But such blinded enthusiasts deserve not to be reasoned with. Let it be sufficient to assert, that all that is now in the open outwardness of historic fact, was once seminally enclosed in the secret inwardness of human ideas, sentiments, desires, and perceptions; and hence, all which moves, animates, and makes what we call "the world,"—is nothing more nor less, than the invisible spirit and central moral life of Humanity, interpreting itself under the tangible conditions of earth, and space, and sense, and time. And can it be, with any reasonable adherence to truth, denied, that the most energizing of all conceivable ideas, perceptions, or principles, which actuate our complex nature, are those which have GOD and MAN for their presiding centres? And if not, how awfully important it is, that God, in the divine gloriousness of His REVEALED PERSONALITY, and Man, in the real depths of his FAllen CONDITION,—should influence the conduct of a nation, the creed of a church, and the heart of a people! But, shall we be accused of arrogant dogmatism if we venture to assert, that the spirit of English legislation, the character of parliamentary decisions, the educational mechanics of the times, together with the reigning spirit of the social world, through all its varied departments,-have each and all, to a vast extent, acted, spoken, and decided, as though our world were under the government of ABSTRACT ATTRIBUTES, instead of a personal and interfering GOD, on the one hand; while Man has been flattered, and treated as though he were competent to decide his own cause, construct his own character, and shape his own destiny, on the other! And what is the remedy for this? In this age of Pyrrhonism, when creedless vanity and churchless schemes are rife around us on all sides, God grant that, like the perplexed seer of old, we may be able to say, "6 I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will watch to see WHAT HE WILL SAY UNTO ME, and what I shall answer when I am reproved," (Habakkuk ii. 1.) Here is our healing rest and hallowed remedy, the light of celestial wisdom, coming down clear and full in direct beams of inspiration from the throne of ESSENTIAL TRUTH itself! With these remarks, we must now terminate this imperfect sketch. Meanwhile, we may, perhaps, be pardoned the transient egotism of self-quotation, in subjoining, from the THIRD EDITION of a work, probably unknown to the readers of these pages,—an extract that exhibits some of those moral realities of the day, which are virtually affected and awfully swayed by our wrong views of WHO God is, and WHAT Man has become. The following quotations, then, are taken from the "GOSPEL IN ADvance of the AGE," and relate to the spirit of our preceding remarks. "And first, what is the prominent fact which must arrest the thoughtful gaze of any contemplatist, who is able to study the complex movements and broad significances of THE TIMES? After allowing for diversities of individual judgment, and the specific bias of the mental taste, we imagine most will concur in this,—that a restless appetite for some vague and vast amelioration, is that which is now stirring and heaving the great heart of Society to its depths. And if we proceed to analyse this perturbed and feverish desire after some undefined state of satisfying good, we shall detect that a confidence in man's own powers, principles, and energies to produce and promote it, lies at the root of all its actings. To an immense extent, as to all active operation on the conscience and the will of the admirers of this world,—the radical corruption and entire apostacy of our race from all spiritual goodness and truth, is either denied, diluted, or forgotten. Still, though the doctrinal fact of the fall may be unremembered, the moral consequences of that fall are not unfelt; and at this moment, we perceive one of its malign influences to be bodied forth in a restless yearning for an imagined millennium, where the loftiest dreams of ages, and the benignest aspirations of the human spirit, will at length be realized! Thus we have restlessness in the political world, producing theories, and plans, and systems; restlessness in the intellectual world, unfolding itself in works of sentiment and science, philosophy, art, and romance; restlessness in the social world, interpreting itself by false notions, forced effects, mistaken views of life, and educational novelties, &c.; and, above all, a restlessness in the church, which seeks to relieve itself in every mode of deliverance which controversy can supply, and under every extreme of improvement which ecclesiastical suggestion can discover, or sectarian arrogance contrive." (p. 70.) "But, let the origin be presumed as it may,-it cannot be denied that our own age is remarkable as being one in which the madness of political theory is working its way into the sympathies of the populace, to a most disastrous and demoralizing extent. And one can hardly refrain from asking, whether or no in all this, the sowers of 'wind' in secular education and scientific culture apart from religious principle, are not now the reapers of a whirlwind' of rebellion and revolution in these direful results? How must those honorary members of all religions,' who, some twenty years since, presumed to think that morality might exist without a revealed God, and Christianity be respected without a defined creed; and that, to educate the unspiritual mind of a people was the great panacea for polluted hearts and vitiated passions,-how must