as

a man has no passions, how, in the name of common sense, can he write upon the passions? He has not the facts upon which to proceed. Such men know but a part of human nature, and reason upon it if they knew the whole. Some one will say to them, "I would believe in an infinite and perfect Being, that I may have an infinite object of love and adoration;" but what is this to our philosophers? They account the wish a dream, and the man an enthusiast, for they know no such feeling or want. They are not fair representations of the human race, and have not a common sympathy with humanity, aud yet they would draw a chart of human nature! The great beliefs which animate the hearts of the men who are engaged in the affairs of life, the noble instances vouchsafed us of self-sacrifice, of bold daring, of untiring zeal, of meek submission, of tearful penitence, and lowly adoration, seem to them enigmas, or can be accounted for by hard effort upon some inferior principle. What wonder that men of heart and nerve, the loving and the pious, turn away from such in disgust, and stigmatize them as pedants, sophists, scholastics, dogmatizers, triflers, and so on through the list. They say to them, your study is not our green living world, you might as well live in the moon for all the profit you can be to us; and so the world goes on its own way, and the scholar, alas! goes his.

To this source we may trace dogmas innumerable, philosophical and theological. Who that has doubted whether there be such a thing as conscience, and whether virtue be eternal and immutable, has not discovered when delivered from his doubt, (and indeed effected his deliverance by the discovery,) that he had lost sight for the time of the plain fact in the case, viz. that he had a sense of duty which no logic could work out of him, and which would not, it may be, have permitted him to falsify, to save his life. Was it not a love of the truth, that sent him out on the perilous voyage of inquiry? How many unprofitable theological dogmas have been deduced from the thoughts of man and the words of Scripture, because, owing to the narrowness of the mind of the examiner, or the coldness of his feelings, he necessarily lost sight of some important consideration. Hence, what was originally a life-giving doctrine, speaking to the heart and soul of man, and helping him forward in the path of duty, becomes a dry barren dogma, and must receive an infusion of life from healthy popular sentiments, or it will speedily decay. Hence we must never look for the belief of the Christian Church in the articles of the

Catholic creed, but in the practical principles exemplified in the lives of faithful and sincere believers in this creed. It is pleasing to reflect, that while we fall short of the moral law, we frequently keep in advance of theological institutes-our Confession of Faith. The pious Christian supplies the fact and the inference, which the harsh dogmatizer had lost sight of. From this fact, unhappily, arises the unnatural divorce of religion and morality, religion becoming merely an arbitrary intellectual system, an affair of the head alone, and demanding assent at whatever sacrifice of honest conviction. Such dogmas remind one strikingly of certain other speculations, noticed in an oft-quoted passage :

"Others apart sat on a hill retired,

In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fix'd fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.
Of good and evil much they argued then,
Of happiness and final misery,

Passion and apathy, and glory' and shame,
Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy."

III. But we would not impute this ignorance of facts to the philosopher, as necessarily and strictly a blameworthy thing. He may have been led into his errors by too close attention to his favorite pursuit, and this brings us to our third head, the grand source of all the difficulties to which speculation has given rise. The intellect must not be suffered to outstrip the affections, the head must not be cared for while the heart is neglected, or the worst consequences will ensue. We have no right, in the first place, to cultivate one part of our nature to the exclusion of the others, if by so doing we defeat the great object of all our action, and destroy the proper developement of the favored portion. But if we would reason upon the human powers-upon the nature of man, we must ourselves be men, and not smoke-dried pedants. The pedant, the scholastic, the bookworm, the retired student, abuses speculation first by withdrawing from society, second (a natural consequence) by reasoning without facts, and finally by incurring the risk of killing by thought his instinctive belief in the principles of common sense. The danger lest the object to be examined fade away because we are examining, is surely

sufficiently great, and we need not increase the difficulty by giving our attention to what is almost invisible at the very outset. The speculator is not to create facts, but to examine those already created to hand. And if he would build upon the facts of his own consciousness, not take his data from books or from other men, he must so live that the facts may be created in him. He must endeavor so to unite faith with knowledge, that he may be able to look upon his soul as upon a fair picture, to be examined and scrutinized indeed, but concerning whose reality and beauty we can never entertain a doubt. How beautiful would be the result of the union of the practical wisdom of life with the acuteness of speculative genius;—the whole soul filled with an animating and ennobling belief, to which atheism and skepticism would be absurdities, the warm heart beating in unison with every noble sentiment and awakening affection; and on the other hand, a practical intellect tracing the mutual dependencies and laws of belief and opinion, and fully able to defend its adherence to faith or to sight. Speculation would no longer stalk before us a ghastly spectre, easy to raise and hard to lay, but would appear as an angel of light, a gospel messenger.

