by them the Ego 'sees, hears, smells, tastes, and touches (Beattie and Reid). Yea, we are as gods, knowing good by our internal moral sense (Hutchison), and the evil of sin by dire experience. No, said Bishop Berkeley, for we only know phenomena, not noumina. Hence, said he, matter does not exist! True, if matter be spirit, for then all knowledge must be derived from the action of spirits upon spirits! Berkeley demonstrated what no man could refute, and what no man in his senses could believe! (Reid.) The fact is, our senses are causes, and perceptions are the real effects. Hence perceptions of phenomena "are our only realities." Of the nouminon, substance, substratum of matter, we know not anything. All that we know is, that it is the marvellous finite work of God-a revelation to man. And why should we complain of God's created goodness? It is only our imperfect conceptions, so called misconceptions, that we should lament. Why so? Perceptions are real sensations of phenomenal realities. Our conceptions-judgments-following thereon, may be either true or false, hence the value of Leibnitz's test of truth! Reason is as much the internal eye of the Ego as the organic eye is the external eye of sense. Hence knowledge is as pleasant to the Ego as it is pleasant to the eye to behold the light. Sensation is the causal nexus.

"Light, the prime work

And all her various objects of delight

Annull'd, which might in part my grief have eased
Inferior to the vilest now become

Of man or worm; the vilest here excel me;

They creep, yet see; I dark in light, exposed
To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong,
Within doors, or without, still as a fool,
In power of others, never in my own;
Scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half,
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse

Without all hope of day!

O first created Beam, and thou great Word,
'Let there be light, and light was over all ;'
Why am I thus bereaved thy prime decree ?
The sun to me is dark

And silent as the moon,

When she deserts the night,

Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.

Since light so necessary is to life,

And almost life itself, if it be true

That light is in the soul,

She all in every part; why was the sight
To such a tender ball as the eye confined,
So obvious and so easy to be quench'd?
And not as feeling, through all parts diffused,
That she might look at will through every pore?"

And yet no mortal eye, except the eagle, can gaze on unclouded material light. Hence, by God's wisdom and goodness its three primary colours, red, blue, and yellow, are resolvable into various shades called tints. Matter absorbs all colours save that which it reflects. Black substances absorb all the colours of the rainbow. Hence they are named black. How lovely is the rainbow, the sign of God's covenant! His just anger was turned away, and yet his hand is still stretched out for partial evil, as a corrective, but much more for universal good! Who can paint like nature? Its varied tints are infinite, and yet nature is loveliest, though not brightest, in her vast robe of "living green." He that made the eye, can he not see? He that made the ear, can he not hear? He that gave the Ego understanding, hath he no knowledge? Yea, his understanding is infinite. Hence he that gave to the Ego its moral sense, cannot possibly be else than a moral judge. "He that judgeth all things is God." Where wert thou, O sceptic! when God, on nothing, laid the foundations of the earth? when God said, Let there be light, and light was? Who was his wise counsellor, and in whom did he delight? Let us make man in our image, and in the image of the Logos our first living man was made. By Him are all things, and through him all things subsist. "That almighty power is all that we do see, and all that we do not see;" and yet Seneca was neither a pantheist nor a materialist. Hence he said, "the Almighty is all mind and all reason." Yet mortals are so blind that the actions of this incomprehensible power, so excellent for beauty, constancy, and disposition, are looked upon by many men (materialists), only as fortuitous, and the work of chance. And this is not only the folly and madness of the common people, but the weakness, imbecility (Hamilton) of the wise men!" It is only by thus surveying the actions of the almighty Infinite, that we can possibly know anything of his infinitude. It is only by phenomena that we can possibly know God. If light and colours, as phenomena, be not realities, it necessarily follows that to us there is no God! nay, more, our own veritable bodies do not exist (Berkeley and Hume)! No, said Reid, "no man in his senses believes that. The finite nouminon is incognisable ; hence much more is the "infinitely infinite." Our conception of it is not the true one (Mansell); yet our phenomenal perceptions of infinite power, wisdom, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth, are true, so far as they are phenomenally perceived. Hence we know that these qualities really exist in the infinite, as certainly as we know and are conscious of our own existence. We think it, yea, we cannot but think it. It is impossible to deny it. Consciousness never denies itself. It may dispose of conceptions by calling them misconceptions; but our percep

tions, from infancy to old age, change not. Lastly, secular philosophers, as well as sceptics, are all alike in fault: they say, Shew us the Father, and it will suffice us ? Virtue! we know it as an abstraction, and as such it is even beautiful! Hence they have said, were virtue to descend from heaven as a reality, in angelic form and shape, it would be seen to be so transcendently pure and lovely, that all men would fall down and worship it. Yea, verily, virtue did come down from heaven as a living reality, yet men saw no beauty in it. Hence their loud cry was, Crucify Him, Crucify Him! Mystery of mysteries! "Shall I crucify your king?" "We have no king but Cæsar!" Hence St Peter said, ye by wicked hands have slain the Holy One, and the just, the veritable Son of man, the Logos, the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth! For so the Father had ordained it for a universal good.

"Let no one measure out God's patience

By the span of human thought,

Nor limit those eternal blessings
Which his Holy Son hath bought."

"Christ tasted death for every man!

"Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee;
Let the water and the blood,
From thy wounded side that flowed,
Be of sin the double cure;

Cleanse me from its guilt and power."

"Oh the hour when this material
Shall have vanished like a cloud;
When, amid the wide etherial,
All the invisible shall crowd;

"When the naked soul, surrounded
With realities unknown,
Triumphs in the view unbounded,
And feels herself with God alone!

"In that sudden, strange transition,
By what new and finer sense
Will she grasp the mighty vision,
And receive its influence?

"Will she there no fond emotion,

Nought of earthly joy, retain ;
Or, absorbed in pure devotion,
Will no mortal thought remain ?

"Can the grave those ties dissever,

Which the very heart-strings twined?

Must she part, and part for ever,

Leaving all she loved behind?

"No; the past she still remembers;
Faith and hope, surviving too,
Ever watch those sleeping embers
Which must rise and live anew.

"For the pure, all perfect Spirit (Heb. xii. 23),
Incomplete till clothed afresh,

Longs perfection to inherit―

Longs to triumph in the flesh (Heb. xi. 40).

LIBERTY AND NECESSITY.

Cause and Effect.-Noumina are the finite causes of phenomena; substance reflects light. Phenomena are the causes of sensations; mental perceptions are totally different. The Ego sees them at a glance, and carries them along with it; wherever it goes, it holds a world in its mind; it sees it spiritually as a whole or a part even in the dark! Perceptions are not even the causes of conceptions. If they were, they would be the causes of reason, and the ego as well, "cogito ergo sum," was a palpable mistake. "Sum ergo cogito" is the truth. Reason is a finite, independent judge. It judges wherein perceptible things differ-conceptions are the results. Phenomena (without distinctions of primary and secondaries) and perceptions are twin realities; we think them so; yea, we must think them so, say what we will. Conceptions are different; they may be true, or partly true; a may be after all, as Calvin said. (A May bee is not a good honey bee.) Misconceptions are mistaken notions, i. e., they are totally false. Humanum est errare-to err is human. Not so as respects perceptions. They are unchangeable truths. God is not a deceiver; hence our senses do not deceive us, and hence our nature is not a lie (Hamilton). No lie is of the truth. Reason may err while cogitating; hence the above Latin proverb. Truth necessitates belief; we think it. We must think it, yea, we cannot deny it; hence the saying, "What! can you believe a lie, can you possibly deny a truth? A fact is a fact all the world over; and yet it may be embellished so as to deprive it of its originality. Truth is better than fiction. Hence it is only a silly trout that is deceived by a gaudy fly hook.

Will and Desire.-The will is free to act and free to choose. I sit, I rise, I walk, I run. Hence the saying, "The child has foolishly taken its own will;" hence it requires punishment. We know it, yea, we feel its power within us ruling every limb. Hence by law a man on deathbed may voluntarily alter or cancel his "last will." And yet in one sense even the moral mind is necessitated, i. e. it may (not must) conceive a lie, but it cannot possibly believe it. God's law is perfect; He is infinitely wise;

God cannot

hence even to himself it is a necessitated truth. possibly deny himself; God's word is truth; he changeth not; hence God's law of intelligent necessity is St James's "royal law of (intelligent) Liberty" (see also Philo, note, p. 52). Hence a Christian man loves its absolute necessity with intense desire, delight. "Oh how I love thy law," said David; "Thy law I have hid in my heart;" hence I think and speak of it day and night; hence also the thrice repeated prayer of the blessed Jesus, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not my will but thine be done." Its test is experience. We thereby taste its pleasant fruit; yea, even its material and mathematical forms-laws of proportion-are beautiful as well as perfect; hence the circle, oval, square, triangle, and the globe and cube. Who taught the bee that its sexagonal wall requires even least wax? The church is compared to a Corinthian pillar, exhibiting the ground (stability) and majesty of truth; hence the two brazen pillars of the temple, Jachin and Boaz, "He shall stablish-in it is strength.' Yea, truth is always pleasant to the wise. Why so? The truth demands obedience; hence the sin of scepticism it calls apples of Sodom, not "forbidden fruit." Seek wisdom, and with all thy getting get understanding. Why so? "Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.'

Again: conceptions are misconceptions when they do not conform to our perceptions, i. e. when we mistake their relativities, and err in generalising. A whole " army" of perceptions would be of little avail unless it had a "general-law." Reason sees perceptions as so many units in a heap. It separates

It

or combines them according to their relations; it forms them into species-next genera-lastly, it classifies them into three separate estates. Man is an "animal," say naturalists. No, says the Bible, man is "over all," i. e. he is the head. Nature may be thus unified! And what is man? A microcosm-a world in himself! But why is reason so often mystified? is so, says Dr Pusey, "because of Adam's fall." He forsook revelation that he might become a god; hence he knows the real difference betwixt good and evil by dire experience; but how to become good without revelation he knoweth not; hence our inane philosophy! It confounds conceptions, judgments of reason, i. e. abstractions, nonenties (Berkeley) with sensible perceptions, i. e. realities, or call them correct copies if you please, for no man can alter, amend, or intensify them without photographing them a second time. Why so? Physical truths are not immutable; moral are fixed and unalterable. God (morally) changeth not. Physical law is fixed only for man's sake, and yet omnia mutantur nihil interit-not a drop of water, not even a unit of life is lost!