intelligence here supplies the more certain, though at the same time the more limited, guidance of instinct. Through this and his more generalized bodily structure, he is brought into relations to external nature every one of which becomes a channel of benefits-incomparably more numerous and diversified than any of the lower animals. Air, earth, and ocean minister alike to his sustenance and enjoyment. And in proportion as he advances in knowledge, becomes acquainted with the laws governing the world around him, and places himself in the proper relations to range of his activities and enjoyments widened. and educated man, -to man possessing the science and the mechanic arts, every thing in nature pays tribute. The elements themselves, within their prescribed spheres of action, vie with one another in doing him service.

them, is the To civilized resources of

But man is not simply an inhabitant of this world. He is in process of training for another. Besides ministering to his mere physical well-being, the circumstances in which he is placed are designed to be the means of spiritual culture. To fit him for this higher, educational government which is extended over him, in addition to an intellectual, there have been conferred upon him the endowments of a moral and religious nature. Under the guidance and through the influence of these, he may receive benefit-the fact of the reception, however, depending as before upon himself - from every possible occurrence in life. Events in themselves disastrous, which no human prescience could foresee, or which, if foreseen, no human power could have averted, may still subserve the purposes of important and needed discipline.

If, however, these provisions connected with man's spiritual nature should, from any cause, fail to secure to him all the intended benefits of his present disciplinary state, and it should please the Divine wisdom and goodness to make some new and further provision, of what nature should we expect it to be? Judging from what we have thus far observed, would the remedy probably be external or internal? The question has been answered. Christianity has been given to strengthen by new motives, and enforce by higher sanctions, man's

moral and religious sentiments, while his external relations, except so far as created by himself, have remained unaltered.

If in addition to all these provisions, in order fully to secure the ends proposed in them, direct and special interposition should prove necessary, of what character, reasoning still from the observed plan of the Divine government, might we expect these to be? and where would they probably occur? Should we look for changes without? or for superadded guidance and strength within? The latter undoubtedly. To this all analogy points. By this all the ends of interposition, whether protective or disciplinary, are equally accomplished. For this the investigations of science leave room, without supposing any known law violated. And above all, and more than all, this is directly taught in the Sacred Scriptures. On the other hand, the supposition of an adjustment of the relations of the individual to the outward world by external interpositions, is opposed by inductive evidence as strong as that which causes us to look for the rising of to-morrow's sun, or to expect our own decease; it is contrary to all that we know of the Divine government, and is, moreover, without support, as will generally be admitted, from the teachings of Scripture. In these circumstances, is it philosophical to hold it? Ought it to be retained, merely because it is impossible to disprove it, -impossible to know that, "without the sphere of human vision," between "some of the links of causation out of sight," physical interpositions do not occur? On such a ground, should the inductive teachings of all science and of the whole of human experience, as well as the strongest and most direct analogies, be set aside? But we will not, we need not, pursue the subject further.*

* Having learned, we have said, from the various sources of knowledge open to us, the actual mode of the Divine government, we may reverently and without rebuke seek for the reasons which determined its adoption. The inquiry in its whole extent we suppose to lie beyond the compass of the human intelligence. To the question, why God works by means and instruments, or if not by means and instru ments, yet in conformity to modes and rules, equally limiting the manifestations of his energy, why he makes the welfare of his creatures dependent upon their own exertions and upon external agencies, instead of bestowing directly the good which his benevolence has designed for them, we do not know that any other answer can be given, than that such is his sovereign pleasure. But this fundamental fact being recognized, it is not difficult to see why the arrangements of his providence should

Having separated from the simple fact of law the different forms of hypothesis that have been connected with it, and having determined, as far as possible, its length and breadth and constancy, it was our intention to inquire what consequences, theological, philosophical, and practical, legitimately flow from it. We designed more particularly to show that the supposition of the uniform and undisturbed operation of natural laws touches only the mode of God's government, and not the government itself, or our relations to him under it. So far as we are concerned, it is wholly immaterial whether he bestows upon us a particular good, through some change in the course of outward events, or by so placing us and disposing our spirits that we may receive the intended benefit without external interposition. The obligation to gratitude and love, the grounds for confidence and trust, as well as the propriety and duty of looking to him for desired blessings, continue precisely the same on either supposition.

