or state of feeling of the person at the time: a proposition which, clearly stated, no one would attempt to impugn; for that would be equivalent to saying that they are not strictly his own acts; which would be the same as to say, that they do not necessarily receive his approval; and this again the same as to say, that they are not acts of Will at all, but things attached to him irrespective of his own inclination; which would be a contradiction and an absurdity. But what is properly meant by freedom of Will is, that its acts are the acts of the man as he is, in distinction from being forced upon him, or wrought in him, by some foreign power or influence; that they have his prevailing assent at the moment;—that there is no suspension or abolition of reason or conscience in the case, so as to prevent him from judging of their fitness or unfitness, their merit or demerit, or to exonerate him from a sense of responsibility for the choice; and moreover that he is not without ability, by efforts of his own, to arrest the formation of this or that desire, or class of desires, or even by degrees so to modify the sum of qualities or the character that he possesses, as to induce the prevalence of a contrary character or contrary acts of Will. Neither religion, nor philosophy in its moral relations, need be much concerned to contend for a freedom essentially different from this, which in truth is involved in the notion of self-action, consciously performed; while arguments addressed to the confutation of another kind, are apt to proceed on a mistake of the principle at issue, and to be alike nugatory and irrelevant.

Of Edwards, by the way, it were out of the question to attempt here to show, what I believe is capable of being proved, that almost all the polemical pieces of this great man (for great he assuredly was if a colossal force of logic can make any one great) are vitiated by some flaw or other lurking at the core :-a curious psychological phenomenon, as illustrating the very partial aid which Truth may receive from a strong deductive faculty of ratiocination.

Whether an approach to a juster philosophy is presented in his notion on the nature of Evil, may be left for the reader to determine: in regard to which, and the problem of its origin, all, in conclusion, that I would venture to propound is, that peccability or liableness to aberration is essential to the free agency belonging to accountableness, however in higher stages of existence such a purity or elevation of character is conceivable as would render wilful deflection a moral impossibility;-that pain and suffering receive their worthiest solution as utterances of warning and guidance, or means for the progress and developement of our faculties, being apt instruments of instruction in the laws of our nature as expressions of the will of God;while death itself is to be referred to the category of provisions that, with whatever higher purposes or results, comprehend still further expansion or advancement.

THE PRINCIPLE AND BEARINGS OF

RELIGIOUS INDUCTION.

HE application of the inductive process to questions of theology and religion, by no means implies the invalidity of appeals to the principles of consciousness or intuition, as legitimate grounds of belief; any more than the application of the same process to physical departments implies the rejection or futility of the elementary or self-evident axioms which constitute the basis of all positive science. The object, in either case, is but the substitution of fact in place of assumption, without pretending to impugn, nay, admitting as among the most indisputable of facts, those primal forms of insight or apprehension, which, carrying their own evidence with them in the very structure of the mind, or lurking there as presages or shadowings of things that elude the formal grasp of intellect, receive their appropriate credentials from no logical demonstration.

By intuitive beliefs I mean, not innate ideas, for ideas are not born with us, but superinduced on sensation or feeling, which ever precedes the rise of thought; nor beliefs which spring up without any particular occasions to call them forth; or from which all perception of relation, or the like, is excluded; but certain impressions or convictions which the mind, in a certain stage of developement, is so constituted as to entertain, apart from any positive instruc

tion or attempts at proof: impressions or convictions which, if not in the strictest sense a priori, are yet so simple and instinctive in their nature and origin, and withal so fundamental, as justly to be deemed a portion of our mental constitution. Of course it is possible for truths or persuasions to be referred to this category, which belong to another; as it is possible for truths or persuasions which belong to the former, to lie, as it were, asleep in the soul; or, after having once been awakened, to be afterward suppressed or verbally denied; in which case the result, as implying a sort of violence to human nature, might not inaptly be termed unnatural.

It were unphilosophical to question the possibility, if not in particular circumstances the probability, of miracles, viewed as extra-natural variations from the established order of events, unless it could be shown, either that the usual course of things is the result of some intrinsic necessity, and not merely God's uniformity of operation, susceptible of deviation at his pleasure, or, that an occasion can never arise when such deviation may be desirable. Hume's argument against miracles, from the alleged impossibility of proving by testimony what is opposed to general experience, is not only a complete petitio principii, but in absolute contrariety to the Baconian or inductive method of philosophizing, which in questions of fact regards all assumptions a priori as worthless, except indeed as positions to be subsequently tested; which are then rather suggestions or provisional hypotheses than assumptions. To attempt the disproof of miracles by asserting, as he does, that experience being set in array against experience would involve a contradiction, is absurd; for how often in ordinary life is the experience of one man contrary to that of multitudes; the experience of the scientific investigator, for instance, contrary to that of the rest of mankind! No antecedent presumptions therefore being admissible against the possi

bility, whatever some may think about the probability, of miracles, all that is necessary, in any particular case, to establish the fact of their occurrence, is evidence of a certain kind and degree: though it may well be said that cases are conceivable in which the intrinsic improbability of supernatural interference is so great, that no amount of external testimony would be sufficient to prove its credibility.

Mr. Babbage, in his collection of fragments entitled the "Ninth Bridgewater Treatise," after explaining the doctrine of Hume to be, that miracles, being contrary to general experience, can never be substantiated by testimony, unless its falsehood were less credible than the facts it is adduced to support-a doctrine which, as thus expounded, may be acknowledged to be correct-has attempted to demonstrate, by an elaborate series of calculations founded on the theory of probabilities, that even on the principles laid down by Hume, the chances in favour of the gospel miracles are all but infinite. The argument might justly be deemed irrefragable on the supposition of their averment by the alleged number of original witnesses: but resting on a postulate which lies at the very root of the controversy, and of which the proof is, to say the least, most precarious, it betrays too close an approximation to the logical vice of reasoning in a circle. Nor, in regard to the ingenious speculation from the movements of his own calculating machine, is it to be forgotten, that phenomena or events susceptible of that species of illustration would be no miracles at all, according to the strict definition of the term, having nothing supernatural about them, but being inevitable though extraordinary results of general laws acting under certain circumstances.

Neither would the conditions of miracle, in the popular theological sense, be better fulfilled on the theory propounded by one of the interlocutors in the last performance of Sir Humphry Davy, where the appearances deemed miraculous are referred exclusively to mind and its appre