Christian faith, when taken in connection with the doctrine of the atonement.

Without, therefore, fully agreeing with Coleridge in all he says or seems to say (for he sometimes is very obscure) upon these points of supreme importance, the consummate wisdom and truth of the following peroration appear to me irresistible :—

"The death to which the law sentenced all sinners (and which even the Gentiles, without the revealed law, had announced to them by their consciences,* "the judgment of God having been made known even to them') must be the same death, from which they were saved by the faith of the Son of God; or the apostle's reasoning would be senseless, his antithesis a mere equivoque. Christ redeemed mankind from the curse of the law,' and we all know that it was not from temporal death, or the penalties and afflictions of the present life, that believers have been redeemed.

"The law, of which the inspired sage of Tarsus is speaking, from which no man can plead excuse; the law miraculously delivered in thunders from Mount Sinai, which was inscribed on tables of stone for the Jews, and written in the hearts of all men-the law 'holy and spiritual!' what was the great point, of

* The accountability of the heathen so plainly intimated by St. Paul, is a difficulty, nevertheless, which he is far from having made clear to our apprehension.

which this law, in its own name, offered no solution? the mystery, which is left behind the veil, or in the cloudy tabernacle of types and figurative sacrifices? Whether there was a judgment to come, and souls to suffer the dread sentence? Or was it not far rather -what are the means of escape? Where may grace be found, and redemption? St. Paul says, the latter. The law brings condemnation; but the consciencesentenced transgressor's question, What shall I do to to be saved? Who will intercede for me? she dismisses as beyond the jurisdiction of her court, and takes no cognizance thereof, save in the prophetic murmurs or mute outshadowings of mystic ordinances and sacrificial types. Not, therefore, that there is a life to come, and a future state; but what each individual may hope for itself therein; and on what grounds; and that this state has been rendered an object of aspiration and fervent desire, and a source of thanksgiving and exceeding great joy; and by whom, and through whom, and for whom, and by what means and under what conditions-these are the peculiar and distinguishing fundamentals of the Christian Faith! These are the revealed lights and obtained privileges of the Christian dispensation! Not alone the knowledge of the boon, but the precious inestimable boon itself, is the Grace and Truth that came by Jesus Christ!' I believe Moses, I believe Paul; but I believe in Christ.""

With respect to the distinction between pure reason and the understanding which occupies so conspicuous a part in Coleridge's mental philosophy, is it not, I would ask, one of degree rather than of kind? The human soul has, we believe, powers and faculties peculiar to itself; it possesses freedom of will, and a corresponding sense of moral responsibility; and it seems capable of understanding a vast many more things than the mind of the most elevated brute; but these are powers and faculties of which the soul itself takes cognizance no otherwise than it does of any knowledge derived from the senses-by reflection, namely, and its own internal consciousness. We feel that in the inmost recesses of the human mind there exists a light capable of responding to the brightest rays of nature and of revelation; but it was not, let me repeat, a light to lighten even the wisest of the gentiles further than the portals of those heavenly mansions which they confessed their inability to pass without a key from heaven. I cannot help thinking, therefore, that the distinction about which Coleridge is so anxious, is rather calculated to impugn the integrity of the soul than to exalt it by giving, as it were, an independent existence to one, however prominent, of its faculties.

If the phrenologists are, as I believe, correct, to the extent at least of allotting to the superior mental faculties their appropriate organs, such a discovery will go

far to put the present question at rest; for what, as Abernethy has sagaciously remarked, can more satisfactorily prove the unity and integrity of the soul than the doctrine of a plurality of faculties ?*

Surely if pure reason mean any thing, it can be no other than the reasoning faculty of the human soul in its highest state of exertion, and, as such, in a manner, the exclusive privilege of gifted individuals like Coleridge himself, elicited too by years of study and reflection, and almost emulating the province of inspiration, for even inspiration pre-supposes the reasoning faculty, and is only the immediate influence of the Holy Spirit acting upon it. Whereas the doctrines of our holy religion are, to all the purposes of our salvation, simple and easily apprehended, under the ordinary influences of the Spirit of God, and depend more

Nothing can be more unfounded than the apprehensions which some have expressed of the supposed tendency of phrenology to materialism; for what is this science, after all, but a new and improved reading of a particular page of the natural history, or physiology, of man? which reading is, to the credit of its veracity, not a little in favour of the scriptural doctrine of the unity of the sentient principle.

Phrenologists maintain that separate portions of the brain are the allotted instruments, or organs, of particular mental faculties, instead of supposing, in opposition to a thousand conflicting facts, that the whole brain is alike concerned in every operation of the mind. Now, what can be more corroborative of the unity and individuality of the sentient principle than such a diversity of organs? Give the utmost latitude to this doctrine, even that of supposing matter itself endowed with perception, which, I confess, is what I cannot comprehend, still the soul will be required to take the direction of this multitudinous assemblage of sentient organs, which would otherwise be very much in the same predicament with an assemblage of musical instruments without a presiding mind to bring them into concert.

upon the affections of the heart than upon the powers

of the head.

In like manner, when Coleridge affirms that "the Gospels of St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke, are merely didactic, but that St. John's Gospel is pure reason," in contradistinction, as it would seem, to inspiration, may it not be fairly asked why-if so— need we Coleridge to point it out to us? Why is it not as readily apprehended as such by a Mahomedan, a Hindoo, or a native of any island in the Pacific, as by the most enlightened Christian?

Experience clearly shows that the peculiar province of human reason is to examine facts, draw conclusions, and separate truth from error; and the very utmost that it can be presumed to recognize in its purest natural state, is the necessary existence of one God; a fact which may be said to lie at the foundation alike of natural and revealed religion.

But the Gospel of St. John requires us to believe that there is a plurality of persons in the Godhead, a mysterious truth which pure reason would never have made known to us. Such knowledge can only be derived from the Bible.

To say, therefore, that the Gospel of St. John is pure reason, is, according to my apprehension, altogether equivocal; but to say that its doctrines are the educts of the inspired mind of the beloved apostle, is to refer them to their right source, the Spirit of