significance, or diminutiveness, though it may seem to be independent of any other, is in fact a correlative of the notion of magnitude. And a mind that had no idea of greatness or sublimity, would never form one of meanness. But as the notion of vastness is directly the offspring of the limitation and feebleness of the human mind, its opposite -the notion of insignificance, has nothing in it of reality it is an idolum tribus, or prejudice which, though common to mankind, is so in consequence of the poverty of the human faculties.

But can we for a moment suppose that the Supreme Intelligence looks abroad upon his works in this manner, as vast in the whole, and petty in the parts? Does He know them as we do--a portion perfectly, and the rest vaguely? Does HE think of them, in part with case and familiarity; and in part with labour and difficulty? Does He see the universe in perspective, as from a central station? Is He moved, as we are, by the conception of the sublime; or does HE, as we, look down at single atoms of the material system, and call them minute, remote, or inconsiderable? Any such supposition as this were most egregious-on the contrary, we may boldly affirm that, as the Divine Knowledge is absolute, and extends itself equably and invariably, over the entire surface, and through all masses of the universe, so it utterly excludes the notion (proper to finite minds) of any part being insignificant and unimportant, in consequence of its disproportion to the immensity of the whole.

Those who think they discern in the vastness of the material universe a reason which weighs against all religion, and which especially excludes the belief of the facts affirmed in the Bible, surrender themselves, as we have seen, to one of the most unsubstantial of all the illusions that infest human nature: and as they neglect to observe what is the manifest law of the divine operations in the organized systemnamely, an equable regard to parts, and to beings, whether small or great; so do they overlook one of the first principles of the sentient and intellectual orders, which is, that no faculties, either of knowledge, or emotion, or action, are bestowed upon any animal but such as have some direct bearing upon its own well-being; or upon its destiny in relation to other species of the animated world. When the objector has produced one unquestionable exception to this rule, he will be fairly entitled to maintain his enormous dogma-That the power and propensity of the human mind to contemplate the extent of the universe, and its habitude of referring all things to an Intelligent First Cause, and its constitutional dread of Invisible Power, and its inextinguishable sense of right and wrong, and its inherent forethought of an after life, are all so many vague and inane instincts, which have no more intention, no more ulterior significance, than the chance forms and gigantic figures that are often assumed by the clouds, or seen upon a stained wall. Man, according to these philosophers, is no better than a monster, combining all sorts of powers and means of action; but without any scope for their employment. He has wings and all the muscular apparatus proper for flight; but his invincible destiny is to crawl upon the ground: he has the interior structure which might enable him to exist in two elements; but he is actually confined to one. To look at his limbs, you would say he might outstrip the winds; but

watch him, and you find that he is passive and motionless as the oyster. -This is, in substance, that natural history of man which the persons we speak of embrace, and which they deem philosophical. Just because the stature of the human species bears an incalculably small proportion to the distance between one star and another, they conclude that buman nature is far too insignificant to allow of its assuming the importance which Christianity assigns to it! To these philosophers it is as nothing that man has mind enough to conceive of God, and is actually alive to powerful emotions of which the Supreme Being is the object: all this weighs not with them, and is entitled to no consideration; or, at any rate, cannot compensate, in their view, the capital disadvantage of the diminutiveness of the human form. If they could visit other regions of the universe, and discover some world, a thousand or ten thousand times more bulky than this, and find upon it intelligent animals, proportionately gigantic, they would then at once grant you that creatures so TALL, might properly challenge for themselves the right to be immortal and religious; but not so the insect man! This is the real meaning of the sentiment that so powerfully represses the piety of certain persons, who, while with the aid of modern astronomy they contemplate the vast magnitudes and distances of the heavenly bodies, exclaim-What is man that he should presume to think of God, or hope to be regarded by Him?'

If we reject with scorn all such false and preposterous inferences from the vastness of the stellar system, we are left to seek an inference which reason can assent to as consonant with the known principles of the Divine operations. We have to ask-What is that sen◄ timent which the human mind should imbibe when it stands upon its turret of observation, and looks this way and that, over the resplendent and illimitable fields of space?