these self-inspired prophets now feel, when, instead of 'grapes,' behold their science hath brought forth wild grapes! At all events, we perceive Chartism,' with its assumed omnipotence of numbers; 'Socialism,' with its brute Atheism, swinish lust, and kindred manifestations of political debauchery,-all variously festering into bitterness, and fermenting into rebellion the habits and dispositions of the lower classes. But while this must be admitted-and the hideous features of the case stand forth with fearful prominence to the intelligence of any man who can embrace a single idea-let Truth have fair play; and when she lifts her unabashed eyes towards those seats of comparative security, where 'noble lords' and 'honourable members' legislate and argue,- —is there not a MORAL HERESY at work, identical in principle, though more delicate in form, with that which cankers the soul of the vulgar Chartist, or the vicious Socialist? Is there not, among the high-born and courtly oracles of the state and nation, frequently a desertion of God's truths touching man's real wants, quite as decided, though not so disgusting,-as that which a sensual haranguer of the people, or lecturing Socialist in Halls of Science exhibits? In truth, we shall fearlessly affirm, that what Christ said unto Nicodemus is practically denied and experimentally forgotten by every politician, except the man who takes his politics from the same source from which he procures his religion,-the simple Word of God. Now, what speaketh this Word? Why, that human nature is broken off from God by sin and selfishness; that, in this condition, it must be at unrest with itself, and at war with the world around it; and, lastly, that as Humanity's real want is God in the will, whatever stops short of this divine supply, is too scanty for human need. Let, then, the corruption of man by sin, and the regeneration of man by grace, be at the base of all political questions, and we shall soon perceive a holier and a nobler way of prescribing for the diseased heart of the Empire, than now prevails. Instead of speeches, plans, and systems, which virtually dethrone God from supremacy over the human Spirit, and which appear to take it for granted, that what is objectively right, can victoriously be brought to bear on beings who are subjectively wrong,instead of such unhallowed empiricism as this, man's internal disorganization, as spiritually corrupt, would be a corrective element included in every word of a speech, and in every enactment of a statute. Man would no longer be treated as a mere piece of humanized mechanism, or automaton of living flesh, to be repulsed backward, or propelled forward, by the wheels and pulleys of outward instrumentality. Far otherwise genuine legislation would learn to regard man with a more venerating eye, as being indeed awfully depraved by self-will and self-worship; but yet, as a creature burdened with an inevitable eternity of consciousness, either for weal or woe; and capable, through the education of the Holy Ghost, of being made not only a sacred ornament to this world, but like unto the angels in the next."-See "GosPEL IN ADVANCE OF THE AGE." Part 2. SONNET "THE MAID OF ON SEEING, SIDE BY SIDE, IN A PRINTSELLER'S WINDOW, BY ROBERT FERGUSSON, Author of "The Shadow of the Pyramid," and " The Pipe of Repose." Look on this picture, and on that! and give Like her, in mercy, glory to fulfil ; 'Mid whose blest ranks we trust that, pure and bright, In works congenial She is active still, Where souls, by life's rude billows toss'd and worn, To shores of rest on angels' wings are borne. THINGS TO BE TESTED. No. I. THE MARCH OF INTELLECT. T is a very pleasant thing to spend a leisure hour among the brown-backed volumes of an old library. Such a library, if arranged with some regard to chronological order, always reminds me of a geological museum. The material of each section has a peculiar character ; which character is modified, or perhaps altogether changed, in the superincumbent stratum; and, as we approach recent times, the mental fossils become more numerous and familiar, more like actual existences of the present day. Extinct, as are the mighty quadrupeds and gigantic lizards of old, is the once flourishing race of patient chroniclers and untiring romancers. The ballad-makers of the Tudor age still exist; but, like our ancient palm and fern trees, they have disappeared from England. The noble old divines of the era of the Reformation, have, like our fossil pinetrees, their representatives; but these representatives, like those of the former pine-trees, are of inferior growth; and though it may require a critical Ehrenberg to detect their existence, the small poets and pamphleteers who preceded "the gentlemen of the press,”—the literary animalculæ of bygone ages-have left their traces in the crumbling limestone or hardened clay of some old controversy or forgotten prejudice. Even as organic life has existed from a very early geological date, so has intellect been alive and active from the earliest period of human history. No intellectual faculty is altogether new; though there have been changes in the forms of intellectual activity as remarkable as any which the geological series of organisms can exhibit. "THE MARCH OF INTELLECT" is more than a mere phrase; yet I never hear the phrase without thinking of the wild German tale of Herr von Woldenblock, whose bleached skeleton marches ever onward obedient to an artificial mechanism. The intellectual life of the present day seems |