Atheism, Pantheism, and Materialism.

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sophy from expressing my conviction, that so long as it cannot be shewn that matter or physical forces do actually reason, the manifestation of thought is evidence of the existence of a thinking being, as the author of such thought, and I shall look upon an intelligent and intelligible connection between the facts of nature as direct proof of the existence of a thinking God."-Id. March 1858, p. 204.

These few words from these great masters in science contain more precious truth than all Mr Herbert Spencer's toilsome and voluminous works. We do not underrate nor depreciate the extent of his knowledge and research, the keenness and astuteness of his mind, his ingenuity and tact as a writer, or the originality and value of his articles within a certain sphere-the sphere of matter and sense-the sphere that remains after obliterating the moral ideas, the spiritual, immortal, and accountable nature of man, and a personal, holy, and reigning God, from the universe. But this void fatally vitiates the whole. It is as if one should describe the solar system without the sun, the body without a soul or a head, the earth without its fauna and flora, sociology without government. However shrewd and useful, therefore, may be many of his writings on some branches, yet this is more than balanced by tearing them from their living root. Thus, in his famous educational article, entitled, "What knowledge is of most worth ?" which was not only endorsed, but republished in one of our New York dailies, which numbers its readers by the hundred thousand, Physical Science is put foremost. All that comes into competition with it is disparaged; supersensual, spiritual, scriptural knowledge is ignored; while the science commended is pronounced "antagonistic to the superstitions that pass under the name of religion." All that can be said in praise of Spencer's miscellaneous writings, can be said in praise not only of those of Hume, Comte, Malthus, but in a far higher degree of Mill, who is a mightier man than our author. He, near the close of his Logic, avows his adhesion to the radical and destructive principles of the Positive Philosophy of Comte. Mr Spencer took pains to write a letter to the New Englander, in which he had been styled a positivist, denying the imputation. That some of his methods are not precisely the same as Comte's, we are aware. But as to the whole animus, scope, and results of his system, with regard to the immaterial, the moral and divine-Religion and Christianity-let him choose between them who will. We submit to our readers whether the choice is worth the trouble of making.

It is a portentous fact, which the friends of Christianity,

and indeed of religion and morality, cannot afford to ignore or neglect, that sceptical and destructive opinions are just now having a formidable development in Great Britain, whence they, of course, migrate more freely to this country than from the continent. Aside of the church, a positive and semi-positive school, with their allies, under the lead of such men as Huxley, Darwin, Spencer, and Mill, appear to be assailing the fundamental, moral, and religious convictions of men from the scientific side, with weapons claimed to be forged in the laboratories of physical science. The absolute atheism or religious nihilism to which they go, has been sufficiently pointed out. Another class enter upon the same destructive work from the ideal and transcendental side, following their German masters. Mr Morell seems to have been oscillating to and fro from one to the other. We have not seen his "Introduction to the Study of Mental Philosophy on the Inductive Method;" but, from some extracts in an able review of it by Professor Noah Porter, of Yale College, in the American Presbyterian and Theological Review, for April 1864, we judge that he is now leaning to the sensuous school. From the alleged correlation between physical forces, he argues "that a similar correlation exists between vital energy, nervous energy, and mental energy;" "that the vital forces and the mind forces are one and the same at the root," &c. &c. This seems just now the newest and most fashionable drift of destructive thinking. Both currents form a confluence in the Westminster Review, and in the party of Destructives in the Established Church. These, with the growth of Romish tenets and practices in the Establishment, and of the Romish Church out of it, form an antagonistic yet combined and fearful host arrayed against the faith once delivered to the saints, the truth as it is in Jesus. The signs are manifold that this thing is not done in a corner, but that the assault upon the fundamentals of faith will be transferred from the old world to the new, and rage from within as well as without the pale of the church. Those set for the defence of the gospel must therefore gird on their armour. They must watch, detect, expose, confront, and overpower their foe. Valiant for the truth, speaking it in love, strengthened by him who is the truth, they shall conquer. When the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him. It is a giant with which we have to wrestle, but a blind giant after all,-blind to the intuitions of our nobler and immortal nature, to the soul, God, and immortality: "a Cyclops with one eye, and that in the back of its head," and giving us the ourang-outang theology of the origin of the human

Rambles in Italy-Ascent of Vesuvius.

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race in place of the book of Genesis." Let us pierce with the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, this

"Monstrum, horrendum, informo, ingens, cui lumen ademptum,"

and we need not fear the issue. We shall be more than conquerors through him that hath loved us.

IX.-Rambles in Italy-Ascent of Vesuvius.

WHAT say our readers, in these hot summer days, to a

run somewhere? "Agreed," exclaim they all, as soon as proposed. German hermeneutics and metaphysics may do admirably well in November. With the black fog outside, and the bright blazing fire inside, one has no temptation to close the page and turn to some other study; and so, with courageous energy, one plods on to the very end of the article. In the cold, clear, crisp days of January, one will set one's face to any amount of Calvinistic Theology or Scotch Philosophy, but for July reading we decidedly prefer, and so, too, doubtless, do our readers, something more airy and sunny, something redolent of the bright flowers and the crystal waters which then enliven plain and mountain, and which carry one's thoughts back, very far back, even to the world's spring-time, when the bloom of Eden was still upon it, and those great clouds which have since enwrapped it with funereal shadows had not yet appeared in its sky.