Boldly we affirm that earth is not too small a globe to be thought worthy of giving birth to the heirs of immortality. Nor is man too diminutive to hold converse with his Creator, or to be amenable to the Divine government. He does not therefore arrogate to himself too much importance when he speaks and acts as one who stands in immediate relationship to God. Nevertheless there are principles which should impose upon him a modesty and restraint in the range of his religious speculations. These are plainly such truths as-That the destinies of man have some bearing upon the welfare of the universe; or are related to its general laws; and that the universe (being so vast as it is) and governed unquestionably by rules which draw their reason not from a part of their system, but from the whole of it, they must always, and especially in the present state, surpass the comprehension of man. In other words, it must be believed, that, in the fate and fortunes of the human race, scope is given to the operation of laws which man must always fail to discern the reason of, since it embraces, or has respect to the immeasurable realm of the Universal King. He alone whose thought grasps all worlds, and all orders of being, and all duration, can digest or comprehend the canons by which all must be governed.' pp. 183–187.

We must take our next specimen from the second paper, which

comprises a philosophical and most cheering view of the present era, as regards the signs of decrepitude and approaching dissolution in the polytheistic, Mohammedan, and papal superstitions. If it were lawful to extend so far beyond its proper scope the apostolic axiom, That which has become antiquated and decrepid with age, is nigh to its final disappearance,' as to apply it to the actual state of those systems of misbelief, the brightest hopes which Christians have of late indulged, would be, it is remarked, at once authenticated.

'Nothing more remarkably distinguishes the religious state of mankind in our own times, as compared with any other eras, concerning which history enables us at all to form an opinion, than the air of DOTAGE which belongs, without exception, to every one of the leading superstitions of the nations. There have been times when, if some were on their wane, others were in full vigour, or just starting forth from their cradle with a giant's strength. If we track the course of time during the lapse of four and twenty centuries, we shall find this to have been the case in each period. In each there was, in some quarter within the circle of historic light, or its penumbra, one or more forms of religious error which very firmly grasped the minds of the nations that were its victims.

'Although our knowledge of the human race is now incomparably more extensive, and accurate, than ever has been heretofore possessed, we can descry, in no direction, a young, and hale, and mantling religious delusion, such as threatens to become invasive; or which attracts the eyes of mankind by the signal proofs it is giving of its sway of the imagination and the turbulent passions of our nature. The contrary

is the fact, and it is so in every zone. It is conspicuous that the demons are holding the reins of their power with a tremulous hand. The spirit of counsel and might has left them: the spirit of adventure and bold imposture has also departed. It seems as if there were neither courage nor concert in the halls of aerial government. Not only is every extant form of error ancient-most of them immemorially so; but every form is imbecile, as well as old. Or if we would seek a phrase that should at once describe the present condition of false religion, universally, we find it in the expression already quoted-The errors of mankind are now" antiquated, and in their dotage."--Dare we so far penetrate futurity as to add-" They are ready to vanish away"?'

The heroic savage who stalks through the wilderness of America, and the pallid Mongul, and the feverish Tartar, of central Asia, and the luxurious islander of the Southern and Pacific Ocean, are men upon whose visage, in whose customs, and in whose belief, we read the characters of a distant age:-they all may boast an ancestry, and they possess a memorial. They are not the mere progeny of the desert, born of oblivion, and destined to oblivion; but the descendants of MEN; and the races they belong to are the wrecks of primitive empires. A personage of princely birth and education has wandered far from his patrimony, has fallen from his rank, has endured many

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degradations, has forgotten his rights: nevertheless there is an inalienable greatness about him; and even the trumpery of the ornaments he wears contains proof of his noble lineage. Like every thing else that distinguishes these fallen and impoverished families, their religion is -a RELIC. And it is a relic, faded in colours, and decayed. If the history of the subjugation of the empires of Mexico and Peru, and if that of the Tartar conquests of the middle ages, and if the imperfect notices of the ancient Scythian nations, preserved by the Greek writers, may be taken as affording the means of a comparison between the present and the past religious condition of those classes of the human family of which we are speaking, it is quite manifest that the dimness, and the incertitude, and the terrors of extreme age have come upon all their superstitions. The force of the fanaticism they once engendered is spent. The demon is less the object of terror, is less often and less largely propitiated with blood;-the priest is less a prince than he was, and more a mercenary. Yes, and symptoms have appeared, even in this class-of incredulity and reason. No phrase better describes these now fading errors, than that already quoted— they are all "superannuated and decaying with age."

