pain when burnt, but knows not, until its intellect is matured by a more or less lengthened experience, whether the cause is internal or external. The same principle holds good in man's religious experience.

From this we learn the immense importance of the philosophy of feeling. Most writers extol thought, but depreciate feeling. To depend on frames and feelings in the religious life is regarded as evidence of a weak intellect. Christianity would now have had a greater hold of the world, if religious feeling had not been so much ignored. In what part of our nature are love, joy, peace, comfort, consolation, but in the emotional? They are certainly not in pure thought. Pure thought is invaluable, for it produces good feeling, but good thoughts certainly arise from good feeling. And if good thoughts are presented to the mind by the good feelings which the Spirit of God produces, the entire sanctification of man's nature will be promoted.

Methodism needs not to be ashamed of the great prominence it has given to feeling, for it has done more for the moral elevation of the world during the last hundred years, than had other agencies, and it will do still more for the salvation of the world in the future, for there is consolation in Christ, and comfort in the Holy Ghost.

In conclusion, we hope it has been made clear, in this essay, that man has not only a speculative knowledge, but a cognitive knowledge of the soul and the world; and also, that he may not merely have a speculative knowledge of God, but that a cognition of God may be obtained by an acceptance of God in Christ, through the Holy Ghost. A true metaphysical philosophy, though metaphysics is despised by nearly all our physical scientists and merely practical men, must, and does, satisfy the deepest wants and noblest aspirations of human nature. JOHN SNAITH.

ART. IX.-ATOMIC.

ALL beauty is truth. True features make the beauty of the face; true proportions make the beauty of architecture, and true measures the beauty of music. The beauty of truth is truth itself.

IF God has existed from all eternity, may He not have created from all eternity? If, to suit our "little schemes of thought," we suppose that He first began to create (matter or spirit) at any definite instant, or finite period of time, then he must have existed an eternity alone! But, how can we reasonably imagine a time when He was not active? An eternity of things is both possible and probable on the admission of an eternal God-but

not on any other hypothesis. New evolutions and formations of matter, in respect to any given world or system, is a very different thing from absolute creation, which means the causing to exist that which before had no existence. The proper rendering of the first verse of Genesis is this:-"In the beginning of God's framing the heavens and the earth-the earth existed utterly void, and darkness was on the face of the deep."

Two and two do not make four, but are four.

WHEN we say that an idea is innate we simply signify that it is natural. It is natural, for example, for the eye to perceive externality, form, and distance, and it is natural for the mind to conceive the idea of cause. In this way, certain precepts and certain concepts are innate, connate, native, intuitive, direct, or natural. That is to say, being constitued as we are, we cannot but have them. The fashionable theory of vision, notwithstanding, it is as natural for the human eye to perceive physical distance without the aid of muscular experience, or anything else, as it is for the duckling of a day old to perceive and get to the pond, or for a lamb that has only been in the world an hour never to attempt walking through a wall or a tree; as, by the bye, it might do, were it unfortunately a philosopher! Has the human creature then, alone, of all the creatures we are acquainted with, no inherent ideas? Byron says:

"When Bishop Berkley said there was no matter,
And proved it, 'twas no matter what he said."

And precisely the same might be said of him with reference to his celebrated theory of vision.

THE essence of matter or of mind consists in the sum of its qualities, and not as far as can be conceived in a substratum or substance underlying the qualities. Take away the primary qualities of a thing, and thereby you evidently make it no-thing. When will people have done speaking of mere subjective abstractions (regulative ideas) as if they were bona fide objective existences ! As far as anybody can see, Phenomena might do very well without Noumena, and, no doubt, do; having a rock to stand upon which is higher than the highest kind of all, of mere natural substrata.. He who "hangeth the earth upon nothing" has, in all probability, hung both matter and mind upon the same. A quasi Noumenonism, it must be admitted, there may possibly be, and if there is, what can it be but God himself, as the basis on which nature alike in the material sphere, and the immaterial, ultimately rests. But are there not an absolute matter, and an absolute mind? Doubtless: and absolute enough, one might suppose, to satisfy any one of their existence, as such, when, for instance, they come within the sphere of our realisation as a Mount Vesuvius.

making all that is within it speak in thunder, and as a Nicholas Copernicus with voice, yet of grander potency, virtually commanding the sun to stand still, and the earth to move! This much is clear, at all events, that if there be any nature of things over and above the one which images itself phenomenally in the mirror of our cognition, we can never know what it is, nor conceive of its mode of being. Moreover, it is consoling to think that matter, as we know it, is just as good for every purpose of practical utility, and scientific investigation, as if we knew for certain of there belonging to it a substratum as a concrete reality, and not as a mere abstract idea; and that mind as a constant succession of mental states flowing along the channel of consciousness, and based upon a constant consciousness of the ego, is as truly real an entity as it could be made by the knowledge of any hypostasis or substance immaterial that the most subtle sopher, or the most enthusiastic philo-sopher, could imagine for its improvement. A spade is a spade, call it what we may, and a spade is nothing but a spade search into it as we may. The ultimate rationale of existence, both material and spiritual, is admittedly a mystery profound as darkness; but we need not complicate it by the addition of gratuitous fancies of our own. To be wise above the attainable is to be wise below the rational. A material object

