religion in the church, and I never feel the slightest wavering or wandering in my mind; but I hope and trust that the true and sober spirit of Christ's religion is there.

A methodist chapel, and a primitive methodist chapel are also in the town. The former is frequented by followers of that eminent clergyman, the Rev. John Wesley, and thus a new sect; and the other by those who are vulgarly called ranters, and, I believe, inclined to the doctrines of that other clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Whitfield. I believe that a good many people frequent the former, but I know nothing of the latter. Neither of them, perhaps, are greatly needed in Ramsey, for it is a small town, and if they were absent, there would be two clergymen, at least, appointed, and two commodious chapels open on Sunday and week days—but so it is, that sectarians will act in opposition to that command of our Lord's to preach the gospel to every creature: for they choose rather to preach among those to whom it is already preached, and for the instruction of whose souls ample provision is made. We certainly do vast harm by building on other men's foundations, and by keeping them from a ministry, which any modest man must confess to be superior to his own. I should not like the responsibility of such a proceeding, and therefore have I refused offers from the Home Mission in Ireland, and made a resolution never to preach without episcopal leave. May God overrule all for good and doubtless many an injudicious thing is done under good intentions, but with short-sightedness as to final results. Formerly, I have been told, there were awfully irreligious scenes enacted in chapels of the methodists; here but I have no reason to think that now the services are otherwise conducted, than with a regard to decency and the rational dictates of religion; and certainly in England religious eccentricities and ravings are dying away, or are strictly confined to the lowest order of religionists. I have always felt especial interest in the doings of the strict followers of Wesley; and I always look upon any departure from that holy man's counsel, with much pain and regret. There is already a vast split among them, but those who separate from the church, must expect to behold their own bond of peace severed. However, strangers need not be frightened from coming to Ramsey on this account, for they will find the church in excellent order, and they are fools indeed who meddle in controversies from which they may steer clear. Churchmen and Methodists live in much harmony here, perhaps, more so than Methodists with Methodists. I love all who are open and sincere in their religion.

NEW SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. A NEW School of speculative philosophy has arisen in Germany. headed by Professor J. H. Fichte, of Bonn. The Heglians had imagined that their master had reached the summit of thought, and that his system, as it was the last, was also necessarily the most perfect. In their haughty self-sufficiency, they looked with contempt

on every other method of solving the problems of Being aud its phenomena; and as Hegel was thought by the Prussian court the strenuous defender of Conservatism, no other philosophy succeeded in rising against, or even beside his; and he and his followers remained complete masters of the field of speculation. Since the appearance, however, of Strauss's Life of Jesus, things seem to be altered. Strauss, a Heglian, resolves the whole history of Our Saviour into myths: it is true, into such as veil the sublimest truths ever offered to human reason, but still only myths. Accordingly, a thousand voices were raised from the clergy and laity, philosophers and historians, against this daring attempt to deprive Christianity of its realistic basis, and to refine the faith of Christendom into a system of speculative conceptions. Had Strauss stood alone, his work would perhaps have proved harmless to his school; but it was soon found that nearly all those his defenders were also Heglians, many of them, too, theologians of high repute, holding preferments in the Prussian church, or occupying professorial chairs.

This discovery has led to serious attacks on the system. It has been asserted (and, in our humble judgment, proved), that Hegel and his followers, under the shelter of glittering language, and an artful terminology, have taught a lifeless pantheism, if not absolute atheism. Their God is a nonentity, inasmuch as he has no selfexisting objective consciousness, but becomes only conscious subjectively in the mind of every man, in proportion to his individual gifts. Nor could they come to a different conclusion, since they, differing from Kant, denied all objective reality to phenomena, and identified them with the subjective intellectual conception : that is to say, they held that they necessarily are what they appear to be to pure reason; or, we should say, what could be talked of them in the jargon of their sect. Be this, however, as it may, the attacks made on them by Professor Leo and others have so attracted public attention, even of those who generally take no cognizance of philosophical disputes, that many of the school, especially of the younger branches of it, have taken the alarm; and hence, probably, the great accession of power, Fichte has found in the outset of his endeavours to start a system which "should go beyond" that of their master. For he does not, as nearly all the founders of new schools have done before him, commence his career by himself, uncertain whether his theory will be received or not; but, having agreed with twenty-six or twenty-seven other philosophical minds on their leading principles, he has commenced, conjointly with them, a periodical, in which these principles are to be gradually unfolded, applied to all the departments of human knowledge, and, if possible, established. This work, which was commenced in 1837, and of which two volumes and a half are already published, is entitled, Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Speculative Theologie. The authors call their philosophy sometimes the System of Liberty, in contradistinction to Hegel's "absolute necessity:" or the System of Individuality, in as far as it aims at the knowledge of the truth, or the objective (personal) reality of God

and His creation. Its harmony with the true spirit of Christianity, is to be the criterion of its truthfulness. The members of the school receive as a fact, that "there has been, at all times and in all places, a belief in a positive revelation [i. e., in an essentially divine annunciation] to the free spirit of man, besides the revelation of God in nature and reason, with distinct instructions for the knowledge, and commandment for the will, of man; and that it is the task of philosophy to make it clear to itself, how it may understand and explain this fact."

