PREFACE.

It has been my aim, in the following lucubrations, to draw closer the connexion between Philosophy and Religion, and to show to the men of genius and letters of the age, that they will never employ successfully their great gifts and acquirements, unless they surrender their souls to those impulses of piety, which, through all the different views of nature and of revelation, are the only sentiments which are congenial with the force of reason and with the splendours of imagination. When the Dialogues which form the principal part of this volume were composed, scarcely any such attempt had been made, otherwise a bolder and more decisive tone would probably have been adopted in them,—yet although Christianity has, in the few years since they were written, made a great apparent progress, and has

had the tide completely turned, so to speak, in its favour, scarcely any writers have appeared who have directed their battery chiefly against the errors and prejudices of philosophical and literary men, and I think my work may still be useful as a specimen of the manner in which such men ought to be met and won. Some great champions of religion, indeed, have done this after a sort,-they have carried into the whole field of their speculations the weight of powerful and commanding intellect, combined with the clearest intimations of sincerity, ―yet there is a repulsive tone about much of that species of theology which they chiefly enforce, and about the manner in which they enforce it, that keeps aloof the class of proud and independent thinkers from so much as intermingling their minds in their inquiries. It is this condition of things which I wish, if possible, to have changed; and I do not despair yet of seeing the change effected. The literature of the age must once more be throughout imbued with Christianity, not by bringing it all down to some supposed level of evangelical precision and formality, but, on the contrary, by showing the intimate connexion between every thing that is elevated in sentiment, and pure in

taste, with the prospects which Christianity holds out, and with the feelings on which faith in its divine authority is built. In short, the men of letters must be made to feel that, while they continue on the antichristian side, they are classing themselves with littleness of thought, and poor and confined views, and that, so far from attaining the true freedom of intellect, they are permitting their noblest powers to be miserably fettered.

I do not say that this mode of making Christians is the most thorough in its influence upon the heart and affections. But the chief business of a reasoner on Christianity is to convince the understandings of those with whom he has to deal, and to show them, if he can, that want of faith is an evidence of a narrowness of mind, of which, at least, all men who lay claim to any intellectual superiority ought to be heartily ashamed. And if he can even bring men from a motive more suited to the natural than the spiritual man, to regard it as a reproach to their understandings, and as a proof that they are not rising to the true level of the age in which they live, if they go on in a state of stupid inattention, or of dull indifference to this vast subject, he will do a great good to society,—and

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although the attack may not be made, in the first instance, upon the strongholds of sin, it will be a mighty matter to get over the reason and even the pride of men, at least those of the superior order, to the side of Divine Truth. Whenever a man has got Christianity fairly in his head,-there, if he is good for any thing, it will stick and work its own way, there is no great matter by what entrance it got in. "It is made all things unto all men, that by all means it may save some." On this principle, it is, that I have felt very little concern in the course of the following Dialogues about the careless and even irreverent expressions in which some speakers indulge,-that I have allowed them to pass almost without notice,-that I have not been very anxious to answer all the deistical objections,—and that I have rather hurried over points of fundamental importance in the Christian system. Incomplete as the defence is, I will yet venture to hope that no man can weigh it without seeing that there is a great deal in it, and that it will rather have the effect of leading on men of genius in the same course of inquiry, as one which, so far from being limited and deficient in original views, is, in fact, the most comprehensive of all inquiries, and opens into the most

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novel and unexpected results. This, I conceive, is the mode in which Christianity may be most successfully inculcated in the present state of opinions. Yet, in case this book should fall into the hands of the young, or of any who are unpractised in such kind of discussions, and lest it should unfortunately suggest doubts to their minds which might otherwise never have occurred to them, I have added a few Discourses, in a less questionable tone, which I flatter myself will be found both to supply deficiencies, and to throw, at the same time, new light and evidence upon the principles previously unfolded. Two of these, the fourth and fifth, will be easily distinguished from the others, as proceeding from a purer source both of sentiment and expression. I am not permitted to name their accomplished and amiable author; but I do not, therefore, encourage him to hope that he can possibly maintain his incognito.

As to my metaphysical speculations in the first part of these Dialogues, and in the Preliminary Inquiry, which is intended for their fuller elucidation, I may, perhaps, have put too much weight upon

* The last of the two has, in the hurry of printing, had a wrong title prefixed to it. It should have been simply designated,-" The Argument from our Saviour's Character continued."