as are the fabrics which it weaves, the materials must be received from, and the products must be returned to, other but equal hands. Helpful and honored when content to sit a peer among the hierarchy of the mind, it only operates confusion to all else, and disaster for itself, when it assumes supreme control. Potent within its jurisdiction against all enemies of the truth, when, through pride or envy, cloaked in feigned humility, it would transcend its jurisdiction, or charge its special weakness upon the other spiritual energies in man, it becomes impotent and unreliable.

III. We have need to say but few words on the relation of Logic to Speculative Theology. Hamilton, and those who maintain his theory of Logic and of Knowledge, deny that there can be, in any real sense, a speculative theology. The objects, they say, which it professes to discuss, cannot be brought within the forms of human thought, and their existence cannot therefore be guaranteed. It has puzzled not a few, that Sir William Hamilton, who has so powerfully vindicated the unity and integrity of the mind in all its operations, who has claimed equal and indisputable authority for our presentative and representative energies, our perceptions and reflections, our intuitions and inferences, should yet remove the ground of certainty from all knowledge concerning our profoundest and most momentous interests, and shut out man forever from any hope of attaining to absolute truth. We do not profess ability to explain the paradox, but we think we see the source whence the explanation must come. It is in his overstepping the boundaries of Logic, and stating in the application of the laws of thought to objective reality what those laws themselves could not warrant. Notwithstanding his exposition of the doctrine of common sense, and his refutation of every species of idealism as affecting both external and internal perception, he has yielded to the Kantian witchery, and proclaimed thought the measure of existence, The germs of Dr. Mansel's Limits of Religious Thought are in the Hamiltonian theory of knowledge, but they are more clearly exhibited in their readiness for use upon the problems of theology in Mansel's Prolegomena

Logica, and the two works must be studied in connection. We cannot escape the conviction - although it seems to imply a notable inconsistency in a very acute thinker that in the last named treatise, Dr. Mansel makes admissions whose proper observance would give us a sure foundation for a reliable knowledge of God, and would guarantee to religious truth a speculative certainty no less than a regulative influence. He repudiates the dogmatism, that "what we cannot compass in thought we may not believe as existing ;" and regards "the religious feelings and affections as a distinct class of psychological facts, coördinate with, not subordinate to, the thinking faculty." He denies that religion is a "function of thought," and believes that "man, as individual, or as species, is a lower intelligence in the midst of the works of a higher; a being of finite intuitions, surrounded by partial indications of the Unlimited, of finite thought, contemplating partial revelations of the Incomprehensible." Now, "coördinate psychological facts," having equal rank, must be of equal authority within their several spheres, and hence the "religious feelings and affections" are as competent to pronounce upon the reality of their objects, as the "thinking faculty" upon its. If the belief that we really contemplate "partial revelations of the Incomprehensible" is as valid as our belief in the laws of logical inference, our foundation for a speculative knowledge of God is as stable as our own nature. All that we insist upon is, that our intuitions are no less reliable than our inferences, and Logic must acknowledge this or lose the ground of its own certainty, for the trustworthiness of our inferences is not a whit more self-evident than of our intuitions. There may be, among the "psychological facts" of the human mind, considerations competent to assure man of absolute truth. Because Logic does not disclose them, or they do not wear the peculiar seal of its authority, it cannot therefore pronounce on their non-existence or insufficiency. That man was made after the Divine likeness, and in harmony with the entire universe-that there is an external world and a spiritual world that God in some sort answers to the human conception of Him—all these may

be certified to man as speculatively true, although Logic be unable to touch them until they are otherwise introduced within the mysterious chambers of thought. The stupendous truths, which keep man reminded of his origin and destiny, and that marshal him along the path they have rendered radiant, do not come veiled in illusion, nor are they merely painted upon the unsubstantial air. They are real and changeless as the Being they speak of, and the soul may be as assured of their existence as of its own.

We cannot too much commend the manner in which both editors and publishers have labored, to render these Lectures worthy of their great author, and attractive to the student. The verification of the almost countless references, the preparation of the index, and the occasional explanatory notes, involve ability and faithful toil, in admirable harmony with the Lectures themselves, and not unworthy the first logicians of Great Britain. We must thank them, also, for the fulness of the Appendix, the most valuable part of the work. The typographical execution is such as the public have learned to expect from the long established and liberal house of Gould & Lincoln.

Perhaps, however, even more than in the volume on Metaphysics, there is that in this volume on Logic which will cause disappointment, if not regret and astonishment, to those who are at all acquainted with the author's other productions. It may result from the impression made by studying his Discussions in Philosophy, and his foot-notes to Reid, but we have certainly felt, while reading these Lectures, that the faithful and competent editorial labor bestowed upon them was, to some extent, as necessary as it is welcome. His own care of Reid has been fittingly and worthily recompensed. But it is matter for wonder, that in these Lectures we should find that logical doctrines were unfolded, and advocated year after year, for twenty years, which the lecturer had elsewhere pronounced excrescences upon the science, unphilosophical and untenable. It is hardly less strange, that a large part of the lectures—perhaps one-fourth should be translated bodily from two unfamiliar German authors, without the

slightest intimation in the text of their foreign origin. True, the editors, with religious candor, verify and attest every such transfer; but the fact that the borrowed portions contain the statement as well as the explication of principles, and the peculiar nature of the references from the original to the borrowed parts, awaken an unpleasant feeling that refuses to be satisfied with any explanation as yet made public.

These drawbacks, however, affect only the Lectures in themselves considered. The erudition, which enlarged but did not obstruct his vision; the philosophical imagination which held whole systems steadily before him, yet with every several part in sharp distinctness and true relation; the critical energy, never asleep and not always merciful, which saw principles as by intuition, and insisted on their fullest devolopment; a logical passion, which, if it sometimes made a false start, rarely slipped in the race; a command of all the resources of speech, which precisely complemented a control of all the resources of thought; - these, while they might safely be claimed for Sir William Hamilton even on the evidence of these Lectures alone, yet, happily for the world, have a more ample basis elsewhere, which no defect in these posthumous works can diminish. Although, therefore, these will not heighten his fame, they will extend it.

ARTICLE VII.—THE NATIONAL CRISIS.

We have uniformly withheld the pages of the Christian Review from political discussions. We have deemed it neither necessary nor fitting to make temporary and partisan questions (however seemingly important), the theme of comment and criticism, in a strictly neutral and religious Journal. Nor do we at all depart from our rule in devoting a portion of our space to the great issues which are now before the country. These questions have assumed an extent and vastness of proportion which raise them entirely above the sphere of party politics. Involving, as they do, the very elements of our national life, they are of a weight and magnitude which claim for them the most anxious attention of every Christian patriot, and cannot properly be passed over by a Journal which claims to keep in any sort of relation to the great moral movements of the age. The nation is in convulsions, and the sweat of her great agony " is wrung out from her in drops of blood. Whether her pangs are the birth-throes of a political regeneration and a higher life, or the precursors of mortal dissolution, stands written on the as yet unturned page of the book of destiny. We await the turning of the leaf with trembling anxiety, and while as yet the Muse of History delays to transcribe its contents into her own record, we turn our gaze to the conjunctions in the political heaven, where the blood-red Planet now rules the ascendant, and, not with the gibberish of heathen Astrology, but with humble Christian divination, seek to cast the horoscope of our country's future.

The present state of things has hardly yet continued long enough, and is in too terrible contrast with all that we had anticipated or deemed possible, to allow us fully to convince ourselves that it is not a hideous dream-a frightful phantas