It remains to be seen what progress this Christian a priori philosophy will make in our sceptical and letter-worshipping age. We say, "God speed !"

OUR MONTHLY CRYPT.

A. B.

PHYSIC AND PHYSICANS. THE MEDICAL CHARACTER.*

If there were among all the regular professions a dispute for pre-eminence, the contest would finally rest between the physician and the divine. The soldier, heroic though he has been held in all ages, is rapidly falling in public estimation. Hitherto soldiers only have been the witnesses of carnage. The more revolting features of the occupation of man-butchering have been hidden in the blaze of glory attending the conqueror, or forgotten in the gaping wonderment at the revolutions of mighty empires. But the philosophy of civilisation is now beginning to be better understood; and, though armies are not yet dispensed with, they are looked upon as necessary evils. A threat goes as far now as a blow, among nations; and kings have learned better manners. Soldiership, therefore, seems likely to be ere long at a discount; and, should those principles prevail, sailors also bid fair to dwindle down into a mere sea-police for the prevention of piracy. Neither soldiership nor sailorship has any claims to high consideration as a profession, except when acting on the defensive. In the aggression they degenerate, even when the authorised agents of nations, into mere robbers and murderers. If we turn to the legal profession, we shall unhappily find that, as at present constituted, it has but few claims to the praise of the moralist. In every legal contest there must be a right and a wrong. The lawyer must therefore eternally risk being engaged in the defence of injustice; for there is no line of demarcation between advocates of the right and advocates of the wrong. The lawyer must undertake the cause upon the facts put before him, and of course no litigant is such an ass as to submit to his advocate a case which is on its very surface fraudulent. Therefore all the lawyer can do is to run the risk of acting as the paid agent of injustice, and apply the salvo to his conscience, that he forsooth does not know that the facts are false-he takes them on the statement of his client. Another feature of the practice of that profession must also occasionally prick the conscience of the lawyer-more especially of the practitioner in the inferior branch;-it is that the expense of litigation is such, as that even if justice be ultimately attained (and how many are the risks of injustice being suffered ?) its good effects are neutralised, and the profit arising from the judgement goes, not to the successful plaintiff, but for the most part into that of his attorney. Far are we from joining in the vulgar cry against that most respectable body, the attornies.

Physic and Physicians, A Medical Sketch Book, exhibiting the public and pri vate life of the most celebrated Medical Men of former days, with Memoirs of eminent living London Physicians and Surgeons. 2 vols. Longman & Co. 1839.

They have too large a sprinkling of black sheep among them no doubt, but there is a great majority of high-minded men composing the profession on whom we would be loth indeed to cast a reflection as regards their motives. Still, he who touches pitch will be defiled; and even the most moderate bill of costs lengthens a man's visage when sent in. In this source of disquiet to the legal conscience (you see we are liberal, reader; we admit the existence of what has been said by divers grave authorities to be an impossibility), the barristers do not so much participate. The long and wearying study required to qualify the really learned counsel, the vast outlay of money necessary to prepare him for his profession, the sacrifices of health, pleasure, and private feeling,-for the barrister is eminently one of those who must

"Scorn delights and live laborious days;"

or, as an ingenious friend of ours reads the passage—

"Scorn delays and live laborious nights,”—

all these circumstances combine to entitle him without dispute to the not high scale of fees by which he is remunerated. Looking, however, to all that can be said in favour of the law as a profession-admitting that sometimes laws are interpreted according to their obvious spirit, and not according to their letter-admitting that judges are sometimes high-minded independent men, promoted for Baconian properties of intellect, rather than peripatetic digests of judge-made law-admitting that barristers may be found insane enough not to avail themselves of a fraud, or a suppressed fact, or a false testimony, in aid of their client's case-admitting that there may be attornies who will not grind their opponents for costs, or their own clients, when they find them rapidly approaching that state when they will be no longer squeezable-admitting that a species of study, whose basis is a slavish deference to precedents, even where such precedents may be but the crude conclusions of the comparatively uninstructed in an uninformed age, is likely to lead to enlargement of mind, and independence of judgement-admitting all these favourable arguments for the moral integrity of the law as a profession, still it must be conceded, that to foment or profit by the wrangles and strifes between man and man is not the most consistent occupation of a christian. But we forget-there is a day specially set apart for the contemplation (perhaps the practice) of their christianity: on other days they are like other men.

