may point out the safe path, but it cannot prevent the communication between temptation within and temptation without, which is continually suggesting deviation, and encouraging departure. You may look forward, therefore, to what age of the world you will, and there will still be infancy and childhood to be taught the rudiments of all that is known, and youth as strongly impelled as ever by those forceful passions which are kneaded into our very clay.

The middle period of life is somewhat sobered and subdued. It has learnt most of what is useful, and is prepared to take up and carry forward the great work of improvement. But even in this period, how much time is seized upon by the common cares and wants of humanity. The ground is to be tilled; the sea is to be traversed and fathomed; the body is to be clothed and fed; children are to be maintained and educated and provided for. Where will be the end of this? There will be no end; in the nature of things there can be none. These will be the great occupations of man while the world stands. The chain which binds him to earth is strong and heavy and immutable; its links were forged in the beginning; they are wrought out of the necessities of his nature.

Old age is the season of quiet and rest, of repose after labor and fatigue, of peace after contention and tumult. The veteran retires from service, and seats himself by his hearth, and hangs up his arms. He may repeat the story of his battles, but we do not expect to see him again in the field. Old people are generally satisfied with what was done in the time of their activity; and not only so, but they are persuaded that nothing more and nothing better is to be done. We admit that there are exceptions; but the rule is well established on fact. They are indisposed to exertion; it is natural that they should be; as the frame wears out, the spirit becomes exhausted. They think everything is accomplished in the cause of humanity, of which the cause is susceptible; and this too is natural, for their own part is performed. If death intervenes not, the second childhood follows; an emptier blank than the first, because it is imbecility without promise.

What rational person can predict any sudden improvement, while these are the appointments of the different stages of life? Why should we roam beyond those limits of our nature which were fixed on the day when man was created, and which will remain till the end of his allotted abode on earth?

But we have not yet spoken of prejudice, which acts like a law of moral entail, and brings down error from one generation to another. Nor of diversity of intellect, and opposition of opinion, which keep truth in a perpetual balance, and divide and parcel out falsehood among all classes and denominations. Nor of interest, which sways a man downward, and binds his heart. to his treasure. Nor of pride, the champion, who is always ready, with visor down and lance in rest, to do battle for self.

These are not temporary obstacles, which may be hereafter removed out of the road of improvement. Improvement is forever to make its way over and through them; for they belong to the soil, and rise up in it on all sides and without end.

But great men come forward, from time to time, and make great discoveries; and when they die, they transmit the fruits of their invention, not to children, but to men, who are able to appreciate, apply, and increase them. How many such heirs will they find? How many who can claim even distant kindred with them? What portion of mankind understand the works of a great astronomer, or a great metaphysician? And out of that portion how many are there who can correct and enlarge them? It needs but little arithmetic to compute their number they may all be counted on the fingers. And the knowledge of the few is slowly and in small quantities imparted to the many. It is long before the simplest results of their labors are apprehended by the mass of mankind. What ocean floods and cataracts of light must be pouring and rushing down from a single constellation of the heavens; and yet what spare threads of the glorious stream reach us here below, and how many years they have been on their silent descent.

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But there are bounds to the most adventurous and expansive intellect; heights which it cannot scale; depths which it cannot sound; holy and mysterious recesses of nature, at the fast doors of which it has knocked anxiously and repeatedly for admission, and the hollow echo within has reverberated the notice, that there was no entrance there. What mind has conceived of a never beginning and never ending eternity, beyond the primary and most general definitions? Or of boundless space; or of the principle of gravitation; or of the essence of the Deity; or the manner in which he lives, creates, and rules? Who shall reconcile the Divine foreknowledge with human free will? Take the sword to the knot, and cut it, and declare that men have no liberty, that they are not free agents, because God has determ

ined all their actions for them; and still you have to reconcile necessity with accountability, and inform us why a man should be punished, either here or hereafter, for a sin which he was foreordained to commit. It is true that they who have written books on these subjects, and have taxed all their ingenuity in attempting to solve the problems contained in them, have thought that they have indeed worked out a solution; but we do not see it; the world does not see it; there is no approximation to an agreement in the controversy. We are by no means of opinion that such investigations are useless; but we do think that they will be endless.

And how should our researches be rewarded with perfect success, when we are so imperfectly acquainted with that which is the agent in making them? We talk of mind and its final triumphs. What is mind, and where is it? What information can the mind give us of its own simple nature? As little as it can of the nature of Him who formed it. It cannot tell us whether it is an independent substance, entirely distinct from matter, or whether it is a system of results from material organization. The anatomist may search and dissect, with his nicest instruments, from the surface to the innermost marrow, and when all is over, he knows just as much of the nature of man, as he does of the next bird or quadruped which may come under his knife, and no more. He knows not even what life is, nor how it begins, nor how it is suspended, nor on what it depends. One has his theory; another has his; the very word is a confession of ignorance.