-say a ball—is a collection of particles, and nothing more. And, metaphysically considered, what is it but a collection of properties, as extension, solidity, etc.? But qualities must inhere in something. Now, something, strictly speaking, is that which exists per se. And what is there, I should like to know, that exists per se but God only? "Life in Himself." "Who only hath immortality." Space and duration are nothing in themselves. On the hypothesis of the soul being a mere collection of qualities, it might be asked, how it can exist hereafter? The reply is, how, on this hypothesis, can it exist now? The realism or the idealism of the objects of our external perceptions is another question. I speak now of the objective as relative to us-as perceived by the senses, and as analyzed by the mind. Real or ideal, it is, and that is the great thing for us. The how of its being God knows, and he only. Substance (as substratum) and a "plastic nature" or physical soul of the world, belong to the same category of notions. Substance must underlie quality, and something must give things form and life. Exactly: Have you never read that in Him we live and are? If there be tribes of men who have no idea of a God, it is because they are an exception to the rule, through being below par in not possessing the requisite power of thought; and, therefore, the exception only confirms the rule. To assert that man cannot see, because some men are born blind, would be as absurd as it is contrary to matter-of-fact.

As our thought increases in extension, it decreases in comprehension. Siminides illustrated the truth of this when he said that the more he thought about God the less he seemed to know of him. But although neither our perceptions nor our conceptions can go far, yet they may be perfectly just and true as far as they do go.

A ONE-SIDED view of things is as common as it is inadequate; whilst an all-sided view is so uncommon as scarcely ever to be met with. If the dogmatist would go round the bush, instead of eternally beating it in one direction, he would see further and catch

more.

IF matter and spirit are not as we know them, but as we do not know them, then each may be either, or neither. No question of our knowledge being relative, but still it is knowledge. To beings of any order, no less than to us, things must even be what they appear to be. Nor is this proposition disproved by the possibility of two differently constituted beings seeing the same thing differently. Relatively, and therefore really, to each, it must be what it is known or realized to be. That is to say, to all orders and degrees of finite percipiency relativity must be reality, and reality relativity. Only the Perfect One can see and know to the bottom of things.

As Kant says, that alone is truly infinite than which a greater cannot possibly exist. The "one substance" of Spinoza's theory is simply the all, whole, or entirety of existence; matter, spirit, space, and duration forming the infinite, because eternal, Amalgam. This is Pantheism; and Pantheism is a gordeon knot which Reason cannot untie, and which revelation, by means of its twoedged sword of fact and truth, can alone effectually deal with. This knot cannot be loosed, it must be cut. No one of any philosophic insight worth the name but must admit that Spinozism is unanswerable on purely rational, i.e., logico-metaphysical grounds. But, thank heaven, by means of the rod of Moses and of Christ we can smite that Red Sea of reasoned infidelity, and walk over dry-shod to a living God and a lively Hope! Give up the Bible, and where are you? Why, in a slough of despond, from which you cannot by any means extricate yourself. Verily, the Sure Word is as a light in a dark place.

Reason, without faith, tends to scepticism; faith, without reason, tends to superstition.

Half truth works more mischief than whole error.

First impressions and first impulses are generally the best. Logic does more harm than good, when it intrudes itself into the sphere of intuition.

Religion is more a question of fact than of logic.

To our higher instincts and intuitions, the existence of God, as power and intelligence, is self-evident. It is only when the leaven

of our logics begins to work, that those direct perceptivities become confused and uncertain.

COMBE'S Constitution of Man-a body without a soul.
BERKELEY'S Theory-a soul without a body.

RFID'S Common Sense-other foundation can no man lay. PRIESTLEY'S Matter and Spirit-matter without materialism, and spirit without immaterialism.

MANSEL'S Limits of Religious Thought a bridle for the ass of dogmatism; a whip for the horse of free-thinking; and a rod for the back of him who thinketh that he knowing anything yet as he ought to know.

YOUNG'S Province of Reason-Young's, not Mansel's, nor mine. DARWIN'S Theory-"Thereby hangs a tail, wherein lieth its strength or sting, no less than its weakness.

Make haste slowly, to make good speed.

In nature, as we know it, all is gradational. No leaps. Therefore, taking analogy as our guidance, we are compelled to look upon our immediate future on quitting "the warm precincts of clay," as a gentle gradation into a better or a worse sphere of existence, as the case may be. As Milton asks: What if earth be but the shadow of heaven ?" and may it not be added, of hell too?

Instruction is a putting in; education is a bringing out (educo); and you must, somehow, bring out, ere you can put in. In other words, capacity must first be formed, before it can be filled. No doubt, we educate by instructing. Exercise tends to growth and expansion; and you cannot teach the young idea how to shoot, even into such a simplicity as a knowledge of A, B, C, without strengthening the mental organs. Nature gives, education developes, and instruction fills our faculties.

Is it in the physical-basis theory of mind to explain the following? Can it account for the phenomena of consciousness, simply considered? Can it reach the origin of the phenomena? and can it trace causation among them? Or does it assist us to discover the conditions that determine the character and connection-the laws of pure thinking? It would appear to common sense that the laws of physiology and the laws of psychology are toto cœlo different, co-work as they may with each other, in the genetic effort which produces the actual phenomena of mind. Can the manipulations and insights of modern mechanico-biological science find out the sad consummation so undevoutly wished for, namely, that, after all, there is not a spirit in man, and that the inspiration of Matter, not of God, giveth him understanding? As the quality of man is a phenomenal fact, why should it be thought a thing incredible that it should be a fundamental one also?