half as much as uncertain friends, who disappoint their expectations. And God has made us jealous over that which we love, and intended that we should love real truth, as the most precious of blessings, and the foundation of all other blessings. And therefore no man who has a value for truth can be a syncretist, and no syncretist have a value for truth.

Neither can he have any sense of the importance of what are called trifles. If he pronounces of any system that any part whatever is valueless, and may be amputated without affecting the whole, he is ignorant of one main law in the constitution of the world, and ignorant through levity and frivolity, or through dishonest prejudice. In this world nothing is a trifle. A painter was one day copying a portrait by Rembrandt. He took off shadow after shadow, light after light, line upon line, most accurately. Still the expression was wanting. Hundreds on hundreds of touches were valueless, till, by the aid of a microscope, he discovered one hair-like line beneath the eye; and this put in, the whole likeness came. So it is with all great things. It is only littleness of mind that cannot appreciate little things. On the eve of one of his greatest battles, the General, who, almost alone in this age, has shewn us what a great man is, was found sitting up in his tent, writing folio upon folio-upon what? on the comparative merits of tin and copper canisters for soldiers' Look at the works of nature. Do they exhibit any contempt for trifles? What is the pencilling of the flower, the plumage of the insect, the moulding of the leaf, the depth below depth of animated worlds, sinking down and down till sense is lost in tracing the minuteness of their structure,—but a witness against the ignorant man, who thinks that, in the sight of an infinite Being, any thing can be

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little, when nothing can be great? Think of the human eye. It is the mirror of the mind, the telegraph of thought, the great actor in the pantomime of signs, by which we hold converse with our fellowmen, and read their souls. What is it but a little dot of light, shifting every moment, and forming an infinite variety of the minutest angles with the two ellipses of the eyelids? And yet by these slight variations we read the thoughts and passions of the mind within; as we read a whole world of truth, past, present, and future, of this world and of others, of man and of God, by little lines, and dots, and curves, and angles, of hair's-breadth thickness, in the forms of writing. So, think how a single voice will decide the fate of nations, even in the most popular of governments, so long as a majority decides; and without such a majority there can be no society. Think how one trifling act, even the wavering of a thought, will give a bias to the mind, and lay the foundation of a habit which nothing afterwards can alter. Think how, in a course either of virtue or of vice, all may be safe, or unsafe, up to a certain point; when again one little act consolidates the habit for ever. Before, there might be escape; now, there is none. Before, heaven might have been lost; now, it is gained for ever. Think how our moral affections rest mainly on what men call trifles -how trifles please, trifles disgust, trifles irritate, trifles excite admiration, trifles provoke emulation, trifles rouse jealousy, trifles consolidate love, trifles are the proof of virtue, trifles indicate the habit; and in all these cases, simply because they are trifles. Great occasions, violent temptations, gigantic efforts, superhuman prowess, these are rarely within our reach. And they are not required. They even diminish admiration. Our hearts are balanced on a point, and they will vibrate with a breath of air.

And then turn to the field of reasoning. If every principle contain, as in a Trojan horse, a host of applications,-if it is but the condensed summary, the quintessence of innumerable experiences, -so also every separate fact involves the principle itself. Of things inseparably united, no one part, however small, can be denied without the denial of the whole. If a man's hair were so connected with his body, that it could never be detached, the nonexistence of a single hair would be as valid a proof against the existence of the man, as the non-existence of his whole body. And no fact whatever in nature is isolated. It has deep and unseen connexions with many, perhaps with all others. The world is built like that fabled roof of exquisite architecture, in which no one stone could be touched, without risking the ruin of the whole. It is hung, as a house exposed to thieves, with wires and bells crossing each other in every direction, and when any one spring is touched, the bells will sound in the most distant part-sound, at least, to those whose ears are alive and watching to catch the alarm, φωνήεντα συνέτοισι. And thus the most thoughtful men, whether in purely scientific morals, or in the system of revelation, are the most keenly sensitive to the value of what common men call trifles. They know that in law, and politics, and nature, and physical science, as well as in theology, there is an Athanasian creed-ay, and with its damnatory clauses, commanding us to make fine distinctions, to guard against the omission of iotas, to affirm positively and boldly subtle seeming oppositions, in which only a hair's-breadth separates the true from the false, the safe from the perilous; and which therefore it is the first business, and even the boast of the lawyer, the politician, the moralist, the physical philosopher, as well as the theologian, to discover, to proclaim, to

insist on, to warn their followers against negligence or presumption when dealing with them, in the very words of the theologian, "which faith, unless a man keep whole and undefiled he cannot be saved." Why was the refusal of "a private gentleman to pay twenty or thirty shillings to the king's service argued," says Clarendon, " before all the judges in England?" Because in those twenty shillings, one party saw the germ of a tyranny, and the other of a rebellion. Why will a lawyer warn you against permitting a neighbour to claim the gathering of even a leaf upon your estate, without contesting his right? Because the gathering the leaf may invalidate your title to the whole estate. Why will a wise politician contest so earnestly for the form of a word, or the wearing a hat, or the title of a writ? Because each of these will become a precedent; and in precedent is involved principle. Why will an engineer be alarmed at the first drop of water oozing through a dam? Because the rest, he knows, will follow it. Why is the discovery of one little bone in a stratum of rock enough to overturn a whole theory of geology? Because the little bone like a pack-thread, will draw after it the whole skeleton like a coil of rope; and the skeleton will imply the power which brought it to its site; and that power will be vast and pregnant with other influences; and thus the whole system of the science will be dragged into peril, as many other systems have been perilled, and have been upset by the merest trifle, by one little fact. Why will a spot of blood betray murder? Why will the print of a nail discover a thief? Why will a whole neighbourhood take flight at the sight of a little boy with only a little spark of fire going into a magazine of powder; or a crowd disperse upon the ice at the sound of the slightest crack? Because nature, as well as theology, has her Atha

nasian creed and her damnatory clauses for those who neglect iotas-because nature, as well as theology, does not know what a trifle is.

And therefore Syncretism, which would cut off trifles-trifles not of human invention, (for these it may prohibit us from intruding on the body of definite revealed truth), but points which it deems insignificant within that body itself; or which, in Morals, would deal with little tendencies and separate phenomena as things of no importance--Syncretism, which would assimilate different schools by squeezing them all into one mould, cutting off this angle and defacing this outline, as if it were no part of their substance this Syncretism is a direct violation of a paramount law of reason; and as such, God and nature have proscribed it.

Add, then, that these trifles in religion are parts of a definite revelation; that in morals they are placed before us on the authority of great and wise, though imperfect men; and that nevertheless we, the ignorant student, or the new original thinker, presume to determine that they are useless-just as if an anatomist would insist on amputating from the work of nature in the human body every organ of which he could not discover the intention,—and we shall see another sin in Syncretism, to make it perilous to man and odious to God.

We scarcely know, indeed, how the differences of sects and systems may be an essential condition for the preservation of truth in the world, and the proper development and play of human reason. They are mischievous, and we must try to extirpate them by bringing all men to the knowledge of truth. And yet if we attempt to extirpate them by any other method than those which God has appointed, we may be doing harm; just as the agriculturist succeeded in destroying one race of vermin, but