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as the growing seed. Opposed to this, on one hand, are the disorderly radicals, or reforming rationalists, who mistake their own moral and social theories for law, and endeavour to agitate them into authority, and to amend the world by subjecting it to them, in a fixed and ungrowing uniformity. And opposed, on the other hand, are the conservative rationalists, who trust only in our present human law for the growth and preservation of society. Both alike mistake the true functions of law, and are ignorant of the inner social principle of growth; and have no trust in the natural law of social progress which God has ordained as an element of our humanity. The former would tear away the protecting and nourishing pod, before the seed is ripe; and the other would bind it up, to prevent the seed from scattering according to the free laws of growth, with wastefulness and disorder.

There is another form of rationalism, equally ignorant of our human spontaneities, which is very often introduced into the family training, to the great injury of the future prospects of the children, until they are able to understand the reasons of the duties required of them, or to perform them freely, out of filial affection. Children very soon learn that coaxing and reasoning do not at all interfere with their having their own way, and thus this mode of training very naturally results in teaching children, among their first lessons, that the wishes of their parents are of no consequence. Indians teach their children better, when they turn them loose to attend to themselves, without this pernicious training, which teaches only disrespect. Children are much better taught by their fellows at school, who instinctively compel them to respect the rights and feelings of others, and to submit to the order and common customs of their little society.

Reason children into submission to authority! Why, they must first have submitted to authority before they can know what authority or submission is; and they must also have experience of, and much reflection upon, the blessings of submission, before you can have any argument to enforce it which they can possibly appreciate. Authority exercised they can understand, in so far as they feel it as a power above them, controlling their actions; and feeling that it is above them, they cannot suppress the sentiment of respect or reverence, more or less crude, that naturally belongs to the perception; and this is a real gain. A proper training is not at all commenced until they have felt the necessity of submitting to authority; and this step in their education is among the most important of their lives. Until it is taken, their development continues to be purely selfish; and if parents cannot bring them to it wisely and steadily, the sooner they

commit their children to the boys and girls at school the better for them.

And what parents can act on pure rational principles, or know what they are? None of us know enough about human nature, in all its stages, to know how to deal with it rationally. Parents have, therefore, their mental instincts, that are a better guide than any light furnished them by the ordinarily limited extent of their science of education. Our instincts tell us that parents know better than their children what is proper for them, and therefore mere instinct teaches the parent to insist upon and enforce his will. Let not this be laid aside because socialists are heard to say that there ought to be no training that is not guided and accepted by reason. The training must be done, and if we have not reason enough to guide us, we must go by our mental instincts, as the next best course. If we carefully follow and observe their lead, and study the character of children, and train ourselves to moderation, and kindness, and good sense, we shall gradually learn for ourselves and our children what is the reason by which we are to be guided. Until we obtain this light of reason we must act upon our spontaneous promptings, under the restraints of good sense and caution.

We have the life of faith and that of law well illustrated in the history of the Jewish people. It is very evident that they were much degraded by idolatry at the time of their delivery from Egyptian bondage; and their forty years of desert life, with its adventurous freedom and its miraculous teachings, seem to have been necessary to awake in them that degree of faith which they needed in order to insure their future growth, and to enable them to master all the difficulties they were to encounter in settling themselves in the promised land. Their subsequent history is the measure of their comprehension of the principles of the Mosaic institutions. We cannot doubt that those institutions were adapted to their customs, but so far modified as was necessary to give adequate expression to the Divine spirituality then begun to be revived among them. The mistake is often made of supposing that, because of their Divine origin, they must be absolutely perfect, whereas their wisdom could be shown only by their relative perfection, or their adaptation. They are not fit for man in all circumstances, but only for a people with the inner principles and outer circumstances then constituting the life of the Jewish people. But the Divine principles which they containedthe unity, spirituality, and perfections of God revealed in them -the high ideas that were presented of our moral, social, and religious duties, and the promises of the future: these were the objects to which their faith was directed-and by this

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faith they were to grow, and did grow. But when this faith. died out, under the indurating formalism of an irreligious priesthood, they ceased to grow, falling away first into a superstitious idolatry, and afterwards into a bigoted rationalism that excluded all faith containing any real vitality, in the sense of a growing principle. They had a life of form, analogous to the crystal's growth in size and hardness, which resists dissolution; but not the true life, of which the mustardseed, with its growing and aspiring tendencies, is a genuine analogy. They had a legal "form of knowledge and truth," but no more than the Samaritan woman could they understand the symbol of the water, that should become in them a well of water springing up in everlasting vitality.

Pharisees and Sadducees were alike materialists in this, that they rejected that spiritual faith which is the life-principle of human progress; they admitted for man the growth of the crystal and the coral reef, by accretion; but not that of the tree, with its blossoms and fruit-and especially not of the Divine in human nature, with its beautifying and elevating principles communicated by the Holy Spirit. In vain did the prophets of God warn them against their formalism, reject their sacrifices, purifications, and tithes, and call them to understand the principles expressed by their institutions, and to observe justice, mercy, and faith, and to a life and growth born "not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God."

