escape from underneath its dark and tearful shadow. He will inevitably sleep in equatorial dead calms, or dance his weary life out in the lugubrious doldrums of the HorseLatitudes, if he do not. Happier winds may take him more prosperously on his life-voyage, if he can but reach them; and, if he can also keep clear of the Arctic night of unmetaphysical physics and orthodox theology, he may have temperate sailing, on an endless parallel, in the eternal radiance of the true Pole-star of the universe; but otherwise, never.

Nor need there be any fear of anything being done, in the entire universe, without a cause; nor that all mankind will adopt the phrenologico-biology and perpetual-motion machine theories of M. Auguste Comte, Harriet Martineau, and George Henry Lewes, nor the childish vagaries of dreamy spiritual rappers; at least, until all shall have sunk into that degree of intellectual stupidity, or superstitious folly, wherein the knowledge of causes, the true nature of cause, and the mode of that thing which is uncaused, is completely ignored, and all attempt to know it summarily renounced. On the contrary, a very large portion of mankind may be presumed to be still capable of appreciating what Bacon made the first and foremost article of his plan of Solomon's House, or a College of the Universal Science, thus: "The End of our Foundation is the knowledge of Causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging the bounds of Human Empire to the effecting all things possible"; or, as he says, again, the true end of knowledge " is a discovery of all operations and possibilities of operations from immortality (if that were possible) to the meanest mechanical practice." He well knew, that "in the entrance of philosophy, when the second causes, which are next unto the senses, do offer themselves to the mind of man, if it dwell and stay there, it may induce some oblivion of the highest cause." There were

1 Valerius Terminus.

"1

also to be in this Solomon's House, "houses of deceits of the senses; where we represent all manner of feats of juggling, false apparitions, impostures, and illusions; and their fallacies. And surely you will easily believe that we that have so many things truly natural, which induce admiration, could, in a world of particulars, deceive the senses, if we could disguise those things, and labor to make them seem more miraculous. But we do hate all impostures and lies. . . These are, my son, the riches of Solomon's House." "1

.....

1 New Atlantis.

CHAPTER VII.

SPIRITUAL ILLUMINATION.

Περὶ τὸν παντων Βασιλέα παντ' εξί, και ἐκεινον ἕνεκα πάντα, και ἐκεῖνο άιτιον ἀπάν TWV TŴY Kaλwv. — Concerning the King of all, all things are, and for his sake are all things, and he is the cause of all the beautiful.-Plato's Epist. II. to Dionysius. "The first creature of God, in the works of the days, was the light of the sense; the last was the light of reason; and his Sabbath work ever since is the illumination of his Spirit."- Bacon's Essay of Truth.

§ 1. THE TRUE RELIGION.

BENJAMIN CONSTANT, setting out upon an investigation into the origin and progress of all religions, with a purpose of showing that Christianity was only one of the many superstitions of the world's history, becomes himself convinced that there is such a thing as religion in itself, resting on an eternal foundation of divine truth, and recognized more or less distinctly in all phases of human experience, and in all forms of human society, from the lowest barbarisms up to the highest degree of civilization; and Goethe, no less learned in historical criticism, and perhaps a still deeper philosopher, finds that there are at least "three Reverences" and "one true Religion," which stand upon such eternal foundation. Morell, writing a philosophy of religion, finds, also, that all religious opinion and belief must come to man through his own reason only; and that there can be no revelation to men of things altogether above their comprehension. These and many other learned writers and scholars, both ancient and modern, take religion to be something universal and necessary, founded in the very nature and constitution of the soul of man,

wherein he is made sensible of his dependence upon 66 some Higher Powers." Lord Bacon had attained to a like comprehension of the true nature of religion. "The true religion," he says, "is built upon the rock; the rest are tossed upon the waves of time." This metaphor appears again in the plays :

Abound as thick as thought could make them, and
Appear in forms more horrid, yet my duty
(As doth a rock against the chiding flood)
Should the approach of this wild river break,
And stand unshaken yours.".

And again, thus:

Henry VIII., Act III. Sc. 2.

"Tit. For now I stand as one upon a rock,

Environ'd with a wilderness of sea;

Who marks the waxing tide grow wave by wave,

Expecting ever when some envious surge

Will in his brinish bowels swallow him."

Tit. And., Act III. Sc. 1.

The same metaphors upon the same subject appear again in a letter drafted by Bacon for Essex, thus:

66 Duty, though my state lie buried in the sands, and my favours be cast upon the waters, and my honours be committed to the wind, yet standeth surely built upon the rock, and hath been, and ever shall be, unforced and unattempted." 1

And in the same Essay (of the Vicissitude of Things), he observes, that "there be three manner of plantation of new sects by the power of signs and miracles; by the eloquence and wisdom of speech and persuasion; and by the sword": :

"Gent.

This is a creature,

Would she begin a sect, might quench the zeal

Of all professors else, make proselytes

Of who she but bid follow.".

Win. Tale, Act V. Sc. 1.

Christianity in itself is perhaps not a sect, nor any man's creed of belief, whether that of Channing, Edwards, Wes1 Letters and Life, by Spedding, II. 193.

raises, if He will, the soul to Philosophy unfolds the past

ley, Penn, Cranmer, Luther, St. Augustine, St. Paul, St. Peter, or even of Jesus of Nazareth, nor the decree of any Church council, but rather the true religion of holy men. It is not exactly philosophy; but it presumes a true philosophy of the universe to be already established in the mind of the true believer. Christianity would seem to proclaim the fact by authority of miracle, all the miracles of the universe, no less than some few, and the universal revelation therein, that God, the creator and preserver of all created things, reigns in and over all His universe, judges the quick and the dead, and life, light, and immortality. and present order of His providence in the known and knowable universe of fact and truth, and endeavors to explain, as far as man can comprehend, how it is possible for God and Nature and Man to exist as they have existed, and do in fact exist, and in what manner, and how it is conceivable and credible that He can create and destroy, remember and forget, govern, judge, and make souls immortal. Christianity is religious culture and worship: philosophy is the science of sciences, the Universal Science. Philosophy is to Christianity what Plato was to Jesus Christ. There must be a Plato before there can be a Jesus, and a philosophy before there can be a Christianity. Every man's Christianity will be according to his philosophy, whether he knows it or not. And when he has advanced his philosophy and his Christianity together to a knowledge of God and His providence in the universe, he will be sure to find them one, - but two names for "the same thing more large." Religion is the live worship of the living God. "It is not without cause," says Bacon, "that the Apostle calls Religion the Rational Worship of God;" and again he says, "As to seek divinity in philosophy is to seek the living amongst the dead, so to seek phi

1 De Aug. Scient., Lib. IX.