We purposed also to inquire how far, and in what circumstances, we may be authorized to ascribe to specific designs events occurring in the ordinary course of nature. Were these events isolated and independent in their origin, and did their influence extend only to the individual or individuals directly and principally affected by them, then we should in every instance be justified in assigning a personal interpretation. But standing as they do, in immediate relation to the laws under which they have arisen, and connected indirectly, it may be, with numerous other and perhaps higher ends provided for under those laws, the problem of the Divine purpose in any particular event becomes more embarrassed, and its

be as they are. This primary inquiry being disposed of, the only remaining question is a very simple one. It is in truth merely this: whether in the accomplishment of his purposes the general shall bend to the particular, and in so doing cease to be general; or the particular be conformed to the general; — whether the laws of external nature shall accommodate themselves to the exigencies of the individual; or the exigencies of the individual be provided for in conformity to the laws of external nature; whether, on the approach of winter, the "unforgotten," still "cared for" sparrow, impelled by an unerring instinct, shall wing its way to a Southern home; or a Southern home be brought to the sparrow ;· whether the pious invalid, whose life is precious in the sight of his Heavenly Father, shall be guided by an invisible hand to some friendly shelter; or the cloud, laden with watery treasures, be turned from a district in perishing need of them.

solution is attended with greater difficulty. As subsidiary to this inquiry, we intended to examine generally the doctrine of final causes, - to see whether teleology be in fact a possible science, or whether, like etiology, the supposed science of efficient causes, it occupies a region unexplored by the human faculties, whether the human mind be not, like the fabled Antæus, bereft of its strength when off the solid ground of facts. And if it should prove on examination, as we believe it would, that there are in man's spiritual nature, and in the constitution of the outward world, real foundations for the science, we proposed to seek for certain principles which might serve as guides in interpreting its phenomena. But we have already extended our discussions so far, that we must leave these inquiries for the present. We may possibly

return to them hereafter.

ART. VIII.-1. Travels in Europe and the East: a Year in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. By SAMUEL IRENEUS PRIME. With Engravings. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1855. 2 vols. 12mo. pp. 405, 440.

2. Visits to European Celebrities. By WILLIAM B. SPRAGUE, D. D. Boston: Gould and Lincoln. 1855. 12mo. pp. 305. 3. Letters Esthetic, Social, and Moral, written from Europe, Egypt, and Palestine. By THOMAS C. UPHAM, Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy in Bowdoin College. Brunswick. 1855. 12mo. pp. 586.

THE Contents of these works first saw the light, as letters from their respective authors, in the columns of religious newspapers; and we rejoice in the credit which their re-issue in a permanent form cannot but reflect on so influential a department of periodical literature. This circumstance, and the fact that they are, all three, records of travel, in part over the same ground, have induced us to group them together.

In other respects, they are as utterly unlike as they could be without some wide mutual dissiliency of principle. The authors are all men in whom the religious nature is too profound and active not to make itself constantly perceived and felt, yet in each after his own peculiar way. Mr. Prime connects with every scene and occasion the commonplaces of religious thought (we use the phrase not in a disparaging sense, but to denote the thoughts which a given scene or occasion would primarily suggest to ninety-nine serious and cultivated minds out of a hundred); Dr. Sprague's researches in European society were guided for the most part by his Christian sympathies, and present no more attractive picture than the undesigned one of the traits of a Christian gentleman in his own person; while Professor Upham, on a still more elevated plane, merges the traveller in the mystic, and depicts such sights as could be revealed only to an inward vision purged and clarified by years of contemplative devotion. With this brief indication of their points of resemblance and difference, we will pass to the consideration of these books in the order in which we have named them.

We have seldom felt under greater indebtedness to a traveller than to Mr. Prime. He carried with him open eyes, a hospitable mind, and a kind heart; the glow of convalescence imparted to his delineations just enough of its own heightened tint to make them lifelike; and his American and Protestant opinions, never extreme or intolerant, but steadily maintained and modestly asserted, give us confidence in the accuracy of his observations and the soundness of his judgments. We cannot but admire, too, the evenness of his work. He does not (as is the manner of not a few) alternate between ambitious rhetoric and slipshod journalizing. He does not scant and slight his descriptions of one class of objects, to bestow superior labor on others. Nor yet does he let his pen go beyond his full perception and clear knowledge. Thus, in the departments of painting and sculpture, he makes no parade of artistical or æsthetic terms, and offers no criticism in detail, but in the simplest style tells us what he saw and what he felt. His was for the most part a common tour over ground which is trodden every year by hundreds of American travel