on which the great doctrines of the church rest for their support, we see that these priests and these fanatical multitudes, that we had looked down upon in the pride of our ignorance, have not been altogether in the wrong, as we had supposed them. We feel that they have had, though often without knowing it, reason on their side, and that it was our own inexperi

ence that had made us think otherwise.

I remember well the time, when the Bible was to me a revolting book, when I could find no meaning in it, and when I could not believe that religious people could honestly regard it as they professed to regard it. Its very style and language were offensive, and if I was called upon to write upon religious topics, I took good care to avoid, as much as possible, the use of its phraseology. But it is not so with me now. Life has developed within me wants which no other book can satisfy. Say nothing now of the divine origin of the Bible; take it merely as an ancient writing which has come down to us, and it is to me a truly wonderful production. I take up the writings of the most admired geniuses of ancient or modern times; I read them, and relish them; and yet there is a depth in my experience they do not fathom. This is much, I say; but I have lived more than is here; I have wants this does not meet; it records only a moiety of my experience. But with the Bible it is not so. Whatever my state, its authors seem to have anticipated it. Whatever anomaly in my experience I note, they seem to have recorded it. What experience these men had, if indeed they spoke from experience! It is well called the Book, for it is the book in which seems to be registered all that the individual or the race ever has lived, or ever can live. It is all here. If I would bow down with sorrow for sin, and pour out my soul in deep contrition for my wanderings, here are the very words I want, and words terribly expressive. If I would break forth in thanksgiving for release from the bonds of iniquity, and shout in exulting strains my forgiveness, here is the hymn already composed, which

exactly meets the temper of my mind. Then, again, even the language of our common English version, ridiculed as it often has been, is after all the only language, in which I can utter the spiritual facts which are developed within me. I seek to vary the expression, to select what I may regard as an equivalent but more elegant term, and some how or other the soul of the passage escapes, and I find remaining nothing but a lifeless form of words. It does not therefore seem strange to me now, though it once did, the attachment the Christian world has to this venerable Book, nor the tenacity with which they, who speak the English tongue, hold on to our common version, in spite of the defects which criticism justly points out.

But notwithstanding all this, I should rebel, should the attempt be made to force me to receive the Bible as the word of God. I receive it as the word of God, because I have reproduced much of it in my own soul; because I am conscious of that within me which vouches for its divinity. And no man can really receive it as the word of God, till his own experience has developed within him the need of it, and furnished him the key to its meaning. Our own life must lead ( us to it. We must be initiated into the mysteries of religion in the temple of our own souls, and then, and not till then, shall we comprehend the significance of the Bible, and the doctrines of grace. The natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit; they are foolishness to him, for they are spiritually discerned. Here is the doctrine of experimental religion, and its justification too. And here is the heresy which I profess, and shall defend.

I claim the right to examine all doctrines, and to interpret them by my own experience; but I hold myself bound to rectify my own experience by the recorded experience of the race; and hence it is that I always regard the fact, that a doctrine has been widely disseminated, long believed, and able to take a firm hold on the heart of the race, as a strong presumption of its truth. The human race is no doubt

liable to err, but he who should contend that it can embrace unmixed error, and be altogether in the wrong, would deprive himself in advance of all evidence, wherewith to prove himself in the right. I have no faculty for perceiving and recognising truth, which was not possesed equally by all who went before me. If that faculty could be wholly at fault in them, how know I that it is not equally at fault in me? The wise man does not reject the doctrines which past ages have bequeathed him; he merely seeks to comprehend them.

At present the doctrines of the church seem to me to be buried beneath a heap of words, which to the generality of men have very little of meaning. People do not look beneath those words; they seem to me to stop at the Idol and not to penetrate to the Idea; to prostrate themselves before the carved image, without recognising the Numen, which it should shadow forth. The many who worship, though moved by a religious impulse, are to a great extent idolaters. The church symbols need not be destroyed, nor warred against; but if we would have men bow down and worship with true adoration, with gratitude and joy, with profit to their souls, we must interpret these symbols anew, and express the truths they conceal, in words adapted to the present state of the human understanding.