All forms of natural religion which are suggested by human reason, founded upon our dim and undefined faith in Divine things, or wherein this is the prevailing element, seem naturally to run into this formalism, because their faith is misdirected, and fixed on objects too gross to excite any true reverence, or too impalpable to reach the intelligence, and thus attract the affections of men. And it is only when the object of faith is a holy, all-wise, and almighty sympathizing God, revealed to us through His Son, manifest in the flesh, and dying for us, that we obtain a definite, yet living and growing faith, having an object sufficiently intelligible to attract our love. "We love Him because He first loved us,' and because we can perceive that He did so. This true faith requires no hierarchical magnificence, imposing rituals, solemn ceremonies, mysterious traditions, or grand legal unity, to supply its defect of principle; for its very simplicity of principle demands simplicity of form.

Now, if minerals, plants, and animals must have natural tendencies and instincts according to their several natures, in order to be what they are, then surely man must have natural tendencies that incline him to a complete fulfilment of his destiny. If the tendencies and instincts of plants and animals

are susceptible of improvement, much more so must be man's. And if the infant has spiritual instincts by which it gradually appropriates to itself the common knowledge and principles which Providence casts in its way, and thus gradually enlarges the province in which its activity may exert itself, surely there must still be natural tendencies that urge it to occupy that territory. These tendencies may be almost always too weak to resist the lower tendencies of human nature, and to overcome the difficulties that lie in the way; but, with the blessing of God, they will have power enough.

Faith is the vital principle of all these tendencies, and it has a natural germ in every human heart. If we are destitute of faith and trust in any given line of action, we must fail. If we do not believe in our natural craving after food, we must die. It is because we trust to our natural desire for knowledge that we ever attain any intelligence; and it is only when we trust to our natural desire after the highest spiritual gifts that we can ever make any advance towards them. We call this a natural desire, because man, however degraded, has still some remains of it.

"Seek, and ye shall find;" but how can we seek without a previous faith that there is something to be sought after? And God assures to us this faith, for the world is full of adaptations to man's physical, moral, and intellectual nature; and, grow as he may, their variety will never be exhausted. Naturally we look upward in search of goodness and intelligence superior to our own, and faith is our natural aspiration towards their attainment. And this faith in beings higher and holier than ourselves is always attended by a sentiment of reverence, varying in degree from the ordinary respect felt for our equals up to the profound awe with which we recognize the Divine. This is worthy of special attention. Every complete impression of any act, event, thing, or being, is at least double in its nature, consisting of the intellectual act by which the object is recognized, and the sentiment that naturally follows such recognition. Thus, the sight of an object that is sublime, or beautiful, or ugly, or of an act that is cruel, ungenerous, or mean, raises a corresponding sentiment; and it is this that makes virtue attractive and vice repulsive to us. All our sentiments rise in this perfectly spontaneous way, depending on the judgments which the mind forms of its objects; and hence the great importance of careful reflection in the formation of our judgments, and of being on our guard to exclude from our mind all thoughts that excite corrupting and misleading emotions. If we recognize in another any excellence to which we have not attained, the natural sentiment of a generous heart is reverence, or at least respect, and a desire to imitate it. But it may be envy, and a desire to degrade

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that excellence to a level with ourselves. If we have cultivated or indulged a habit of selfishness in all our calculations and conduct, the representation or judgment that we form of an excellent man will likely be that he stands in our way, or that we compare badly with him; and then our natural sentiment will be envy. Our judgments are the sources of our sentiments, the very springs of our inner and outer life; the chords of all the moral harmonies of the soul; and it is when we allow the tempters and the moral and political charlatans of society to play upon them at their pleasure, that we are sure to lose all proper self-control, and become the slaves of social excitements and seductions.

Faith, in its highest and most general spiritual sense, is the judgment of the mind concerning things above us-" things unseen "-and reverence for, and desire to reach them, are its naturally attendant sentiments. And this reverence is the very blossom of the tree of life; it gives to faith its upward look and hopeful aspirations after the unseen excellencies that it feels to be above it. This reverence may be in excess or in deficiency, and thus be timid and superstitious, or rude, imprudent, and audacious; but it must exist wherever there is faith enough to "look at things which are not seen." There can be no more important sentiment belonging to our spiritual nature, and we must endeavour to correct its excess or deficiency by exercising, with measured and reflecting caution, the faith out of which it flows.

But we have gone much further than we intended in elaborating these views; perhaps further than our readers care to follow us, and we must stop. We need not go back upon what we have said in order to convince our readers that the Inductive Method does not unduly bind philosophy to the leading strings of material nature, so as to exclude all the mental knowledge that is to be derived from our internal experience. It does take nature as it finds it, because that is a main object of its study; but it also studies how far nature may be improved by man. And especially does it, or may it, study human nature, and find wherein and how it may be improved. Life and growth are essential characteristics of this. method. It operates by appropriation, digestion, and assimilation, like the plant or animal. From the concrete gifts of nature it rises to the highest classifications, and from its most obvious laws to the highest principles. And in the performance of this work, the mind of man, also an object of philosophy, is continually growing and developing its natural tendencies, and always urging philosophy upwards, and always forbidding it to be complete. There can be no aprioral philosophy to fix or measure the destiny of man, except in the mind of his Creator.