The contest, then, lies between the divine and the physician. Their object is undoubtedly to do good, not evil. No divine comes to the altar prepared to disseminate doctrines which he believes to be pernicious. No physician attends the bed-side of his patient with the intention of killing him. Each desires to heal, to the best of his power,-the one the body, the other the soul. To attempt to decide between them involves considerations that go to the very root of religion and morals; as, for instance, Which is the higher utility—that which consists in saving the soul in the next world, or that which prolongs its existence in this? Perhaps the doctor of medicine might carry the day as against the doctor of divinity, on the ground that the longer a poor sinner has to live, the longer time has he for repentance. "Ah, but," cries the divine, "it is in sickness, when physical debility subdues the pride of man, that the lessons of the Gospel sink the deepest into the repentant soul. You come in-work your nostrums and specifics-you promise health-you authorise indulgenceyou induce the patient to rely rather upon man than upon God-and in the end, by restoring him to the world, you rekindle his passion for its vanities, and drive me from the vantage-ground I held in his conscience!" Half a century ago, the wig and the cane of the M. D. might have vanquished the D. D., but (alas for the picturesque !) doctors of all sorts now dress in a decent dulness, like other English gentlemen. The virtues and humble glories of the Divine have had many affectionate painters: indeed, the portrait is one to dwell upon con amore:

"The christian priest, devout, and pure, and meek, Whose solace sinners in affliction seek;

A pastor wise, just, affable, and mild,

Who loves and rules his flock, as parent should his child,
A friend,―revered by low and high degree-

At once the stay and charm of true society;
A blameless man, who scarce suspecteth ill,

And bears to each and all a sweet good will."

Not less amiable in its moral features is the character of the really highminded physician. Accustomed from early youth to devote himself exclusively to meditating on the sources of human suffering and devising the means of cure; cut off by the nature of his studies from the petty and degrading strifes which neutralise the moral qualities of worldly men; with a mind elevated by the constant contemplation of the mysterious workings of the Creator, from the grandeur of design manifested in the structure of man, down to those minutest details of the animal and vegetable world, which are still more wondrous as marking the infinite benevolence of the Deity; now prostrate in humility before a power whose utmost wisdom he is led to revere, the more hope he has of penetrating the portals of the divine workshop, and now, elated with a noble pride, because trusting that in him is lodged the ability to restore to harmony that grand machine when disarranged by accident or blind indulgence; the physician combines within himself all the properties of the highly intellectual and the moral. At all events, he has the most favourable opportunities for acquiring that knowledge, refinement of feeling, and those principles of honour, which when combined in one person, go to form that beau-ideal of all our vain longing-the gentleman.

With these feelings towards that honourable profession, we were pleased to receive a work whose title promised a rich fund of amusement and interest. Nor have we been disappointed. The author of the book, with a becoming modesty, has preferred on all occasions, to give us the thoughts and feelings of eminent bygone writers on the subject of medicine and medical men, rather than to substitute for them his own. Yet the judicious remarks which are interspersed throughout the volumes show that this abstinence has not proceeded from any lack of power to do justice to his views. He has collected from innumerable sources, a vast body of the most interesting facts, and most amusing anecdotes, so that the work is one of the most amusing to the general reader, that has for a long time appeared. Every page teems with amusement, and though most of the anecdotes of bygone Physicians are necessarily not new, yet to the great majority of readers they will be so, and even to those who may have met with them individually, before, they will be interesting, as taken in connection, and affording illustrations of the medical character-a character on the whole, more brilliant, eccentric, amusing and instructive, than any other.

In the opening chapter, after an able review of the antiquity and dignity of physic, the author thus enthusiastically alludes to the claims of his profession:"Medical men have in all ages been held in high estimation, when the understanding of mankind was not clouded by superstition. The ancients deified their celebrated medical men, and dedicated temples to their honour. Plato, the great heathen philosopher, says, that a good physician is only second to God himself. The Athenians must have had an elevated notion of the science of medicine, for there was a law among them that no slave or woman should study physic. The inhabitants of Smyrna associated, upon the coins of that city, the names of their celebrated physicians with the effigies of their gods. The Romans, in the early period of their history, did not hold the art in very high estimation; but in the time of Julius Cæsar, when physicians came from Greece (the country whence the Romans derived all their polite learning, and knowledge of the fine arts), they were complimented with the freedom of the 'Eternal City;' a privilege of which that proud people was extremely jealous.