Further :

Disproof of Materialism.

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It is demonstrably certain, if Materialism is true, that we cannot take a step physically or mentally, religiously or morally, but in the way and according to the thoughts of the millions who have gone before us. It is not given to any man, however endowed, to rise spontaneously or quickly into intellectual splendour, there is no break, no solution of continuity. At any and every given moment of our history knowledge has limits which it cannot pass, and every one of us is weak, standing alone.

As if to disprove this mechanical theory, an unknown law intervenes. The thought and work of other men converge in us; the long travail of past centuries-the patience, experience, emotion, thought of all former ages, make us what we are; and this rule or empire of the dead is a great and increasing empire; not a small and measurable thing, the interpretations are illimitable, a reservoir of experience for all the living. Hence, we fairly argue, the human mind is not a gloomy cave, or winding passage leading no whither, dimly lighted with mirage of baseless opinion; but, gathering rich stores from the past, carries forward the whole man towards fullest truth and greatest good.

Such a revelation, from ancient source, of unknown and forgotten things, disposes for ever of that huckstering traffic which would measure the exercise of thought, the flight of fancy, the brilliancy of creative genius, and sell it by weight over the counter of physical experiment. The psychical laws of it are real, true, but further reaching than the physical; their effects may be likened to those thrills of the earth seen and measured in magnetic mirror; so that to our mental centre there is a revelation of things that are not of our own creation, and an interpretation as if a Hand played with Divinely ordered variety on the chords of our emotion: emotion, which giving grand conception of mysteries and supreme events, makes the successive ages spectators, and the great souls of all periods contemporary. We may enlarge the fact.

Energy and brilliancy of thought not being of unvarying quantitative or qualitative stability in an individual, a race,

or a period, we are not surprised by appearances, when and where least expected, of great and sudden splendour. The progress not being uniform, but intermittent; gathering strength in the clearness consequent upon repose, or by mighty wrestling, some thinker of exceptional power thrusts aside barriers, and wins a wider circle in which thought entrenches itself, thence to go forth with new strength once more to conquer. This thrill and interchange of energy acts as by a spurt, or without any known parentage of antecedent thought. Enormous distance comes between the experience of Pythagoras and the scientific computations of Newton, between common minds and the genius of Shakspeare, between profane persons and men of piety. Throes arise out of the long travail of centuries, from the trouble and struggle of a million workers, and, by passionate exercise concentrating much light and power, turn common places of effort into miracle-scenes. This accounts for Moses, a slave, delivering a nation of slaves-rendering them free men; and giving laws which evermore preserved them, as a pure race and a peculiar people. This shows how holy Apostles, not having movement and tone from their age, received sparks of new worldenlightening thought from Jesus Christ; this was real inspiration.

No

Timid souls exclaim-" Let us leave one another alone; keep to your own province, do not enter ours; let there be peace between us." This will never do: the pact can be observed only so long as neither party is quite in earnest. By no treaty can the domain of truth be divided. bargaining nor fencing off, nor any form of process, will maintain artificial barriers against inquiry, or bar the right of way blessed right, enforced by rightful power. The natural world and spiritual world, the intellectual and the emotional, cannot be separated in any such fashion. That fatal objection

"It is not true," will cast down any system. Truth will not admit nor allow a lie. Every truth, whether physical or psychical, is connected with every other truth; and especially with Him who is the centre of all. Science, therefore, must be allowed, without suspicion or hindrance, to pursue her own proper work. The Church will certainly, despite all hindrance,

Work of the Clergy.

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do her work; nor is it limited to purely spiritual consolation, to academic speculation, or to mere philosophy; her work is of a very practical nature: you cannot cause it to cease from the pulpit, nor from the hearth, nor from the printing press, it will win and replenish the earth.

