THE CHILD FATHER TO THE MAN.

The outer law of childhood is often the best vehicle in which the inner law of mature life can be contained for its various purposes. The man remembers with affection, and keeps up with delight the customs of the home of his childhood; tempted, perhaps, to over-estimate their value, but even when perfectly aware that they are no more than one form out of many which a wellordered household might adopt, preferring them because of his long familiarity, and because of the memories with which they are associated. So, too, truth often seems to him richer and fuller when expressed in some favourite phrase of his mother's, or some maxim of his father's. He can give no better reason very often for much that he does every day of his life than that his father did it before him; and provided the custom is not a bad one the reason is valid. And he likes to go to the same church. He likes to use the same prayers. He likes to keep up the same festivities. There are limits to all this. But no man is quite free from the influence; and it is in many cases, perhaps in most, an influence of the highest moral value. There is great value in the removal of many indifferent matters out of the region of discussion into that of precedent. There is greater value still in the link of sympathy which binds the present with the past, and fills old age with the fresh feelings of childhood. If truth sometimes suffers in form, it unquestionably gains much in power; and if its onward progress is retarded, it gains immeasurably in solidity and in its hold on men's hearts.

We quote this exquisite and life-like sketch from Dr. Temple's essay on the Education of the World.

LIFE NOT GREATER THAN ITS REFLEX.

The opinion that Life in spontaneous unconscious evolution, is, relatively to us, or to life's progress, greater than its reflex-is thus eloquently controverted by Mr. A. Wilson, in the Edinburgh Essays, 1856:

As the flower on the mountain-side, and the crystal in the vein of the rock, may be more lovely and more perfect to us than the mountain itself, so individual souls may be, as it were, the flowers and highest perfection of the great existence of which they are a part, while these souls again have their flower and highest perfection in the ideal life which they project beyond the confines of the real. The highest life known to us exists not in the ages of our past, not in the distant stars, which look so blue and beautiful, while probably they are full of wildly conflicting forces, but in our own imaginings and longing dreams, which can harmonize all antagonisms, and shadow forth a perfect world. It is even this draping glorifying power of imaginative thought which renders possible our conscious recognition of things existent. Omni

Life not Greater than its Reflex.

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potent Phantasy, that divinest goddess, is the true mater gloriosa and Queen of Heaven, the mistress of souls and benefactress of mankind, ever gathering our knowledge and ignorance into shapes of beauty, weaving the rainbow across our path, and veiling the dark deep with lucid azure. From the cradle to the grave, what were the children of men but for her? Before the child's gaze, where the speculation is but small, she forms this our world as before the clear earnest eyes of the bravest man; and when the strong thought is about to slumber for ever, in the wearied brain, the heart of feeling beats faintly, and the dim eye is closing, she is there, painting the blessed fields, on the awful darkness, with the very mists of death. In her gift is an ordered world. How often, in her highest exercise, has she formed it anew for the races of men !-now giving, as centre, some misty Olympus, among the peaks of which are gods: now some unfathomable source of creative power, itself unmoved; now some omnipotent ruler-"Jehovah, Jove, or Lord." Slight her not, poor Thinker !—and worship at her nod, for without her, there is only the blackness of darkness for ever-the melancholy waste of waters on which no Columbus has found the New Land. Painful and dangerous is her service, spes et præmia in ambiguo-certa, funera et luctus; but even to him who is destroyed by it there is compensation; for in the very perception of genius-in its love penetrating to all stars, its sight, which vindicates existence, and hails the golden age,-there is a pure joy, an exceeding sense of glory, which can raise and transfigure it above the sufferings of earth.

After all, though you may look to your understanding for amusement, it is to the affections that we must trust for happiness. These imply a spirit of self-sacrifice; and often our virtues, like our children, are endeared to us by what we suffer for them. Conscience, even when it fails to govern our conduct, can disturb our peace of mind. Yes! it is neither paradoxical, nor merely poetical, to say

That seeking other's good, we find our own.

This solid yet romantic maxim is found in no less a writer than Plato; who, sometimes, in his moral lessons, as well as in his theological, is almost, though not altogether, a Christian. These are the opinions of Richard Sharpe, a man of refined conversation and practical virtue.

Belief and Scepticism.

WHAT IS FAITH?

SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON, in his Lectures on Metaphysics, gives, as a joint reason for the desire of unity as one of the essential causes of philosophy, the existence of a corresponding unity in the order of nature, and the ultimate dependence of all effects on one cause, the Creator. That he did not believe the human mind capable of any direct knowledge of this highest unity is plain from his Alphabet of Thought. It would be vain to criticise his few words which remain :

"We must believe in the infinity of God; but the infinite God cannot by us, in the present limitation of our faculties, be comprehended or conceived. A Deity understood would be no Deity at all; and it is blasphemy to say that God only is as we are able to think Him to be. We know God according to the finitude of our faculties, but we believe much that we are incompetent properly to know. The Infinite, the infinite God, is what, to use the words of Pascal, is infinitely inconceivable. FaithBelief is the organ by which we apprehend what is beyond our knowledge."

