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vally, tilly vally, Master More, will you sit still by the fire and make goslings in the ashes with a stick, as children are wont to do? For as my mother was wont to say, heaven rest her soul! it is ever better to rule than to be ruled. And, therefore, I would not, I warrant you, be so foolish as to be ruled when I might rule." "By my troth, wife, in this, I dare say, you say truth; for I never found you willing to be ruled yet."

There is no answering Mistress Alice's argument; so the late Lord Chancellor falls to criticizing his wife's dress. But the daughters declare it to be all right; and then he adds, “Do you not perceive that your mother's nose is somewhat awry?" whereat the good lady, even in her ill humor, begins to see that in matters of conscience, though she does not understand so sensitive a nature, she will do well to let it alone.

And this was the end of an honest man's career of honor, and twenty-five years' acquaintance with the splendid court of the eighth Henry. In gold and silver he had about one hundred pounds, and of income, about the same; for, above the King's gifts, which indeed were very soon gone again, he had not purchased land enough to yield over £50 per annum.

He called his family about him. "We will now try Lincoln's Inn diet," said he, "and if that is too much for our slender purse, then New Inn fare, wherewith many an honest man is well contented. If that exceed our ability, then will we, in the next year, descend to Oxford fare; which, if our ability stretch not to maintain neither, then may we yet go a begging, and so still keep company, and be merry together."

So we have reached once more the point from which we started. More, broken down in health, with some deep-seated disease of the chest, was at rest in Chelsea. His course was run. There only remained the last struggle to keep a good conscience, in dark and perilous days, and then the victor's crown.

This is a pleasing ideal of a good man's life. But where are the shadows in this bright picture? There have been many who opposed his principles to point them out. We will endeavor to give an impartial view of them in a subsequent Article.

ART. II.-SHALL WE EVER HAVE A CHRISTIAN PHI

I. Bekker's Plato.

LOSOPHY?

II. Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding.

III. Reid's Works, by HAMILTON.

IV. Kant's Critic of Pure Reason.

V. Cousin's Psychology.

Review of Locke's Essay on the

Human Understanding.

VI. Sir William Hamilton's Metaphysics.

VII. Mansel's Limitations of Religious Thought.

VIII. The Supernatural in Relation to the Natural. By JAMES McCosн, LL. D.

IX. Tyndall's Heat considered as a Mode of Motion.

THERE are those who think Philosophy of no use except to amuse idlers who might otherwise be engaged in something worse. There are those who think it the source of all our knowledge, whether of things in Heaven or of things on Earth. And there are those who regard it as the cause of all our errors in Religion, of all the unbelief and misbelief of whatever name or kind since the days of the Apostles.

If, now, for the word "Philosophy" we might substitute "philosophizing," we should probably agree with the latter of the three classes referred to, and leave the other two to settle the account as might best suit themselves. For it is a fact that what is called Philosophy" has been the prolific parent of every system of heresy and unbelief that has been proposed or prevalent in Christendom since those days of the Apostles, when some had been "spoiled by Philosophy and vain deceit." And conversely, it is true that no system of Philosophy has been propounded and accepted by any considerable number of thinkers, that has not brought forth some species of religious error, some form of unbelief or misbelief.

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In view of these facts, many there are who would put a ban upon Philosophy, and exclude it from among the reputable studies. Nay, it has been declared to be the very "tree of knowledge " planted in Eden, the eating of which was the first act of disobedience, and that it thus became the essence of all sin, the parent of all our woes, so that even in our age any attempt at what is called philosophizing is but a repetition of that old transgression.

We may as well be a little elementary, and say plainly what we mean by Philosophy and philosophizing. Any inquiry into the meaning and importance of a fact, any seeking for an explanation of an obvious phenomenon, is philosophizing about it; and the result of our inquiry, whether right or wrong, will be our Philosophy concerning it; if it be right, it becomes a means to further knowledge, a premise to other conclusions, and so on to the highest attainments of which the human mind is capable. If it be wrong,

it will only lead to error in regard to other matters, and thus show the falsity of our theory of the facts by the absurdity of the practical application to which it leads. But any attempt to go beyond an observed fact, and either seek an explanation or draw from it an inference, is an example of philosophizing.