How does mind act upon matter, if it is really separate from it; and how is it connected with matter and affected by it? Why do the diseases of the body sometimes lay the mind in ruins, and sometimes pass over it, and leave it upright and strong? But it is idle to multiply these questions. We return to the primitive assertion; it is not known what mind is. We pretend not at present to take one side or the other of the controversy; only we hope that we shall never dogmatize on either. We think it probable that the question will never be satisfactorily determined, however positively it may be argued.

We would not disturb faith, nor check its generous and holy aspirings. Yet it gains nothing in our eyes, we confess, when it becomes visionary or assuming. A meet companion for it is humility; and nothing is better adapted to assure their fellowship, than a view of the near boundaries of human knowledge.

We remain, as we began, the advocates of human improvement; firmly convinced that knowledge has been and now is in a progressive state; that in some directions it may advance almost indefinitely; and that happiness and virtue are likewise increasing on the earth. It is only necessary, as it seems to us, to name the bare names of peace, liberty, toleration, equality, and charity, to prove how much more generally these subjects are understood than they used to be, and how much this diffused understanding of them has conduced to the security, dignity, and enjoyment of man.

Why then have we spoken of limits, doubts, ignorance, and frailty? Simply that a proper apprehension might be entertained of human powers, and of the objects to which they may be most safely and productively applied. It is important that we should know where to devote our exertions; what is to be accomplished in its due order and degree; and the best manner in which it is to be effected; so that life may not be spent in speculation, nor genius wasted in revery. The inquiry of the philanthropist ought to be, what is now to be done; not, what is to be done a thousand years hence. In this manner he not only renounces the thraldom of old authority and prescription, and assumes that something is to be done, but he feels himself called upon to contribute his own immediate exertions.

If we look around us to discover what are the great moral improvements which principally distinguish our own age, we shall find that they consist not so much in invention as instruction; not so much in the promulgation of original knowledge, as in the diffusion among many, of that which had long been the property of a few. We presume that Jeremy Taylor entertained as clear an apprehension of the principles of toleration and religious liberty as is entertained by any one at the present day; but those principles are now understood by a thousand, where they were understood in his time by one; and the consequence of this consentaneous adoption of them is, that they are beginning to be extensively and thoroughly practised upon. Milton perceived the value of education, and its important effects on the community, as clearly as we do; but how many are there who now enjoy the privilege of abundant instruction, who, if they had lived when he lived, would not have been able to read the word of God, or to write their own names.

And that which has been so happily supplied, is still the demand. The great call of the age still continues to be for the

wider dissemination of existing knowledge. The crying want of society, morally and intellectually considered, is, not for any striking discoveries from individuals, but that the multitude should be raised up to the same attainments which well instructed individuals already possess, and which have been possessed by a scattered few in almost every period of recorded time. Let us infuse into the community at large, precisely the faith and the morals which have been formerly professed and practised by a small and disconnected company, and we may look on all indefinite schemes and visions with indifference. What greater thing could come to pass, than that all men should be made as rationally pious and practically religious as was Locke, for instance, to say nothing of his less attainable characteristics? Yet all that would be new in this case would be the universal conformity to a known exemplar. Let us try to lift up as many of our fellow beings as we can to this, or any other exalted moral standard. Here is the sphere of our worthiest labors. Here is the task which may gloriously employ the powers of the most gifted and accomplished minds. The happiness of the world is to be expected from the liberal communication of sentiments, views, principles, and motives, which are already in the world. The path of duty is right onwards; and it must conduct to successively higher stages of improvement, so long as it is honestly and steadily pursued. There is much before our very eyes, and within the compass of our plain ability, which needs to be altered, perfected, or destroyed. What are the best ways of securing these visible objects and advantages? We must search for them. This is a part of the labor; and in this respect, we allow, there is an urgent and almost constant call for invention; but the invention of means and not of ends; the finding out how that which is already invented, may be made common and useful; how prejudices, which have long been under suspicion and displeasure, may be safely banished from the realms of faith; how old knowledge may be most easily, acceptably, and beneficially introduced to the young mind; how the best principles may be made the predominant ones; how the practice of that which is received, may lead to the establishment of that which is hoped for.

Thus the objects of effort and invention come plainly and bodily into our presence, and appear in a practicable position and form. We are no longer misled by fancies and dreams, either our own, or other men's; theory submits to the ordeal of