It cannot be too often repeated, that the only responsible The will is, indeed, liable to

part of man is his WILL. blame for neglecting or misusing the external as well as the internal means of right perception; but it is perfectly unreasonable to make it answerable for the perceptions themselves. It would be real, not theological blasphemy (which generally means evil speaking of theological opinions), to say that God would doom any of his rational creatures to eternal misery because, though he had tried, he could not understand the plain demonstration of the truth, that the three angles of any triangle are equal to two right ones. Yet to perceive that truth seems to be in the power even of the most moderate understanding. What then should we say of the assertion, that God dooms to everlasting perdition every one whose reason rejects the Athanasian Creed? Reason itself, that highest faculty of the human soul, whose inalienable privilege is to decide between right

was shewn to the public on a certain festival. The devout people looked through a glass into a golden box where the hair should be seen. But when the existence of such things is once fully established by faith, the keepers of the treasure take no further pains to facilitate the belief. To place a hair, or even a whole lock, in the box was not difficult. It happened, however, that for many years the box had contained no such thing. A rather too curious and prying Christian, having deposited his oblation of money on the salver that lay upon the table, behind which a priest in his stole was shewing the relic, kept his eye close to the glass for a considerable time. "I can see no hair, father" (whispered he in the ear of the monk)."No wonder, my son (answered the priest in the same tone of voice), for I have shewn it these twenty years, and have never been able to see it." How many who shew the wonders of Orthodoxy might truly give a similar answer! Yet it is most probable that if the monk and the devotee's dialogue had been overheard, both would have been sent to the Inquisition, to be punished for their visual weakness, and to learn to see better in future.

and wrong, truth and deception, is, not the subject, but the fountain of all moral duty. The WILL alone has duties to perform. One of them is to employ the UNDERSTANDING (the faculty that prepares the information required for the decision of reason) under a habitual love of divine truth, i.e. of the correspondence of our conceptions with the existences of God's material and spiritual universe. It is the moral duty of the WILL to use the understanding as a MIRROR,* courting in every direction, and by every means in man's power, the rays of divine truth; and endeavouring, by industry, disinterestedness, and sincerity, to remove the soiling breath of the passions and desires, which so frequently distort those rays, and make them diverge from the mind.

But, above all, the great moral duty of the will, in relation to the conclusions of reason, is VERACITY. The impressions which every individual receives, the reflected truths which, after proper examination, are found to be permanent on the mind, should be sacred to VERACITY. I need not add that this duty is peculiarly incumbent on the Christian respecting the religious truths which he finds in the Scriptures. But excuse me if I repeat, that, in order to prepare ourselves for the performance of this duty, we should remove from the mind every superstitious fear, which, when existing there, must prevent those writings from conveying an unperverted sense. We hear loud and incessant declamations against the pride and presumption which are

* "For now we see as by means of a mirror, in hints." This translation seems to me to remove the obscurity which the established version leaves on this interesting passage.-1 Cor. xiii. 12.

believed to interfere whenever any one rejects the interpretations of the Orthodox party. But what passion can be compared with the servile fear of many Christians as to its power of paralyzing the intellectual faculties, and preventing the exercise of a manly judgment? Can a trembling soul which sees the gulf of destruction gaping before it during the examination of some contested point; can any one who from the cradle has been made to see every danger on the side of believing what is plain, rational, and consistent, and all imaginable safety in embracing what is most repugnant to common sense and the first laws of reason; can a mind in this state of weakness and trepidation avoid the temptation to close its eyes against the truth, and "speak wickedly for God and talk deceitful for Him"? It would be, indeed, not only useless, but in many cases cruel, to urge any powerful considerations which might disturb the helpless slaves, or rather victims, of an education essentially intolerant; but every man who has courage to think, and loves truth more than he fears obloquy and insult, is bound to caution all those who, possessing a mental character of the same stamp, may not yet be aware of its value, against the dangers which threaten if it be not fully developed. It is to such persons that I address my warnings: let them beware of superstitious fear in the investigation of religious truth; let them encourage in their souls a habitual attention to the duty of VERACITY, and read the Scriptures with a firm determination of not deceiving themselves, for the sake of a false internal peace with early prejudices; and, still more, of not con

cealing from others whatever impressions may have assumed a clear and prominent character during the examination of the sacred writings. Since subjective religious truth, i.e. the impressions which the Seriptures leave on each individual, have not been made by God a matter of OBEDIENCE to any authorized judge of truth; since the meaning of the Scriptures has been left unlimited by the judgment of any external authority; it must be supposed that it is the intention of Providence that the Scriptures be studied, in common, by all those who acknowledge their authority; and, if such be the purpose of the Divine Mind, it must be a duty of all Christians not to deceive each other as to the results of their respective perceptions of the sense of the Scriptures. To act otherwise, must be a sin of FALSEHOOD : it must be "holding the truth in unrighteousness" (or translating more literally, "in injustice" for what injustice can exceed that which is done to mankind when any one casts into the common treasury of intellectual experience, as his own TRUTH, as the real impression on his mind, that which is entirely unlike that impression? Such a deliberate LIE, in relation to the Scriptures, must be hateful in the eyes of God. He knows our weakness of judgment, and our consequent liability to error; but what can plead our excuse before Him when we wilfully corrupt and deface the only unquestionable TRUTH we possess the reality of our consciousness? It cannot be our duty to be right in our interpretation of the Scriptures, because God has not given us the means to understand them with moral certainty, except as to their general and practicnl objects; but we

are bound to be VERACIOUS, to state candidly what we see, because in regard to this we are fully conscious whether we speak the TRUTH or a LIE.

From faithfulness to the duty of VERACITY, the Christian world might finally derive the inestimable advantage of knowing what is the most general, most distinct, and most lasting impression made by the Scriptures on the collective intellect of those to whom they are collectively addressed. That impression, if gathered from the free and unbiassed examination of the most intelligent portion of the Christian world, might properly be called the natural sense of the Scriptures. In what department of knowledge do we see, or could a civilized nation endure, the method which is followed in regard to religion? I have, indeed, heard and read of some attempts to perpetuate, by means of oaths, some particular theory of medicine, which at some time or other was considered to have arrived at a perfection above all possibility of improvement. I am aware that the pupils of the school of Hippocrates vowed to the gods never to perform or recommend the operation of lithotomy; and I recollect to have seen, many years ago, in a book written against the use of the Jesuits' Bark, a sentence of excommunication which a high ecclesiastical authority (I have an idea that it was the Pope) had fulminated against any practitioner of medicine that prescribed it. Similar attempts to stop the progress of knowledge, just at the point where the stoppage suited the vanity, the indolence, and interest of some powerful body of men, have been frequent; but they have been gradually swept off by the progress of civilization. Yet the same method of keeping down all Christians to the measure of a certain