After the fiery trials to which reflecting men have been called in this age of inquiry, may we not hope that the union of faith and reason will be consummated? If philosophy and theology still live and flourish in spite of French atheism and German rationalism, how much will they be purified and strengthened when the wind and tempest shall have finished their work and ceased. The rubbish of Popery could not be removed without inflicting some slight injury upon the Church within, and unfortunately the careful, though bold, hand of Luther could not finish the work which it commenced. Can we not perceive traces of a union of religion with a sound philosophy, in the Evangelical party in Germany, and in the French school of philosophers? This humble and chastened wisdom may justly be called the principal thing." "Therefore let us get this wisdom, and with all our getting get this understanding." This alone brings clear light, unobscured by mist or vapor, and with light, joy and sweet peace.

R. E.

THE MORNING STAR.

"AND I will give him the morning star." Rev. ii. 28. This is a strikingly beautiful thought. The meaning is, he who overcometh and perseveres unto the end, shall be like the morning star, the most brilliant among the hosts of heaven and the harbinger of day. The true, faithful, and devoted Christian not only possesses a moral power of the most beneficent kind, not only exerts a deep and abiding moral influence on all around, but by his character and conduct at the last— by his triumphal death he opens the future world to our vision, and gives promise of the coming of that day which no night shall follow.

There is no brighter assurance of a glorious immortality than the happy close of a true Christian life. Death then seems like one of the grateful changes, rather than an interruption in the current, of our being, not as the termination, but the beginning of real existence. And who ever witnessed such a death,-who ever saw the Christian sustained in the hour of his need by faith and hope, looking at the close of life with calmness and courage, resigning all familiar and well known objects without a sigh, gazing with a serene and steady eye and with a pulse that did not quicken upon the pale form of the destroyer, and triumphing in the anticipation of a happy immortality,who ever saw this without a deeper conviction of the reality of a spiritual and future world? It opens such a world to the eye of faith and imagination. It speaks of the blessed and glorious beyond the grave. It rises on a dark world like the first light of the dawn, mild and beautiful, giving the assurance of coming day.

It is a testimony which I would offer to the unbeliever with more hope of convincing him than by any argument whatever. I would take him from dwelling to dwelling on which the light of Christian truth has shone. I would lead him to those who in the midst of earthly blessings, while the cup of enjoyment was full and there were objects pulling at every fibre of their hearts, having overcome the world, having lived with such meekness and sense of dependence as to have no will but the will of God, are able to witness their end approaching with no fear but that they may not be unprepared to go. The glow of health has begun to fade on their cheek and the symptoms of

decline to appear too visible to be any longer mistaken, and they feel that the hour is near when they must resign the tender objects of their affection until they shall meet again in the skies; and yet they are calm, collected, cheerful, as if they contemplated a pleasant journey. The frame is wasted by the daily and nightly ravages of disease, and the vital principle is almost exhausted by lingering and painful suffering; and yet the mind is as clear in its perceptions, and the heart is as strong in its affections, as in the days of full health and strength. I go farther. The sands are rapidly sinking, the pulse is throbbing fainter and slower, and the spirit is just ready to take its mysterious flight; and yet the countenance is brightened up as if it were already inscribed with the impress of heaven, and there is a tone of fervor and tenderness as if converse were already held with "the spirits of the just made perfect." How beautiful thus to pass away! And I ask the skeptic,-can you behold the mild radiance of the rising star, can you observe the streaks of light which begin to illumine the eastern horizon, and not believe the day is approaching; and can you witness such scenes, and not feel the glorious assurance that the soul never dies-that an immortal day will rise upon our world?

He

To distinctly perceive the value of the lesson, we must contrast these with other scenes, in which there is physical but not moral power. Go in imagination to the chamber where the trappings of earthly greatness are, but where religious faith and hope are not. Stand, for instance, at the bedside of him whose whole life was a selfidolatry, and whose whole course was marked by desolation and bloodshed. Enter the room and stand by the bed on which Napoleon lies dying. It is a day of cheerless gloom. The skies are troubled, the storm is raging, and the tempest is beating without the dwelling. But a fiercer tempest is agitating his bosom who lies upon that bed. has been agonized with pain, and his countenance writhes with his internal sufferings. Disease has done its work upon him, and now approaches the final conflict. Look upon that eye whose slightest glance once made the bravest quail; it is now fixed on vacancy. Watch that mind whose mighty schemes struck with horror the nations; visions are crowding into it, but not of futurity. Imagination is busy, but not with glories to come. It is amidst scenes of carnage and bloodshed. It has conjured up the shadowy forms of the once living warriors. He is engaged again in the strife of the battle. He opens his lips, and the last words of the dying hero are,-Forward to