Our scientific men hold now a position very like that of the hierarchy in the middle ages. The great mass of men who have no chance of examining the reasons which they bring forward, accept their assertions with almost amusing docility. It is, of course, quite right and necessary that it should be so; still this authority over the minds of many men is a talent for which, as you and I believe, they will have one day to give account.

Hugh. But I suppose you would not wish to restrain their liberty to utter what they believe to be scientific truth.

Arthur. Not if they are sure that it is apprehended as truth by their hearers; but I need not repeat what I before said, that truth in the mouth of the speaker may become error in the mind of the hearer.

Hugh. Beware of obscurantism.

Arthur. I do. I know the danger on that side, and pray that we may always have the fresh air of free thought and free discussion to keep our very beliefs from becoming rotten. But, on the other hand, you must remember in what an intensely artificial state of society we are now living. I am not going to draw any fancy picture of Arcadian innocence and ignorant holiness in past days; but I think we must admit that the shepherd and the huntsman and the sailor, have more chance of hearing the voice of God in nature than is given to the dwellers in cities. Well, our civilisation enormously multiplies the population of town-dwellers, carries the subdivision of labour further than was ever before known, tends more and more to separate the thinkers from the workers as a class, but strains all the appliances of science, the steam-engine, and the electric telegraph, and the printing-press, to put the results of the thought of the few, as promptly and as universally as she can, before the many. Quite right of her so to do; it

is one of her noblest works: only let her remember that, if through any error or inadvertence, she is carrying poison with the food to all these intellects, it does the more terrible mischief. And the more subtle and delicate her processes, the more fatal will be the poisons which she will have the power of producing.

Hugh. I see you think that more stringent means must be used to prevent the strychnine and prussic acid of modern science from accidentally poisoning the spiritual life of our half-educated classes, than were successful with the hemlock and aconite, which were the poisons of earlier and ruder days.

Arthur. Exactly so, and I wish you could impress this truth on all your scientific friends, some of whom, I think, can hardly realize what vast power they have; else they would not, in mere lightness of heart, deal the cruel blows which they do at the spiritual life of their fellow-countrymen, "and overthrow the faith of some." It is reassuring to remember how entirely we have the great names of reason as well as of faith on our side. I should have liked to read to you that discourse of Socrates with Aristodemus, which is given in the first book of Xenophon's " Memorabilia;" but we shall not have time now, and perhaps you remember it.

Hugh. No: I must have read it, but it has gone

from me.

Arthur. It is a splendid vindication of the existence of a Divine Intelligence in the creation of the world: uttered by the father, may not we say, of all true science, but sound argument still, as good, I think, for Darwin as for Diagoras. However, as that is too long to read now, and as we must have some good clear assertion of the truth to take away the taste of all this false philosophy, let us read a part of one of our old favourites, "Bacon's Essay on Atheism."

Will you take the book? You will easily pick out the sentences which bear the most closely on our argument.

Hugh (reads). "I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind; and, therefore, God never wrought miracles to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it. It is true that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in science bringeth men's minds about to religion; for while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them and go no farther; but when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity. The scripture saith, The fool hath said in his heart there is no God;' it is not said, 'The fool hath thought in his heart;' so as he rather saith it by rote to himself as that he would have, than that he can thoroughly believe it or be persuaded of it; for none deny there is a God, but those for whom it maketh that there were no God. It appeareth in nothing more, that atheism is rather in the life than in the heart of man than by this, that atheists will ever be talking of that their opinion,' as if they fainted in it themselves, and would be glad to be strengthened by the consent of others.

"The contemplative atheist is rare—a Diagoras, a Bion, or a Lucian, perhaps, and some others; and yet they seem to be more than they are, for that all that impugn a received religion or superstition are by the adverse part branded with the name of atheists; but the great atheists, indeed, are hypocrites, which are ever handling holy things, but without feeling, so as they must needs be cauterised in the end.

"The causes of atheism are divisions in religion,

if there be many, for any one main division addeth zeal to both sides, but many divisions introduce atheism another is, scandal of priests, when it is come to that which St. Bernard saith, Non est jam dicere, ut populus, sic sacerdos; quia nec się populus, ut sacerdos.' A third is, a custom of profane scoffing in holy matters, which doth by little. and little deface the reverence of religion: and, lastly, learned times, especially with peace and prosperity; for troubles and adversities do more bow men's minds to religion. They that deny a God destroy a man's nobility, for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body; and if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature. It destroys, likewise, magnanimity, and the raising human nature; for, take an example of a dog, and mark what a generosity and courage he will put on when he finds himself maintained by a man, who is to him instead of a God, or melior natura—which courage is manifestly such as that creature, without that confidence of a better nature than his own, could never attain. So man, when he resteth and assureth himself upon Divine protection and favour, gathereth a force and faith which human nature in itself could not obtain; therefore as atheism is in all respects hateful, so in this, that it depriveth human nature of the means to exalt itself above human frailty."

Arthur. Well and truly spoken, Verulam. And surely with not less truth and with a more wonderful prescience of our modern temptations, that old Hebrew minstrel, "Know ye that the Lord He is God: it is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture."

THOMAS HODGKIN.

ON THE DIVINE PRINCIPLE IN MAN. "For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God." COL. iii. 3.

I Do not propose in this paper to enter into a theological discussion of the nature of the indwelling principle in the heart of man, which has been more or less a portion of the belief of almost all Christian bodies except the extreme Calvinists, and with which we are familiar in the writings of the early Friends under the designation of the "seed," or the "witness;" but for which every sect has adopted its own name, or perhaps has only instinctively and not avowedly acknowledged. For, as Charles Kingsley says in his Introduction to Miss Winkworth's translation of the "Theologia Germanica," "The doctrine of Christ in every man, as the indwelling Word of God, the Light who lights every one who comes into the world, is no peculiar tenet of the Quakers, but one which runs through the whole of the Old and New Testaments, and without which they would be unintelligible, just as the same doctrine runs through the whole history of the Christian Church for the first two centuries, and is the only explanation of them." And again, Thomas Hancock in his Prize Essay on the Decline of the Society of Friends entitled "The Peculium: ""These doctrines," of the immediate revelation of Jesus Christ to the soul of man, and of the universality of this revelation, "are often expressed, always implied, in all the offices of the Liturgy of the Church" of England;

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indeed, the very name Catholic and Apostolic; the pretence of being National; the Sacrament of Baptism given to the children of all parents, bad or good; the Confirmation Office, and much more,