Or this first snow-drop of the year 8 As these white robes are soil'd and dark, As this pale taper's earthly spark, To yonder argent round; So shows my soul before the Lamb, My spirit before Thee; So in mine earthly house I am, To that I hope to be. Break up the heavens, O Lord! and far, 3. He lifts me to the golden doors; For me the Heavenly Bridegroom waits, One sabbath deep and wide A light upon the shining sea The Bridegroom with his bride! 74. INFIDEL PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE. ROBERTSON. BOBERTSON-a distinguished writer and lecturer of the day. He is a na tive of Sectland, and at present holds the honorable position of Professo of History in the Irish University. 1. THE infidel philosophy of the last age was the child of the Reformation, Towards the close of the sixteenth century, a sect of deists had sprung up in Protestant Switzerland. As early as the reign of James the First, Lord Herbert, of Cherbury, commenced that long series of English deists, consisting of Chubb, Collins, Shaftesbury, Toland, Bolingbroke, the friend of Voltaire. Bayle, who at the commencement of he cighteenth century, introduced infidelity into France, was Protestant; and so was Rousseau, the eloquent apostle i leism, and who did nothing more than develop the principles of Protestantism. 2. Voltaire and his fellow-conspirators against the Chris tian religion, borrowed most of their weapons from the arsenal of the English deists; and the philosopher of Ferney was, in his youth, the friend and guest of Bolingbroke. So Protestantism, which often, though falsely, taunts the Catholic Church with having given birth to unbelief, lies, itself, clearly open to that imputation. Let us take a glance at the character of the leaders of the great anti-Christian confederacy in France. 3. Bayle was a writer of great erudition, and extreme sub tlety of reasoning. His "Dictionnaire Philosophique" is, eveL at the present day, often consulted. Montesquieu, one of the most manly intellects of the eighteenth century, unfortunately devoted to the wretched philosophy of the day the powers which God had given him for a nobler purpose. His strong sense, indeed, and extensive learning, guarded him against the wilder excesses of unbelief; but the absence of strong religious convictions left him withert a compass and a chart on the wide ocean of political and ethical investigations. 4. Rousseau was a man of the mort impassioned eloquence and vigorous reasoning; but a mind withal so sophistical, that, according to the just observatior of La Harpe, even truth itself deceives us in his writings. His firm belief in the existence of the Deity, and the immortality of the soul, as well as in the necessity of virtue for a future state of happiness, and some remarkable tributes to the Divinity, and the blessed influences of the Christian religion, give, at times, to the pages of Rousseau a warmth and a splendor we rarely find in the other infidel writers of the last century. 5. Inferior to Rousseau in eloquence and logical power, the sophist of Feruey possessed a more various and versatile tal ent. Essaying philosophy and history, and poetry-tragic, comic, and epic; the novel, the romance, the satire, the epi gram, he directed all his powers to one infernal purpose-the spread of irreligion, and thought his labor lost as long as Christ retained one worshipper! Unlike the more impassioned sophist of Geneva, rarely do we meet in his writings with a generous sentiment or a tender emotion. But all that ele vates and thrills humanity-the sanctities of religion, the nobleness of virtue, the purity of the domestic hearth, the expansiveness of friendship, the generosity of patriotism, the majesty of law, were polluted by his ribald jest and fiend-like mockery. "Like those insects that corrode the roots of the most precious plants, he strives," says Count de Maistre, "to corrupt youth and women." 6. And it is to be observed that, despite the great progress of religion in France within the last fifty years; though the aristocracy of French literature has long rejected the yoke of Voltaire, he still reigns in its lower walks, and the novel, and the satire, and the ballad, still feel his deadly influence. The only truth which this writer did not assail was, the existence of God; but every other dogma of religion became the butt of his ridicule. 