Much space, as heretofore, will be devoted to the discussion of metaphysical subjects. This perhaps will not be regarded as a recommendation of the Review. Metaphysics do not enjoy the best reputation in the world. Many sensible people regard all time and thought, bestowed upon metaphysical studies, as so much time and thought thrown away; for they entertain the notion that these studies serve no useful purpose; that they merely tend to draw off attention from the practical affairs of life, to multiply jarring and contradictory systems, to fill the brain with perplexing subtilties, and to overload every subject of

human inquiry with needless and unmeaning distinctions. But are these people correct? This is not an idle question; but who can answer it without resorting to those very metaphysical studies they condemn? We all of us, consciously or unconsciously, are continually resorting to these studies; and whoever asks, Why? or, Wherefore? in relation to any subject whatever, affirms them to be indispensable.

Then these, too, are stirring times; times in which all is agitated and nothing settled. Men are everywhere loosened from their old moorings, and afloat upon a tumultuous ocean, at the mercy of the winds and waves. A spirit of free inquiry has gone abroad, and keen and searching glances are sent into all subjects. All that men have heretofore regarded as sacred and well established is arraigned and put upon its defence. Old opinions are recklessly abandoned, new views are rashly put forth, new creeds are proposed, new institutions projected, and an entire reörganization of the human race contended for. Surely this is not a condition of things, a wise lover of peace and security, of God and man, would desire to see rendered permanent. But how shall we change it? Not by declaiming against it. It is useless to dwell on the danger it threatens. A terrible spirit has been. raised, and there is no charm in eloquence, none in authority, to exorcise it. The evil we see and apprehend can be averted only by searching to the bottom our general faculty of knowing, by determining with what it is we know, what it is that we can know, what are the grounds and conditions of all science. Now to attempt to do this is precisely what it is to engage in the study of metaphysics. Metaphysics are the science of science, that which determines the ground and conditions of science in general. Without them, it is impossible to make any scientific progress, beyond that of amassing materials for science.

There is no distrust among us of the physical sciences. But the physical sciences repose upon a metaphysical basis. It is the metaphysician who furnishes

the naturalist his method, and legitimates his inductions. The instrument, used in the construction of the natural sciences, is the human intelligence, and to determine the value and right manner of using the intelligence, belongs to the metaphysician. Before he had determined this, the naturalist made but slow progress. Men looked on nature with open eyes and keen senses before the time of Bacon, but it was not till he had taught them how to observe her features, and how to question her, that she began in very deed to surrender to them her secrets.

This age devotes much attention to the study of history, which is well; for the hoary past contains much that we need to know. We are but the continuation and development of what has gone before us. What has placed us where we are, and made us what we are? Strike out the metaphysical sciences, and how will you answer these questions? Reject these sciences, and take your stand where you will, you are in the labyrinth, and no Ariadne at hand to furnish you the thread. Reject these sciences, and tell me, I pray you, the meaning of that fierce and long continued struggle between Greece and the great King, of the deadly feuds ever nurtured between Athens and Sparta, of the quarrel between Marius and Sylla, of the victory of Julius over Pompey, of the Guelph and Ghibbeline parties, of the Reformation by Luther, of the French Revolution, of the parties even of our own country; and why it is that silence is rapidly gathering over the memory of our own once idolized Hamilton, while young America pronounces with ever increasing enthusiasm the name of Jefferson? You can tell me nothing of all this. All to you is dark and meaningless; for the torch which shall illumine the historic page, and enable you to read it, must be kindled at the despised taper, whose feeble light glimmers from the window of the solitary metaphysician. The key to the past can be found only by a careful analysis of the elements of human nature, as they present themselves to-day to the eye of individual