Well it is agreed that we shall have a holiday. Let us, then, without loss of time, be off at once. The steam horse stands ready yoked to carry us, with speed outstripping that of the eagle, whithersoever we will. But before starting, there is a little preliminary which we must needs settle. Whither shall we go? Shall it be to the fiords of Norway, or to the turf-bogs of Shetland, or the geysers of Iceland, or some other rarely visited spot in the Scandinavian north; or shall we turn to the sunny south, and seek the storied lands that lie beyond the Alps? Fashion in travel, as in other and more important matters, is in perpetual revolution. Italy and Greece have, for the hour, lost their monopoly of attraction, and the great stream of tourists, forsaking the museums of Florence, the meadows of the Clitumnus, the majestic ruins amid which the Tiber rolls its sluggish and discoloured floods, or the hoary edifices which crown the Athenian Acropolis, turns northward, in quest of excitement or of health, amid the rougher landscapes and under the sterner

skies of the Arctic circle, where night, at this time of the year, is unknown, and the evening's gold passes imperceptibly and sweetly into the silvery flush of morning.

We do not go with the stream. Turning our back upon the pine-crested Norwegian precipices, we seek mightier mountains and grander scenery. We journey toward those lands where the great streams of European history have their birth-place; even as there the literal rivers which water the continent of Europe have their infant sources. Already we are ploughing the channel. The chalky cliffs of England have sunk behind us, and as our vessel climbs the billow that comes rolling up from the Atlantic, and rushes tumultuously through the narrow strait of Dover, we descry the shore of France; and now we steam in at the narrow winding rocky entrance of the harbour of Dieppe, or moor our vessel alongside the more spacious quays of Boulogne. Paris need not detain us except for a single day, for we have made our escape from home, not to be broiled in cities, but to luxuriate amid the glaciers and pine forests of the Alps, and to brace our limbs by healthful exercise amongst the olive groves of the Apennines,-the "purple Apennine," on whose crest is hung the sparkling town, on whose side ripens the purple grape, and within whose vast cavernous entrails floods of living fire boil and smelter, till, gathering strength, the pent up element forces its way at the summit, darkening kingdoms with its smoke, whitening provinces with its ashes, and burying city and olive-yard beneath an ocean of burning lava.

But as yet we have not got beyond Paris. There is a dazzling gaiety about the capital of France, which first fascinates, almost intoxicates, but which soon begins to pall, then inflicts a sense of fatigue and weariness, and at last becomes absolutely painful. There is a want of repose in the intense continuous glare that surrounds one, so that neither eye nor heart can long feel satisfied. One seeks rest, but finds it not. The Creator has ordained that beauty shall have no power to yield permanent delight unless it be grafted on utility; and that pleasure shall impart no true enjoyment unless in alliance with labour surmounted and duty discharged. The Parisians have paid too little attention to this in the construction of their city, and still less have they attended to it in the selection of the great ends to which their existence is devoted. Aiming solely at the "æsthetic" in their capital, they have come short of that crowning effect which it is the province of true art to achieve; and making "pleasure" the one predominant and almost exclusive end of their lives, they have sadly missed it. Still Paris, viewed as an artistic effort, is a marvellous creation. It is perhaps the most perfect city, judged solely with reference to art,

First Sight of the Alps.

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that ever existed. It has not the solemn dignity of Rome; it does not convey the idea of power-grave, majestic, imperial power-which London does; nor has it the romantic grandeur and exquisite beauty of Edinburgh. The Scottish capital, without much attention to art, nay, in spite of the disregard and violation of some of its rules, has attained the highest effect which art can reach. In respect of the picturesque grouping of its buildings; in respect of the wondrous blending of landscape and city, of mountain cliff and architectural dome; in respect of those skiey influences which idealise and transform it, creating a different city every day, and sometimes every hour of every day, Edinburgh stands alone and unrivalled among the cities of earth.

We have traversed France, we have touched the "blue Rhone. What glory is that which begins to light up the southern horizon? Lo, gleaming afar, seen across the vast sweep of the plains of Dauphiny, are the white tops of the Alps. How they stir and expand the soul, looking like the pinnacles of some city of glory which lies beyond the earth, and within whose gates pure tranquil joy has made its eternal dwelling-place. The little fretting thoughts and cares which inevitably spring up in one's daily life, and are engendered by one's intercourse with the ordinary world, suddenly melt, and drop off as do fetters which the fire has touched, or the rust corroded; and the mind feels as if coming out of prison. The sight of these glorious summits is as the opening of a new world; there rushes a tide of new emotions into the soul, and to have lived for even this brief space in that higher sphere is worth all the toil of the journey thither.

But how shall we cross this snowy ridge, and set foot on the land of beauty which lies beyond it? The ice-clad pinnacles rise so high in heaven, towering as they do above the clouds, and are so stainlessly white, that it might seem feat too daring to scale these mighty bulwarks, or tread with mortal foot upon their shining snows. Yet cross them we must. Four great passes lift up their everlasting gates, to give us entrance to the land which these stupendous ramparts enclose. Which of these four great routes shall we choose? We can scarce choose wrong, for although each has its peculiar characteristic, there is not one of the four which will not disclose much quiet beauty, much stern, savage grandeur and sublimity, and which will not so elevate and enrich the mind with images of power, glory, and majesty, as to cause one forget the toil and danger of the ascent, and make him feel that he is enjoying a rich banquet, whose delights are destined never to pass away from his memory. The Mont Cenis pass is the lowest and tamest of the four. It has, nevertheless, much beautiful scenery on the