7. A more advanced phase of infidelity was represented by D'Alembert, Diderot, and others; they openly advocated materialism and atheism. In the Encyclopedia they strove to array all arts and sciences against the Christian religion. It was, indeed, a tower of Babel, raised up by man's impiety against God. It was a tree of knowledge without a graft from the tree of life. In mathematics and physics only did D'Alembert attain to a great eminence. Diderot was a much inferior intellect, that strove to make up by the phrenetic vio lence of his declamation for the utter hollowness of his ideas. It was he who gave to Raynal that frothy rhetoric, and those turgid invectives against priests and kings, which the latter wove into his history of the European settlements in the East and West Indies. 75. INFIDEL PHILOSOPHY, ETC.-continued. 1. THE great Buffon, though he condescended to do homage to the miserable philosophy of his day, yet, by the nobleness of his sentiments, as well as by the majesty of his genius, often -ose superior to the doctrine he professed. Bernardine de St. Pierre was another great painter of nature. His better feelings at times led him to Christianity, but his excessive vanity drove him back to the opposite opinions. What shall I say of the remaining wretched herd of materialists and atheists,-a Baron d'Holbach, a Helvetius, a La Mettrie, a Cabanis, and others? It has been well said by a great writer, that materialism is something below humanity. And while debasing man to a level with the brute, it takes from him all the nobler instincts of his own nature; it fails to give him in return those of the lower animals. So deep a perversion of man's moral and intellectual being we cannot conceive. 2. We cannot realize (and happily for us we cannot), that awful eclipse of the understanding which denies God. We have a mingled feeling of terror and of pity, when we contemplate those miserable souls, that, as the great Italian poet, Dante, says, have lost the supreme intelligential bliss: When that great idea of God is extinguished in the human mind, what remains to man? Nature abhors a vacuum, said the old naturalists; with what horror then must we recoil from that void which atheism creates ?-a void in the intelligence, a void in the conscience, a void in the affections, a void in society, a void in domestic life. The human mind is swung from its orbit; it wanders through trackless space; and the reign of chaos and old night returns. 3 What a lamentable abuse of all the noblest gifts of intel-' lect, wit, and eloquence, imagination and reasoning! And for the accomplishment of what purpose? For the overthrow of religion, natural and revealed religion, the guide of existence, the great moral teacher, which solves all the prob lems of life, which tells our origin and destiny, our duties to our Creator and our fellow-creatures, the foundation of the family and of the State,-religion, the instructress of youth, and the prop of age; the balm of wounded minds, and the moderator of human joys; which controls the passions, yet imparts a zest to innocent pleasures; which survives the illusions of youth, and the disappointments of manhood; consoles us in life, and supports us in death. 4. Such were the blessings that perverted genius strove to snatch from mankind. Yet the time was at hand, when the proud Titans, who sought to storm Heaven, were to be driven back by the thunderbolts of Almighty wrath, and hurled dow into the lowest depths of Tartarus. But, even in regard to literature and science, the influence of this infidel party was most pernicious. How could they understand nature, who rested their eyes on its surface only, but never pierced to its inner depths? How could they understand the philosophy of history, who denied the providence of God, and the free will of man? How could they comprehend metaphysics, who disowned God, and knew nothing of man's origin, nor of his destiny? And, was an abject materialism compatible with the aspirations of poetry? 5. Classical philology, too, shared the fate of poetry and of history; and in education was made to give place to mathematics and the natural sciences. Hence, from this period dates the decline of philological studies in France. The men of genius of whom infidelity could boast, like Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Buffon, and D'Alembert, were men who had been trained up in a Christian country, had received a Christian education, and whose minds had been imbued with the doctrines and the ethics of Christianity, and had partially retained these sentiments in the midst of their unbelief. But, let unbelief sink deep into a nation's mind-let it form its morals, and fashion its manners-and we shall soon see how barbarism of taste and coarseness of habits will be associated with moral depravity and mental debasement. Look at the goddess literature of the French Republic from 1790 to 1802, and at that of the Empire down to 1814. What contempt |