adherents of the Prophet under a Moslem training, have no wish to see in others any advance towards maturity. Such restrictions on belief, so far from promoting unity of opinion, if that were at all desirable, are the greatest hindrances to unity of Christian feeling, creating those divisions often so inconsistently bewailed, and perpetuating sectarianism: while instead of moulding the judgment aright, their too common effect is to pervert or suppress its operation, or to occasion a tacit compromise between the deductions of the understanding, and the dictates of worldly policy.

From impressions of this nature, the transition is logically inevitable to the belief-by the votaries of Interest or of Form only to be confounded with irreverence of divine things-that the system of a ministry erected not for the utterance of conviction, unshackled by formulas or pledges, but for the propagation of certain speculative notions or theories on the subject of man's relation to the infinite-for to this all theology, in the proper acceptation of the term, is reducible, more or less varying in every age, and dividing intellects the most acute and comprehensive-is fraught with dire snares to conscience, and is an impediment in the search and acquisition of truth. Where would have been the doctrines of the Newtonian astronomy, or what their reception among the mass of the population, if an order of men had been endowed some centuries ago for the transmission and defence of the Ptolemaic interpretations of the heavens ? *

Certainly the foundations of a spiritual or metaphysical scheme are not likely to be over-nicely or impartially scrutinised in such a case, nor any irrationalities it may include to weigh much-in minds especially grown up

* "As Hobbes has well observed:-Were it for the profit of a governing body, that the three angles of a triangle should not be equal to two right angles, the doctrine that they were, would, by that body, inevitably be denounced, as false and pernicious."-Sir William Hamilton: Discussions in Philosophy, etc. p. 637.

under its sway, and taught to connect doubt with impietyagainst the grave and substantial reasons comprehended in solid pay; which, with a similarly adjusted species of training to that which prevails in this country, and with a germ of natural sentiment underneath, corresponding to the religious, so easily made the nucleus of theoretic error, would ensure a multiplicity of champions to the most fallacious tenets under the sun.

So may it well be without the shadow of imputation on the sincerity of the many pure and benevolent minds devoted to a profession that, in name and object at least, is concerned with the noblest and most enduring interests of man. But sincerity, it were needless to say, is no guarantee of truth and where the motives are less honourable, or a certain position has been assumed without impartial inquiry beforehand, or even where the intellect is too acute to acquiesce without a struggle, the influence of habit, prepossession, and social standing, is apt to prevail over other considerations, and to issue in a state adverse alike to the unbiassed exercise of thought, and to all progressive forms of opinion.*

The implication in the preceding strictures is, not, as the sophistical might pretend, that because adventitious attractions may procure almost any amount of support to false or questionable theories of religion, therefore a system well patronised has no intrinsic worth on its side; but that the advocacy or reception of a system under circumstances of the kind is so far from constituting a presumption of its correctness, as to impose the necessity of a stricter examination of its claims.

It is the unreflecting and incongruous worship of the Past the elevation of antique or defunct formulas to a supremacy over living minds—in a word, the cardinal vice

*The characteristics of minds so circumstanced are but too faithfully portrayed by Schiller in his description of the Brodgelehrten : Werke, x. 364-8.

of dependence on authority or tradition, that, more or less pervading the various churches of Christendom, not only invert all the legitimate principles of belief, but tend to the mutilation or abasement of human nature itself: while a motley train of doubtful or gratuitous dicta, rendered all the more specious by a colouring or intermixture of truth, and confided to a professional class for the most part without the permission, if with the capacity or the inclination to think, sophisticate and becloud the popular apprehension, which is in consequence no more fitted to appreciate the frank utterances, the bold and startling revelations of reason and philosophy, than the bird of night the electric flashes that purify the atmosphere.

Political conservatism, if synonymous with the preservation of things as they are-a definition which few conservatives would be willing to accept-is sufficiently inane or unintelligible conservatism in the arts, if such a thing were ever whispered, would sound still more so but intellectual conservatism, which is tolerated only in the regions of theology, is the most inane and monstrous of all.

In brief, the mighty problems which present themselves in the wide field of spiritual inquiry, are not to be settled by the vapid common-places of those who, with nominal mistrust of human nature, repose securely on its weaker manifestations in the systems which they uphold; and whose undoubting confidence, where it has other parentage than unthinking ignorance, is not seldom the offspring of principles that neutralise all thought by perverting its efforts, or dictating the conclusions at which it shall arrive.

FORESHADOWINGS.

LL systems and institutions, whether civil or ecclesiastical, which are incapable of moving along

with the tide of general improvement, will sooner or later be swept away by its progress. The alleged infallibility and unchangeableness of the Romish church, constitute the principle of its destruction; at least if the dogma shall be so interpreted as to forbid, though not modification of forms, yet the excision of doctrinal accretions. Many of its leading tenets, as well as observances, took their rise in ages when not merely the functions of conscience, but the laws of belief, were alike undefined and disregarded; and when the action of philosophic thought, as distinguished from scholastic speculation on the one hand, and superstitious or visionary fancies on the other, was for the most part unknown; the result being a medley of incongruous elements, offering no basis for intuitive assent, and unable to bear the test of the critical investigation consequent on the advancement of reason and scientific research :—a circumstance not to be overlooked by other religious communions, emphatic in denunciation of hierarchical pretences, yet tenacious of things unaccompanied with higher credentials than hierarchical dicta or tradition.

The antidote in either case is to be sought in that organon or touchstone of truth, the mind or judgment of man, comprehending both the spiritual and intellectual parts

of his nature, exercised without allegiance to human authority or ecclesiastical jurisdiction: a principle or right practically asserted at the Reformation, and which, though virtually as little conceded by most of its advocates, as by its opponents it is often unpardonably misrepresented, and one effect of which, among others of a better kind, has been to split up the Christian community into an almost infinitesimal series of sects, each in the main as intolerant as its predecessor, embraces an element that, properly expanded, will not only supply a remedy for existing imperfections, but secure the developement and application of truth amid the varying phases of society in every stage of its progress.

Strictly, no doubt, it is the exercise of private judgment on one side, without the concession of it on another, which has mostly occasioned the multiplicity of sects; the blame of course attaching to the party refusing the right; and the true schismatics, or authors of division, being those who impose terms of communion neither demanded by the purposes of religious association, nor compatible with the claims of reason or conscience.

If ever the principle, so loudly extolled, yet so little understood, be fairly carried out, the result will be, not the multiplication, but the coalition or annihilation of sects.

As a concomitant of such a state, and one of its most delightful characteristics, controversial topics being excluded from association with Christian worship, and reserved for discussion in books or the like, the public offices of devotion would then be of so catholic a nature that all good men, or those aiming to be such, could unite in them without the compromise of opinion, or the exercise of the critical faculty in qualifying or rejecting, which enunciations of mingled truth and error, of individual crudities, or systematic perversion, inevitably impose on the reflecting. Nor are these the rarest of traits in the treatment of subjects by many within the pale of a profession that, however respectable for sincerity, or for attainments in certain walks, is