On the nature of this organ, Sir W. Hamilton has left us nothing. This has made his philosophy popular among those who do not seek a reason for the faith that is in them. With pardonable confusion of thought, many of them have also welcomed the work of the disciple, who has included Faith itself in the demonstration that the spirit of man has no direct knowledge of the Infinite Spirit. How far the teaching of Sir W. Hamilton tended to such conclusions, is a question which has excited much controversy.

Lord Erskine has left us this practical picture of Faith. "I can conceive a distressed but virtuous man, surrounded by his children, looking up to him for bread, when he has none to give them, sinking under the last day's labour, and unequal to the next, yet still supported by confidence in the hour, when all tears shall be wiped from the eyes of affliction-bearing the burden laid upon him by a mysterious Providence, which he adores, and anticipating with exultation the revealed promises of his Creator, when he shall be greater than the greatest, and happier than the happiest of mankind."

Childish Desires.

WHAT IS REVELATION?

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The idea of a positive external Divine revelation of some kind has formed the very basis of all hitherto received systems of Christian belief. The Romanist indeed regards that revelation as of the nature of a standing oracle accessible in the living voice of his Church; which being infallible, of course, sufficiently accredits all the doctrines it announces, and constitutes them divine. A more modified view has prevailed among a considerable section of Anglican theologians, who ground their faith on the same principles of Church authority, divested of its divine and infallible character. Most Protestants, with more or less difference of meaning, profess to regard revelation as once for all announced, long since finally closed, permanently removed, and accessible only in the written Divine word contained in the Scriptures. And the discussion with those outside the pale of belief has been entirely one as to the validity of those external marks and attestations by which the truth of the alleged fact of such communication of the Divine will, was held to be substantiated.-Prof. Baden Powell; Essays and Reviews.

Mr. Locke says: "He that takes away Reason to make way for Revelation puts out the light of both; and does much about the same as if he would persuade a man to put out his eyes, the better to receive the remote light of an invisible star by a telescope."

Much scepticism has been engendered of late years by tyros in science straining after identities of physical truths with Scripture. "There are, indeed," observes the Rev. W. L. Harcourt, "certain common points in which Reason and Revelation mutually assist each other; but, in order that they may ever be capable of doing so, let us keep their paths distinct, and observe their accordances alone; otherwise our reasonings run round in a circle, while we endeavour to accommodate physical truth to Scripture, and Scripture to physical truth."

CHILDISH DESIRES.

Archbishop Leighton, speaking of unreasonable and childish. Desires, says:

"And what would we have? Think we that Contentment lies in so much and no less? When that is attained, it shall be as far off as before. When children are at the foot of a high Hill, they think it reaches the Heavens, and yet if they were there, they would find themselves as far off as before, or, at least, not sensibly nearer. Men think, oh, had I this, I were well; and when it is reached, it is but an advanced standing, from which to look higher, and spy out for some other thing.-Comment on St. Peter.

Compare this with Norris's fine poem, entitled The Infidel:

Farewell Fruition, thou grand cruel cheat

Which first our hopes doth raise, and then defeat;
Farewell thou midwife to abortive Bliss,

Thou mystery of Fallacies,

Distance presents the object fair,

With charming features and a graceful air,
But when we come to seize th' inviting prey,,
Like a shy Ghost, it vanishes away.

So to th' unthinking Boy, the distant Sky
Seems on some Mountain's surface to rely;
He with ambitious haste climbs the ascent,
Curious to touch the Firmament;
But when with an unweary'd pace

Arrived he is at the long-wished-for place,
With sighs the sad defeat he does deplore,
His Heaven is still as distant as before.

We conclude with a beautiful passage from Bishop Hickes's Devotions:

"Tis to be happy that we run after Pleasures; and cover (sic) in every thing our own proud Will. But we, alas! mistake our Happiness, and foolishly seek it where it is not to be found. As silly children think to catch the sun, when they see it setting at so near a distance. They travel on, and tire themselves in vain; for the thing they seek is in another World.

WEAK BELIEF.

There is in the world a great deal of this lukewarm reception of divine truths: it does not amount to unbelief, but it is thickly beset with its perils. "It is easy and agreeable to believe," said Bonnet, the learned Genevese: "to doubt requires an unpleasant effort." But how important is the conviction. There can be no reasonable doubt that it is better to believe too much than too little; since, as Boswell observes (most probably in Johnson's words), "a man may breathe in foul air, but he must die in an exhausted receiver."

How many, too, content themselves with expressing their sense of the importance of a firm religious belief, and a desire to attain it, rather than an assertion that they themselves have found all they sought. This shortcoming is very observable among leaders of science, and hence it has a baleful effect. What can be more encouraging on the one hand, and disheartening on the other, than the following eloquent declaration of Sir Humphry Davy :

I envy no qualities of the mind and intellect in others-nor genius, nor power, nor wit, nor fancy: but if I could choose what would be the most delightful and, I believe, most useful to me, I should prefer a firm religious belief to every other blessing. For it makes life a discipline