this ineffable humility, and with the glowing and reverent style in which he is spoken of by the chosen witnesses of his resurrection-would have led a mind that does sympathize with him to a higher appreciation of the great truths which centre round his name. If it be true that he has told us nothing respecting God or futurity, or man in his relations to God and futurity, beyond what had been already revealed in the constitution of human nature, conclusions logically follow which it would have been fair to enunciate, but which are not contained in these lectures and why not? Is it because the lecturer is, after all, not sure of the premises which he has so eloquently stated?-or, because he has not reasoned from them?-or, because he knows that the conclusions, boldly given, would have been too fierce an assault on the convictions of the best-informed, as well as too gross an outrage on the most sacred feelings of the most devout? The conclusions, nakedly and formally stated, are such as the following Jesus, who called himself the Son of God, who said that he had come forth from the bosom of the Father, to give his life a ransom for the many, to prepare a place for his followers in his Father's house, and, finally, to judge the world, was either a vile pretender or a weak enthusiast; or he has been grossly misrepresented in the only writings which tell us what he said and did. That such conclusions harmonize with the contents of those writings, and with the effect which they have produced on the world, and with many facts acknowledged in these lectures, it is not our business to determine; but it is passing strange, that the system founded on the facts and principles of these writings should have preserved the enduring and universal in religion more truthfully and efficiently than any other religion!' Yet such is declared, in these lectures (p. 186), to be 'the result of a complete and fair examination.'

In many of the statements of these lectures we have to express a modified concurrence. We have no doubt, that the capacities of human nature are as they are here represented, or that the religion of mankind is conversant with ideas respecting God, revelation, providence, duty, redemption, heaven. But, as these ideas, not being innate, are the result of teaching, and, as in all religions, excepting that which is taught in the Bible, there is erroneous teaching on all the great theories to which these ideas relate, we are indebted to the Bible, directly or indirectly, for our knowledge of those truths respecting God, and redemption, and heaven, which Mr. Fox attributes solely to human nature. All the sciences are conversant with things respecting which men have ideas, but knowledge displaces vague or false ideas by such as are definite and true; in like manner, the instructions of prophets, apostles, and evangelists, discovering to us the facts

and the general truths which constitute the gospel, correct the crrors into which men are continually falling, on matters which concern their highest well-being, impart the knowledge of God, of a Redeemer, of eternal blessedness, show us how to live and how to die so as to be right and happy, and guide the best faculties and instincts of our nature to their proper objects. Men may depreciate the labours of discoverers and inventors, saying that they can do no more than modify our natural ideas of the material universe, by methods quite as rational as those by which Mr. Fox attempts to depreciate the revelations of Divine wisdom in the gospel. The true question, however, we take to be this: Does the Bible contain discoveries respecting God and man, and their mutual relations? We think it has been proved that it does. Such discoveries the sacred writers profess to give, and have given. This is not the place for an elaborate defence of such a position. Our object is not to argue on behalf of Christianity, but to indicate what we regard as a want of fairness in these disparagements of it. Unhappily, some advocates of Divine truth have claimed for the Bible a completeness and an exclusiveness of authority to which the men who wrote it make no pretensions, and, in their zeal for particular doctrines, not a few able men have put constructions on the words of Scripture which do violence to their simple meaning; but, surely, it is not wise to charge these mistakes, or whatever else they may be called, upon the book itself. Here, we take the liberty of saying, in all candour, Mr. Fox appears to us as being more averse to Christianity than any of the deistical writers of a former age. These lectures are not the composition of a Deist. The writer is simply a Pantheist. We are not using the term Pantheist in any invidious sense, but as the correct definition of the writer in distinction from a Deist. He belongs to a school. Without the power of deep philosophical thinking, or the habit of close and continued investigation, he presents, in an alluring dress, the shadowy outlines of a cloudy congeries of world-old fancies, which some of our worthy German neighbours have been dignifying with the name of philosophy. It is nothing more than the mistake of substituting ideas for things, the abstractions and generalizations of logic for real beings. We want a name to express our notions of all things collectively considered; the familiar words--world, universe, are not thought to answer the purpose so well as the rò av of the Greeks. God is either a portion of the rò Tav, or the infinite and independent creator of the τὸ πᾶν, or the word God is a name for the τὸ πᾶν. Adopting the last of these suppositions, men reject the second, and the word God, in their notion of it, stands not for the Creator and Ruler of all things, but for all things; and this is

Pantheism. From several expressions in these lectures we gather that this is the sense in which the word God is used. Some of these expressions are:- Omnipotent Nature; the thought of Deity is a proof of God; ""Queen Mab” is not an atheistic poem, whatever Shelley might think or profess; it recognises that pervading spirit of love presiding over universal being which is only a phase of theism-a peculiar phase, and certainly not among the least lovely; the universal principle -pervading presence and power; an essence, a spirit, a soul of the universe incorporate with all, and in all ;'' a God ab extra,' referred to as not believed in (pp. 86, 87); as also,' a Deity that lives without, and rules over, and thus manages, changes, and guides; something superinduced, something interposed, one with the majestic frame of the heavens and the earth-one with the mighty movements of material nature-one with intellectual and moral development in humanity-who lives, breathes, thinks, feels, acts, in and by all that is all that is being one with them, and He all and in all;''the notion of law, universal law, in nature, when once it arises, and is clearly apprehended, brings what is called Creation within the same category as the events by which it is followed; it sees in them all developments, and developments only-the one infinite, universal, and eternal, the great original, and all else modifications and manifestations."