By civilization and industry, but not in matters of religion, the Chinese is entitled to take rank above his northern neighbour, cousin, and conqueror-the Mongul. In truth it must hardly be said that there is any thing of religion in China, if we deduct, on the one hand, what is purely an instrument of civil polity-a pomp of government; and on the other, what is mere domestic usage, or immemorial decoration of the home economy. Ages have passed away since mind, or feeling, or passion, animated the religion of China. The religion of China is now a thing, not only as absurdly gay, but as dead at heart, as an Egyptian mummy :-it is fit only to rest where it has lain two thousand years:-touch it-shake it-it crumbles to dust. Let but the civil institutions of China be broken up, and we might look about in vain for its religion.

'But may not at least the dark and gorgeous superstitions of India boast of undiminished strength, as well as of venerable age? Antiquated as they are, can we affirm that they totter? Less so, it may be granted, than any other forms of false religion upon earth.-They were born for longevity; they are the very beings of the climate; almost as proper to it as its prodigious and venomous reptiles. But can it be said of these illusions, firm as they still seem, that they have not been placed in jeopardy during the last fifty years, and especially of late? Is there not even now, in the fanaticism of India, more of usage than of passion? And we well know that the very crisis of a profound religious system, such as Hindooism-such as Romanism,— comes on, when the enormities which once were cruel and sincere, begin to be simply loathsome and farcical. Besides; does not the strength of the religion of India consist in the credit of the Braminical order? The beard of the Bramin is the secret of its power; but, like the locks of Samson, may it not readily be lost? The credit of the Bramin rests upon the unnatural partition of the people by caste: and this partition is hastening to decay.

If the question related to the probable facility with which the

Gospel, in our hands, would prevail over the delusions of the Hindoo, it might seem one of very difficult solution. But we ask no more than this-Whether the superstitions of India, and of the adjacent countries, do not (even admitting their actual hold of the people) partake of that character of SUPERANNUATION which now so remarkably belongs to every other impiety and error in the world? We scruple not

to assume the affirmative.

The grave and masculine superstition of the Asiatic nations, which employed the hot blood of its youth in conquering all the fairest regions of the earth, spent its long and bright manhood in the calm and worthy occupations of government and intelligence. During four centuries, the successors of Mahomet were the only men the human race could at all boast of. In the later season of its maturity, and through a long course of time, the steadiness, the gravity, and the immovable rigour, which often mark the temper of man from the moment when his activity declines, and until infirmity is confessed, belonged to Islamism, both western and eastern. And now, is it necessary to prove that every symptom characteristic of the last stage of human life, attaches to it? Mahometan empire is decrepit; Mahometan faith is decrepit: and both are so by confession of the parties. In matters both civil and religious, those days are come upon this superstition in which-" The sun, and the moon, and the stars, are darkened;" nor do "the clouds (of refreshment) return after the rain. -And the keepers of the house tremble; and the strong bow themselves; and the grinders (the powers of the mechanic art and trade) cease, because they are few. And they that look out at the windows (the learned class) are darkened. And the doors are shut in the streets (by jealousy and depopulation) and the wakefulness of conscious danger is upon it; and the daughters of music (revelry) are brought low; and fears are in the way; and desire faileth."

'Is it indeed a gratuitous assumption, advanced only to give completeness to an argument, when we say-That the religion of the Prophet is now in its stage of extreme decrepitude?

But in what terms are we fairly to describe the present health and powers of the haggard Superstition of the West?-If the strength of immortality indeed be in her, to what region has the vital energy retired?—is it kindling about the heart? Is it within and around the pestilential levels of the Tiber, that we are to find the force, the concentration, the fervour, that should belong to the centre of a living body? Or may we choose among the extremities? Is the Catholic faith otherwise than decrepit, as it exists in the midst of the sceptical intelligence of the north of Italy; or by the side of the mystical unbelief of Germany? Or shall we prefer the mockery of France, to the debauchery of Spain, and of Portugal, when we are thus in search of the power and promise of popery? But perhaps Ireland is the asylum of the true and indestructible religion! Those who will console themselves with such a supposition, shall not be disturbed in their dreams; and yet will we not hold our conclusion in suspense -That Popery, like Mahometanism, and every other superstition of mankind, is in its wane.-Upon the Church of Rome, most conspicuously, have come the many loathsome infirmities that usually attend