the extreme. We simply say that it is not enough, and that if we would successfully grapple with the higher forms of scepticism, the old bulwarks must be supplemented with something else, and something more. The difficulty in this matter is to abstract ourselves from our present and Christian modes of thought, for the occupancy of a pagan or Neoplatonic view-point; but until we in some measure accomplish this, we cannot hope to cope successfully with the men who have become fascinated with the one, or are idolaters of the other-men who have even the hardihood to tell us that our Christianity is in the "Phædo."

Efforts have recently been made to show that philosophy was advancing to a solution of some of those abstruse and weighty problems which had so long baffled the utmost efforts of its loftiest sages; and the hymn of Cleanthes, and the dogmas of the Pythagoreans, have been pointed to as proofs that, had time only been granted, they would have accomplished, unaided, what it is the peculiar glory of Christianity to have achieved for man. Nothing so forcibly reminds us that our modern sceptics tread "a land of darkness as darkness itself," as the intense interest with which they gaze upon any gleam of light which may meet them on their pilgrimage. Like the traveller, faint and weary with traversing the trackless wastes of Sahara, they feel more intensely interested with the few stunted

shrubs to be found in the oases of the desert, than when embosomed in vegetation "thick as leaves in Vallambrosa.”

At the era of the revival of letters, which immediately preceded the Reformation, it was feared by some that the passion for the classics would revive the worship of antiquity. The age of the Medici and Leo X. was unquestionably more pagan than Christian in its tendencies, and the transformation which was feared then, is, to a considerable extent, being realized now through the influence of modern idealism. The men whose dark and lowering crests are to be seen in the van of the scepticism of the age are, for the most part, men who have either lost their way amidst the fogs of German metaphysics, or whose souls have been chilled and frost-bitten by some one or other of the numerous critical systems to which that land of doubters has given birth.

Though not a student of German metaphysics, nor much acquainted with the numerous critical systems, that, like meteors of the night, are ever shooting athwart the intellectual horizon of "the thinkers of Europe," Hugh Miller had not altogether escaped the wintry influences of a sceptical philosophy. Never, indeed, had he at any time made that philosophy a faith; yet its chill had passed over, though it failed to petrify his spirit. A strong dash of hereditary prejudice kept him

from being whelmed in its dark and troublous waters, even in the absence of any higher light to guide his steps into the way of peace. The period had, however, now come, when the mists of scepticism are to take themselves off, and religion's tranquil star, which these mists had obscured, is to shed over his soul its selectest influence.

On his return to Cromarty, he found an old companion, one of the band he so long led in days of youthful frolic, relinquishing superior commercial prospects, and entering the curriculum of preparation for the work of the ministry. The two early friends spent much of their time together, and frequently their talk was upon religious topics. The perfect disinterestedness of his companion's abnegation of every worldly advantage under the impulse of religious devotion, brought Christianity as an operative power upon the heart, not a mere system of doctrines, prominently before him. Previous to this period, he seems to have thought Howie's description of that Scottish Ulrich von Hutten, Balfour of Burley's relations to the covenanting cause, would have very well described his own religious condition; and it is with the characteristic reserve of a true Scotchman Hugh Miller tells the story of the great transition-era in his religious history.

Scottish theology, whether in its extreme or moderate form, has unfortunately for the most part presented

Christianity to the people of Scotland rather in the light of a scheme of doctrine to be embraced, than as embodying a being to be loved. The kinsman-redeemer of the "Marrow men" was indeed an exception; but somehow this benignant aspect of the theology of the Bostons and the Erskines was long lost sight of, and not until comparatively recent times did it again, under somewhat altered forms and a modernised nomenclature, emerge from the obscurity into which it had fallen. It was from out the glowing heart of Edward Irvingwhile yet Edward Irving held fast his integrity-this noblest blossoming of the antique creed of our country again bloomed into beauty. With this theology, one so familiar with the evangelical writers of the Scottish church as was Hugh Miller, could not have been unacquainted; but hitherto it had been to him rather a wandering voice than a thing of power. How his religion became a religion of the heart, as certainly as of the intellect, shall be told in his own words:-"I was," he states, "led to see at this time, through the instrumentality of my friend, that my theological system had previously wanted a central object to which the heart could attach itself; and that the true centre of an efficient Christianity is, as the name ought of itself to import, 'the Word made Flesh.' Around the central sun of the Christian system-appreciated, however, not as an abstraction, but as a divine person-so truly man

that the affections of the human heart can lay hold upon him; and so truly God that the mind through faith can at all times and in all places be brought into direct contact with him,-all that is really religious takes its place in a subsidiary and subordinate relation. I say subsidiary and subordinate. The Divine man is the great attractive centre-the sole gravitating point of a system, which owes to him all its cohering, and which would be but chaos were he away. It seems to be the existence of the human nature in this central and paramount object, that imparts to Christianity in its subjective character its peculiar power of influencing and controlling the human mind. There may be men who, through a peculiar idiosyncrasy of constitution, are capable of loving after a sort a mere abstract God, unseen and inconceivable, though, as shown by the air of sickly sentimentality borne by almost all that has been said and written on the subject, the feeling in its true form must be a very rare and exceptional one. In all my experience of men, I never knew a genuine instance of it. The love of an abstract God seems to be as little natural to the ordinary human constitution, as the love of an abstract sun or planet. The true humanity and true divinity of the adorable Saviour, is a truth equally receivable by at once the humblest and the loftiest intellects. Poor dying children, possessed of but a few simple ideas, and men of the most robust