The Clergy, well aware of this, count it their special office to teach from the pulpit, and exhort in the house, concerning the great facts; Redemption, Sanctification, Everlasting Life. Not the precise antiquity of the human race-not the exact line separating allegory from history in Scripture-not the interval between miraculous operation and natural causenot the reconciliation of the Supernatural with ordinary law -are to be enforced on the Holy Day; though it were well for fit men, with leisure, to show at the "week-evening services" what a good and holy thing is Physical Science. Most of them, and rightly, will do that they love most; and for which they are best fitted; enforce simple Bible Truth : that every man, as he lives and when he dies, may use Professor Henslow's prayer-" Washed in the Blood of the Lamb enable me to submit to Thy Holy Will: sanctify me with Thy Spirit." Faith and Prayer of this sort will exist despite scientific difficulties, and outlive them. Truths, that seem simplest, are deepest; and in guiding those who have gone astray, helping the tempted, and consoling the troubled, our Clergy tell us what God has done, what Christ has done, what the Holy Spirit has done; and these truths-if they breathe in the thoughts, and burn in the words—are the power of God to the soul.

This teaching, throwing light into many dark places of the Bible, shows that the face which answered to our face in childhood, becomes, as we grow, a reflection of manhood in Christ; an intelligence, long unseen, becoming visible. This enlargement of meaning with our growth of understanding, and the rising of precept and doctrine into rules of higher discipline for the advancement of purity, had long been a matter of spiritual experience to devout minds; but the accurate scientific positive thought of the age has led to inquiry, whether those parts also which address our reason, and not so much the emotional and reverential faculties, do not

possess equal power of enlargement. What have we found? We have found that the excellency of the Bible above all other Books, and its peculiarity as the word of God, render it, what for want of better name may be called a spiritual organism (Heb. iv. 12). The words are not chosen and arranged as by a scientific man, nor do they contain latent systems of science; but, when scientific facts become known, the very truth of them confirms the old letter. As an artist beholds spirit and life on that canvas which, to a common eye, is but a dead picture; or as the sculptor sees genius live and move in the marble that, to another man, is lifeless; the believer finds the chambers of Scripture to be full of true and holy living things. There are some rare human countenances in which an honest homely look might be counted all; but in a moment, as if light from Heaven shone, depths of soul are revealed all a glow with love and truth: so is it with the Bible.

We respectfully ask scientific men whether cold mechanical narrow conception and interpretation of the Holy Book is not as scientifically wrong as some old conceptions of nature are actually false? Can a book exciting holy emotion, quickening pious resolve, overcoming the fear of death, enabling the low, the vicious, the cruel, to attain elevation sanctity and mercifulness, have its powers accounted for by mechanical arrangements? Are its peculiar construction-often setting aside our modern rules of grammar; its splendour of imagery -adorning every chamber of our mind; its array of facts and historic narration-delighting to confound our theories; to be interpreted, or corrected, or rejected, because some of us find that our systems are not in accord with its statements? Ought it not to be meted by another measure than the hard analysis of criminal-court procedure? We ask even the undevout-for surely godly emotions sometime move in them, a sense of the Supreme sometime possesses them, a desire for immortality in purity and truth sometime lives in them-whether these high spiritual parts are not more valuable parts of their nature, and more worthy of cultivation and reliance, than the carnal instincts which crave only to eat drink and be merry?

Let it be a matter of duty to develop the high, as it is a necessity to appease the low with the mastery of logical methods and the accuracy of experiment, partake of those more elaborate delicate and comprehensive processes of thought and emotion which draw even scientific specialists to Scripture, to Faith, to God. If a critic asserts, "Shakespeare had no genius and Milton no imagination," will not men smile at his folly? Is it not greater folly to call Moses, one of the greatest of men, “a semi-barbarous Hebrew;" to account the Prophets enthusiasts, Jesus as wholly human, and the Apostles as deceived or deceivers? We cannot but hope that He who, in compassionate and unfaltering love, prayed for his enemies-"Father forgive them," will look from the Cross with His sublime suffering Human countenance upon the ignorant, draw them to Him and save them; and from the Throne regard them gloriously.