aims of a pure and enlarged devotion;-the fact being that not a few thus stigmatised on the score of a negative or deficient creed, have a creed both definite and comprehensive; in particular a faith in God and goodness, compared with which the positive beliefs of some are but a virtual denial of both; and, what is something in these days of sacerdotal pretence, a faith in the ultimate discomfiture of each system of error now claiming the sanctity and the prerogatives of truth. Adherence to speculative forms without examination is a nullity; but adherence founded on the renunciation of reason is scepticism in disguise. Lastly, that it is the part no less of sound philosophy than of right feeling to eschew the principle, often so complacently broached, which identifies intellectual aberrations with moral delinquency, or assumes the former necessarily to involve the latter: a principle that, fairly carried out, might perchance tell most detrimentally on its supporters.

Thus much at least may be affirmed, that in the pertinacious indulgence of a one-sided habit of thought, joined to the practical assumption of an infallibility renounced in words, the ethical flaws of some people most conspicuously display themselves; whose quantum of peccant humour, restricted from any outward flow, finds a convenient range in the obliquities and intolerance of a speculative dogmatism.

To say nothing of the myriads of minds in whom the thinking power, properly so called, is never exercised from the cradle to the grave, there is unhappily no dearth of those who, trained in a certain wise to think, and unmarked perhaps with a single vice in the ordinary sense, or with the neglect of any outward act of piety, yet in processes requiring the utmost impartiality and openness to conviction, betray a narrowness, distortion, or servility of view, which no stretch of charity could easily separate from the will, and which a judgment untempered with charity would not hesitate to pronounce among the characteristics of a nature that, if not corrupt to the core, is surrendered to intellectual unfairness

and dishonesty. The sophistications indeed practised in support of alleged truth, but too often exemplify the qualities most adverse to its requirements; whether by misrepresentation of unpalatable opinions, or by concealment of the grounds adduced in their behalf; the one being the species of mendacity comprised in the miscolouring of fact, the other, a delinquency corresponding to the suppression of evidence in a court of justice :-all this too not seldom in combination with the employment of arguments which, with trifling variation, would lend an equal plausibility to things that the disputant himself acknowledges to be indefensible; and implying not so much a distrust in human reason,sometimes modestly affected, sometimes modestly and no less commodiously inculcated,-as a virtual claim to its perversion.

Sir James Mackintosh has been censured for holding the blamelessness of mere opinion, or error of judgment; his detractors wanting the philosophy or the candour to see, that it is the moral qualities which mould opinion, when the reflex of such causes-in other words, fidelity or its opposite in the use of the light possessed-that are alone the proper subject of praise or blame. The harmlessness of opinions is another question; which, though men are often little. modified by their professed creed, being sometimes better, sometimes worse, no one could find much difficulty in solving who is at all conversant with circles not the lowest in religious pretension, yet illustrating the effect on moral sensibility and character of narrow-minded dogmas, and the subtleties of an artificial traditionary belief.

It is no slight reflection on prescriptive theology, that besides operating as an impediment to freedom of intellect, it has been far from inactive as a perverter of conscience.

To hoodwink or prepossess the understanding; to proscribe tenets not as false, but as novel or dangerous, or contrary to certain received standards, which, rightly traced, mean. nothing but the notions of their supporters; or to cry down

reason for the purpose of crying up something very unreasonable, may suit the pledged votaries of system or party but to follow evidence whithersoever it may lead, not accepting phrases for ideas, or authorities instead of arguments; and while exercising the inalienable right of opinion oneself, to tolerate in others every thing but intolerance,- -are characteristics belonging to that rarest of phenomena a worshipper of truth.

At present, alas! it is dogma that is worshipped rather than truth, and with the sacrifice too of charity, which stands in much the same relation to it as gold coin to its paper representative, or as the genuine riches of intellect and happiness to the material wealth with which they may or may not be associated.

Certainly conscience might be blotted out of the nature of man, and the idea of responsibility discarded as a vain chimera, if admission is to be given to the principle, dishonourable alike to reason and to God, which substitutes authority for Truth, instead of making Truth the only authority.

Were the mass of minds indeed to look into the nature of the things tendered for their belief, with half the nicety that men of business look into the quality of the articles offered them in the market, the process of doubt or elimintion would more frequently take the place of that conventional acquiescence in prevailing forms, which confounds the most penetrating order of intellects with those which are passive or inane-a process, however, scarcely to be expected while thinking is an effort unknown or irksome to most; abjured by many through mistaken apprehensions of the office of reason in religion, or, virtually, through the adoption of certain foregone conclusions; and sparingly indulged by others from a lurking suspicion of the consequences it may entail on their social relations or prospects. For, whatever may be alleged by some, honest thought, reflected in honest. speech or action, amid the ascendancy of systems comprising

so much that is specious yet hollow, is not the way to fortune or repute-nor to peace, except as arising from the satisfactions of conscience, and converse with the nobler class of perceptions.

The direst of moral states is one that, under the covert of religious formulas, for the most part unreal or effete, combines a faith involving no reverence to truth, but rather virtual infidelity, with a sanctimonious application of the term to whatever, exposing the illusion, deserves the name of thought; apart from which, exercised with honesty of inquiry and aim, a belief framed on the system that happens to be uppermost, is little better than the slumber of the dead.

P

MORAL RIDDLES.

HE trains of thought in the mind are in no case arbitrary, but always regulated by fixed laws, so that any variation which occurs is owing to variation of circumstances. Thus, if we knew the exact qualities of the mind at any given period; the state of the body, so far as it would influence the mind; together with external scenes or circumstances; we should be able to determine what ideas would next arise in the mind. Now all these particulars, thus separately enumerated, God no doubt perceives at a single glance; or, to speak in accordance with our imperfect apprehensions, he foresees from eternity. We may therefore conceive how volition can be free, yet the thoughts and feelings of the mind be known, or foreknown, to God. If freedom of Will does not imply that the successions of thought are arbitrary, it can never be irreconcileable with the certainty implied in Divine prescience. Or the argument may be resolved into a question -Would volition be free, supposing for a moment that God did not exist? If so, his existence or foreknowledge can be no obstruction to the free agency or responsibility of man; the Supreme Being only perceiving beforehand the various sentiments and affections of the mind; just as he perceives all the properties of matter, and the changes which it will at any time undergo.

It is needless perhaps to explain, though it may be proper to remember, that the philosophy of the subject, or a fair