Now, though Pantheism sounds like the opposite of Atheism, it is equally remote from Theism. According to the doctrine of these lectures, God, Providence, Creation, as understood by Christians and, by Deists, are denied. To deny these primary truths of religion, and, at the same time, to hold by certain ideas or instincts of the human mind, is to deny all that renders religion possible, and to remove the foundations which Christianity assumes as laid. He who has reached this point of denial, and imagines that his denial is expansion of the truth, is not likely to attach importance to the historical documents in which the truths peculiar to Christianity are embodied. To him, miracles, prophecies, inspiration, are modifications of natural laws, veiled under the ignorance or oriental extravagances of pious but illinformed religionists. It ought not to surprise us that Mr. Fox should be fascinated with such vapoury expansions, or that the portion of the public with whom he is an oracle should be fascinated, in their turn, by the rhetoric which they mistake for reasoning, and the dogmatism which they admire as freedom. Neither he nor they have any distinct object of worship. Why should they pray to a God which is nothing more than an abstract notion of the human intellect, unless it be that whole of which they are themselves essential parts and varied modifications? What to them are sin, repentance, atonement, redemption,

heaven, hell? What have they to fear in death? Why should they feel responsible to one above themselves? What revelation, or law, can they admit but nature?

There are few thoughtful persons, we presume, who are strangers to the occasional suggestion of the difficulties which the limitation of our faculties, and of our range of observation, imposes on every attempt to grasp the entire circumference of any question whatever in the region of speculation. But the Bible is for man in his practical life, in his actual condition, in his deep and universal want; and while the mere speculator finds the same perplexity here as elsewhere, the man who follows evidence, believes what is proved by substantial and appropriate testimony, gives his confidence to a Being whose power and love are known to him, and humbly obeys that Being in all his revelations, obtains solid peace of mind, has that within him which restrains his passions, consoles his griefs, elevating him to a manly life, a saintly death, and the sweet ennobling assurance of everlasting joy.

There are many insinuations, caricatures, and other figures of rhetoric, in these pages, which have struck us, while reading them, as illustrations of the kind of weapons which are nearest at hand, and most dexterously wielded, by adversaries whose moral earnestness is not strong enough to check the play of their intellectual adroitness. They seem to forget that they have no monopoly of such artillery, no exclusive patent for its use; and that the time may come when men of graver discipline, finding that these adversaries will not, or dare not, or cannot, meet them fairly on the well-fought fields of scholarship, of candid investigation, of orderly and courteous reasoning, will condescend to their own style of doing things, lash them with unsparing ridicule, and turn against them the indignant scorn of all whose opinion is worth caring for.

Before we take leave of these lectures, we must not omit to point out a pleasant passage, which treats us to a specimen of the kind of religious freedom which Englishmen may expect, if ever the opinions here propounded should gain the ascendant in high places. Among the things which the State may and can do' for the education of our people, we are told, most amiably: It can take care that sects and Churches do not pervert the operation of education to their own selfish or class purposes,' (p. 220.) Now, the State neither may nor can do this thing until the religious liberty of England is destroyed. LET HIM

WHO DARES ATTEMPT IT.

We remember to have read in the Westminster Review,' some three years ago, a paper of considerable power, on Strauss's 'Life of Jesus,' and Theodore Parker's 'Discourse of Matters per

taining to Religion.' We need scarcely say, that there were many opinions broached, or hinted, in that review, which our convictions led us to reject, but which prepared us for something like the article in the April number of the same Review,' entitled, The Church of England.' Into a detailed, critical, or controversial notice of that article, we do not feel that we are required to enter; we have not space now left for the purpose; but we are careful to record our protest against the subtle infidelity, the perverse confusion of Christianity as we hold it, with what we have been habitually opposing as the additions or modifications of its professed disciples-the ignorant or studied misrepresentations of orthodox belief-the bold denunciation of the great mediatory principle we receive and cherish, and desire to propagate, as the principle of the gospel-the levity which trifles with the most awful mysteries of the Divine government-the dogmatism-the unreasoning substitution of human speculations for revealed verities-the laborious accumulation of often-refuted objections to the Bible—and, in a word, the animus of the entire composition. While there is much to which the readers of the Eclectic' will probably agree with us in assenting, and which we are sure is in accordance with the views of many most Evangelical believers, we cannot but lament that truths of great practical value, together with many literary attractions, should have been so blended with superficial opinions, unsound principles, and dark insinuations, as to form a mixture more mischievous, on the whole, than any production which has lately come before us.

Why, then, it may be asked, notice these and similar publications at all?-why call attention to them from readers who, otherwise, might know nothing of them, or content themselves with having heard that they are not fit to be introduced to Christian families?

One reason for not pursuing the course of politic silence, or of indiscriminate condemnation, is, that we honestly believe there has been too much of both already by what is conventionally syled 'the religious public.' We certainly do think that persons in all classes of Christian society, and especially all Christian teachers, should be better acquainted than a great many of them are, with the notions of the most active-minded among our earnest operatives, and among the more highly educated of our countrymen.

Another reason which induces us to adopt the seemingly more adventurous course, of examining and reporting faithfully such writings as those with which we have now dealt, is-that we do not think it desirable for Christian believers to withhold their moral sympathy from persons who may be on the way towards