of the term, or by associating it with the phænomena around us, we begin to give it an actual existence, then it is that we are encouraging the growth of a Sceptical principle in the mind. By substituting in our speculations, Nature for God, we keep out of sight the Creator and the Governor of the universe, till we finally doubt the reality of his Providence and of his power.

The medical profession has been very frequently, but very unjustly, charged with a general tendency to infidelity. Among those who have dedicated their talents to the cultivation and practice of this branch of natural philosophy, the proportion of those who are Sceptically inclined, may be rather greater than in any other department; but never let it be forgotten that, in other countries as well as in our own the men who have united the most consummate skill in their profession with the most enlarged and cultivated understandings, have ever been, and still continue to be among the first to acknowledge themselves sincere and humble Christians. No living physiologist will contest the palm of science with the profound and sagacious Haller; yet Haller was not only a believer, but an advocate in the cause of