Now, in reference to Theology we have this inevitable condition. We assume that Theology is based on Revelation. But as Revelation itself raises the question of the existence of God, His personality and attributes, the nature of miracles and their possibility, their efficiency as proof of divine interposition, these questions must be settled in some way before we can accept or reject the Bible as the Word of God. And we have this other fact also, that in all our country we have schools and colleges for the training of the minds of the young in scientific knowledge and the methods of science. These methods they are taught to regard as worthy of their confidence, or true; nay, more, as infallible; and when, therefore, we ask them to accept the Bible as the Word of God, they naturally ask, "How does this belief agree with your teaching? Can we, in the exercise of the principles and in the application of the methods you have been inculcating, receive the Bible as the Word of God, and the Theology you teach us as a Revelation from Him? If so, well and good; we shall of course do it; for we have acquired the utmost confidence in those principles and methods. They have served us well thus far, and we have never, in all our experience, found them at fault in any one single instance. But if what you ask us to do requires that we shall abandon these principles or act in contradiction to them, we must, as consistent, -self-respecting men, wait until we can get time to examine the grave questions implied in the course you ask us to take. We must see what the new principles are, whither they would lead, and why those we have been accustomed to are to be repudiated. The demand is in itself suspicious, and all the more to be distrusted

because all history is full of examples of priestcraft demanding of people a renunciation of their Reason in order that they might be made dupes of most unreasonable delusions and imposture."

We are prepared to admit that this position is in itself right, although of course it may have been made in bad faith in numberless instances, and persisted in most unreasonably in others, and from sinister motives. What we mean, therefore, in admitting that the position of the skeptic is correct, is, simply that the child has a right to expect that as he advances from his first lessons to his last act of faith, he shall find this to result from a continuous course, that the rules of multiplication and addition which he learned in childhood shall be true for the solution of manhood's profoundest problems, that is, true so far as they go, though by no means sufficient for them; that the laws of evidence and the maxims of belief which he applies to the ordinary affairs of life, shall not need to be exchanged for others of a contrary nature and leading to totally different results before he can accept that Faith on which depends the salvation of his soul. He should, on the contrary, discover that the very principles which have carried him on in all that he knows of earthly things, shall carry him also, if applied in that direction when we come to the spiritual, into the belief of all that he needs to know for his soul's health, not indeed by his unassisted faculties. He should be able, by the processes of logical reasoning and scientific induction, to demonstrate that the Bible is the Word of God, that the Creed is the authorized summary of all essential doctrine, and that the Church is the perpetual witness of Eternal Truth.

If, now, we can secure this result, we gain at once the intellectual assent of all our young and rising minds to the Bible and the Church. If not, the whole tendency of our secular education, whether within or out of the Church, is to skepticism; and we leave the Preacher of the Gospel an immense task in the necessity for him to undo most of the work of the teacher, tear down what had been built up, in order that he may erect on the ruins an edifice of Christian Faith, where he should find, in the work of the instructor, a foundation already laid, and a heart and head expectant and waiting for the superstructure. And if this be not thus, whose is the fault? Only three reasons can be given: (1) either our Theology is wrong and inconsistent with the truth of nature and the methods of science, or (2) our Philosophy is wrong and

we in it lay down false principles and waken delusive expectations, or (3) there is an irreconcilable incompatibility between Science and Theology, between the Word of God as expressed in the works of Nature, and as written in Revelation. We suppose that nobody will avow the last of these opinions: we certainly shall not admit the first, and are therefore obliged to accept the second.

In saying that what passes under the name of Philosophy is at fault, we do not mean to say that it is all and altogether wrong. We do not suppose the Scripture can be proven from what is contained in the multiplication table or the rule of three. Nor can these require change. And so with the primary processes of observation, deduction, and reasoning upon the obvious facts of nature. And these may be all that is necessary for the lower forms of the life of intelligent beings. But if we would rise above that level at all we must have methods and processes for it. “ And this method," says one, "is Revelation." We assent to his proposition, but still the question arises, "How and by what method and process are we to accept and apply Revelation?" Will the principles already learned in the lower sphere lead up to this, or must we abandon and contradict them, pour scorn and contempt upon all that has been called human reason, in order to accept this higher method, this means to an eternal life? And this is the very difficulty we are considering. The man who wishes to know how many days before Sunday, or how many apples he can buy for a sixpence at two for a penny, may have no need of mathematics: he can calculate all he wants to know by counting the ends of his fingers. But if he would know when the next eclipse of the moon occurs, or when a return of Encke's comet may be expected, he must look to his methods and the formulæ of computation. And precisely so if we are to accept a Revelation. We must, if we will act rationally, know that a Revelation has been made, and the knowledge of that fact implies the further knowledge of what a Revelation is, whether it is possible or not, how it can be made, and by what evidence attested. Thus we are hurried at once into the middle of metaphysical questions, in the very centre of the domain of Philosophy, and among its profoundest problems. We must look to the nature of human knowledge, and the means of its acquisition, and the limits within which it may range, and to what it is confined.

Nor are we without Scripture warrant for this exercise of our

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