A reflection has occurred amongst the multitude suggested by this principle of holy origin, which perhaps it may not be unuseful to present, with the circumstances which attend it, to the more advanced student in philosophy. It has grown out of the contemplation of the passage we have cited, and particular remembrances which cling yet to the thought, with little to recommend them save "the mild magic of reflected light"-the impress which they still retain of those firstborn phantasies, so often and so deeply enshrined in the feelings of early youth.

There was a period at which an intellect, which has since become associated in a more intimate union with those within these walls, owned, like numberless others, the bewitching influences of a refined philosophy. Contemplations of perpetual recurrence, which presented little else than physical truths, embodied in a recondite analysis, or collected from the mass of experimental results, deflected somewhat from its regular path the mind which was subjected to their sway, and, without impairing the native force of the lessons of childhood, tinged with their admixture the principles of youth. In this of Final causes was the influence most especially manifested. What was due to a doctrine of Religion was forgotten in what was conceded to the canons of philosophy. What was soundly argumentative, and essentially

useful, in moral reasoning, was merged in the crude metaphysics, and the luxuriant speculations of scientific minds. Let then a word in season be addressed to those, whom the behests of Providence have placed in like circumstances; and let them be conjured to suffer for a moment the admonitions of one, who has moved over the same round of intellectual effort which they are now commencing. In the midst of all that intensity of research, which reacts on mind with impulse amply compensative of the painfulness of exertion, never let them lose sight of the moral consideration. Never let them forget, that their most sublime physics, when divested of this animating principle, are, with all their transcendency of views, but "rudiments of the world"; and the devotedness they inspire, but an image-worship of the heart so much the more dangerous, because rendered as the tribute of a noble enthusiasm to victorious intellect. With them too often it fares as with their mighty auxiliary. Are not the visible, and tangible, and appreciable existences, submitted to the operations of your analysis, soon lost sight of in the infinity of its evolutions? Do they not, instead of remaining objects of sense, become, like the ideas of the metaphysician, occult-abstract-evanescent ? The relations of quantity merge into those of conventional symbols, and definedness of per

ception is sacrificed to amplitude of investigation (2).

Our Newton wielded his analysis too-but his giant intellect remained incorrupt, and he preserved inviolate his Christian principle (3). His illustrious Disciple of the Institute has, by too exclusive a devotion to his analytical processes, overlooking the sensible relations of being, vacillated amidst the conflict of dubious principles, which characterise their minds with whom he is associated (). Happy, had he contented himself with impugning a metaphysical principle, leaving untouched the holiness of the sanctuary, and undisturbed the repose of the believer's convictions! But such would not have accorded with the favorite prejudices of his school, and he has consummated his labors with intimations hostile to the best interests of the moral world.

Yet his is the doctrine of Intelligence and Design in the ordination of physical laws (5). To the development of this principle an important article in one of his most beautiful performances is devoted; a principle maintained as far as the dogmas of Rational Theism permitted its intrusion, but abandoned in effect by his rejection of the philosophy of final causes (6), when its consequences on opinion were regarded with an eye of suspicion.

Above this temporising spirit of a half-em

braced atheism how elevated are the Christian's views! He, recognising the moral attributes of his God in every appreciable harmony of his creation, "puts not asunder what have thus been joined together," but "breathes into❞ the inanimate form of material physics the "living soul" of ethical contemplation. He hears the man, whose "wisdom" was not "of this world-foolishness with God," apostrophise in language as truly philosophical as, and vastly more sublime than, that of modern science, the intelligence which presided at the birth of our visible universe; and he transfuses into all his habitudes of thought a congeniality of sound and elevated conception.

It remains for us to profit by the instruction, "to go and do likewise," "to lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us"-the weight, the depressing weight, of philosophical arrogance, the sin of philosophical scepticism-and conform to the imagery of the royal Psalmist, in the moment even of their intensest abstraction, the efforts and the convictions of our matured understandings; "O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! Thou that hast set thy 'glory above the heavens! Out of the mouth of babes hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. When I consider the heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast

ordained; what is man that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth" ! (")

The true conception of intelligence and design being thus defined, that namely which centres those attributes in a person or persons, not that which, seeming to regard them as ef ficient causes, really contemplates them as abstract ideas; the subordination of physical to moral agencies being moreover maintained on a principle which is grounded on this justness of conception; the accordance, moreover, of the philosophy of Scripture with that of the incomparable Genius, to which modern Science has been indebted for its extent and its certainty, being premised, not merely as a barren speculative truth, but as a fact introductory to a series of analogous ones, on which may be established a more extensive system of coincidence; we are prepared with a basis of adamantine materials whereupon to erect a solid superstructure. Our first inquiry shall be, how far the fundamental proposition of the Mosaic physics, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," accords with the principles of the Newtonian philosophy.

In his beautiful Essay on the theory of the earth, antecedently to a more minute consideration of certain phænomena, regarded by him as